Sometimes when our hands grow weary, Or our tasks seem very long; When our burdens look too heavy, And we deem the right all wrong; Then we gain a new, fresh courage, And we rise to proudly say: "Let us do our duty bravely-- This was our dear mother's way." Then we keep her memory precious, While we never cease to pray That at last, when lengthening shadows Mark the evening of our day, They may find us waiting calmly To go home our mother's way. SONG OF THE BROOK _By_ ALFRED TENNYSON I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I chatter over stony ways; In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles. With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lusty trout, And here and there a grayling, And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel, And draw them all along, and flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows. I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses. And out again I curve and flow To join the brimming river; For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW _By_ GRACE E. SELLON Among the most distinguished and interesting buildings in the town of Portland, Maine, is the rather severe-looking house built in the latter part of the eighteenth century by General Peleg Wadsworth. From the very date of its erection, this structure became the object of not a little pride among the citizens of Portland as the first in the town to be made of brick; but this local fame grew in the course of a century to world-wide celebrity when the dwelling came to be known as the childhood home of the most loved of American poets.