ith Oct. Lo, Brethren at the Treaty Ports, come tablets in hand before you—and Task 5 What uow is all the prospect of our task, And what of our realities the sum Why do we deck the ending of our toil With things that shall not be? The Lotus ways Hold us, all listless; and our summer days Leave us still exiles on an alien soil.
Lo, it was Hope that led us long ago; We saw the trodden path, but failed to see Our good therein; and so, full restlessly, Hope led us forth. But, brethren, ye What were the hopes ye had, and what the way That uow ye tread; and shall we say "The road Draws to its close perhaps with lighter load?"—Come, let us know the reason of our stay.
Is it ambition? By what mighty deed Shall you or I find fame in far Cathay Lo, even he who holds a Consul's sway Shall vainly at the last for Knighthood plead.
Look in our silent acre down the glen, Simple and short the epitaphs ye find No story of success wherewith to bind High name and fame to distant countrymen.
Or is it Riches? Doth the "golden"
East Paint roseate visions to the hopeful eye Of fortunes rapid as in days gone Prius dementat! this the last and least Of all our lot: go now, and scan the roll Of English Longs ten years ayo, and see How many have withstood the shocks that tea Or silver's freaks have dealt. Ye know the toll Of native honesty on all our gains, Ye too have seen our comrades take their way Across the Styx, nor leave enough to pay For one carved stone to cover their remains, It is perchance ye love the life apart In lone Wuhu or water-girt Sha-
Content to let your days slip by, serene, Far from the hum of all the social mart?
But quiet dwells not in the midst of fe lears Save quiet such as sleeping Btnas give:
Ye know the rabble amidst whom ye live And not in vain their record of past years.
Or is it for a higher, nobler end hat yeara hereto wage a hopeless fight °Gaitst ignorance and sin for truth and right Mid horrors that all time shall never wend "Think ye to feed with bread the carrion crow Then take your Christian creed to the Chinese, While the deep voice of London's miseries Brings you no message of her endless woe.
Or can it be for Luxury that w Careless of all that brings it not, would sell Our birthright and the land we love so well For comfort and the base servility Of sordid slaves? Do we, the ages'
heirs, Forego all things that make us so, to please Our souls with larger sense of Capuan ease, Shutting our eyes to what the future bears Content to take the wages of to-day In fatness, though the leaner years must come Giving the old traditions of our home For one more dish at meals, or fine 1 array?
Therefore it is, wy Brethren, that I come, Tablets in hand, before you—and I as What now is all the prospect of our task And what of our realities the sum
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.