But our times are in the Best Hand.  And the one thing about our lot, my reader, that we may think of with perfect contentment, is that they are so.  I know nothing more admirable in spirit, and few things more charmingly expressed, than that little poem by Mrs. Waring which sets out that comfortable thought.  You know it, of course.  You should have it in your memory; and let it be one of the first things your children learn by heart.  It may well come next after, “O God of Bethel”:  it breathes the self-same tone.  And let me close these thoughts with one of its verses:—­

  “There are briers besetting every path,
    Which call for patient care: 
  There is a cross in every lot,
   And an earnest need for prayer: 
  But a lowly heart that leans on Thee
    Is happy anywhere!”

  THE FLAG.

  There’s a flag hangs over my threshold, whose folds are more dear to me
  Than the blood that thrills in my bosom its earnest of liberty;
  And dear are the stars it harbors in its sunny field of blue
  As the hope of a further heaven that lights all our dim lives through.

  But now should my guests be merry, the house is in holiday guise,
  Looking out through its burnished windows like a score of welcoming eyes. 
  Come hither, my brothers who wander in saintliness and in sin! 
  Come hither, ye pilgrims of Nature! my heart doth invite you in.

  My wine is not of the choicest, yet bears it an honest brand;
  And the bread that I bid you lighten I break with no sparing hand;
  But pause, ere you pass to taste it, one act must accomplished be: 
  Salute the flag in its virtue, before ye sit down with me.

  The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed: 
  Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed;
  ’T was red with the blood of freemen, and white with the fear of the foe,
  And the stars that fight in their courses ’gainst tyrants its symbols
     know.

  Come hither, thou son of my mother! we were reared in the self-same
     arms;
  Thou hast many a pleasant gesture, thy mind hath its gifts and charms;
  But my heart is as stern to question as mine eyes are of sorrows full: 
  Salute the flag in its virtue, or pass on where others rule.

  Thou lord of a thousand acres, with heaps of uncounted gold,
  The steeds of thy stall are haughty, thy lackeys cunning and bold: 
  I envy no jot of thy splendor, I rail at thy follies none: 
  Salute the flag in its virtue, or leave my poor house alone.

  Fair lady with silken trappings, high waving thy stainless plume,
  We welcome thee to our numbers, a flower of costliest bloom: 
  Let a hundred maids live widowed to furnish thy bridal bed;
  But pause where the flag doth question, and bend thy triumphant head.