ek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny--

The waters know their own, and draw
The brooks that spring in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

_John Burroughs_

* * * * *

The thing that pays, and that makes for a well balanced, useful, and
happy life, is not necessarily and is not generally a somber, pious
morality, or any standard of life that keeps us from a free, happy,
spontaneous use and enjoyment of all normal and healthy faculties,
functions, and powers, the enjoyment of all innocent pleasures--use, but
not abuse, enjoyment, but enjoyment through self-mastery and not through
license or perverted use, for it can never come that way. Look where we
will, in or out and around us, we will find that it is the middle
ground--neither poverty nor excessive riches, good wholesome use without
license, a turning into the bye-ways along the main road where innocent
and healthy God-sent and God-intended pleasures and enjoyments are to be
found; but never getting far enough away to lose sight of the road
itself. The middle ground it is that the wise man or woman plants foot
upon.

* * * * *

For evil poisons; malice shafts
Like boomerangs return,
Inflicting wounds that will not heal
While rage and anger burn.

* * * * *

Tell me how much one loves and I will tell you how much he has seen of
God. Tell me how much he loves and I will tell you how much he lives
with God. Tell me how much he loves and I will tell you how far into the
Kingdom of Heaven,--the kingdom of harmony, he has entered, for "love is
the fulfilling of the law."

And in a sense love is everything. It is the key to life, and its
influences are those that move the world. Live only in the thought of
love for all and you will draw love to you from all. Live in the thought
of malice or hatred, and malice and hatred will come back to you.

And so love inspires love; hatred breeds hatred. Love and good will
stimulate and build up the body; hatred and malice corrode and tear it
down. Love is a savor of life unto life; hatred is a savor of death unto
death.