Page:Curiosities of Olden Times.djvu/311

The Philosopher's Stone nights in fruitless experiment; but, like all history, that of the alchemists teaches us a lesson—to look up instead of looking down—a lesson to seek happiness, wealth, contentment, in the simple and not the complex, in light instead of in darkness.

I believe that this is the only one of my articles in which I have drawn a moral, but the moral is so obvious that it would have been inexcusable had I passed it over. But I know that as a child I resented the applications in Æsops Fables, and perhaps my reader will feel a like objection to having a moral appended to this essay. That I may dismiss him with a smile instead of a frown, I will close with a copy of verses extracted by me some thirty and more years ago, from—I think—a Cambridge University undergraduates' magazine, verses probably new to my readers; but as they enforce the same moral in a perfectly fresh and charming manner, and as they deserve to be rescued from oblivion, I conclude with them:

I was just five years old, that December, And a fine little promising boy, So my grandmother said, I remember, And gave me a strange-looking toy:

In its shape it was lengthy and rounded, It was papered with yellow and blue. One end with a glass top was bounded, At the other, a hole to look through.

'Dear Granny, what's this?' I came, crying, 'A box for my pencils? but see, 299