---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - James, Harry A.
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 13
number: 5
published: 1910-03
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'James, Harry A., "Today," *Improvement Era* 13, no. 5 (March 1910): 412.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera135unse
  transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers.
  identifier: improvementera135unse
start_page: 412
end_page: 412
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1910-03)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera135unse
  publication_year: 1910
  note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1910, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Today


<!-- page:412 -->

412                        IMPROVEMENT ERA.

little   more than eight hundred miles?             These two cars left their
tracks in    a strip of        country that has been "a hiss and a by-
word."      They cannot be erased.           They may serve as a stamp of
growth.       It is as impossible to forecast       what may follow, as it is
to tell the course of the roots of that quaint pine on a rocky peak.
Pioneers have always builded better than they knew.

Kanab, Utah.

To Day.
(For the Improvement Era.)

Why are we wistfully shaking our heads,
And sighing for days that are o'er,
Speaking of joys that are long ago past
As if they could never be more?
If in our world     things are going awry,
Nature has changed not, but men;
We are to blame for the sighs and the tears,
God is the same now as then.

Trouble   is   oft what we make for ourselves,
Sorrow a thing we create,
Hugging the burden we might cast aside,
Despairingly talking of Fate;
If we are men, let us live out     the past.
Problems were made but to face,
The more we endure the greater the joy,
When we get to the end of the race.

"Onward!" the motto, not sighing for aye
For the shadowy age of gold,
Of that which shall be in a far-distant age,
Or that was in the good days of old:
Brothers, the time that     is   given us is now,
Our part in life's game we must play,
Be content, and remember for you and for me
The most glorious tima is To Day.
Harry A. Jame;