"Come from your long, long roving, On life's sea so bleak and rough; Come to me tender and loving, And I shall be blest enough." That hath been her long song, always on her lips or in her heart. Children had been born to them. She had reared them almost alone--they were gone! Her hand had led them to the uttermost edge of the morning that has no noon. Then she had comforted him, and sent him out strong and whole-hearted while she stayed at home and--cried. What can a woman do but cry and trust? Well, she is at rest now. But she could not die until he had promised to "bear up," not fret, but to remember how happy they had been. They? Yes, it was even so. It was an equal partnership, after all. "She--was--a--good--wife--to--me." Oh, man! man! Why not have told her so when her ears were not dulled by death? Why wait to say these words over a coffin wherein lies a wasted, weary, gray-haired woman, whose eyes have so long held that pathetic story of loss and suffering and patient yearning, which so many women's eyes reveal to those who weep? Why not have made the wilderness in her heart blossom like the rose with the prodigality of your love? Now you would give worlds, were they yours to give, to see the tears of joy your words would have once caused, bejeweling the closed windows of her soul. It is too late. "We have careful thoughts for the stranger, And smiles for the sometime guest, But oft for own, The bitter tone, Though we love our own the best." ODD-FELLOWSHIP AND THE FUTURE There is infinite and perennial fascination in the contemplation of the future. The past is a fixed province, the finished result of an ever-moving present. The future is the province of the poet, the prophet and the seer. The past is adamant, the future is plastic clay. The past is with God alone; the future is with God and man. We toil for it; dream of it; look to it; and all seek so to * * * "Forecast the years, As find in loss a gain to match, Or reach a hand through time to catch The far-off interest of tears."