and damage. Not so of soul-wants. They often demand an unlimited gratification, which generally adds to their relish and desire for more. Work is both a soul-want and a bodily one. For the body, it must be moderate and not too longcontinued; for the soul, it may be prolonged indefinitely.

In close connection with this may be mentioned the want of society. This is seen partially developed in animals, but only in a small degree. In man it rises to a noble principle, and has a reflex influence on all his other wants. It modifies the want of food, and compels man to seek for food better in kind, more abundant in quantity, more tasteful in appearance, and more elaborate in ornament. Exactly so of his clothing. It must have better colors, more variety, harmony, and appropriateness, because of the society which he seeks. It must be of finer texture, more graceful in form, and of more elegant manufacture. And his house is not only larger, as before said, on account of society, but far more splendid and permanent. The beauty, too, which the soul craves is hence sought more eagerly, and must combine more of pleasing variety and more of enduring novelty. This want also compels man to go above himself and ask for the society and communion of his Maker. Thus it becomes, in connection with the religious element of his nature, his most elevating and ennobling principle. Wanting the society of his fellows, and the approbation of his Maker, he can but feel the necessity of a truthful soul to render him worthy of such society; and, therefore, he is prompted by this want to labor to become better and truer, more righteous and holy. This improves his moral and spiritual nature, and is the climax of all his wants, and shows how broad and deep is the philosophy of want.

What now are some of the lessons of human want? This has been partially illustrated already, and will, therefore, need but a word further. As man's wants are so much more numerous and exacting than those of the lower animals; and as the gratification of these wants always tends to produce new ones, we may, in this fact, find one of the strong links of that chain of probabilities which go far to indicate and establish the immortality of the human soul. For if man could be as easily satisfied as the brute, might he not be supposed to die as easily and as completely? But as he, unlike all other creatures, can never be satisfied, or, rather, can never remain satisfied, and-paradoxical as it may seem-as the nearer he shall on the morrow approach his ideal of to-day, the farther will he on to-morrow fall short of his to-morrow's ideal; so may we not conclude that he is destined to unlimited

progress; since a benign Creator would never have given desires which he intended should never taste the sweets of complete satisfaction? As, therefore, the gratification of desire or the satisfaction of want engenders a higher desire or wants, does not this fact mark man off and separate him by an almost infinite distance from the brutes that perish? Give the bird daily food and a suitable nest, and it wants nothing else, nay, will take nothing else. Give the fox a hole and a sufficiency of blood, and he will have no more. Provide for the ox, the horse, or the sheep a proper amount of hay, grass, or provender, and he will use nothing more. But give a man exactly what he wants to-day, and while that seems to satisfy the want that called for it, a new stimulus will be added to that want. It is like feeding a fire with combustible fuel. When small the fire consumes slowly, but additional fuel increases its power to assimilate or consume in a greater ratio. So the gratification of desire or the supply of want does but enlarge man's capacity and inflame his desires. Hence, may it not be argued that want renders our immortality probable?

But while thus much may be said, and said truly, in regard to human want, there must be some qualification attached to the general idea that want prompts to improvement and argues an eternity of progression on the part of the living subject from whose nature these wants spring. Real want is the condition of improvement, and to satisfy it thoroughly encourages invention, promotes honesty, and enlarges both the sphere and the capacity of desire. Unreal and unrestricted want, or the want of a feverish or a pampered sensuality, is the exact reverse, and while it may stimulate cunning and ingenuity in certain directions, it does at the same time beget hypocrisy and introduce the whole brood of fraud, deceit, and meanness. Let it not be forgotten that bodily wants are most frequently the unreal; soul-wants the real, however common it may be among those who do not think to reverse these epithets. Soul-wants and a few simple bodily wants may, as they are sometimes termed, be called natural wants; while a very large class of bodily wants are appropriately, and often with strictest justice, denominated artificial wants, as having no true and real foundation in the constitution of our being. They are not uncommonly wholly imaginary at first, but by habit they become so ingrafted upon the original nature as to form a second nature very different from that which our Creator gave us. This constitutes them both artificial and unreal.

It is this sort of want-unrestrained and determined on gratification-that leads to fraud,

and introduces so many adulterated and counterfeit articles into all branches of trade and business. If a youth of sixteen, having only three cents to spend daily, wants and can not do without six cigars-the best Havanas-a day, it is one of the most easy and natural things in the world that some ingenious person shall supply the article—in name for the money and still make a profit by it. A few cast-off cabbage leaves, soaked in a decoction of the main stalks of Connecticut-grown tobacco, will answer the purpose admirably and supply the want. If half a million of kitchen maids, earning on an aver age one dollar and a half a week, want splendid jewelry made of gold and set with costly gems, in abundance greater than the rich, some Attleboro tinker will supply the demand with a composition of tin, copper, and zinc, colored with common salt and aquafortis, and will adorn it with all sorts of precious stones, made of glass or paste. If these same girls and others want and must have fine linens and gorgeous silks, for which they can pay not more than a fifth of their actual cost, some body will invent the articles and lay up money by it-making the former, showing a beautiful pliancy and an extra whiteness, out of cotton and starch, and the latter ont of a mixture of worsted, linen, cotton, silk, and glue, so that they shall appear to be of the stiffest texture and richest luster. If five millions of men in our country want each twenty-five gallons of whisky a year, costing, to make it honestly-if such an article ever be honestly madeat least fifty cents a gallon, and are able to pay for it only twenty cents the gallon; or want ten gallons of wine at a dollar a gallon, while the genuine article costs at least two dollars, when there is only corn enough to produce two gallons of the former, and when only grapes enough grow to make a quart of the latter for each consumer, some trader or wine merchant will find skill and material, by the aid of fire and chemica! affinities, to produce good whisky-as to color and burning taste-out of water, cider, oil of vitriol, and juniper berries, and wine out of logwood, whisky, and cockroaches, and will sell at a profit the articles-bad enough to suit such depraved tastes-at a rate cheap enough to suit the purses of persons nursing such aristocratic wants and carrying such plebeian purses. So if men want to live in palaces of marble and freestone, and are not able to pay for real substantial frame mansions, architects, masons, and carpenters can always be found who can veneer house fronts with the thinnest scale of the real stone; or cheaper still, who can put up the thinnest, shammiest brick wall, and daub it with mortar, grooved and stuccoed into the showiest of marble

or the solidest of stone; or who, at a less expense still, can patch up boards, and with simple paint and putty transmute the shanty into a freestone palace!

Want is not only an imperative lord, but also a wonderful magician and alchemist. It is more potent in this direction than even the fabled Gorgon Medusa, who turned every thing she looked upon into stone. Want sets its eyes upon cotton and it becomes linen, or wool, or silk; upon pinchbeck and glass, and forthwith they become gold and diamonds; upon perched peas and corn meal, and they are roasted coffee and ginger; upon lath and plaster, and lo, they are granite, and bronze, and iron! And yet even these shams may have their uses, and certainly they do have a startling significance. All things have their affinities, and these affinities will often reveal original and innate likenesses, while we had not suspected even an analogy, much less a similarity. So the people who seek after these shams are mostly shams themselves; we know them by their attractions.

Nothing but a thing capable of being made a magnet will turn lovingly toward the magnet, or obey the exhilarating forces of electricity; and nothing but a buzzard, a vulture, or a fly will pass by wholesome meat to gloat and feed on carrion.

There is, then, an important lesson even in these very annoying, perplexing shams and imitations. They may teach us what persons are true and willing to appear only as they are; for while a man is desirous, for the sake of the mere show, of dwelling in a lath-and-plaster stone-house, or of wearing a copper-tin gold watch or guard chain; while a woman is desirous, both for show and economy, of wearing cotton-silk dresses and gum diamonds; and while both are willing, for cheapness and fashion's sake, to drink aquafortis brandy and cockroach wine, you may be certain that the human part of the personage, if looking a little more genuine and real, is not a whit truer or more like what it purports to be, than is the material in which it is clothed or which it drinks. It does not necessarily degrade a man to have such wants as these; but it does degrade him to yield to them; and it always degrades the man who supplies them, and much more him who pampers them. Sinful thoughts and unholy mental suggestions do not of necessity prove a man a great sinner, provided that he strives to banish them at once from him. They may only show to him his weak side, and be a warning to him to set a double guard in that particular place. President Edwards resolved to watch his dreams, and if he found any evil suggestions mingling among them, to be more watchful in praying

against them. So if a man finds within him any of these wants, which, unrestrained, would lead him to put on, or to surround himself with, or to love any sort of sham or counterfeit whatever, he may be sure that he has still within his soul a foe, or at least a place for a foe to hide. Let him betake himself to prayer and supplication, that he may be thoroughly delivered and made so to love truth in the inward parts that no counterfeit can be tolerated near him. By such considerations, by such watchfulness, and by such prayers, will he be enabled to rise to that genuine abhorrence of all shams, so characteristic of every noble soul, and which gleams out in letters of fire from almost every line of God's holy word. So will he learn to love purity and truthfulness, such as the Scriptures enjoin and command, and he will thus know how to sympathize with the beautiful lines of one of our own poets:

"In the elder days of art,

Builders wrought with greatest care
Each unseen and hidden part;

For the gods see every-where.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean."

And this view of human want teaches us that one of the most real and imperative of all our wants is the want or need of restraint. Unless we can learn "to circumscribe our desires," and keep all our wants within the "proper circle" marked out by the compass and prescribed by our Creator, we may be sure they will lead us greatly astray. But while the due restraint is put upon all our passions and appetites, while our wants are regulated by what we really need, and are confined to such things as will truly ennoble and adorn our natures, we shall always find want prompting to labor, and labor always working improvement. Let us not, then, throw contempt upon human wants, but rather study them, carefully discriminating between the real and the imaginary; between those we can law fully gratify and those we can not; between those that encourage in us a healthful activity and those that induce us to become deceitful; and let us then use want as a spur for our souls, to drive them more rapidly along the career of legitimate

progress.

Or such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to think he is so to others; without once making this easy and obvious reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men than theirs have with him; and how little that is, he is sensible enough.

ITINERANCY AND SCENES IN CALIFORNIA.

BY REV. S. D. SIMONDS.

A FAMOUS MULE RIDE.

HASTA, December, 1856.-On the morning

of October, refreshed and invigor

ated with sleep, but more by the repose of faith, I rose early, paid next to my last dollar for my mule keeping, and started on my lonely way, regardless of many warnings, from French Gulch over Trinity Mountain. The air was sharp and bracing, with an occasional roughness of the wind; overhead the white-plumed clouds hurried in platoons to the north by east. They seemed to have a battle of storm on hand to which they hasted with invisible feet, and joined and swelled the gathering blackness that hung its heavy folds about Mount Shasta, the king of California mountains. I saw these clouds form from nothing, apparently springing quicker than I could see, from particular points, and gathering additions rapidly, then flying in a ragged bulk away, which grew and swelled as it rolled or perchance broke in twain, but kept on the general direction. Then others formed and sped after them. It was a new sight to me-an enrapturing, natural beauty, on which I gazed delighted as I rode up Clear creek, up and down the spurs of the mountain, for six miles or more, till I came to the shoot or spur up which I was directed to take to cross the main ridge.

"Is it possible!" I mentally exclaimed, looking up two or three times before I really measured the long, steep ascent, and half hoping that was not the trail-"is it possible that this is the trail?" There was in fact no other, and for what place except Yreka would a trail be found over such a mountain! I looked down in consternation at my little mule. Poor thing! I could not think of riding her up. So down I got and commenced my walk up the mountain. Talk about the charity of Uncle Toby, who put the fly out of the window, saying, "The world is wide enough for me and thee!" He would have shown a better charity in letting the poor fly be inside, and it would then be nothing to the charity of a man who pays his money for a mule to ride, feeds her well, and then leads her up the steep mountains. Auy man who is charitable feels well; and so I was feeling very comfortable in my lonely ascent. The mule looked particularly kind and shy, and watchful, and twirled her long ears in various directions to catch any approaching sound. Once or twice she made me think she certainly saw an Indian or smelled a grizzly bear. But after a hasty jerk or two she seemed quieted and fol lowed very demurely.

Up, up, two and a half miles. Scrambling up

on an angle of forty to sixty degrees* will make one, unaccustomed to the exercise, weak in the knees, and no amount of clerical dignity can prevent his puffing. I stopped frequently to recover breath and strength, and feasted my eyes on the grandeur that faced me about-here a solemn gorge, there magnificent castellated crags and peaks; yonder, in the rounded heaving of the mountain breast, the silent swell and magnificent unfolding of beauty; here, the whisperworshiping pine-the still voice out of which God comes; there, the twisting, gnarled oak, with its condensed dignity, seeming almost afire with its life-force-reminding me of the solemn painting in Wordsworth's Yew-Trees:

"Each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibers serpentine,
Up-coiling and inveterately convolved,
Nor uninformed with phantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane;"

and all around the bristling chaparral and chemisette-the flesh-hairs and manes of the ridges. I know not how it is, but to me there is something wonderfully sustaining in mountain glory. Physically weak ordinarily and trembling, I never felt like yielding to exhaustion on the mountains. I am capable of three times the exertion and endurance of any other place.

After the first bench is passed the trail sweeps round to the left of a high knob, ascending by a narrow dug-way, on the lower side of which logs or stones are laid to hold the earth from sliding down. I overtook just here a pack-train of some fifty mules, heavily loaded, carrying, the driver told me, three hundred and four hundred pounds each. I wondered how they had come up the first bench, and pitied the poor creatures indeed. They seemed to labor very hard and went grunting along at every step, making an irregular chorus of groans. I ventured to suggest to the driver the hardship it was for the mules to carry such loads over these vast mountains. "Faugh! the d-1" he exclaimed, and then surveyed me from head to feet, and with staring eyes and a huge oath demanded, "Do you walk to favor your mule?" He then looked at the mule and again at me, as I was all steaming with perspiration, and exclaimed with another oath, "She is better able to carry you, than you, sir, are to walk." He then turned to his train and began shouting and swearing at them all in general, and then at this one and that one by name in particular. I

* A much better trail was soon after constructed,

and now-1859-a wagon road leads over the mountain. One can scarcely imagine the difference, nor the growth of this country.

"What makes mule-drivers swear so much? Can't they drive mules without cursing them?"

The man turned a curious and scrutinizing glance on me, and soon perceiving my seriousness let his eye and countenance fall. Candor, the frequent characteristic of the wildest Californians, is now apparent in him.

"It is a bad habit, sir-inexcusably bad, and I am sorry for it; but the truth is, the d—l is in the mules, and I can not drive them without swearing." This he said with the most serious and decided tone and manner. I told him I had heard the same before in this country, but could not believe hardly that the men who said it were in sober earnest.

"I declare solemnly," he replied, "I was never more in earnest in my life."

"Very well," I said, "it may be some think so. I am inclined to believe on the whole that when men fall into sin they do become superstitious and may believe the d-1 is in mules; that there are witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, etc., all about the world. A pure life and a sense of the presence of God casts out all such chimeras, and fills men with love and peace; that is, it deprives their experience of all such facts, which they therefore call chimeras; but in truth I do not know what may be in a man that is without God. We read of some who were to be tormented of the devil."

"I expect that's the mule-drivers," growled my new acquaintance. "Who swear," I added.

I attempted now to pass, the mountain above the trail being sufficiently clear to admit of it, but the muleteer desired me not to pass the upper side, as his mules might be frightened and leave the trail, to the left of which the ground was rough and precipitous. I readily complied and reined back my animal. I could see he had more work to keep from swearing than it was to drive the mules. Every few rods he choked down a big oath and let slip the softer forms of profanity only half emphasized. I told him how deeply horrified I had often felt at the amount

of profanity I had heard in the country; that once I was passing where a six-mule team was stalled. It was in such a place in the road that no other teams could pass, and some eight wagons were standing along in the rear waiting for this train to get out of the way. Teams were doubled and several men at the wheels, but the load would not move. As I was passing the whipping, shouting, and swearing was so shocking that I could not but hold up my hands and exclaim, "O! O! O!" The teamsters all stopped and looked up in amaze, when I said, "What shocking profanity-shocking!" Silence and some little confusion seemed to be on the company, and I was passing on when a small man on the top of a big wagon, a hundred yards off, cried out,

"Halloo, mister, do n't be too hard on us. You'd swear yourself if you drove mules."

There was a laugh at this, as much as to say, "Well said-truth-truth;" but I exclaimed with energy,

"No-no-I am engaged in a more difficult business than mule-driving, and I never swear." "I should like to know what it is," said the little man with a fine, questioning voice.

"Yes, yes; tell us what it is. Give it up. You tell us now," cried several after me with gruff voices.

I stopped my horse, turned in my saddle and said, "Gentlemen, my business in California is to persuade men to travel the road to heaven, and in no spirit of banter I tell you it is hard work, harder than mule-driving, and I never think of swearing about it."

attachment for the rear and would not go. I applied heel and spur; for like the knight, Hudibras, who

"Wore on spur

As wisely knowing could he stir To active trot one side of 's horse The other would not lag."

I had adopted economy and had but one spur. But mules, though they are bound to keep both sides in the same relative position, will sometimes go sidewise. Mine took a sudden dart ten feet down the shelvy side of the mountain and struck her fore-feet down stiff-legged, threw her head down and her hind-feet up, and reversed the motion two or three times, then gave such a whirl and snort as made a little lightning round. I had always supposed the flames said to be in the nostrils of war-horses in battle were not there, but in the writers of poetry; but if I did not see magnetic, electric, or veritable sparks fly from my mule's dilated nostrils like watrous sparks from steel when held hard upon a wet, rapidlyturned emery wheel, why then I had an unusually poetic perception-that is all. And that's my little jenny serving me such a trick after I had led her up the worst part of the mountain! There she stands, quivering in every limb, scowling back her ears, her neck stiff with defiance, and her eye as malignant as a serpent's. I cried whoa, whoa, as gently and determined as possible. She frisked about as if disposed to jump down a ledge nearly twenty feet perpendicular, on the brink of which she had stopped. I did not dare attempt to get off, and resolved to maintain my seat as long as the mule did her legs. But I soon saw she had no idea of going down, but that her charitable intention was to leave her load among the rocks, and failing of this she was more than willing to get back into the trail. I managed to pick up my hat, which had fallen

My friend seemed to relish the point of the story, but looked not a little confused, when, with deep love in my heart and a solemnity of manner I could not help under the impulse, I said to him, I still continued to invite men to the kingdom of heaven; that I hoped he would walk in the way of life; that to do so he need not quit his business; that God would have mercy on his soul that day if he would repent; all he needed to do was to quit his sin, profanity among the rest. Do it at once, for soon you will be in hell at this rate. At which words I bid him farewell and started on, as the way was now clear. My mule had her own notion, however, about passing the train. She seemed to have formed a strong

bags, which, being fastened in the middle, had changed ends in such a way as to present an original specimen of twist, and was ready to try to get by the train again. Jenny goes kindly and spryly along now, nimble and clean as if nothing had happened. Queer notions mules take! What could have happened that this gentle-looking little thing should get so very spunky and then seem to forget it so quickly! She trots along nicely. I thought some of getting down at the next steep bench, but finally concluded to ride up slowly. Up she scrambled with me on her back, and in the course of fifteen minutes or so her head drooped, eyes seemed half shut, and she panted as if about ready to fall down. Poor thing! Well, I ought to have walked; but we