DRUNKARDS SHALL NOT MARRY.
The government of the principality of Waldeck, in Germany, have given public notice that no license to marry will hereafter be granted to any individual who is addicted to drunkenness, or, if having been so, he must exhibit full proofs that he is no longer a slave to this vice. The same government have also directed that in every report made by the ecclesiastical, municipal, and police authorities, upon petition for license to marry, the reporter shall distinctly state whether either of the parties desirous of entering matrimonial connection is addicted to intemperance or otherwise.
I CAN'T HELP CRYING.
A little girl who was in the habit of attending a Sunday school was the daughter of a notorious drunkard. She came home from school one day, crying bitterly, when it happened that her father was in rather better humor than usual. He asked her what was the matter. She said:
"I don't like to tell you, father."
"Oh, yes," said he, "I will know."
She then said:
"The girls run after me, and call me a drunkard's daughter, and I can't help crying."
It was too much for the father. He accompanied her to the next temperance meeting, signed the pledge, and got drunk no more. He now goes to work with a light heart and clear head; and when Saturday night comes, he brings home his wages to his family, instead of spending them at a public house; and on the Sabbath, he is to be seen in the sanctuary, and is, I trust, a sincere inquirer for the way of salvation.
RATS AND CIDER.
A farmer, in a flourishing town in Massachusetts, filled a hogshead with cider, leaving the bung-hole open so that the oxygen of the air might produce vinous fermentation, knowing that acetous fermentation following fast after would supply him with a fine stock of vinegar. In the spring, when he tapped the plethoric vessel for vinegar, he was surprised to find that his cider was soft and sweet as unintoxicating wine. He and his family, and his friends who called upon him, had all the cider they needed all that spring, and the following summer.
In the fall, when he was about to cleanse the hogshead for a new supply of new cider, judge his astonishment, when he made the discovery that half a bushel of bones, the skeletons of rats, was in the bottom of the hogshead. The flesh of the rats had been dissolved in the cider, and its sweetness was due to that fact.