ORY IN DEFEAT

The great, radiant souls of earth--the Davids, the Shakespeares, the
Lincolns--know grief and affliction as well as joy and triumph. But
adversity is never to them mere adversity; it

"Doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange";

and in the crucible of character their suffering itself is transmuted
into song.

Defeat may serve as well as victory
To shake the soul and let the glory out.
When the great oak is straining in the wind,
The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk
Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.
Only the soul that knows the mighty grief
Can know the mighty rapture. Sorrows come
To stretch out spaces in the heart for joy.

_Edwin Markham._

From "The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems."

THE RICHER MINES

No man is so poor but that he is a stockholder. Yet many a man has no
real riches; his stocks draw dividends in dollars and cents only.

When it comes to buying shares
In the mines of earth,
May I join the millionaires
Who are rich in mirth.

Let me have a heavy stake
In fresh mountain air--
I will promise now to take
All that you can spare.

When you're setting up your claim
In the Mines of Glee,
Don't forget to use my name--
You can count on me.

Nothing better can be won,
Freer from alloy,
Than a bouncing claim in "Con-
Solidated Joy."

You can have your Copper Stocks
Gold and tin and coal--
What I'd have within my box
Has to do with Soul.

_John Kendrick Bangs._

From "Songs of Cheer."

BRAVE LIFE

To be absolutely without physical fear may not be the highest courage;
to shrink and quake, and yet stand at one's post, may be braver still.
So of success. It lies less in the attainment of some external end than
in holding yourself to your purposes and ideals; for out of high loyalty
and effort comes that intangible thing called character, which is no
mere symbol of success, but success itself.

I do not know what I shall find on out beyond the final fight;
I do not know what I shall meet beyond the last barrage of night;
Nor do I care--but this I know--if I but serve within the fold
And play the game--I'll be prepared for all the endless years may hold.

Life is a training camp at best for what may wait beyond the years;
A training camp of toiling days and nights that lean to dreams and tears;
But each may c