Little by little the world grows strong,
    Fighting the battle of Right and Wrong: 
    Little by little the Wrong gives way,
    Little by little the Right has sway;
    Little by little all longing souls
    Struggle up nearer the shining goals!

    Little by little the good in men
    Blossoms to beauty for human ken;
    Little by little the angels see
    Prophecies better of good to be;
    Little by little the God of all
    Lifts the world nearer the pleading call.

Cincinnati Humane Appeal.

* * * * *

LOYALTY.

    Life may be given in many ways
    And loyalty to truth be sealed
    As bravely in the closet as the field,
        So generous is fate;
    But then to stand beside her,
    When craven churls deride her,
    To front a lie in arms, and not to yield,
    This shows, methinks, God’s plan
    And measure of a stalwart man,
    Limbed like the old heroic breeds,
    Who stands self-poised on manhood’s solid earth,
    Not forced to frame excuses for his birth,
    Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

J. R. LOWELL.

* * * * *

ANIMALS AND HUMAN SPEECH.

Animals have much more capacity to understand human speech than is generally supposed.  The Hindoos invariably talk to their elephants, and it is amazing how much the latter comprehend.  The Arabs govern their camels with a few cries, and my associates in the African desert were always amused whenever I addressed a remark to the big dromedary who was my property for two months; yet at the end of that time the beast evidently knew the meaning of a number of simple sentences.  Some years ago, seeing the hippopotamus in Barnum’s museum looking very stolid and dejected, I spoke to him in English, but he did not even open his eyes.  Then I went to the opposite corner of the cage, and said in Arabic, “I know you; come here to me.”  He instantly turned his head toward me; I repeated the words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my face with a touch of delight while I stroked his muzzle.  I have two or three times found a lion who recognized the same language, and the expression of his eyes, for an instant, seemed positively human.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

* * * * *

PITY.

    And I, contented with a humble theme,
    Have poured my stream of panegyric down
    The vale of Nature, where it creeps and winds
    Among her lovely works, with a secure
    And unambitious course, reflecting clear
    If not the virtues, yet the worth, of brutes. 
    And I am recompensed, and deem the toils
    Of poetry not lost, if verse of mine
    May stand between an animal and woe,
    And teach one tyrant pity for his drudge.