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Show I Rippling ji Rhymes ' By WALT MASON. ' THE BACK TRAIL. "It wc could live our lives again," thuB sigh the old and wintry men, "we'd shun tho pltfall3 and the gins, and Bldetrack fifty kinds of sins which on our souls have left their scars; we'd hitch our wagons to the stars, and Btrive to reach the higher place, and cut out all that's cheap and base. We'd be examples to all men. if we could live our lives again." When men are old their dreaming gaze is fixed upon the winding ways that they have walked in long, long years; at every turn some trap appears that they'd have shunned had they been wise, with wisdom of the ancient gniys On looking back the road seems plain, distinct from tangled path and lane, and old men wonder why they trod in bog and quicksand far abroad. "We'd keep away from marsh and fen. could we but live our lives again!" We cannot can-not make the journey twice; one long excursion must suffice; the old would teach us how to tread, to cross the torrent's tor-rent's slippy bed. to climb the mountain's moun-tain's beetling side, traverse the forest for-est dark and wide, but youth turns deaf or heedless ears to all the wisdom of the seers, I oo |