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JOHN B. GOUGH

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scorn, and contempt. They stood alone; they looked into the future calmly, and with faith; they saw the golden beam inclining to the side of perfect justice; and they fought on amid the storm of persecution. In Great Britain they tell me when I go to see such a prison : "Here is such a dungeon, in which such a one was confined; Here, among the ruins of an old castle, we will show you where such a one had his ears cut off, and where another was murdered." Then they will show me monuments towering up to the heavens. "There is a monument to such a one; there And what do I find? That the one genera

is a monument to another." tion persecuted and howled at these men, crying, "Crucify them! crucify them!" and danced around the blazing fagots that consumed them; and the next generation busied itself in gathering up the scattered ashes of the martyred heroes, and depositing them in the golden urn of a nation's history. O, yes! the men that fight for a great enterprise are the men that bear the brunt of the battle, and "He who seeth in secret "-seeth the desire of his children, their steady purpose, their firm self-denial-"will reward them openly," though they may die and see no sign of the triumphs of their enterprise.

Our cause is a progressive one. I read the first constitution of the first temperance society formed in the State of New York, in 1809, and one of the by-laws stated, "Any member of this association who shall be convicted of intoxication shall be fined a quarter of a dollar, except such act of intoxication shall take place on the Fourth of July, or any other regularly appointed military muster." We laugh at that now; but it was a serious matter in those days: it was in advance of the public sentiment of the age. The very men that adopted that principle were persecuted; they were hooted and pelted through the streets, the doors of their houses were blackened, their cattle mutilated. The fire of persecution scorched some men so that they left the work. Others worked on, and God blessed them. Some are living to-day; and I should like to stand where they stand now, and see the mighty enterprise as it rises before them. They worked hard. They lifted the first turf-prepared the bed in which to lay the corner-stone. They laid it amid persecution and storm. They worked under the surface; and men almost forgot that there were busy hands laying the solid foundation far down beneath. By-and-by they got the foundation above the surface, and then commenced another storm of persecution. Now we see the superstructure-pillar after pillar, tower after tower, column after column, with the capitals emblazoned with "Love, truth, sympathy, and good-will to men." Old men gaze upon it as it grows up before them. They will not live to see it completed, but they see in faith the crowning cope-stone set upon it. Meek-eyed women weep

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

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the age; less, however, from the eloquence of the speaker than from what he had to say, his pointing out how the whites and blacks could live together in harmony in the South. The Boston Transcript said of this speech: "It seems to have dwarfed all the other proceedings and the Exposition itself. The sensation that it has caused in the press has never been equalled." We give the main portions of this address.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND CITIZENS: One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent Exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom. Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the State Legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, "Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, "Water, water; send us water!" ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered, "Cast, down your bucket where you are." And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white. man, who is their next-door neighbor, I will say: "Cast down your bucket where you are,'-cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.

Cast it down in agriculture, in mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection, it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is

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BOOK VIII.

Notable Women Orators

HE advent of woman into the field of oratory belongs in great measure to the latter half of the nineteenth century. Kept for ages from any active participation in the political affairs of the nations, deprived of all opportunity of attaining the higher education, and confined as closely as possible to domestic duties and social interests, it is not surprising that the appearance of woman upon the rostrum in the past was almost a thing unknown. The greater freedom and broader education which came to her within the nineteenth century caused a marked change in this situation of affairs. And this was especially the case in the United States, whose republican institutions favored free thought and untrammeled action among all classes of the community. Naturally such great moral issues as those of the abolition of slavery and the development of the temperance cause came early to the front, and enlisted the active co-operation of many women of broad thought and warm sympathies. But while woman was encouraged in giving her most earnest attention to these evils, the field of politics was firmly closed against her; it not being opened until 1848; when the first Woman's Rights Convention was called. In the succeeding period the voice of woman has been often and effectively heard, dealing with the varied subjects of woman suffrage, temperance reform, slavery abolition, and other moral and political issues. Woman as an orator has come to stay, and fairly claims a place in our record of the world's oratory.

MARY A. LIVERMORE (1821

A DISTINGUISHED PUBLIC SPEAKER

IKE most of the noted woman orators, Mary A. Livermore early in life became deeply interested in the various reform movements of the time. Born, the daughter of Timothy Rice, at Boston, Massachusetts, she spent three years of her early womanhood on a Southern plantation, where there were some five hundred slaves. The scenes she beheld there made her one of the most radical of abolitionists, and she actively aided every movement for the freeing of the slaves. Marrying a Universalist minister, she became active in church work, writing many hymns and organizing a flourishing temperance society of boys and girls. During the Civil War she was a valuable worker in the Sanitary Commission service, and after the war became an ardent supporter of the Woman's Suffrage movement. The first Woman's Suffrage Convention in Chicago was organized by her, and she became an editor, author and lecturer on this subject. As a lecture orator she was highly esteemed.

THE BATTLE OF LIFE

[Mrs. Livermore's lecture entitled "The Battle of Life," was first delivered in her husband's pulpit, on an occasion when he was too ill to officiate, and has since been given some two hundred and fifty times before audiences from Maine to California. The following selection is from this very popular lecture.]

When it is declared that life is a battle, a statement is made that appeals to every one who has reached adult life; aye, and to a great multitude who are only a little way across the threshold. As our experience deepens we realize that the whole world is one vast encampment, and that every man and woman is a soldier. We have not voluntarily enlisted into this service with an understanding of the hardness of the warfare, and an acceptance of its terms and conditions, but have been drafted into the

FRANCES E. WILLARD (1839-1898)

THE WOMEN'S CRUSADE ORATOR

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N 1873 began in Ohio the memorable "Women's Crusade " against the liquor sellers. For months together bands of devoted women besieged the saloons, entreating their keepers to give up their soul-destroying business, praying and singing hymns in bar-rooms or on the sidewalks, and with such effect that many of the dealers closed their saloons, and some of them emptied barrels of liquor into the gutters. This movement enlisted the heart-felt sympathy of Frances E. Willard, then president of a college for women at Evanston, Illinois. She studied thoroughly the history of the temperance cause, consulted with Neal Dow and other prohibition advocates, and joined in the crusade in Pittsburgh, kneeling in prayer on the sawdust-covered saloon floors, and leading the crusaders in singing "Rock of Ages," and other hymns.

This crusade movement was a temporary one, but in Miss Willard it had found an organizing head and an energetic spirit. There were separate bands of women temperance workers over the country. These she determined to combine into one organization, and this was done in 1874 in the formation of that great body, the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. From that time forward Miss Willard devoted herself, heart and soul, to the furtherance of this noble temperance organization. Under her leadership it spread to all parts of the country, with main and subordinate branches, it built the great "Temperance Temple" at Chicago, it organized an extensive publishing business, and its work for good was extraordinary. Throughout, its energetic president aided it with voice and pen, until, worn out with her labors, death took her work from her hands, leaving it for others to carry on with her resolute spirit. No

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