se with the prodigality of your love? Now you would give worlds,
were they yours to give, to see the tears of joy your words would have
once caused, bejeweling the closed windows of her soul. It is too late.

"We have careful thoughts for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But oft for own,
The bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best."

ODD-FELLOWSHIP AND THE FUTURE

There is infinite and perennial fascination in the contemplation of the
future. The past is a fixed province, the finished result of an
ever-moving present. The future is the province of the poet, the
prophet and the seer. The past is adamant, the future is plastic clay.
The past is with God alone; the future is with God and man. We toil
for it; dream of it; look to it; and all seek so to

* * * "Forecast the years,
As find in loss a gain to match,
Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears."

Let us consider the future as a field and Odd-Fellowship as a force.
The future is a field, billowing with the ripening harvest of golden
possibilities. It is as wide as the world, for the world is the field.
It comprises every zone and clime; every nation and tribe; every island
of the seas. Wherever we find one of our fellow-men in darkness and in
chains, there is our field. It is as long as from now to the coming of
Christ. A moment's survey of the field will convince us that the
greatest conquests are yet to be made. There is battle ahead, great
interests to be gained, great incentives to heroic effort. The times
call for men--broad-browed, clear-eyed, strong-hearted, swift-footed
men. Odd-Fellows, not behind you but before you, not in the past but
in the future, lies the widest and richest field of Odd-Fellowship's
possibility. Turn your faces, not toward the waning light of
yesterday, but toward the growing radiance of a better morning. The
force is commensurate with the field. The cry of every true Odd-Fellow
ought to be the cry that leaped from the heart of Isaiah when his lips
were touched with the coal from off the altar: "Here am I, Lord, send
me." Our order is no longer a puny and helpless infant, but a lusty
giant, panoplied in the armor of truth and clad in the strength of
perpetual youth. We have riches untold. We have institutions for the
care of the old, and the orphan, the equal of any of which the world
can boast. We have a grasp on the