If the mountains are high, go round the valley;
If the streets are blocked, go up some alley;
If the parlor-car's filled, don't scorn a freight;
If the front door's closed, go in the side gate.
To reach your goal this advice is sound:
If you can't go over or under, go round!

Joseph Morris.

THICK IS THE DARKNESS

How many of us forget when the sun goes down that it will

rise again!

THE BELLY AND THE MEMBERS

(ADAPTED FROM "CORIOLANUS")

No doubt the world is cursed with grafters and parasites-men who live off the body economic and give nothing substantial in return. But an appearance of uselessness is not always proof of such. We should not condemn men in ignorance. As old as Esop is the fable of the rebellion of the other members of the body against the idle unproductiveness of the belly. In this passage the fable is used as an answer to the plebeians of Rome who have complained that the patricians are merely an encumbrance.

HERE was a time when all the body's members
Rebelled against the belly; thus accused it:

That only like a gulf it did remain

I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive,
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing

Like labor with the rest, where the other instruments
Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,
And, mutually participant, did minister
Unto the appetite and affection common
Of the whole body. Note me this, good friend;
Your most grave belly was deliberate,

Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered:
"True is it, my incorporate friends," quoth he,
"That I receive the general food at first,
Which you do live upon; and fit it is;
Because I am the store-house and the shop
Of the whole body: but, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live. Though all at once cannot
See what I do deliver out to each,

Yet I can make my audit up, that all

From me do back receive the flour of all,

And leave me but the bran."

What say you to 't?

William Shakespeare.

THE CELESTIAL SURGEON

We may acquire the resolution to be happy by resting on a bed of roses. If that fails us, we should try a bed of nettles.

IF I have faltered more or less

In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain :-
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!

Robert Louis Stevenson.

MAN, BIRD, AND GOD

Robert Bruce, despairing of his country's cause, was aroused to new hope and purpose by the sight of a spider casting its lines until at last it had one that held. In the following passage the poet, uncertain as to his own future, yet trusts the providence which guides the birds in their long and uncharted migrations.

I

GO to prove my soul!

I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!

Robert Browning.

HIS ALLY

The thought of this poem is that a man's best helper may be that which gives him no direct aid at all—a sense of humor.

HE

E fought for his soul, and the stubborn fighting
Tried hard his strength.

"One needs seven souls for this long requiting,"
He said at length.

"Six times have I come where my first hope jeered me And laughed me to scorn;

But now I fear as I never feared me

To fall forsworn.

"God! when they fight upright and at me
I give them back

Even such blows as theirs that combat me;
But now, alack!

"They fight with the wiles of fiends escaping
And underhand.

Six times, O God, and my wounds are gaping!
I-reel to stand.

"Six battles' span! By this gasping breath No pantomime.

'Tis all that I can. I am sick unto death. And a seventh time?

"This is beyond all battles' soreness!"

Then his wonder cried;

For Laughter, with shield and steely harness,
Stood up at his side!

From "Merchants from Cathay,"

Yale University Press.

William Rose Benét.

SUBMISSION

There are times when the right thing to do is to submit. There are times when the right thing is to strive, to fight. To put forth one's best effort is itself a reward. But sometimes it brings a material reward also. The frog that after falling into the churn found that it couldn't jump out and wouldn't try, was drowned. The frog that kept leaping in brave but seemingly hopeless_endeavor at last churned the milk, mounted the butter for a final effort, and escaped.

UBMISSION? They have preached at that so long. As though the head bowed down would right the wrong,

As though the folded hand, the coward heart
Were saintly signs of souls sublimely strong;
As though the man who acts the waiting part
And but submits, had little wings a-start.
But may I never reach that anguished plight
Where I at last grow weary of the fight.

Submission: "Wrong of course must ever be
Because it ever was. 'Tis not for me

To seek a change; to strike the maiden blow. 'Tis best to bow the head and not to see;

'Tis best to dream, that we need never know
The truth. To turn our eyes away from woe."
Perhaps. But ah-I pray for keener sight,
And may I not grow weary of the fight.

Miriam Teichner.

Permission of
Miriam Teichner.