Page images
PDF
EPUB

HAT we have a right to expect 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 goodygoody 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 knoware good at their studies or their business, fearless and stalwart, hated

and feared by all

that is wicked and

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.

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

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.

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.

"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,

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.

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.

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.

O man has earned the right to

GELFISHNESS 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, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.-Oscar Wilde.

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 when you have felt around you a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which sur

God, we don't like to complain—

rounds the dying man, and in hope and in despair have trusted to your own unshaken willthen only will you have achieved. Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows

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

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,

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

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.

moving to the measure of his thought-HE plant is an animal confined in a

the 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.

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.

N enlightened mind is not hood-LL truth is safe and nothing else is

winked; 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.

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 intimate 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.

-Edgar Saltus.

O 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 if 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.

[blocks in formation]

HE faculty to dream was not given to mock us. There is a reality back of it. There is a divinity behind our legitimate desires.

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

T is a curious reflection that the

Leaf after leaf drops off, flower

after flower,

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 the work 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 s -Edmund Gosse

Some in the chill, some in the

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

Y share of the work 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.

lutely level. The water seems to wait a moment on its verge, then it passes with a single bound, three hundred and fifty feet below.

It is a sheer, unbroken, compact, shining mass of silver foam. But your eyes are all the while distracted from the fall itself, great and beautiful as it is, to its marvelous setting; to the surprising,

E have reached Cascade Creek at last; and a beautiful grove of pine trees, beneath whose shade a clear stream, whose waters are free from the nauseous taste of alkali, furnishes a delightful place to camp. Now, dismounting and seeing that your horse is well cared for, while the men are unloading the packmules and pitching the tents, walk up that trail winding up the hillside, follow it for a little among the solemn pines, and then pass out from the tree shadows and take your stand upon that farther rock, clinging to it well meanwhile and being very sure of your footing, for your head will swim and grow dizzy, and there opens before you one of the

With fingers weary and worn,

With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread,—
Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt;
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work-work-work

Till the brain begins to swim!
Work-work-work

Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam, and gusset, and band,—

Band, and gusset, and seam,-
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

(Continued on next page)

most stupendous scenes of Nature, the Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone › ‹☛

And now where shall I begin, and how shall I, in any wise, describe this tremendous sight; its overpowering grandeur, and at the same time, its inexpressible beauty?

Look yonder! Those are the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. They are not the grandest in the world, but there are none more beautiful. There is not the breadth and dash of Niagara, nor is there the enormous depth of leap of some of the waterfalls of Yosemite.

But there is a majesty of its own kind, and beauty, too. On either side are vast pinnacles of sculptured rock. There, where the rock opens for the river, its waters are compressed from a width of two hundred feet, between the Upper and Lower Falls, to less than one hundred feet where it takes the plunge. The shelf of rock over which it leaps is abso

overmastering canyon into which the river leaps, and through which it flows, dwindling to but a foamy ribbon there in its appalling depths. As you cling here to this jutting rock, the falls are already many hundred feet below you. The falls unroll their whiteness down amid the canyon gloom s

These rocky sides are almost perpendicular; indeed, in many places the boiling springs have gouged them out so as to leave overhanging cliffs and tables at the top. Take a stone and throw it over; you have to wait long before you hear it strike. Nothing more awful have I ever seen than the yawning of that chasm; and the stillness, solemn as midnight, profound as death. The water dashing there as in a kind of agony, against those rocks, you can not hear.

The mighty distance lays the finger of silence on its white lips. You are oppressed by a sense of danger. It is as though the vastness would soon force you from the rock to which you cling. The silence, the sheer depth, the gloom, burden you. It is a relief to feel the firm earth beneath your feet again, as you carefully crawl back from your perchingplaces

But this is not all, nor is the half yet told. As soon as you can stand it, go out on that jutting rock again and mark the sculpturing of God upon those vast and

« PreviousContinue »