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6
Worth Woman's While
Thou Knowest.
Lord, all the dreams that I have dreamed,
The hopes I builded fair,
And lifted eager heart to Thee
In voiceless prayer—
Ihou knowest!
Thon knowest how widely differed far
From mine Thy way for me,
How eyes, with blindifig tears, have turned
Too oft to Thee—
Thou knowest ’
Father, teach me, and yet again
The task that Thou hast set;
For naught is left but Thee, and I
Would self forget—
Thou knowest!
And, Lord, where I have failed, let me
Help some one else to win,
That one whose happy lot I hoped,
I once thought, mine had been.
To help—let this my portion be—
Grant but this only boon;
For what I would that 1 had been.
That I had done—
Thou knowest!
The Use of Recreation.
Beware of trying to work all the time. The very
intensity of your ambition to get on may keep you
back. A bow that is bent constantly loses its elas
ticity. Take the best Indian bow that ever was
made, string it taut, hang it up for a year, then cut
the string, and vou will find that the bow will
remain in the same position. It has lost its throw
ing power; all its spring is gone. So, the brain that
is kept tense during all the waking hours soon loses
it responsiveness and effective working power.. It
fails to fully grasp all the necessary phases of a
day’s work.
Everyone should put a layer of pleasure, of gen
uine recreation, into each day. No day is complete
without its period of relaxation. Nothing is truer
than that ‘‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy”—dull, literally. Those who are everlastingly
grinding, who allow themselves no time for recrea
tion, amusement, or social life of any kind, are very
apt to become bores, because they develop but one
side of their nature. We must look upon life as a
whole, and prepare ourselves for its different parts.
—Ex.
Children’s Prayers.
The little prayers we teach children and have
them say by rote after us are fraught with a deeper
reality for their simple minds than we, reciting
thoughtlessly, as we sometimes do. are apt to com
prehend. The imagination which invests with life
the most impossible inanimate thing, even conjur
ing up personalities as real to the imaginator as
any of actual existence, has it not its own concep
tion of the unseen, the truer that it is not hampered
with the knowledge which destroys faith? We
think children do not understand, and talk to them
of Gcd in Heaven as of some existence farther away
than fairies or hobgoblins, or any of the creatures
which even they comprehend could never have be
ing. But little ones properly brought to early
friendship with their Father have a clearer under
standing than we give them credit for; their fine
imagination renders their perception clear, and
takes them into a closeness which the more material
mind can scarcely conceive. They approach Him
with a straightforwardness that is at once a rebuke
and a lesson to us, taking to Him the little trials
we would not have thought they realized as such.
Little Mabel on her way to the mountains was
told that she would have to- occupy an upper berth
in the sleeping car, and protested so loud that her
mother moaned, ‘Oh, you are never satisfied!” The
The Golden Age for November 8, 1906.
By FLORENCE L. TUCKER.
incident passed and would have been forgotten per
haps, but arrived at her destination the following
night the impression on the baby mind was shown
to have been unmistakable. When she knelt to say
her prayers, at the close of the usual petitions, she
added: “And oh, Lord, p’ease make me shatter
tied!” Plainly she had thought it out, and was
carrying her trouble to the Source she had herself
decided was the only one.
And how often may it not be like this? Do we
realize the depth of the childish understanding, and
the extent of dependence the children feel? Do we
make prayer all that it could be to them? Could
all things become transparent, no doubt they might
teach us many things. It was little Mabel herself
who prayed that she might be “shatterfied”; per
haps her mother may have done so in secret, but
the little petition straight out of the baby heart
was of her own prompting. And so, often, do their
prayers startle us—ay, and sometimes make us
ashamed.
Taking People at their Best.
One of the greatest lessons in life is to learn to
take people at their best, not their worst; to look
for the divine, not the human, in them; the beauti
ful, not the ugly; the bright, not the dark; the
straight, not the crooked side.
A habit of looking for the best in everybody, and
of saying kindly instead of unkindly things about
them, strengthens the character, elevates the ideals,
and tends to produce happiness. It also helps to
create friends. We like to be with those who see
the divine side of us, who see our possibilities, who
do not dwell upon the dark side of our life, but up
on the bright side. This is the office of a true
friend, to help us discover our noblest selves.—Ex.
••
Hallowe’en on a Southern Plantation.
(Continued from last week.)
When the merriment was at its height Mr. Allison
entering the hall where an old-fashioned reel was
being danced, announced, at its finish, that a little
diversion without awaited the guests; it would be
furnished, he said, by the plantation negroes who
would carry out an old custom in the Island of
Lewis, where at Hallowtide, the inhabitants sacri
ficed to the Sea-god, Shamhna, or Shony, as it has
been corrupted. Tn old days they gathered together
at the church of St. Mulvay, each family bringing
provisions and a peck of malt which was brewed into
ale, and after the sacrificial ceremony the evening
was spent in the fields.
It was a happy party that trooped gaily on to the
lawn where scores of dusky faces were lighted by
the torches which are the accompaniment of “Soule
ing,” and followed the leaders down to a point on
the river’s bank which was low and shallow. Here
Tim waded waist deep into the stream, and pouring
a cup of ale on the water, called upon Shony to
prosper the people through the coming year, after
which they all repaired to the little chapel where
a single candle was burning upon an altar, and
standing silent about it for a little, at a signal from
one it was blown out, and they went—not to the
fields, but to a grove at the left of the house where
long tables had been spread with wholesome food as
well as fruits and nuts, provided by the master, as
was his custom.
In the long dining room lighted by a blazing
wood fire in the wide chimney, and numberless
Jack-o’-lanferns made from golden pumpkins, was
presented a feast such as not even Allison Hall had
ever offered its guests. Added to the Hallowe’en
menu which Pomona had thought included in other
years every known thing suitecT to tlie season, was
a dish of “call-cannon,” and a drink called “Lam
asool,” neither of which had she heard of before.
The “Lamasool,” a delicious concoction of roasted
apples and ale, took the place of the cider of hith
erto feasts.
“Call-cannon’’ which is an indispensable feature
of the evening meal at Hallowtide with all good
Scotch and Irish wherever found, is made of mashed
parsnips and potatoes and chopped onions. It is
served in a deep bowl filled to the brim and placed
in the middle of the table; in the center is a well
filled with melted butter, and somewhere in the
howl a gold ring. On this occasion it was necessa
rily a very large bowl, and as Mr. Allison served
each guest with a portion he explained that in some
lucky one’s plate would be found the ring which
promised marriage to the finder within a year.
Mona’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes like
stars—if Dick were coming he must soon be here!
Marie had been covertly watching her all through
the evening. As the plate of “call-cannon” was
handed her she contrived to pass it on to Pomona—
in it her eyes alone had discerned a tiny bit of shin
ing rim, and as presently the shout went up, “Mo
na has the ring! Mona has it!” her joy was keen
est of any.
“Oh, it is too bad,” cried the young hostess,
“that I should have the ring at my own party!”
But Marie noted that her color deepened and her
breath came quick.
It was a quarter of twelve when the last car
riage disappeared down the avenue. Pomona slip
ped quickly away—Dick had not come after all, and
she could not bear it a moment longer. Through
the dining-room window, and in the shadow so as
not to be observed, down to the summer house she
went. Mother had told her this very morning of
such a beautiful test—and best of all, it was sure
to come true! Selecting two of her dear roses, the
two with the longest stems, she sped swiftly to the
house again, and quickly up the stairs to her own
room. The roses must be named, one for her lover
and one for herself, and as she twined their stems
together and repeated the spell-binding lines, look
ing intently at the lover’s rose, his would turn a
deeper hue; by her bed she must kneel, having spok
en to no one since the roses were gathered.
Not waiting to disrobe she dropped down by the
bedside, her dew-drenched skirts clinging about her
slippered feet:
“Twine, twine, and intertwine,
Let my love be wholly mine.
If his heart be kind and true,
Deeper grow his rose’s hue!”
She could not tell if it grew darker or not, the
tears were too thick. She brushed them away, and
looked again. A second time she said them, and a
third, for the third time is the charm—“ Twine,
twine”—and waited—
A half an hour later Mrs. Allison knocked softly
at the door of her daughter’s room. Receiving no
response she pushed it gently open and tip-toed in.
Kneeling beside the bed, her outstretched hands
still clasping the crimson roses, an undried tear on
her cheek, poor, overwrought little Mona had fallen
asleep.
With a little sobbing laugh the mother stooped
over her. “ Mavourneen! ” she murmured sweetly,
while a shining drop from her own eyes mingled
with the other. “Mavourneen, Dick has come! He
has been talking with Father, and is waiting for
you now down by your rose-bush. It is late, but
Father is smoking on the verandah, so you need not
mind. ”
Pomona’s hands trembled in her mother’s loving
clasp, and the tears were coming now like soft rain.
Together they rose, and with their arms about each
■other went down to the verandah. Mother stood
close to Father as the two watched their child pass
from the light of the hallway into what darkness
she knew not, nor cared, since Dick was at the other
end—watched her pass from their care into the
keeping of another love than theirs—and he turned
and pressed his face to the hand resting on his
shoulder.
“Our little girl!” he said. “If the boy had not
gotten here—But he did!”