contrast with the Iron Rule of tyranny, which teaches that might makes right!' How it glows in the firmament, when compared with what has been called the Silver Rule of the earth, which bids you to mete out to others as they have measured to you! Rightly has the whole civilized world recognized the inspired command as indeed the Golden Rule. And if lived up to by all on earth, what a paradise would it make of this globe! May it ever go before you as the pillar of fire of old, guiding your footsteps as well as governing your lives!

"I cannot close this address, which you have already found has treated of the education of the heart more than of the mind-the moral nature more than the intellectual-without insisting that all of you have it in your power to make this world happier and better by your presence in it, and that you have no right to hide this power in a napkin. Look around you on every side as you go out from these walls into the busy world. You will find some, selfish, cold, austere, repulsive, forbidding. No noble charity affects their souls. No unselfish deed warms their natures. No generous act unlocks their hearts. No blessings are invoked upon their heads. Living for self alone, they carry with them to their graves hearts of steel and faces of iron. But there are others active in every good word and work. Is there a cry of distress? They do not lecture the unfortunate, but promptly proffer the helping hand. Is there misery to be assuaged? Is there a wounded heart that needs the oil of consolation? Do the rough winds of adversity smite their neighbor?-and all mankind is your neighbor. How cheerfully they speed on the errand of humanity! How joyously they go forth on their labor of love! My

young friends, the true felicity of this world is in making others happy. It is this which fills your own soul with joy. It is this which causes a constant influx of gladness into your own heart. For in blessing others you bless yourself. To me the most beautiful couplet in the English language is—

"Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no noble action done.'

"None of us can live up to this noble lesson of life fully; but in striving towards this ideal you shall diffuse a genial sunshine around you, which will make you, in many hearts, beloved while living and mourned when dead. Lord Bacon said most beautifully that 'man's heart was not an island, cut off from all other lands, but a continent which joins them.' And if you will thus, while educating the intellect and enlarging the mind, and filling yourselves with the priceless knowledge you acquire here, and which is to fit you for useful members of society hereafter, also educate the heart, widening the sphere of your affections and the scope of your duty to the less fortunate, who are ever near to your very doors, you shall all

"Earn names that win

Happy remembrance from the great and good—
Names that shall sink not in oblivion's flood,

But with clear music, like a church-bell's chime,

Sound through the river's sweep of onward-rushing time.'”

CHAPTER XX.

FIRMNESS AND BOLDNESS

TESTIMONY OF COLONEL FORNEY-MOTION FOR MR. LONG'S EXPULSION-PRESENTATION OF SILVER SERVICE TO MR. COLFAX SPEECH BY MR. M'CULLOCH-RESPONSE BY MR. COLFAX-A FRIEND'S SONNET.

MR. COLFAX is a man of benevolent disposition, of genial kindness and crystal-like purity; he is also a man of iron firmness. His adherence to principle is unwavering, and his boldness in maintaining that, which in his conviction, is right, dauntless. Colonel Forney, writing of him in connection with the performance of his duties as Speaker in the Thirty-eighth Congress, said: "He has been the embodiment of the war policy of the Government."

In April, 1864, Mr. Long, of Ohio, made a speech in the House of Representatives, virtually declaring the rebellion right and the war for the Union unjust and wrong; that the names of our battle-fields were synonymous with disunion instead of union. The speech seemed in fact almost like the unfurling of the Confederate flag on the floor of the House. Without consultation with his friends upon the subject, Mr. Colfax, under an imperative sense of duty to the country and to the soldiers that were in the field and before the enemy, calling upon another member of the House to preside, left the Speaker's chair, and upon the floor of the House made a motion for the expulsion of Mr. Long as an unworthy member, and supported the motion with a speech. The following are its opening paragraphs:

"MR. SPEAKER: 'Where are we?' was the emphatic question propounded by the eloquent gentleman from the first district of Ohio [Mr. Pendleton] on Tuesday last. I answer him: We are in the Capitol of our nation. We are in the hall where assembles the Congress of this Republic, which, thank God, in spite of conspiracy and treason, still lives; in spite of enemies, open and covert, within and without our lines, with and without arms in their hands, still lives, and which, thanks to our gallant defenders in the field, will live as long as time shall last. 'Where are we?' said he. I will answer him in the language of his colleague, [Mr. Long,] whose speech is under review:

"From the day on which the conflict began up to the present hour, the Confederate army has not been forced beyond the sound of their guns from the dome of the Capitol in which we are assembled. The city of Washington is to-day, as it has been for three years, guarded by Federal troops in all the forts and fortifications with which it is surrounded.'

"And yet, sir, while we are thus placed; 'in this fearful hour of the country's peril,' as the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Long] says in the opening paragraph of his speech; while the scales of national life and death. are trembling in the balance; while our veterans are at the front seeking to save the life of the country, and willing to seal their fidelity, if need be, with their heart's blood; with the enemy almost at the very gates of your Capital; at such a time as this the gentleman from the second district of Ohio rises in his seat and declares that our Government is dead; nay, more, that it is destroyed; and then, having thus consigned it to death and destruction, he avows boldly that he prefers to recognize the

nationality of the Confederacy of traitors, which has caused this alleged death of the Republic, to any other alternative that remains."

The following extracts from Mr. Colfax's speech exhibit both his unyielding firmness in duty and his true kindness of heart:

"The gentlemen on the other side, every one, indeed, who have referred to it at all, have been kind enough to speak of my impartiality as the presiding officer of the House. I thank them for this testimonial, which I have endeavored to deserve. But at the same time most of them have expressed 'regret' that I left the Speaker's chair and came down upon the floor of the House. I have, however, no regret. I did it in the performance of what seemed to me an imperative duty, from conscientious conviction, and from no personal unkindness toward the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Long]. I have no personal unkindness toward him or any human being who lives upon the earth.

"If my course is a disgrace, you can fix the brand on my forehead, and I will wear it through life, nor do I want any prouder epitaph on my tombstone than that I dared fearlessly to stand up here and do my duty according to my convictions. [Great applause.]

"Mr. Speaker, I desire that the rules of the House forbidding applause should be obeyed. Gentlemen on the other side have been displeased with the galleries during the past few days. We have sat here, sir, when those galleries glowered with hate in their eyes upon those who spoke for freedom, and applauded to the echo those who spoke for slavery, and never were they cleared but once, to my knowledge. It is unseemly for the