ILWAY.

Few can realize the problem before those intrepid men, who, with
little money and large hostility behind them, hauled their strenuously
obtained subsistence and material over nearly a thousand miles of
poorly equipped road. They fought mountains of snow as they had never
before been fought. They forced their weak, wheezy little engines up
tremendous grades with green wood that must sometimes be coaxed with
sage-brush gathered by the firemen running alongside of their creeping
or stalled iron horses. There were no steel rails. Engineers worked
unhelped by the example of perfected railroad building of later times.
No tracks or charts of the man-killing desert! No modern helps, no
ready, over-eager capital seeking their enterprise! Only skepticism,
hatred from their enemies, and "You can't do it!" flung at them from
friend and foe.

SARAH PRATT CARR,
in _The Iron Way._

MAY 12.

ANGLING THE SWORDFISH.

As he brought the great fish around again, a wonderful sight with its
gaudy fins, enormous black eyes and menacing sword, the head boatman
hurled the heavy spear into it. The swordfish fairly doubled up under
the shock, deluging with water the fishermen, its sword coming out and
striking the boat. A moment more and it might have escaped; but one of
the men seized it by the sword, while another threw a rope around it,
and the big game was theirs; in all probability the first large
swordfish ever taken with a rod and reel.

CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER,
in _Big Game at Sea._

MAY 13.

The old Greeks taught their children how to sing, because it taught
them how to be obedient. This is a difficult universe to the man who
drives dead against it, but to the man who has learned the secret of
harmony through obedience it is a happy place. Discord is sickness;
harmony is health. Discord is restlessness; harmony is peace. Discord
is sorrow; harmony is joy. Discord is death; harmony is life. Discord
is hell; harmony is heaven. He who is in love and peace with his
neighbors, filling the sphere where God has placed him, hath heaven in
his heart already. Only through blue in the eye, the scientist tells
us, can blue out of the eye be seen. Only through C in the ear can C
out of the ear be heard. Only through Heaven down here can Heaven up
there be interpreted.

MALCOLM McLEOD,
in _Earthly Discords._

MAY 14.

As one approaches the mission from the road, it defines itself more
and more as a distinct