Connecticut western news., 1898-05-12

great flooks of absorbing duties, and such 8 father needs help in home or office or field. Go out and help him with the flocks. The reason that so many men now condemn themselves to unaffianced and solitary life is because they cannot support the modern young woman, who rises at half past 10 in the morning and retires after midnight, one of the trashiest of novels ill her hands most of the time between the late rising and the late retiring-a thousand of them not worth one Zipporah.
 There are questions that every father and mother ought to ask the daughter at breakfast or tea table and that all the daughters of the wealthy sheik ought to ask each other: "What would you do if the family fortune should fail. if sickness should prostrate the bread- winner, if the flocks of Jethro should be destroyed by sudden excursion of wolves and bears and hyenas from the mountain? What would you do for a
 living? Could you support yourself? Can you take care of an invalid mother or brother or sister as we'll as yourself?"
 Yea, bring it down to what any day might come to prosperous family.
 "Can you cook dinner if the servants should make strike for higher wages and leave that morning." Every minute of every hour of every day of every year there are families flung from prosperity into hardship, and, alas, if in such exi- gency the seven daughters of Jethro can do nothing but sit around and cry and wait for some one to come and hunt them up situation for which they have no qualification Get at something useful, get at it right away. Do not say, eff I were thrown upon my own resources, I would become music teacher" There are now more music teachers than could be supported if they were all Mozarts and Wagners and Handels. Do not say, "I will go to em- broidering slippers" There are more slippers now than there are feet. Our hearts are every day wrung by the story of elegant women who were once afflu- ent. but through catastrophe have fall en helpless, with no ability to take care of themselves.
 Our friend and Washingtonian towns man, W. W. Corooran, did . magnifi- cent thing when he built and endowed the Louise home for the support of the unfortunate aristocracy of the south the people who once had everything, but have come to nothing. We want anoth- CT W. W. Corcoran to build Louise home for the unfortunate aristocraoy of the north But institutions like that in every city of the land could not take care of one-half the unfortunate aristoo- racy of the north and south whose large fortunes have failed and who, through lack of acquaintance with any style of work, cannot now earn their own bread.
 There needs to be peaceful yet rad ical revolution among most of the pros porous homes of America by which the elegant do nothings may be transformed into practical do something's. Let use- less women go to work and gather the flooks. Come, zipporah. let me intro duoe you to Moses. But you do not mean that this man affianoed to this country girl was the great Moses of his tory, do you? You do not mean that he was the man who afterward wrought such wonders there? Surely you do not mean he whose staff dropped, wriggled into a serpent and then, clutched, stiff ened again into a staff? You do not mean the challenger of Egyptian thrones and palaces? You do not mean he who struck the rock so hard it went in stream for thirsty hosts? Surely you do not mean the man who stood alone with God on the quaking Sinaitic ranges, not him of that most famous funeral of all time. God coming down out of the heavens to bury him? Yes, the same Moses defending the seven of the Midianitish sheik, who afterward rescued all nations.
 Preparation For Special Work.
 Why, do you not know that this is the way men and women get prepared for special work? The wilderness of Arabia was the law school, the theolog- ioal seminary, the university of rock and sand, from which he graduated for a mission that will balk seas and drown armies and follow the cloud of fire by night and start the workmen with backs among Egyptian brick kilns toward the pasture lands that flow with milk and the trees of Canaan drip ping with honey. Gracious God, teach all the people this lesson. You must go into humiliation and retreat and hidden closets of prayer if you are GO be fitted for special usefulness. How did John the Baptist get prepared to become forerunner of Christ? Show me his wardrobe. It will be hung with silken socks and embroidered robes and attire of Syrian purple. Show me his dining table. On it the tankards ablush with the richest wines of the vineyards of Engedi and rarest birds that were ever caught in net and sweetest venison that ever dropped antlers before the hunter. No; we are directly told "the same John had his raiment of camel's hair" not the fine hair of the camel which we call oamlet, but the long, coarse hair such as beggars in the east wear-and his only meat was of insects, the green locust, about two inches long, roasted, a disgusting food. These insects were caught and the wings and legs torn off, and they were stuck on wooden spits and turned before the fire. The Bedouins pack them in salt and carry them in sacks. What menu for John the Bap- tist Through what deprivation he came to what exultationi
 And you will have to go down before you go up. From the pit into which his brothers threw him and the prison in which his enemies incaroerated him Joseph rose to be Egyptian prime min ister. Elijah, who was to be the great est of all the ancient prophets; Elijah, who made King Ahab's knees knock to- gether with the prophecy that the dogs would be his only undertakers; Elijah, whose one prayer brought more than three years of drought and whose other prayer brought drenching showers; the man who wrapped up his cape of sheep skin into roll and with it cut path through raging Jordan for just two men to pass over; the man who with wheel of fire rode over death and escaped into the skies without mortuary disintegra- tion; the man who, thousands of years after was oa1led out of the eternjties tO