the suburbs-where in hot, close, crowded, festering tenement houses, women and little children breathe an air that is poison and live a life that is death-where gaunt poverty and grim despair form a fellowship of misery, and from their loathsome union is born crime, with its glaring visage and heart of hell. Give me the mountain and the prairie, the river and the wood, the voice of passing winds, the sight of growing things, the scent of flowers and the song of birds—give me God's green earth, for I like it better than the places man has built. I believe a life which brings one into daily contact with the substratum of a city populace tends to make him a materialist— learns him to look at people as only another form of animals, who live their brief life, perform their little labor, and pass into the nothingness from which they Philosophy and religion teach that a single soul, an isolated human life, is priceless, outweighing in value all material wealth; and yet, when we look at the ignorant, unthinking, vicious, degraded and damnable mob which swells the census of the cities, it is almost impossible to believe that the Son of God died for such, that gems of value are hidden in such worthless caskets, or that a future better than the present can ever dawn upon them. Yet it will not do to cast away faith in the loving paternity of God. came. How would it make the weight and wonder less If, lifted from immortal shoulders down, The world were cast on seas of emptiness, I am a serious lad, my boy, and, riding much on the cars lately, I have thought how much the trip on a train is like the journey of life. The incoming passengers, who burst in upon us at the way-stations, are the births which keep full the stream of life; while those who depart are quickly lost to sight and thought, as we shall be when we step off into the darkness which envelops all the world. The engine represents the human passions, which are the motive power of life; the engineer is law, which guides and controls; the brakemen are the magistrates and officers who watch over and protect our persons and property, and the conductor is the parson, who directs us on the journey and acquaints us with our destination. To finish the similitude, many go wrong in life, and many go wrong on the train. With almost unimagined speed the world rolls along its measured track among the stars. Soon our station will be reached. We shall step off into eternal silence, and invisible Charon will ferry us over the Stygian wave. There is no baggage-master on that craft, my boy. Our checks must be surrendered before our spirit feet shall tread its ghostly deck, and so do not encumber yourself on the journey with things that must be left behind at its close. Thus, like many another, covering my own deficiencies with a word of admonition to a friend, I am Yours fraternally. WILL and WORK are higher trumps than genius and luck, in the game of life. FOURTH OF JULY ORATION. [The following short extracts are from a Fourth of July oration delivered at Winona, Minnesota, in 1872.] * It is a matter for congratulation that our fathers chose this particular season of the year for the enunciation of their Declaration of Independence. Longest days, midway between seedtime and harvest. On each side the months slope down. All the luxuriance, the superb and sensuous beauty of nature greets us now, and contributes to our rejoicing. * * * We may as well understand the fact that the old-fashioned Fourth of July has passed away, never to return again. It belongs to history. It is as much a part of the past as the battle of Brandywine, or the surrender of Burgoyne. Twelve years ago there was an awe in the sight of a cannon, a glory in the waving of a flag or the beating of a drum, and a novelty in the appearance of a regiment in arms. There was a charm of remoteness about these things. They moved before us as the actors move in a play. Since then they have become sadly but proudly familiar. The gaudy show has been made a stern reality. The cannon have thundered the menace of death; the drums have beat the solemn death-march; the gay banners have been torn by hissing balls, and the brave regiments have swept in shattered columns over fields that were lost. We * cannot now invest the Fourth of July with its ancient reverence. We have handled the sacred things until they have become common and familiar. The heroes of the Revolution do not loom so grandly before our mental vision, for we find their living peers and equals wherever we turn. As the advent of the Christian dispensation broadened the old, local, Jewish Sabbath into a universal day of worship, recreation and rest, so has the logic of events broadened this Fourth of July, which at first commemorated only the successful revolt of a few colonies, into a festal day of freedom, and made the very words a menace to oppression and an inspiration and hope to the oppressed. The Fourth of July is the Nation's birthday, and it has probably occurred to all of you that the importance of a birthday is greatly in proportion to the age of the individual. It is a great event when the babe has completed its first twelve months of existence. The youth who has not attained his majority, thinks the years creep along with snail-like pace, and looks forward to his birthdays with neverfailing interest, but to the man immersed in business they pass by almost unheeded; while the dimmed vision of the aged hardly discovers them, as the crowded, shortened years flit by. What the years are to the man the centuries are to the world, and we have not yet passed the first century mile-stone on the journey of national life. It is only by comparison that we can appreciate how young, as a nation, we are. Away to the north, on the banks of Lake St. Croix, lives a man* who is older than the Fourth of July. His step is still reasonably firm; the light from his eye still gleams out from beneath the thin lashes which shade it; his memory is still tenacious; his enjoyment of the society of friends is fresh and keen; yet he is ten years older than the Fourth of July-was born ten years before the Declaration of Independence was signed ten years before "The Fourth" was taken out from among other days, glorified, and made forever memorable. This man voted for Washington for the Presidency, and, holding him by the hand, looking into his wrinkled face, listening to his voice, you feel how young this country is. Four generations like him would reach back and clasp hands with that first emigrant to the western world· - Christopher Columbus. I sometimes think we do not give sufficient honor to Columbus. It is true that he was spared many things which fall to the lot of later emigrants. He had to "declare his intention" to the natives, but he did not take out his naturalization papers; was not implored to go to caucuses, or join a campaign club; he never ran for office and was beat, nor hurrahed over favorable election returns, nor lost his money on an unsuccessful candidate, nor was on the finance committee of a Fourth of July celebration. But though spared all this, his honors do not match his merit. Looking back at him through the misty years, he *David Stiles, who died in 1873, at the age of 107. |