The School News from Cottonwood Falls, Kansas • 14

Great gifts make beggars bold. 14 become distended, and either give way or permit the extravasation of their contents. When this sort of thing happens, even though in comparatively trifling degree, in the case of vessels directly connected with such delicate organs as the eye, the ear and the brain, it is easy to eee that the rusults may be very serious in their character, and probably few postures commonly taken np by persons who Jead somewhat sedentary lives are so prone to do mischief unnoticed as that of leaning forward, as at work at a table which is not sufficiently high to insure the head being so raised that the veins of the neck may not be in any way compressed, or the return of blood from the head embarrassed or delayed. We see reason to believe that if this apparently small matter were generally understood there would be fewer head and heart troubles, and we will go so far as to say that some lives now lost would be saved. much of his time during the last forty years of his life.

Less fortunate than his greatest botanical contemporary, George Bentham, who turned from the last page of corrected proof of his work on the genera of plants to the bed from which he was never to rise again, Asa Gray's great work is left unfinished. The two volumes of the Synoptical Flora of North America will keep his memory green, however, as long as the human race is interested in the study of plants. But his botanical writings and his scientific fame are not the most valuable legacy which Asa Gray has left to the American people. More precious to us is the example of his life in this age of grasping materialism. It is a life that teaches how industry and unselfish devotion to learning can attain to the highest distinction and the most enduring fame.

Great as were his intellectual gifts, Asa Gray was greatest in the simplicity of his character and in the beauty of his pure and stainless life. ing forward under the special conditions indicated. With many other varieties of the vertigo consequent upon heart weakness or cerebral amemia observation or experience lias made us all acquainted. We can not, however, help thinking that the consequences of even partial compression of veins of the neck, offering an obstacle to the return of blood from the head, with its important organs, are not so well recognized. The peculiar form, or, more accurately, the several forms, of headache distinctly caused in this way when the head is long bowed forward on the chest, bending the neck on itself, can not fail to occur to every one; nor will the high tension of the eyeball, the turgid and heavy eyelids, the snuffling nose, the deafness, with buzzing or throbbing in the ears, the heavy breathing and the puffed and perhaps flushed or darkened color of the face, resulting from the obstructed venous circulation through the bended neck, be forgotten.

There are other and more perilous, though secondary, effects of leaning forward when the heart is weak or the blood vessels aro not so strong as they ought to be, which should not be overlooked. Beyond question the extra strain thrown upon tho apparatus of the circulation by anything that impedes the free passage of blood, through almost any part of the venous system, is more severe and dangerous than a physically equal strain thrown on the arteries. At least this is so in adult life, and without going further into details in connection with the modus operandi of the mischief to which we point, it may be permissible to urge that the subject is one to which attention may bo usefully directed. Tho weakly, and those who aro not unlikely to have hearts readily overburdened, and blood vessels stretched beyond recovery, or even ruptured, should be warned quite as earnestly against suddenly assuming or too long retaining postures which, however slightly and partially, impede tho return of blood through the veins. Wo know how prolonged sitting may cause the veins of tho legs to Good Manners.

Good manners are not so common as to be of no weight in society, like good spelling or good English. One may be rich as the Ilothschilds, one may be highly educated, and not possess them, or one may have them in a degree. The Due de Morny's definition ot a polite man was, one who listens with interest to things he knows all about, when they are told by a person who knows nothing about them;" but this is but one phase of his character. Good manners are more serviceable than a passport, than a bank account, or a lineage. They make friends for us; they are more potent than eloquence and genius without them.

They undoubtedly spring from a kind heart, and are the dictates of good humor. They are not something to be learned from fashion news and books ot etiquette; they are not imported or borrowed. The good mannered person does not tell us of our failings, does not lecturo us; ho does not merely wuar his -manners because they are becoming or politic, but because he can no more exist without them than without air. They resemble the antique painted glues Stooping Forward. On the subject of stooping forward the London Lancet this advice.

Every one knows that stooping forward, particularly after rising quickly from the bed in the morning, when the stomach is empty and the heart has less than ordinary support from the viscra below the diaphragm, is very apt to occasion a form of faintness with vertigo not unlike that which occurs in seasickness. We do not at the moment speak of the faintness and giddiness from cerebral anemia, which aro directly consequent upon suddenly assuming the erect after long continuing in the recumbent posture, but of tho more alarming sensation of being in tho center of objects which are rapidly passing away, usually from left to right, with loss of power to stand or even sit, and an almost nightmare feelino-of inability to call 'for help or do anything to avert a catastrophe, whilo throughout the experience the sufferer retains painfully acute consciousness. This, wo say, is fa miliar as one at least, of the effects not uncommonly produced by stoop.