wait at night for a bold man-eater, who had stalked up and picked up a man on an open railway truck as the train slowed down into the station. Parenti lay on the floor, Hubner was in an upper berth, and Ryal was on the seat of the carriage, with his rifle. Ryal was on guard, but unfortunately he fell asleep. At 2 o'clock in the morning the man-eater they were hunting entered the carriage, picked up Ryal, jumped through the window, and fled to the forest, where the unfortunate man's whitened bones were long afterward found.—Peter MacQueen, Leslie's Weekly.
(146)
ASPIRATION
Does not every man at times feel the aspiration to realize the man he "might have been":
Across the fields of long ago
He sometimes comes to me,
A little lad with face aglow—
The lad I used to be.
And yet he smiles so wistfully,
Once he has crept within—
I think that he still hopes to see
The man I might have been!
(147)
Climb on! Climb ever! Ne'er despond,
Tho from each summit gained
There stretch forth ever heights beyond—
Ideals to be attained!
Life's rescript simply is to climb,
Unheeding toil and tire;
Failure hath no attaint of crime,
If we but still aspire.
—James T. White, "Character Lessons."
(148)
The spirit of man is not intended to grovel on low levels or to gravitate downward under carnal influences. Man is the only creature on earth so constructed physically as to be able to gaze upward.
"He died climbing" is the simple inscription
on a monument to an Alpine
guide, who perished when attempting the
ascent of a peak. That record is a noble
tribute to a hero. His attitude should
be ours—looking upward and pressing
forward. He was pressing on in the pathway
of duty. Many a splendid career, intercepted
at the critical juncture, might
be described by the same sententious record.
"He died climbing" may be said of
many a young and ardent enthusiast—of
Mackay, soon cut off in Uganda; of
Bishop Hannington, reaching the border
of the same land and martyred there; of
Patteson, soon slain in Melanesia by islanders
who mistook him for a slave-catching
captain; of Henry Martyn, who did
not live to see any of the results of his
mission; of Wyclif, who sent forth the
Bible in English but was not permitted
to see the beginning of the Reformation.
All these "died climbing." (Text.)
(149)
Theodosia Garrison points out in these verses that aspiration, even when it fails of realization, is good for the soul:
Let me remember that I failed,
So I may not forget
How dear that goal the distance veiled
Toward which my feet were set.
Let me forget, if so Thy will,
How fair the joy desired,
Dear God, so I remember still
That one day I aspired. (Text.)
—Ainslee's Magazine.
(150)
W. H. T. Squires expresses the normal law of the soul—that its desires are to rise and climb—in these verses:
Up from the mists of marsh and fen,
Up from the gloom of the glen,
The mountains rise to kiss the skies,
They spurn the plain that lowly lies—
Up from the forest's fitful shade,
Up to the heights that God hath made.
Up from the stains of sordid strife,
Up to a loftier life
My spirit cries, "Aspire! aspire!"
Climb we the heights from high to higher
Up, lest the fleeting daylight fade,
"Up!" is the law God hath laid.
(151)
See Discontent, Divine; Focusing the
Eye.
ASSIMILATION
The alfalfa plant is a rank species of
grass that grows in the western sections
of our country. It is valuable for horses
