IT CAN BE DONE BE THE BEST OF WHATEVER YOU ARE We all dream of great deeds and high positions, away from the pettiness and humdrum of ordinary life. Yet success is not occupying a lofty place or doing conspicuous work; it is being the best that is in you. Rattling around in too big a job is much worse than filling a small one to overflowing. Dream, aspire by all means; but do not ruin the life you must lead by dreaming pipe-dreams of the one you would like to lead. Make the most of what you have and are. Perhaps your trivial, immediate task is your one sure way of proving your mettle. Do the thing near at hand, and great things will come to your hand to be done. F you can't be a pine on the top of the hill The best little scrub by the side of the rill; If you can't be a bush be a bit of the grass, We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew, If you can't be a highway then just be a trail, It isn't by size that you win or you fail- Permission of Douglas Malloch. THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD This poem has as its keynote friendship and sympathy for other people. It is a paradox of life that by hoarding love and happiness we lose them, and that only by giving them away can we keep them for ourselves. The more we share, the more we possess. We of course find in other people weaknesses and sins, but our best means of curing these are through a wise and sympathetic understanding. HERE are hermit souls that live withdrawn THE In the peace of their self-content; In the peace There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, The men who are good and the men who are bad, I would not sit in the scorner's seat, Or hurl the cynic's ban; Let me live in a house by the side of the road I see from my house by the side of the road, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears Both parts of an infinite plan; Let me live in my house by the side of the road I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead And the road passes on through the long after noon And stretches away to the night. But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice, Let me live in my house by the side of the road They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they Wise, foolish-so am I. Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat Let me live in my house by the side of the road From "Dreams in Homespun," Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. Sam Walter Foss. FOUR THINGS What are the qualities of ideal manhood? Various people have given various answers to this question. Here the poet states what qualities he thinks indispensable. FOUR things a man must learn to do Henry Van Dyke. From "Collected Poems," |