the polar bergs and
floes, who roam the wild, unpeopled places, perchance to find among the
snows a resting-place remote and lonely; a winding-sheet of deathless
white, where elemental voices only disturb the brooding year-long night.

Brave souls are they whose man-made pinions have borne them over plains
and seas, who conquered wide and new dominions, and strapped a saddle
on the breeze. Their engine-driven wings are wearing new pathways
through the realm of clouds; they play with death, with dauntless
daring, to please the breathless, fickle crowds.

Brave men go forth to distant regions, forsaking luxury and ease;
through all the years they've gone in legions, to unknown lands, o'er
stormy seas; and when, by sword or fever smitten, they blithely
journeyed to the grave, full well they knew their names were written
down in the annals of the brave.

I am as brave as any rover described in gay, romantic screeds, but,
when my fitful life is over, no epic will narrate my deeds. Condemned
to silent heroism, I go my unmarked way alone, and no one hands me
prune or prism, as token that my deeds are known. But yesterday my
teeth were aching, and to the painless dentist's lair I took my way,
unawed, unquaking, and sat down in the fatal chair. He dug around my
rumbling molars with drawing-knives and burglars' tools, and cross-cut
saws and patent rollers, and marlinspikes and two-foot rules. He
climbed upon my lap and prodded with crowbar and with garden spade, to
see that I was not defrauded of all the agony that's made. He pulled
and yanked and pried and twisted, and uttered oft his battle shout, and
now and then his wife assisted--till finally the teeth came out. And
never once while thus he pottered around my torn and mangled jowl--not
once, while I was being slaughtered, did I let out a single howl! No
brass-bands played, none sang a ditty of triumph as I took my way; no
signs of "Welcome to Our City" were hung across the street that day!

Thus you and I and plain, plug mortals may show a courage high and
fine, and be obscure, while some jay chortles in triumph where the
limelights shine.

PLAY BALL

"Play ball!" you hear the fans exclaim, when weary of a dragging game,
when all the players pause to state their theories in a joint debate,
or when they go about their biz as though they had the rheumatiz. And
if they do not heed the hunch that's given by the bleachers bunch, they
find, when next they sta