Broken-hearted, I obey. Diamonds, gold-dust, petrified ram's-horn, heavenly Beetle are all flung on a rubbishheap outside the door.

Mother bewails her lot:

"A nice thing, bringing up children to see them turn out so badly! You'll bring me to my grave. Green stuff I don't mind it does for the rabbits. But stones, which ruin your pockets; poisonous animals, which'll sting your hand what good are they to you, silly? There's no doubt about it: some one has thrown a spell over you!"

Yes, my poor mother, you were right, in your simplicity : a spell had been cast upon me; I admit it to-day. When it is hard enough to earn one's bit of bread, does not improving one's mind but render one more meet for suffering? Of what avail is the torment of learning to the derelicts of life?

A deal better off am I, at this late hour, dogged by poverty and knowing that the diamonds of the duck-pool were rock-crystal, the gold-dust mica, the stone horn an Ammonite and the sky-blue Beetle a Hoplia! We poor men would do better to mistrust the joys of knowledge: let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace, flee the temptations of the pond, mind our ducks and leave to others, more favored by fortune, the job of explaining the world's mechanism, if the spirit moves them.

And yet no! Alone among living creatures, man has the thirst for knowledge; he alone pries into the mysteries of things. The least among us will utter his whys and his wherefores, a fine pain unknown to the brute beast. If these questionings come from us with greater persist

ence, with a more imperious authority, if they divert us from the quest of lucre, life's only object in the eyes of most men, does it become us to complain? Let us be careful not to do so, for that would be denying the best of all our gifts.

Let us strive, on the contrary, within the measure of our capacity, to force a gleam of light from the unknown; let us examine and question and, here and there, wrest a few shreds of truth. We shall sink under the task; in the present ill-ordered state of society, we shall end, perhaps, in the poor-house. Let us go ahead for all that: our consolation shall be that we have increased by one atom the general mass of knowledge, the incomparable treasure of mankind.

COLOR IN THE WHEAT

BY HAMLIN GARLAND

LIKE liquid gold the wheat field lies,

A marvel of yellow and russet and green,
That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,
With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen,
That play in the golden hair of a girl,
A ripple of amber — a flare

Of light sweeping after a curl
In the hollows like swirling feet

Of fairy waltzers, the colors run
To the western sun

Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.

Broad as the fleckless, soaring sky,

Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea, The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye Under the fierce sun's alchemy.

The slow hawk stoops

To his prey in the deeps;

The sunflower droops

To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps Then swirling in dazzling links and loops, A riot of shadow and shine,

A glory of olive and amber and wine, To the westering sun the colors run Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.

O glorious land! My western land,
Outspread beneath the setting sun!
Once more amid your swells, I stand,
And cross your sod-lands dry and dun.
I hear the jocund calls of men

Who sweep amid the ripened grain
With swift, stern reapers; once again
The evening splendor floods the plain,
The crickets' chime

Makes pauseless rhyme,
And toward the sun

The colors run

Before the wind's feet

In the wheat!

A FOREST HYMN

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

THE groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above him, — ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down,

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.

Ah, why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect

God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn - thrice happy, if it find

Acceptance in His ear.

Father, Thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns, Thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in Thy sun,
Budded, and shook their green leaves in Thy breeze,
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died

Among their branches, till at last, they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshiper to hold
Communion with his Maker.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on
In silence, round me - the perpetual work
Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed
For ever. Written on Thy works I read
The lesson of Thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die — but see again
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them.

One of earth's charms!

Oh! there is not lost

O God! when Thou

Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift, dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods
And drowns the villages; when, at Thy call,
Uprises the great deep and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms
Its cities who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of Thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?