THE CALF-PATH By Sam Walter Foss, Author and Poet. B. 1858, New Hampshire; d. 1911, Massachusetts. This selection is a sermon in verse. It has little to do with the emotions. The metropolis to which Mr. Foss refers is Boston, and the crooked trail over which now goes "the traffic of a continent" is Washington Street. It is a story with a moral attached. Tell it as a story. It is intellectual throughout. I One day through the primeval wood A calf walked home as good calves should, A crooked trail, as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, II But still he left behind his trail, And from that day, o'er hill and glade, III And many men wound in and out, And dodged and turned and bent about, And uttered words of righteous wrath And through the winding wood-way stalked, IV This forest path became a lane The years passed on in swiftness fleet, VI Each day a hundred thousand rout A hundred thousand men were led 1 For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. VII A moral lesson this might teach VIII They follow in the beaten track, Ah, many things this tale might teach- |