MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS.
After Vacation.
Again they muster from the far-off hillside,
From country farm-house and from sea-girt shore;
Their tramping feet resound along the highways,
Their gleeful shouts ring on the air once more.
A merry band, so full of youth’s elixir,
How can their restless spirits e’er essay
The tasks that wait their patient, steady labor
After the long, bright, summer holiday?
Not now, O children, in the sunny meadows
Ye cull the flowers or by the brooklets stray,
But in the fields of knowledge, thick with blossoms,
To gather sweets for a far future day.
Here, too, you roam a land of fairest promise,
Watered by many a stream of limpid hue,
Where weary travelers find a sweet refreshment
And garner richest stores of old and new.
We bid thee welcome to the homes that missed thee,
To the deserted school-room’s open door.
The nation’s hope is in thee, keep thy birthright;
Thine heritage is more than golden store.
The Kingdom of Home.
The People’s Holidays.
Not alone for the rich and great
Are the beautiful works of God;
The mountain’s slopes and the ocean’s beach
By the people’s feet are trod,
And the poor man’s children sing and dance
On the green flower-covered sod.
Not alone for the cultured eyes
Do the sweet flowers spring and grow;
There is scarcely living a man so poor
But he may their sweetness know;
And out of the town to the fresh fair fields
The toilers all can go.
Away from the factory shop and desk,
Where the diligent work in throngs,
They go sometimes to the well-earned rest
That to faithful zeal belongs;
And the shore and the forest welcome them,
And the larks pour down their songs.
“Man does not live by bread alone,”
And well it needs must be
That we all should look on our Father’s works
By the river and lake and sea,
And spend our souls in adoring praise,
For He careth for you and me.
And well may all with a stronger hand,
And a braver, truer heart,
Go back to the task that God has given,
And faithfully do our part;
And bear in our souls the peace of the fields,
To the counter, the desk, and the mart.
Home Lights.
The light of June that shines on tremulous leaves
Of softest green, how fair a thing to see!
When shafts of dawn touch birch and maple tree,
Or sunset’s hour a mesh of magic weaves;
The diamond light that flashes on the sea
In August noons,—a dazzle of pure rays.
With lovely ground of blue, whereon we gaze
From cliff or sandy shore in ecstasy;
The light that blazes on the mountain way,
Or, strained to pallor, steals to lonely dells;
None are forgotten on this autumn day,
As with sweet memories the glad heart swells;
But as the October sun drops down the west,
We say with smiling lips, Home lights are best.
Concerning Beginnings and Ends.
We cannot bear a very long, uniform look-out. It is an unspeakable blessing that we can stop and start again in everything. The journey that crushes us down when we contemplate it as one long weary thing can be borne when we divide it into stages. And one great lesson of practical wisdom is to train ourselves to mentally divide everything into stages. It would crush down any man’s resolution if he saw in one glance the whole enormous bulk of labor which he will get through in a lifetime. And yet you know, and the little child knows just as well, that after he has conquered that tremendous alphabet, he must begin again with something else, he must mount from his first little book onwards and upwards into the fields of knowledge and learning. Let us, if we are wise men, hold by the grand principle of step by step.
A Strange Experience.
They took the little London girl from out the city street
To where the grass was growing green, the birds were singing sweet;
And everything along the road so filled her with surprise,
The look of wonder fixed itself within her violet eyes.
The breezes ran to welcome her; they kissed her on each cheek,
And tried in every way they could their ecstasy to speak,
Inviting her to romp with them, and tumbling up her curls,
Expecting she would laugh or scold, like other little girls.
But she did not; no, she could not; for this crippled little child
Had lived within a dingy court where sunshine never smiled,
And for weary, weary days and months the little one had lain
Confined within a narrow room, and on a couch of pain.
The out-door world was strange to her—the broad expanse of sky,
The soft, green grass, the pretty flowers, the stream that trickled by;
But all at once she saw a sight that made her hold her breath,
And shake and tremble as if she were frightened near to death.
Oh, like some horrid monster of which the child had dreamed,
With nodding head and waving arms, the angry creature seemed;
It threatened her, it mocked at her, with gestures and grimace
That made her shrink with terror from its serpent-like embrace.
They kissed the trembling little one, they held her in their arms,
And tried in every way they could to quiet her alarms,
And said, “Oh, what a foolish little goose you are to be
So nervous and so terrified at nothing but a tree!”
They made her go up close to it, and put her arms around
The trunk and see how firmly it was fastened in the ground;
They told her all about the roots that clung down deeper yet,
And spoke of other curious things she never would forget.
Oh, I have heard of many, very many girls and boys
Who have to do without the sight of pretty books and toys,
Who have never seen the ocean; but the saddest thought to me
Is that anywhere there lives a child who never saw a tree.
The Daily Task.
The morning light falls gently on the eyes
And wakes the sleeping men;
And bids them rise and haste to meet the day,
And find their work again.
No one is asked to choose what he will do,
Or take the task loved best,
For God allots the places, and each one
Obeys His high behest.
One, loving silence, passes to the street
And mingles with the crowd,
And finds his daily work awaiting him,
Where noise is long and loud.
And one who hungers for the voice and touch
Of others in the gloom
Is ordered to withdraw from all, and work
Alone within one room.
Another, loving beauty, air, and light,
Passes in sordid ways,
And uncongenial sights, and jarring sounds,
The hours of his best days.
And yet another who could love all work,
And do it thankfully,
Has naught to do but suffer and be still
In patience, perfectly.
Are, then, the workers at their daily tasks
Unhappy and unblest?
Nay; He who chooses for them gives the wage
Of happiness and rest.
The feet pass swiftly to the place of toil,
The lips break into song,
And ready hands receive the allotted task,
Nor find the hours too long.
Because the loyal heart is true to God,
And the deft hand obeys
The Master, who decides what each shall do,
Joy fills the working days.
And so, if but the soul be leal, the task
Itself becomes more dear,
And every worker finds that work well done
Is work that brings good cheer.
“What’s the Lesson for To-day?”
Little Bess, with laughing eyes,
Brightly blue as summer skies,
Came to me one morn in May,
Asking in her eager way,
“What’s the lesson for to-day?”
And I told her, then and there,
What I wished her to prepare.
But new meaning (strange to say),
In the childish query lay,
“What’s the lesson for to-day?”
And I pondered o’er and o’er
What I scarce had thought before,—
As I went my wonted way,
Towards my duty, sad or gay,
“What’s my lesson for the day?”
Students in the school of life,
’Mid its struggles and its strife,
Let us ask, in childlike way,
Of the Teacher we obey,
“What’s the lesson for to-day?”
And the answer God will give,
He will show us how to live,
Teach us of His perfect way,
Grant us wisdom that we may
Learn the lesson of the day.
Moral Courage.
A great deal of talent is lost in the world for the want of a little courage. The fact is, that to do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating tasks, and adjusting nice chances; it did very well before the flood, where a man could consult his friends upon an intended publication for an hundred and fifty years, and then live to see its success afterwards: but at present, a man waits and doubts and hesitates, and consults his brother and his uncle and particular friends, till one fine day he finds that he is sixty years of age; that he has lost so much time in consulting his first cousin and particular friends, that he has no more time to follow their advice.
No Work the Hardest Work.
Ho! ye who at the anvil toil,
And strike the sounding blow,
Where from the burning iron’s breast
The sparks fly to and fro,
While answering to the hammer’s ring,
And fire’s intenser glow—
Oh, while ye feel ’tis hard to toil
And sweat the long day through,
Remember it is harder still
To have no work to do.
Ho! ye who till the stubborn soil,
Whose hard hands guide the plow;
Who bend beneath the summer sun
With burning cheek and brow—
Ye deem the curse still clings to earth
From olden time till now;
But while ye feel ’tis hard to toil
And labor all day through,
Remember it is harder still
To have no work to do.
Ho! ye who plow the sea’s blue field,
Who ride the restless wave;
Beneath whose gallant vessel’s keel
There lies a yawning grave;
Around whose bark the wintry winds
Like fiends of fury rave—
Oh, while ye feel ’tis hard to toil
And labor long hours through,
Remember it is harder still
To have no work to do.
Ho! all who labor, all who strive,
Ye wield a mighty power;
Do with your might, do with your strength,
Fill every golden hour;
The glorious privilege to do
Is man’s most noble dower.
Oh, to your birthright and yourselves,
To your own souls be true!
A weary, wretched life is theirs
Who have no work to do.
Some Old School-books.
I have been back to my home again,
To the place where I was born;
I have heard the wind from the stormy main
Go rustling through the corn;
I have seen the purple hills once more;
I have stood on the rocky coast
Where the waves storm inland to the shore;
But the thing that touched me most
Was a little leather strap that kept
Some school-books, tattered and torn!
I sighed, I smiled, I could have wept
When I came on them one morn;
For I thought of the merry little lad,
In the mornings sweet and cool,
If weather was good, or weather bad,
Going whistling off to school.
My fingers undid the strap again,
And I thought how my hand had changed,
And half in longing, and half in pain,
Backward my memory ranged.
There was the grammar I knew so well,—
I didn’t remember a rule;
And the old blue speller,—I used to spell
Better than any in school;
And the wonderful geography
I’ve read on the green hill-side,
When I’ve told myself I’d surely see
All lands in the world so wide,
From the Indian homes in the far, far West,
To the mystical Cathay.
I have seen them all. But Home is best
When the evening shades fall gray.
And there was the old arithmetic,
All tattered and stained with tears;
I and Jamie and little Dick
Were together in by-gone years.
Jamie has gone to the better land;
And I get now and again,
A letter in Dick’s bold, ready hand,
From some great Western plain.
There wasn’t a book, and scarce a page,
That hadn’t some memory
Of days that seemed like a golden age,
Of friends I shall no more see.
And so I picked up the books again
And buckled the strap once more,
And brought them over the tossing main;
Come, children, and look them o’er.
And there they lie on a little stand
Not far from the Holy Book;
And his boys and girls with loving care
O’er grammar and speller look.
He said, “They speak to me, children dear,
Of a past without alloy;
And the look of Books, in promise clear,
Of a future full of joy.”
Harper’s Weekly.
Their Cost.
How cheap are the things which are bought and sold,
The beautiful things which the hands can hold,
Whatever is purchased with silver and gold.
The merchants are calling and filling their rooms
With jewels and laces and rarest perfumes,
And wonderful webs from the Indian looms.
The price of the treasures is small, as they say;
For dollars and cents, are exchanged every day
The furs of the North-land, the silks of Cathay.
But, oh! the rare things which can never be brought
From the far-away countries, but still must be sought
Through working and waiting and anguish of thought!
The patience that comes to the heart, as it tries
To hear, through all discord and turbulent cries,
The songs of the armies that march to the skies;
The courage that fails not, nor loses its breath
In stress of the battle, but smilingly saith,
“I’ll measure my strength with disaster and death;”
The love that through doubting and pain will increase;
The longing and restlessness, calmed into peace
That is perfect and satisfied, never to cease—
These, these are the dear things. No king on his throne
Can buy them away from the poor and unknown
Who make them, through labor or anguish, their own.
A true life must be simple in all its elements.—Horace Greeley.
The Old Reading Class.
I.
I cannot tell you, Genevieve, how oft it comes to me—
That rather young old reading class in District Number Three,
That row of elocutionists who stood so straight in line,
And charged at standard literature with amiable design.
We did not spare the energy in which our words were clad!
We gave the meaning of the text by all the light we had;
But still I fear the ones who wrote the lines we read so free
Would scarce have recognized their work in District Number Three.
II.
Outside, the snow was smooth and clean—the winter’s thick-laid dust;
The storm, it made the windows speak at every sudden gust;
Bright sleigh-bells threw us pleasant words when travelers would pass;
The maple-trees along the road stood shivering in their class;
Beyond, the white-browed cottages were nestling cold and dumb,
And far away the mighty world seemed beckoning us to come—
The wondrous world, of which we conned what had been and might be,
In that old-fashioned reading class of District Number Three.
III.
We took a hand at History—its altars, spires and flames—
And uniformly mispronounced the most important names;
We wandered through Biography, and gave our fancy play,
And with some subjects fell in love—“good only for one day;”
In Romance and Philosophy we settled many a point,
And made what poems we assailed to creak at every joint;
And many authors that we love, you with me will agree,
Were first time introduced to us in District Number Three.
IV.
You recollect Susannah Smith, the teacher’s sore distress,
Who never stopped at any pause—a sort of day express?
And timid young Sylvester Jones, of inconsistent sight,
Who stumbled on the easy words and read the hard ones right?
And Jennie Green, whose doleful voice was always clothed in black?
And Samuel Hicks, whose tones induced the plastering all to crack?
And Andrew Tubbs, whose various mouths were quite a show to see?
Alas! we cannot find them now in District Number Three.
V.
And Jasper Jenckes, whose tears would flow at each pathetic word
(He’s in the prize-fight business now, and hits them hard, I’ve heard);
And Benny Bayne, whose every tone he murmured as in fear
(His tongue is not so timid now: he is an auctioneer);
And Lanty Wood, whose voice was just endeavoring hard to change,
And leaped from hoarse to fiercely shrill with most surprising range;
Also his sister Mary Jane, so full of prudish glee.
Alas! they’re both in higher schools than District Number Three.
VI.
So back these various voices come, though long the years have grown,
And sound uncommonly distinct through Memory’s telephone;
And some are full of melody, and bring a sense of cheer,
And some can smite the rock of time, and summon forth a tear;
But one sweet voice comes back to me, whenever sad I grieve!
And sings a song, and that is yours, O peerless Genevieve!
It brightens up the olden times, and throws a smile at me—
A silver star amid the clouds of District Number Three.
Forward.
Let me stand still upon the height of life;
Much has been won, though much there is to win;
I am a little weary of the strife.
Let me stand still awhile, nor count it sin
To cool my hot brow, ease the travel-pain,
And then address me to the road again.
Long was the way, and steep and hard the climb;
Sore are my limbs, and fain I am to rest;
Behind me lie long sandy tracks of time;
Before me rises the steep mountain crest.
Let me stand still; the journey is half done,
And when less weary I will travel on.
There is no standing still! Even as I pause
The steep path shifts and I slip back apace;
Movement was safety; by the journey laws
No help is given, no safe abiding-place,
No idling in the pathway hard and slow;
I must go forward, or must backward go!
I will go up then, though the limbs may tire,
And though the path be doubtful and unseen;
Better with the last effort to expire
Than lose the toil and struggle that have been,
And have the morning strength, the upward strain,
The distance conquered, in the end made vain.
Ah, blessed law! for rest is tempting sweet,
And we would all lie down if so we might;
And few would struggle on with bleeding feet;
And few would ever gain the higher height
Except for the stern law which bids us know
We must go forward, or must backward go.
Her Angel.
Margery cowered and crouched in the door of the beautiful porch.
There were beautiful people in there, and they all belonged to the church.
But Margery waited without; she did not belong anywhere
Except in the dear Lord’s bosom, who taketh the children there.
And through the open doorway came floating a lovely sound;
She shut her eyes and imagined how the angels stood around
With their harps like St. Cecilia’s in the picture on the wall—
Ah, Margery did not doubt that so looked the singers all.
“Suffer the little children!” sang a heavenly voice somewhere,
Or the soul of a voice that was winging away in the upper air;
“Let the children come to me!” sang the angel in her place,
And Margery, listening, stood, with upturned eyes and face.
“Let them come! let them come to me!” And up the aisle she sped
With eyes that sought for the Voice, to follow where it led.
She did not say to herself: “I’m coming! Wait for me!”
But it shone in her face, and it leaped in her eyes, dear Margery!
Up the stair to the singer she ran, she touched the hem of her dress.
But the choir were bending their heads, the preacher had risen to bless
The reverent throng, and alas! bewildered Margery,
The Voice has ceased, and the singers have turned their eyes on thee.
They look with surprise at her feet, and again at her ragged gown,
And one by one they pass with a careless smile or a frown;
But the sweetest face bent near, and—“I came,” said Margery,
“For I thought ’twas an angel sang, ‘Let the children come to me!’”
With a tender sigh the singer took the child upon her knee;
“I sang the words for the dear Lord Christ, my Margery,
And so, for the dear Lord Christ, I take thee home with me!”
—“It was an angel sang!” sobs little Margery.
Are the Heroes Dead?
“We are low,—we are base!” sigh the singers,
“The heroes have long been dead!
The times have fallen,—the state is sick,
And the glory of earth has fled!
Sordid and selfish on every side
Walk the men and the women we know.
Downward we tend continually,
And faster and faster go!”
Shame to ye, shame to ye, singers!
And have ye never known
That the soul of man has been ever the same
Since the sun of heaven shone?
If ye listen and look for the heroes,
Ye will find them everywhere;
But if ye look for the knaves and scamps—
It is true they are not rare.
But whenever a ship is lost at sea,
Or a building burns on land,
Amid the terror and death and loss
A hero is found at hand.
And if ever a war should come again
(From it long may we be freed!)
Ye will find the heroes, as ever before,
Responding to the need.
Failed!
a poem of hard times.
Failed! Jim Miserton failed! You don’t mean to say it’s so?
Had it from Smith at the Bank? Well, he’s a man that should know.
Forty-two cents on the dollar? I cannot believe my ears.
There’s no such thing as judging a man by the way he appears.
Yes, you may well say “failed;” there’s more than the term implies,
When all there is of a man in a hopeless ruin lies.
To come after twenty years of a stubborn up-hill strife,
It isn’t a business smash so much as a failure in life.
Gold was always his god—he’d nothing else in his soul;
Money, for money’s sake, was ever his ultimate goal.
A “self-made man” they styled him, for low and poor he began;
But now his money has vanished, and what is left of the man?
He had no eye for beauty, for literature no taste;
Buying pictures or books he counted a shameful waste.
Nothing he cared for art or the poet’s elaborate rhymes;
His soul was only attuned to the musical jingle of dimes.
Selfish, exacting, and stern, a hand he would treat like a slave;
Long were his hours of toil, and scanty the pay that he gave;
Made of cast-iron himself, his zeal in the struggle for gold
Left him no pity to spare for those of a different mold.
Never a cent for the poor, for the naked never a stitch;
’Twas all their fault, he would say; they should save like him, and grow rich.
Now and then to a church he’d forward a liberal amount,
Duly set down in his books to the advertising account.
So he succeeded, of course, and piled his coffers with wealth,
Missing pleasure and culture, losing vigor and health;
Now he’s down at the bottom, exactly where he began;
Even his gold has vanished, and what is left of the man?
A self-made man, indeed! then we owe no honor to such;
The genuine self-made man you cannot honor too much;
But be sure what you make is a man—with a heart, and a soul, and a mind,
Not merely a pile of dollars, that goes, leaving nothing behind.
Labor.
To some field of labor, mental or manual, every idler should fasten, as a chosen and coveted theater of improvement. But so he is not impelled to do, under the teachings of our imperfect civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and blesses himself in his idleness. This way of thinking is the heritage of the absurd and unjust feudal system under which serfs labored, and gentlemen spent their lives in fighting and feasting. It is time that this opprobrium of toil were done away. Ashamed to toil, art thou? Ashamed of thy dingy work-shop and dusty labor-field; of thy hard hand scarred with service more honorable than that of war; of thy soiled and weather-stained garments, on which Mother Nature has embroidered, midst sun and rain, midst fire and steam, her own heraldic honors? Ashamed of these tokens and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and vanity? It is treason to nature; it is impiety to Heaven; it is breaking Heaven’s great ordinance. Toil, I repeat—toil, either of the brain, of the heart, or of the hand, is the only true manhood, the only true nobility.
The Holy Place.
The people came to the priest,
“Good father,” said they,
“We love the holy altar
Where we kneel to pray;
We would ’broider a cloth
Of fine silk and wool
To cover the altar,
For our hearts are full.”
“My children,” said the priest,
“When the heart is full,
Spend not its treasure
In fine silk and wool.
Listen, my children,
Do you hear a moan?
’Tis the poor man waiting,
Sick and alone.
“His darlings ask in vain
For a piece of bread;
And what thinks the Lord?”
The good priest said.
“The tender-hearted Christ
Would be very wroth
Should you leave his poor
For an altar-cloth.
“He blesses the holy altar
Where we kneel to pray;
But in the silence
I hear him say:
“Seek me, my children,
In works of grace;
Where you comfort a heart
Is the holy place.”