"In 1852, while a member of the U. S. Congress, Horace Mann,
received on the same day the nomination by a political party for
governor of Massachusetts and president of Antioch College." He
could not refuse a position that gave him such an opportunity to
help those seeking after knowledge. His advice to his students
was: "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for
humanity." In his last illness he asked his doctor how long he
had to live. On being told three hours, he replied, "I still
have something to do." As we left the town of Yellow Springs,
slumbering beneath her aged trees, we thought of these
significant words of this great man: "Lost somewhere between
sunrise and sunset two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond
minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever."

Suddenly from its lofty station in the tower the clock chimed
the hours as if admonishing us to use them rightly. To some our
journey along the road that afternoon in July may have seemed
but idleness, yet we lost few of those golden moments, and every
change in the foreground gave us a new picture. Now it was a
wooded hillside with numbers of deciduous trees crowning its low
swelling top, with a faint radiance deepening into dreamy
halftones on their eastern slopes; now several giant chestnuts
lifting their proud crests of bloom above the valley; again it
was an emerald meadow in which cattle were grazing. The rich old
gold of ripening wheat and the blue haze hanging over the
distant hills all lent an atmosphere of tranquillity which the
notes of the thrush only emphasized.

Now we felt a soft breeze that stole from the forest,