When summer's solstice came again The schoolhouse slept forsaken there, Or harvest moon shone bright and fair. Alas! that school life waned away, A relic of the fading past. Where children's children learned to spell, The scythe of Time unsparing fell And swept the schoolhouse from men's sight. Its walls of brick no more are seen; Its roof and porch and doors are gone, And where it stood the grass grows green No more that schoolhouse stands no more It's work is done! It's day is o'er! Yet Mem'ry clings around it still. Dover, New Hampshire. THE MAGIC GRANITE STATE SLEIGH RIDE By Elias H. Cheney Oh the jingle, jingle, jingle, Sleighing 'mong New Hampshire hills, By her rivers, brooks and rills; Lad and lassie side by side; Lassie he would make his bride. Where's the harm, I'd like to know? Wasn't nature always so? Just as long ago our daddy, Just as mamma did right early To the pure all things are pure; God made the horse both strong and fleet, It was not God who made the sleigh. THE BURIAL By L. J. H. Frost There was an open grave, And many an eye looked sadly on it. On they come! That slow funeral train, with pensive tread And heads bowed low, and eyes that sadly looked The heart's deep anguish, while silently They dropped upon the dust the scalding tearBefitting tribute to departed worth. The ebon bier, covered with sable pall, Rested upon the grave's green brink; and then The heart-chilling words, "Ashes to ashes!" Then, There rose a wail upon the ambient air That spoke a mother's sorrow. What was all of earth to her whose cherished son Her first born-ah! her only, worshiped one, Was gone forever? Could the kind friendship Of true hearts, or loving sympathy From all the world, efface the lost one's image A mother's heart may learn soon to forgive, True she may Meekly bow her head and say, "My Father, Yet from her inmost soul there rises up to God The Musings of a Quiet Thinker By Francis H. Goodale It has been humorously remarked, that if persons only talked as little as they thought, what a silent world this would be. A very able thinker has also truly said: "The expression by a person of his opinions shows where he stopped thinking. This goes to show that careful reflection and hard thinking are absolutely essential to secure clear, strong, forcible ideas; and then, too, we should also be able to select the proper words to express these ideas clearly, forcibly and concisely. History demonstrates very conclusively that all men who have originated great and noble ideas, or who have made important discoveries or inventions, which have promoted the welfare of men, have done it by careful, patient, concentrated thinking on one subject for a long time. Reflection is to the mind what artificial instruments are to the senses. It enables the mind to see, and discern clearly much more complicated and difficult problems of life, which could not, otherwise, have been mastered and understood. Emanuel Sevedenborg has very profoundly remarked that, "It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to affirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false; this is the mark and character of intelligence. Steam, electricity and the other great forces in Nature had just the same power and energy hundreds of years ago, that they now have; but we did not discover how to use and control these forces until recent times. So it is, largely, with the forces of the mind. They lie dormant for a long time, until some great kindred force, in life and Nature comes in direct contact with the intellectual forces of some great man and gives him con structive and creative power to understand some of the great silent laws and forces governing the material universe, which constantly transform nature and life into higher and nobler being. Our chief want in life is somebody to give us a "big push" to make us do what we can, as so many persons lack faith, hope, self-reliance, self-trust, and also the power and courage to live and act straight up to their own best convictions, regardless of what other persons may think or say. "He most lives, who thinks most, who feels the noblest, acts the best. When we get our minds into a fine, healthy glow, we then get glimpses "of that immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, millioncolored, which beams over the universe as on the first morning'-; so that we may truly "Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, Drink the wild air's salubrity." History is only the marriage of thought to nature; and nature is the memory of the mind; and so every great institution is the incarnation of the thoughts of some great man or men. The latest writers on Evolution have, therefore, very properly put great stress on the constructive and creative faculties of our minds. Language is probably the highest form of intelligence yet developed, and this is also merely "the incarnation of thought," as S. J. Coleridge puts it in his "Aids to Reflection,' or that words are the glasses through which we see ideas, as Joubert has it. This all goes to show, most forcibly, then, how history repeats itself over dence of the intellects of men; and and over in the expansion and decaalso why we should always strive most earnestly to "hold fast to that which is good," as Saint Paul so tersely puts it. |