'T’ke 
This is the great American Aloe, or Century Plant, It is from ten 
to seventy years, according to climate, in attaining maturity, when it pro¬ 
duces a gigantic flower-stem forty feet in height, and perishes. Its name 
is from the Greek, signifying admirable. 
Most patient of plants in Flora’s domain! 
Thou teachest us all to what all may attain, 
If but working with heart, with might and with main, 
We trust in High Heaven—while delays we disdain. 
— E. M. Patterson. 
Slow but Sure Achievement. 
HE greatest part of mankind will be found all too prone to chafe 
^ under the tedious endeavors and the long delays that so frequently 
attend their darling projects, and especially if they have planned some 
grand enterprise. They ill brook the weariness that comes of prolonged 
expectation. “Why do not our attempts succeed—and at once? Whence 
is it that our aims are thus fruitless, our plans frustrated, our labors un¬ 
availing V’ rise with indignant protest or scarcely stifled sullen murmur 
from a, thousand hastily disappointed breasts. Realization is sweet, cer- 
iainly. Yet it is frequently the unwise mistake of age, as well as of youth, 
to complain so petulantly. One w T ould imagine that such malcontents 
have been injured with grave injustice—that they suffer some flagrant 
abridgment of their rights! . . . Ho; no; let all, when their schemes are 
thwarted and their efforts baffled, quietly and meekly, yet strong in hope¬ 
fulness, resume their wonted painstaking, with invoking the blessing of 
