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Held at the fire his favored place;
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Play cross-pins on my uncle's hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth's college halls.

Born the wild northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation's reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater's keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind man's buff,
And whirling plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,

Or held the good dame's winding yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told

Of classic legends rare and old,

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome

Had all the commonplace of home,

And little seemed at best the odds
"Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Araxes took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,

And dread Olympus at his will
Became a whortleberry hill.

J. G. WHITTIER.

JUSTICE.

In this world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad foam-oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is what the wise, in all times, were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below: the just thing, the true thing.

My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton, and say, "In God's name, No!"

Thy success!" What will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just thing lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and annihilated thing. Success?. In a few years thou wilt be dead and dark; all cold, eyeless, deaf; no blaze of bonfires, dingdong of bells, or leading articles, visible or audible to thee again at all, forever. What kind of success is that?

THOMAS CARLYLE.

TRUE ELOQUENCE.

When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction.

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It can not be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will

toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they can not compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they can not reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.

The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent.

The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object,-this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence. It is action, noble, sublime, godlike action!

DANIEL WEBSTER.

DRIVING HOME THE COWS.

Out of the clover and blue-eyed grass,
He turned them into the river-lane;

One after another he let them pass,
Then fastened the meadow bars again.

Under the willows and over the hill,

He patiently followed their sober pace;

The merry whistle for once was still,
And something shadowed the sunny face.

Only a boy! and his father had said

He could never let his youngest go;

Two already were lying dead

Under the feet of the trampling foe.

But after the evening work was done,

And the frogs were loud in the meadow swamp, Over his shoulder he slung his gun,

And stealthily followed the foot-path damp,—

Across the clover and through the wheat,
With resolute heart and purpose grim,
Though cold was the dew on his hurrying feet,
And the blind bats' flitting startled him.

Thrice since then had the lanes been white,
And the orchards sweet with apple-bloom;
And now, when the cows came back at night,
The feeble father drove them home.

For news had come to the lonely farm
That three were lying where two had lain;
And the old man's tremulous palsied arm
Could never lean on a son's again.

The summer dew grew cool and late;

He went for the cows when the work was done;

But down the lane, as he opened the gate,

He saw them coming, one by one,―

Brindle, Ebony, Speckle and Bess,

Shaking their horns in the evening wind, Cropping the buttercups out of the grass— But who was it following close behind?

Loosely swung in the idle air

The empty sleeve of army blue;

And worn and pale, from the crisping hair,
Looked out a face that the father knew;-

For Southern prisons will sometimes yawn,
And yield their dead unto life again;
And the day that comes with a cloudy dawn
In golden glory at last may wane.

The great tears sprang to their meeting eyes;
For the heart must speak when the lips are dumb,
And under the silent evening skies

Together they followed the cattle home,

TO THE AMERICAN UNION.

[This piece should be spoken in clear, bold tone of voice; but little action or gesture should accompany its delivery.]

Giant aggregate of nations,

Glorious whole of glorious parts,

Unto endless generations

Live united, hands and hearts!
Be it storm or summer weather,
Peaceful-calm, or battle-jar,
Stand in beauteous strength together,
Sister States, as now you are!

Every petty class-dissension,

Heal it up as quick as thought;
Every paltry place-pretension,
Crush it as a thing of naught;
Let no narrow private treason
Your great onward progress bar,
But remain, in right and reason,
Sister States, as now ye are!

Fling away absurd ambition!
People, leave that toy to kings;
Envy, jealousy, suspicion,

Be above such groveling things.
In each other's joys delighted,
All your hate be-joys of war,
And by all means keep united,
Sister States, as now ye are!

Were I but some scornful stranger,
Still my counsel would be just;

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