"You cannot hide any secret. 'Tis as hard to hide as fire." Perhaps you think that it is not so; but you just try how long you can keep a secret that even your dearest friend does not know. I should not wonder if Emerson were right once more.
"There is much you may not do." True again. We do not need Emerson to tell us that. "You must not do that, you must not do this," the little folks hear so often, that sometimes they wonder what they may do.
But we would like to have him tell us what things last longest.
He is all ready to tell whoever wants to know, "Beauty is the quality which makes to endure. In a house that I know, I have noticed a block of spermaceti lying about closets and mantel-pieces for twenty years together, simply because the tallow-man gave it the form of a rabbit; and I suppose it may continue to be lugged about unchanged for a century. Let an artist draw a few lines or figures on the back of a letter, and that scrap of paper is rescued from danger, is put in a portfolio, or framed and glazed, and, in proportion to the beauty of the lines drawn, will be kept for centuries." And there are beauties of heart, mind and character, that do not meet the eye, but are none the less powerful in "making to endure."
[THE OLD MAN AND THE NERVOUS COW.]
BY R.E.
"There was an old man who said 'How