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LTHOUGH imitation is one of the

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven,

If in your bright leaves we

would read the fate

Of men and empires-'t is to be forgiven

MAN'S Thanksgiving: God of commonsense, I give Thee thanks for the heavy blows of pain that drive me back from perilous ways into harmony with the laws of my being; for stinging whips of hunger and cold that urge to bitter strivings and glorious achievement; for steepness and roughness of the way and staunch virtues gained by climbing over jagged rocks of hardship and stumbling through dark and pathless sloughs of discouragement; for the acid blight of failure that has burned out of me all thought of easy victory and toughened my sinews for fiercer battles and greater triumphs; for mistakes I have made, and the priceless lessons I have learned from them; for disillusion and disappointment that have cleared my vision and spurred

great instruments used by Providence in bringing our nature toward its perfection, yet if men gave themselves up to imitation entirely, and each followed the other, and so on in an eternal circle, it is easy to see that there could never be any improvement among them. Men must remain as brutes do, the same at the end that they are at this day, and that they were at the beginning of the world. To prevent this, God has implanted in man, a sense of ambition, and a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed valuable among them. It is this passion that drives men to all the ways we see in use of signalizing themselves, and that tends to make whatever excites in a man the idea of this distinction so very pleasant. It

That in our aspirations to be great

Our destinies o'erleap their

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mortal state,

And claim a kindred with you; for ye are

A beauty and a mystery, and create

In us such love and reverence from afar,

That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

"Stars," by Lord Byron

my desire; for strong appetites and passions and the power they give when under pressure and control; for my imperfections that give me the keen delight of striving toward perfection.

God of common good and human brotherhood, I give Thee thanks for siren songs of temptation that lure and entangle and the understanding of other men they reveal; for the weaknesses and failings of my neighbors and the joy of lending a helping hand; for my own shortcomings, sorrows and loneliness, that give me a deeper sympathy for others; for ingratitude and misunderstanding and the gladness of service without other reward than self-expression.-Arthur W. Newcomb.

has been so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; where we can not distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we take complacency in some singular infirmity, folly or defect.

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the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard." The American Boy," by Theodore Roosevelt.

I

HAT we have a right to ex-
pect of the American boy is
that he shall turn out to be a
good American man. The
boy can best become a good
man by being a good boy-not a goody-
goody boy, but just a plain good boy. I
do not mean that he must love only the
negative virtues; I mean that he must
love the positive
virtues also.
"Good," in the
largest sense,
should include
whatever is fine,
straight forward,
clean, brave, and
manly. The best
boys I know—the
best men I know-
are good at their
studies or their
business, fearless
and stalwart, hated
and feared by all
that is wicked and

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

N the beginning, men went forth each day-some to do battle, some to the chase; others, again, to dig and to delve in the field-all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. Until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he staid by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the Shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

This man, who took no joy in the ways of his brethrenwho cared not for conquest, and fretted in the fieldthis designer of quaint patternsthis deviser of the beautiful - who perceived in Nature about him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the firethis dreamer apart, was the first artist.

"Invictus,” by W. E. Henley

depraved, incap-
able of submitting
to wrongdoing, and
equally incapable
of being aught but
tender to the weak
and helpless. Of course the effect that a
thoroughly manly, thoroughly straight
and upright boy can have upon the com-
panions of his own age, and upon those
who are younger, is incalculable. If he is
not thoroughly manly, then they will not
respect him, and his good qualities will
count for but little; while, of course, if he
is mean, cruel or wicked, then his
physical strength and force of mind
merely make him so much the more
objectionable a member of society. He
can not do good work if he is not strong
and does not try with his whole heart
and soul to count in any contest; and
his strength will be a curse to himself and
to every one else if he does not have a
thorough command over himself and
over his own evil passions, and if he does
not use his strength on the side of
decency, justice and fair dealing.

In short, in life, as in a football-game,

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We have then but to wait-until, with the mark of the gods upon him-there come among us again the chosen-who shall continue what has gone before. Satisfied that, even were he never to appear, the story of the beautiful is already complete-hewn in the marbles of the Parthenon-and broidered, with the birds, upon the fan of Hokusai-at the foot of Fuji-Yama.

-J. McNeill Whistler.

HERE is but one virtue: to help human beings to free and beautiful life; but one sin: to do them indifferent or cruel hurt; the love of humanity is the whole of morality. This is Goodness, this is Humanism, this is the Social Conscience.-J. William Lloyd.

ELFISHNESS is not living as one

wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acqui

God, we don't like to complain

We know that the mine is no lark— But there's the pools from the rain: But-there's the cold and the dark.

Oman has earned the right to intellectual ambition until he has learned to lay his course by a star which he has never seen-to dig by the divining-rod for springs which he may never reach. In saying this, I point to that which will make your study heroic. For I say to you in all sadness of conviction, that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone have felt you around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and in despair have trusted to your own unshaken will

when

then only will you have achieved. Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows

God, You don't know what it is—
You, in Your well-lighted sky,
Watch the meteors whizz;

Warm, with the sun always by.

God, if You had but the moon

Stuck in Your cap for a lamp, Even You'd tire of it soon,

Down in the dark and the damp.

Nothing but blackness above,

And nothing that moves but the cars— God, if You wish for our love,

esces in it, enjoys it.-Oscar Wilde.

Ꮽ Ꮽ

HE tree which

moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and

some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees.-William Blake.

Fling us a handful of stars!

"Caliban in the Coal Mines," by Louis Untermeyer

that, long after he is dead and forgotten, men who never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thoughtthe subtile rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours,-still it is only thus that you can know that you have done what it lay in you to do,—can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end.-Oliver Wendell Holmes.

N enlightened mind is not hoodwinked; it is not shut up in a gloomy prison till it thinks the walls of its own dungeon the limits of the universe, and the reach of its own chain the outer verge of intelligence.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

HE plant is an animal confined in a wooden case; and Nature, like Sycorax, holds thousands of "delicate Ariels imprisoned in every oak. She is jealous of letting us know this; and among the higher and more conspicuous forms of plants reveals it only by such obscure manifestations as the shrinking of the Sensitive Plant, the sudden clasp of the Dionea, or still more slightly, by the phenomena of the cyclosis.-Huxley.

LL truth is safe and nothing else is

safe; and he who keeps back the truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal, or both.-Max Müller.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.-Franklin.

E courteous to all, but inti- COMMERCE is a

mate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. Let your heart feel for the affections and distresses of every one, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse; remembering always the estimation of the widow's mite, that it is not every one that asketh that deserveth charity; all however, are worthy of the inquiry, or the deserving may suffer.

Do not conceive that fine clothes make fine men, any more than fine feathers make fine birds. A plain, genteel dress is more admired, obtains more credit, than lace and embroidery, in the eyes of the judicious and sensible.-George Washington in a letter to his nephew, Bushrod Washington, 1783.

HE names of the Periclean Age are

high. There is a higher one yet, that of Pericles. Statesman, orator, philosopher, soldier, artist, poet and lover, Pericles was so great that, another Zeus, he was called the Olympian. If to him Egeria came, would it not, a poet somewhere asked, be uncivil to depict her as less than he? It would be not only uncivil but untrue.

Said Themistocles, " You see that boy of mine? Though but five, he governs the universe. Yes, for he rules his mother, his mother rules me, I rule Athens and Athens the world." After Themistocles it was Pericles' turn to govern and be ruled

His sovereign was Aspasia.

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-Edgar Saltus.

me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was poetry; He formed it, and that was sculpture; He varied and colored it, and that was painting; and then, crowning all, He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand divine, eternal drama.

-Charlotte Cushman.

COMMERCE is a game of skill,

which every man can not play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call commonsense; a man of strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune; and so, in making money. Men talk as it there were some magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent-for every effect a perfect cause-and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.-Emerson.

O be honest, to be kind, to earn a

little, and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation; above all, on the same condition, to keep friends with himself; here is a task for all a man has of fortitude and delicacy.

-Robert Louis Stevenson.

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T is a curious reflection that the ordinary private person who collects objects of a modest luxury has nothing about him so old as his books. If a wave of the rod made everything around him disappear that did not exist a century ago, he would suddenly find himself with one or two sticks of furniture perhaps, but otherwise alone with his books. Let

Leaf after leaf drops off, flower

after flower,

Some in the chill, some in the

By the desires that have divinity in them, we do not refer to the things that we want but do not need; we do not refer to the desires that turn to Dead Sea fruit on our lips or to ashes when eaten, but to the legitimate desires of the soul for the realization of those ideals, the longing for full, complete self-expression, the time and opportunity for the weaving of the pattern shown in the moment of our highest transfiguration.

A man will remain a rag-picker as long as he has only the vision of the ragpicker

Our mental attitude, our heart's desire, is our per

warmer hour:

Alive they flourish, and alive they fall,

And Earth who nourished them

receives them all.

Should we, her wiser sons, be

less content

To sink into her lap when life is spent?

"Leaf After Leaf Drops Off,"

petual prayer which Nature answers. She takes it for granted that we desire what we are headed toward, and she helps us to it. People little realize that their desires are their perpetual prayers-not head prayers, but heart prayers-and that they are granted.

Most people do not half realize how sacred a thing a legitimate ambition is. What is this eternal urge within us which is trying to push us on and on, up and up? It is the urge, the push in the great force within us, which is perpetually prodding us to do our best and refuses to accept our second best.

Orison Swett Marden.

Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever.-Meredith.

by Walter Savage Landor

thework of another

century pass, and certainly nothing would be left but these little brown volumes so many caskets full of tenderness and passion, disappointed ambition, fruitless hope, self-torturing envy, conceit, aware, in maddening, lucid moments, of its own folly -Edmund Gosse.

Y share of the

D Wohare of the

world may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious. Darwin could work

only half an hour at a time; yet in many diligent half-hours he laid anew the foundations of philosophy.

Green, the historian, tells us that the world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.-Helen Keller.

HE character and qualifications of the leader are reflected in the men he selects, develops and gathers around him. Show me the leader and I will know his men. Show me the men and I will know their leader. Therefore, to have loyal, efficient employees-be a loyal and efficient employer. Arthur W. Newcomb.

Of all kinds of pride I hold national pride the most foolish; it ruined Greece; it ruined Judea and Rome.-Herder.

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