UNIVERSITY COURIER.
7
restless discontent. But thinking of busy, useful days makes a dreary present more cheerful.
After all happiness and friendship are but the birds upon life's telegraph wire, resting a moment then are gone. Gayly they dance and chatter, unheeding the words which pass beneath their feet. Words upon which hang the destiny of a human soul. Waste not your time luring these birds to stay with you. If they do enjoy their song while it lasts. But when they fly to a higher wire do not mourn. Watch, rather, the messages which o'er this wire carry our every thought on and on to eternity.
While we can do more with a friend we can do much without one. While we would gladly take happiness as an incident of this life, it is not, it cannot be, man's highest good. There is something better for us in this world than happiness whatever there be beyond. Then let us not place this first and thus cloud our heads with doubt and fill our hearts with discontent.
It we but do what seems to us to be our duty, wher we are weary, if we've no friend, fairy fingers will clos our eyes and unseen forms bear us away to rest.
A FEW COMPARISONS.
Men say that wasps and bees and ants have many resemblances, and have given them the same family name. But the wasps and bees are too proud to claim relationship with so humble an insect as an ant. Indeed, if one did not know the history of the family, he would never suspect that they were first cousins.
Why is it that Madame Wasp looks down on her relations so scornfully? I should think she would be proud of them. Perhaps she is jealous, for every one praises the "wise little ants," and even Solomon tells lazy people to learn a lesson from them.
This is advice many of us need, so let's take it. Never mind if you have learned the lesson once, it will do you good to review it, you know. Now you think I am going to say that they are very industrious little creatures, and then stop, but I am not. I think that the very first thing in which we should emulate the ants is their tenderness toward their mother. They are not ashamed to show their love for her. Some of them are always near her, ready to anticipate her slightest wish. They caress her. They vie with each other as to who shall show her the most respect and loving attentions. They give her the best room in the house. They bring her the choicest food. Their care for her endures throughout her whole life, and at her death they are inconsolable. Let us treat our mothers a little more as the ants treat theirs.
They are unselfish. They take no thought for their own ease or pleasure, nor do they try to put off on others what they can do themselves; but if there is anything disagreeable to do, each does his part cheerfully and well. They divide their best food, sometimes giving the last particle to some hungry fellow-worker. They take all the care of the children of the family, giving them breakfast, dinner, and supper of the freshest milk from their cows, the aphides; every morning carrying them in their arms to the air and sun light, and at evening back in again, and tucking them snugly in bed. Even when their charges are grown, they continue the same watch care over them, until each has learned all the ways of the world and is ready to take its turn in caring for others. The ant thinks of itself last.
They are patriotic. If danger threatens their little country, each ant is on the alert. The feeble ones of the community are hurried to the strongholds, sentinels are posted at every entrance, and all are ready to fight, if need be. Indeed, they do fight often, and with the greatest ardor. You will see no white feathers there. Here as elsewhere, sometimes might seems to make right and the stronger party wins. The defeated army carried away its dead and wounded. Whether they bury the dead or not, no one can tell, but it is certain that they care for the wounded most tenderly.
The love we have for our country is one of the noblest feelings that can animate mankind. But how many there are who shirk their duty in the battle for the right. Selfish cowards! They would stand by and see wrong tear up all the foundations of moral liberty and right without a feeling of responsibility upon them.
Do we, I wonder, try to rescue a fellow creature who has been overcome by the power of evil? Do we pour balm upon his wounds, and give him strengthening food? Do we help him fight his battles, and teach him how better to meet the enemy? Alas! We must hang our heads and say "no."
Heed the sermon the ants preached to me. Ants are provident. They know that winter is coming, and they lay by in store. All day long, and all night, they are tirelessly running to and fro, gathering up every particle of food they can find. There are some persons in the world, who live only for to-day and make no provision for days to come; perhaps they might learn a little something from insects.
Ants are successful architects. Who knows but man gained his first idea of how to construct an arch from watching them, as they rapidly build up their walls and arched them over, placing last a perfectly fitting keystone to hold all together.
And they are industrious, too. Just consider the amount of labor there is in caring for the many helpless thousands that require the closest watching to preserve all the conditions necessary for their development. Then there is the house they live in—more than five hundred times as high as the ants are long, and broad in proportion, besides the almost endless galleries and storerooms under ground, all completed in two or three years.
What is man's work to this? Mere child's play. His greatest achievements seem no more than mole hills when compared with the mountains thrown up-by these brave, self-sacrificing, energetic insects. L.
NATIONAL INDIVIDUALITY.
A nation derives its strength and nourishment from individual ideas. Not, however, from them as a whole, but from those which are known by the awakening of mind and soul to a conception of man's destiny.
It matters not what the nation may have been,what its form of government, what the age of its existence, not one ever reached the summit of glory and usefulness without leaving along the line of its life the impress of notable, individual ideas.
Could we go back to the beginning of Time's winding stream, and follow its course through the ages, we would see here and there along its banks the traces of national life. Some in the sandy shore and others back in the rock walls safe from the wild rushing torrent. Why this difference in posistion? Because, one though national, records the individuality of a single mind, while