eye took Misery for a chum.
He hailed misfortunes as his pals, and murmured, "Let 'em come!"

"Oh, what's the blooming use?" he yelped, his face an angry red,
"When everything's been thought before and everything's been said?
And what's a Grumpy Guy to do except to go to bed?

"And where's the joy the poets sing, the merriment and fun?
How can one start a thing that's new when everything's begun?--
When everything's been planned before and everything's been done?--

"When everything's been dreamed before and everything's been sought?
When everything that ever ran has, so to speak, been caught?--
When every game's been played before and every battle fought?"

I started him at solitaire, a fooling, piffling game.
He played it ninety-seven hours and failed to find it tame.
In all the times he dealt the cards no two games were the same.

He never tumbled to its tricks nor mastered all its curves.
He grunted, "Well, this takes the cake, the pickles and preserves!
Its infinite variety is getting on my nerves."

"Its infinite variety!" I scoffed. "Just fifty-two
Poor trifling bits of pasteboard!--their combinations few
Compared to what there is in man!--the poorest!--even you!

"Variety! You'll never find in forty-seven decks
One tenth of the variety found in the gentler sex.
Card combinations are but frills to hang around their necks.

"The sun won't rise to-morrow as it came to us to-day,
'Twill be older, we'll be older, and to Time this debt we pay.
For nothing can repeat itself, for nothing knows the way."

Then the Grumpy Guy was silent as a miser hoarding pelf.
He knew 'twas time to put his grouch away upon the shelf.
And so he did.--You see, I was just talking to myself!

_Griffith Alexander._

From "The Pittsburg Dispatch."

THE FIGHTER

If life were all easy, we should degenerate into weaklings--into human
mush. It is the fighting spirit that makes us strong. Nor do any of us
lack for a chance to exercise this spirit. Struggle is everywhere; as
Kearny said at Fair Oaks, "There is lovely fighting along the whole
line."

I fight a battle every day
Against discouragement and fear;
Some foe stands always in my way,
The path ahead is never clear!
I must forever be on guard
Against the doubts that skulk along;
I get ahead by fighting hard,
But fighting keeps my spirit strong.

I hear the croakings of Despair,