Stands, with his chisel, fashioning the Man,
And stroke by stroke the masterpiece is wrought.

Angel or demon? Choose, and do not err!
For time but follows as you shape the mold,
And finishes in marble, stern and cold,
That statue of the soul, the character.
By wordless blessing, or by silent curse,
By act and motive,--so do you define
The image which time copies, line by line,
For the great gallery of the Universe.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

At the gateway of a new year, emerging from the gay carelessness of
childhood, stand troops of buoyant, eager-eyed youths and maidens,
gazing down the vista of the future with glad expectancy.

Fancy spreads upon her canvas radiant pictures of the joys and triumphs
which await them in the unborn years. In their unclouded springtime
there is no place for the specters of doubt and fear which too often
overshadow the autumn of life.

In this formative period, the soul is unsoiled by warfare with the
world. It lies, like a block of pure, uncut Parian marble, ready to be
fashioned into--what?

Its possibilities are limitless. You are the sculptor. An unseen hand
places in yours the mallet and the chisel, and a voice whispers: "The
marble waiteth. What will you do with it?"

In this same block the angel and the demon lie sleeping. Which will you
call into life? Blows of some sort you must strike. The marble cannot
be left uncut. From its crudity some shape must be evolved. Shall it be
one of beauty, or of deformity; an angel, or a devil? Will you shape it
into a statue of beauty which will enchant the world, or will you call
out a hideous image which will demoralize every beholder?

What are your ideals, as you stand facing the dawn of this new year
with the promise and responsibility of the new life on which you have
entered, awaiting you? Upon them depends the form which the rough block
shall take. Every stroke of the chisel is guided by the ideal behind
the blow.

Look at this easy-going, pleasure-loving youth who takes up the mallet
and smites the chisel with careless, thoughtless blows. His mind is
filled with images of low, sensual pleasures; the passing enjoyment of
the hour is everything to him; his work, the future, nothing. He
carries in his heart, perhaps, the bestial motto of the glutton, "Eat,
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die;" or the flippant maxim of
the gay worldling, "A short life and a merry one; the