Lord, tame my tongue, and make it pure,
And teach it only to repeat
Thy promises, all safe, all sure;
To tell thy love, so strong and sweet.

Lord, tame my tongue, and make it kind
The faults of others to conceal
And all their virtues call to mind;
Teach it to soothe, to bless, to heal.

ELIZABETH ROSSER




SAMUEL SMILES, THE AUTHOR OF "SELF-HELP"


When Samuel Smiles was a schoolboy in Scotland, he was fonder of frolic
than of learning. He was not a prize-winner, and so was not one of his
teacher's favorites. One day his master, vexed by his dulness, cried out,
"Smiles, you will never be fit for anything but sweeping the streets of
your native borough!" From that day the boy's mates called him by the name
of the street sweeper in the little town. But he was not discouraged.

"If I have done anything worthy of being remembered," he wrote, more than
sixty years later, when his name was known over the whole world, "it has
not been through any superiority of gifts, but only through a moderate