PART II. Readings and Recitations from the Most Celebrated Authors (continued 4)

THE PEOPLE ALWAYS CONQUER.

BY EDWARD EVERETT.

As a finished scholar and eloquent speaker, Mr. Everett gained the highest distinction. His silvery tones and flowery periods held multitudes spellbound. His orations were always prepared with the greatest care, delivered from memory, and are models of elevated thought and sentiment and brilliant diction. He was the finished orator, noted for the classic beauty of his writings.

Sir, in the efforts of the people—of the people struggling for their rights—moving, not in organized, disciplined masses, but in their spontaneous action, man for man, and heart for heart—there is something glorious. They can then move forward without orders, act together without combination, and brave the flaming lines of battle without entrenchments to cover or walls to shield them.

No dissolute camp has worn off from the feelings of the youthful soldier the freshness of that home, where his mother and his sisters sit waiting, with tearful eyes and aching hearts, to hear good news from the wars; no long service in the ranks of a conqueror has turned the veteran’s heart into marble. Their valor springs not from recklessness, from habit, from indifference to the preservation of a life knit by no pledges to the life of others; but in the strength and spirit of the cause alone, they act, they contend, they bleed. In this they conquer.

The people always conquer. They always must conquer. Armies may be defeated, kings may be overthrown, and new dynasties imposed, by foreign arms, on an ignorant and slavish race, that cares not in what language the covenant of their subjection runs, nor in whose name the deed of their barter and sale is made out.

But the people never invade; and, when they rise against the invader, are never subdued. If they are driven from the plains, they fly to the mountains. Steep rocks and everlasting hills are their castles; the tangled, pathless thicket their palisado; and nature, God, is their ally! Now he overwhelms the hosts of their enemies beneath his drifting mountains of sand; now he buries them beneath a falling atmosphere of polar snows; He lets loose his tempest on their fleets; He puts a folly into their counsels, a madness into the hearts of their leaders; He never gave, and never will give, a final triumph over a virtuous and gallant people, resolved to be free.

TO THE SURVIVORS OF BUNKER HILL.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

One of the towering names in American statesmanship is that of Daniel Webster, “the great defender of the Constitution.” Mr. Webster was not more remarkable for intellectual power than he was for masterly eloquence. His triumphs in Senatorial debate and on great public occasions are historic. In person he was large and brawny, with a swarthy complexion, massive head, and always conveyed the impression of strength, and, at times, even of majesty. His orations are masterpieces of patriotic fervor and scholarly culture.

Venerable men: you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife of your country. Behold how altered! The same heavens are indeed over your heads; the same ocean rolls at your feet; but all else, how changed! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown.

The ground strewed with the dead and the dying; the impetuous charge; the steady and successful repulse; the loud call to repeated assault; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death;—all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee.

Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country’s own means of distinction and defence. All is peace; and God has granted you this sight of your country’s happiness, ere you slumber in the grave for ever. He has allowed you to behold and partake the reward of your patriotic toils; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you!

But, alas! you are not all here! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge! our eyes seek for you in vain amidst this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country’s independence established and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like

and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloudless.

SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER.

The eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South Carolina by the honorable gentleman, for her revolutionary and other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent, or distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part of the honor; I partake in the pride of her great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses, Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions—Americans all—whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by state lines, than their talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits.

In their day and generation, they served and honored the country, the whole country, and their renown is of the treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman bears himself—does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir—increased gratification and delight, rather. Sir, I thank God, that if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down.

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the limits of my own State and neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven—if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the South—and if, moved by local prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair, from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts—she needs none. There she is—behold her and judge for yourselves. There is her history—the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker’s Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State, from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever.

EULOGIUM ON SOUTH CAROLINA.

BY ROBERT T. HAYNE.

This distinguished American orator was born in the parish of Saint Paul, South Carolina. His eminent ability soon secured for him a seat in the United States Senate. The following is from one of his orations delivered in the celebrated controversy between himself and Daniel Webster. It is a glowing defense of his native state, and is memorable in the annals of forensic eloquence.

If there be one State in the Union, and I say it not in a boastful spirit, that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. From the very commencement of the Revolution, up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made, no service she has ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your prosperity; but in your adversity she has clung to you with more than filial affection.

No matter what was the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resources, divided by parties, or surrounded by difficulties, the call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic discord ceased at the sound; every man became reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country.

What was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? I honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle. But, great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a generous zeal which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might have found, in their situation, a guarantee that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on all considerations, either of interest or safety, they rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, perilled all in the sacred cause of freedom.

Never was there exhibited in the history of the world higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance than by the Whigs of Carolina during the Revolution! The whole State, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe.

The “plains of Carolina” drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black and smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children. Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions, proved, by her conduct, that, though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible.

THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS.

It has been said of Mr. Phillips that in his public addresses he was “a gentleman talking,” so easy and graceful was his manner. “The golden-mouthed Phillips” was also an appropriate title. Considered simply as an orator, perhaps our country has never produced his superior.

It matters very little what spot may have been the birthplace of Washington. No people can claim, no country can appropriate him. The boon of Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, and his residence creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the convulsion in which he had his origin. If the heavens thundered, and the earth rocked, yet, when the storm had passed, how pure was the climate that it cleared; how bright, in the brow of the firmament, was the planet which it revealed to us!

In the production of Washington, it does really appear as if Nature was endeavoring to improve upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. Individual instances, no doubt, there were, splendid exemplifications of some singular qualification; Cæsar was merciful, Scipio was continent, Hannibal was patient; but it was reserved for Washington to bind them all in one, and, like the lovely masterpiece of the Grecian artist, to exhibit, in one glow of associated beauty, the pride of every model, and the perfection of every master.

As a general, he marshalled the peasant into a veteran, and supplied by discipline the absence of experience; as a statesman, he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into the most comprehensive system of general advantage; and such was the wisdom of his views, and the philosophy of his counsels, that to the soldier, and the statesman he almost added the character of the sage! A conqueror, he was untainted with the crime of blood; a revolutionist, he was free from any stain of treason; for aggression commenced the contest, and his country called him to the command.

Liberty unsheathed his sword, necessity stained, victory returned it. If he had paused here, history might have doubted what station to assign him; whether at the head of her citizens or her soldiers, her heroes or her patriots. But the last glorious act crowns his career, and banishes all hesitation.

Who, like Washington, after having emancipated a hemisphere, resigned its crown, and preferred the retirement of domestic life to the adoration of a land he might almost be said to have created?

Such, sir, is the testimony of one not to be accused of partiality in his estimate of America. Happy, proud America! The lightnings of heaven yielded to your philosophy! The temptations of earth could not seduce your patriotism.

NATIONAL MONUMENT TO WASHINGTON.

BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

One of “Boston’s hundred orators” is the author of this eloquent oration, which was delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of Washington’s monument, that imposing shaft which is one of the greatest objects of interest at our national capital. Scarcely any finer tribute was ever paid to the Father of his Country. It should be delivered with full volume of voice and sustained energy.

Fellow-citizens, let us seize this occasion to renew to each other our vows of allegiance and devotion to the American Union, and let us recognize in our common title to the name and the fame of Washington, and in our common veneration for his example and his advice, the all-sufficient centripetal power, which shall hold the thick clustering stars of our confederacy in one glorious constellation forever! Let the column which we are about to construct be at once a pledge and an emblem of perpetual union!

Let the foundations be laid, let the superstructure be built up and cemented, let each stone be raised and riveted in a spirit of national brotherhood! And may the earliest ray of the rising sun—till that sun shall set to rise no more—draw forth from it daily, as from the fabled statue of antiquity, a strain of national harmony, which shall strike a responsive chord in every heart throughout the republic!

Proceed, then, fellow-citizens, with the work for which you have assembled. Lay the corner-stone of a monument which shall adequately bespeak the gratitude of the whole American people to the illustrious father of his country! Build it to the skies; you can not outreach the loftiness of his principles! Found it upon the massive and eternal rock; you can not make it more enduring than his fame! Construct it of the peerless Parian marble; you cannot make it purer than his life! Exhaust upon it the rules and principles of ancient and of modern art; you cannot make it more proportionate than his character.

But let not your homage to his memory end here. Think not to transfer to a tablet or a column the tribute which is due from yourselves. Just honor to Washington can only be rendered by observing his precepts and imitating his example. He has built his own monument. We, and those who come after us, in successive generations, are its appointed, its privileged guardians.

The wide-spread republic is the future monument to Washington. Maintain its independence. Uphold its constitution. Preserve its union. Defend its liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and beauty, securing peace, order, equality, and freedom, to all within its boundaries, and shedding light and hope and joy upon the pathway of human liberty throughout the world—and Washington needs no other monument. Other structures may testify our veneration for him; this, alone can adequately illustrate his service to mankind.

Nor does he need even this. The republic may perish; the wide arch of our ranged Union may fall; star by star its glories may expire; stone by stone its columns and its capitol may moulder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten; but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongues anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues prolong the fame, of George Washington.

THE NEW WOMAN.

BY FRANCES E. WILLARD.

Although it is not customary to include women among orators, an exception must be made in the case of Miss Willard. Few men have ever possessed her command over popular audiences. Her eloquence drew multitudes to listen to her burning appeals in behalf of the reforms of the day, among whom were always many who protested that they “never liked to hear a woman talk in public.”

Miss Willard’s remarkable gifts, her zeal and earnestness, and her devotion to her cause, gave her a world-wide reputation. This extract from one of her eloquent public addresses is bright in thought, wholesome in sentiment, and is a model of effective speech.

Let us be grateful that our horizon is widening. We women have learned to reason from effect to cause. It is considered a fine sign of a thinker to be able to reason from cause to effect. But we, in fourteen years’ march, have learned to go from the drunkard in the gutter, who was the object lesson we first saw, back to the children, as you will hear to-night; back to the idea of preventive, educational, evangelistic, social, and legal work for temperance; back to the basis of the saloon itself.

We have found that the liquor traffic is joined hand in hand with the very sources of the National Government. And we have come to the place where we want prohibition, first, last, and all the time. While the brewer talks about his “vested interests,” I lend my voice to the motherhood of the nation that has gone down into the valley of unutterable pain and in the shadow of death, with the dews of eternity upon the mother’s brow, given birth and being to the sons who are the “vested interests” of America’s homes.

We offset the demand of the brewer and distiller, that you shall protect their ill-gotten gains, with the thought of these most sacred treasures, dear to the hearts that you, our brothers, honor—dear to the hearts that you love best. I bring to you this thought, to-night, that you shall vote to represent us, and hasten the time when we can represent ourselves.

I believe that we are going out into this work, being schooled and inspired for greater things than we have dreamed, and that the army of women will prove the grandest sisterhood the world has ever known. As I have seen the love and kindness and good-will of women who differed so widely from us politically and religiously, and yet have found away down in the depths of their hearts the utmost love and affection, I have said, what kind of a world will this be when all women are as fond of each other as we strong-minded women are?

Home is the citadel of everything that is good and pure on earth; nothing must enter there to defile, neither anything which loveth or maketh a lie. And it shall be found that all society needed to make it altogether homelike was the home-folks; that all government needed to make it altogether pure from the fumes of tobacco and the debasing effects of strong drink, was the home-folks; that wherever you put a woman who has the atmosphere or home about her, she brings in the good time of pleasant and friendly relationship, and points with the finger of hope and the eye of faith always to something better—always it is better farther on.

As I look around and see the heavy cloud of apathy under which so many still are stifled, who take no interest in these things, I just think they do not half mean the hard words that they sometimes speak to us, or they wouldn’t if they knew; and, after awhile, they will have the same views I have, spell them with a capital V, and all be harmonious, like Barnum’s happy family, a splendid menagerie of the whole human race—clear-eyed, kind and victorious!

AN APPEAL FOR LIBERTY.

BY JOSEPH STORY.

I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors—by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil—by all you are, and all you hope to be—resist every object of disunion, resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.

I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in woman, the love of your offspring; teach them, as they climb your knees, or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never to forget or forsake her.

I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are; whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short, which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of your country.

I call upon you, old men, for your counsels, and your prayers, and your benedictions. May not your gray hairs go down in sorrow to the grave, with the recollection that you have lived in vain. May not your last sun sink in the west upon a nation of slaves.

No; I read in the destiny of my country far better hopes, far brighter visions. We, who are now assembled here, must soon be gathered to the congregation of other days. The time of our departure is at hand, to make way for our children upon the theatre of life. May God speed them and theirs. May he who, at the distance of another century, shall stand here to celebrate this day, still look round upon a free, happy, and virtuous people. May he have reason to exult as we do. May he, with all the enthusiasm of truth as well as of poetry, exclaim, that here is still his country.

THE TRUE SOURCE OF REFORM.

BY EDWIN H. CHAPIN.

As a pulpit orator and lecturer Mr. Chapin was widely known and popular. His style was ornate and finished, and when to this was added his grand voice and magnetic delivery, his audiences could not resist the charm of his eloquence. His opinions placed him in the front ranks of reformers.

The great element of reform is not born of human wisdom, it does not draw its life from human organizations. I find it only in Christianity. “Thy kingdom come!” There is a sublime and pregnant burden in this prayer. It is the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of Reform. For what is the significance of this prayer? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate and subdue and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think, and speak, and do good, from the very necessity of his being.

So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass away. So would sin die out from the earth; and the human soul living in harmony with the Divine will, this earth would become like heaven. It is too late for the reformers to sneer at Christianity—it is foolishness for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human progress—our confidence in reform. It is indissolubly connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, capable, in man.

That men have misunderstood it, and perverted it, is true. But it is also true that the noblest efforts for human melioration have come out of it—have been based upon it. Is it not so? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the just—who took your conduct from the line of Christian philosophy—come from your tombs, and answer!

Come, Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar-house, and show us what philanthropy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens to the Word of Life;—Come, Penn, from thy sweet counsel and weaponless victory—and show us what Christian zeal and Christian love can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come, Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor, and show us with what an eye this faith regards the lowest and least of our race; and how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for the rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immortality.

And ye, who are a great number—ye nameless ones—who have done good in your narrow spheres, content to forego renown on earth, and seeking your reward in the record on high—come and tell us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage the religion ye professed can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak. Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity, to thy great work of Reform. The past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy martyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes; the present is hopeful because of thee; the future shall acknowledge thy omnipotence.

APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN.

BY LYMAN BEECHER.

A rather small wiry man with strong face, compact fibre, quick motions, great earnestness and pulpit ability of the highest order—this was Lyman Beecher. He made himself especially prominent in the early days of the temperance reformation. The selection here given is one of many similar utterances and is full of force and fire.

Could I call around me in one vast assembly the temperate young men of our land, I would say,—Hopes of the nation, blessed be ye of the Lord now in the dew of your youth. But look well to your footsteps; for vipers, and scorpions, and adders surround your way.

Look at the generation who have just preceded you: the morning of their life was cloudless, and it dawned as brightly as your own; but behold them bitten, swollen, enfeebled, inflamed, debauched, idle, poor, irreligious, and vicious, with halting step dragging onward to meet an early grave! Their bright prospects are clouded, and their sun is set never to rise. No house of their own receives them, while from poorer to poorer tenements they descend, and to harder and harder fare, as improvidence dries up their resources.

And now, who are those that wait on their footsteps with muffled faces and sable garments? That is a father—and that is a mother—whose gray hairs are coming with sorrow to the grave. That is a sister, weeping over evils which she cannot arrest; and there is the broken-hearted wife; and there are the children, hapless innocents, for whom their father has provided the inheritance only of dishonor, and nakedness and woe.

And is this, beloved young men, the history of your course? In this scene of desolation, do you behold the image of your future selves? Is this the poverty and disease which, as an armed man, shall take hold on you? And are your fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and wives, and children, to succeed to those who now move on in this mournful procession, weeping as they go? Yes: bright as your morning now opens, and high as your hopes beat, this is your noon, and your night, unless you shun those habits of intemperance which have thus early made theirs a day of clouds, and of thick darkness. If you frequent places of evening resort for social drinking; if you set out with drinking, daily, a little, temperately, prudently, it is yourselves which, as in a glass, you behold.

THE PILGRIMS.

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

Mr. Depew is considered one of the foremost of our American orators, and it is enough to say he has risen to this distinction in a land noted for the eloquence of its public men. He is an excellent extemporaneous speaker, is graceful and easy in manner, fluent in utterance, and has a touch of humor that renders him popular. His tribute to the Pilgrims is worthy of a theme so inspiring.

They were practical statesmen, these Pilgrims. They wasted no time theorizing upon methods, but went straight at the mark. They solved the Indian problem with shot-guns, and it was not General Sherman, but Miles Standish, who originated the axiom that the only good Indians are the dead ones. They were bound by neither customs nor traditions, nor committals to this or that policy. The only question with them was, Does it work? The success of their Indian experiment led them to try similar methods with witches, Quakers and Baptists.

Their failure taught them the difference between mind and matter. A dead savage was another wolf under ground, but one of themselves persecuted or killed for conscience sake sowed the seed of discontent and disbelief. The effort to wall in a creed and wall out liberty was at once abandoned, and to-day New England has more religions and not less religion, but less bigotry, than any other community in the world.

In an age when dynamite was unknown, the Pilgrim invented in the cabin of the Mayflower the most powerful of explosives. The declaration of the equality of all men before the law has rocked thrones and consolidated classes. It separated the colonies from Great Britain and created the United States. It pulverized the chains of the slaves and gave manhood suffrage. It devolved upon the individual the functions of government and made the people the sole source of power. It substituted the cap of liberty for the royal crown in France, and by a bloodless revolution has added to the constellation of American republics, the star of Brazil.

But with the ever-varying conditions incident to free government, the Puritan’s talent as a political mathematician will never rust. Problems of the utmost importance press upon him for solution. When, in the effort to regulate the liquor traffic, he has advanced beyond the temper of the times and the sentiment of the people in the attempt to enact or enforce prohibition, and either been disastrously defeated or the flagrant evasions of the statutes have brought the law into contempt, he does not despair, but tries to find the error in his calculation.

If gubernatorial objections block the way of high license he will bombard the executive judgment and conscience by a proposition to tax. The destruction of homes, the ruin of the young, the increase of pauperism and crime, the added burdens upon the taxpayers by the evils of intemperance, appeal with resistless force to his training and traditions. As the power of the saloon increases the difficulties of the task, he becomes more and more certain that some time or other and in some way or other he will do that sum too.

PATRIOTISM A REALITY.

BY THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER.

All Americans ought to feel kindly disposed toward this eloquent Irish patriot, for he not only risked his life in the cause of Irish liberty, but also in our own Civil War. This oration has a rugged strength and blunt earnestness quite characteristic of the man. Let it not be delivered in any feeble halting manner, but with all your nerve and energy.

Sir, the pursuit of liberty must cease to be a traffic. It must resume among us its ancient glory—be with us an active heroism. Once for all, sir, we must have an end of this money making in the public forum. We must ennoble the strife for liberty; make it a gallant sacrifice, not a vulgar game; rescue the cause of Ireland from the profanation of those who beg, and from the control of those who bribe!

Ah! trust not those dull philosophers of the age, those wretched sceptics, who, to rebuke our enthusiasm, our folly, would persuade us that patriotism is but a delusion, a dream of youth, a wild and glittering passion; that it has died out in this nineteenth century; that it cannot exist with our advanced civilization—with the steam-engine and free trade!

False—false!—The virtue that gave to Paganism its dazzling lustre, to Barbarism its redeeming trait, to Christianity its heroic form, is not dead. It still lives, to preserve, to console, to sanctify humanity. It has its altar in every clime—its worship and festivities. On the heathered hills of Scotland, the sword of Wallace is yet a bright tradition. The genius of France, in the brilliant literature of the day, pays its high homage to the piety and heroism of the young Maid of Orleans.

In her new senate hall, England bids her sculptor place among the effigies of her greatest sons the images of Hampden and of Russell. By the soft blue waters of Lake Lucerne stands the chapel of William Tell. At Innsbruck, in the black aisle of the old cathedral, the peasant of the Tyrol kneels before the statue of Andrew Hofer. In the great American republic—in that capital city which bears his name—rises the monument of the Father of his country.

Sir, shall we not join in this glorious homage, and here in this island, consecrated by the blood of many a good and gallant man, shall we not have the faith, the duties, the festivities, of patriotism? You discard the weapons of these heroic men—do not discard the virtues. Elevate the national character; confront corruption wherever it appears; scourge it from the hustings; scourge it from the public forum; and, whilst proceeding with the noble task to which you have devoted your lives and fortunes, let this thought enrapture and invigorate your hearts: That in seeking the independence of your country, you have preserved her virtue—preserved it at once from the seductions of a powerful minister, and from the infidelity of bad citizens.

THE GLORY OF ATHENS.

BY LORD MACAULAY.

As a historian Macaulay has a world-wide reputation. As a poet he takes high rank. As an orator his speeches are characterized by lofty thought, felicitious language and the most elaborate style. I would call him a graceful giant. The last paragraph of the following selection in which he predicts the final decay of England, has created an endless amount of comment and criticism. Concerning the beauty and grandeur of this selection from his writings, there can be but one opinion.

All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Whenever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, and consoling. It stood by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney.

But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage; to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty; liberty in bondage; health in sickness; society in solitude. Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate; in the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy.

But these are not her glory. Surely it is no exaggeration to say, that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye, which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties, all the shapeless ore of the yet unexplored mines.

This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have for more than twenty centuries been annihilated. Her people have degenerated into timid slaves; her language, into a barbarous jargon. Her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable.

And, when those who have rivaled her greatness, shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief; and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts; her influence and her glory will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control.

THE IRISH CHURCH.

BY WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.

No man in England, or in fact in the whole world, has gained so high a distinction in modern times for statesmanship and eloquence as Mr. Gladstone. Possessed of vast resources of brain and culture, a remarkable command of language, an iron will and an enthusiasm in behalf of every cause he espoused that was checked by no opposition, the “Grand Old Man,” as he was called, was the most majestic and commanding figure in English politics and literature for a generation. His oration on the Irish Church is a good specimen of his impassioned oratory.

If we are prudent men, I hope we shall endeavor as far as in us lies to make some provision for a contingent, a doubtful, and probably a dangerous future. If we be chivalrous men, I trust we shall endeavor to wipe away all those stains which the civilized world has for ages seen, or seemed to see, on the shield of England in her treatment of Ireland. If we be compassionate men, I hope we shall now, once for all, listen to the tale of woe which comes from her, and the reality of which, if not its justice, is testified by the continuous emigration of her people—that we shall endeavor to—

But, above all, if we be just men, we shall go forward in the name of truth and right, bearing this in mind—that, when the case is proved and the hour is come, justice delayed is justice denied.

There are many who think that to lay hands upon the national Church Establishment of a country is a profane and unhallowed act. I respect that feeling. I sympathize with it. I sympathize with it while I think it my duty to overcome and repress it. But if it be an error, it is an error entitled to respect. There is something in the idea of a national establishment of religion, of a solemn appropriation of a part of the Commonwealth for conferring upon all who are ready to receive it what we know to be an inestimable benefit; of saving that portion of the inheritance from private selfishness, in order to extract from it, if we can, pure and unmixed advantages of the highest order for the population at large.

There is something in this so attractive that it is an image that must always command the homage of the many. It is somewhat like the kingly ghost in Hamlet, of which one of the characters of Shakespeare says:—

But, sir, this is to view a religious establishment upon one side, only upon what I may call the ethereal side. It has likewise a side of earth; and here I cannot do better than quote some lines written by the Archbishop of Dublin, at a time when his genius was devoted to the muses. He said, in speaking of mankind:

And so the Church Establishment, regarded in its theory and in its aim, is beautiful and attractive. Yet what is it but an appropriation of public property, an appropriation of the fruits of labor and of skill to certain purposes, and unless these purposes are fulfilled, that appropriation cannot be justified. Therefore, Sir, I cannot but feel that we must set aside fears which thrust themselves upon the imagination, and act upon the sober dictates of our judgment.

I think it has been shown that the cause for action is strong—not for precipitate action, not for action beyond our powers, but for such action as the opportunities of the times and the condition of Parliament, if there be but a ready will, will amply and easily admit of. If I am asked as to my expectations of the issue of this struggle, I begin frankly by avowing that I, for one, would not have entered into it unless I believed that the final hour was about to sound.

And I hope that the noble lord will forgive me if I say that before Friday last I thought that the thread of the remaining life of the Irish Established Church was short, but that since Friday last, when at half-past four o’clock in the afternoon the noble lord stood at that table, I have regarded it as being shorter still. The issue is not in our hands.

What we had and have to do is to consider well and deeply before we take the first step in an engagement such as this; but having entered into the controversy, there and then to acquit ourselves like men, and to use every effort to remove what still remains of the scandals and calamities in the relations which exist between England and Ireland, and use our best efforts at least to fill up with the cement of human concord the noble fabric of the British empire.

APPEAL TO THE HUNGARIANS.

BY LOUIS KOSSUTH.

The eminent Hungarian orator and statesman, whose name for a whole generation stood for liberty, visited our country in his early manhood and received an ovation wherever he went. His progress was a triumphal march. This was due not merely to the fact that he was exerting all his energies to liberate his country, but his reception was a tribute to his brilliant genius and overpowering eloquence. Kossuth was one of the most remarkable orators of modern times. The following selection is a fine illustration of his impassioned, burning eloquence.

Our fatherland is in danger. Citizens of the fatherland! To arms! To arms! If we believed the country could be saved by ordinary means, we would not cry that it is in danger. If we stood at the head of a cowardly, childish nation, which, in the hour of peril, prefers defeat to defence, we would not sound the alarm-bell. But because we know that the people of our land compose a manly nation, determined to defend itself against oppression, we call out in the loudest voice, “Our fatherland is in danger!” Because we are sure that the nation is able to defend its hearths and homes, we announce the peril in all its magnitude, and appeal to our brethren, in the name of God and their country, to look the danger boldly in the face.

We will not smile and flatter. We say it plainly, that unless the nation rise, to a man, prepared to shed the last drop of blood, all our previous struggles will have been in vain. The noble blood that has flowed like water, will have been wasted. Our fatherland will be crushed to the earth. On the soil, where rest the ashes of our ancestors, the Russian knout will be wielded over a people reduced beneath the yoke of slavery.

If we wish to shut our eyes to the danger, we shall thereby save no one from its power. If we represent the matter as it is, we make our country master of its own fate. If the breath of life is in our people, they will save themselves and their fatherland. But, if paralyzed by coward fear, they remain supine, all will be lost. God will help no man who does not help himself. We tell you that the Austrian Emperor sends the hordes of Russian barbarians for your destruction.

People of Hungary! Would you die under the destroying sword of the barbarous Russians? If not, defend your own lives! Would you see the Cossacks of the distant north trampling under foot the dishonored bodies of your fathers, your wives, and your children? If not, defend yourselves! Do you wish that your fellow-countrymen should be dragged away to Siberia, or should fight for tyrants in a foreign land, or writhe in slavery beneath a Russian scourge? If not, defend yourselves! Would you see your villages in flames, and your harvest-fields in ruins? Would you die of hunger on the soil which you have cultivated with sweat and blood? If not, defend yourselves!

This strife is not a strife between two hostile camps, but a war of tyranny against freedom, of barbarians against the collective might of a free nation. Therefore must the whole people arise with the army. If these millions sustain our army, we have gained freedom and victory for universal Europe, as well as for ourselves. Therefore, O strong, gigantic people, unite with the army, and rush to the conflict. Ho! every freeman! To arms! To arms! Thus alone is victory certain.

THE TYRANT VERRES DENOUNCED.

BY CICERO.

This oration is inserted here to furnish an example of the style of the great Roman orator whose eloquence has been proverbial from his time to the present. His patriotic utterances should stir the blood of the reciter, and if they do this his hearers will share the inspiration.

An opinion has long prevailed, fathers, that, in public prosecutions, men of wealth, however clearly convicted, are always safe. This opinion, so injurious to your order, so detrimental to the state, it is now in your power to refute. A man is on trial before you who is rich, and he hopes his riches will compass his acquittal; but whose life and actions are his sufficient condemnation in the eyes of all candid men. I speak of Caius Verres, who, if he now receive not the sentence his crimes deserve, it shall not be through the lack of a criminal or of a prosecutor, but through the failure of the ministers of justice to do their duty.

Passing over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does the quæstorship of Verres exhibit but one continued scene of villanies? The public treasure squandered, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people trampled on! But his prætorship in Sicily has crowned his career of wickedness, and completed the lasting monument of his infamy. His decisions have violated all law, all precedent, all right. His extortions from the industrious poor have been beyond computation. Our most faithful allies have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. Men the most worthy have been condemned and banished without a hearing, while the most atrocious criminals have, with money, purchased exemption from the punishment due to their guilt.

I ask now, Verres, what have you to advance against these charges? Art thou not the tyrant Prætor, who, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, dared to put to an infamous death, on the cross, that ill-fated and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Cosanus? And what was his offence? He had declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against your brutal persecutions!

For this, when about to embark for home, he was seized, brought before you, charged with being a spy, scourged and tortured. In vain did he exclaim: “I am a Roman citizen! I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and who will attest my innocence!” Deaf to all remonstrance, remorseless, thirsting for innocent blood, you ordered the savage punishment to be inflicted! While the sacred words, “I am a Roman citizen,” were on his lips—words which, in the remotest regions, are a passport to protection—you ordered him to death—to a death upon the cross!

O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred—now trampled on! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate—a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people—in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Roman commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the merciless monster, who, in the confidence of his riches, strikes at the very root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance? And shall this man escape? Fathers, it must not be! It must not be unless you would undermine the very foundations of social safety, strangle justice, and call down anarchy, massacre, and ruin on the commonwealth.

Humorous Recitations.

A recitation that has a touch of humor, one that is quaint and droll, one that has comical situations, or one that hits off any popular absurdity, is sure to be well received by your audience. A school exhibition or an evening’s entertainment without something of this kind would be pronounced dull and dry.

Some readers are especially adapted to recitals of this description. They have an innate sense of the ludicrous and are able to convey it by voice and manner. Those who are not favored with the very desirable gift of humor should confine themselves to selections of a graver character. The department of Wit and Humor here presented is large and complete, containing a great variety of readings that cannot fail to be enthusiastically received when properly rendered.

BILL’S IN TROUBLE!

“’SPACIALLY JIM.”

THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY.

Be careful, in all dialect recitations, to enunciate as the piece requires. A good part of the humor is brought out in the accent, and you should study this until you are master of it.

BLASTED HOPES.

TIM MURPHY MAKES A FEW REMARKS.

A good specimen of the Irish brogue and wit.

I saw Teddy Reagan the other day; he told me he had been dealing in hogs. “Is business good?” says I. “Yis,” says he. “Talking about hogs, Teddy, how do you find yourself?” sez I. I wint to buy a clock the other day, to make a present to Mary Jane. “Will you have a Frinch clock?” says the jeweler. “The deuce take your Frinch clock,” sez I. “I want a clock that my sister can understand when it strikes.” “I have a Dutch clock,” sez he, “an’ you kin put that on the shtairs.” “It might run down if I put it there,” sez I. “Well,” sez he, “here’s a Yankee clock, with a lookin’-glass in the front, so that you can see yourself,” sez he. “It’s too ugly,” sez I. “Thin I’ll take the lookin’-glass out, an’ whin you look at it you’ll not find it so ugly,” sez he.

I wint to Chatham Sthreet to buy a shirt, for the one I had on was a thrifle soiled. The Jew who kept the sthore looked at my bosom, an’ said: “So hellup me gracious! how long do you vear a shirt?” “Twinty-eight inches,” sez I. “Have you any fine shirts?” sez I. “Yis,” sez he. “Are they clane?” says I. “Yis,” sez he. “Thin you had better put one on,” sez I.

You may talk about bringin’ up childer in the way they should go, but I believe in bringing them up by the hair of the head. Talking about bringing up childer—I hear my childer’s prayers every night. The other night I let thim up to bed without thim. I skipped and sthood behind the door. I heard the big boy say: “Give us this day our daily bread.” The little fellow said: “Sthrike him for pie, Johnny.” I have one of the most economical boys in the Citty of New York; he hasn’t spint one cint for the last two years. I am expecting him down from Sing Sing prison next week.

Talking about boys, I have a nephew who, five years ago, couldn’t write a word. Last week he wrote his name for $10,000; he’ll git tin years in the pinatintiary. I can’t write, but I threw a brick at a policeman and made my mark.

They had a fight at Tim Owen’s wake last week. Mary Jane was there. She says, barrin’ herself, there was only one whole nose left in the party, an’ that belonged to the tay-kettle.

PASSING OF THE HORSE.

A SCHOOL-DAY.

Don’t overdo the whimpering and crying, but make the facial expressions and imitate the sobbing of one in tears. Make use of a handkerchief to render the imitation more effective.

THE BICYCLE AND THE PUP.

THE PUZZLED CENSUS TAKER.

Before reciting this state to your audience that “nein” is the German for “no.”

IT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

“Now, then,” said the short and fat and anxious-looking man as he sat down in the street car and unfolded a map he had just bought of a fakir. “I want to know how this old thing works. Let me first find the Philippine Islands and Manila. Here I am, and here is Ca-vitt.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the man on his left, “but that name is pronounced Kah-vee-tay.”

“Then why ain’t it spelled that way?” demanded the short and fat man. “No wonder Dooye has been left there a whole month without reinforcements when they mix up things that way.”

“You mean Dewey,” corrected the man on his right.

“I heard it called Dooye, sir.”

“But it isn’t right.”

“Then why don’t this map give it right? Is it the plan of our map-makers to bamboozle the American patriot? Let us turn to Cuba. Ah! here is that San Jew-an they are talking so much about.”

“Will you allow me to say that the name is pronounced San Wan?” softly observed the man on the left.

“By whom, sir?”

“By everybody.”

“I deny it, sir!” exclaimed the fat man. “If J-u-a-n don’t spell ‘Juan’ then I can’t read. If I am wrong then why don’t this map set me right? Is it the idea to mix up the American patriot until he can’t tell whether he’s in Cuba or the United States?”

“Where is that Ci-en-fue-gos I’ve read about?”

“Do you wish for the correct pronunciation of that name?” asked a man on the other side of the car.

“Haven’t I got it?”

“Not exactly, sir.”

“Then let her slide. The men who got out this map ought to be indicted for swindling. Maybe I’m wrong in calling it Ma-tan-zas?”

“It is hardly correct, sir.”

“And I’m off on Por-to Ri-co?”

“Just a little off.”

“That settles it, sir—that settles it!” said the short man as he folded up the map and tossed it away on the street. “I had a grandfather in the Revolutionary War, a father in the war with Mexico, and two brothers in the late Civil War, and I was going to offer my services to Uncle Sam in this emergency; but it’s off, sir—all off.”

“But what difference does the pronunciation make?” protested the man on the right.

“All the difference in the world, sir. My wife is tongue-tied and my only child has got a hare-lip, and if I should get killed neither one of them would be able to ever make any one understand whether I poured out my blood in a battle in Cuba or was run over by an ice-wagon in front of my own house!”

BRIDGET O’FLANNAGAN ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND COCKROACHES.

Och, Mollie Moriarty, I’ve been havin’ the quare iksparyincis since yiz hurrud from me, an’ if I’d known how it wud be whin I lift ould Oireland, I’d nivir have sit fut intil this coonthry befoor landin’. Me prisint misthriss that I had befoor the lasht wan is a discoiple av a new koind av relijun called Christian Soience. She’s been afthur takin’ a sooccission av coorsis av coolchur (I belave that’s fwhat they call it), an’ she knows all aboot this Christian Soience.

I’ve hurrud her talkin’ wid the other ladies about moind an’ matther, an’ as will as I can undherstand, Christian Soience manes that iverything is all moind an’ no matther, or all matther an’ nivir moind, an’ that ivery wan’s nobody, an’ iverything’s nothing ilse. The misthriss ses there’s no disase nor trooble, an’ no nade av physic; nivirthiliss, whin she dishcoovered cockroaches intil the panthry, she sint me out wid the money to buy an iksterminatin’ powdher.

Thinks I to mesilf, “I’ll give thim roaches a dose av Christian Soience, or fwhat the ladies call an ‘absint thratemint.’” So I fixed the powers av me moind on the middlesoom craythers an’ shpint the money till me own binifit. Afther a few days the misthriss goes intil the panthry, an’ foinds thim roaches roonin’ ’round as if they’d nivir been kilt at all. I throied to iksplain, but wid the inconsishtency av her six she wouldn’t listhin till a worrud, but ses I was addin’ impertinince to desaving’. So I’m afther lookin’ fur a place, an’ if yiz know av any lady widout notions that do be bewildherin’ to me moind, address,

Miss Bridget O’Flannagan, Post Office, Ameriky. M. Bourchier.

CONVERSATIONAL

WANTED, A MINISTER’S WIFE.

HOW A MARRIED MAN SEWS ON A BUTTON.

It is bad enough to see a bachelor sew on a button, but he is the embodiment of grace alongside a married man. Necessity has compelled experience in the case of the former, but the latter has depended upon some one else for this service, and fortunately for the sake of society, it is rarely he is obliged to resort to the needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds her right hand, or runs a sliver under the nail of the index finger of that hand, and it is then the man clutches the needle around the neck, and, forgetting to tie a knot on the thread, commences to put on the button.

It is always in the morning, and from five to twenty minutes after this he is expected to be down street. He lays the button on exactly the site of its predecessor, and pushes the needle through one eye, and carefully draws the thread after, leaving about three inches of it sticking up for leeway. He says to himself, “Well, if women don’t have the easiest time I ever see.”

Then he comes back the other way and gets the needle through the cloth easy enough, and lays himself out to find the eye, but, in spite of a great deal of patient jabbing, the needle point persists in bucking against the solid parts of the button, and finally, when he loses patience, his fingers catch the thread, and that three inches he has left to hold the button slips through the eye in a twinkling, and the button rolls leisurely across the floor. He picks it up without a single remark, out of respect for his children, and makes another attempt to fasten it.

This time, when coming back with the needle, he keeps both the thread and button from slipping, by covering them with his thumb; and it is out of regard for that part of him that he feels around for the eye in a very careful and judicious manner, but eventually losing his philosophy as the search becomes more and more hopeless, he falls to jabbing about in a loose and savage manner, and it is just then the needle finds the opening and comes up the button and part way through his thumb with a celerity that no human ingenuity can guard against. Then he lays down the things with a few familiar quotations, and presses the injured hand between his knees, and then holds it under the other arm, and finally jams it into his mouth, and all the while he prances and calls upon heaven and earth to witness that there has never been anything like it since the world was created, and howls, and whistles, and moans and sobs. After a while he calms down and puts on his pants and fastens them together with a stick, and goes to his business a changed man.

J. M. Bailey.

THE DUTCHMAN’S SERENADE.

You do not need any set tune for the words to be sung. It will be more amusing to have none, but to extemporize as you go along. Stop singing when you come to the words in parenthesis and speak them. To complete the impersonation, you should have a violin. Do not recite German dialect pieces too rapidly; the words should be pronounced very distinctly.

BIDDY’S TROUBLES.

If this selection were recited in the costume of a housemaid, with apron, sunbonnet and bare arms, the effect would be intensified. Place the hands on the hips except when gesticulating.

“It’s thru for me, Katy, that I never seed the like of this people afore. It’s a time I’ve been having since coming to this house, twelve months agone this week Thursday. Yer know, honey, that my fourth coosin, Ann Macarthy, recommended me to Mrs. Whaler, and told the lady that I knew about genteel housework and the likes; while at the same time I had niver seed inter an American lady’s kitchen.

“So she engaged me, and my heart was jist ready to burst wid grief for the story that Ann had told, for Mrs. Whaler was a swate-spoken lady, and never looked cross-like in her life; that I knew by her smooth, kind face. Well, jist the first thing she told me to do, after I dressed the children, was to dress the ducks for dinner. I stood looking at the lady for a couple of minutes, before I could make out any maneing at all to her words.

“Thin I went searching after clothes for the ducks; and such a time as I had, to be sure. High and low I went till at last my mistress axed me for what I was looking; and I told her the clothes for the ducks, to be sure. Och, how she scramed and laughed, till my face was as rid as the sun wid shame, and she showed me in her kind swate way what her maneing was. Thin she told me how to air the beds; and it was a day for me, indade, when I could go up chamber alone and clare up the rooms. One day Mrs. Whaler said to me:

“‘Biddy, an’ ye may give the baby an airin’, if yees will.’

“What should I do—and it’s thru what I am saying this blessed minute—but go upstairs wid the child, and shake it, and then howld it out of the winder. Such a scraming and kicking as the baby gave—but I hild on the harder. Everybody thin in the strate’ looked at me; at last misthress came up to see what for was so much noise.

“‘I am thrying to air the baby,’ I said, ‘but it kicks and scrames dridfully.’

“There was company down below; and whin Mrs. Whaler told them what I had been after doing, I thought they would scare the folks in the strate wid scraming.

“And then I was told I must do up Mr. Whaler’s sharts one day when my mistress was out shopping. She told me repeatedly to do them up nice, for master was going away, so I takes the sharts and did them all up in some paper that I was after bringing from the ould country wid me, and tied some nice pink ribbon around the bundle.

“‘Where are the sharts, Biddy?’ axed Mrs. Whaler, when she comed home.

“‘I have been doing them up in a quair nice way,’ I said, bringing her the bundle.

“‘Will you iver be done wid your graneness!’ she axed me with a loud scrame.

“I can’t for the life of me be tellin’ what their talkin’ manes. At home we call the likes of this fine work starching; and a deal of it I have done, too. Och! and may the blessed Vargin pity me, for I never’ll be cured of my graneness!”

THE INVENTOR’S WIFE.

MISS EDITH HELPS THINGS ALONG.

THE MAN WHO HAS ALL DISEASES AT ONCE.

Imitate the cough. Put your hands on different parts of your body in describing your aches and pains. Wear a long dismal face. Bend forward and limp as you change your position.

Good Morning, Doctor; how do you do? I hain’t quite as well as I have been; but I think I’m some better than I was. I don’t think that last medicine that you gin me did me much good. I had a terrible time with the earache last night; my wife got up and drapt a few draps of walnut sap into it, and that relieved it some; but I didn’t get a wink of sleep till nearly daylight. For nearly a week, Doctor, I’ve had the worst kind of a narvous headache; it has been so bad sometimes that I thought my head would bust open. Oh, dear! I sometimes think that I’m the most afflictedest human that ever lived.

Since this cold weather sot in, that troublesome cough, that I have had every winter for the last fifteen years, has began to pester me agin. (Coughs.) Doctor, do you think you can give me any thing that will relieve this desprit pain I have in my side?

Then I have a crick, at times, in the back of my neck, so that I can’t turn my head without turning the hull of my body. (Coughs.)

Oh, dear! What shall I do? I have consulted almost every doctor in the country, but they don’t any of them seem to understand my case. I have tried everything that I could think of; but I can’t find anything that does me the least good. (Coughs.)

Oh, this cough—it will be the death of me yet! You know I had my right hip put out last fall at the rising of Deacon Jones’ saw-mill; it’s getting to be very troublesome just before we have a change of weather. Then I’ve got the sciatica in my right knee, and sometimes I’m so crippled up that I can hardly crawl round in any fashion.

What do you think that old white mare of ours did while I was out plowing last week? Why, the weaked old critter, she kept a backing and backing, ontil she backed me right up agin the colter, and knock’d a piece of skin off my shin nearly so big. (Coughs.)

But I had a worse misfortune than that the other day, Doctor. You see it was washing-day—and my wife wanted me to go out and bring in a little stove-wood—you know we lost our help lately, and my wife has to wash and tend to everything about the house herself.

I knew it wouldn’t be safe for me to go out—as it was raining at the time—but I thought I’d risk it anyhow. So I went out, picked up a few chunks of stove-wood, and was a coming up the steps into the house, when my feet slipped from under me, and I fell down as sudden as if I’d been shot. Some of the wood lit upon my face, broke down the bridge of my nose, cut my upper lip, and knocked out three of my front teeth. I suffered dreadfully on account of it, as you may suppose, and my face ain’t well enough yet to make me fit to be seen, ’specially by the women folks. (Coughs.) Oh, dear! but that ain’t all, Doctor; I’ve got fifteen corns on my toes—and I’m afeard I’m going to have the “yaller janders.” (Coughs.)

Dr. Valentine.

THE SCHOOL-MA’AM’S COURTING.

THE DUTCHMAN’S SNAKE.

Near the town of Reading, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, there formerly lived a well-to-do Dutch farmer named Peter Van Riper. His only son was a strapping lad of seventeen, also named Peter, and upon old Peter and young Peter devolved the principal cares of the old man’s farm, now and then assisted by an ancient Dutchman named Jake Sweighoffer, who lived in the neighborhood, and went out to work by the day.

One warm day in haying time this trio were hard at work in a meadow near the farm-house, when suddenly Peter the elder dropped his scythe and called out:

“Oh! mine gracious, Peter! Peter!”

“What’s de matter, fader?” answered the son, straightening up and looking at his sire.

“Oh! mine Peter! Peter!” again cried the old man, “do come here, right off! Der schnake pite mine leg!”

If anything in particular could disturb the nerves of young Peter, it was snakes; for he had once been chased by a black one and frightened nearly out of his wits. At the word snake, therefore, young Van Riper fell back, nimbly as a wire-drawer, and called out in turn: “Where is der shnake, fader?”

“Here, up mine preeches!—Oh! my! my! my!”

“Vy don’t you kill him, fader?” exclaimed Peter, junior, keeping at a safe distance from his suffering sire.

“I can’t get at der little sinner, Peter; you come dake off my drowsis, or he’ll kill me mit his pites.”

But the fears of Peter, the younger, overcame his filial affection, and lent strength to his legs, for he started off like a scared two-year-old toward the old man Jake, to call him to the assistance of his unhappy father. A few moments after, the two came bounding toward the old man, and as they passed a haycock where their garments had been laid when they began work, Jake grabbed the vest which he supposed belonged to his employer. During this time old Peter had managed to keep on his feet, although he was quaking and trembling like an aspen leaf in a June gale of wind.

“Oh! come quick, Yacob!” exclaimed he, “he pite like sixty, here, on mine leg.”

Old Jake was not particularly sensitive to fear, but few people, young or old, are free from alarm when a “pizenous” reptile is about. He seized a small pitchfork, and, telling the unhappy Van Riper to stand steady, promised to stun the reptile by a rap or two, even if he didn’t kill it outright. The frightened old man did not long hesitate between the risk of a broken leg or being bitten to death by a snake, but promptly indicated the place where Jake should strike. Whack went the pitchfork, and down tumbled Peter, exclaiming, “Oh! my! my! my; I pleeve you’ve proke mine leg! but den der shnake’s gone.”

“Vere! vere’s he gone to?” says old Sweighoffer, looking sharply about on the ground he stood upon.

“Never mind der shnake now, Yacob,” says Van Riper, “come and help me up, and I’ll go home.”

“Here, I’ve got your shacket—put it on,” says Jacob, lifting up the old man, and slipping his arms into the armholes of the vest.

The moment old Peter made the effort to get the garment on his shoulders, he grew livid in the face—his hair stood on end—he shivered and shook—his teeth chattered, and his knees knocked an accompaniment. “O Yacob!” exclaimed he, “help me to go home—I’m dead! I’m dead!”

“Vat’s dat you say? Ish dere nodder shnake in your preeches?” inquired the intrepid Jacob.

“Not dat—I don’t mean dat,” says the farmer, “but shust you look on me—I’m shwelt all up, pigger as an ox! my shacket won’t go on my pack. I’m dying mit de pizen. Oh! oh! oh! help me home quick.”

The hired man came to the same conclusion; and with might and main he hurried old Peter along toward the farm-house. Meantime young Peter had run home, and so alarmed the women folks that they were in a high state of excitement when they saw the approach of the good old man and his assistant.

Old man Peter was carried into the house, laid on a bed, and began to lament his sad misfortune in a most grievous manner, when the old lady, his frow, came forward and proposed to examine the bitten leg. The unhappy man opened his eyes and feebly pointed out the place of the bite. She carefully ripped up his pantaloons, and out fell—a thistle-top! and at the same time a considerable scratch was made visible.

“Call dis a shnake? Bah!” says the old lady, holding up the thistle.

“Oh! but I’m pizened to death, Katreen!—see, I’m all pizen!—mine shacket!—Oh! dear, mine shacket not come over mine pody!”

“Haw! haw! you crazy fellow,” roars the frow, “dat’s not your shacket—dat’s Peter’s shacket! ha! ha! ha!”

“Vat! dat Peter’s shacket?” says old Peter, shaking off death’s icy fetters at one surge, and jumping up: “Bosh! Jacob, vat an old fool you must be to say I vas shnake-pite! Go ’pout your pusiness, gals. Peter, give me mine pipe.”

NO KISS.