We are too young a nation yet to have any distinguishing characteristic and, of course, it would not be exactly modest for us to attribute virtues to ourselves, but there can be harm in saying what we would like our character to be. Among the people of the world in the years to come, we will ask no greater heritage for our country than to be known as the land of the Fair Deal, where every race, color and creed will be given exactly the same chance; where no person can "exert influence" to bring about his personal ends; where no man or woman's past can ever rise up to defeat them; where no crime goes unpunished; where every debt is paid; where no prejudice is allowed to masquerade as a reason; where honest toil will insure an honest living; where the man who works receives the reward of his labor.

It would seem reasonable, too, that such a condition might be brought about in a new country, and in a country as big as ours, where there is room for everyone and to spare. Look out upon our rolling prairies, carpeted with wild flowers, and clotted over with poplar groves, where wild birds sing and chatter, and it does not seem too ideal or visionary that these broad sunlit spaces may be the homes of countless thousands of happy and contented people. The great wide uncultivated prairie seems to open its welcoming arms to the land-hungry, homeless dwellers of the cities, saying: "Come and try me. Forget the past, if it makes you sad. Come to me, for I am the Land of the Second Chance. I am the Land of Beginning Again. I will not ask who your ancestors were. I want you—nothing matters now but just you and me, and we will make good together." This is the invitation of the prairie to the discouraged and weary ones of the older lands, whose dreams have failed, whose plans have gone wrong, and who are ready to fall out of the race. The blue skies and green slopes beckon to them to come out and begin again. The prairie, with its peace and silence, calls to the troubled nations of Middle Europe, whose people are caught in the cruel tangle of war. When it is all over and the smoke has cleared away, and they who are left look around at the blackened ruins and desolated farms and the shallow graves of their beloved dead, they will come away from the scenes of such bitter memories. Then it is that this far country will make its appeal to them, and they will come to us in large numbers, come with their sad hearts and their sad traditions. What will we have for them? We have the fertility of soil; we have the natural resources; we have coal; we have gas; we have wheat land and pasture land and fruit land. Nature has done her share with a prodigality that shames our little human narrowness. Now if we had men to match our mountains, if we had men to match our plains, if our thoughts were as clear as our sunlight, we would be able to stand up high enough to see over the rim of things. In the light of what has happened, our little grabbing ways, our insane desires to grow rich and stop work, have some way lost their glamour. Belgium has set a pace for us, has shown us a glimpse of heroic sacrifice which makes us feel very humble and very small, and we have suddenly stumbled on the great truth that it is not all of life to live, that is, draw your breath or even draw your salary; that to get money and dress your family up like Christmas trees, and own three cars, may not be adding a very heavy contribution to human welfare; that houses and lands and stocks and shares may be very poor things to tie up to after all.

An Englishman who visited Western Canada a few years ago, when everybody had money, wrote letters to one of the London papers about us. Commenting on our worldliness, he said: "The people of Western Canada have only one idea of hell, and that is buying the wrong lots!"

But already there has come a change in the complexion of our mind. The last eight months have taught us many things. We, too, have had our share in the sacrifice, as the casualty lists in every paper show. We have seen our brave lads go out from us in health and hope, amid music and cheers, and already we know that some of them will not come back. "Killed in action," "died of wounds," "missing," say the brief despatches, which tell us that we have made our investment of blood. The investment thus made has paid a dividend already, in an altered thought, a chastened spirit, a recast of our table of values. "Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin" always seemed a harsh and terrible utterance, but we know now its truth; and already we know the part of our sin of worldliness has been remitted, for we have turned away from it. We acknowledge in sorrow that we have followed strange gods, and worshiped at the worldly altar of wealth and cleverness, and believed that these things were success in life. Now we have had before our eyes the spectacle of clever men using their cleverness to kill, maim and destroy innocent women and children; we have seen the wealth of one nation poured out like water to bring poverty and starvation to another nation, and so, through our tears, we have learned the lesson that it is not wealth or cleverness or skill or power which makes a nation or an individual great. It is goodness, gentleness, kindliness, the sense of brotherhood, which alone maketh rich and addeth no sorrow. When we are face to face with the elemental things of life, death and sorrow and loss, the air grows very still and clear, and we see things in bold outlines.

The Kaiser has done a few things for us. He has made us hate all forms of tyranny and oppression and autocracy; he has made us hate all forms of hypocrisy and deceit. There have been some forms of kaiserism dwelling among us for many years, so veneered with respectability and custom that some were deceived by them; but the lid is off now—the veneer has cracked—the veil is torn, and we see things as they are.

When we find ourselves wondering at the German people for having tolerated the military system for so long, paying taxes for its maintenance and giving their sons to it, we suddenly remember that we have paid taxes and given our children, too, to keep up the liquor traffic, which has less reasons for its existence than the military system of Germany. Any nation which sets out to give a fair deal to everyone must divorce itself from the liquor traffic, which deals its hardest blows on the non-combatants. Right here let us again thank the Germans for bringing this so clearly to our notice. We despise the army of the Kaiser for dropping bombs on defenseless people, and shooting down women and children—we say it violates all laws of civilized warfare. The liquor traffic has waged war on women and children all down the centuries. Three thousand women were killed in the United States in one year by their own husbands who were under the influence of liquor. Non-combatants! Its attacks on the non-combatants are not so spectacular in their methods as the tactics pursued by the Kaiser's men, who line up the defenseless ones in the public square and turn machine-guns on them. The methods of the liquor traffic are not so direct or merciful. We shudder with horror as we read of the terrible outrages committed by the brutal German soldiers. We rage in our helpless fury that such things should be—and yet we have known and read of just such happenings in our own country. The newspapers, in telling of such happenings, usually have one short illuminative sentence which explains all: "The man had been drinking." The liquor traffic has outraged and insulted womanhood right here in our own country in much the same manner as is alleged of the German soldiers in France and Belgium! Another thing we have to thank the Kaiser for is that we have something now whereby we can express what women owe to the liquor traffic. We know now that women owe to the liquor traffic the same sort of a debt that Belgium owes to Germany. Women have never chosen the liquor business, have never been consulted about it in any way, any more than Belgium was consulted. It has been wished on them. They have had nothing to do with it, but to put up with it, endure it, suffer its degradation, bear its losses, pay its abominable price in tears and heartbreak. Apart from that they have had nothing to do with it. If there is any pleasure in it—that has belonged to men; if there has been any gain in it, men have had that, too.

And yet there are people who tell us women must not invade the realm of politics, where matters relating to the liquor traffic are dealt with. Women have not been the invaders. The liquor traffic has invaded woman's place in life. The shells have been dropped on unfortified homes. There is no fair dealing in that.

A woman stooped over her stove in her own kitchen one winter evening, making food for her eight-months-old baby, whom she held in her arms. Her husband and her brother-in-law, with a bottle of whiskey, carried on a lively dispute in another part of the kitchen. She did not enter into the dispute, but went on with her work. Surely this woman was protected; here was the sacred precincts of home, her husband, sworn to protect her, her child in her arms—a beautiful domesticated Madonna scene. But when the revolver was fired accidentally it blew off the whole top of her protected head; and the mother and babe fell to the floor! Who was the invader? and, tell me, would you call that a fair deal?

The people who oppose democratic principles tell us that there is no such thing as equality—that, if you made every person exactly equal today, there would be inequality tomorrow. We know there is no such thing as equality of achievement, but what we plead for is equality of chance, equality of opportunity.

We know that absolute equality of opportunity is hardly possible, but we can make it more nearly possible by the removal of all movable handicaps from the human race. The liquor traffic, with its resultant poverty, hits the child in the cradle, whose innocence and helplessness makes its appeal all the stronger. The liquor traffic is a tangible, definite thing that we can locate without difficulty. Many of the causes of poverty and sin are illusive, indefinite qualities such as bad management, carelessness, laziness, extravagance, ignorance and bad judgment, which are exceedingly hard to remedy, but the liquor traffic is one of the things we can speak of definitely, and in removing it we are taking a step in the direction of giving everybody a fair start.

When the Boer War was on, the British War Office had to lower the standard for the army because not enough men could be found to measure up to the previous standard, and an investigation was made into the causes which had led to the physical deterioration of the race. Ten families whose parents were both drinkers were compared with ten families whose parents were both abstainers, and it was found that the drinking parents had out of their fifty-seven children only ten that were normal, while the non-drinking parents, out of their sixty-one children, had fifty-four normal children and only seven that were abnormal in any way. They chose families in as nearly as possible the same condition of life and the same scale of intelligence. It would seem from this that no country which legalizes the liquor traffic is giving a fair deal to its children!

Humanity is disposed to sit weakly down before anything that has been with us for a long time, and say it is impossible to do away with it. "We have always had liquor drinking," say some, "and we always will. It is deeply rooted in our civilization and in our social customs, and can never be outlawed entirely." Social customs may change. They have changed. They will change when enough people want them to change. There is nothing sacred about a social custom, anyway, that it should be preserved when we have decided it is of no use to us. Social customs make an interesting psychological study, even among the lower animals, who show an almost human respect for the customs of their kind.

Have you ever seen lizards walk into a campfire? Up from the lake they will come, attracted by the gleam of the fire. It looks so warm and inviting, and, of course, there is a social custom among lizards to walk right in, and so they do. The first one goes boldly in, gives a start of surprise, and then shrivels, but the next one is a real good sport, and won't desert a friend, so he walks in and shrivels, and the next one is no piker, so walks in, too. Who would be a stiff? They stop coming when there are no more lizards in the lake or the fire is full. There does not seem to be much reason for their action, but, of course, it is a social custom. You may have been disposed to despise the humble lizard with his open countenance and foolish smile, but you see there is something quite human and heroic about him, too, in his respect for a social custom.

Moths have a social custom, too, which impels them to fly into the flame of the candle, and bees will drown themselves in boiling syrup. No matter how many of their friends and cousins they see lying dead in the syrup, they will march boldly in, for they each feel that they are strong enough to get out when they want to. Bees all believe that they "can drink or leave it alone."

But moralists tell us that prohibition of any evil is not the right method to pursue; far better to leave the evil and train mankind to shun it. If the evil be removed entirely mankind will be forced to abstain and therefore will not grow in strength. In other words, the life of virtue will be made too easy. We would gently remind the moralists who reason in this way that there will still be a few hundred ways left, whereby a man may make shipwreck of his life. They must not worry about that—there will still be plenty of opportunities to go wrong!

The object of all laws should be to make the path of virtue as easy as possible, to build fences in front of all precipices, to cover the wells and put the poison out of reach. The theory of teaching children to leave the poison alone sounds well, but most of us feel we haven't any children to experiment on, and so we will lock the medicine-chest and carry the key.

A great deal is said about personal liberty in connection with this matter of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, though the old cry that every man has a perfect right to do as he likes is not so popular as it once was, for we have before us a perfect example of a man who is exercising personal liberty to the full; we have one man who is a living exponent of the right to do exactly as he likes, no matter who is hurt by it. The perfect example of a man who believes in personal liberty for himself is a man by the name of William Hohenzollern.

If there were only one man on the earth, he might have personal liberty to do just as he liked, but the advent of the second man would end it. Life is full of prohibitions to which we must submit for the good of others. Our streets are full of prohibitory signs, every one of which infringes on our so-called personal liberty: "Keep off the grass," "Go slow," "No smoking," "Do not feed the animals," "Post no bills," "Kindly refrain from conversation."

Those who profess to understand the human heart in all its workings, notably beer-drinking bishops and brewers, declare that a prohibitory measure rouses opposition in mankind. When the law says, "Thou shalt not," the individual replies, "I certainly shall!" This is rather an unkind cut at the ten commandments, which were given by divine authority, and which make a lavish use of "Thou shalt not!" These brave souls, who feel such a desire to break every prohibition, must have a hard time keeping out of jail. No doubt it is with difficulty that they restrain themselves from climbing over the railway gates which are closed when the train comes in and which block the street for a few minutes several times a day.

The Archbishop of York, speaking at the York Convention recently, declared against prohibition on the ground that when the prohibition was removed there might be "real and regrettable intemperance"—the inference being that any little drinking that is going on now is of an imaginary and trifling nature—and yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer declares that the liquor traffic is a worse enemy than the Germans, and Earl Kitchener has added his testimony to the same sentiment.

The Dean of Canterbury declared that he did not believe in prohibition, for he once tried total abstinence and he found it impaired his health. Of course the Dean's health must be kept up whether the warships are built or not. England may be suffering from loss of men, money and efficiency, but why worry? The Dean's health is excellent! When we pray for the erring, the careless and indifferent who never darken a church door, let us not forget the selfish people who do darken the church doors, and darken her altars as well!

But prohibition will not prohibit, say some. For that matter, neither does any prohibitory law; the laws against stealing do not entirely prevent stealing; notwithstanding the laws prohibiting murder as set down in the Decalogue, and also in the statute books of our country, there are murders committed. Prohibition will make liquor less accessible. Men may get it still, but it will give them some trouble. In the year 1909 the saloons in the United States were closed at the rate of forty-one a day, and $412,000,000 was the sum that the drink bill decreased. It would seem that prohibition had taken some effect. But, in spite of the mass of evidence, there is still the argument that, under prohibition, there will be much illicit selling of liquor. It will be sold in livery stables and up back lanes, and be carried in coal-oil cans, and labeled "gopher-poison." Even so, that will not make it any more deadly in its effects; the effect of liquor-drinking is much the same whether it is drunk in "the gilded saloon," where everything is exceedingly legal and regular, or up the back lane, absolutely without authority. Both are bad!

Under prohibition, a drunken man is a marked man—he is branded at once as a law-breaker, and the attitude of the public is that of indignation. Under license, a drunken man is part of the system—and passes without comment. For this reason a small amount of drunkenness in a prohibition territory is so noticeable that many people are deceived into believing that there is more drunkenness under prohibition than under license. Prohibition does not produce drunkenness, but it reveals it, underlines it. Drunkenness in prohibition territory is like a black mark on a white page, a dirty spot on a clean dress; the same spot on a dirty dress would not be noticed.

There was a licensed house in one of the small prairie towns, which complied with all the regulations; it had the required number of bedrooms; its windows were unscreened; the license fee was paid; the bartender was a total abstainer, and a member of the union; also said to be a man of good moral character; the proprietor regularly gave twenty-five dollars a year to the Children's Aid, and put up a cup to be competed for by the district hockey clubs. Nothing could be more regular or respectable, and yet, when men drank the liquor there it had appalling results. There was one Irishman who came frequently to the bar and drank like a gentleman, treating every person and never looking for change from his dollar bill. One Christmas Eve, the drinking went on all night and well into Christmas Day. Then the Irishman, who was the life of the party, went home, remembering what day it was. It all came out in the evidence that he had taken home with him presents for his wife and children, so that his intention toward them was the kindest. His wife's intention was kind, too. She waited dinner for him, and the parcels she had prepared for Christmas presents were beside the plates on the table. For him she had knitted a pair of gray stockings with green rings around them. They were also shown as evidence at the inquest!

It is often claimed that prohibition will produce a lot of sneaking drunkards, but, of course, this man had done his drinking under license, and was of the open and above-board type of drinker. There was nothing underhand or sneaking about him. He drank openly, and when he went home, and his wife asked him why he had stayed away so long, he killed her—not in any underhand or sneaking way. Not at all. Right in the presence of the four little children who had been watching for him all morning at the window, he killed her. When he came to himself, he remembered nothing about it, he said, and those who knew him believed him. A blind pig could not have done much worse for that family! Now, could it?

Years after, when the eldest girl had grown to be a woman, she took sick with typhoid fever and the doctor told her she would die, and she turned her face to the wall and said: "I am glad." A friend who stood beside her bed spoke of heaven and the blessed rest that there remains, and the joy of the life everlasting. The girl roused herself and said, bitterly: "I ask only one thing of heaven and that is, that I may forget the look in my mother's face when she saw he intended to kill her. I do not want to live again. I only want to forget!" The respectability of the house and the legality of the sale did not seem to be any help to her.

But there are people who cry out against prohibition that you cannot make men moral, or sober, by law. But that is exactly what you can do. The greatest value a law has is its moral value. It is the silent pressure of the law on public opinion which gives it its greatest value. The punishment for the infringement of the law is not its only way of impressing itself on the people. It is the moral impact of a law that changes public sentiment, and to say that you cannot make men sober by law is as foolish as to say you cannot keep cattle from destroying the wheat by building a fence between them and it, or to claim you cannot make a crooked twig grow straight by tying it straight. Humanity can do anything it wants to do. There is no limit to human achievement. Whoever declares that things cannot be done which are for the betterment of the race, insults the Creator of us all, who is not willing that any should perish, but that all should live and live abundantly.



CHAPTER XI

AS A MAN THINKETH

When the valley is brimming with sunshine, And the Souris, limpid and clear, Slips over its shining pebbles And the harvest time draws near, The heart of the honest plowman Is filled with content and cheer!

It is only the poor, rich farmer Whose heart is heavy with dread, When over the smiling valley The mantle of harvest is spread; "For the season," he says, "is backward And the grain is only in head!"

The hired man loves the twilight When the purple hills grow dim, And he smiles at the glittering blackbirds Which round him circle and skim; His road is embroidered with sunflowers That lazily nod at him!

But the rich man's heart is heavy, With gloom and fear opprest; For he knows the red-winged blackbird As an evil-minded pest, And the golden brown-eyed sunflower Is only a weed, at best!

When the purple rain-clouds gather And a mist comes over the hills, A peace beyond all telling The hired man's bosom fills, And the long, long sleep in the morning His heart with rapture fills.

But the rich man's heart is heavy With gloom and fear of loss, When the purple clouds drop moisture On field and flower and moss; It's all very well for the plowman, But it's not well at all for the "Boss."

When the moonlight lies on the valley And into the hayloft streams, Where the humble laborer snoreth And dreameth his peaceful dreams; It silvers his slumbering fancies With the witchery of its beams.

But the poor rich man is restless, For his heart is on his sheaves; And the moonlight, cold and cloudless, For him no fancy weaves, For the glass is falling, falling, And the grain will surely freeze!

So the poor rich farmer misses What makes this old world sweet; And the weather grieves the heart of him With too much rain or heat; For there's nothing gold that can't be sold, And there's nothing good but wheat!

There is no class of people who have suffered so much from wrong thinking as the farmer; vicarious wrong thinking, I mean; other people have done the wrong thinking, and the farmer has suffered. Like many another bromide, the thought has grown on people that farmers are slow, uncouth, guileless, easily imposed on, ready to sign a promissory note for any smooth-tongued stranger who comes in for dinner. The stage and the colored supplements have spread this impression of the farmer, and the farmer has not cared. He felt he could stand it! Perhaps the women on the farm feel it more than the men, for women are more sensitive about such things. "Poor girl!" say the kind friends. "She went West and married a farmer"—and forthwith a picture of the farmer's wife rises up before their eyes; the poor, faded woman, in a rusty black luster skirt sagging in the back and puckering in the seams; coat that belonged to a suit in other days; a black sailor hat, gray with years and dust, with a sad cluster of faded violets, and torn tulle trimming, sitting crooked on her head; hair the color of last year's grass, and teeth gone in front.

There is no reason for the belief that farmers' wives as a class look and dress like this, only that people love to generalize; to fit cases to their theory, they love to find ministers' sons wild; mothers-in-law disagreeable; women who believe in suffrage neglecting their children, and farmers' wives shabby, discouraged and sad.

I do not believe that farmers' wives are a down-trodden class of women. They have their troubles like other people. It rains in threshing time, and the threshers' visit is prolonged until long after their welcome has been worn to a frazzle! Father won't dress up even when company is coming. Father also has a mania for buying land instead of building a new house; and sometimes works the driving horse. Cows break out of pastures; hawks get the chickens; hens lay away; clothes-lines break.

They have their troubles, but there are compensations. Their houses may be small, but there is plenty of room outside; they may not have much spending money, but the rent is always paid; they are saved from the many disagreeable things that are incident to city life, and they have great opportunity for developing their resources.

When the city woman wants a shelf put up she 'phones to the City Relief, and gets a man to do it for her; the farmer's wife hunts up the hammer and a soap box and puts up her own shelf, and gains the independence of character which only come from achievement. Similarly the children of the country neighborhoods have had to make their own fun, which they do with great enthusiasm, for, under any circumstances, children will play. The city children pay for their amusement. They pay their nickel, and sit back, apparently saying: "Now, amuse me if you can! What are you paid for?" The blase city child who comes sighing out of picture shows is a sad sight. They know everything, and their little souls are a-weary of this world. It is a cold day for any child who has nothing left to wonder at.

The desire to play is surely a great stroke of Providence, and one of which the world has only recently begun to learn. Take the matter of picnics. I have seen people hold a picnic on the bare prairie, where the nearest tree was miles away, and the only shade was that of a barbed-wire fence, but everybody was happy. The success of a picnic depends upon the mental attitude, not on cool shade or purling streams.

I remember seeing from the train window a party of young people carrying a boat and picnic baskets, one hot day in July. A little farther on we passed a tiny lake set in a thick growth of tall grass. It was a very small lake, indeed. I ran to the rear platform of the train and watched it as long as I could; I was so afraid some cow would come along and drink it dry before they got there.

Not long ago I made some investigations as to why boys and girls leave the farm, and I found in over half the cases the reason given was that life on the farm was "too slow, too lonely, and no fun." In country neighborhoods family life means more than it does in the city. The members of a family are at each other's mercy; and so, if the "father" always has a grouch, and the "mother" is worried, and tired, and cross, small wonder that the children try to get away. In the city there is always the "movie" to go to, and congenial companionship down the street, and so we mourn the depopulation of our rural neighborhoods.

We all know that the country is the best place in which to bring up children; that the freckle-faced boy, with bare feet, who hunts up the cows after school, and has to keep the woodbox full, and has to remember to shut the henhouse door, is getting a far better education than the carefree city boy who has everything done for him.

It is a good thing that boys leave the farm and go to the city—I mean it is a good thing for the city—but it is hard on the farm. Of late years this question has become very serious and has caused alarm. Settlements which, ten or fifteen years ago, had many young people and a well-filled school and well-attended church, with the real owners living on the farms, have now become depopulated by farmers retiring to a nearby town and "renters" taking the place. "Renters" are very often very poor, and sometimes shiftless—no money to spend on anything but the real necessities; sometimes even too poor to send their children to school.

One cause for this is that our whole attitude toward labor is wrong. We look upon labor as an uncomfortable experience, which, if we endure with patience, we may hope to outgrow and be able to get away from. We practically say: "Let us work now, so that by and by we may be able to live without working!" Many a farmer and his wife have denied themselves everything for years, comforting themselves with the thought that when they have enough money they will "retire." They will not take the time or the money to go to a concert, or a lecture, or a picnic, but tell themselves that when they retire they will just go to everything. So just when they have everything in fine shape on the farm, when the lilacs are beginning to bloom and the raspberry bushes are bearing, they "retire." Father's rheumatism is bad, and mother can't get help, so they rent the farm and retire.

The people to whom the farm is rented do not care anything about the lilac or raspberry bushes—there is no money in them. All they care about is wheat—they have to pay the rent and they want to make money. They have the wheat lust, so the lilacs bloom or not as they feel disposed, and the cattle trample down the raspberry bushes and the gate falls off the top hinge. Meanwhile the farmer and his wife move into town and buy a house. They get just a small house, for the wife says she's tired of working. Every morning at 4.30 o'clock they waken. They often thought about how nice it would be not to have to get up; but now, someway it isn't nice. They can't sleep, everything is so quiet. Not a rooster crowing. Nor a hen cackling! They get up and look out. All down the street the blinds are drawn. Everybody is asleep—and it all looks so blamed lazy.

They get up. But there is nothing to do. The woman is not so badly off—a woman can always tease out linen and sew it up again, and she can always crochet. Give her a crochet needle, and a spool of "sil-cotton," and she will keep out of mischief. But the man is not so easy to account for. He tries hard to get busy. He spades the garden as if he were looking for diamonds. He cleans the horse until the poor brute hates the sight of him. He piles his wood so carefully that the neighbors passing call out and ask him if he "intends to varnish it." He mends everything that needs it, and is glad when he finds a picket off the fence. He tries to read the Farmers' Advocate. They brought in a year's number of them that they had never got time to read on the farm. Someway, they have lost their charm. It seems so lazy in broad daylight for a grown man to sit down and read. He takes a walk downtown, and meets up with some idle men like himself. They sit on the sidewalk and settle the government and the church and various things.

"Well, I must be gittin'!" at last he declares; then suddenly he remembers that he has nothing to do at home—everything is done to a finish—and a queer, detached feeling comes over him. He is no longer needed anywhere.

Somebody is asking him to come in for a drink, and he goes! Why shouldn't he have a drink or anything else that he wants, he asks himself. He has worked hard. He'll take two. He'll go even further, he'll treat the crowd. When he finally goes home and sleeps it off, he finds he has spent $1.05, and he is repentant.

That night a young lady calls, selling tickets for a concert, and his wife would have bought them, but he says: "Go slow, Minnie, you can't buy everything. It's awful the way money goes in town. We'll see about this concert—maybe we'll go, but we won't buy tickets—it might rain!"

They do not buy the tickets—neither do they go. Minnie does not care much about going out. She has stayed in too long. But he continues to sit on the sidewalk, and he hears many things.

Sometimes people have attributed to women the habit of gossiping, but the idle men, who sit on the sidewalks of the small towns or tilt back in the yellow round-back chairs on the hotel verandas, can blacken more characters to the hour than any other class of human beings. He hears all the putrid stories of the little town; they are turned over and discussed in all their obnoxious details. At first, he is repelled by them, for he is a decent fellow, this man who put in the lilacs and the raspberry bushes back there on the farm. He objects to the remarks that are passed about the women who go by, and he says so, and he and one of the other men have "words."

The bartender hears it and comes out and settles it by inviting everyone in to have "one on the house."

That brings back good-fellowship, and everyone treats. He sees then that nobody meant any harm—it was all just in fun. A few glasses of "White Horse" will keep a man from being too sensitive about things. So he laughs with the others at the indecent joke. This is life—town life. Now he is out in the world!

So begins the degeneration of a man, and it is all based on the false attitude we have toward labor. His idea of labor was wrong while he was on the farm. He worked and did nothing else, until he forgot how to do everything else. Then he stopped working, and he was lost.

Why any rational human being wants to "retire" to the city, goes beyond me! I can understand the city man, worn with the noise, choked by the dust, frazzled with cares, retiring to the country, where he can heal his tired soul, pottering around his own garden, and watching green things grow. That seems reasonable and logical! But for a man who has known the delight of planting and reaping to retire to a city or a small town, and "hang around," doing nothing, is surely a retrograde step.

The retired farmer is seldom interested in community matters—they usually vote against any by-law for improvement. Coal-oil lamps were good enough on the farm—why should a town have electric light? Why should a town spend money on cement sidewalks when they already have good dirt roads? He will not subscribe funds for the support of a gymnasium, hockey club or public baths. He does not understand about the need of exercise, he always got too much; and he doesn't see any reason why the boys should not go to the river and swim.

It is not that the farmer is selfish or mean above or below other men. It is because he has not learned team play or the community spirit. But it is coming. The farmer has been an independent fellow, able to get along without much help from anyone. He could always hire plenty of men, and there are machines for every need. So far as the farmer has been concerned, he could get along very well.

It has not been so with the farmer's wife. More than any other woman she has needed help, and less than any other woman has she got it. She has been left alone, to live or die, sink or swim.

Machines for helping the man on the farm are on the market in great numbers, and are bought eagerly, for the farmer reasons out the matter quite logically, and arrives at the conclusion that anything which will add to the productiveness of his farm is good buying. He can see the financial value of a seeder, or a roller, or a feed chopper. Now, with a washing-machine it is different. A washing-machine can only wash clothes, and his wife has always been able to get the clothes washed some way. The farmer does not see any return for his ten dollars and a half, and so he passes up the machine. Besides this, his mother never used one, and always managed to keep the clothes clean, too, and that settles it!

The outside farm work has progressed wonderfully, but the indoor farm work is done in exactly the same way as it was twenty-five years ago, with the possible exception of the cream-separator.

Many a farmyard, with its binders, rakes, drills, rollers, gasoline engine, fanning-mill, and steam-plow looks as if someone had been giving a machinery shower; but in the kitchen you will find the old washboard and dasher churn, which belonged to the same era as the reaping hook and tallow candle. The women still carry the water in a pail from a pump outside, wash the dishes on the kitchen table, and carry the water out again in a pail; although out in the barn the water is pumped by a windmill, or a gasoline engine. The outside work on the farm is done by horse, steam, or gasoline, but the indoor work is all done by woman-power.

And then, when the woman-power gives out, as it does many times, under the strain of hard work and childbearing, the whole neighborhood mourns and says: "God's ways are past finding out."

I remember once attending the funeral of a woman who had been doing the work for a family of six children and three hired men, and she had not even a baby carriage to make her work lighter. When the last baby was three days old, just in threshing time, she died. Suddenly, and without warning, the power went off, and she quit without notice. The bereaved husband was the most astonished man in the world. He had never known Jane to do a thing like that before, and he could not get over it. In threshing time, too!

"I don't know what could have happened to Jane—a strong young woman like her," he said over and over again.

We all gathered at the house that afternoon and paid our respects to the deceased sister, and we were all very sorry for poor Ed. We said it was a terrible way for a poor man to be left.

The chickens came close to the dining-room door, and looked in, inquisitively. They could not understand why she did not come out and feed them, and when they were driven away they retreated in evident bad humor, gossiping openly of the shiftless, lazy ways of folks they could mention, if they wished to name names.

The six little children, whom the neighbor women had dressed in their best clothes, sat dazed and silent, fascinated by the draped black coffin; but the baby, the tiny one who had just entered the race, gathered up the feeling of the meeting, and cried incessantly in a room upstairs. It was a hard rebellious cry, too, as if the little one realized that an injustice had been done.

Just above the coffin hung an enlarged picture of "Jane" in her wedding dress, and it was a bright face that looked out at the world from the heavy gold frame, a sweet girlish face, which seemed to ask a question with its eager eyes. And there below, in the black draped coffin, was the answer—the same face, only a few years older, but tired, so inexpressibly tired, cold and silent; its light gone out—the power gone off. Jane had been given her answer. And upstairs Jane's baby cried its bitter, insistent cry.

Just then the minister began to read the words of the funeral service:

"Inasmuch as it hath pleased the Lord...."

This happened in the fall of the year, and the next spring, just before the busy time came on, the bereaved husband dried his eyes, painted his buggy, and went out and married one of the neighbor's daughters, a good strong one—and so his house is still running on woman-power.

If men had to bear the pain and weariness of child-bearing, in addition to the unending labors of housework and caring for children, for one year, at the end of that time there would be a perfect system of cooperation and labor-saving devices in operation, for men have not the genius for martyrdom that women have; and they know the value of cooperative labor. No man tries to do everything the way women do. No man aspires to making his own clothes, cleaning his own office, pressing his own suits, or even cleaning his own shoes. All these things he is quite willing to let people do for him, while he goes ahead and does his own work. Man's work is systematized well and leaves a man free to work in his own way. His days are not broken up by details.

On the other hand the home is the most haphazard institution we have. Everything is done there. (I am speaking now of the homes in the country.) In each of the homes there is a little bit of washing done, a little dressmaking, a little butter-making, a little baking, a little ironing going on, and it is all by hand-power, which is the most expensive power known. It is also being done largely by amateurs, and that adds to the amount of labor expended. Women have worked away at these endless tasks for generations, lovingly, unselfishly, doing their level best to do everything, with no thought of themselves at all. When things get too many for them, and the burdens overpower them, they die quietly, and some other woman, young, strong and fresh, takes their place, and the modest white slab in the graveyard says, "Thy will be done," and everybody is apparently satisfied. The Lord is blamed for the whole thing.

Now, if men, with their good organizing ability and their love of comfort and their sense of their own importance, were set down to do the work that women have done all down the centuries, they would evolve a scheme something like this in each of the country neighborhoods. There would be a central station, municipally owned and operated, one large building fitted out with machinery that would be run by gasoline, electricity, or natural gas. This building would contain in addition to the school-rooms, a laundry room, a bake-shop, a creamery, a dressmaking establishment, and perhaps a butcher shop.

The consolidated school and the "Beef-rings" in the country district are already established facts, and have opened the way for this larger scheme of cooperation. In this manner the work would be done by experts, and in the cheapest way, leaving the women in the farm homes with time and strength to raise their children.

This plan would solve the problem, too, of young people leaving the farm. Many of the young people would find occupation in the central station and become proficient in some branch of the work carried on there. They would find not only employment, but the companionship of people of their own age. The central station would become a social gathering place in the evenings for all the people of the district, and it is not too visionary to see in it a lecture hall, a moving-picture machine, and a music room. Then the young people would be kept on the farms because their homes would be pleasanter places. No woman can bake, wash, scrub, cook meals and raise children and still be happy. To do all these things would make an archangel irritable, and no home can be happy when the poor mother is too tired to smile! The children feel an atmosphere of gloom, and naturally get away from it as soon as they can. The overworked mother cannot make the home attractive; the things that can be left undone are left undone, and so the cushions on the lounge are dirty and torn, the pictures hang crooked on the walls, and the hall lamp has had no oil in it for months. That does not matter, though, for the family live in the kitchen, and, during the winter, the other part of the house is of the same temperature as a well. Knowing that she is not keeping her house as it should be kept has taken the heart out of many a woman on the farm. But what can she do? The meals have to be cooked; the butter must be made!

There are certain burdens which could be removed from the women on the farm; there is part of their work that could be done cheaper and better elsewhere, and the whole farm and all its people would reap the benefit.

But right about here I think I hear from Brother Bones of Bonesville:

"Do you mean to say that we should pay for the washing, ironing, bread-making, sewing?" he cries out. "We never could afford it, and, besides, what would the women put in their time at if all that work was done for them?"

Brother Bones, we can always afford to pay for things in money rather than in human flesh and blood. That is the most exorbitant price the race can pay for anything, and we have been paying for farm work that way for a long time. If you doubt this statement, I can show you the receipts which have been chiseled in stone and marble in every graveyard.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JANE

BELOVED WIFE OF EDWARD JAMES. AGED 32 YEARS AND 6 MONTHS.

Who can estimate the worth of a mother to her family and the community?

An old widower, who was reproved for marrying a very young girl for his third wife, exonerated himself from blame by saying: "It would ruin any man to be always buryin', and buryin'."

But Brother Bones is not yet satisfied, and he is sure the women will have nothing to do if such a scheme would be followed out, and he tells us that his mother always did these things herself and raised her family, too.

"I can tell you," says Brother Bones, "my mother knew something about rearing children; she raised seven and buried seven, and she never lay in bed for more than three days with any of them. Poor mother, she was a very smart woman—at least so I have been told—I don't remember her."

That's just the point, Brother Bones. It is a great thing to have the memory of such a self-sacrificing mother, but it would be a greater thing to have your mother live out her days; and then, too, we are thinking of the "seven" she buried. That seems like a wicked and unnecessary waste of young life, of which we should feel profoundly ashamed. Poor little people, who came into life, tired and weak, fretfully complaining, burdened already with the cares of the world and its unending labor—

Your old earth, they say, is very weary; Our young feet, they say, are very weak,

and when the measles or whooping-cough assails them they have no strength to battle with it, and so they pass out, and again the Lord is blamed!

It is very desirable for the world that people should be born and brought up in the country with its honest, wholesome ways learned in the open; its habits of meditation, which have grown on the people as they have gone about their work in the quiet places. Thought currents in the country are strong and virile, and flow freely. There is an honesty of purpose in the man who strikes out the long furrow, and turns over every inch of the sod, painstakingly and without pretense; for he knows that he cannot cheat nature; he will get back what he puts in; he will reap what he sows—for Nature has no favorites, and no short-cuts, nor can she be deceived, fooled, cajoled or flattered.

We need the unaffected honesty and sterling qualities which the country teaches her children in the hard, but successful, school of experience, to offset the flashy supercilious lessons which the city teaches hers; for the city is a careless nurse and teacher, who thinks more of the cut of a coat than of the habit of mind; who feeds her children on colored candy and popcorn, despising the more wholesome porridge and milk; a slatternly nurse, who would rather buy perfume than soap; who allows her children to powder their necks instead of washing them; who decks them out in imitation lace collars, and cheap jewelry, with bows on their hair, but holes in their stockings; who dazzles their eyes with bright lights and commercial signs, and fills their ears with blatant music, until their eyes are too dull to see the pastel beauty of common things, and their ears are holden to the still small voices of God; who lures her children on with many glittering promises of ease and wealth, which she never intends to keep, and all the time whispers to them that this is life.

The good old country nurse is stern but kind, and gives her children hard lessons, which tax body and brain, but never fail to bring a great reward. She sends them on long journeys, facing the piercing winter winds, but rewards them when the journey is over with rosy cheeks and contented mind, and an appetite that is worth going miles to see; and although she makes her children work long hours, until their muscles ache, she gives them, for reward, sweet sleep and pleasant dreams; and sometimes there are the sweet surprises along life's highway; the sudden song of birds or burst of sunshine; the glory of the sunrise, and sunset, and the flash of bluebirds' wings across the road, and the smell of the good green earth.

Happy is the child who learns earth's wisdom from the good old country nurse, who does better than she promises, and always "makes her children mind"!



CHAPTER XII

THE WAR AGAINST GLOOM

Not for all sunshine, dear Lord, do we pray— We know such a prayer would be vain; But that strength may be ours to keep right on our way, Never minding the rain!

It is a great thing to be young, when every vein throbs with energy and life, when the rhythm of life beats its measures into our hearts and calls upon us to keep step with Joy and Gladness, as we march confidently down the white road which leads to the Land of our Desire. God made every young thing to be happy. He put joy and harmony into every little creature's heart. Who ever saw a kitten with a grouch? Or a little puppy who was a pessimist? But you have seen sad children a-plenty, and we are not blaming the Almighty for that either. God's plans have been all right, but they have been badly interfered with by human beings.

When a young colt gallops around the corral, kicking and capering and making a good bit of a nuisance of himself, the old horses watch him sympathetically, and very tolerantly. They never say; "It is well for you that you can be so happy—you'll have your troubles soon enough. Childhood is your happiest time—you do well to enjoy it, for there's plenty of trouble ahead of you!"

Horses never talk this way. This is a distinctively human way of depressing the young. People do it from a morbid sense of duty. They feel that mirth and laughter are foreign to our nature, and should be curbed as something almost wicked.

"It's a fine day, today!" we admit grudgingly, "but, look out! We'll pay up for it!"

"I have been very well all winter, but I must not boast. Touch wood!"

The inference here is that when we are healthy or happy or enjoying a fine day, we are in an abnormal condition. We are getting away with a bit of happiness that is not intended for us. God is not noticing, and we had better go slow and keep dark about it, or He will waken up with a start, and send us back to our aches and pains and our dull leaden skies! Thus have we sought to sow the seeds of despondency and unbelief in the world around us.

In the South African War, there was a man who sowed the seeds of despondency among the British soldiers; he simply talked defeat and disaster, and so greatly did he damage the morale of the troops that an investigation had to be made, and as a result the man was sent to jail for a year. People have been a long time learning that thoughts are things to heal, upbuild, strengthen; or to wound, impair, or blight. After all we cannot do very much for many people, no matter how hard we try, but we can contribute to their usefulness and happiness by holding for them a kind thought if we will.

There are people who depress you so utterly that if you had to remain under their influence they would rob you of all your ambition and initiative, while others inspire you to do better, to achieve, to launch out. Life is made up of currents of thought as real as are the currents of air, and if we could but see them, there are currents of thought we would avoid as we would smallpox germs.

Sadness is not our normal mental condition, nor is weakness our normal physical condition. God intended us to laugh and play and work, come to our beds at night weary and ready to sleep—and wake refreshed.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!" No truer words were ever spoken, and yet men try to define themselves by houses and lands and manners and social position, but all to no avail. The old rule holds. It is your thought which determines what manner of man you are. The respectable man who keeps within the law and does no outward harm, but who thinks sordidly, meanly, or impurely, is the man of all others who is farthest from the kingdom of God, because he does not feel his need, nor can anyone help him. Thoughts are harder to change than ways.

"Let the wicked man forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts," declared Isaiah long ago, and there is no doubt the unrighteous man has the hardest and biggest proposition put up to him.

When the power of thought is understood, there will be a change in our newspapers. Now the tendency is to ignore the good in life and underline the evil in red ink. If a man commits a theft, it will make a newspaper story, bought and paid for at regular rates. If it is a very big steal, you may wire it in and get telegraphic rates. If the thief shoots a man, too, send along his picture and you may make the story two columns. If he shoots two or three people, you may give him the whole front page, and somebody will write a book about him. It will sell, too. How much more wholesome would our newspapers be, if they published the good deeds of men and women rather than their misdoings. Why should not as much space be given to the man who saves a life, as is given to the man who takes a life? Why not let us hear more of the boy who went right, rather than of the one who went wrong? I remember once reading an obscure little paragraph about a man who every year a few days before Christmas sent twenty-five dollars to the Postal Department at Ottawa, to pay the deficit on Christmas parcels which were held up for insufficient postage. Such a thoughtful act of Christian charity should have been given a place on the front page, for in the words of Jennie Allen: "Life ain't any too full of nice little surprises like that." Why should people enjoy the contemplation of evil rather than good? Is it because it makes their own little contribution of respectability seem larger by comparison?

We have missed a great deal of the joy of life by taking ourselves too seriously. We exaggerate our own importance, and so if the honor or distinction or the vote of thanks does not come our way, we are hurt! Then, too, we live in an atmosphere of dread and fear—we fear poverty and hard work—we fear the newspapers and the neighbors, and fear is hell!

When you begin to feel all fussed up, worried, and cross, frayed at the edges, and down at the heel—go out and look up at the stars. They are so serene, detached, and uncaring! Calmly shining down upon us they rebuke the fussiness of our little souls, and tell us to cheer up, for our little affairs do not much matter anyway.

The earthly hope men set their hearts upon Turns ashes, or it prospers—and anon Like snow upon the desert's arid face, Cooling a little hour or two—is gone!

It is a great mistake for us to mistake ourselves for the President of the company. Let us do our little bit with cheerfulness and not take the responsibility that belongs to God. None of us can turn the earth around; all we can ever hope to do is to hit it a few whacks on the right side. We belong to a great system; a system which can convince even the dullest of us of its greatness. Think of the miracle of night and day enacted before our eyes every twenty-four hours. Right on the dot comes the sun up over the saucer-like rim of the earth, never a minute late. Think of the journey the earth makes around the sun every year—a matter of 360,000,000 miles more or less—and it makes the journey in an exact time and arrives on the stroke of the clock, no washout on the line; no hot box; no spread rail; no taking on of coal or water; no employees' strike. It never drops a stick; it never slips a cog; and whirls in through space always on the minute. And that without any help from either you or me! Some system, isn't it?

I believe we may safely trust God even with our affairs. When the war broke out we all experienced a bad attack of gloom. We were afraid God had forgotten us and gone off the job. And yet, even now, we begin to see light through the dark clouds of sorrow and confusion. If the war brings about the abolition of the liquor traffic, it will be justified. Incidentally the war has already brought many by-products which are wholly good, and it would almost seem as if there is a plan in it after all.

Life is a great struggle against gloom, and we could fight it better if we always remembered that happiness is a condition of heart and is not dependent on outward conditions. The kingdom of heaven is within you. Everything depends on the point of view.

Two prisoners looked out once through the bars, One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.

Looking into the sky one sees the dark clouds and foretells rain, and the picnic spoiled; another sees the rift of blue and foretells fine weather. Looking out on life, one sees only its sad grayness; another sees the thread of gold, "which sometimes in the patterns shows most sweet where there are somber colors"! Happiness is a condition, and if you are not happy now, you had better be alarmed about yourself, for you may never be.

There was a woman who came with her family to the prairie country thirty-five years ago. They built a house, which in those days of sod roofs and Red-River frames seemed quite palatial, for had it not a "parlor" and a pantry and three bedrooms? The lady grieved and mourned incessantly because it had no back-stairs. In ten years they built another house, and it had everything, back-stairs, dumb-waiter, and laundry shoot, and all the neighbors wondered if the lady would be happy then. She wasn't. She wanted to live in the city. She had the good house now and that part of her discontent was closed down, so it broke out in another place. She hated the country. By diligently keeping at it, she induced her husband to go to the city where the poor man was about as much at home as a sailor at a dry-farming congress. He made no complaint, however. The complaint department was always busy! She suddenly discovered that a Western city was not what she wanted. It was "down East." So they went. They bought a beautiful home in the orchard country in Ontario, and her old neighbors watched development. Surely she had found peace at last—but she hadn't. She did not like the people—she missed the friendliness of the new country; also she objected to the winters, and her dining-room was dark, and the linen closet was small. Soon after moving to Ontario she died, and we presume went to heaven. It does not matter where she went—she won't like it, anyway. She had the habit of discontent.

There's no use looking ahead for happiness—look around! If it is anywhere, it is here.

"I am going out to bring in some apples to eat," said a farmer to his wife.

"Mind you bring in the spotted ones," said she who had a frugal mind.

"What'll I do if there are no spotted ones?" he asked.

"Don't bring any—just wait until they do spot!"

Too many people do not eat their apples until they are spotted.

But we know that life has its tragedies, its heartaches, its gloom, in spite of all our philosophy. We may as well admit it. We have no reason to believe that we shall escape, but we have reason to hope that when these things come to us we will be able to bear them.

"Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by day, nor of the arrow that flieth by night, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday."

You will notice here that the promise is that you will not be afraid of these things. They may come to you, but they will not overpower you, or destroy you utterly, for you will not be afraid of them. It is fear that kills. It is better to have misfortunes come, and be brave to meet them, than to be afraid of them all your life, even if they never come.

Gloom and doubt and fear paralyze the soul and sow it thick with the seeds of defeat. No man is a failure until he admits it himself.

Tramps have a way of marking gateposts so that their companions who may come along afterwards may know exactly what sort of people live inside, and whether it is worth while to ask them for a meal. A certain sign means "Easy people—no questions"; another sign means "Nothing stirring—don't go in"; another means "Beat it or they'll give you a job with lots of advice!" and still another means "Dog." Every doubt and fear that enters your heart, or tries to enter, leaves its mark upon the gatepost of your soul, and it serves as a guide for every other doubt and fear which may come along, and if they once mark you "Easy," that signal will act as an invitation for their twin brother "Defeat," who will, without warning, slip into your heart and make himself at home.

Doubts and fears are disloyalty to God—they are expressions of a want of confidence in Him, but, of course, that's what is wrong with our religion. We have not got enough of it. Too many of us have just enough religion to make ourselves miserable—just enough to spoil our taste for worldly pleasures and not enough to give us a taste for the real things of life. There are many good qualities which are only an aggravation if we have not enough of them. "Every good and perfect gift cometh from above." You see it is not enough for the gift to be "good"—it must be "perfect," and that means abundant. Too long we have thought of religion as something in the nature of straight life insurance—we would have to die to get the good of it. But it isn't. The good of it is here, and now we can "lift" it every day if we will. No person can claim wages for half time; that's where so much dissatisfaction has come in, and people have found fault with the company. People have taken up the service of God as a polite little side-line and worked at it when they felt like it—Sunday afternoons perhaps or rainy days, when there was nothing else going on; and then when no reward came—no peace of soul—they were disposed to grumble. They were like plenty of policy-holders and did not read the contract, or perhaps some agent had in the excess of his zeal made it too easy for them. The reward comes only when you put your whole strength on all the time. Out in the Middle West they have a way of making the cattle pump their own water by a sort of platform, which the weight of an animal will press down, and the water is forced up into a trough. Sometimes a blase old ox who sees the younger and lighter steers doing this, feels that he with his superior experience and weight will only have to put one foot on to bring up the water, but he finds that one foot won't do, or even two. He has to get right on, and give to it his full weight. It takes the whole ox, horns, hoofs and tail. That's the way it is in religion—by which we mean the service of God and man. It takes you—all the time; and the reward is work, and peace, and a satisfaction in your work that passeth all understanding. No more grinding fear, no more "bad days," no more wishing to die, no more nervous prostration. Just work and peace!

Did you ever have to keep house when your mother went away, when you did not know very well how to do things, and every meal sat like a weight on your young heart, and the fear was ever present with you that the bread would go sour or the house burn down, or burglars would come, or someone would take sick? The days were like years as they slowly crawled around the face of the old clock on the kitchen shelf, and even at night you could not forget the awful burden of responsibility.

But one day, one glorious day she came home, and the very minute you heard her step on the floor, the burden was lifted. Your work was very much the same, but the responsibility was gone, and cheerfulness came back to your eyes, and smiles to your face.

That is what it feels like when you "get religion." The worry and burden of life is gone. Somebody else has the responsibility and you work with a light heart. It is the responsibility of life that kills us, the worry, fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. How we envy the man who works by the day, just does his little bit, and has no care! This immunity from care may be ours if we link ourselves with God.

Think of Moses' mother! There she was hired to take care of her own son. Doing the very thing she loved to do all week and getting her pay envelope every Saturday night. So may we. God hires us to do our work for Him, and pays us as we go along—the only stipulation being that we do our best.

"I have shown thee, O man, what is good!" declared Micah long ago. "What doth now the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and walk humbly with thy God!" In "walking humbly, doing justly, and loving mercy," there is no place for worry and gloom; there is great possibility of love and much serving, and God in His goodness breaks up our reward into a thousand little things which attend us every step of the way, just as the white ray of light by the drop of water is broken into the dazzling beauty of the rainbow. The burning bush which Moses saw is not the only bush which flames with God, and seeks to show to us a sign. Nature spares no pains to make things beautiful; trees have serrated leaves; birds and flowers have color; the butterflies' wings are splashed with gold; moss grows over the fallen tree, and grass covers the scar on the landscape. Nature hides her wounds in beauty. Nature spares no pains to make things beautiful, for beauty is nourishing. Beauty is thrift, ugliness is waste, ugliness is sin which scatters, destroys, integrates. But beauty heals, nourishes, sustains. There is a reason for sending flowers to the sick.

Nature has no place for sadness and repining. The last leaf on the tree dances in the breezes as merrily as when it had all its lovely companions by its side, and when its hold is loosened on the branch which bares it, it joins its brothers on the ground without regret. When the seed falls into the ground and dies, it does it without a murmur, for it knows that it will rise again in new beauty. Happy indeed is the traveler on life's highway, who will read the messages God sends us every day, for they are many and their meaning is clear: the sudden flood of warm sunshine in your room on a dark and dreary afternoon; the billowy softness of the smoke plume which rises into the frosty air, and is touched into exquisite rose and gold by the morning sun; the frosted leaves which turn to crimson and gold—God's silent witnesses that sorrow, disappointment and loss may bring out the deeper beauties of the soul; the flash of a bluebird's wing as he rides gaily down the wind into the sunlit valley. All these are messages to you and me that all is well—letters from home, good comrade, letters from home!

God knew that some would never look Inside a book To know His will, And so He threw a varied hue On dale and hill. He knew that some would read words wrong, And so He gave the birds their song. He put the gold in the sunset sky To show us that a day may die With greater glory than it's born, And so may we Move calmly forward to our West, Serene and blest!

THE END