It may be that you cannot stay
    To lend a friendly hand to him
  Who stumbles on the slippery way,
    Pressed by conditions hard and grim;
  It may be that you dare not heed
    His call for help, because you lack
  The strength to lift him, but you need
    Not push him back.

  It may be that he has not won
    The right to hope for your regard;
  He may in folly have begun
    The course that he has found so hard;
  It may be that your fingers bleed,
    That Fortune turns a bitter frown
  Upon your efforts, but you need
    Not kick him down.

S.E.  Kiser.

LIFE

In life is necessarily much monotony, sameness.  But our triumph may lie in putting richness and meaning into routine that apparently lacks them.

  Forenoon and afternoon and night,—­Forenoon,
  And afternoon, and night,—­Forenoon, and—­what! 
  The empty song repeats itself.  No more? 
  Yea, that is Life:  make this forenoon sublime,
  This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer,
  And Time is conquered, and thy crown is won.

Edward Rowland Sill.

From “Poems.”

THE GRUMPY GUY

When students came, full of ambition, to the great scientist Agassiz, he gave each a fish and told him to find out what he could about it.  They went to work and in a day or two were ready for their report.  But Agassiz didn’t come round.  To kill time they went to work again, observed, dissected, conjectured, and when at the end of a fortnight Agassiz finally appeared, they felt that their knowledge was really exhaustive.  The master’s brief comment was that they had made a fair beginning, and again he left.  They then fell to in earnest and after weeks and months of investigation declared that a fish was the most fascinating of studies.  If our interest in life fails, it is not from material to work on.  No two leaves are alike, not two human beings are alike, and if we are discerning, the attraction of any one of them is infinite.

  The Grumpy Guy was feeling blue; the Grumpy Guy was glum;
  The Grumpy Guy with baleful eye took Misery for a chum. 
  He hailed misfortunes as his pals, and murmured, “Let ’em come!”

  “Oh, what’s the blooming use?” he yelped, his face an angry red,
  “When everything’s been thought before and everything’s been said? 
  And what’s a Grumpy Guy to do except to go to bed?

  “And where’s the joy the poets sing, the merriment and fun? 
  How can one start a thing that’s new when everything’s begun?—­
  When everything’s been planned before and everything’s been done?—­

  “When everything’s been dreamed before and everything’s been sought? 
  When everything that ever ran has, so to speak, been caught?—­
  When every game’s been played before and every battle fought?”