LOVE OF THE SOIL ture. Some of the rocks were big and required hours of slow toil. Their hands were cut and bleeding, and by night their backs were stiff and weak. They dug roots to eat because they could not always find other food and it was not very often that they found a treasured egg that the old hen had laid. Besides, the eggs were saved for the dreaded winter that was to come. When Cina found an egg she would hurry to Johan and call, "Johan! Johan! see, an egg. Our blessed hoan is helping us;" and then she would gleefully exhibit the coveted egg. With winter came bleakness and despair. It was cold. Food was impossible to get. Johan was nearly driven to stealing. When Johan appeared with a little frozen meat or crusts of black bread, Cina's heart beat fast and she would even laugh with joy if her cold did not keep her coughing. Even wood was hard to get for fuel. There was no axe and the snow covered the branches that were on the ground. It was a miracle that they both lived through the winter. Towards spring they felt encouraged although they were weak and hungry. One day as Johan was turning for home with nothing to eat for Cina, he found a tiny pig almost frozen to death by the roadside. At first he thought it was dead, but it moved a little when he picked it up; so he wrapped his ragged coat around it! and started the painful journey home. As he walked, his happiness and hopes increased. A pig meant so much to a person in his condition. As he neared his hut he began whistling an old feasting tune through his cold lips. Cina heard it and dragged herself to the opening of the dugout calling hoarsly, "What do you bring, Johan?" Johan, smiling like a young lover, cried joyfully as he stumbled towards her, "A graes, Cina, a graes." Cina clapped her wrinkled hands and cried for joy. They nursed the pig as if it were a child; it had the choicest spot near the fireplace, and Johan and Cina went without much of their food so that they might keep the pig alive. In the spring when the ground was bare Johan started his work on the soil. He turned it up with his shovel and then planted the seeds of grain he had brought with him from his old home. It was a beautiful spring, and the warm weather put spirit into the old couple. Then one day the precious hen lead nine little chicks into the sunshine. Johan and Cina stood in the doorway. The grain was growing nicely, the hen was scratching food for the chicks, the little pig had lived and was rooting in the soft earth. Johan straightened up and murmered, "Cina, next year we will have a cow." -Dilworth Jensen THE THREAD Eventless days; even years in unbroken stretch; miles of existence; a round of things weighted with sameness. If there was joy---it had departed. If there was an exultation---it had gone. If there was pain or pleasure---I had forgotten them---until--- Today in the wake of a song of timeless love which sought through centuries its complement undiscouraged, joyful, hopeful even, to be at last requitted, at last received in all the myriad things that break into the soul and fill its hungering, and satisfying its seeking; Today that song flooded my reed dry soul; o'er filled it with the old transendendency caught up from Lethe, where I had burried it, the invulnerable thread. Love, my beloved that little path to yesterday! The bonds I builded with a heavy hand, to shackle all the pain of deep rememberings fell by as though they really hadn't been, and I had stood so long against it, not even daring to be weak. That is the acme of weakness when (one builds around a broken thing a stern, cold wall to hide it from himself. Reborn, remembrance says with clear, calm voice, "Oh live again, for these things are not thwarted!" This would I ask, "Forgive, that a song from the fire of another soul, should call love again to live." -Maude Johns FROM THE WINGS A twisting ribbon, silver bright, Slides out along the floor Beneath the heavy drop that hangs Around the magic door. Out there, they act. Within the shadows of the wings, I catch the light and glare, The silence of the audience That watches, watches there In that live black. The heavy, pungent, clinging smells Of grease-paint, thickly smeared, The muffled sounds of moving "props," As stage is swiftly cleared, Get into me. I can't stay here-behind the scenes; Out there are parts for me. Give me my lines to learn and live. I'm not afraid to be That which I am! -Dorothy Foulger