And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in,-a good joke it was too!

There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain,1 That could harness a team with a logical chain; When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire, We called him "The Justice," but now he's "The Squire."

3

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,2.
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;4
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,-
Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!"

You hear that boy laughing?—You think he's all

fun;

But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done; The children laugh loud as they troop to his call, And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

Yes, we're boys,

with pen;

And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men? Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay, Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

1 with a three-decker brain. | Smith (born in Boston in 1808), a Explain this forcibly descriptive classmate of Dr. Holmes, and aumetaphor. thor of numerous hynins and lyrics, among which are, "My

2 pith, mental vigor. 8 tried to conceal him. What country, 'tis of thee," "Yes, my native land, I love thee," and Dr. Samuel Francis "The morning light is breaking."

is the joke?

4 Smith.

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!1
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,2
Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE BOYS!3

7.- PROSE BRILLIANTS FROM HOLMES.

THE wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions in which its knowledge is embodied.

Beware of rash criticisms: the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls.

What a man wants to do, in talking with a stranger, is to get and to give as much of the best and most real life that belongs to the two talkers as the time will let him.

Talk about those subjects you have had long in your mind, and listen to what others say about subjects you have studied but recently. Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.

How we all like the spurting up of a fountain, seemingly against the law that makes water everywhere

1 its gold and its gray. plain.

2 our life-lasting toys. the meaning of this metaphor.

Ex

Give

8 Dear Father... Boys. Note how the poet rises from the playful tone to this lofty and solemni strain.

slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to get as low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow, to that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever (if the universe be eternal), — the great outspread hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been linked to each other in many a household, where one name was historic, and the other let me say the nobler-unknown, save by some faint reflected ray, borrowed from its lustrous companion.

The grandest objects of sense and thought are common to all climates and civilizations. The sky, the woods, the waters, the storms, life, death, love, the hope and vision of eternity, - these are images that write themselves in poetry in every soul which has any thing of the divine gift.

I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne, "Every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself." I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to you over a new route, by a new and express train of associations.

The more we study the body and the mind, the more we find both to be governed, not by but according to laws, such as we observe in the larger universe.

Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies: they are ready enough to tell them. Goodbreeding never forgets that amour-propre is universal. When you read the story of the Archbishop and Gil Blas, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor old man's delusion; but don't forget that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and that his master served such. a booby rightly in turning him out of doors.

At thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of this tenement of life; twenty years later we have carved it, or shut up our jackknives. Then we are ready to help others, and care less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in our

way.

One-story intellects, two-story intellects, three-story intellects with skylights. All fact-collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are one-story men. Two

story men compare, reason, generalize, using the labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground-floors, that can store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so that he can get at them,-facts below, principles above, and all in ordered series. Poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture, in the attics.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch: nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace.