ho owed his success in business
entirely to my friendly aid and instructions, to speak a good word for
me, but he at once showed his gratitude by securing the appointment
for himself, being aided and abetted by an influential bald-headed
man who hated me, simply because I had sent to him a friend who
represented a hair restorer. Said bald-headed man had many reasons
to, and had often claimed to be, a friend of mine; but was foolishly
sensitive about his lack of hirsute adornment, and said I insulted him
by referring to his billiard-ball caput. Truly, gratitude is a lost
art, and some friends immediately become enemies when they can secure
from you no more plunder.

It is exceedingly difficult for a man who has passed the "death line"
of the half century, to find a place where he can do good and get
good; the hustling crowd of younger and stronger competitors push
him to the wall or trample him beneath their feet, in the terrific
scramble for the bare necessities of life. He drifts into the
depressing occupation of book or life insurance agency, and at once
every so-called friend, who pretended to worship him when he was
prosperous, gives him the cold shoulder, and "poor devil" is the most
complimentary epithet with which he is greeted.

Analogous with that wonderful Gulf Stream, once a myth, still a
mystery, the strange current of human existence bears each and all
of us with a strong, steady sweep from the tropic lands of sunny
childhood, enameled with verdure and gaudy with bloom, through the
temperate regions of manhood and womanhood, fruitful or fruitless as
the case may be; on to the often frigid, lonely shores of old age,
snow-crowned and ice-veined; and individual destinies seem to resemble
the tangled drift on those broad gulf billows, strewn on barren
beaches, stranded upon icebergs, some to be scorched under equatorial
heats, some to perish by polar perils; a few to take root and
flourish, building imperishable landmarks; and many to stagnate in the
long inglorious rest of the Sargasso Sea.

But really to the faithful soul nothing is lost; though the great
prizes of earth are denied us, every heroic endeavor, every struggle
to benefit the world sends treasures on high to our credit in the
grand bank of heaven.

There are the thoughts that one by one died 'ere we gave them birth,
The songs we tried in vain to sing, too sweet, too beautiful for earth.
No endeavor is in vain;
Its rew