LIFE AND DEATH

Many a man would die for wife and children, for faith, for country. But would he live for them? That, often, is the more heroic course-and the more sensible. A rich man was hiring a driver for his carriage. He asked each applicant how close he could drive to a precipice without toppling over. "One foot," "Six inches," "Three inches," ran the replies. But an Irishman declared, "Faith, and I'd keep as far away from the place as I could." "Consider yourself employed," was the rich man's tomment.

So he died for his faith. That is fine

More than most of us do.

But stay, can you add to that line
That he lived for it, too?

In death he bore witness at last
As a martyr to truth.
Did his life do the same in the past
From the days of his youth?

It is easy to die. Men have died
For a wish or a whim-
From bravado or passion or pride.
Was it harder for him?

But to live: every day to live out
All the truth that he dreamt,

While his friends met his conduct with doubt,
And the world with contempt—

Was it thus that he plodded ahead,

Never turning aside?

Then we'll talk of the life that he led

Never mind how he died.

Ernest H. Crosby.

From "Swords and Ploughshares,"

Funk & Wagnalls Co.

ON BEING READY

At nightfall after bloody_Antietam Lee's army, outnumbered and exhausted, lay with the Potomac at its back. So serious was the situation that all the subordinate officers advised retreat. But Lee, though too maimed to attack, would not leave the field save of his own volition. "If McClellan wants a battle,” he declared, "he can have it." McClellan hesitated, and through the whole of the next day kept his great army idle. The effect upon the morale of the two forces, and the two governments, can be imagined.

THE

HE man who is there with the wallop and punch
The one who is trained to the minute,

May well be around when the trouble begins,
But you seldom will find he is in it;

For they let him alone when they know he is there
For any set part in the ramble,

To pick out the one who is shrinking and soft
And not quite attuned to the scramble.

The one who is fixed for whatever they start
Is rarely expected to prove it;

They pass him along for the next shot in sight
Where they take a full wind-up and groove it;
For who wants to pick on a bulldog or such
Where a quivering poodle is handy,

When he knows he can win with a kick or a brick
With no further trouble to bandy?

Permission of the Author.

From "The Sportlight."

I

Grantland Rice.

TWO AT A FIRESIDE

BUILT a chimney for a comrade old,
I did the service not for hope or hire-
And then I traveled on in winter's cold,
Yet all the day I glowed before the fire.
Edwin Markham

From "The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems."
Doubleday, Page & Co.

TO-DAY

We often lose the happiness of to-day by brooding over the sorrows of yesterday or fearing the troubles of to-morrow. This is exceedingly foolish. There is always some pleasure at hand; seize it, and at no time will you be without pleasure. You cannot change the past, but your spirit at this moment will in some measure shape your future. Live life, therefore, in the present tense; do not miss the joys of to-day.

URE, this world is full of trouble

SURE

I ain't said it ain't.

Lord! I've had enough, an' double,
Reason for complaint.

Rain an' storm have come to fret me,
Skies were often gray;

Thorns an' brambles have beset me
On the road-but, say,

Ain't it fine to-day?

What's the use of always weepin',
Makin' trouble last?

What's the use of always keepin'
Thinkin' of the past?

Each must have his tribulation,
Water with his wine.
Life it ain't no celebration.
Trouble? I've had mine-
But to-day is fine.

It's to-day that I am livin',
Not a month ago,
Havin', losin', takin', givin',
As time wills it so.

Yesterday a cloud of sorrow
Fell across the way;
It may rain again to-morrow,
It may rain-but, say,
Ain't it fine to-day!

Permission of
Douglas Malloch.

Douglas Malloch.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG

We can calculate with fair accuracy the number of miles an automobile will go in an hour. We can gauge pretty closely the mount of merchandise a given sum of money will buy. But a good deed or a kind impulse is not measurable. Their influence works in devious ways and lives on when perhaps we can see them

no more.

SHOT an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

THE INNER LIGHT

"Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted,"

says Shakespeare. But not only does a clear conscience give power; it also gives light. With it we could sit at the center of the earth and yet enjoy the sunshine. Without it we live in a rayless prison.

E that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' the center, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the midday sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.

John Milton.

THE THINGS THAT HAVEN'T BEEN DONE

BEFORE

It is said that if you hold a stick in front of the foremost sheep in a flock that files down a trail in the mountains, he will jump it-and that every sheep thereafter will jump when he reaches the spot, even if the stick be removed. So are many people mere unthinking imitators, blind to facts and opportunities about them. Kentucky could not be lived in by the white race till Daniel Boone built his cabin there. The air was not part of the domain of humanity till the Wright brothers made themselves birdmen.

HE things that haven't been done before,

THE

Those are the things to try;

Columbus dreamed of an unknown shore
At the rim of the far-flung sky,

And his heart was bold and his faith was strong
As he ventured in dangers new,

And he paid no heed to the jeering throng
Or the fears of the doubting crew.

The many will follow the beaten track
With guideposts on the way,
They live and have lived for ages back
With a chart for every day.
Someone has told them it's safe to go
On the road he has traveled o'er,
And all that they ever strive to know

Are the things that were known before.

A few strike out, without map or chart,
Where never a man has been,
From the beaten paths they draw apart
To see what no man has seen.
There are deeds they hunger alone to do;
Though battered and bruised and sore,
They blaze the path for the many, who
Do nothing not done before.

The things that haven't been done before
Are the tasks worth while to-day;