smile and the mother's fond embrace, strayed out into the night, alone, amid its dreary, coming blackness. But the lost treasure is merely material; and the child is still in the pathway of loving humanity, still within the enfolding arms of an all-loving God. But the drunkards! Lost lost! lost! fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, lost to friends, to families, to loved ones, to society; lost to the world, to the church; and lost, forever lost, from the circle of the redeemed that shall gather round God's throne over the rapids, and lost. 32. THE GENII OF THE OLD AND THE NEW CIVILIZATION. W HAT lessons come to us from the past! The Genius of the Old Civilization, solemn and sad, sits there on the Alps, his classic beard descending o'er his breast. Behind him arise the new nations, bustling with romantic life. He bends down over the midland sea, and counts up his children —Assyria, Egypt, Tyre, Carthage, Troy, Etruria, Corinth, Athens, Rome once so renowned, now gathered with the dead, their giant ghosts still lingering pensive o'er the spot. He turns westward his face, too sad to weep, and raising from his palsied knee his trembling hand, looks on his brother Genius of the New Civilization. That young giant, strong and mocking, sits there on the Alleghanies. Before him lie the waters covered with ships; behind him he hears the roar of the Mississippi and the far distant Oregon - rolling their riches to the sea. He bends down, and that far ocean murmurs pacific in his ear. On his left are the harbors, shops, and mills of the east, and a five-fold gleam of light goes up from northern lakes. On his right spread out the broad savannas of the south, waiting to be blessed; and far off that Mexique Bay bends round her tropic shores. A crown of stars is on that giant's head, some glorious with flashing, many-colored light; some bloody red; some pale and faint, of most uncertain hue. His right hand lies folded in his robe; the left rests on the Bible's opened page, and holds these sacred words: All men are equal, born with equal rights from God. The old says to the young, Brother, BEWARE!" and Alps and Rocky Mountains say, "BEWARE!" 66 That stripling giant, ill-bred and scoffing, shouts amain, My feet are red with the Indian's blood; my hand has forged the negro's chain. I am strong; who dares assail me? There is no right, no truth; Christianity is false, and God a name." His left hand rends those sacred scrolls, casting his Bible underneath his feet, and in his right he brandishes the negro-driver's whip crying again, "Say, who is God, and what is Right?" And all his mountains echo, "RIGHT." But the old Genius sadly says again, Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not prosper. The hollow tomb of Egypt, Athens, Rome, of every ancient state, with all their wandering ghosts, replies, "AMEN." THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. 71 33. THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. THERE is dignity in toil; in toil of the hand as well as toil of the head; in toil to provide for the bodily wants of an individual life, as well as in toil to promote some enterprise of world-wide fame. All labor that tends to supply man's wants, to increase man's happiness, in a word, all labor that is honest, is honorable too. The Dignity of Labor! Consider its achievements! Dismayed by no difficulty, shrinking from no exertion, exhausted by no struggle, "clamorous Labor knocks with its hundred hands at the golden gate of the morning," obtaining each day, through succeeding centuries, fresh benefactions for the world. Labor clears the forest, and drains the morass, and makes the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose. Labor drives the plough, and scatters the seeds, and reaps the harvest, and grinds the corn, and converts it into bread, the staff of life. Labor gathers the gossamer web of the caterpillar, the cotton from the field, and the fleece from the flock, and weaves them into raiment, soft, and warm, and beautiful the purple robe of the prince and the gray gown of the peasant being alike its handiwork. Labor moulds the brick, and splits the slate, and quarries the stone, and shapes the column, and rears, not only the humble cottage, but the gorgeous palace, and the tapering spire, and the stately dome. Labor, diving deep into the solid earth, brings up its long-hidden stores of coal, to feed ten thousand furnaces, and in millions of habitations to defy the 72 THE DIGNITY OF LABOR. winter's cold. Labor explores the rich veins of deeply-buried rocks, extracting the gold, the silver, the copper, and the tin. Labor smelts the iron, and moulds it into a thousand shapes for use and ornament. Labor cuts down the gnarled oak, and hews the timber, and builds the ship, and guides it over the deep, to bear to our shores the produce of every clime. Labor, laughing at difficulties, spans majestic rivers, carries viaducts over marshy swamps, suspends bridges over deep ravines, pierces the solid mountains with its dark tunnel, blasting rocks, filling hollows, and linking together with its iron but loving grasp all nations of the earth. Labor, a mighty magician, walks forth into a region uninhabited and waste; he looks earnestly at the scene, so quiet in its desolation; then waving his wonder-working wand, those dreary valleys smile with golden harvests; those barren mountain slopes are clothed with foliage; the furnace blazes; the anvil rings; the busy wheel whirls round; the town appears; the mart of commerce, the hall of science, the temple of religion, rear high their lofty fronts; a forest of masts, gay with varied pennons, rises from the harbor. Science enlists the elements of earth and heaven in its service; Art, awaking, clothes its strength with beauty; Civilization smiles; Liberty is glad; Humanity rejoices; Piety exults; for the voice of industry and gladness is heard on every side. Working-men, walk worthy of your vocation. You have a noble escutcheon; disgrace it not. "Work for some good, be it ever so slowly; SPEECH AT THE TRIAL OF DUNBAR. 73 34. SPEECH AT THE TRIAL OF DUNBAR. HE morning before suspicion of the death of the THE Lester children was entertained, and while it was supposed they had wandered away, the prisoner, Reuben Dunbar, remarked, "If they were men, people might think they had money, and had been murdered for money; but any one might know that they had no money, and what man under heaven would murder those innocent children?" Now, tell me why it was that this conjecture as to the murder of these children should first fall from his lips? It was because the mighty secret was in his heart. It was conscience, writhing beneath the tremendous and crushing weight, that spoke. Spectral shadows were flitting before him; spectres of those dead children, with their broken and mutilated faces, gasping in the agonies of death; spectres of this terrible ordeal of trial for his life; spectres of the prison, the gallows, and a grave of infamy; spectres of the judgment. These were before and around him; they haunted his footsteps, and forced him to speak. A vision is passing before me. I see the trusting and innocent face of the younger child looking beseechingly into his murderer's. I hear his voice pleading for mercy, supplicating for his life. his little arm raised to ward off the blow that was to I see destroy him. I see the terrible weapon flashing in the sunlight, and hear it as it crashes through his skull, and the death-shriek of the little child is sounding in my ears. His quivering limbs subside into quietude; the stillness and rigidity of death settle |