OH, CHILDREN DEAR!

H, CHILDREN DEAR! All mankind throws

A kiss to you! The nation shows

How glad it is to greet the fair!
Your music fills the chastened air,

And kindliness in beauty glows!

The world now pays the debt it owes
Unto the Child, and ev'rywhere
Man's purest love its grace bestows,
Oh, children dear!

As through the years the spring-tide flows,
Caressing you where'er it goes,

You will be blest, for Love's sweet prayer
Will have its answer; earthborn care

Shall turn into a heavenly rose,

Oh, children dear!

-LOUIS MANN.

BROTHERHOOD

N forest and in meadows green

IN

Are many little folks unseen

Who dress in fur and feather. They ask but love of you and me To make them happy as can be In every kind of weather.

They go to school and work and play, A few by night, but more by day, From danger often fleeing.

They quarrel and make up again; They hurt themselves and suffer pain,

Just like a human being.

But most of all they live in dread (I'm sorry that it must be said)

Of those who should be kindlyOf heedless man and thoughtless boy, Who seem to count it as a joy

To chase and hunt them blindly.

Now Peter Rabbit asks of you,
For self and all his neighbors too,
Just this-that you will love them.
Your love they will return in kind
And then some day you'll surely find
How little we're above them.

BROTHERHOOD-(Continued)

For just as God made you and me
He made these little folk to be,
And so, somehow or other,
I feel that in His all-wise plan
It is His purpose to have man
To be their elder brother.

-THORNTON W. BURGESS.

APOLOGIA

It's a little bit short of a crime
To ask me to turn to a rhyme,
But I send this to you

With apologies too

For taking so much of your time.

-LEO DITRICHSTEIN.

A

WHOSE FAULT?

BRAND-NEW wooden rocking-horse, a lovely dapple gray

His owner stood beside him in an owner's proud

ish way;

"And yet," he said, "I think I'd like him better with a few

More shiny dark spots in his coat-I'll try what I can do."

The reason that he thought so was because he chanced to spy

A fine new hammer and some tacks left temptingly near by;

And as he loved to hammer more than anything on earth,

He set about his happy task with chuckling, gleeful mirth.

He took those tacks with quite the air of one whom conscience guides,

And pounded them and pounded them into the pony's sides,

Until an object more forlorn you would go far

to see

Then sister came and suddenly there was an

end of glee.