SELECTIONS IN PROSE.

11

No public virtue can withstand, none ever encountered, such seductions as these. Our own virtue and moderation must be renewed and fortified under circumstances so new and peculiar.

Where shall we seek the influence adequate to a task. so arduous as this? Shall we invoke the press and the pulpit? Shall we resort to executive authority? Shall we go to the Congress? No: all are unable as agencies to uphold or renovate declining virtue. Where should we go but there, where all Republican virtue begins and must end, to the domestic fireside and humble school where the American citizen is trained? Instruct him there that it will not be enough that he can claim for his country heroism, but that more than valor and more than magnificence is required of her.

Go then, ye laborers in a noble cause, gather the young Catholic and the young Protestant alike into the nursery of freedom, and teach them there, that although religion has many and different shrines on which may be made the offering of a "broken spirit," which God will not despise; yet that their country has appointed only one altar and one sacrifice for all her children, and that ambition and avarice must be slain on that altar, for it is consecrated to HUMANITY.

EVERYWHERE, at the approach of the white man,

the Indians fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn; and they are gone forever. They pass mournfully by us, and they return no more.

Two centuries ago the smoke of their wigwams and the fire of their councils rose in every valley. The

shouts of victory and the war-dance rung through the mountains and the glades. The thick arrows and deadly tomahawk whistled through the forests; and the hunters' trace and the dark encampment startled the wild beasts in their lairs.

Where now are the villages, and warriors, and youth? the sachems, and the tribes? the hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores, a plague which the touch of the white man communicated, a poison which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic face not a single region which they may now call their

own.

Already the last feeble remnants of the race are on their journey toward the setting sun. The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longer curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look at their deserted villages. a last glance upon the graves of their fathers. no tears; they utter no cries; they have no groans.

They cast They shed

There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both, which chokes all utterance. It is courage, absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them 1 no, never. They know and feel that there is for them still one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is to the general burialground of their race.

SELECTIONS IN PROSE.

13

Ex. 11. OUR FUTURE AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

WH

HOEVER among us thoughtfully loves his country must feel his heart glow as he reflects upon the necessities and the possibilities of his future. We are forty millions of people; we shall soon be sixty, eighty, and I believe that some of us younger scholars may yet see the number swell to one hundred millions.

Silently and in awe the mind contemplates the meeting of many races; the combats of religious creeds and sects; the struggles of conflicting political parties; the dangers and hopes; the possible failure and ruin; the probable triumph and glory of the Republic, - which shall it be? How can we, just entering life, listen to the hum and roar of the grand future coming down upon us, without leaping up as hearing in it our country's call?

Thirty years hence, our fathers will have passed from the stage, and we in their place must take hold of the nation with its mighty labors and problems. Shall we be better fitted for this than they? Worldly prosperity will not fit us, nor mere learning endow us, for the proper fulfilment of our responsibilities.

Nations more magnificent in all this than we can hope to be for many generations to come have fallen headlong into ruin. The future will demand strong men and noble women, who will be ready to live for something besides their own personal enjoyments and pleasures. Eating and drinking are good in their way, but he who lives for these alone is very low in the scale. The delights of scholarship, the pleasures and luxuries of life, are good; but the man who cares only for these has

*This piece will answer very well for a valedictory, and should be spoken by an intelligent boy who understands and appreciates the subject and the occasion.

ebe, who turns aside from the great po1 tasks of the day.

ble to look for prosperous churches and ntry torn by faction and ruled by corrupt ually impossible to suppose a free, happy governed, and rapidly progressing, while of the nation's culture treat the political umanity as unfitted to their tastes and

I out from our schools to begin the life our attention to all matters concerning welfare of the state, and so grow up that

comes for us to enter upon the grave reFa citizen, we may be prepared to conake them under the honest conviction, e worship of God, there are no higher, no duties than those peculiar to the Ameri

t day there is much to learn in the natucial changes of the world. This age is ent. There are physical, political, and xes that shake the earth on which we live in which we move. Empires are being gs and princes driven from their thrones; chat history is repeating itself in the rise

re.

on of the teacher, however far from the

SELECTIONS IN PROSE.

15

disturbing elements of worldly action, is one of great pleasure and interest. He can take the telescope and scan the heavens by night, and study the beautiful worlds that are rolling over his head. Let him chase the comet in his fiery path around the sun, and mark the sister planets with their borrowed light as they wander among the stars. Let him watch the moon, ever changing to the view, from its first appearance as a silver thread, to the glory of its full round silver orb, and thus study the great Omnipotent who made the beautiful clock-work in the heavens, whose machinery marks time for our world.

Let him take the spade, and from the books dig down into the earth where God has hidden among the rocks the caskets which contain his beautiful jewels, and study the great secrets of nature in the mysterious world beneath our feet. Let him take his geography and maps and travel with the scholars in foreign lands, call up the history of nations long since passed away, and now only studied as the ruins of empire; let him review the grand physical features of the earth, its seas, rivers, mountains, and valleys, the ruins of ancient cities, with the romance of their history, their manners, customs, and laws.

The doors of our attractive school-houses are open to receive, without money and without price, the children, not only of the native, but of all immigrants, no matter from what part of the world they come, or what language they speak, no matter what is their social condition, or their religion. The doors are open to all denominations; the Protestant, the Catholic, the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist, all meet on a neutral ground, and they acquire as good a practical education as any boarding or day school in this or any country can afford.