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Victoria
Yesterday, To-day, To-morrow

. . . Once in a while we each of us may dream: far voices call and echoes come aloud. Echoes are everywhere of songs once sung, of voices long since silent, footsteps passed along the dim far corridors of time. . .

Mellowed by moonlight the College sleeps; ghosts come now of those of old time who here told their youthful tale, who wove the warp and woof of the garment of memory that time has flung about the shoulders of the mother. The web is always on the loom, its human threads pieced in changing pattern, for there is no Penelope here to tear apart the weaving—some hearts will ever be remembering—unending spinning, unending threads of thought woven in the subtlest patterns.

But this is of yesterday which begot to-day and bequeathed to it a store of thoughts, a host of memories, and hope. The wraiths vanish, the shadows go, and here is to-day in the light of the morning sky with youth clamouring for the sun, climbing on the past years to snatch its elusive light. What will the mother give? Youth is here to take. And the answer is—reap now while the day is young of the store which waits for you, while each succeeding hour brings its fill of beauty, for soon comes farewell. Retrospect can bring no sadder thing than unfulfilment, and unfulfilment comes from inability to realise that it is in to-day that we must reap as well as sow. Take from the hour what it has to offer, give to the hour what you have to give; so only shall there be peace in your soul. Yesterday was here with its full of living, to-day is here for living to the full; so may to-morrow be, ever after. But there is one compulsion: give as well as take; and the giving is first.

So, when the times have grown colder and autumn leaves flutter to their rest, may there be some echo from youth's lute even though it may be forever folded beneath the cloak of years.

. . . Echoes are dying faintly along the corridors, echoes fading to nothingness; does even one remember kindly sometime, somewhere? If so it has not been in vain to have lived to-day.

—H. R. Bannister.