ake the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

TENNYSON

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Many a man lives a burden
to the earth, but a good book is the precious life blood of a
master-spirit.

MILTON

"DO SEEK THEIR MEAT FROM GOD"

There was a solitary cabin in the thick of the woods a mile or more from
the nearest neighbour, a substantial frame house in the midst of a large
and well-tilled clearing. The owner of the cabin, a shiftless fellow who
spent his days for the most part at the corner tavern three miles
distant, had suddenly grown disgusted with a land wherein one must work
to live, and had betaken himself with his seven-year-old boy to seek
some more indolent clime.

The five-year-old son of the prosperous owner of the frame house and the
older boy had been playmates. The little boy, unaware of his comrade's
departure, had stolen away, late in the afternoon, along the lonely
stretch of wood road, and had reached the cabin only to find it empty.
As the dusk gathered, he grew afraid to start for home and crept
trembling into the cabin, whose door would not stay shut. Desperate with
fear and loneliness, he lifted up his voice piteously. In the terrifying
silence, he listened hard to hear if anyone or anything were coming.
Then again his shrill childish wailings arose, startling the unexpectant
night, and piercing the forest depths, even to the ears of two great
panthers which had set forth to seek their meat from God.

The lonely cabin stood some distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile, back
from the highway connecting the settlements. Along this main road a man
was plodding wearily. All day he had been walking, and now as he neared
home his steps began to quicken with anticipation of rest. Over his
shoulder projected a double-barrelled fowling-piece, from which was
slung a bundle of such necessities as he had purchased in town that
morning. It was the prosperous settler, the master of the frame house,
who had chosen to make the tedious journey on foot.

He passed the mouth of the wood road leading to the cabin and had gone
perhaps a furlong beyond, when his ears were startled by the sound of a