mounting lark;
But from his lips no accent of repining
Fell when the days grew dark;

And though contending long dread Fate to master,
He failed at last her enmity to cheat,
He turned with such a smile to face disaster
That he sublimed defeat.

_Florence Earle Coates._

From "Poems."

WILL

"I can resist anything but temptation," says a character in one of Oscar
Wilde's plays. Too many of us have exactly this strength of will. We
perhaps do not fall into gross crime, but because of our flabby
resolution our lives become purposeless, negative, negligible. No one
would miss us in particular if we were out of the way.

I

O well for him whose will is strong!
He suffers, but he will not suffer long;
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong.
For him nor moves the loud world's random mock;
Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound,
Who seems a promontory of rock,
That, compass'd round with turbulent sound,
In middle ocean meets the surging shock,
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.

II

But ill for him who, bettering not with time,
Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will,
And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime,
Or seeming-genial venial fault,
Recurring and suggesting still!
He seems as one whose footsteps halt,
Toiling in immeasurable sand,
And o'er a weary sultry land,
Far beneath a blazing vault,
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill
The city sparkles like a grain of salt.

_Alfred Tennyson._

[Illustration: EVERARD JACK APPLETON]

FABLE

To be impressed by a thing merely because it is big is a human failing.
Yet our standard of judgment would be truer if we considered, instead,
the success of that thing in performing its own particular task. And
quality is better than quantity. The lioness in the old fable was being
taunted because she bore only one offspring at a time, not a numerous
litter. "It is true," she admitted; "but that one is a lion."

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel,
And the former called the latter "Little Prig";
Bun replied,
"You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents