—­F.B.  Sanborn.

    One small cloud can hide the sunlight;
    Loose one string, the pearls are scattered;
    Think one thought, a soul may perish;
    Say one word, a heart may break.

    —­A.A.  Procter.

Self-scrutiny is often the most unpleasant, and always the most difficult, of moral actions.  But it is also the most important and salutary; for, as the wisest of the Greeks said, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

    —­J.  Strachan.

    Try your own selves, whether ye are in the faith; prove your own
    selves.

    —­2 Corinthians 13. 5.

Gracious Father, help me that I may not be thoughtless and unkind.  May I be gentle and sympathetic.  Forgive me for any unhappiness which I may have made, and may it be mine to know the rejoicing that comes hi lifting a discouraged life in time.  Amen.

DECEMBER SIXTEENTH

John Selden born 1584.

Francois La Rochefoucauld born 1610.

George Whitefield born 1714.

Jane Austen born 1775.

    So live that when thy summons comes to join
    The innumerable caravan that moves
    To that mysterious realm where each shall take
    His chamber in the silent halls of death,
    Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
    Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
    By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
    Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
    About him and lies down to pleasant dreams.

    —­William Cullen Bryant.

    As the wind extinguishes a taper but kindles the fire, so absence is
    the death of an ordinary passion, but lends strength to the greater.

    —­La Rochefoucauld.

    If a man die, shall he live again?

    —­Job 14. 14.

Heavenly Father, with thy help may I enter into the hope that overcomes the fear of death.  May my days be full of aspiration, and through faith may my life move toward the eternal and the sublime.  Amen.

DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH

Sir Roger L’Estrange born 1616.

Ludwig van Beethoven born 1770.

Sir Humphry Davy born 1779.

John Greenleaf Whittier born 1807.

    The night is mother of the day,
      The winter of the spring;
    And ever upon old decay
      The greenest mosses cling. 
    Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
      Through showers the sunbeams fall;
    For God, who loveth all his works,
      Has left his hope with all.

    —­John Greenleaf Whittier.

    The sun set; but not his hope: 
    Stars rose; his faith was earlier up.

    —­Ralph Waldo Emerson.

    What I am I have made myself.

    —­Sir Humphry Davy.