With a critical satisfaction?
But yesterday's laurels are dry and dead
And to-morrow's triumph is still ahead;
To-day is the day for action.

Yesterday's sun: is it shining still?
To-morrow's dawn: will its coming fill
To-day, if to-day's light fail us?
Not so. The past is forever past;
To-day's is the hand which holds us fast,
And to-morrow may never hail us.

The present and only the present endures,
So it's hey for to-day! for to-day is yours
For the goal you are still pursuing.
What you have done is a little amount;
What you will do is of lesser account,
But the test is, what are you doing?

THE FIRST PERSON SINGULAR.

McUmphrey's a fellow who's lengthy on lungs.
Backed up by the smoothest of ball-bearing tongues,
And his topic--himself--is worth talking about,
But he works it so much he has frazzled it out.
He never will give me my half of a chance
To chip in my own little, clever romance
In the first person singular. Yes, and they say,
He offended you, too, in a similar way.

Cousin Maud tells her illnesses, ancient and recent,
In a most minute way which is almost indecent!
Vivisecting herself, with some medical chatter,
She serves us her portions--as if on a platter,
Never noting how I am but waiting to stir
My dregs of diseases to offer to her.
And I hear (such a joke!) that your chronic gastritis
Stands silent forever before her nephritis.

Mrs. Henderson's Annie goes out every night,
And Bertha, before her, was simply a fright,
While Agnes broke more than the worth of her head,
And Maggie--well, some things are better unsaid.
Such manners to talk of her help--when she knows
My wife's simply aching to tell of _our_ woes!
And I hear that she never lets you get a start
On your story of Rosy we all know by heart.

You'd hardly believe that I've heard Bunson tell
The Flea-Powder Frenchman and Razors to Sell,
The One-Legged Goose and that old What You Please--
And even, I swear it, The Crow and the Cheese.
And he sprang that old yarn of He Said 't was His Leg,
When you wanted to tell him Columbus's Egg,
While I wanted to tell my own whimsical tale
(Which I recently wrote) of The Man in the Whale!

THE CHOICE.

The little it takes to make life bright,
If we