Page images
PDF
EPUB

"No dog was on the threshold, great or small,
No pigeon on the roof, no household creature,
No cat demurely dozing on the wall,

Not one domestic feature."

It loads the people with debts to pass down from one gene ration to another, like the curse of original sin; upon its merciless errand of violence, it fills the land with crime and tumult and rapine, and it "gluts the grave with untimely victims and peoples the world of perdition." Yet, ruthless as is the sway, and devastating as is the course of war, it is not the greatest of evils nor the last lesson in humiliation. "Sweet are the uses of adversity." In its current of violence and blood, it may purify an atmosphere too long surcharged with discontent, and corruption, and apostasy, and treachery, and littleness, and prove how poor a remedy it is for social grievances. It may correct the dry-rot of demoralization in public station, and raise us, as a people, above the dead level of a mean and morbid ambition. It may scatter the tribe of bloated hangers-on who seek to serve their country that they may plunder and betray it; and, above all, it may arouse the popular mind to a just sense of its responsibility, until it shall select its servants with care, and hold them to a faithful discharge of their duty; until deficient morals shall be held questionable, falsehood a social fault, violation of truth a disqualification, aud bribery a disgrace-until integrity shall be a recommendation, and treason and larceny crimes.

Ex. CLXXVIII.—UNSEEN SPIRITS.

Он, North and South, 'twas not by chance,
Still less by fraud or fear,

That Sumter's battle came and closed,
Nor cost the world a tear.

"Twas not that Northern hearts were weak,

Or Southern courage cold,

That shell and shot fell harming not
A man on shore or hold.

It was that all their ghosts who lived
To love the realm they made,
Came flitting so athwart the fire,
That shot and shell, were stayed.

ALL OF THEM.

Washington with his sad still face,
Franklin with silver hair,

Lincoln and Putnam, Allen, Gates,
And gallant Wayne were there.

With those who rose at Boston,
At Philadelphia met;

Whose grave eyes saw the Union's seal
To their first charter set.

Adams and Jay and Henry,

Rutledge and Randolph, too-
And many a name their country's fame
Hath sealed brave, wise and true.

An awful host-above the coast,
About the fort they hung;
Sad faces pale, too proud to wail,
But with sore anguish wrung.

And Faith and Truth, and Love and Ruth,
Hovered the battle o'er,

Hindering the shot, that freight of death
Between those brothers bore.

And thus it happed, by God's good grace,
And those good spirits' band,
That Death forbore the leaguered place,
The battery-guarded strand.
Thanks unto Heaven on bended knee,

Not scoff from mocking scorn,

Befits us, that to bloodless end
A strife like this is borne.

271

Ex. CLXXIX.-" ALL OF THEM."

A True Story.'

WITH head erect, and lips compressed,
He throws his hammer by;

The purpose of his manly breast
Is now to do or die,

He seeks the camp: "Put down my name:
My boys will mind the shop;

If the rebels want my heart's best blood,
I'll sell it drop by drop.

And now here comes my oldest boy;
My son, what would you do?".
"Father, my brother will drive the trade;
I've come to fight with you."

"God bless him! Well, put down his name;
I can not send him home;

But here's the other boy, I see

My son, what made you come?"

"Father, I could not work alone;
The shop may go to grass;

I've come to fight for the good old flag;
Stand off here let me pass."
?

"Yes, put him down-he's a noble boy;
I've two that are younger still;

They'll drive the plough on the Flushing farm,

And work with a right good will.

"My stars! and here comes one of them! My son, you must not go!"

"Father, when rebels are marching on,
I cannot plough or sow."

"Well, thank God, there is one left yet;
He will plough and sow what he can;
But he's only a boy, and can never do
The work of a full-grown man.

With a proud, full heart the blacksmith turned,
And walked to the other side;
For he felt a weakness he almost scorned,
And a tear he fain would hide.

They told him then, that his youngest boy
Was putting his name on the roll;
"It must not be," said the brave old man;
"No, no, he's the light of my soul!"

STAND BY THE FLAG.

But the lad came up with a beaming face,
Which bore neither fears nor cares;
"Father, say nothing-my name is down;
I have let out the farm on shares!"

And now they have marched to the tented field,
And when the wild battle shall come,

273

They'll strike a full blow for the Stars and Stripes,
For God, and their country and home.

Ex. CLXXX.-STAND BY THE FLAG !

Letter to Kentuckians, Written from Washington, May 31, 1861.

JOSEPH HOLT.

LET us twine each thread of the glorious tissue of our country's flag about our heart strings, and looking upon our homes and catching the spirit that breathes upon us from the battle-fields of our fathers, let us resolve that, come weal or woe, we will in life and in death, now and forever, stand by the Stars and Stripes. They have floated over our cradles, let it be our prayer and our struggle that they shall float over our graves. They have been unfurled from the snows of Canada to the plains of New Orleans, to the halls of the Montezumas, and amid the solitude of every sea, and everywhere, as the luminous symbol of resistless and beneficent power, they have led the brave and the free to victory and to glory.

It has been my fortune to look upon this flag in foreign lands, and amid the gloom of an Oriental despotism, and right well do I know, by contrast, how bright are its stars and how sublime its inspirations! If this banner, the emblem for us of all that is grand in human history, and of all that is transporting in human hope, is to be sacrificed on the altars of a satanic ambition, and thus disappear forever amid the night and tempest of revolution, then will I feel-and who shall estimate the desolation of that feeling ?—that the sun has indeed been stricken from the sky of our lives, and that henceforth we shall be wanderers and outcasts, with nought but the bread of sorrow and of penury for our lips, and with hands ever outstretched in feebleness and supplica tion, on which, in any hour, a military tyrant may rivet the

fetters of a despairing bondage. May God in his infinite. mercy save you and me, and the land we so much love, from the doom of such a degradation.

No contest so momentous as this has arisen in human history, for, amid all the conflicts of men and of nations, the life of no such government as ours has ever been at stake. Our fathers won our independence by the blood and sacrifice of a seven years' war, and we have maintained it against the assaults of the greatest power upon the earth; and the question now is, whether we are to perish by our own hands, and have the epitaph of suicide written upon our tomb. The ordeal through which we are passing must involve immense suffering and losses for us all, but the expenditure of not merely hundreds of millions, but of billions, will be well made, if the result shall be the preservation of our institutions.

Could my voice reach every dwelling in Kentucky, I would implore its inmates-if they would not have the rivers of their prosperity shrink away, as do unfed streams beneath the summer heats-to rouse themselves from their lethargy, and fly to the rescue of their country before it is everlastingly too late. Man should appeal to man, and neighborhood to neighborhood, until the electric fires of patriotism shall flash from heart to heart in one unbroken current throughout the land. It is a time in which the workshop, the office, the counting-house and the field may well be abandoned for the solemn duty that is upon us, for all these toils will but bring treasure, not for ourselves, but for the spoiler, if this revolution is not arrested. We are all, with our every earthly interest, embarked in mid-ocean on the same common deck. The howl of the storm is in our ears, and "the lightning's red glare is painting hell on the sky," and while the noble ship pitches and rolls under the lashings of the waves, the cry is heard that she has sprung a leak at many points, that the rushing waters are mounting rapidly in the hold. The man who, at such an hour, will not work at the pumps, is either a maniac or a monster.

« PreviousContinue »