“ WHEN EARTH'S LAST PICTURE IS PAINTED What is it that a human being wants? Most of us have something that we like to do more than anything else. We are not free to do it as we wish. We are handicapped by the need to earn a living, by physical weariness, by the carpings and scoffs of the envious, by the limited time we have at our disposal. But underneath all this is the spirit of work—the desire to take up our task for its own sake alone, to give our whole selves to it, to carry it through, not in some partial way, but in accordance with the fulness of our dream. ”

“ THE ONE In our youth we picture ourselves as we will be in the future—not mere types of this or that kind of success, but above all and in all, Ideal Men. Then come the years and the struggles, and we are buffeted and baffled, and our very ideal is eclipsed. But others have done better than we. Weary and harassed, they yet embody our visions. And we, if we are worth our salt, do not envy them when we see them. Nor should we grow dispirited. Rather should we rejoice in their triumph, rejoice that our dreams were not impossibilities, take courage to strive afresh for that which we know is best. ”

“ His fight is lost—and he knows it is lost—and yet he is fighting on.
Out of the smoke of the battle-line watching men win their way,
And, cheering with those who cheer success, he enters again the fray,
Licking the blood and the dust from his lips, wiping the sweat from his
eyes,
He does the work he is set to do—and "therein honor lies."
Brave they were, these men he cheered,—theirs is the winners' thrill;
His fight is lost—and he knows it is lost—and yet he is fighting still.
And those who won have rest and peace; and those who died have more ”

“ MORALITY We can't always, even when accomplishing, have the ardor of accomplishment; we can only hold to the purpose formed in more inspired hours. After a work is finished, even though it be a good work which our final judgment will approve, we are likely to be oppressed for a time by the anxieties we have passed through; the comfort of effort has left us, and we recall our dreams, our intentions, beside which our actual achievement seems small. In such moments we should remember that just after the delivery of the Gettysburg Address Lincoln believed it an utter failure. ”

“ But it could not serve its full purpose without the presence, here and there, of older poems—of "classics." These express a truth, a mood, or a spirit that is universal, and they express it in words of noble dignity and beauty. They are not always easy to understand; they are crops we must patiently cultivate, not crops that volunteer. But they wear well; they grow upon us; we come back to them again and again, and still they are fresh, living, significant—not empty, meaningless, and weather-worn, like a last year's crow's nest.
Such a poem is Ulysses. ”

“ When you're nearly drowned in trouble, and the world is dark as ink;
When you feel yourself a-sinking 'neath the strain,
And you think, "I've got to holler 'Help!'" just take another breath
And pretend you've lost your voice—and can't complain!
(That's the idea!)
Pretend you've lost your voice and can't complain!
When the future glowers at you like a threatening thunder cloud,
Just grit your teeth and bend your head and say:
"It's dark and disagreeable and I can't help feeling blue,
But there's coming sure as fate a brighter day!" ”

“ Above all, he himself was undisturbed; for to the strong-hearted, trials and reverses are instruments of final success.
My name is Trouble—I'm a busy bloke—
I am the test of Courage—and of Class—
I bind the coward to a bitter yoke,
I drive the craven from the crowning pass;
Weaklings I crush before they come to fame;
But as the red star guides across the night,
I train the stalwart for a better game;
I drive the brave into a harder fight. ”

“ THE FIRM OF GRIN AND BARRETT It has been said that when disaster overtakes us, we can do one of two things—we can grin and bear it, or we needn't grin. The spirit that keeps a smile on our faces when our burden is heaviest is the spirit that will win in the long run. Many men know how to take success quietly. The real test of a man is he way he takes failure. ”

“ Life is another man to fight
Catch as catch can.
Don't talk of Life as scurvy Fate,
Who gave you favors just too late,
Or Luck who threw you smiles for bait
Before he ran.
Don't whine and wish that you were dead,
But wrestle for your daily bread,
And afterward let it be said
"He was a man."
Jane M'Lean.
SMILES Smiles bring out the latent energies within us, as water reveals the bright colors in the stone it flows over.
Smile a little, smile a little,
As you go along,
Not alone when life is pleasant,
But when things go wrong. ”

“ PLAYING THE GAME We all like the good sport—the man who plays fair and courteously and with every ounce of his energy, even when the game is going against him.
Life is a game with a glorious prize,
If we can only play it right.
It is give and take, build and break,
And often it ends in a fight;
But he surely wins who honestly tries
(Regardless of wealth or fame) ,
He can never despair who plays it fair—
How are you playing the game? ”

“ Buck up, do your damnedest and fight!
It's the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard;
Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit—
It's the keeping your chin up that's hard.
It's easy to cry that you're beaten and die,
It's easy to crawfish and crawl,
But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight,
Why, that's the best game of them all.
And though you come out of each grueling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred—
Just have one more try. It's dead easy to die,
It's the keeping on living that's hard. ”

“ It blights a man's purpose and shortens his aim.
Despise it with all of your hatred of error;
Refuse it the lodgment it seeks in your brain;
Arm against it as a creature of terror,
And all that you dream of you some day shall gain.
Can't is the word that is foe to ambition,
An enemy ambushed to shatter your will;
Its prey is forever the man with a mission
And bows but to courage and patience and skill.
Hate it, with hatred that's deep and undying,
For once it is welcomed 'twill break any man ”

“ SOLITUDE Said an Irishman who had several times been kicked downstairs: "I begin to think they don't want me around here." So it is with our sorrows, our struggles. Life decrees that they belong to us individually. If we try to make others share them, we are shunned. But struggling and weary humanity is glad enough to share our joys.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth
Must borrow its mirth,
It has trouble enough of its own. ”

“ Without it the great showman could not have succeeded at all. Nor did he think that any man who lacks it will make much headway in life.
We know how rough the road will be,
How heavy here the load will be,
We know about the barricades that wait along the track;
But we have set our soul ahead
Upon a certain goal ahead
And nothing left from hell to sky shall ever turn us back.
We know how brief all fame must be,
We know how crude the game must be,
We know how soon the cheering turns to jeering down the block ”

“ OPPORTUNITY To the thought of the preceding poem we have here a direct answer. No matter how a man may have failed in the past, the door of opportunity is always open to him. He should not give way to useless regrets; he should know that the future is within his control, that it will be what he chooses to make it.
They do me wrong 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. ”

“ The soul of a man is cast.
Edwin Markham
From "Lincoln, and Other Poems."
BATTLE CRY We should win if we can. But in any case we should prove our manhood by fighting.
More than half beaten, but fearless,
Facing the storm and the night;
Breathless and reeling but tearless,
Here in the lull of the fight,
I who bow not but before thee,
God of the fighting Clan,
Lifting my fists, I implore Thee,
Give me the heart of a Man!
What though I live with the winners
Or perish with those who fall?
Only the cowards are sinners,
Fighting the fight is all.
Strong is my foe—he advances! ”

“ William Shakespeare.
SELF-DEPENDENCE One star does not ask another to adore it or amuse it; Mt. Shasta, though it towers for thousands of feet above its neighbors, does not repine that it is alone or that the adjacent peaks see much that it misses under the clouds. Nature does not trouble itself about what the rest of nature is doing. But man constantly worries about other men—what they think of him, do to him, fail to emulate in him, have or secure in comparison with him. He lacks nature's inward quietude. Calmness and peace come by being self-contained. ”

“ Fate and his legions are ready to rout you—
Give 'em both barrels—and aim for their eyes.
Life's not a rose bed, a dream or a bubble,
A living in clover beneath cloudless skies;
And Fate hates a fighter who's looking for trouble,
So give 'im both barrels—and shoot for the eyes.
Fame never comes to the loafers and sitters,
Life's full of knots in a shifting disguise ”

“ He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming;
All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows,
But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing,
And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow,
At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles,
For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow,
And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles. ”

“ By black disaster I was trounced until it jarred my spine; I was a failure so pronounced I didn't need a sign. And after I had soaked my coat, I said (at forty-three) , "I'll see if I can catch the goat that has escaped from me." I labored hard; I strained my dome, to do my daily grind, until in triumph I came home, my billy-goat behind. And any man who still has health may with the winners stack, and have a chance at fame and wealth—for has-beens do come back. ”

“ THE GAME Lessing said that if God should come to him with truth in one hand and the never-ending pursuit of truth in the other, and should offer him his choice, he would humbly and reverently take the pursuit of truth. Perhaps it is best that finite beings should not attain infinite success. But however remote that for which they seek or strive, they may by their diligence and generosity make the very effort to secure it noble. In doing this they earn, as Pope tells us, a truer commendation than success itself could bring them. "Act well thy part; there all the honor lies." ”

“ BRAVE LIFE To be absolutely without physical fear may not be the highest courage; to shrink and quake, and yet stand at one's post, may be braver still. So of success. It lies less in the attainment of some external end than in holding yourself to your purposes and ideals; for out of high loyalty and effort comes that intangible thing called character, which is no mere symbol of success, but success itself.
I do not know what I shall find on out beyond the final fight ”

“ THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS The nautilus is a small mollusk that creeps upon the bottom of the sea, though it used to be supposed to swim, or even to spread a kind of sail so that the wind might drive it along the surface. What interests us in this poem is the way the nautilus grows. Just as a tree when sawed down has the record of its age in the number of its rings, so does the nautilus measure its age by the ever-widening compartments of its shell. These it has successively occupied. The poet, looking upon the now empty shell, thinks of human life as growing in the same way. ”

“ FAIRY SONG The great beneficent forces of life are not exhausted when once used, but are recurrent. The sun rises afresh each new day. Once a year the springtime returns and "God renews His ancient rapture." So it is with our joys. They do not stay by us constantly; they pass from us and are gone; but we need not trouble ourselves—they are sure to come back. ”

“ THE FIGHTING FAILURE "I'm not a rabid, preachy, pollyanna optimist. Neither am I a gloomy grouch. I believe in a loving Divine Providence Who expects you to play the Game to the limit, Who wants you to hold tight to His hand, and Who compensates you for the material losses by giving you the ability to retain your sense of values, and keep your spiritual sand out of the bearings of your physical machine, if you'll trust and—'Keep Sweet, Keep Cheerful, or else—Keep Still'"—Everard Jack Appleton. ”

“ Yet success is not occupying a lofty place or doing conspicuous work; it is being the best that is in you. Rattling around in too big a job is much worse than filling a small one to overflowing. Dream, aspire by all means; but do not ruin the life you must lead by dreaming pipe-dreams of the one you would like to lead. Make the most of what you have and are. Perhaps your trivial, immediate task is your one sure way of proving your mettle. ”

“ ABOU BEN ADHEM "Forgive my enemies?" said the dying man to the priest. "I have none. I've killed them all." This old ideal of exterminating our enemies has by no means disappeared from the earth. But it is waning. "Live and let live" is a more modern slogan, which mounts in turn from mere toleration of other people to a spirit of service and universal brotherhood. Love of our fellow men—has humanity reached any height superior to this? ”

“ MY TRIUMPH The poet, looking back upon the hopes he has cherished, perceives that he has fallen far short of achieving them. The songs he has sung are less sweet than those he has dreamed of singing; the wishes he has wrought into facts are less noble than those that are yet unfulfilled. But he looks forward to the time when all that he desires for humankind shall yet come to pass. ”

“ Pretence often gets the plaudits, but desert is above them—it has rewards of its own.
No matter whence you came, from a palace or a ditch,
You're a man, man, man, if you square yourself to life;
And no matter what they say, hermit-poor or Midas-rich,
You are nothing but a husk if you sidestep strife.
For it's do, do, do, with a purpose all your own,
That makes a man a man, whether born a serf or king;
And it's loaf, loaf, loaf, lolling on a bench or throne
That makes a being thewed to act a limp and useless thing! ”