15
Summer hours depart;
Learn to make the most of life,
Lose no happy day,
Time will never bring thee back
Chances swept away! 20
Leave no tender word unsaid,
Love while love shall last;
"The mill cannot grind
With the water that is past."

Work while yet the daylight shines, 25
Man of strength and will!
Never does the streamlet glide
Useless by the mill;
Wait not till to-morrow's sun
Beams upon thy way, 30

All that thou canst call thine own
Lies in thy to-day;
Power and intellect and health
May not always last;
"The mill cannot grind 5
With the water that is past."

Oh, the wasted hours of life
That have drifted by!
Oh, the good that might have been--
Lost, without a sigh! 10
Love that we might once have saved
By a single word;
Thoughts conceived but never penned,
Perishing unheard;
Take the proverb to thine heart, 15
Take, and hold it fast--
"The mill cannot grind
With the water that is past."

1. How does a water mill work? Find a picture of
one. What was this mill probably used to grind? Why
is it appropriate to have the reapers in the
picture in the first stanza?

2. What other proverbs with the same meaning as
this one can you find?

A MOTTO OF OXFORD

This stanza is engraved over one of the old
colleges of Oxford University, a great seat of
learning in England.

He who reads and reads
And does not what he knows,
Is he who plows and plows
And never sows.

SAILING AND FAILING

BY HAMILTON W. MABIE

There are two kinds of men in the world: those who
sail and those who drift; those who choose the ports
to which they will go and skillfully and boldly shape their
course across the seas, with the wind or against it, and those
who let winds and tides carry them where they will. The 5
men who sail, in due time arrive; those who drift, often
cover greater distances but they never m