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. 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. I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, He sang to my ear, -they sang to my eye. The delicate shells lay on the shore; Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. The lover watched his graceful maid, Was woven still by the snow-white choir. Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; - The gay enchantment was undone, A gentle wife, but fairy none. Then I said, "I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, I inhaled the violet's breath ; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Again I saw, again I heard, The rolling river, the morning bird; - 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 |