“IF

PLEASING EVERYBODY

F YOU please," said the Weather Vane to the Wind, "will you turn to the south? There is such a cry against the cold that I am afraid they'll pull me down if I stop much longer in this north squarter."

So the Wind came from the south; clouds hid the face of the sun and rain fell in showers.

"Oh, please turn me from the south!" said the Weather Vane to the Wind again. "The potatoes 10 will all be spoiled; the hay wants dry weather; and while I stay here, rain it will. And what with the heat and the wet, the farmers are all angry at me."

So the Wind shifted into the west and there came soft drying breezes, day after day.

"Oh, dear," said the Weather Vane, "here is a deal of trouble! Such evil looks as I get from eyes all round me, the first thing every morning! The grass is drying up, and there is no water for the cattle. And what is to be done? The farmers say that there will s be no corn. Do turn me somewhere else."

Upon this the Wind grew very angry and with a fierce puff sent the Weather Vane into the east.

"What do they say to you now?" he asked, after a few days.

"Why," said the Weather Vane, "everybody has caught cold, and everything is blighted. That's what they say; and somehow or other they lay it to the east wind."

IC

"Well!" cried the Wind, "let them find fault. I1s see it is impossible for you or me to please everybody, so in future I shall do what I think best, and you will point where I tell you without asking any questions. In that way we shall satisfy more people than we do now with all our consideration."

1. Why did the weather vane fail in its efforts? Is the moral of this lesson that you should not try to please anybody? Discuss.

2. A girl clerk in a store failed to please two customers one morning. She quit trying to please any of her customers for the rest of the day. What happened?

3. A policeman agrees to please everybody. Make up a story, telling what troubles he had in one day.

20

"I

BY EDGAR A. GUEST

LEARNED this over there," said a soldier lad

to me,

"That the general and the private are as like as they

can be ;

And though one is giving orders and the other one

obeys,

There'd be no such thing as freedom if they pulled in separate ways.

The thing that counts in battle is a centralized control 10 With everybody in it set to reach a common goal.

"The general wasn't fighting just because he loved to fight;

He'd the everlasting notion that his country's cause was right.

Is The flag that waved above us meant as much to him

20

as me,

And the thing that he was after wasn't fame, but

victory.

And I came to understand it, that beneath the shoulder

straps

And the markings on the tunic, we were ordinary

chaps.

(From Just Folks, copyrighted by Reilly and Lee Co., Publishers. Reproduced by permission.)

"He was thinking of his children in the way I thought

of mine.

He was wondering where men went to when death took them from the line.

Oh, I don't know how to tell it, but down beneath the s skin

We were all alike in Flanders, with a common goal to

win.

And we just forgot our notions and our separate ranks and creeds,

And worked and pulled together—and that's all a nation needs.

"I learned this over there," said a soldier lad to me, "That the general and the private are as like as they

can be.

And when people come to know it - when they learn that every man

Wants to win his way to Heaven and to do the best

he can

They'll just work and pull together for the glory of 20 the soul,

And be one united army marching toward a common goal."

I. This is the lesson one soldier learned in the World War. State it in your own words. How does this lesson apply to your school? 2. Explain the reference to: Flanders; private; tunic; goal; centralized control,

INDIAN TALES

A simple, care-free life in the open; endless hunting and fishing; eternal camp life in wood or by lake or river. These are the alluring things in the lives of the Indians: they are the poetry of a lost people. On the other hand, the red man's war whoop was the worst terror our pioneer ancestors knew. Wild beasts, famine, and pestilence could be endured calmly; but Indians. This sheaf of stories sets forth both the poetry and the sterner prose of Indian life.