h a man, live such a life, that if every man were such as you,
and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise."

Remember that no good the humblest of us has wrought ever dies. There
is one long, unerring memory in the universe, out of which nothing
dies. A chill autumn wind, blowing over a sterile plain, bore within
its arms a little seed, torn with ruthless force from its matrix on a
lofty tree, and dropped the seed upon the sand to perish. A bright
winged beetle, weary with flight and languid with the chilly air,
rested for a moment on the arid plain. The little seed dropped Aeolus
served to satisfy the hunger of the beetle, which presently winged its
flight to the margin of a swift running stream that had sprung from the
mountain side, and cleaving a bed through rocks of granite, went gaily
laughing upon its cheery way down to the ever rolling sea. Sipping a
drop of the crystal flood, the beetle crawled within a protecting
ledge, and, folding its wings, lay down to pleasant dreams. The Ice
King passed along and touched the insect in its sleep. Its mission was
fulfilled; but the conflict of the seasons continued until the white
destroyer melted in the breath of balmy spring. And then a sunbeam
sped to the chink wherein the body of the insect lay, and searching for
the little seed entombed, but not destroyed, invited it to "join the
Jubilee of returning life and hope." Under the soft wooing of the
peopled ray, the little seed began to swell with joy, tiny rootlets
were developed within the body of the protecting beetle, a minute stem
shot out of its gaping mouth, and lo! a mighty tree had been carried
from the desert, saved from the frosts of winter, nurtured and started
upon its mission of life and usefulness by an humble insect that had
perished with the flowers. The agent had passed away, but, building
better than he knew, the wide-spreading tree remained by the margin of
the life-giving stream, a shelter and a rest to the weary traveler upon
life's great highway through many fretful centuries.

A child abandoned by its mother to perish in an Egyptian marsh may
become the instrument to deliver a nation from bondage, and an
unostentatious man, unknown to fortune and to fame, may become the
agent of a mighty work destined to benefit the human race as long as it
may last upon the earth. George Eliot says, "Our deeds are like
children that are born to us; they live and act apart from ou