A Fifth Reader (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3A PSALM OF LIFE Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each tomorrow Find us farther than today. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!' Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead! Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow THE ONE-STRINGED FIDDLE "hello! Here's father's old fiddle, to be sure." We were up in the garret. What is a house good for without a garret? What is a garret good for unless it has old things in it? What are old things good for unless you can go and rummage among them and "oh!" and "ah!" about them when it comes a rainy day? "Well, well, here's the old fiddle. Many's the time you have played textit{Merrily, oh! and textit{Hunter's Chorus and textit{Pompey Duck-legs. I'd been wondering what had become of you, and here you are. We...