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Hours are golden links, God's token,
Reaching heaven; but, one by one,
Take them, lest the chain be broken
Ere the pilgrimage be done.

ADELAIDE ANNE PROCter.

Life Lessons

The Commonwealth of the Bees

(Type of a Well-ordered State.)

For government, though high, and low, and
lower,

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.

Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavor in continual motion;
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt,
Obedience; for so work the honey-bees,
Creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom:
They have a king and officers of state,
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they with merry march bring
home

Life To the tent-royal of their emperor;
Lessons Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed Justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy, yawning drone.

WILLIAM SHakespeare.

From "King Henry V."

The Pilgrim

Who would true valor see
Let him come hither!

One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather:
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first-avow'd intent
To be a Pilgrim.

Whoso beset him round
With dismal stories,

Do but themselves confound;

His strength the more is.

No lion can him fright;
He'll with a giant fight;
But he will have a right
To be a Pilgrim.

Nor enemy, nor fiend,

Can daunt his spirit;

He knows he at the end
Shall Life inherit:-
Then, fancies, fly away;

He'll not fear what men say;

He'll labor, night and day,

To be a Pilgrim.

Life Lessons

JOHN BUNYAN.

Be Useful

Be useful where thou livest, that they may
Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still.
Find out men's wants and will,

And meet them there.

All worldly joys go less

To the one joy of doing kindnesses.

GEORGE HERBERT.

The Glad Evangel

When the Child of Nazareth was born, the sun, according to the Bosnian legend, “leaped in the heavens, and the stars around it danced. A peace came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and healthy on the green hill-side. The grass was beflowered with open blossoms, incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, birds sang on the mountain top, and all gave thanks to the great God."

It is naught but an old folk-tale, but it has truth hidden at its heart, for a strange, subtle force, a spirit of genial good-will, a new-born kindness, seem to animate child and man alike when the world pays its tribute to the "heaven-sent youngling," as the poet Drummond calls the infant Christ.

When the Three Wise Men rode from the East into the West on that "first, best Christmas night," they bore on their saddle-bows three caskets filled with gold and frankincense and myrrh, to be laid at the feet of the manger-cradled babe of Bethlehem. Beginning with this old, old journey, the spirit of giving crept into the world's heart. As the Magi came bearing gifts, so do we also; gifts that relieve want, gifts that are sweet and fragrant with friendship, gifts that breathe love, gifts that mean service, gifts inspired still by the star that shone over the City of David nearly two thousand years ago.

Then hang the green coronet of the Christmas-tree with glittering baubles and jewels of flame; heap offerings on its emerald branches; bring the Yule log to the firing; deck the house with holly and mistletoe,

"And all the bells on earth shall ring

On Christmas day in the morning."

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