CHARACTER

CHARACTER is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature coöperates with it. The reason why we feel one man's presence and do not feel another's is as simple as gravity. Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs. All individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of this element in them. The will of the pure runs down from them into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be withstood than any other natural force. We can drive a stone upward for a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed. Character is this moral order seen through the medium of an individual nature. An individual is an incloser. Time and space, liberty and

necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what quality is in him, he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all his regards return into his own good at last. He animates all he can, and he sees only what he animates. He incloses the world, as the patriot does his country, as a material basis for his character, and a theater for action. A healthy, soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.

Thus, men of character are the conscience of the

society to which they belong.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

EACH AND ALL

LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now,
For I did not bring home the river and
sky;

He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore

With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the

cage;

The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth:"
As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Over me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird; —
Beauty through my senses stole;
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

CAPTAIN SCOTT

THIS love for his fellow-men and willingness to risk his life for their safety was not confined to his experience on the Rock. He never referred to any of these deeds thereafter; -never believed really that he had done anything out of the ordinary. I myself had been with him for two years before I learned of the particular act of heroism which I am now about to relate

and only then from one of his men an act which was the talk of the country for days, and the subject of many of the illustrations of the time. I give it as it was told me, and