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THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a love once, fairest among women :
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man :
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly, -
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood, Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces,

How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed:

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

WEBSTER

1782-1852

DANIEL WEBSTER was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, in 1782, and died seventy years later at Marshfield, in Massachusetts. As an orator and statesman he is chiefly known; but his writings, fragmentary though they are, deservedly rank among the best specimens of our literature. Evarts

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has said of him: "In the sphere of literature Webster has a clear title to be held as one of the greatest authors and writers of our mother tongue that America has produced. I propose to the most competent critics of the nation that they can find nowhere six octavo volumes of printed literary production of an American that contain as much noble and as much beautiful imagery, as much warmth of rhetoric and of magnetic impression upon the

reader, as are to be found in the collected writings and speeches of Daniel Webster."

Of Webster's oratory, Choate tells us: "Addressing masses by tens of thousands, in the open air, on the urgent political questions of the day; or designated to lead the meditations of an hour devoted to the remembrance of some national era, or of some incident marking the progress of the nation, and lifting him up to a view of what is, and what is past, and some indistinct revelations of the glory that lies in the future, or of some great historical name, just borne by the nation to his tomb, — in such scenes, unfettered by the laws of forensic or parliamentary debate; multitudes uncounted lifting up their eyes to him; some great historical scenes of America around, all symbols of her glory and art and power and fortune there; voices of the past, not unheard; shapes beckoning from the future, not unseen, -sometimes that mighty intellect, borne upwards to a height and kindled to an illumination which we shall see no more, wrought out, as it were in an instant, a picture of vision, warning, prediction: the progress of the nation; the contrasts of its eras; the heroic deaths; the motives to patriotism; the maxims and arts imperial by which the glory has been gathered and may be heightened, wrought out, in an instant, a picture to fade only when all record of our mind shall die."

Our first selection is from an article which Webster contributed to the North American Review, and the second is from his memorable speech at the centennial celebration of the birthday of Washington.

THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL1

No national drama was ever developed in a more interesting and splendid first scene. The incidents and the result of the battle itself were most important, and indeed most wonderful. As a mere battle, few surpass it in whatever engages and interests the attention. It was fought on a conspicuous eminence, in the immediate neighborhood of a populous city, and consequently in the view of thousands of spectators. The attacking army moved over a sheet of water to the assault. The operations and move

1 One of the first and one of the most celebrated battles of the Revolutionary War, fought June 17, 1775. It is commemorated by a granite obelisk, two hundred and twenty feet high, on the battle-ground in Charlestown, Mass., the corner-stone of which was laid by Lafayette in 1825.

ments were of course all visible and all distinct. Those who looked on from the houses and heights of Boston had a fuller view of every important operation and event than can ordinarily be had of any battle, or than can possibly be had of such as are fought on a more extended ground, or by detachments of troops acting in different places, and at different times, and in some measure independently of each other. When the British columns were advancing to the attack, the flames of Charlestown (fired, as is generally supposed, by a shell) began to ascend. The spectators, far outnumbering both armies, thronged and crowded on every height and every point which afforded a view of the scene, themselves constituted a very important part of it. The troops of the two armies seemed like so many combatants in an amphitheater. The manner in which they should acquit themselves was to be judged of, not, as in other cases of military engagements, by reports and future history, but by a vast and anxious assembly already on the spot, and waiting with unspeakable concern and emotion the progress of the day.

In other battles the recollection of wives and children has been used as an excitement to animate the warrior's breast and nerve his arm. Here was not a mere recollection, but an actual presence of them, and other dear connections, hanging on the skirts of the battle, anxious and agitated, feeling almost as if wounded themselves by every blow of the enemy, and putting forth, as it were, their own strength, and all the energy of their own throbbing bosoms, into every gallant effort of their warring friends.

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But there was a more comprehensive and vastly more important view of that day's contest than has been mentioned, view, indeed, which ordinary eyes, bent intently on what was immediately before them, did not embrace, but which was perceived in its full extent and expansion by minds of a higher order. Those men who were at the head of the colonial councils, who had been engaged for years in the previous stages of the quarrel with England, and who had been accustomed to look forward to the future, were well apprised of the magnitude of the

events likely to hang on the business of that day. They saw in it, not only a battle, but the beginning of a civil war of unmeasured extent and uncertain issue. All America and all England were likely to be deeply concerned in the consequences. The individuals themselves, who knew full well what agency they had in bringing affairs to this crisis, had need of all their courage, not that disregard of personal safety in which the vulgar suppose true courage to consist, but that high and fixed moral sentiment, that steady and decided purpose, which enables men to pursue a distant end, with a full view of the difficulties and dangers before them, and with a conviction that, before they must arrive at the proposed end, should they ever reach it, they must pass through evil report as well as good report, and be liable to obloquy 2 as well as to defeat.

Spirits that fear nothing else fear disgrace; and this danger is necessarily encountered by those who engage in civil war. Unsuccessful resistance is not only ruin to its authors, but is esteemed, and necessarily so, by the laws of all countries, treasonable. This is the case, at least, till resistance becomes so general and formidable as to assume the form of regular war. But who can tell, when resistance commences, whether it will attain even to that degree of success? Some of those persons who signed the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, described themselves as signing it "as with halters about their necks." If there were grounds for this remark in 1776, when the cause had become so much more general, how much greater was the hazard when the battle of Bunker Hill was fought! These considerations constituted, to enlarged and liberal minds, the moral sublimity of the occasion; while to the outward senses, the movement of armies, the roar of artillery, the brilliancy of the reflection of a summer's sun from the burnished armor of the British columns, and the flames of a burning town, made up a scene of extraordinary grandeur.

1 issues, results

2 from Lat. obloqui, "to speak against;" hence reproach, odium

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