ONE THOUSAND SECRETS REVEALED

144 ONE THOUSAND SECRETS REVEALED.
OUR MISSION.
In calm and stormy weather
Our mission is to grow;
To keep the angle paramount
And bind the brute below.
We grow not all in sunshine,
But richly in the rain;
And what we deem our losses
May prove our final gain.
The snows and frosts of winter
A richer fruitage bring;
From battling with the anvil
The smith's grand muscles spring.
'Tis by the law of contrast
That fine effects are seen;
As thus we blend in colors
The orange with the green.
By action and reaction
We reach our perfect growth;
Nor by excess of neither,
But equipoise of both.
The same code binds the human
That governs mother earth;
God cradled her in tempest
And earthquakes from her birth.
Our life is but a struggle
For perfect equipoise;
Our pains are often jewels,
Our pleasures gilded toys.
Between the good and evil
The monarch will must stand,
To shape the final issue
By God's divine command.
GEMS OF THOUGHT. 145
Our mission is to battle
With ill in every form—
To borrow strength and volume
From contact with the storm.
In the beautiful hereafter
These blinding mortal tears
Shall crystalize in jewels
To sparkle in the spheres.
With weak and moldish vision
We work our way below;
But sure our souls are building
Much wiser than we know.
And when the work is finished
The scaffolding then falls;
And lo! a radiant temple,
With pearl and sapphire walls.
A temple far transcending
The grandest piles below,
Whose dome shall blaze with splendor,
In God's eternal glow.
Wealth is necessary; let us not disclaim against it; every nation
needs it to attain the highest achievements in civilization. But it is a
blessing only as a servant, and is destructive as a master.
JOHN P. AI/TGELD.
If I were a young man I should ally myself with some high and at
present unpopular cause, and devote my every effort to accomplish its
success. JOHN G. WHITTIER.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish and may fade;
A breath can make them, as breath has made;
But an honest peasantry, a country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
War preys on two things—life and property: but he preys with a
partial appetite. P'easting on life, he licks his jaws and says, "More, by
your leave!" Devouring property, he says, between grin and glut, "This
is so good that it ought to be paid for!" Into the vacuum of wasted
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