men who for the time being were deemed great and who usually were engaged in war, whereas the great bulk of life was not the life of warfare at all. It was the life of peace,—of the quiet agricultural people, of the tradespeople, of the homes, which is not written up in any history at all,—that was the real history of the world. The men and the women who were doing earth's work were not those who went out to battle or on great expeditions, but those who, day by day, heroically, unflinchingly, and without fear of oblivion, did the real business of the world. There are some familiar lines of Lowell's in "Under the Old Elm" that put the principle for us:
"The longer on this earth we live
And weigh the various qualities of men,
Seeing how most are fugitive,
Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then,
Wind-wavered, corpse-lights, daughters of the fen,
The more we feel the high stern-featured beauty
Of plain devotedness to duty, steadfast and still,
Not fed with mortal praise,
But finding amplest recompense
For life's ungarlanded expense
In work done squarely and unwasted days."
And take this matter of Christian service that lies before the thought of every earnest young life. Why are so many of us going to be, in the cities and homes from which we came, the same useless driftwood that we have been? Why? Simply because of our want of courage to face
