Various
Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides
THE DELUGE
The judgment was at hand. Before the sun
Gathered tempestuous clouds, which, blackening, spread
Until their blended masses overwhelmed
The hemisphere of day: and, adding gloom
To night's dark empire, swept from zone to zone —
Swept the vast shadow, swallowing up all light,
And covering the encircled firmament
As with a mighty pall! Low in the dust
Bowed the affrighted nations, worshiping.
Anon the o'ercharged garners of the storm
Burst with their growing burden; fierce and fast
Shot down the ponderous rain, a sheeted good,
That slanted not before the baffled winds,
But, with an arrowy and unwavering rush,
Dashed hissing earthward. Soon the rivers rose,
And roaring fled their channels; and calm lakes
Awoke exulting from their lethargy,
And poured destruction on their peaceful shores.
The lightning flickered in the deluged air,
And feebly through the shout of gathering waves
Muttered the stifled thunder. Day nor night
Ceased the descending streams; and if the gloom
A little brightened when the lurid morn
Rose on the starless midnight, 'twas to show
The lifting up of waters. Bird and beast
Forsook the flooded plains, and wearily
The shivering multitudes of human doomed
Toiled up before the insatiate element.
Oceans were blent, and the leviathan
Was borne aloft on the ascending seas
To where the eagles nestled. Mountains now
Were the sole landmarks, and their sides were clothed
With clustering myriads, from the weltering waste
Whose surges clasped them, to their topmost peaks
Swathed in the stooping cloud. The hand of Death
Smote millions as they climbed; yet denser grew
The crowded nations, as the encroaching waves
Narrowed their little world.
And in that hour,
Did no man aid his fellow. Love of life
Was the sole instinct; and the strong-limbed son,
With imprecations smote the palsied sire
That clung to him for succor. Women trod
With wavering steps the precipice's brow,
And found no arm to grasp on the dread verge
O'er which she leaned and trembled. Selfishness
Sat like an incubus on every heart,
Smothering the voice of Love. The giant's foot
Was on the stripling's neck: and oft despair
Grappled the ready steel, and kindred blood
Polluted the last remnant of that earth
Which God was deluging to purify.
Huge monsters from the plains, whose skeletons
The mildew of succeeding centuries
Has failed to crumble, with unwieldy strength
Crushed through the solid crowds; and fiercest birds,
Beat downward by the ever-rushing rain,
With blinded eyes, drenched plumes, and trailing wings,
Staggered unconscious o'er the trampled prey.
THE WORM OF THE STILL
I have found what the learned seemed so puzzled to tell —
The true shape of the Devil, and where is his Hell;
Into serpents, of old, crept the Author of Ill,
But Satan works now as a worm of the still.
Of all his migrations, this last he likes best:
How the arrogant reptile here raises his crest!
His head winding up from the tail of his plan,
Till the worm stands erect o'er the prostrated man.
Here, he joys to transform, by his magical spell,
The sweet milk of the Earth to an Essence of Hell;
Fermented our food, and corrupted our grain,
To famish the stomach and madden the brain.
By his water of life, what distraction and fear;
By the gloom of its light, what pale spectres appear!
A Demon keeps time on his fiddle finance,
While his Passions spring up in a horrible dance!
Then prone on the earth, they adore in the dust,
A man's baser half, raised, in room of his bust.
Such orgies the nights of the drunkard display,
But how black with ennui, how benighted his day!
With drams it begins, and with drams must it end;
A dram is his country, his mistress, his friend;
Till the ossified heart hates itself at the last,
And the dram nerves his hand for a death-doing blast.
Mark that monster, that mother, that shame and that curse;
See the child hang dead-drunk at the breast of its nurse!
As it drops from her arm, mark her stupefied stare!
Then she wakes with a yell, and a shriek of despair.
Drink, Erin! drink deep from this crystalline round,
Till the tortures of self-recollection be drowned;
Till the hopes of thy heart be all stiffened to stone —
Then sit down in the dirt like a queen on her throne.
No phrensy for Freedom to flash o'er the brain;
Thou shalt dance to the musical clank of the chain;
A crown of cheap straw shall seem rich to thine eye
And peace and good order shall reign in the sky!
Nor boast that no track of the viper is seen,
To stain thy pure surface of Emerald green:
For the Serpent will never want poison to kill,
While the fat of your fields feeds the worm of the still!
MAN'S CONNECTION WITH THE INFINITE
That is to every thing created pre-eminently useful, which enables it rightly and fully to perform the functions appointed to it by its Creator. Therefore, that we may determine what is chiefly useful to man, it is necessary first to determine the use of man himself.
Man's use and function is to be the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness.
Whatever enables us to fulfill this function is, in the pure and first sense of the word, useful to us. Pre-eminently, therefore, what sets the glory of God more brightly before us. But things that only help us to exist are, in a secondary and mean sense, useful, or rather, if they be looked for alone, they are useless and worse, for it would be better that we should not exist, than that we should guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence.
And yet people speak in this working age, when they speak from their hearts, as if houses, and lands, and food, and raiment were alone useful; and as if sight, thought, and admiration were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves Utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and their race into vegetables: men who think that the meat is more than the life, and the raiment than the body; who look to the earth as a stable, and to its fruit as fodder; vine-dressers as husbandmen, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they crush, better than the gardens of the angels upon the slopes of Eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that the wood they hew and the water they draw, are better than the pine forests that cover the mountains like the shadow of God, and than the great rivers that move like his eternity. And so comes upon us that woe of the preacher, that, though God "hath made every thing beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their hearts, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end."
This Nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends us to grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely on the excess or continuance of national power and peace. In the perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. Out of the suffering comes the serious mind; out of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of the endurance, the fortitude; out of the deliverance, the faith; but now, when they have learned to live under providence of laws, and with decency and justice and regard for each other, and when they have done away with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem rising out of their rest – evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood though they do not shed it, and ossify the heart though they do not torture it. And deep though the causes of thankfulness must be to every people at peace with others and at unity in itself, there are causes of fear also, a fear greater than the sword and sedition: that dependence on God may be forgotten, because the bread is given and the water is sure; that gratitude to him may cease, because his constancy of protection has taken the semblance of a natural law; that heavenly hope may grow faint amidst the full fruition of the world; that selfishness may take place of undemanded devotion, compassion be lost in vainglory, and love in dissimulation; that innovation may succeed to strength, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting words and foulness of dark thoughts, to the earnest purity of the girded loins and the burning lamp. – Ruskin.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE EAGLE
It is one of the difficulties of those who undertake to make public speeches, that sometimes they are embarrassed about the heads of their discourses; and so I am somewhat troubled at finding the inferior position of the American eagle, inasmuch as he has but one head, while the Russian eagle has two. I suppose that the explanation of this ornithological difference arises from the necessity of the Russian eagle having one head to watch over his large possessions in Asia, and the other head to look after his small property in Europe. I feel a good deal of confidence in speaking of the American eagle in contrast. I can see that if the American eagle has but one head, it embodies therein the national sentiment now prevailing, of one country and one people. It is very true that our brethren of the South – for I still call them our brethren – have been under the impression that ours was a double-headed eagle, with a Northern and a Southern head, with this distinction over the Russian; that the Southern was the larger and more important head of the two, and we are now engaged in the somewhat expensive and troublesome task of correcting that mistake in natural history. There is a good deal that is appropriate, and sometimes something that is suggestive, in these national symbols. The lion, for instance, is a very hungry beast, and the large portion of the globe which he has got into his possession shows the appropriateness of the selection of the symbol. The cock, as we know, is a very boisterous and demonstrative bird, who never does anything that he does not make a noise about. And certainly the Gallic neighbor of the English lion has never been distinguished for his modesty whenever he has accomplished any thing in arts or in arms. The eagle is a high-soaring bird, and I had better bring before you what an English poet says of him:
He clasps the crag with hooked hands,
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed in an azure world he stands;
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls,
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
If the illustration had been carried further we might be content with this English authority that the eagle, as typical of Russia and of the United States, is to be armed with that thunderbolt which the Greeks thought to be the prerogative of Jupiter. The American eagle has been distinguished for the quickness of his flight; and I do not think that our bitterest enemies can ever bring against us the charge of slowness. There are some points of resemblance between the United States and Russia. Russia, like us, is made up of many nationalities: and we have had recently the most satisfactory evidence that the Russian eagle is soaring in the same quarter as we are – soaring beyond the crowing of the cock or the roaring of the lion.
In conclusion, the eagle was an old symbol. The Egyptians had it; the Persians had it; the Romans, after trying four or five other animals, took it, in the time, I think, of Marius. Therefore, as it is one of the oldest illustrations of national importance, I indulge in the sentiment that, as the eagle now represents the nations of Russia and the United States, it may at least be one among the latest. – Judge Daly, of New York.
WASHINGTON. – S. S. Cox
All over the world examples may be found which are lessons to us. Could you go to Naples, you will find beyond the Grotto of Phisillippo, where the soft waves of the delightful Bay make their music on the shore – the tomb of the great Latin poet – Virgil. Men from every clime go thither to pay their homage to his tomb, although two thousand years have gone since his Epic was given to the world. His tomb is still the mausoleum of Genius. It is respected, protected and honored. Some of you have seen the monuments Scotland has reared to her gifted men. Some of you have seen the tomb of Walter Scott, at Dryburg Abbey, and have not only admired its beauty and repose, but have admired the vigilant care with which it is guarded and protected.
Go to Rome! Beneath St. Peter's Bascilica, you will find there the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul. They are guarded ever by priestly vigilance, and around them burn the ever-trimmed lamps of religious veneration. At Paris, the great Napoleon sleeps, honored in death beyond all human conquerors, in the Hotel des Invalides, surrounded by a hundred banners, emblems of his victories and his genius!
England has her Westminster Hall, wherein is enshrined her royal line, and by a higher heritage a line of genius, from Chaucer, who sung the dawn of English verse, to Macaulay, who illustrated her history in the undying eloquence of his prose. France has her St. Denis, the last abode of her kings, and Paris has its Pantheon, in whose vaults the literary demigods are immortalized!
But I pass these reminiscences by. We have a tomb which, I trust, in future, will be cared for and protected; and as long as woman is the watcher, her faith and patience will guard it with vestal vigilance.
It is neither a trite nor an untrue saying, that if a man bears the blade of patriotism, woman is the jewel in its hilt. She has and ever will make that jewel shine, wherever there is a fair opportunity and an ennobling civilization.
Why has this association of American women been formed? For the purpose of purchasing, preserving, reclaiming and protecting that spot we have just left, so sacred in our historic annals and in the nation's memory. It is because the man who lies there buried is not the mere hero of a novel – not the mere hero of to-day – not the mere soldier who achieved with his own sword his own fortune – not your Sultan Mohammed or Emperor Napoleon, who, with bloody ambition, created an empire on the Bosphorus or a dynasty on the Seine. The career of these heroes of the battle-field is as yonder blood-red moon, just risen above the Potomac, compared with the bright effulgence of the noonday sun, which shines with no borrowed light, as an auriole around the memory of George Washington. He can be addressed at this day, when he is so canonized in our hearts, only in the language of that poetry which has likened him to the brightest imagery which the material universe can furnish. He has been spoken of as the illustrious but lost Pleiad in our American constellation.
AMERICA vs. ENGLAND. – David Dudley Field
It has been said that if a new dictionary were now to be published in England, another definition of neutrality would have to be given. Certain it is that much of what has taken place on the other side of the ocean during this unhappy war comports little with our previous understanding of the duties of neutrals. And yet strict neutrality between belligerents is enjoined as much by philanthropy as by national honor; for while it protects national independence it restricts the limits of war. It is thus a rule alike of justice and of prudence. It springs from principles which lie at the foundation of international law; that is to say, the independence and the equality of nations. But there is another rule which springs from the same principles, and which is as old and as strong as that of neutrality, and is sometimes confounded with it – that is, the duty of every nation to abstain from any interference with the internal concerns of another. To be neutral between two belligerents is to help neither; to make, or help to make, two belligerents out of the same nation is to interfere in its internal relations. If it be said that this is but to recognize and declare a fact, I answer that the nation itself, as it is equal and independent, is the sole judge of the fact. The relation of the different parts with each other is a domestic concern. To assume to recognize and declare relations which it does not first recognize and declare, is, equally with the violation of neutrality, a departure from that courtesy and deference which are due from one nation to another. Both depend upon that public law of the world which is as old as governments and as eternal as equity. No nation is so ancient or mighty as to be above it; none so young or weak as to be below it. Each, as it takes its place in the family of nations, assumes it in all its plenitude. These rules the Government of this country has followed at all times and under all circumstances. Whatever may have been the sympathies of our people, whatever may have been the moral aspects of the foreign wars on which they have looked, and however much they have desired the success of one party over the other, they have inflexibly refused to throw their powers into the scale, or to allow any of their citizens to violate the neutrality which the Government enjoined. From the administration of Washington to the administration of Lincoln, through all the wars of the French Republic and the French empire, through the struggles of mastery in Eastern Europe, through the great civil wars in Poland, in Hungary and in India, we have steadily asserted the policy of non-interference, and maintained it in practice. And we have never resorted to the paltry evasion of doing secretly what we professed openly to avoid. What we said we meant, and what we meant we said. We have held the obligation to be paramount and universal. We complain of England and France, first for the proclamation or profession of neutrality, and then for the violation of the neutrality thus professed. This is not the place to enter upon the reasons which justify these complaints. The loyal people of this country have made up their opinions on both these subjects. They are convinced that England and France have wronged them in both respects, and are just as strongly convinced that Russia, whose naval officers are our guests to-night, has acted differently; has done us no injury; has conformed her conduct to the solemn injunctions of the law of nations, in accounting us competent to manage our own affairs; treating the established and recognized Government of the country as the only lawful belligerent, and holding no relations whatever with the rebels. It is impossible to mistake the settled convictions of the American people. They will never forget, through all the changes of future years, that in their mortal struggle the Czar has been true to them, and in the exercise of his great office has been inflexible in his adherence to the grand and salutary principles of public law. And they will just as surely never cease to believe that the Governments of England and France have desired the disruption of the republic, and have hastened unjustly to lift the rebels into the condition of legal belligerents; have offensively professed neutrality between the lawful and the rebel forces, and, after all, have evaded that professed neutrality by every species of indirect assistance which it was possible to give short of engaging in hostilities. These things will never be forgotten so long as Americans can read and remember. And, more than this, the men of this generation, who have smarted under these wrongs, will not rest until some of them are righted. We see the ground fresh with graves, half of which would never have been opened but for the countenance which England and France have given to the rebellion; and, whether it shall be procured from their apprehension of the consequences, or their sense of justice, reparation must be made, or the seed which has been sown in these three years will ripen into an iron harvest of future war, of which no man can foresee the end.
IF WE KNEW. – By Ruth Benton
If we knew the cares and crosses
Crowding round our neighbor's way,
If we knew the little losses,
Sorely grievous, day by day,
Would we then so often chide him
For his lack of thrift and gain —
Leaving on his heart a shadow,
Leaving on our life a stain?
If we knew the clouds above us,
Held by gentle blessings there,
Would we turn away all trembling,
In our blind and weak despair?
Would we shrink from little shadows,
Lying on the dewy grass,
While 'tis only birds of Eden,
Just in mercy flying past?
If we knew the silent story,
Quivering through the heart of pain,
Would our womanhood dare doom them
Back to haunts of guilt again?
Life hath many a tangled crossing;
Joy hath many a break of woe;
And the cheeks, tear-washed, are whitest;
This the blessed angels know.
Let us reach in our bosoms
For the key to other lives,
And with love toward erring nature,
Cherish good that still survives;
So that when our disrobed spirits
Soar to realms of light again,
We may say, "Dear Father, judge us
As we judged our fellow-men."