f ours seems to be meaningless; whether we have
succeeded or whether we have failed appears to make little difference to
us, and therefore effort seems scarcely worth while. But Longfellow
tells us this view is all wrong. The past can take care of itself, and
we need not even worry very much about the future; but if we are true to
our own natures, we must be up and doing in the present. Time is short,
and mastery in any field of human activity is so long a process that it
forbids us to waste our moments. Yet we must learn also how to wait and
endure. In short, we must not become slaves to either indifference or
impatience, but must make it our business to play a man's part in life.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow._

A CREED

Men may seem sundered from each other; but the soul that each possesses,
and the destiny common to all, invest them with a basic brotherhood.

There is a destiny that makes us brothers:
None goes his way alone:
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.

I care not what his temples or his creeds,
One thing holds firm and fast--
That into his fateful heap of days an