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Show ALONG LIFE'S TRAIL Cy THOMAS A. CLARK Dt-uii of Men, University of Illinois, lit;, I'JI. Wfcaterr. Nuwnpuur Union.) HIS EROTHER'S KEEPER IT IS characteristic of the nice to shirk responsibility. Adum blamed our lirst nionil disaster upon Kve; Cuin lust his temper when tlie Lord asked hiin about Al)el, ami rather petulantly naked: "Am I my brothers keeper?" Klchardsnn knew that younK Murphy, Mur-phy, who was lodging at his house, was supposed tu he in college and that he was felling money from home regularly regu-larly to iny his college hills, though he had never registered and was sleeping sleep-ing through the days and wasting his nights In foolish and sometimes even In vicious dissipation, lie knew, too, that the money from home meant u real sacrllice to h.inl-working parents. "Why did you not tell me," 1 asked him, when hy chance 1 stumbled onto the facts, "and give me u chance to get Murphy to class V" "It wasn't any of my affairs," he said quite carelessly. "He was paying his rent regularly, i wasn't responsible for him. Why should I worry?" Why, Indeed? Curler, living across the hall from Wilbur in the same building, was going to the dogs pretty fast. Not Infrequently he came in late at night under the inlluenee of liquor, and be was wasting his money pretty regularly regular-ly in poker and crap games. "What have you done with Carter?" 1 asked Wilbur, when the conditions in (he place came to my attention. "I haven't done anything," was his reply. "It's not my funerul, so long as lie doesn't bother me." "Don't you feel any responsibility," 1 asked, "for the character of the house, and for the effect which Carter's Car-ter's escapades ure having on his work?" "Why should I?" he inquired rather ' surprised at my question. "I think I'm doing pretty well If I look after myself. 1 don't want to get him Into troubl" I soniotI:.ies wonder If young people peo-ple ever stop to think what free education educa-tion involves and why the state is educating edu-cating them why it spends every year millions of dollars In the support of education. The real reason is not that we may be trained as individuals to look after ourselves only, and to follow fol-low our selfish purposes without regard re-gard to the welfare of our neighbors or of the community in which we live. We are all in a very large sense our brother's keeper. It requires eourage to take responsibility for good order and moral conduct, and few of us have courage. "I'd lose my friends and get into trouble," a man said to me recently, "if I tried to change conditions." And he wanted friends and hated trouble, lie hud never realized that all of us are our brothers' keepers, and it is a responsibility which we cannot shirk. MY SENTIMENTAL GARDEN MY NEIGHBOR' has a very beautiful beauti-ful and spacious garden, well-kept, well-kept, orderly and full of 'he rarest and choicest plants. She knows the naua-nnd naua-nnd the ancestry of every plant in it, she calls each one by i;s lirst name as one might address the individuals in a lafje family of children. "Have you fioule de Neige?" she asks me when I am looking at her wonderful collection of peonies. I stammer a reply, for I do not know Boule de Neige from Armand Rousseau, and It Is humiliating to confess con-fess such floral ignorance. She talks of hybrids and seedlings and sports with a glibness that amazes mo. and scrutinizes the pedigree ol each member of her garden family as one might examine the genealogy of a prospective son-in-law. My garden is very different. It has as much bloom as my neighbors and as great variety, perhaps, but it is more heterogeneous. I care little for the parentage of my garden friends. I like the associations wnieh they recall re-call to me. 1 do' not know whether my delphiniums delphini-ums are Kelways or not. 1 only know that I gathered the seed one heavenly day In August 2(1 years ago as I was walking through one of i tie gardens at Oxford college. My poppies came from the Chalet de l.ake Louise. Nancy picked the seed while I lay oa the grass and watt bed rhe reilections ' In the lake. My calendma were given me by an old monk at the mission ol Santa Barbara ; the yellow rosebush and the honeysuckle I dug from tlit garden where I lived as a child ; 1 picked the seed of the wall (lowers that llourish in my borders as N'a.iey and 1 walked from Melrose to Abbots ford. The bittersweet, whose crimsor berries hu.ig in festoons from my per gola through all the fall and early win ter. a dear old lady gave me and I carried car-ried the roots a hundred miles to plant them. My garden Is a garden full of pleas ant "memories. As I sit i- it 1 recall the happy associations jf home, thf pleasant Intercourse of friends and experiences In far-away countries. Thf vears disappear when I am in my gar den; my youth returns. |