Don't Take Your Troubles To Bed.

    You may labor your fill, friend of mine, if you will;

      You may worry a bit, if you must;

    You may treat your affairs as a series of cares,

      You may live on a scrap and a crust;

    But when the day's done, put it out of your head;

    Don't take your troubles to bed.

    You may batter your way through the thick of the fray,

      You may sweat, you may swear, you may grunt;

    You may be a jack-fool if you must, but this rule

      Should ever be kept at the front:--

    Don't fight with your pillow, but lay down your head

    And kick every worriment out of the bed.

    That friend or that foe (which he is, I don't know),

      Whose name we have spoken as Death,

    Hovers close to your side, while you run or you ride,

      And he envies the warmth of your breath;

    But he turns him away, with a shake of his head,

    When he finds that you don't take your troubles to bed.

Author Unknown

The Path to Home

The Path to Home

THERE'S the mother at the doorway, and the children at the gate,

And the little parlor windows with the curtains white and straight.

There are shaggy asters blooming in the bed that lines the fence,

And the simplest of the blossoms seems of mighty consequence.

Oh, there isn't any mansion underneath God's starry dome

That can rest a weary pilgrim like the little place called home.

Men have sought for gold and silver; men have dreamed at night of fame;

In the heat of youth they've struggled for achievement's honored name;

But the selfish crowns are tinsel, and their shining jewels paste,

And the wine of pomp and glory soon grows bitter to the taste.

For there's never any laughter howsoever far you roam,

Like the laughter of the loved ones in the happiness of home.

-        

                                                                                                                                                                   Edgar Albert Guest

Success

           I hold no dream of fortune vast,

            Nor seek undying fame.

          I do not ask when life is past

            That many know my name.

          I may not own the skill to rise

            To glory's topmost height,

          Nor win a place among the wise,

            But I can keep the right.

          And I can live my life on earth

            Contented to the end,

          If but a few shall know my worth

            And proudly call me friend.

                                                                                                    

                                                                                        By Edgar A. Guest

You May Count That Day

A class of little settlement girls besought Mrs. George Herbert Palmer, one insufferable summer morning, to tell them how to be happy. "I'll give you three rules," she said, "and you must keep them every day for a week. First, commit something good to memory each day. Three or four words will do, just a pretty bit of poem, or a Bible verse. Do you understand?" A girl jumped up. "I know; you want us to learn something we'd be glad to remember if we went blind." Mrs. Palmer was relieved; these children understood. She gave the three rules--memorize something good each day, see something beautiful each day, do something helpful each day. When the children reported at the end of the week, not a single day had any of them lost. But hard put to it to obey her? Indeed they had been. One girl, kept for twenty-four hours within squalid home-walls by a rain, had nevertheless seen two beautiful things—a sparrow taking a bath in the gutter, and a gleam of sunlight on a baby's hair.

  If you sit down at set of sun

     And count the acts that you have done,

     And, counting, find

  One self-denying deed, one word

  That eased the heart of him who heard-

     One glance most kind,

  That fell like sunshine where it went-

  Then you may count that day well spent.

  But if, through all the livelong day,

  You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay-

     If, through it all

  You've nothing done that you can trace

  That brought the sunshine to one face-

     No act most small

  That helped some soul and nothing cost-

  Then count that day as worse than lost.

  

By George Eliot

Meetin' Trouble

Some students of biology planned a trick on their professor. They took the head of one beetle, the body of another of a totally different species, the wings of a third, the legs of a fourth. These members they carefully pasted together. Then they asked the professor what kind of bug the creature was. He answered promptly, "A humbug." Just such a monstrosity is trouble--especially future trouble. Some things about it are real, but the whole combined menace is only an illusion, not a thing which actually exists at all. Face the trouble itself; give no heed to that idea of it which invests it with a hundred dire calamities.

  Trouble in the distance seems all-fired big--

    Sorter makes you shiver when you look at it a-comin';

  Makes you wanter edge aside, er hide, er take a swig

    Of somethin' that is sure to set your worried head a-hummin'.

  Trouble in the distance is a mighty skeery feller--

  But wait until it reaches you afore you start to beller!

  Trouble standin' in th' road and frownin' at you, black,

    Makes you feel like takin' to the weeds along the way;

  Wish to goodness you could turn and hump yerself straight back;

    Know 'twill be awful when he gets you close at bay!

  Trouble standin' in the road is bound to make you shy--

  But wait until it reaches you afore you start to cry!

  Trouble face to face with you ain't pleasant, but you'll find

    That it ain't one-ha'f as big as fust it seemed to be;

  Stand up straight and bluff it out! Say, "I gotter a mind

    To shake my fist and skeer you off--you don't belong ter me!"

  Trouble face to face with you? Though you mayn't feel gay,

  Laugh at it as if you wuz--and it'll sneak away!

 by Everard Jack Appleton 

  From "The Quiet Courage."

Life

"What is life?" we ask. "Just one darned thing after another," the cynic replies. Yes, a multiplicity of forces and interests, and each of them,even the disagreeable, may be of real help to us. It's good for a dog, says a shrewd philosopher, to be pestered with fleas; it keeps him from thinking too much about being a dog.

What's life? A story or a song;

    A race on any track;

  A gay adventure, short or long,

    A puzzling nut to crack;

  A grinding task; a pleasant stroll;

    A climb; a slide down hill;

  A constant striving for a goal;

    A cake; a bitter pill;

  A pit where fortune flouts or stings;

    A playground full of fun;

  With many any of these things;

    With others all in one.

  What's life? To love the things we see;

    The hills that touch the skies;

  The smiling sea; the laughing lea;

    The light in woman's eyes;

  To work and love the work we do;

    To play a game that's square;

  To grin a bit when feeling blue;

    With friends our joys to share;

  To smile, though games be lost or won;

    To earn our daily bread;

  And when at last the day is done

    To tumble into bed.

  

by Griffith Alexander

From "The Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger."

The Stone Rejected

          The story here poetically retold of the great Florentine sculptor shows how much a lofty spirit may make of unpromising material.

  For years it had been trampled in the street

  Of Florence by the drift of heedless feet--

  The stone that star-touched Michael Angelo

  Turned to that marble loveliness we know.

  You mind the tale--how he was passing by

  When the rude marble caught his Jovian eye,

  That stone men had dishonored and had thrust

  Out to the insult of the wayside dust.

  He stooped to lift it from its mean estate,

  And bore it on his shoulder to the gate,

  Where all day long a hundred hammers rang.

  And soon his chisel round the marble sang,

  And suddenly the hidden angel shone:

  It had been waiting prisoned in the stone.

  Thus came the cherub with the laughing face

  That long has lighted up an altar-place.

By Edwin Markham.

From "The Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems."