"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn,

Good and ill together."

All's Well that Ends Well, IV. 3.

HE fates that weave the web have mixed the

THE

threads,

Some gray, some of a roseate hue, Why it is so I leave to wiser heads, But 'tis, alas! I fear, too true.

January 5.

"Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days."

L

Midsummer Night's Dream, III. 1.

OVE is a dream of a midsummer night,

Full of passion and storm,

Reason the outcome of many a fight

Will shield us from harm.

Happy is he who the two can unite;
But if you cannot, seek safety in flight.

"O Time! thou must untangle this, not I."

Twelfth Night, II. 2.

HERE'S many a tangled skein that Time

THER

untangles,

There's much that we must all endure;
With time so many a lute no longer jangles,
There's many an evil Time alone can cure.
O great Consoler! teach me not to grieve
When my allotted course is fully run;
Teach me the world resignedly to leave
And wend my way towards a brighter sun.

January 7.

"We must take the current as it serves,

Or lose our ventures."

Julius Cæsar, IV. 3.

O with the current, let it gently bear

Go

Your barque along.

Halt at the rapids, lest they hurl your barque

The rocks among.

Wait till the rising flood the danger clears,
Then launch again and banish fears.

A

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude."

As You Like It, II. 7.

CYNIC once describéd gratitude

As a fine sense of favours yet to come;

So may we well describe ingratitude

As a conviction that their course is run.

January 9.

"Who alone suffers, suffers most in mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind;
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip
When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship."
King Lear, III. 6.

THAT

HAT grief when shared is shorn of half its weight

Is an opinion that I cannot share.

Far rather bear alone the strokes of fate

Than to another's eyes my grief lay bare.

66 All gone, and not

One friend to take his fortune by the arm

And go along with him."

Timon of Athens, IV. 2.

HAT! not one single friend among so

WHA

many

'Tis hard indeed to find one's self alone,
Seeking in vain too for that one poor penny-
Money and friends alike together gone.
Still the position 's not without its uses,
Revealing powers we knew not of before.
It gives no room for plunder or abuses,

And then there may be golden days in store.
It's always well to know the very worst.

All fear is at an end-that's one great matter. We may be drenched, but then the cloud has burst, And we are quit of sycophants who flatter.

So let us brace our courage to the task,

Set head and hands resolvedly to work. That God vouchsafe us strength is all we ask; However hard the toil, we shall not shirk.

"The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."

Hamlet, II. 2.

EW verify ambition's dreams,

FE

And yet the dreams do good;

In struggling hard for fortune's beams
We earn our daily food.

Those youthful dreams of fame, renown,

The world drives quick away;

A realistic half-a-crown

Beats any dream to-day.

January 12.

"Now God be praised that to believing souls Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair."

2 Henry VI. II. I.

THE That is the sceptic's curse.

HE true believer knoweth not despair;

If little doubts creep in, O, have a care!
They lead from bad to worse.