We should not wait until a great and good man has left us before giving him honor, or trying to understand what he has done for us.  A dreary world ours would be, if there were no poets’ songs echoing through it; and we may be proud of our country that it has a poetry of its own, which it is for us to know and possess for ourselves.

Longfellow has said: 

  “What the leaves are to the forest
    With light and air and food,
  Ere their sweet and tender juices
    Have been hardened into wood,
  That to the world, are children”: 

and something like this we may say of his songs.  There is in all true poetry a freshness of life which makes the writer of it immortal.

The singer so much beloved has passed from sight, but the music of his voice is in the air, and, listening to it, we know that he can not die.

[Illustration]

=Inauguration Day=

March 4

The date was settled by the old Congress of the Confederation in 1788, when the procedure was established for the election of a President.  It was decreed that the Electoral College should meet on the first Wednesday of January, the votes be counted by the House of Representatives on the first Wednesday of February, and the President be inaugurated on the first Wednesday of March.  This March date was the 4th.  March 4 has been Inauguration Day ever since.

=HOW A PRESIDENT IS INAUGURATED=

BY CLIFFORD HOWARD

As you will remember, Thomas Jefferson was the first President of our country to be inaugurated at Washington.  This took place in the year 1801, when our national capital was not much more than a year old; and you may imagine that the city was a very different-looking place from what it is to-day.

But now instead of a straggling town with a few muddy streets and about three thousand inhabitants, Jefferson would find our national capital one of the most beautiful cities on the face of the earth, with a population of nearly three hundred thousand; and on March 4 he would behold a scene such as he never dreamed of.  Thousands of flags fly from the house-tops and windows, bright-colored bunting in beautiful designs adorns the great public buildings, all the stores and business houses are gaily decorated with flags and streamers, and everything presents the appearance of a great and glorious holiday, while the streets swarm with the hundreds of thousands of people who have come to the city from all parts of the country to take part in the grand celebration.

Everybody is moving toward Pennsylvania Avenue, where the parade is to march.  No, not everybody:  some fifty or sixty thousand make their way to the Capitol, so as to get a glimpse of the inauguration exercises that take place on the east portico; and although the ceremonies will not begin until nearly one o’clock, the great space in front of the Capitol is packed with people three hours before that time, some of them having come as early as eight o’clock in the morning to be sure of getting a good view.