And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.

Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, Act v., Sc. 3.

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

King John, Act iil., Sc 4.

Life is a jest, and all things show it;
1 thought so once, but now I know it.

Gay: My awn Epitaph.

O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!

Burns: Despondency,

Is there, then, anything to live for? Very little; but l«t us make the best of that little. Dum vivimus vtvamus:

Catch, then, oh, catch the transient hour;

Improve each moment as it flies!
Life's a short summer, man a flower;

He dies—alas! how soon he dies J

Johnson: Winter: An Ode.

Life let us cherish while yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close;
Why are we fond of toil and care?
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear?

J. M. Usteri: Life let ns cherish.

Or, with James Montgomery, let us realize that

'Tis not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die,

The Issues of Life and Death,

and so take heart of grace from Longfellow's admonition:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

"Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! life is earnest 1

And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

A Psalm of L&r.

Doddridge seeks to show how the Epicurean and the ascetic doctrine may be reconciled;

Live while you live, the epicure would say,
And seize the pleasures of the present day;
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries,
And give to God each moment as it flies.
Lord, in my views let both united be:
1 live in pleasure when 1 Rve to thee.

Epigram on his Family A rms.

And the same truth is taught by Ellen Sturgis Hooper:

But, whatever life may be, few care to leave it:

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing, anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

Gray: Elegy t Stanza 2a.

Nay, it is the oldest that are least resigned. "Nobody loves life like an old man,'* says Sophocles (Acrisius, Frag. 63), and Euripides tells us,—

Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to thtm,—A/cestis, 669;

sayings which are thus summed up by Mrs. Thrale in her poem of "The Three Warnings:"

The tree of deepest root is found
Least willing still to emit the ground:
'Twas therefore said by ancient sages

That love of life increased with years
So much, that in our latter stages,
When pain grows sharp and sickness rages,

The greatest love of life appears.

Lifting, or Heaving, an old custom formerly prevalent in many parts of England, mostly performed in the open street. People formed into parties of twelve or more, and from every one "lifted" they extorted a contribution. There is said to be a record in the Tower of London of certain payments made to ladies and maids of honor for taking King Edward I. in his bed at Easter, whence it has been presumed that he was lifted according to the custom which then prevailed among all ranks throughout the kingdom. The custom survives locally in England as part of the Easter privileges of the fair sex.

Light and leading, Men of. In "Sibyl" (Book v. ch. i.) Disraeli had the phrase, "Not a public man of light and leading in the country withheld the expression of his opinion." Again, February 28, 1859, moving for leave to bring in the Representation of the People Bill in the House of Commons, Disraeli said, "I believe there is a general wish among all men of light and leading in this country that the solution of this long-controverted question should be arrived at." A third repetition of this alliterative phrase occurred March 10, 1880, in an electioneering address to the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. But long before Disraeli, Burke had said, in his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (vol. iii. p. 331), "The men of England,—the men, I mean, of light and leading in England." Cowper has a faintly analogous line:

Lights of the world, and stars of human race,

The Progress of Error ,1. 97;

and a curious verbal likeness is found in an old ballad which describes the vengeance exacted by Crichton, the Lord of Sanquhar, on a noted freebooter, Johnstone of Annandale:

And when they came to the Well path head,
The Crichtons bade them " Light and lead."

But this only means that the followers of the chief were to " dismount and give battle."

Light, Blasted with excess of. In the "Progress of Poetry," Part III., Sec 2, Gray has this fine allusion to Milton's blindness:

He passed the flaming bounds of space and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

Even Dr. Johnson, no admirer of Gray's, condescends to acknowledge that if we suppose the blindness caused by study in the formation of his poem, this account is poetically true and happily imagined. It is no detraction from Gray that he was remotely indebted for his daring and successful figure to Milton himself, who, speaking of the Deity, says,— Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear.

Paradise Lost, Book iii.f I. 380.

This line is frequently misquoted with "light" for '• bright,"—a substitution, however, which is an improvement. Milton, in his turn, may have remembered that passage in Longinus where, after quoting from Demosthenes, he asks, "In what has the orator here concealed the figure? Plainly, in its own lustre." If we read a metaphorical meaning in the following extract from Hermias, a Galatian writer of the second century, it closely approximates to Gray's figure:

When Homer resolved to write of Achilles, be had an exceeding desire to fill his mind with a just idea of so glorious a hero: wherefore, having paid all due honors at his tomb, he entreats that he may obtain a sight of him. The hero grants bis poet's petition, and rises in a glorious suit of armor, which cast so insufferable a splendor that Homer lost his eyes while he gazed for the enlargement of his notions.

Pope says if this be anything more than mere fable, one would be apt to imagine it insinuated his contracting a blindness by too intense application while he wrote the Iliad,—which is exactly analogous to Dr. Johnson's gloss on Gray.

Shelley has imitated Gray in these lines from "Julian and Maddalo:"

The sense that he was greater than his kind
Had struck, methinks, his eagle-spirit blind,
By gazing on its own exceeding light.

Light-fingered, a euphemism for "thievish," applied particularly to pickpockets.

Our men contented themselves with looking after their goods (the Tonquinese being very light-fingered), and left the management of the boats entirely to the boat's crew.—Dam Pi K*: Voyages, II, i. 14.

Light-fingered Catch, to keep his hands in ure,

Stole anything,—of this you may be sure,

That he thinks all his own that once he handles,—

For practice' sake did steal a pound of candles;

Was taken in the act:— oh, foolish wight 1

To steal such things as needs must come to light 1

A Collection 0/Epigrams (1727).

Lightning, Quick as, an obvious metaphor found in all literatures. A few examples must suffice:

It must be done like lightning.

Ben Jonson: Every Man in his Humor, Act iii., Sc. 3.
But Hudibras gave him a twitch
As quick as lightning in the breech,
Just in the place where honor's lodged,
As wise philosophers have judged;
Because a kick in that part more
Hurts honor than deep wounds before.

Butlkr: Hudibras, Part II., Canto ii., 1.1065.

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wav<
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.

William Knox: Mortality.

Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world.
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.

Sir Henry Tavlok: Philip Van Artevtlde, Act i., Sc. 7.

Shakespeare says of the happiness of lovers that it is

Too like the lightning, which does cease to be
Ere one can say, " It lightens,"

Romeo andJuliet', Act ii., Sc. a;

and again,—

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream.
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth.
And ere a man hath power to say, " Behold 1"
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i., Sc. x.

The same comparison of the briefness of love to a lightning-flash was employed nine centuries before Shakespeare by the Indian poet Bhavabhuti, in the drama of "Malata and Madhava:"

Alas! too often is the happiness

That kindred, friends, and lovers taste as brief

As lightning's transient glare.

Lilli-Burlero and Bullen-a-la, said to have been the shibboleth of the Irish Catholics in the bloody events of 1641. A song with the refrain of "Lilli-burlero, bullen-a-la!" was written by Lord Wharton, which may be called the "Marseillaise" of the English Revolution of 1688. Burnet says, "It made an impression on the [king's] army that cannot be imagined. The whole army, and at last the people, both in city and country, were singing it perpetually; . never had so slight a thing so great an effect." It was the favorite tune of "Uncle Toby" in "Tristram Shandy." The words of the song are printed in Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," Series ii., Book iii.

Lily, Consider the. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ enjoins his disciples to take no thought of the morrow:

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they ?—Matthew vi. 26.

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say to you. That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ?—Ibid., 28-30.

The above passages bear a notable similarity to one of the apothegms of the Indian poet Bhartrihari:

He by whose hands the swans are painted white, and parrots green, and peacocks manyhued, will make provision for thy maintenance.

Bhartrihari is held to have been a brother of King Vikramaditya, who flourished half a century before Christ. Burns paraphrases the Scripture texts:

That he who stills the raven's clamorous nest,

And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,
Would, in the way his wisdom sees the best,

For them and for their little ones provide.

Lime-juicers, an epithet of contempt for the English commercial marine, current among Yankee skippers; derived from the regulation requiring English merchant-vessels to carry among their stores a supply of lime-juice as a preventive against scurvy.

Xainooln Brotherhood, political associations of negroes in the South, after the close of the civil war, to protect their rights of suffrage.

Linen. It is not linen you're wearing out One of the most vhrid

passages in Hood's "Song of the Shirt" is the following:

O men with sisters dear,

O men with mothers and wives.
It is not linen you're wearing out,

But human creatures' lives.

This is probably a reminiscence of the rebuke which Maggie makes to Oldbuck of Monkoarns in Scott's "Antiquary" (ch, xi.): •• It's no fish ye're buying, it's men's lives."

Lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, The. The quotation is from Psalm xvi. 6. "Lines'' was formerly synonymous with "lot:" a survival of the word in this sense is found in the slang phrase "hard lines." The passage from the Psalm above given in the Prayer-Book version (where it is verse) is rendered thus: "The lot has fallen unto me in a fair ground."

Lion-Hunter, The. Among the penalties of fame there are none more terrible than the persecutions of the lion-hunter. He is indefatigable and ubiquitous; his nets and snares are spread in the most unsuspected places; he dogs the footsteps of the lion, pursues him into the sacred recesses of his home, and drags him out into the glare of publicity. Or he assails him through the mails, seeking advice, encouragement, assistance, an autograph. He cannot and will not be put off.

Nor is he a recent development As far back as the eighteenth century Schiller complained that it was quite a peculiar case to have a literary name. "The few men of worth and consideration who offer you their intimacy on that score and whose regard is really worth coveting are too disagreeably counter-weighted by the baleful swarm of creatures who keep humming around you like so many swarms of flesh-flies, gape at you as if you were a monster, and condescend, moreover, on the strength of one or two blotted sheets, to present themselves as colleagues."

The great Goethe had a serene and splendid way of dealing with these bores. An admirer once broke into his bedroom at an inn. Goethe was undressing. But the worshipper, nothing daunted, fell at the feet of his idol, and poured out his ecstatic admiration. Goethe calmly put out the light and jumped into bed.

Sir Walter Scott had an equally hearty hatred of lionizing, but his courtesy prevented his showing it. He extended a kindly welcome to the intrusive bores who overran Abbotsford, pestered him wkh inquiries as to why he did not call his place Tollyveolan or Tillytudlen, questioned him about his own age and that of his wife, jotted down memoranda of other domestic details in their note-books, and shouted out "Prodigious/1 in facetious imitation of Dominie Sampson, at whatever was shown them. He was scrupulously careful, also, to answer all letters addressed to him. In those days of high postage this was a tax not only on his time and his temper, but on his purse as well. He spent as much as one hundred and fifty pounds a year in postage. Once a mighty package came from the United States. Five pounds were due on it. When opened it was found to contain a manuscript called "The Cherokee Lovers," a drama written by a New York lady, who begged Scott to read and correct it, write a prologue and an epilogue, and secure a manager and a publisher. A fortnight later another package of similar size, charged with a similar postage, was placed in Scott's hands. When opened, out popped another copy of "The Cherokee Lovers," with a note from the authoress explaining that, as the mails were uncertain, she had deemed il prudent to forward a duplicate.