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conditions from which they have shrunk all their lives. The Law has a way of picking up those shivering mortals who stand around the river's edge, and throwing them into the stream, bidding them to strike out and SWIM. It prefers the easier way of teaching you to swim by degrees --- of acquiring knowledge by easy stages --- but if you refuse to learn in this way, it will resort to the vigorous plan just mentioned --- but swim you must, one way or the other.

I am going to tell you a story --- not a particularly pretty one, but one that will give you an idea of what I mean, and how the plan works. It's about animals --- but many a truth has been conveyed by fables in which animals were the actors, and this homely little tale from the wilderness may convey to your minds the point of this talk better than do my words. Here's the story:

Once upon a time a man, away up in one of the Northwestern States, owned a dog named "Jerry." He was not very much on looks --- and less in good qualities. He was not of any fancy breed --- just Dog, that's all. He had drifted on to the farm from Somewhere and had been kicked and cuffed around in his early youth, until he was afraid to claim a right to live at all. He grew up into a worthless animal --- snapped at by smaller dogs --- bullied by those of his own size --- looked down upon by all. He expected to be kicked by everybody in sight --- and, of course, got kicked. (Men and dogs who go around expecting to be abused, always draw upon them the thing they fear and expect.) His tail seemed a magnet which attracted all the tin cans around that neighborhood. Pitying did not seem to do him any good --- it only made him more miserable and abject than ever, just as it acts in the case of some people. The poor chap gradually dropped down to the lowest state of dogdom, and his case seemed hopeless. The farmer would drive to town every once in a while, and Jerry would sneak along under the wagon, in manner seeming to apologize for taking up even that space. His appearance would be the signal for all the dogs of the several farms along the road to chase down to the wagon, rout him out, and roll him over in the dust, the performance being repeated at every farm to and from the town. The farmer, at last, feeling that the dog was bringing his establishment into disrepute, and knowing that "Hopkins' Jerry" was becoming a township jest, determined to put an end to the animal's unhappy career. But Destiny intervened --- possibly in order to give me a tale to point the moral of this talk --- and to give you something to remember in trying circumstances.

Jerry strayed away from the farm one evening, being chased a part of the distance by some of the smaller dogs who delighted in bullying him. He traveled some distance from home and entered the woods. Bear tracks had been discovered in that region, and some of the boys had dug a pit, baiting it with some choice tid-bit pleasing to his bearship, and covering it over with a thin