te to the London _Times_ an article on Mr. Story's work, in
which he conjured up most of the superlative phrases of commendation
that the limits of the English language allow to praise his work, none
of whose marshalled force was too poor to do him reverence. The
versatile gifts of Story's personality drew around him friends whose
influence was potent and, indeed, authoritative in their time.

Still, any analysis of these conditions brings the searcher back to the
primary truth that without the gifts and grace to attract about him an
eminent circle of choice spirits he could not have enjoyed this potent
aid and inspiration; and thus, that

"Man is his own star,"

is an assertion that life, as well as poetry, justifies. In the full
blaze of this fundamental truth, it is, not unfrequently, the
mysterious spiritual tragedy of life that many an one as fine of fibre
and with lofty ideals

"Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."

Mr. Story was himself of too fine an order not to divine this truth.
With what unrivalled power and pathos has he expressed it in his
poem--one far too little known--the "Io Victis":--

"I sing the song of the Conquered, who fell in the Battle of
Life,--
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed
in the strife;
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding
acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet
of fame,
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the
broken in heart,

* * * * *

Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes
burned in ashes away,
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood
at the dying of day
With the wreck of their life all around them...."

In this poem Mr. Story touched the highest note of his life,--as poet,
sculptor, painter, or writer of prose; in no other form of expression
has he equalled the sublimity of sentiment in these lines:--

"... I stand on the field of defeat,
In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and
dying, and there

* * * * *

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 'They only the
victory win
Who have fought the go