o make the world laugh, and put the world's laughter on the
side of all right as against all wrong. If this be not done, the
seriousness of life will darken into gloom, its work become slavish
tasks, and the conflict waged be a terrible conflict between grim
virtues and fiendish vices. If you could shroud the bright skies with
black tempest-clouds, burn to ashes the rainbow-hued flowers, strike
dumb the sweet melodies of the grove, and turn to stagnant pools the
silver streams,--if you could do this, thinking thereby to make earth
more of a paradise, you would be scarcely less insane than if you were
to denounce and banish all

"Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,
Sport, that wrinkled care derides,
And laughter, holding both his sides."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: See _Parton's Humorous Poetry_.]

THE SUBJECTIVE OF IT.

Toward the close of a dreamy, tranquil July day, a day made impressive
beyond the possible comprehension of a dweller in civilization by its
sun having risen for us over the unbroken wilderness of the Adirondack,
a mountain-land in each of whose deep valleys lies a blue lake, we, a
party of hunters and recreation-seekers, six beside our guides, lay on
the fir-bough-cushioned floor of our dark camp, passing away the little
remnant of what had been a day of rest to our guides and of delicious
idleness to ourselves. The camp was built on the bold shore of a lake
which yet wants a name worthy its beauty, but which we always, for want
of such a one, call by that which its white discoverer left
it,--Tupper's Lake,--whose waters, the untremulous mirror of the forests
and mountains around and the sky above, gleamed to us only in blue
fragments through the interstices of the leafy veil that intervened. The
forest is unbroken to the water's edge, and even out over the water
itself it stretches its firs and cedars, gray and moss-draped, with here
and there a moisture-loving white-birch, so that from the very shore one
sees only suggestive bits of distance and sky; and from where we were
lying, sky, hills, and the water below were all blue alike, and
undistinguishable alike, glimpses of a world of sunlight, which the
grateful shadow we lay in made delicious to the thought. We were
sheltered right woodsman-like;--our little house of fresh-peeled bark of
spruces, twelve feet by nine, open only to the east, on which side lay
the lake, shielded us from