re already love-laden, and you go out into the highways and hedges, and
gather up the rough, wild, wilful words, heavy with the hatreds of men,
and fill them to the brim with honey-dew. All things great and small,
grand or humble, you press into your service, force them to do soldier's
duty, and your banner over them is love.

With such a friendship, presence alone is happiness; nor is absence
wholly void,--for memories, and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparkle
through the hours, and you know the sunshine will come back.

For such friendship one is grateful. No matter that it comes unsought,
and comes not for the seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness of
your gratitude. You only know that your whole being bows with humility
and utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of all
realms.

And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love dies weakly with the
occasion that gave it birth; but such friendship is born of the
gods, and immortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep around it, but
within the cloud the glory lives undimmed. Death has no power over it.
Time can not diminish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction may
have been earthly, but itself is divine. You go back into your solitudes:
all is silent as aforetime, but you can not forget that a Voice once
resounded there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded the
mountain-tops,--breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in lilies
and roses,--flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheral
melody,--swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled into song.
And though now the warmth has faded out, though the ruddy tints and
amber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies
are dead, and forest, vale, and hill look hard and angular in the sharp
air, you know that it is not death. The fire is unquenched beneath. You
go your way not disconsolate. There needs but the Victorious Voice. At
the touch of the prince's lips, life shall rise again and be perfected
forevermore.

PONCHUS PILUT

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

Ponchus Pilut _used_ to be
1st a _Slave_, an' now he's _free_.
Slaves wuz on'y ist before
The War wuz--an' _ain't_ no more.

He works on our place fer us,--
An' comes here--_sometimes_ he does.
He shocks corn an' shucks it.--An'
He makes hominy "by han'!"--

Wunst he bringed us some, one trip,
Tied up in a piller-slip:
Pa says, when Ma cooked it, "MY!