s; but when such
men as Winthrop die such death as his, we seize the tools that fall
from their dying grasp, and complete the fragmentary structure, in
shape more graceful, it may be, in height more majestic, in colors more
lovely, than their own hands could have wrought. We attribute to them,
not simply what they did, but all that they might have done. Had
Winthrop lived, failing health, adverse circumstance, might have
blasted his promise in the bud; but now nothing of that can ever mar
his fame. We surround him with his aspirations. We glorify him with
his possibilities. He is not only the knight without fear and without
reproach, but the author immortal as the brightest auspices could have
made his strong and growing powers. A century could not have left him
greater than the love and hope and sorrow of his countrymen, building
on the little that is known of his short and beautiful life, have made
him.

O men and women everywhere who are following on to know the Lord, faint
yet pursuing; men women who are troubled, toiling, doubting, hoping,
watching, struggling; whose attainments "through the long green days,
worn bare of grass and sunshine," lag hopelessly behind your
aspirations; who are haunted evermore by the ghosts of your young
purposes; who see far off the shining hills your feet are fain to
tread; who work your work with dumb, assiduous energy, but with
perpetual protest,--I bid you good luck in the name of the Lord.

HAPPIEST DAYS

Long ago, when you were a little boy or a little girl,--perhaps not so
very long ago, either,--were you never interrupted in your play by
being called in to have your face washed, your hair combed, and your
soiled apron exchanged for a clean one, preparatory to an introduction
to Mrs. Smith, or Dr. Jones, or Aunt Judkins, your mother's early
friend? And after being ushered into that august presence, and made to
face a battery of questions which where either above or below your
capacity, and which you consequently despised as trash or resented as
insult, did you not, as were gleefully vanishing, hear a soft sigh
breathed out upon the air,--"Dear child, he is seeing his happiest
days"? In the concrete, it was Mrs. Smith or Dr. Jones speaking of
you. But going back to general principles, it was Commonplacedom
expressing its opinion of childhood.

There never was a greater piece of absurdity in the world. I thought
so when I was a child, and now I know it; and I