substitute when he lies a-dying;--why should all his years be spent in the vain endeavor to find a substitute for living? An endless dependence upon the opinions, the whims, the prejudices of others, is the bane of living, and the mark of a weak mind, made so oftener by education than nature. When the young forget to abuse the old, and the old to run down the young; when mothers-in-law cease to hate their daughters-in-law, and to improve all opportunities for sowing strife; when wives take pains to understand their husbands, and husbands decide that woman nature is worth studying; when women can remember to be charitable to other women; when the Golden Rule can be read as it is written, and not 'Do unto others as ye would _not_ they should do unto you;' when justice and truth rule men, rather than unreason and petty spite, then the aggravation of living will die a natural death, and the world become as comfortable an abiding place as its inhabitants need desire. Till then, hope and wait. Live the life God gives us, as purely and truly as you know how. Have some faith in human nature, but more in God, and wait his own good time for the perfect life, not to be reached here, but hereafter. THE LESSON OF THE WOOD. In the same soil the family of trees Spring up, and, like a band of brothers, grow In the same sun, while from their leafy lips Comes not the faintest whisper of dissent Because of various girth and grain and hue. The oak flings not his acorns at the elm; The white birch shrinks not from the swarthy ash; The green plume of the pine nods to the shrub; The loftiest monarch of the realm of wood Spares not his crown in elemental storms, But shares the blows with trees of humbler growth, And stretches forth his arms to save their fall. Wild flowers festoon the feet of all alike; Green mosses grow upon the trunks of all; Sweet birds pour out their songs on every bough; Clouds drop baptismal showers of rain on each, And the broad sun floods every leaf with light. Behold them clad in Autumn's golden pomp-- Their rich magnificence, of different dyes, More beautiful than royal robes, and crowns Of emperors on coronation day. But the deserted nest in silence sways Like a sad heart beneath a royal scarf; And the red tint upon the maple leaves Is colored like the fields where fell our braves In hurricanes of flame and leaden hail. I love to gaze up at the grand old trees; Their branches point like hope to Heaven serene; Their roots point to the silent world that's dead; Their grand old trunks hold towns and fleets for us, And cots and coffins for the race unborn. When at their feet their predecessors fell, Spring covered their remains with mourning moss, And wrote their epitaph in pale wood flowers, And Summer gave ripe berries to the birds To stay and sing their sad sweet requiem; And Autumn rent the garments of the trees That stood mute mourners in a field of graves,