The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1886-04-15

of priest and undertaken and grave-digger
and mourner, were ended.
Oh, was not Miriam, the sister of Moses,
doing good thing, an important thing,
glorious thing when she watched the boat
woven of river plants and made water
tight with asphaltum, carrying its one
passenger? Did she not put all the ages
of time and of coming eternity under
obligation when she defended her help
less brother from the perils aquatic, reptil-
ian and ravenous? She it was that
brought that wonderful babe and his
mother together, SO that he was reared to
be the deliverer of his nation, when other
wise, if saved at all from the rushes of
the Nile, he would have been only one
more of the God .defying Pharaohs, for
the Princess Thermutis. of the bathing
house, would have inherited the crown Of
Egypt, and as she had no child of her own
this adopted child would have come to
coronation Had there been no Miriam
there would have been no Moses. What
a garland for faithful sisterhood? For,
how many law-giver, and how many
a hero, and how many deliverer, ana
how many saint are the world and the
Church indebted to a watchful, loving,
faithful godly sister? Come up out of the
farm houses; come up out of the uncon-
spicuous homes! Come up from the banks
of the Hudson and the Penobscot and the
Savannah and the Mobile and the Missis-
sippi and all the other Niles of Amer
lea, and let us see you, the Miriams
who watched and protected the lead
ers in law and medicine and
merchandise, and art, and agriculture, and
mechanics, and religion! If should ask all
these physicians, and attorneys, aud mer-
chants, and ministers of religion, and sue
cessful men of all professions and trades
who are indebted to an elder sister for
good influences, and perhaps for an educa-'
ton or a prosperous start, to rise, they
would rise by the hundreds. God knows
how many of our Greek lexicons and how
much of our schooling was paid for by
money that would otherwise have gone
for the replenishing of a sisters wardrobe.
While the brother sailed off for a resound-
ing sphere the sister watched him from the
banks of self-denial.
Let sisters not begrudge the time and
believe that any boy that you know sowell
as your brother can ever turn out nything
very useful. Well, be may not be Moses.
There is only one of that kind needed for
5000 years. But 1 tell you what your
brother will be-either a blessing or cnrse
to society and candidate for happiness
or wretchedness. He will, like Moses,
have the choice between rubies and
living Goals, and your influence
will have much to do with his decision. He
may not, like Moses, be the deliver of a
nation, but he may, after your father and
mother are gone, be the deliverer of a
household. What thousands of homes to-
day are piloted by brothers. There are
properties now well invested, and yield
ing income for the support of sisters and
younger brothers, because the older brother
rose to the leadership from the day the
father laid down to die. Whatever you
do for your brother will come back to you
again. If you set him an ill-natured, GEN.
serious. accommodating example. it will
recoil upon you from his own irritated and
despoiled nature. If you, by patience
with all infir1nities and by nobility of
character, dwell with him, in the few years
of your companionship you will have
your counsel reflected back upon you some
day by his splendor of behavior in some
cases where he would have failed but for
you.
Don't snub him. Don't depreciate his
ability. Don't talk discouragingly about
his future. Don't let Miriam get down off
the bank of the Nile and wade out and up
set the ark of bulrushes. Don't tease him.
Brothers and sisters do not consider it any
harm to tease. That spirit abroad in the
family is one of the meanest and most
devilish. There is teasing that is
pleasurable and is only another for N
of innocent raillery, but that viii b
provokes and irritates and makes the
eye flush with anger is to be reprehended.
1t would be less blameworthy to take a
bunch of thorns and draw them across
your sisters cheek, or to take knife and
draw its sharp edge across your brothers
hand till the blood spnrts, for that would
damage only the body, but teasing is the
thorn and the knife scratching and LAGER
ating the disposition and the soul. It is
the curse of innummerable households tina
the brothers tease the sisters and the Sis
tiers the brothers. Sometimes it is the color
OF the hair, or the shape of the features, OF
an affair OF the heart. Sometimes it is by
revealing secret, or BY suggestive look
or guffaw, or an ssahem!" Tease! tease
tease! For Gods sake quit it. Christ says:
"He that hateth his brother is a murderer. I,
Now, when you, by teasing, make youl
brother or sister hate, you turn HIM or hel
into murderer or murderess.
Don't let jealousy ever touch sisters
soul, as it so often does, because her broth.
er gets more honor or more means. Even
Miriam, the heroine of the text, was struck
by that evil passion of jealousy. She had
possessed unlimited influence over Moses
and now he lnarries, and not only so, bui
marries black woman from Ethiopia
and Miriam is so disguised and
outraged by Moses, first because
| he had married at all. and next because
ne had practiced niscegenation, that she
is drawn into frenzy and then begins te
| turn white, and gets as white as a corpse
and then whittier than corpse. Her com.
| plexion is like chalk; the fact is, she ha,
the Egyptian leprosy And now the
brother whom she had defended on tn.
Nile comes to her rescue, in a PRAYER tina,
brings her restoration. Let there be M
rrNn ar, oil L..