Then, up to the contest with fate,

Unbound by the past, which is dead!

What though the heart's roses are ashes and dust? What though the heart's music be fled?

Still shine the fair heavens o'erhead;

'And sublime as the seraph who rules in the sun Beams the promise of joy when the conflict is won!

THEY do me wrong

OPPORTUNITY

BY WALTER MALONE

who say I come no more When once I knock and fail to find you in, For every day I stand outside your door,

And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
Each night I burn the records of the day,
At sunrise every soul is born again!

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,

To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say “I can!”
No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep
But yet might rise and be again a man.

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past,
And find the future's pages white as snow.

Art thou a mourner?

Rouse thee from thy spell;

Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.

THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD*

BY SAM WALTER FOSS

THERE are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;

There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;

There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran;-

But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road,

Where the race of men go by

The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.

*From Dreams in Homespun, copyright, 1897, by Lee and Shepard. Used by special permission of Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road,
By the side of the highway of life,

The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife.

But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears -
Both parts of an infinite plan;

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
And mountains of wearisome height;

That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.

But still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice,
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by

They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,

Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,

Or hurl the cynic's ban?

Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

BY O. HENRY

ONE dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

do but flop down on the So Della did it. Which

There was clearly nothing to shabby little couch and howl. instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as

though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterlingsomething just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

are.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dilling