wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

--_Longfellow._

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.[35]

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea.
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!

--_Oliver Wendell Holmes._

[35] Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers.

PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY

TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF OAKLAND, CAL. MAY 24, 1901

"There is nothing better for the United States than EDUCATED
CITIZENSHIP; and, my young friends, there never was a time in all our
history when knowledge was so essential to success as now. Everything
requires knowledge. What we want of the young people now is exact
knowledge. You want to know whatever you undertake to do a little
better than anybody else. And if you will do that, then there is
nothing that is not within your reach.

And what you want besides education is CHARACTER--CHARACTER! There is
noth