Caper Sauce Part 17

I have looked upon the humanitarian side of the question till I don't know whether to be most disgusted at my own credulity, or the perfidy of my fellow-creatures. Now let somebody else take a turn at it.

A HINT TO ORGAN-GRINDERS.--It is a curious fact that organ-grinders prefer to select for their purpose that house whose windows are ornamented with statues or flowers. There is philosophy in this; since the lady who is fond of beauty and of sweet perfumes, is also fond of music. And though some of our street strains are sufficiently wheezy and harrowing, yet much of it also is sweet and soothing, and suggestive of past luxurious evenings, and of happy faces, and of hours that flew all too swiftly. But alas! for the uplifted pen, with its suspended drop of ink, at such moments! Alas! for the printer's devil waiting on one leg in the hall! Why won't organ-grinders learn where scribblers abide?

_STONES FOR BREAD._

Some of our papers publish, the latter part of every week--and a very good custom it is--a list of different preachers, their places of wors.h.i.+p, and the topics selected for the ensuing Sunday. We often read over this list with curiosity and interest, and lay it down with a sad wonder at some of the topics selected for the sermons. We sometimes say, why _don't_ they preach about something that will come home to the worn, weary, tried heart--vexed enough already with its life-burthens--instead of entangling it in theological nets, till the blessed voice that says so sweetly, "Come unto Me," never reaches the perplexed ear? We say this in no spirit of fault-finding, or dictation, but because we are _sure_ that hungry souls, who every Sunday beg for bread, receive only a stone; and go away to take up their daily burden again on Monday, with faltering, hopeless step, when they might and _should_ march--singing the song of triumph!

If a mother weeps over her lost babe, if a wife mourns her husband, or a father bends over a dead son, whom he thought would live to close _his_ aged eyes, do you choose that time to distress them with abstract questions and transcendental theories? "No--you see before you an aching, tried heart; and you yearn with all your sympathetic nature to comfort it. Your words are few but earnest, and full of love. You go softly with them and look at the dear, dead face, which perhaps you never saw living, and say with quivering lips, "G.o.d help you, my friend." Just so, we long sometimes to have clergymen look at the dead faces of men's lost joys and hopes, and pity the bereaved, lonely hearts that want something to lean upon besides cold, dull abstractions; that yearn for the warm, beating, pulsating heart of Infinite Love, and yet _cannot_ find it. Oh! what mission on earth as blessed as to teach them where and how?"

"_Come unto Me._" These words, thousands of years old, and yet never worn out! "Come unto Me." Oh, shake off the dust of your libraries, and say, as _He_ said it, "Come unto Me!"

THE END.