has no past;--time has been nought to it, and men
have come and gone, leaving behind them no track, no vestige of their
presence. Some French writer, speaking of these prairies, has said that
the sense of this utter negation of life, this complete absence of
history, has struck him with a loneliness, oppressive and sometimes
terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so, but, for my part, the prairies
had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing oppressive in their
loneliness. One saw here the world, as it had taken shape and form from
the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less beautiful because
nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun brought forth the
flowers.

October had reached its latest week; the wild geese and swans had taken
their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended
through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was
settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night
with the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the
Indian Summer, and Winter was coming quickly down, from his far northern
home.

Major W. F. Butler: "The Great Lone Land."

[Illustration: PIONEERS]

RULE, BRITANNIA

When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never will be slaves!

The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall,
While thou shalt flourish great and free--
The dread and envy of them all.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe and thy renown.

To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.

The Muses, still with Freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest Isle, with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair:--
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!
Britons never will be slaves!

James Thomson

THE COMMANDMENT AND THE REWARD