Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act that each to-morrow Finds us farther than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the Bivouac of life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act--act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;-- Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait. H.W. LONGFELLOW. [Notes:_Art is long, and time is fleeting_. A translation from the Latin, _Ars longa, vita brevis est._ The metaphor in the last two stanzas in this page is strangely mixed. Footprints could hardly be seen by those sailing over the main.] * * * * * BOYHOOD'S WORK. In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at a public school. Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms. Now is the time in all your lives, probably, when you may have more wide influence for good or evil in the society you live in than you ever can have again. Quit yourselves like men, then; speak up, and strike out, if necessary, for whatsoever is true, and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never try to be popular, but only to do your duty, and help others to do theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it, and so be doing good, which no living soul can measure, to generations of your countrymen yet unborn. For boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles. Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and right. This standard is ever varying, though it changes only slowly, and little by little; and, subject only to such standard, it is the leading boys for the time being who give the tone to all the rest, and make the school either a noble institution for the training of Christian Englishmen, or a place where a young boy will get more evil than he would if he were turned out to make his way in London streets, or anything between these two extremes.