THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN

"A modest Acorn; never to tell

What was enclosed in its simple shell!
That the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its simple cup!
And meekly to sink in the darksome earth,
Which proves that nothing could hide its worth!

"And O! how many will tread on me,
To come and admire the beautiful tree,
Whose head is towering toward the sky,
Above such a worthless thing as I!
Useless and vain, a cumberer here,
I have been idling from year to year;
But never, from this, shall a vaunting word
From the humble Pebble again be heard,
Till something without me or within,
Shall show the purpose for which I have been."
The Pebble its vow could not forget,
And it lies there wrapped in silence yet.

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. What kind of stone is a pebble?

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2. Why did the author select a pebble and acorn instead of real persons to talk this way?

3. Just what is the pebble's boast? Why "swelling words"? 4. How many influences did the pebble say it had resisted? Was this not true?

5. What added weight would these words have, had they come from another?

6. How did the pebble greet the acorn?

7. What was the first effect of the salute upon the acorn?

8. What did the acorn finally resolve to do?

9. What then became of the acorn?

10. Explain

"the pride of the forest was folded up
In the narrow space of its simple cup."

11. How was it proven that worth cannot be hidden?

12. What effect did all this have on the pebble?

13. Why now call herself "a worthless thing," "useless and vain,

a cumberer here"?

14. What high resolve did the pebble now make? Explain fully. 15. If the pebble were a person, what kind of person would it be (a) in the home; (b) in school; (c) in business?

16. If the acorn were a person, what kind of person would it be (a) in the home; (b) in school; (c) in business?

REFERENCES

LADY CAREW: True Greatness.

MENELLA BUTE SMEDLEY: The Discovery.

MACKAY: Song of Life.

WILLIAM COWPER: The Nightingale and the Glow-worm.

WALTER C. SMITH: The Self-Exiled.

THI

THE PRAYER SEEKER

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

HIS poem appears in the author's collection of religious poems and gives the last word of the Quaker poet on the subject of prayer. The poem was written in 1870 when Whittier was 63 years of age and five years after he wrote The Eternal Goodness. It is the product of his ripened religious experience, an interpretation of his profoundest religious philosophy. Whittier has given no clue as to the origin of the poem, but it is doubtless founded on the custom, in vogue in his day, which permitted church goers to pass to the sacred desk and place thereon requests for prayers during the sacred hour of prayer. Some asked prayers for favorable weather and bountiful harvest; some, for the healing of the sick; mothers asked prayers for wayward boys; gray-haired fathers, for the safe return of their soldier sons; and many requested prayers for the salvation of a friend or loved one. In this instance, an unknown woman veiled and in black glided softly to the sacred desk while the worshipers were quietly kneeling, and placed thereon a scroll with the simple request "Pray for me," then back into the night, leaving no suggestion of the nature of the burden she bore. Whittier recognizes in the simple legend the clear expression of the sense of personal need, and sympathy with the world of need. He utters the universal request, "Pray for us." The poem clearly sets forth that prayer is

an attitude of the soul in which it seeks not to know the specific miseries of others but to realize "that every heart hath needs like these."

THE PRAYER SEEKER*

Along the aisle where prayer was made,
A woman, all in black arrayed,
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host,
With gliding motion of a ghost,
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon
A scroll which bore these words alone,
Pray for me!

Back from the place of worshipping
She glided like a guilty thing:
The rustle of her draperies, stirred
By hurrying feet, alone was heard;
While, full of awe, the preacher read,
As out into the dark she sped:
Pray for me!

Back to the night from whence she came,
To unimagined grief or shame!

Across the threshold of that door

None knew the burden that she bore;

Alone she left the written scroll,

The legend of a troubled soul,-
Pray for me!

Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin!

Thou leav'st a common need within;

Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight,

Some misery inarticulate,

Some secret sin, some shrouded dread,

Some household sorrow all unsaid.

Pray for us!

Used by the courteous permission of the publishers, Hough

ton Mifflin Company.

THE PRAYER SEEKER

Pass on! The type of all thou art,
Sad witness to the common heart!
With face in veil and seal on lip,
In mute and strange companionship,
Like thee we wander to and fro,
Dumbly imploring as we go:
Pray for us!

Ah! who shall pray, since he who pleads
Our want perchance hath greater needs?
Yet they who make their loss the gain
Of others shall not ask in vain,

.

And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer
Of love from lips of self-despair:
Pray for us!

In vain, remorse and fear and hate

Beat with bruised hands against a gate
Whose walls of iron only move

And open to the touch of love.

He only feels his burden fall

Who, taught by suffering, pities all.
Pray for us!

He prayeth best who leaves unguessed
The mystery of another's breast;

Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow,
Or heads are white, thou need'st not know.
Enough to note by many a sign

That every heart hath needs like thine.
Pray for us!

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SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. Give clearly the incident upon which the poem is based.

2. What was the simple request made?

3. Why should the preacher be "full of awe”?

4. What at least could the preacher infer concerning the un

known visitor?