en in the face of the Monna Lisa. As I see him,
life is so beautiful to him that its proportions are monstrous.
Perhaps his childhood may have been overfull of gladness;
they don't like that. If the seekers were kind he is the one for
whom the flags of his college would fly one day. But the seeker
I am thinking of is unfriendly, and so our student is 'the lad
that will never be told.' He often gaily forgets, and thinks
he has slain his foe by daring him, like him who, dreading water,
was always the first to leap into it. One can see him serene,
astride a Scotch cliff, singing to the sun the farewell thanks
of a boy:

'Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun
hold a red torch above the farthest seas,
and the fierce island pinnacles put on
in his defence their sombre panoplies;
Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun
like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees,
till all the beauty of the scene seemed one,
led by the secret whispers of the breeze.

'The sun's torch suddenly flashed upon his face
and died; and he sat content in subject night
and dreamed of an old dead foe that had sought
and found him;
a beast stirred bodly in his resting-place;
And the cold came; Man rose to his master-height,
shivered, and turned away; but the mists were
round him.'

If there is any of you here so rare that the seekers have taken an
ill-will to him, as to the boy who wrote those lines, I ask you to
be careful. Henley says in that poem we were speaking of:

'Under the bludgeonings of Chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.'

A fine mouthful, but perhaps 'My head is bloody and bowed' is better.

Let us get back to that tent with its songs and cheery conversation.
Courage. I do not think it is to be got by your becoming solemn-sides
before your time. You must have been warned against letting the
golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because
we let them slip. Diligence--ambition; noble words, but only if
'touched to fine issues.' Prizes may be dross, learning lumber,
unless they bring you into the arena with increased understanding.
Hanker not too much after worldly prosperity--that corpulent cigar; if
you became a millionaire you would probably go swimming around for
more like a diseased goldfish. Look to it that what you are doing is
not merely toddling to a competency. Perhaps that must be your fate,
but fight it and then, though