Reading Room

There are ten thousand ways of telling a lie. A man's entire life may be a falsehood, while with his lips he may not once directly falsify. There are those…

Blasphemy is a crime that aims at God, but does its chief harm to the one that fires it off. So I compare it to a piece of imperfect firearms…

Men like to hear the frailties and faults of others chastised. With what blandness and placidity they sit and hear the religious teacher excoriate the ambition of Ahab, the treachery…

[NOTE.—This chapter, in its first shape, was given some currency under the title of "The Evil Beast." I have, however, so revised and added to that Lecture, that, as here…

Iniquity never gives a fair fight. It springs out from ambush upon the unsuspecting. Of the tens of thousands who have fallen into bad habits, not one deliberately leaped off,…

While among my readers are those who have passed on into the afternoon of life, and the shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons with the glow of the setting…

The newspaper is the great educator of the nineteenth century. There is no force compared with it. It is book, pulpit, platform, forum, all in one. And there is not…

[NOTE.—This chapter, though largely devoted to "Oil," is to be construed as reaching any other "Kite" that the stock gambler flies—any other scheme which his unprincipled ideas of right and…

Very long ago the needle was busy. It was considered honorable for women to toil in olden time. Alexander the Great stood in his palace showing garments made by his…

It is the anniversary of Herod's birthday. The palace is lighted. The highways leading thereto are ablaze with the pomp of invited guests. Lords, captains, merchant princes, and the mightiest…