Then, welcome each rebuff
  That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
  Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! 
  Be our joys three-parts pain! 
  Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
  Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

  For thence,—­a paradox
  Which comforts while it mocks,—­
  Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: 
  What I aspired to be,
  And was not, comforts me: 
  A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.

  So, still within this life,
  Though lifted o’er its strife,
  Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
  “This rage was right i’ the main,
  That acquiescence vain: 
  The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.”

  For more is not reserved
  To man, with soul just nerved
  To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: 
  Here, work enough to watch
  The Master work, and catch
  Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.

Robert Browning.

TO MELANCHOLY

The last invitation anybody would accept is “Come, let us weep together.”  If we keep melancholy at our house, we should be careful to have it under lock and key, so that no one will observe it.

  Melancholy,
  Melancholy,
  I’ve no use for you, by Golly! 
  Yet I’m going to keep you hidden
  In some chamber dark, forbidden,
  Just as though you were a prize, sir,
  Made of gold, and I a miser—­
  Not because I think you jolly,
          Melancholy! 
  Not for that I mean to hoard you,
  Keep you close and lodge and board you
  As I would my sisters, brothers,
  Cousins, aunts, and old grandmothers,
  But that you shan’t bother others
  With your sniffling, snuffling folly,
          Howling,
          Yowling,
  Melancholy.

John Kendrick Bangs.

From “Songs of Cheer.”

THE LION PATH

Admiral Dupont was explaining to Farragut his reasons for not taking his ironclads into Charleston harbor.  “You haven’t given me the main reason yet,” said Farragut.  “What’s that?” “You didn’t think you could do it.”  So the man who thinks he can’t pass a lion, can’t.  But the man who thinks he can, can.  Indeed he oftentimes finds that the lion isn’t really there at all.

  I dare not!—­
               Look! the road is very dark—­
  The trees stir softly and the bushes shake,
  The long grass rustles, and the darkness moves
  Here! there! beyond—! 
  There’s something crept across the road just now! 
  And you would have me go—? 
  Go there, through that live darkness, hideous
  With stir of crouching forms that wait to kill? 
  Ah, look!  See there! and there! and there again! 
  Great yellow, glassy eyes, close to the