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the head of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest dress and set in his chariot and carried about to his friends' houses; and each of them placed him at his table's head, and all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to you in plain words as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honor, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive.

Suppose the offer were this: "You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify; your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you; but day by day your body shall be dressed more gaily and set in higher chariots, and have more honors on its breastcrowns on its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout around it, crowd after it up and down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their table's head all the night long; your soul shall stay enough with it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown edge on the skull — no more."

Would you take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think you? Yet practically and verily we grasp it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it who desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public honor, and not more personal soul!

He only is advancing in life whose heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into Living Peace. And the men who have this life in them are the only true lords and kings of the earth they, and they only!

GIFTS.

EMMA LAZARUS.

"Он, World-God, give me wealth!" the Egyptian cried. His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold Palace and pyramid; the brimming tide

Of lavished Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,

World-circling traffic roared through mart and street.
His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined,
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.

"Oh, World-God, give me Beauty!" cried the Greek. His prayer was granted. All the earth became Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,

Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might

Of the immortal marble, his the play

Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sunshine-race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.

"Oh, World-God, give me Power!" the Roman cried. His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained. A captive to the chariot of his pride.

The blood of myriad provinces was drained

To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.

Invulnerably bulwarked every part

With serried legions and with close-meshed Code.
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home.
A roofless ruin stands where once abode

The imperial race of everlasting Rome.

Oh, Godhead, give me Truth!" the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,

Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour,
Immortal, through the lamp within his hand!

A LIBERAL EDUCATION.

THOMAS H. HUXLEY.

THAT man has had a liberal education, who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic-engine, with all its parts

of equal strength and in smooth working order; ready like a steam engine to be turned to any kind of work and spin the gossamers, as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of Art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself.

Such a one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his beneficent mother; he as her mouth-piece, her conscious self, her minister, and interpreter !

THE TWO STREAMS.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

BEHOLD the rocky wall,

That down its sloping sides

Pours the swift rain-drops, blending as they fall

In rushing river-tides !

Yon stream whose sources run,
Turned by a pebble's edge,

Is Athabasca rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

The slender rill had strayed,

But for the slanting stone,

To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon.

So from the heights of Will,

Life's parting stream descends,

And as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends,

From the same cradle's side,

From the same mother's knee, — One to long darkness and the frozen tide, One to the Peaceful Sea!

I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

I WANDERED lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

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