One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed Part 22

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in yer face while it picks yer pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of mair use to the professors than the justice of it.

MACKLIN.

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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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; G.o.d 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 G.o.d's divine command.

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 G.o.d'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. ALTGELD.

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 acc.u.mulates 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 appet.i.te. Feasting 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 life rush the moaning winds of grief and desolation; in to the vacuum of wasted property rushes the goblin of debt. The wasted life is transformed at length into a reminiscent glory; the wasted property becomes a hideous nightmare. The heroes fallen rise from their b.l.o.o.d.y cerements into everlasting fame; the property destroyed rises from the red and flame-swept field as a spectral vampire, sucking the still warm blood of the heroic dead and of their posthumous babes to the tenth generation! The name of the vampire is Bond.

JOHN CLARK RIDPATH.

TO A WATERFOWL.

Whither, mid'st falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care Teaches thy way along that pathless coast-- The desert and illimitable air-- Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end; Soon shall thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven Hath swallowed up thy form; yet on my heart Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone, Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone Will lead my steps aright.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

ROBERT BURNS

(Considered by many the world's greatest Song writer and natural Poet.)

While Burns was yet a plow boy he was challenged by two highly educated gentlemen, who were seated awaiting their dinner to be served at an Inn in the town of Ayr.

The terms of the challenge was for each to write a verse on the event of their first acquaintance, the one writing the best and most appropriate short rhyme was to have his dinner paid for by the other two.

Burns wrote as follows:

I Jonnie Peep, Saw two sheep.

Two sheep saw me.

Half a crown apiece Will pay for their fleece.

And I Jonnie Peep go free.

On another occasion while drinking at a Bar a hanger on who was notorious for his much drinking and was dubbed the Marquis, asked Burns to write an appropriate epitaph for his grave stone.

Burns, quick as flash and without any apparent effort, wrote:

Here lies a faulse Marquis: Whose t.i.tle is shamed If ever he rises It will be to be d.a.m.ned.