his heritage divine, and justified the trust;
While through his rifted prison-bars the hues of freedom pour,
O'er every nation, race and clime, on every sea and shore,
Such glories as the patriarch viewed, when, mid the darkest skies,
He saw above a ruined world the Bow of Promise rise.

_F.S. Cozzens._

Health and Wealth

We squander health in search of wealth;
We scheme and toil and save;
Then squander wealth in search of health,
But only find a grave.
We live, and boast of what we own;
We die, and only get a stone.

The Heartening

It may be that the words I spoke
To cheer him on his way,
To him were vain, but I myself
Was braver all that day.

_Winifred Webb._

Billy's Rose

Billy's dead, and gone to glory--so is Billy's sister Nell:
There's a tale I know about them, were I poet I would tell;
Soft it comes, with perfume laden, like a breath of country air
Wafted down the filthy alley, bringing fragrant odors there.

In that vile and filthy alley, long ago one winter's day,
Dying quick of want and fever, hapless, patient Billy lay,
While beside him sat his sister, in the garret's dismal gloom,
Cheering with her gentle presence Billy's pathway to the tomb.

Many a tale of elf and fairy did she tell the dying child,
Till his eyes lost half their anguish, and his worn, wan features smiled;
Tales herself had heard haphazard, caught amid the Babel roar,
Lisped about by tiny gossips playing round their mothers' door.

Then she felt his wasted fingers tighten feebly as she told
How beyond this dismal alley lay a land of shining gold,
Where, when all the pain was over,--where, when all the tears were shed,--
He would be a white-frocked angel, with a gold thing on his head.

Then she told some garbled story of a kind-eyed Saviour's love,
How He'd built for little children great big playgrounds up above,
Where they sang and played at hopscotch and at horses all the day,
And where beadles and policemen never frightened them away.

This was Nell's idea of heaven,--just a bit of what she'd heard,
With a little bit invented, and a little bit inferred.
But her brother lay and listened, and he seemed to understand,
For he closed his eyes and murmured he could see the promised land.

"Yes," he whispered, "I can see it, I can see it, sister Nell,
Oh, the children look so happy and they're all so strong and well;
I can see them there with Jesus--He is playing with them, too