Have you never felt the longing that it were possible to step quietly off your accustomed path in life and strike out into fresh fields and pastures new? There are a few of us so contented as never to be troubled with such a wish.

Chloroform was used with fatal results by burglars at the farm of H. E. Collins, near Parker, Mrs. Collins dying from the effects of the drug without regaining consciousness. Mr. Collins' condition is critical and he may not survive. The robbers administered the drug while the couple was asleep in their bedroom.

The murderers escaped and are now being pursued by the sheriff and a posse.

The culprits gained entrance to the home by removing the screen from the bedroom window. They then administered the drug to the sleeping family, which includes Mr. and Mrs. Collins and their two children.

They then proceeded to ransack the place. They rifled the pockets in Mr. Collins' clothes and took $250 which he had just drawn from the bank. The robbers then escaped by taking Mr. Collins' horse. The horse came back, saddled and bridled.

It is supposed the robbers saw Mr. Collins draw the money from the bank in Parker, and followed him to his home, where they lay in wait for a chance to enter the house. The crime was committed during the early hours of the morning, none of the family recovering from the effects of the drug until some time later. The authorities were immediately notified, and a posse formed. The searchers expect to capture the bandits soon.

Doctors worked for hours over the body of Mrs. Collins, but were unable to resuscitate her. The two children are very weak, but they are not fatally affected by the drug.

Travelers through the Syrian desert have seen horses weep from thirst, a mule has been seen to cry from the pain of an injured foot and camels, it is said, shed tears in streams, says a writer in Harper's Weekly. A cow sold by its mistress who had tended young soko ape used to cry from vexation if Livingston didn't nurse it in his arms when it asked him to. Wounded apes have died crying, and apes have wept over their young slain by hunters. A chimpanzee trained to carry water jugs broke one and fell a-crying, which proved sorrow, though it wouldn't mend the jug. Rats, discovering their young drowned, have been moved to tears. A giraffe which a huntsman's rifle had injured began to cry when approached. Sea lions often weep over the loss of their young. Gordon Cummings observed tears trickling down the face of a dying elephant. And even an orangoutang when deprived of its mango was so vexed that it took to weeping. There is little doubt, therefore, that animals do cry from grief or weep from pain or annoyance.

Divorces are, happily, rare in society circles. Separation by mutual consent, however, grows more frequent every year. Every one has upon his or her visiting list husbands and wife who never meet if they can help it, but between whom there has never been an open breach. Incompatibility of temper is the usual cause, and the reason for that is, one imagines, the still common custom of encouraging the younger generation to marry before they have begun to approach years of discretion.

The mistake which the average religion makes is that it supposes that the whole of the universe is opposed to man. It places man at one pole and God at the together and attempts to bridge the chasm with a futile span called religion. The bridge of salvation, the higher religions call it. The fact is, however, that man opposed to the laws of nature is nothing; man acting in harmony with and understanding them is little less than God. There never was—there never will be—opposition between man and God.

It is folly to place the light of science in the old testament. It is foolish to suppose that in those days of meager scientific knowledge there was exactness in the thought about the world. It is still more futile to make science conform to the old testament. It is absurd to suppose that at the time the sum total of knowledge had been reached.

The idea of personal immortality is a continuation of the instinct of self-preservation. It is the idea which made the early man bow to the fetich. It is the thought that makes the more modern man come to the altar and pray. In both is the feeling that without the propitiation of the higher powers man will be destroyed. The instinct of self-preservation expanded is the desire to live perpetually. Man knows something of what life is. He knows nothing of death. He therefore desires to live forever and he asks that life shall be made as easy as possible.

There is a deeper truth than this in immortality. There are great movement in human development. In these each man takes his large or small share. In proportion to that share, in ratio to the influence, known or unknown to men at large, which he exerts on these great movements is his immortality.

He dies, but the energy, the potentiality which has been released in his life never dies. It becomes part of the great movements of the world. Man competing with natural law is impotent. Man knowing and utilizing natural law has potency which is second only to that of the universe, or God.

There is no conflict between natural and ethical laws. The ethical law is that by which a man becomes a man of power, of resource, of mental potency. Outside of these laws he can not reach his highest development. As natural as the law of crystallization to the stone, as natural as the cellular growth to the plant, so is the ethical law to man. It has not been thundered from above. It has become known to him as the other laws of nature have become known to him—through his experience.

When science reaches out into the future it becomes philosophy. When philosophy seeks out the helpful, finds the values of life and formulates conduct it becomes ethics. When ethics involve not only the understanding of the laws of the universe in their relation to man but the harmonious position of man to the great intent of the universe, the co-operation with the great power which we know by the name of God, then ethics become religion.

Religion created the bible. The bible did not create religion. It does not end it. It goes as far, in a great poem, to give the experiences of life as it can. This poetic link forms the human connection with the harmony of which I spoke. What the nature of God is we do not know definitely. But we assert that there never was and never will be inharmony between God and man. The two are partners.

Lots of people have holes in their pockets. They are losing a great deal of money. Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters are scattered everywhere. The strange thing about this losing business is this: The lost pieces never can be found. And a still stranger thing is the fact that the losers would not try to find them if they could. These losses in the aggregate are enormous. They may run up into compound interest proportions. These losses also mean a great deal that is painful to consider. They are antgonistic to every rule of thrift and economy. They make the "rainy day" a very dismal affair. They make "getting ahead" a very difficult thing, in fact "getting behind" becomes a very common experience. These losses may cause injustice, wrongdoing and even actual suffering. The wife suffers when the husband has a big hole is his pocket. She needs and should have some of those dimes and quarters, and she feels keenly their loss. Children have something to say about the lost pieces of money. Patient creditors may have to wait. Humane and benevolent causes do not get the help they need on account of the hole in the pocket.

I cannot tell it all. To cut the story short, it seems to me a very unfortunate thing to have a hole in the pocket; and be constantly losing what you never can find. Let me call things by their right names. One of these holes may be called the whiskey hole, another the tobacco hole, another the chewing gum hole, and what the many others are, I will leave you to say yourself.

I want to give you some good advice. Will you take it? Examine your pockets, and if you find holes in them, big or small, by all means, sew them up.

E. E. Rogers 

A novel experiment is about to be tried by the government of Victoria, Australia. A sum of $25,000 has been placed in the administration's estimate for the making of roads by prisoners through the "bush" in unsettled parts of the state. Each prisoner who does his work well will be paid a regular daily wage, the amount to accumulate until his release, when , as the premier says, he "will have a respectable sum with which to make a new start in life." The labor party is expected to oppose the use of bond for free labor.