associates together and poisoned them. Leigh Hunt rewrites the incident thus:

"What!' exclaimed Dante, 'art thou no longer, then, among the living?'

'Perhaps I appear to be,' answered the friar; 'for the moment any one commits a treachery like mine his soul gives up his body to a demon, who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche? He seems to be walking the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years.'

"'Impossible,' cried Dante; 'Branca Doria is still alive; he eats, drinks and sleeps like any other man.'

""I tell thee,' returned the friar, 'that the soul of the man he slew had no sooner reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him ere the soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand and relieve mine eyes.'

Dante, whose ferocity was as great as his genius, refused to help the miserable sinner who begged "But now put forth thy hand and ope mine eyes." Says Dante: "I oped them not. Ill manners were best courtesy to him."

We do not believe, as the ancient believed and as Dante taught although he was too intelligent to believe in hell's superstition-that men's bodies walk up and down on this earth after their souls have been taken below for perpetual torment.

We know there is a death in the body which is in

finitely worse than the real death which sets a man free and ends his responsibilities.

The death of enthusiasm is the greatest possible calamity-fight against it.

Enthusiasm is hope, confidence in yourself, courage, a determination to succeed, or, at least, to struggle on trying.

Said Goethe: "Money lost, something lost.

"Honor lost, much lost.

"Courage lost, everything lost-better you were never born."

Enthusiasm includes courage in its meaning. Enthusiasm lost, everything lost-better you were never born.

What shall a man do who feels courage gradually leaving him and doubt, worry creeping in?

Can enthusiasm be kept alive in spite of disappointments, in spite of the disillusion that follows effort!

That each man must find out for himself.

Life grows wearisome.

other mile in a long race.

Every year seems like an

Others fly past us. We seem to stand still. Enthusiasm flickers in the early morning, fades away by noon, gloom and depression finish the day.

What can a man do who feels enthusiasm dying within him, who remembers with a bitter smile the hope of his boyhood and his impatience to meet the world?

What cure is there for the deadly disease worse than death, the disease that the doctors do not know, the disease of dying enthusiasm that attacks nearly all men before they die, and a majority before they are thirty?

What can we do to keep enthusiasm alive? We can at least talk to ourselves earnestly and determinedly, as we would talk to a man sitting dejected on the roadside. To him we should say:

"Get up and walk on. You have every chance now that you ever had.

"You are older than some who have succeeded, true. But many succeed when much older than you and after discouragements much greater than yours.

"You have been so discouraged that you have thought of suicide. What of it? In all the list of the world's greatest successes there is probably not one but has felt as you feel-longed for death, and been tempted to seek it.

"Don't let the work that you have done already go to waste.

"Don't moan over time wasted. Let the thought of that time drive you to use the time that remains.

"The road is no steeper or rougher than it used to be. Thousands with more cause of complaint are struggling on, refusing to give up hope."

Hope goes but can be called back. out, but it can be made strong again.

Enthusiasm dies

Age is no bar to success if the enthusiasm is there. Weakness does not prevent success if only the body is weak. It is weak courage that keeps men sitting down as failures when they should be going ahead traveling the road.

The trouble in the average man is not lack of ability, intelligence, strength or health. It is lack of the courage that comes from enthusiasm.

Watch yourself and that power within you. With enthusiasm really dead and gone, your body lives still upon this earth, but, like the miserable creatures in Dante's Inferno, the real you is not here.

Courage is the man, and a man without courage is dead.

The only real wealth is human labor. If you don't waste that, nothing matters. Be as big a fool as you like, with your money.

To let hatred sink too deeply into the mind and heart is bad for the hater.

Of one thing be sure, young gentlemen: this and the next few years hold great possibilities for those that now have little. When the water is rough and weather uncertain, look out for valuable wreckage coming ashore. Of those that have, many will have left little or nothing before long. Changed and changing conditions will develop a new crop of the prosperous. Things will have to be done in a new way, the man with the new idea will have a chance.

The Span of Life

Life is a short walk along a narrow thread of destiny, begin ning and ending in a mysterious unknown. Hope keeps us balanced as we walk the narrow line. Life is short as we see it, but in reality it is without beginning, and never ends—and, long or short, it is all that we have.

You are the figure walking on a slender thread. Each of us walks alone and must balance himself through life. Many millions walk but a few steps and fall back into the infinite whence they came. Other millions walk half or three-quarters of the way-a small percentage finish the full natural span of a normal life.

Hesitating, balancing, leaning to this side and to that side, you go along the span that leads from birth to death.

This is a subject about which all the writers have written, all the poets have sung, all the philosophers have speculated, and all the law makers have legislated.

We have all got to take the journey, walk the span, whether we like it or not. We are not asked when we come here whether we want to come. And it is not left to us to say when we shall go. We come without knowing why, we go without knowing why, and we travel our journey balanced on a thread stretched between the finger and thumb of Destiny.

We are not, however, mere machines wound up and set in motion. Something is left to our own decision.