:JH0 MISSOURI STATE IIURTICUL TUKAL SOCIETY. 



Let elm and ash their shadows fling 



Across the murmuring rills, 

 And let the pine's -^olian strings 



Make music on the hills. 



Plant trees and something better leave 



Your daughters and your sons 

 Than 'twere to have your name engraved 

 On marble shaft or bronze. 



How much nobler — how much more like the example of the great 

 Teacher "who went about doing good" — to contribute to the comfort 

 and encouragement of the living — to adorn the path-way of the soldier 

 in life's struggle — whether as the student of nature or science, pouring 

 over his well used volumes in ardent pursuit of knowledge, battling 

 against misfortune and poverty, or the hard handed toiling laborer, 

 breasting wind and tide, contending against want and oppression, and 

 worst of all, against unjust and discriminating legislation — or the teach- 

 er, whether of the school room imparting scientific instruction to the 

 youth of our country, scattering light and knowledge over the land, or 

 the more exalted teacher of righteousness, sowing the seeds of eternal 

 life among the erring and vicious at home or the barbarous heathen of 

 uncivilized lands abroad, mid scoffs and persecutions — how much better 

 to help on the weary traveler through time, than to obstruct and thorn 

 the path-way of his progress in life, and then seek to make amends by 

 decorating his grave when the struggle ot life is over. How much 

 more happiness one flower to the living than all the roses and lilies of 

 the floral kingdom to the dead. 



"Friends do not wait, 



Till frozen are my heart's aching chords 

 To utter tender and loving words ; 



And if you have some precious flowers to give, 

 I would have some of them, while yet I live." 



Would that we could call a halt to the custom so prevalent to-day, 

 especially in the world of politics, of tearing down, retarding and slan- 

 dering through life, then feigning to cover up by heaping honors upon 

 their house of clay. 'Tis said, that 



" Seven cities claimed the Homer, dead. 

 Through which the living Homer begged his bread." 



