"All that glitters is not gold,
Gilded tombs do worms infold."
The land of the rising sun is not less lovely than that of its
setting. There is a freshness and a parity in the early dawn not
found in the evening time, and the birds greet the purpling east
with their sweetest songs. No one may know how cheerful, how far
reaching, how thrilling the singing of birds may be unless he
has listened to them telling the gladness of the morning while
the last star melts in the glowing east.
Then, too, what a journey is this when we look forward to the
glad meeting with friends who knew the horrors of the World War
and whom a kind Providence permitted to return to their native
land. During those awful days spent in the halls of suffering
and death near Verdun there were found many golden chains of
friendship, and we thought--
"Better than grandeur, better than gold,
Than rank or title a hundred-fold,
Is a healthy body and a mind at ease,
And simple pleasures that always please,
A heart that can feel for a neighbor's woe,
And share in his joy with a friendly glow,
With sympathies large enough to infold
All men as brothers, is better than gold."
Gold has no power to purchase true friendship and only eternal
things are given away. So, what matters it whether we travel
east or west as long as our souls retain the freshness and
fragrance of the early morning's hours? We can be our own
alchemists, and through the gray vapors of our poor lives
transmute them into golden flowers of character that shall gleam
and sparkle as the evening of our closing days draw near, like
coruscating stars in the violet dusk of our twilight sky.
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