Chapter XIII: Part THREE: Platform Practice (2)

There was once a noble ship full of eager passengers, freighted with a rich cargo, steaming at full speed from England to America. Two thirds of a prosperous voyage thus far were over, as in our mess we were beginning to talk of home. Fore and aft the songs of good cheer and hearty merriment rose from deck to cabin.

"As if the beauteous ship enjoyed the beauty of the sea,
She lifteth up her stately head, and saileth joyfully,
A lovely path before her lies, a lovely path behind;
She sails amid the loveliness like a thing of heart and mind."

Suddenly, a dense fog came, shrouding the horizon, but as this was a common occurrence in the latitude we were sailing, it was hardly mentioned in our talk that afternoon. There are always croakers on board ship, if the weather changes however slightly, but the _Britannia_ was free, that voyage, of such unwelcome passengers. A happier company never sailed upon an autumn sea! The storytellers are busy with their yarns to audiences of delighted listeners in sheltered places; the ladies are lying about on couches, and shawls, reading or singing; children in merry companies are taking hands and racing up and down the decks,--when a quick cry from the lookout, a rush of officers and men, and we are grinding on a ledge of rocks off Cape Race! One of those strong currents, always mysterious, and sometimes impossible to foresee, had set us into shore out of our course, and the ship was blindly beating on a dreary coast of sharp and craggy rocks.

I heard the order given, "Every one on deck!" and knew what that meant--the masts were in danger of falling. Looking over the side, we saw bits of the keel, great pieces of plank, floating out into the deep water. A hundred pallid faces were huddled together near the stern of the ship where we were told to go and wait. I remember somebody said that a little child, the playfellow of passengers and crew, could not be found, and that some of us started to find him; and that when we returned him to his mother she spake never a word, but seemed dumb with terror at the prospect of separation and shipwreck, and that other specter so ghastly when encountered at sea.

Suddenly we heard a voice up in the fog in the direction of the wheelhouse, ringing like a clarion above the roar of the waves, and the clashing sounds on shipboard, and it had in it an assuring, not a fearful tone. As the orders came distinctly and deliberately through the captain's trumpet, to "ship the cargo," to "back her," to "keep her steady," we felt somehow that the commander up there in the thick mist on the wheelhouse knew what he was about, and that through his skill and courage, by the blessing of heaven, we should all be rescued. The man who saved us so far as human aid ever saves drowning mortals, was one fully competent to command a ship; and when, after weary days of anxious suspense, the vessel leaking badly, and the fires in danger of being put out, we arrived safely in Halifax, old Mr. Cunard, agent of the line, on hearing from the mail officer that the steamer had struck on the rocks and had been saved only by the captain's presence of mind and courage, simply replied, "Just what might have been expected in such a disaster; Captain Harrison is always master of the situation." Now, no man ever became master of the situation by accident or indolence. I believe with Shelley, that the Almighty has given men and women arms long enough to reach the stars if they will only put them out! It was an admirable saying of the Duke of Wellington, "that no general ever blundered into a great victory." St. Hilaire said, "I ignore the existence of a blind chance, accident, and haphazard results." "He happened to succeed," is a foolish, unmeaning phrase. No man happens to succeed.

WIT AND HUMOR

Reprinted from "American Wit and Humor," copyrighted in "Modern Eloquence," Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY MINOT J. SAVAGE

Wit may take many forms, but it resides essentially in the thought or the imagination. In its highest forms it does not deal in things but with ideas. It is the shock of pleased surprise which results from the perception of unexpected likeness between things that differ or of an unexpected difference between things that are alike. Or it is where utterly incongruous things are apparently combined in the expression of one idea. Wit may be bitter or kindly or entirely neutral so far as the feelings are concerned. When extremes of feeling, one way or the other, are concerned, then it takes on other names which will be considered by themselves.

But not to stop any longer with definition, it is almost pure wit when some one said of an endless talker that he had "occasional brilliant flashes of silence." So of the saying of Mr. Henry Clapp. You know it is said of Shakespeare, "He is not for a day, but for all time." Speaking of the bore who calls when you are busy and never goes, Mr. Clapp said, "He is not for a time, but for all day." And what could be more deliciously perfect than the following: Senator Beck of Kentucky was an everlasting talker. One day a friend remarked to Senator Hoar, "I should think Beck would wear his brain all out talking so much." Whereupon Mr. Hoar replied, "Oh, that doesn't affect him any: he rests his mind when he is talking." This has, indeed, a touch of sarcasm; but it is as near the pure gold of wit as you often get. Or, take this. There being two houses both of which are insisted on as the real birthplace of the great philosopher and statesman, Mark Twain gravely informs us that "Franklin was twins, having been born simultaneously in two different houses in Boston."

One of the finest specimens of clear-cut wit is the saying of the Hon. Carroll D. Wright. Referring to the common saying, he once keenly remarked: "I know it is said that figures won't lie, but, unfortunately, liars will figure."

In contradistinction from wit, humor deals with incidents, characters, situations. True humor is altogether kindly; for, while it points out and pictures the weaknesses and foibles of humanity, it feels no contempt and leaves no sting. It has its root in sympathy and blossoms out in toleration.

It would take too long at this point in my lecture to quote complete specimens of humor; for that would mean spreading out before you detailed scenes or full descriptions. But fortunately it is not necessary. Cervantes, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb, Dickens, and a host of others will readily occur to you. But what could be better of its kind than this? General Joe Johnston was one day riding leisurely behind his army on the march. Food had been scarce and rations limited. He spied a straggler in the brush beside the road. He called out sharply, "What are you doing here?" Being caught out of the ranks was a serious offense, but the soldier was equal to the emergency. So to the General's question he replied, "Pickin' 'simmons." The persimmon, as you know, has the quality of puckering the mouth, as a certain kind of wild cherry used to mine when I was a boy. "What are you picking 'simmons for?" sharply rejoined the General. Then came the humorous reply that disarmed all of the officer's anger and appealed to his sympathy, while it hinted all "the boys" were suffering for the cause. "Well, the fact of it is, General, I'm trying to shrink up my stomach to the size of my rations, so I won't starve to death."

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA

From an article in The Philistine, with the permission of the author

BY ELBERT HUBBARD

When war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba--no one knew where. No mail or telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly.

What to do!

Some one said to the President, "There's a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you if anybody can." Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How "the fellow by the name of Rowan" took the letter, sealed it up in an oilskin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.

The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?" By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing--"Carry a message to Garcia!"

General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man--the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook, or threat, he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an angel of light for an assistant.

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of the effort is for all?

My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away as well as when he is at home. And the man, who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off," nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village--in every office, shop, store, and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly-the man who can carry a message to Garcia.

SHAKESPEARE'S "MARK ANTONY"

ANONYMOUS

A Roman, an orator, and a triumvir, a conqueror when all Rome seemed armed against him only to have his glory "false played" by a woman "unto an enemy's triumph,"--such is Shakespeare's story of Mark Antony. Passion alternates with passion, purpose with purpose, good with evil, and strength with weakness, until his whole nature seems changed, and we find the same and yet another man.

In "Julius Cęsar" Antony is seen at his best. He is the one triumphant figure of the play. Cęsar falls. Brutus and Cassius are in turn victorious and defeated, but Antony is everywhere a conqueror. Antony weeping over Cęsar's body, Antony offering his breast to the daggers which have killed his master, is as plainly the sovereign power of the moment as when over Cęsar's corpse he forces by his magnetic oratory the prejudiced populace to call down curses on the heads of the conspirators.

Cęsar's spirit still lives in Antony,--a spirit that dares face the conspirators with swords still red with Cęsar's blood and bid them,

Whilst their purple hands do reek and smoke,

fulfill their pleasure,--a spirit that over the dead body of Cęsar takes the hand of each and yet exclaims:--

"Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,
Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,
It would become me better than to close
In terms of friendship with thine enemies."

Permission is granted Antony to speak a farewell word over the body of Cęsar in the crowded market place. Before the populace, hostile and prejudiced, Antony stands as the friend of Cęsar. Slowly, surely, making his approach step by step, with consummate tact he steals away their hearts and paves the way for his own victory. The honorable men gradually turn to villains of the blackest dye. Cęsar's mantle, which but a moment before had called forth bitter curses, now brings tears to every Roman's eye. The populace fast yields to his eloquence. He conquers every vestige of distrust as he says:--

"I am no orator, as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him."

And now the matchless orator throws off his disguise. With resistless vehemence he pours forth a flood of eloquence which bears the fickle mob like straws before its tide:--

"I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Cęsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me; but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cęsar, that would move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny."

The effect is magical. The rage of the populace is quickened to a white heat; and, baffled, beaten by a plain, blunt man, the terror-stricken conspirators ride like madness through the gates of Rome.

ANDR. AND HALE

From "Orations and After-Dinner Speeches," the Cassell Publishing Company, New York, publishers.

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

André's story is the one overmastering romance of the Revolution. American and English literature is full of eloquence and poetry in tribute to his memory and sympathy for his fate. After the lapse of a hundred years, there is no abatement of absorbing interest. What had this young man done to merit immortality? The mission whose tragic issue lifted him out of the oblivion of other minor British officers, in its inception was free from peril or daring, and its objects and purposes were utterly infamous.

Had he succeeded by the desecration of the honorable uses of passes and flags of truce, his name would have been held in everlasting execration. In his failure the infant Republic escaped the dagger with which he was feeling for its heart, and the crime was drowned in tears for his untimely end. His youth and beauty, the brightness of his life, the calm courage in the gloom of his death, his early love and disappointment, surrounded him with a halo of poetry and pity which have secured for him what he most sought and could never have won in battles and sieges,--a fame and recognition which have outlived that of all the generals under whom he served.

Are kings only grateful, and do not republics forget? Is fame a travesty, and the judgment of mankind a farce? America had a parallel case in Captain Nathan Hale. Of the same age as André, he, after graduation at Yale College with high honors, enlisted in the patriot cause at the beginning of the contest, and secured the love and confidence of all about him. When none else would go upon a most important and perilous mission, he volunteered, and was captured by the British.

While André received every kindness, courtesy, and attention, and was fed from Washington's table, Hale was thrust into a noisome dungeon in the sugarhouse. While André was tried by a board of officers and had ample time and every facility for defense, Hale was summarily ordered to execution the next morning. While André's last wishes and bequests were sacredly followed, the infamous Cunningham tore from Hale his cherished Bible and destroyed before his eyes his last letter to his mother and sister, and asked him what he had to say. "All I have to say," was his reply, "is, I regret I have but one life to lose for my country."

The dying declarations of Andre and Hale express the animating spirit of their several armies, and teach why, with all her power, England could not conquer America. "I call upon you to witness that I die like a brave man," said André, and he spoke from British and Hessian surroundings, seeking only glory and pay. "I regret I have but one life to lose for my country," said Hale; and, with him and his comrades, self was forgotten in that absorbing, passionate patriotism which pledges fortune, honor, and life to the sacred cause.

THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON

BY THEODORE PARKER

One raw morning in spring--it will be eighty years the nineteenth day of this month--Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came to seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia came together before daylight, "for training." A great, tall man, with a large head and a high, wide brow, their captain,--one who had "seen service,"--marshaled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bade "every man load his piece with powder and ball." "I will order the first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered. "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war, let it begin here."

Gentlemen, you know what followed; those farmers and mechanics "fired the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up amid the memories of that day. When a boy, my mother lifted me up, on Sunday, in her religious, patriotic arms, and held me while I read the first monumental line I ever saw-- "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind."

Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome, in many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian obelisks, have read what was written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, but no chiseled stone has ever stirred me to such emotion as these rustic names of men who fell "In the Sacred Cause of God and their Country."

Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. The monument covers the bones of my own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green grass at Lexington. It was my own name which stands chiseled on that stone; the tall Captain who marshaled his fellow farmers and mechanics into stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war of American Independence,--the last to leave the field,--was my father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket he that day captured from the foe, I learned also another religious lesson, that "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." I keep them both "Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both "In the Sacred Cause of God and my Country."

THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE

Reprinted with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.

BY HENRY W. GRADY

I went to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol Hill; my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's Capitol, and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration.

Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich with the promise of harvest.

Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. Outside, there stood my friend, the master, a simple, upright man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing crops, master of his own land and master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man, but happy in the heart and home of his son.

They started to their home, and as they reached the door the old mother came with the sunset falling fair on her face, and lighting up her deep, patient eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of her heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond was the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart and conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down the lane came the children, trooping home after the cows, seeking as truant birds do the quiet of their home nest.

And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as the wings of the unseen dove. And the old man--while a startled bird called from the forest, and the trees were shrill with the cricket's cry, and the stars were swarming in the sky--got the family around him, and, taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, the little baby hiding in the folds of its mother's dress, while he closed the record of that simple day by calling down God's benediction on that family and on that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I said, "Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last the strength and the responsibility of this government, the hope and the promise of this republic."

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT

BY CANON G. W. FARRAR

When Abraham Lincoln sat, book in hand, day after day, under the tree, moving round it as the shadow crossed, absorbed in mastering his task; when James Garfield rang the bell at Hiram Institute on the very stroke of the hour and swept the schoolroom as faithfully as he mastered his Greek lesson; when Ulysses Grant, sent with his team to meet some men who came to load his cart with logs, and, finding no men, loaded the cart with his own boy's strength, they showed in the conscientious performance of duty the qualities which were to raise them to become kings of men. When John Adams was told that his son, John Quincy Adams, had been elected President of the United States, he said, "He has always been laborious, child and man, from infancy."

But the youth was not destined to die in the deep valley of obscurity and toil, in which it is the lot--and perhaps the happy lot--of most of us to spend our little lives. The hour came; the man was needed. In 1861 there broke out that most terrible war of modern days. Grant received a commission as Colonel of Volunteers, and in four years the struggling toiler had been raised to the chief command of a vaster army than has ever been handled by any mortal man. Who could have imagined that four years would make that enormous difference? But it is often so. The great men needed for some tremendous crisis have stepped often, as it were, out of a door in the wall which no man had noticed; and, unannounced, unheralded, without prestige, have made their way silently and single-handed to the front. And there was no luck in it. It was a work of inflexible faithfulness, of indomitable resolution, of sleepless energy, and iron purpose and tenacity. In the campaigns at Fort Donelson; in the desperate battle at Shiloh; in the siege of Corinth; in battle after battle, in seige after seige; whatever Grant had to do, he did it with his might. Other generals might fail--he would not fail. He showed what a man could do whose will was strong. He undertook, as General Sherman said of him, what no one else would have ventured and his very soldiers began to reflect something of his indomitable determination.

His sayings revealed the man. "I have nothing to do with opinions," he said at the outset," and shall only deal with armed rebellion." "In riding over the field," he said at Shiloh, "I saw that either side was ready to give way, if the other showed a bold front. I took the opportunity, and ordered an advance along the whole line." "No terms," he wrote to General Buckner at Fort Donelson (and it is pleasant to know that General Buckner stood as a warm friend beside his dying bed); "no terms other than unconditional surrender can be accepted." "My headquarters," he wrote from Vicksburg, "will be on the field." With a military genius which embraced the vastest plans while attending to the smallest details, he defeated, one after another, every great general of the Confederates except Stonewall Jackson. The Southerners felt that he held them as in the grasp of a vise; that this man could neither be arrested nor avoided. For all this he has been severely blamed. He ought not to be blamed. He has been called a butcher, which is grossly unjust. He loved peace; he hated bloodshed; his heart was generous and kind. His orders were to save lives, to save treasure, but at all costs to save his country--and he did save his country.

After the surrender at Appomattox Court House, the war was over. He had put his hand to the plow and had looked not back. He had made blow after blow, each following where the last had struck; he had wielded like a hammer the gigantic forces at his disposal, and had smitten opposition into the dust. It was a mighty work, and he had done it well. Surely history has shown that for the future destinies of a mighty nation it was a necessary and blessed work!

AMERICAN COURAGE

From the copyrighted print in "A Modern Reader and Speaker," by George Riddle, with the permission of Duffield and Company, New York, publishers.

BY SHERMAN HOAR

I fear we undervalue the devotion to country which comes from a contemplation of what has been done and suffered in her name. I feel that we teach those who are to make or mar the future of this nation too much of what has been done elsewhere, and too little of what has been done here. Courage is the characteristic of no one land or time. The world's history is full of it and the lessons it teaches. American courage, however, is of this nation; it is ours, and if the finest national spirit is worth the creating; if patriotism is still a quality to be engendered in our youth; if love of country is still to be a strong power for good, those acts of devotion and of heroic personal sacrifice with which our history is filled, are worthy of earnest study, of continued contemplation, and of perpetual consideration.

"Let him who will, sing deeds done well across the sea,
Here, lovely Land, men bravely live and die for Thee."

The particular example I desire to speak about is of that splendid quality of courage which dares everything not for self or country, but for an enemy. It is of that kind which is called into existence not by dreams of glory, or by love of land, but by the highest human desire; the desire to mitigate suffering in those who are against us.

In the afternoon of the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, General Kershaw of the Confederate army was sitting in his quarters when suddenly a young South Carolinian named Kirkland entered, and, after the usual salutations, said: "General, I can't stand this." The general, thinking the statement a little abrupt, asked what it was he could not stand, and Kirkland replied: "Those poor fellows out yonder have been crying for water all day, and I have come to you to ask if I may go and give them some." The "poor fellows" were Union soldiers who lay wounded between the Union and Confederate lines. To go to them, Kirkland must go beyond the protection of the breastworks and expose himself to a fire from the Union sharpshooters, who, so far during that day, had made the raising above the Confederate works of so much as a head an act of extreme danger. General Kershaw at first refused to allow Kirkland to go on his errand, but at last, as the lad persisted in his request, declined to forbid him, leaving the responsibility for action with the boy himself. Kirkland, in perfect delight, rushed from the general's quarters to the front, where he gathered all the canteens he could carry, filled them with water, and going over the breastworks, started to give relief to his wounded enemies. No sooner was he in the open field than our sharpshooters, supposing he was going to plunder their comrades, began to fire at him. For some minutes he went about doing good under circumstances of most imminent personal danger. Soon, however, those to whom he was taking the water recognized the character of his undertaking. All over the field men sat up and called to him, and those too hurt to raise themselves, held up their hands and beckoned to him. Soon our sharpshooters, who luckily had not hit him, saw that he was indeed an Angel of Mercy, and stopped their fire, and two armies looked with admiration at the young man's pluck and loving- kindness. With a beautiful tenderness, Kirkland went about his work, giving of the water to all, and here and there placing a knapsack pillow under some poor wounded fellow's head, or putting in a more comfortable position some shattered leg or arm. Then he went back to his own lines and the fighting went on. Tell me of a more exalted example of personal courage and self-denial than that of that Confederate soldier, or one which more clearly deserves the name of Christian fortitude. In that terrible War of the Rebellion, Kirkland gave up his life for a mistaken cause in the battle of Chickamauga, but I cannot help thanking God that, in our reunited country, we are joint heirs with the men from the South in the glory and inspiration that come from such heroic deeds as his.

THE MINUTEMEN OF THE REVOLUTION

Reprinted, with permission, from "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

The Minuteman of the Revolution! And who was he? He was the old, the middle-aged, and the young. He was the husband and the father, who left his plow in the furrow and his hammer on the bench, and marched to die or be free. He was the son and lover, the plain, shy youth of the singing school and the village choir, whose heart beat to arms for his country, and who felt, though he could not say with the old English cavalier:--

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."

He was the man who was willing to pour out his life's blood for a principle. Intrenched in his own honesty, the king's gold could not buy him; enthroned in the love of his fellow citizens, the king's writ could not take him; and when, on the morning of Lexington, the king's troops marched to seize him, his sublime faith saw, beyond the clouds of the moment, the rising sun of the America we behold, and, careless of himself, mindful only of his country, he exultingly exclaimed, "Oh, what a glorious morning!" And then, amid the flashing hills, the ringing woods, the flaming roads, he smote with terror the haughty British column, and sent it shrinking, bleeding, wavering, and reeling through the streets of the village, panic-stricken and broken.

Him we gratefully recall to-day; him we commit in his immortal youth to the reverence of our children. And here amid these peaceful fields,-- here in the heart of Middlesex County, of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, stand fast, Son of Liberty, as the minuteman stood at the old North Bridge. But should we or our descendants, false to justice or humanity, betray in any way their cause, spring into life as a hundred years ago, take one more step, descend, and lead us, as God led you in saving America, to save the hopes of man.

No hostile fleet for many a year has vexed the waters of our coast; nor is any army but our own likely to tread our soil. Not such are our enemies to-day. They do not come, proudly stepping to the drumbeat, their bayonets flashing in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom; or bigotry and ignorance shall lay their fatal hands on education; or the arrogance of caste shall strike at equal rights; or corruption shall poison the very springs of national life,--there, Minuteman of Liberty, are your Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. And as you love your country and your kind, and would have your children rise up and call you blessed, spare not the enemy. Over the hills, out of the earth, down from the clouds, pour in resistless might. Fire from every rock and tree, from door and window, from hearthstone and chamber. Hang upon his flank from morn to sunset, and so, through a land blazing with indignation, hurl the hordes of ignorance and corruption and injustice back--back in utter defeat and ruin.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

Reprinted with permission from "The Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis," Vol. III. Copyright 1894, by Harper and Brothers.

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

On Tuesday, April 18, 1775, Gage, the royal governor, who had decided to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads from Boston into Middlesex, to prevent any report of the intended march from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the tension of the popular mind, every sound and sight was significant. In the afternoon, one of the governor's grooms strolled into a stable where John Ballard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a son of liberty; and when the groom idly remarked in nervous English "about what would occur to-morrow," John's heart leaped and his hand shook, and, asking the groom to finish cleaning the horse, he ran to a friend, who carried the news straight to Paul Revere.

Gage thought that his secret had been kept, but Lord Percy, who had heard the people say on the Common that the troops would miss their aim, undeceived him. Gage instantly ordered that no one should leave the town. But Dr. Warren was before him, and, as the troops crossed the river, Paul Revere was rowing over the river farther down to Charlestown, having agreed with his friend, Robert Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North Church,--

"One, if by land, and two, if by sea,"

as a signal of the march of the British. It was a brilliant April night. The winter had been unusually mild and the spring very forward. The hills were already green; the early grain waved in the fields, and the air was sweet with blossoming orchards. Under the cloudless moon the soldiers silently marched, and Paul Revere swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West Cambridge, rousing every house as he went, spurring for Lexington and Hancock and Adams, and evading the British patrols, who had been sent out to stop the news.

Stop the news! Already the village church bells were beginning to ring the alarm, as the pulpits beneath them had been ringing for many a year. In the awakening houses lights flashed from window to window. Drums beat faintly far away and on every side. Signal guns flashed and echoed. The watchdogs barked; the cocks crew.

Stop the news! Stop the sunrise! The murmuring night trembled with the summons so earnestly expected, so dreaded, so desired. And as, long ago, the voice rang out at midnight along the Syrian shore, wailing that great Pan was dead, but in the same moment the choiring angels whispered, "Glory to God in the highest, for Christ is born," so, if the stern alarm of that April night seemed to many a wistful and loyal heart to portend the passing glory of British dominion and the tragical chance of war, it whispered to them with prophetic inspiration, "Good will to men; America is born!"

There is a tradition that long before the troops reached Lexington an unknown horseman thundered at the door of Captain Joseph Robbins in Acton, waking every man and woman and babe in the cradle, shouting that the regulars were marching to Concord and that the rendezvous was the old North Bridge. Captain Robbins' son, a boy of ten years, heard the summons in the garret where he lay, and in a few minutes was on his father's old mare, a young Paul Revere, galloping along the road to rouse Captain Isaac Davis, who commanded the minutemen of Acton. The company assembled at his shop, formed, and marched a little way, when he halted them and returned for a moment to his house. He said to his wife, "Take good care of the children," kissed her, turned to his men, gave the order to march, and saw his home no more. Such was the history of that night in how many homes!

The hearts of those men and women of Middlesex might break, but they could not waver. They had counted the cost. They knew what and whom they served; and, as the midnight summons came, they started up and answered, "Here am I!"

THE ARTS OF THE ANCIENTS

From "Speeches and Lectures," with the permission of Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, Boston, publishers.

BY WENDELL PHILLIPS

We have a pitying estimate, a tender compassion, for the narrowness, ignorance, and darkness of the bygone ages. We seem to ourselves not only to monopolize, but to have begun, the era of light. In other words, we are all running over with a fourth-day-of-July spirit of self-content. I am often reminded of the German whom the English poet Coleridge met at Frankfort. He always took off his hat with profound respect when he ventured to speak of himself. It seems to me, the American people might be painted in the chronic attitude of taking off its hat to itself.

Considering their employment of the mechanical forces, and their movement of large masses from the earth, we know that the Egyptians had the five, seven, or three mechanical powers; but we cannot account for the multiplication and increase necessary to perform the wonders they accomplished.

There is a book telling how Domenico Fontana of the sixteenth century set up the Egyptian obelisk at Rome on end, in the Papacy of Sixtus V. Wonderful! Yet the Egyptians quarried that stone, and carried it a hundred and fifty miles, and the Romans brought it seven hundred and fifty miles, and never said a word about it.

Take canals. The Suez canal absorbs half its receipts in cleaning out the sand which fills it continually, and it is not yet known whether it is a pecuniary success. The ancients built a canal at right angles to ours; because they knew it would not fill up if built in that direction, and they knew such a one as ours would. There were magnificent canals in the land of the Jews, with perfectly arranged gates and sluices. We have only just begun to understand ventilation properly for our houses; yet late experiments at the Pyramids in Egypt show that those Egyptian tombs were ventilated in the most perfect and scientific manner.

Again, cement is modern, for the ancients dressed and joined their stones so closely, that, in buildings thousands of years old the thin blade of a penknife cannot be forced between them. The railroad dates back to Egypt. Arago has claimed that they had a knowledge of steam. A painting has been discovered of a ship full of machinery, and a could only be accounted for by supposing the motive power to have been steam. Bramah acknowledges that he took the idea of his celebrated lock from an ancient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says that there was no social question that was not discussed to rags in Egypt.

"Well," say you, "Franklin invented the lightning rod." I have no doubt he did; but years before his invention, and before muskets were invented, the old soldiers on guard on the towers used Franklin's invention to keep guard with; and if a spark passed between them and the spearhead, they ran and bore the warning of the state and condition of affairs. After that you will admit that Benjamin Franklin was not the only one that knew of the presence of electricity, and the advantages derived from its use. Solomon's Temple you will find was situated on an exposed point of the hill: the temple was so lofty that it was often in peril, and was guarded by a system exactly like that of Benjamin Franklin.

Well, I may tell you a little of ancient manufactures. The Duchess of Burgundy took a necklace from the neck of a mummy, and wore it to a ball given at the Tuileries; and everybody said they thought it was the newest thing there. A Hindoo princess came into court; and her father, seeing her, said, "Go home, you are not decently covered,--go home;" and she said, "Father, I have seven suits on;" but the suits were of muslin so thin that the king could see through them, A Roman poet says, "the girl was in the poetic dress of the country." I fancy the French would be rather astonished at this. Four hundred and fifty years ago the first spinning machine was introduced into Europe. I have evidence to show that it made its first appearance two thousand years before.

Why have I groped among these ashes? I have told you these facts to show you that we have not invented everything--that we do not monopolize the encyclopedia. The past had knowledge. But it was the knowledge of the classes, not of the masses. "The beauty that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" were exclusive, the possession of the few. The science of Egypt was amazing; but it meant privilege-- the privilege of the king and the priest. It separated royalty and priesthood from the people, and was the engine of oppression. When Cambyses came down from Persia and thundered across Egypt, treading out royalty and priesthood, he trampled out at the same time civilization itself.

The distinctive glory of the nineteenth century is that it distributes knowledge; that it recognizes the divine will, which is that every man has a right to know whatever may be serviceable to himself or to his fellows; that it makes the church, the schoolhouse, and the town hall, its symbols, and humanity its care. This democratic spirit will animate our arts with immortality, if God means that they shall last.

A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

An extract from "A Man Without a Country"

BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE

Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of the West," as the Western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow; at some dinner party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flatboat, and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack life was very tame to poor Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician the time which they devoted to Monongahela, hazard, and high-low-jack. But one day Nolan had his revenge. This time Burr came down the river, not as an attorney seeking a place for his office, but as a disguised conquerer. He had defeated I know not how many district attorneys; he had dined at I know not how many public dinners; he had been heralded in I don't know how many "Weekly Arguses," and it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an empire before him. It was a great day--his arrival--to poor Nolan. Burr had not been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a cottonwood tree, as he said--really to seduce him; and by the time the sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

What Burr meant to do I know no more than you. It is none of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the great treason trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget's Sound is to- day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage; and, to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for "spectacles," a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence enough--that he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false to it, and would have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any one who would follow him had the order been signed, "By command of His Exc. A. Burr." The courts dragged on. The big flies escaped--rightly for all I know. Nolan was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I would never have heard of him, but that, when the president of the court asked him at the close whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy:--"Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!"

I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him "United States" was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by "United States" for all the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to "United States." It was "United States" which gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he might never hear her name again.

He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September 23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard her name again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.

Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. He called the court into his private room, and returned in fifteen minutes, with a face like a sheet, to say:--

"Prisoner, hear the sentence of the court! The court decides, subject to the approval of the president, that you never hear the name of the United States again."

Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added:--

"Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver him to the naval commander there."

The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.

"Mr. Marshal," continued old Morgan, "see that no one mentions the United States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to Lieutenant Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one shall mention the United States to the prisoner while he is on board ship. You will receive your written orders from the officer on duty here this evening. The court is adjourned without day."

The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily followed ever after. The Secretary of the Navy was requested to put Nolan on board a government vessel bound on a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far confined there as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the country. One afternoon a lot of the men sat on the deck smoking and reading aloud. Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read to the others; and he read very well. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifth canto without a thought of what was coming:--

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,"--

It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the first time; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on, still unconsciously or mechanically:--

"This is my own, my native land!"

Then they all saw something was to pay; but he expected to get through, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on:--

"Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?--
If such there breathe, go, mark him well,"--

By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was any way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of mind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on:--

"For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,
Despite these titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,"--

and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swung the book into the sea, vanished into his stateroom, and we did not see him for two months again. He never entered in with the young men exactly as a companion again; but generally he had the nervous, tired look of a heart-wounded man.

And when Nolan died, there was found in his Bible a slip of paper at the place where he had marked the text:--

"They desire a country, even a heavenly; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He hath prepared for them a city."

On this slip of paper he had written:--

"Bury me in the sea; it has been my home, and I love it. But will not
some one set up a stone for my memory at Fort Adams or at Orleans, that
my disgrace may not be more than I ought to bear? Say on it:--
"In Memory of
"PHILIP NOLAN,
"_Lieutenant in the Army of the United States_.
"He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but
no man deserved less at her hands."

THE EXECUTION OF RODRIGUEZ

From "Cuba in War Time," with the author's permission

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS