An easy thing, O Power Divine, To thank thee for these gifts of Thine, For summer's sunshine, winter's snow, For hearts that kindle thoughts that glow.

An easy thing, O Power Divine, To thank thee for these gifts of Thine, For summer's sunshine, winter's snow, For hearts that kindle thoughts that glow.

Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby clothes, and after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the poorest home.

Genius is lonely without the surrounding presence of a people to inspire it.

Only yonder magnificent pine-tree... holds her unchanging beauty throughout the year, like her half-brother, the ocean, whose voice she shares; and only marks the flowing of her annual tide of life by the new verdure that yearly submerges all trace of last year's ebb.

In our methodical American life, we still recognize some magic in summer. Most persons at least resign themselves to being decently happy in June. They accept June. They compliment its weather. They complain of the earlier months as cold, and so spend them in the city; and they complain of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away.

Character shows itself apart from genius as a special thing. The first point of measurement of any man is that of quality.