Joy is divine. Come storm, come shine,
The hopeful are the gladdest;
And doubt and dread, children, believe
Of all things are the saddest.
In morning's light, let youth be bright;
Take in the sunshine tender;
Then, at the close, shall life's decline
Be full of sunset splendor.
And ye who fret, try, like Jeannette,
To shun all weak complaining;
And not, like Jo, cry out too soon—
"It always is a-raining!"
WATSEKA.
AN INDIAN LEGEND.
Many years ago there lived in the west a tribe of Indians who called themselves Illinois. They were not savage and warlike, as the tribes around them were, but they liked to live in peace, hunting the deer in the great woods, and taking the fish from the shallow streams.
On the bank of a pretty little river that flows into the great Mississippi a small band of these Indians had built their wigwams. All along the stream were tall oaks and spreading walnut trees, with here and there a grove of wild plums or a thicket of hazel bushes. But only half a mile away began the great prairie, where there was neither tree nor bush, but only tall grass; and it stretched like a green sea as far as the eye could reach.
What there was on the other side of the prairie the Indians did not know. But they had been told that a fierce race of men lived there who loved only war.
"We will live quietly in our own place," they said, "and then these strangers will not molest us."
And so for many years they lived, in a careless, happy way by the side of the pretty river; and few of their young men dared to wander far from the friendly shelter of the woods.