mine, these pages would not be written in vain.

I heard once of a man banished from New England to the Llano Estacado,
the great summer-bitten plains of Texas. While riding alone among his
cows over miles of yucca and sage he kept in touch with the world
through the poetry he recited to himself. His favorite, I remember, was
Whittier's "Randolph of Roanoke:"

"Here where with living ear and eye
He heard Potomac flowing,
And through his tall ancestral trees
Saw Autumn's sunset glowing;

"Too honest or too proud to feign
A love he never cherished,
Beyond Virginia's border line
His patriotism perished.

"But none beheld with clearer eye
The plague spot o'er her spreading,
Nor heard more sure the steps of doom
Along her future treading."

This is good verse and it may well serve to relate the gray world of
Northern Texas to the many-colored world in which men struggle and die
for things worthwhile, winning their lives eternally through losing
them.

Here are some other bits of verse which on the sea and on the lands, in
the deserts or in the jungles have served the same purpose for other
men, perhaps indeed for you.

"It has been prophesied these many years
I should not die save in Jerusalem,
Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land.
But bear me to that chamber, there I'll lie,
In this Jerusalem shall Hardy die."

--

"And gentlemen of England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood cheap while any speaks
Who fought with us upon St. Crispin's day."

--

"Let me come in where you sit weeping, aye:
Let me who have not any child to die
Weep with you for the little one whose love
I have known nothing of.
The little arms that slowly, slowly loosed
Their pressure round your neck, the hands you used
To kiss. Such arms, such hands I never knew.
May I not weep with you
Fain would I be of service, say something
Between the tears, that would be comforting.
But ah! So sadder than yourselves am I
Who have no child to die."

--

"Your picture smiles as once it smiled;
The ring you gave is still the same;
Your letter tells, O changing child,
No tidings since it came!
Give me some amulet
That marks intelligence with you,
Red when you love and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
Alas that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession.
Torments me still the fear that Love
Died in his last expression."

--

"He walks with God upon the hills
And s