e fine old trees were shriveled and
weary, as if trying were no longer worth while. They craved sleep and
peace--just rest. The gay grasses were dry and faded and when the
little winds tried to rouse them they only rustled impatiently,
dolefully and murmured, "Oh what's the use?"

The heart of Cynthia's son studied the low brooding sky, the dying
world, listened to the wailing, mourning winds, the sighing of the
grasses and it too said wearily, "Yes--what's the use of anything?"

What's the use of working and trying when the thing you want most to do
you can't do. What's the use of longing when the thing you crave most
can never again be given to you? What's the use of feeling big,
eternal, divine, when you know that every day is dwarfed by your
limitations, every friendship marred by your helplessness, every dream
blurred by your ignorance? The sweetest things in life, Cynthia's son
told himself with all the bitterness of youth, were memories and hopes.
Memories of happy moments, hours perhaps, memories of perfect days and
hopes of new days, new friends, new skies.

To-day all hope seemed dead, gone from the hillsides with the summer
flowers. And the world was a sad and a lonely place. Cynthia's son
had yet to learn that gray days are home days. That if it were not for
gray skies there would be no low roofs gleaming through tree tops, no
home fires glowing anywhere. Gray days are heart days, for it is then
that the heart hungers for sympathy, for kinship. It is then that men
draw together for comfort and cheer.

Cynthia's son never felt quite so alone in the world before--the last
of his line. He was young and did not know what ailed him. So he lay
heartsick and puzzled on his hill top and wished he had some one all
his own to talk to.

There are things you can whistle to a robin, whisper to a tree friend
or look into the heart of the sunset. There are problems you can argue
out with a neighbor or solve with the help of a friend. But the heart
has certain longings that you can share only with some one who is all
your own and very, very dear.

It is hard to be the last of a line, Cynthia's son told himself
bitterly, and in his loneliness he turned over and hid his face on his
arm and let his homesick heart stray off across the seas to the land
that for so long had been home to him, the land that held the dead
hearts that had always robbed his gray days of all sadness.

He craved the hot sunshine, t