happy in hope, and we grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; - but the stream hurries on, and still our hands are empty. Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the moving picture of enjoyment and industry passing before us; we are excited by some short-lived disappointment. The stream bears us on and our joys and our griefs are alike left behind us. We may be shipwrecked, but we cannot long be delayed; whether rough or smooth, the river hastens towards its home, till the roar of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of its waves is beneath our feet, and the land lessens from our eyes, and the floods are lifted up around us, and we take our leave of earth and its inhabitants, until of our farther voyage there is no witness save the Infinite and Eternal. HA Ex. 48. THE GREAT WEST. AVE you seen that valley world in its wild luxu riance and glory, with its mountain barriers at east and west standing as sentinels to guard it from an unlawful approach; with its chain of gigantic lakes upon the north, whose wedded waves lift up their nuptial salutation to the ocean in Niagara's roar; and on the south a tropic sea to wash its coast; traversed from north to south by a river unmatched among the streams of earth, sweeping as a royal conqueror along, receiving tribute from many a fair province and distant empire? Have you seen it with its illimitable reaches of corn and cotton, as they ripen to fill the mouths of the world, and keep its back from nakedness? Have you seen its inexhaustible mines of coal, iron, lead, and copper; its SELECTIONS IN PROSE. 55 quarries of marble and fields of sugar? Have you seen the husbandman leading the merchant, the capitalist, and the manufacturer by the hand, bidding them possess this rich domain and enjoy it? Upon a noble bluff of the Ohio River did the dreamer, John Fitch, first behold the vision of steam applied to navigation. Here is the prophecy of the seer receiving its amplest fulfilment. Here is that mightiest vassal of man's mechanical genius working its sublimest results. Here are fourteen sovereign States, with populous and thriving cities, almost the product of Aladdin's lamp, — with busy hoards of growing millions; with steamboats, railroads, magazines, and warehouses unnumbered; with mineral, agricultural, and commercial wealth beyond our power to estimate. Here is society starting on a higher plane than it has ever travelled, and man girding himself for a grander task than he has ever wrought. I Ex. 49. THE CONSTITUTION. — Bingham.* STAND here to-day for the Constitution as it is. I stand to-day with millions of my countrymen of every section of the Republic for the Constitution as it is. By all the dread memories of the past, by all the cherished hopes of the future, we are commanded to maintain intact that matchless form of civil polity, the Constitution of our common country; that country which has but one Constitution; that country which embraces every rood of the Republic, the East with its rockbound coast and its consecrated battle-grounds; the North, with its Keystone and its Empire States; the West, the boundless West, with its great rivers and inland seas, with its exhaustless hidden treasure and its fertile *Mr. Bingham is one of the greatest of living American orators. plains; and the South, the beautiful sunlit South, with its gallant, generous people, with its sacred traditions and its holy graves, the sepulchres of our dead heroes, dead patriots, and dead statesmen. What are all these several sections but parts of our common country; that country which is the common heritage of every citizen of the Republic, whether native or adopted. Maintain the Constitution! maintain it inviolate until it fulfils its sublime mission, until this goodly heritage of ours, slumbering between two great oceans that engirdle the world, shall be filled with free Commonwealths, in every one of which, without violence to any human being or any human habitation, every unjust fetter shall be broken, and every inherent right maintained. Maintain the Constitution until our temple of civil and religious liberty shall be complete, lifting its headstone of beauty above the towers of watch and war, until all nations shall flee unto it, and its glory shall fill the whole earth. K IND friends, upon our festal day And though the banquet we have made Is humble fare, and plain, Our hearts, filled full with gratitude, The day is full of joy to us That crowns our closing year, With Wisdom's treasures won, We gather new and needed hope We know that you will sympathize 3* Nor "view us with a critic's eye," Nor outdo Newton, Webster, Locke; Whatever anxious friends expect And 't is the heart, and not the feast, Ex. 51. THE NEWS-BOYS. A RE all your papers sold, Tom? Then let us to the open square, To warm us in the sun, To warm us in the sweet kind sun, To feel his kindling glow; For his kind looks are the only looks Of kindness that we know. We'll call the sun our father, Tom; He thinks no shame to kiss us, For his kind looks are the only looks |