And though you be done to the death, what then? If you battled the best you could, If you played your part in the world of men, Why, the Critic will call it good. Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce, It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts, But only how did you die? Edmund Vance Cooke. ADDRESS AT GETTYSBURG Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. Address of President Lincoln at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863, IF WE HAD THE TIME If I had the time to find a place And sit me down full face to face With my better self that stands no show It might be then I would see my soul Was stumbling still toward the shining goal- If I had the time to let my heart To a comrade quartered on no-luck land, And hear the note of the whip-poor-will. I think that my wish with God would rhyme- If I had the time to learn from you How much for comfort my word would do; To kiss your feet when I did you ill— If the tears aback of the bravado Richard Burton. MAMMA'S DIRL Ev'ry night when shadows fly, I had not forgot, ah, no! O'er those ways of yesteryear That still makes their mem'ry dear. Than I was down any way That my young feet used to tread; Skies are bluer overhead, And today's birds sing more clear J. M. Lewis, in Houston Post. JOHN WESLEY'S RULE Do all the good you can, THE SIMPLE FAITH Before me, even as behind, God is, and all is well. John Greenleaf Whittier. And night's deep darkness has no chain to bind His rushing pinion. Time, the tomb-builder, holds his fierce career, Amid the mighty wrecks that strew his path George D. Prentice. WITH LOVE-FROM MOTHER There's a letter on the bottom of the pile, It has traveled to the city many a mile, And the postmark names a little unknown town. But the hurried man of business pushes all the others by. for gain, The while he reads what mother writes from up in Maine. There are quirks and scratchy quavers of the pen Where it struggled in the fingers old and bent. There are places that he has to read again And ponder on to find what mother meant. There are letters on his table that enclose some bouncing checks: There are letters giving promises of profits on his "specs:" But he tosses all the litter by, forgets the golden rain, Until he reads what mother writes from up in Maine. |