OCTOBER FIFTH 

• Jonathan Edwards born 1703.
• Denis Diderot born 1713.
• Horace Walpole born 1717.
• Nancy Hanks died 1818.
• Chester A. Arthur, Vermont, twenty-first President United States, born 1830.
• H. R. Guy de Maupassant born 1850.

Earth gets its price for what earth gives us;

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,

The priest has his fee who comes and shrives us,

We bargain for the graves we lie in;

At the devil's booth are all things sold,

Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;

For a cap and bells our lives we pay,

Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking;

'Tis heaven alone that is given away,

'Tis only God may be had for the asking.

—James Russell Lowell.

The free gift of God is eternal life. 

—Romans 6. 23.

Gracious Father, may the world speak to me of thy gifts, and of the peace and power which it freely offers. May I not pass by thy great appeals, and prefer to purchase at a great cost my indolence and dissipation. Amen.