Yes, too, and the wretch—so seemingly depraved that nothing beautiful or pure of soul is left—who flings from him his life in mad suicide, goes out into that trackless eternity with home upon the lips of death. Then if the patter of baby's feet, the glad ring of children's voices echo within the walls of your home, if father and mother; and brothers and sisters brighten it with the sunshine of love, enjoy it while you may, make it your heaven, and be not in over-haste to break the ties that bind you there. 

 You may never weep, perchance, over a home made desolate by death; and yet, time—so surely as time is—will make it but only a memory. And all too late each heart will learn that it did not prize enough the blessedness of home. 

 

     WHY? 

Why is it we grasp at the shadow That flits from us swift as thought, While the real that maketh the shadow Stands in our way unsought? And why do we wonder, and wonder, What's beyond the hill-tops of thought? 

Why is it the things that we sigh for Are the things that we never can reach? Why, only the sternest experience A lesson of patience can teach? And why hold we so careless and lightly The treasures that are in our reach? 

Why is it we wait for the future, Or dwell on the scenes of the past, Rather than live in the present Hastening from us so fast? Why is it the prizes we toil for, So tempting in fancy's mould cast, Prove, when to our lips we have pressed them, Only dead-sea apples at last? And why are the crowns, and the crosses, So wondrous inequally classed? 

Ask it, ye, over and over, Let the winds waft your question on high, Till memory wanes with the ages, Till the stars in eternity die. And out from the bloom and the sunshine, From the rainbow o'erarching the sky, From the night and the gloom and the tempest, Echo will answer you, "Why?" 

 

     OUT IN THE COLD. 

     Suggested by reading, "Lights and Shades" in San Francisco. 

Out from a narrow, crowded street, Sick'ning resort of shame and crime, Wearing upon her brow a curse, Out in the darkness, lost to sight, Out in the dreary Winter night, Fleeing a fate than Nessus worse. On through the gathering mist and dew 'Till the fog-wrapped city is hid from view;   'Till the rugged cliffs 

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