solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

H.W. LONGFELLOW.

[Notes:_Art is long, and time is fleeting_. A translation from the
Latin, _Ars longa, vita brevis est._

The metaphor in the last two stanzas in this page is strangely mixed.
Footprints could hardly be seen by those sailing over the main.]

* * * * *

BOYHOOD'S WORK.

In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at
a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are
getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives,
probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil in the
society you live in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like
men, then; speak up, and strike out, if necessary, for whatsoever
is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be
popular, but only to do your duty, and help others to do theirs, and you
may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it,
and so be doing good, which no living soul can measure, to generations
of your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like
sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled
principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of
right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking
certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and
right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly, and
little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the leading
boys for the time being who give the tone to all the rest, and make
the school either a noble institution for the training of Christian
Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get more evil than he
would if he were turned out to make his way in London streets, or
anything between these two extremes.

* * * * *

WORK IN THE WORLD.

"I want to be at work in the world," said Tom, "and not dawdling away
three years at Oxford."

"What do you mean by 'at work in the world?'" said the master, pausing,
with his lips close to his saucerful of tea, and peering at Tom over it.

"Well, I