LOYALTY AND HEROISM.

CAMP AND

COUNCIL-HALL.

NATIONS AND HUMANITY.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

It was not his olive valleys and orange groves which made the Greece of the Greek; it was not for his apple orchards or potato fields that the farmer of New England and New York left his plough in the furrow and marched to Bunker Hill, to Bennington, to Saratoga. A man's country is not a certain area of land, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. The secret sanctification of the soil and symbol of a country is the idea which they represent; and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol.

So with passionate heroism, of which tradition is never weary of tenderly telling, Arnold von Winkelried gathers into his bosom the sheaf of foreign spears. So, Nathan Hale, disdaining no service that duty demands, perishes untimely with no other friend than God and the satisfied sense of duty. So, through all history from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs has fought fiercely, and fallen bravely, for that unseen mistress,

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their country. So, through all history to the end, that army must still march, and fight, and fall.

But countries and families are but nurseries and influences. A man is a father, a brother, a German, a Roman, an American; but beneath all these relations, he is a man. The end of his human destiny is not to be the best German, or the best Roman, or the best father, but the best man he can be.

History shows us that the association of men in various nations is made subservient to the gradual advance of the whole human race; and that all nations work together toward one grand result. So, to the philosophic eye, the race is but a vast caravan forever moving, but seeming often to encamp for centuries at some green oasis of ease, where luxury lures away heroism as soft Capua enervated the hosts of Hannibal. But still the march proceeds, slowly, slowly over mountains, through valleys, along plains, marking its course with monumental splendors, with wars, plagues, crimes, advancing still, decorated with all the pomp of nature, lit by the constellations, cheered by the future, warned by the past. In that vast march, the van forgets the rear; the individual is lost; and yet the multitude is but many individuals. The man faints, and falls, and dies, and is forgotten; but still mankind moves on, still worlds revolve, and the will of God is done in earth and heaven.

We of America, with our soil sanctified and our symbol glorified by the great ideas of liberty and religion, love of freedom and love of God,

are in the foremost

!

vanguard of this great caravan of humanity. To us rulers look, and learn justice, while they tremble; to us the nations look, and learn to hope, while they rejoice. Our heritage is all the love and heroism of liberty in the past; and all the great of the Old World are our teachers.

Our faith is in God and the Right, and God himself is, we believe, our Guide and Leader. Though darkness sometimes shadows our national sky, though confusion comes from error, and success breeds corruption, yet will the storm pass in God's good time, and in clearer sky and purer atmosphere our national life grow stronger and nobler, sanctified more and more, consecrated to God and liberty by the martyrs who fall in the strife for the just and true.

And so, with our individual hearts strong in love for our principles, strong in faith in our God, shall the nation leave to coming generations a heritage of freedom, and law, and religion, and truth, more glorious than the world has known before; and our American banner be planted first and highest on heights as yet unwon in the great march of humanity.

HEROES.

EDNA DEAN PROCTOR.

THE winds that once the Argo bore
Have died by Neptune's ruined shrines,
And her hull is the drift of the deep sea-floor,
Though shaped of Pelion's tallest pines.

You may seek her crew in every isle
Fair in the foam of Ægean seas,

But, out of their rest, no charm can wile
Jason and Orpheus and Hercules.

And Priam's wail is heard no more
By windy Ilion's sea-built walls;
Nor great Achilles, stained with gore,
Shouts, "O ye Gods! 't is Hector falls!"
On Ida's mount is the shining snow,
But Jove has gone from its brow away,
And red on the plain the poppies grow
Where the Greek and the Trojan fought that day.

Mother Earth! Are the Heroes dead?
Do they thrill the soul of the years no more?
Are the gleaming snows and the poppies red
All that is left of the brave of yore?
Are there none to fight as Theseus fought
Far in the young world's misty dawn?
Or to teach as gray-haired Nestor taught?
Mother Earth! are the Heroes gone?

Gone? In a grander form they rise;
Dead? We may clasp their hands in ours;
And catch the light of their clearer eyes,
And wreathe their brows with immortal flowers.
Wherever a noble deed is done

'T is the pulse of a Hero's heart is stirred;
Wherever Right has a triumph won

There are the Heroes' voices heard.

Their armor rings on a fairer field

Than the Greek and the Trojan fiercely trod;
For Freedom's sword is the blade they wield,
And the gleam above is the smile of God.
So, in his isle of calm delight,

Jason may sleep the years away;

For the Heroes live, and the sky is bright,
And the world is a braver world to-day.

SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

FELLOW COUNTRYMEN: At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. At the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have constantly been called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted