I believe the world is better to-day than it ever was before. I believe the refinements of modern society, its elegant accomplishments, its intellectual culture, and its conceptions of the beautiful, are glorious evidences of our advancement toward a higher plane of being. I believe the superb churches of to-day, with the glorious harmonies of their choral music, their great pipe organs, their violins and cornets, and their grand sermons, full of heaven’s balm for aching hearts, are expressions of the highest civilization that has ever dawned upon the earth. I believe each successive civilization is better and higher and grander than that which preceded it; and upon the shining rungs of this ladder of evolution, our race will finally climb back to the Paradise that was lost. I believe that the society of to-day is better than it ever was before. I believe that human government is better and nobler and purer than it ever was before. I believe the church is stronger and is making grander strides toward the conversion of the world and the final establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth than it ever made before. I believe that the biggest fools in this world are the advocates and disseminators of infidelity, the would-be destroyers of the Paradise of God. [Illustration: With Trotwood] THE LAST DRIVE ’Twas long ago, aye, long and long ago, I see the starlight and the paling clouds Which linger yet in Mem’ry’s afterglow, Pale cheeks that lie amid a sky of shrouds. The swell of Evening’s breathing all around. The flocks of Fullness by Contentment led, Heart incense, murmur’d from the grateful ground Up to the fold of Faith, bright panoplied. The fields, the fresh’ning air—earth odors from below, Your laugh, your perfumed hair—gone long, so long ago. ’Twas long ago, aye, long and long ago, So says the world, Sweet, reckoning thereby From season unto season. They do not know— We reckon—we—from mem’ry unto mem’ry. And when one mem’ry overshadoweth All others, as morning over moon-skies, The pink of slumber o’er the pale of death, It stands alone before my aching eyes— That evening drive—the hush—the twilight’s deepening blue, The sunset’s crimson in your blush: “I love you, too.” Sweets, sweets, sweets, from a heart of sweets! And sweets to a soul of sad despair— Oh, love, to-night the Past the Present meets With love’s own linkéd laughter in the air. But, oh, you went from out my heart as goes The full rose, blushing, to the frosts of death— As autumn flowers to the winter snows; And now, dear heart, O now I love you so, I love you yet, altho’ ’twas long, so long ago. _John Trotwood Moore._ THE PROBLEM OF LIFE