Two Boys and a Cigarette

686 IMPROVEMENT ERA

once resided in the centers of Europe. This ideal calls for a resurrection of the teaching profession to the point where it will command greater respect and greater confidence. Learning must be put to work. To accomplish this the learned must be a good workman. Learning must deal, even more than now, with realities and not whimsicalities. Learning can well afford to lose much of its polish and politeness (although this is not necessary) if it can assume more rough commonplaceness and adaptability. And in such assumption it will lose none of its great dignity because the greatest dignity comes from achievement. The learned must not only have the potential power of mind and spirit, as now; they must turn the wheels. Honor will seek them out. Logan, Utah

Two Boys and a Cigarette (Selected)

Two bright little fellows, named Harry and Will, Were just the same age and the same size, until One day in their travels it chanced that they met A queer little creature, surnamed Cigarette. This queer little creature made friends with the boys, And told them a story of masculine joys He held for their sharing. "I tell you," quoth he, "The way to be manly and big is through me." Will listened and yielded but Harry held out. ;

"I think your assertions are open to doubt," He said, "and besides, I'm afraid I'd be sick." "Afraid!" echoed Will, "Oh, you cowardly stick! Well, I'm not afraid, look a here!" As he spoke He blew out a halo of cigarette smokjs.

Five years from that meeting saw them again. The time had arrived when they both should be men, But strangely enough, although Harry boy stood As tall and as strong as a tree in the. wood, Poor Will seemed a dwarf; sunken eye, hollow cheek, Stoop shoulders, proclaimed him unmanly and weak. With thumb and forefinger he listlessly rolled A cigarette, smoothing each wrinkle and fold, And the smoke that he puffed from his lips, I declare Took the form of a demon, and grinned from the air. And it said: "See that wreck of a man that I made Of the boastful young fellow who wasn't afraid." Ella Wheeler Wilcox