AIDS TO SUCCESS.

I'm thankful, truly thankful, I have kind and loving friends,

Who wait with willing hearts and hands to help me gain

my ends;

The faith which they repose in me is strength through thick and thin,

I dare not disappoint them, so I feel I'm bound to win.

And yet, I must be truthful, so I frankly here confess There is another, stronger, force impels me toward

success;

A doubting few have said I'll fail, and so I feel I must To make them swallow their remarks-confound 'em!

-win or bu'st.

-NIXON WATERMAN.

THE PRESENT.

Do not crouch to-day, and worship The old Past whose life is fled: Hush voice with tender reverence,

your

Crowned he lies, but cold and dead; For the Present reigns our monarch, With an added weight of hours; Honor her, for she is mighty! Honor her, for she is ours!

See, the shadows of his heroes
Girt around her cloudy throne;
Every day the ranks are strengthened
By great hearts to him unknown;
Noble things the great Past promised;
Holy dreams both strange and new;
But the Present shall fulfil them,
What he promised, she shall do.

She inherits all his treasures,
She is heir to all his fame;
And the light that lightens round her
Is the lustre of his name.
She is wise with all his wisdom,

Living on his grave she stands;
On her brow she bears his laurels,
And his harvest in her hands.

Coward, can she reign and conquer
If we thus her glory dim?

Let us fight for her as nobly
As our fathers fought for him.
God, who crowns the dying ages,
Bids her rule and us obey;
Bids us cast our lives before her,
Bids us serve the great Today.

—ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

THE UNSEEN GUIDE.

There is no blind, unguided chance:
The wandering atoms feel the sway
Of central forces, till they dance,
Harmonious, in the sunbeam's glance,

As star-worlds in the Milky Way.
The loneliest can not walk apart:
A hand unseen is in his hand,
A heart is beating with his heart,
And thrills of homelike music start
The pilgrim in a desert land.

The brook that, down it's sinuous way,
Goes humming with a low content,
Though clinging with a pleased delay
Round flower-banks many a summer's day,
Runs, fate-like, whither it was sent;-

Runs to its marriage with the sea,

Not less predestined than the shock

Of arrowy torrents foaming free
And roaring down in boisterous glee,

Or madly hurled from rock to rock.
What foolish pains we take to reach

The prize we can not miss or hold! The simplest rill, whose gurgled speech Is musical mirth, could better teach

How inward laws our fates unfold.

Great Nature, nurse of mortal life,

Smiling or stern, nor threats nor bribes,
Too careless of our peace or strife
To purchase change, she bids us drive

Right on, nor heeds our plaints or gibes.

Yet, under all, and life of all,

A mother heart beats warm and great;
Blind to its mighty pulse we call
Our gain or loss, its rise and fall,

Nor know how all things undulate.

Let him thank God who, at the last,

Though sorely scourged by storm and wave, On any solid shore is cast.

There shall he find the very blast

That wrecked will drift him food to save.

More proudly may he tread the wreck

Of shattered hopes compelled, once more,
To bear him home, than, ere the check
Of adverse fates, he trod the deck

Of his gay barque and turned from shore.

Strength comes from trial, soon or late,
And that omnipotence of will
Which dares to man a helmless fate
No sleek-browed fortune can create,

No scowling fortune daunt with ill.

-GEORGE SHEPARD BURLEIGH.