social difficulties—p. 53educate, educate, educate; teach the mind to find subjects for thought in all things, and purify the heart by enabling it to find “sermons in stones, and good in everything;” then will Gossip be the graceful unbending of the loving heart and well-filled head.

p. 53

p. 54CHIPS.

p. 54

Chips! chips! We had climb’d to the top of the cliff that day, Just where the brow look’d over the bay; And you stood, and you watch’d the shifting ships Till I found you a seat in the heather. As we reach’d the top you had touch’d me thrice; I had felt your hand on my shoulder twice, And once I had brush’d your feather. And I turn’d at last, and saw you stand, Looking down seaward hat in hand, At the shelving sweep of the scoop’d-out sand, And the great blue gem within it. The bright, sweet sky was over your head, Your cheek was aflame with the climber’s red, And a something leapt in my heart that said,— Happy or sorry, living or dead,— My fate had begun that minute. And we sat, and we watch’d the clouds go by (There were none but the clouds and you and I As we sat on the hill together); As you sketch’d the rack as it drifted by, Fleece upon fleece through the pathless sky, Did you wonder, Florence, whether, When you held me up your point to cut, I had kept the chips, when the knife was shut,— For none of them fell in the heather.

Chips

p. 55Chips! chips!— Yet what was I but the cousin, you know?— Only the boy that you favour’d so— And the word that stirr’d my lips I must hide away in my heart, and keep, For the road to you was dizzy and steep As the cliff we had climb’d together. There was many an older lover nigh, With the will and the right to seek your eye; And for me, I know not whether, If I chose to live, or I chose to die, It would matter to you a feather. But this I know, as the feather’s weight Will keep the poise of the balance straight, In the doubtful climb—in the day’s eclipse, In the stumbling steps, in the faults and trips, I have gain’d a strength from the tiniest scraps That ever were help to a man, perhaps,—  Chips! chips!

p. 55

Look, these are “the tiniest scraps,” you see, And this is their casket of filigree, That I bought that year “far over the sea,” With a volley of chaff, and a half-rupee, From a huckstering, fox-faced Bengalee, That set himself up for a dealer. They have slept with me by the jungle fires, They have watch’d with me under 

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