histle, whistle!

_Frank L. Stanton._

[Illustration: GRANTLAND RICE]

"MIGHT HAVE BEEN"

"Yes, it's pretty hard," the optimistic old woman admitted. "I have to
get along with only two teeth, one in the upper jaw and one in the
lower--but thank God, they meet."

Here's to "The days that might have been";
Here's to "The life I might have led";
The fame I might have gathered in--
The glory ways I might have sped.
Great "Might Have Been," I drink to you
Upon a throne where thousands hail--
And then--there looms another view--
I also "might have been" in jail.

O "Land of Might Have Been," we turn
With aching hearts to where you wait;
Where crimson fires of glory burn,
And laurel crowns the guarding gate;
We may not see across your fields
The sightless skulls that knew their woe--
The broken spears--the shattered shields--
That "might have been" as truly so.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen"--
So wails the poet in his pain--
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
And world-wide runs the dull refrain.
The saddest? Yes--but in the jar
This thought brings to me with its curse,
I sometimes think the gladdest are
"It might have been a blamed sight worse."

_Grantland Rice._

From "The Sportlight."

THE ONE

In our youth we picture ourselves as we will be in the future--not mere
types of this or that kind of success, but above all and in all, Ideal
Men. Then come the years and the struggles, and we are buffeted and
baffled, and our very ideal is eclipsed. But others have done better
than we. Weary and harassed, they yet embody our visions. And we, if we
are worth our salt, do not envy them when we see them. Nor should we
grow dispirited. Rather should we rejoice in their triumph, rejoice that
our dreams were not impossibilities, take courage to strive afresh for
that which we know is best.

I knew his face the moment that he passed
Triumphant in the thoughtless, cruel throng,--
Triumphant, though the quiet, tired eyes
Showed that his soul had suffered overlong.
And though across his brow faint lines of care
Were etched, somewhat of Youth still lingered there.
I gently touched his arm--he smiled at me--
He was the Man that Once I Meant to Be!

Where I had failed, he'd won from life, Success;
Where I had stumbled, with sure feet he stood;
Alike--yet unalike--we faced the wor