"I am not so sure of that," said the Invalid.

And so we turned our faces northward, not without a lingering sorrow at leaving the home where we had spent so many sweet and sunny days.

"Good-by, Paradise Plantation," said Merry, as the little white house under the live-oak receded from our view as we stood upon the steamer's deck.

"It was not so inappropriately named," said the Invalid. "Our life there has surely been more nearly paradisiacal than any other we have known." And to this even the Pessimist assented.

CENTENNIAL ORATION.

H. A. BROWN.

[The premature death of Henry Armitt Brown cut off in the prime of youth an orator whose unusually fine powers could not have failed, had he lived to a riper age, to make their mark upon the world. He was born in Philadelphia, December 1, 1844, and died August 21, 1878. Of his orations probably the best in substance and finest in finish was that made at Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, on the occasion of the completion of the first century of American Independence. We give the peroration of this eloquent example of oratory.]

THE conditions of life are always changing, and the experience of the fathers is rarely the experience of the sons. The temptations which are trying us are not the temptations which beset their footsteps, nor the dangers which threaten our pathway the dangers which surrounded them. These men were few in number; we are many. They were poor, but we are rich. They were weak, but we are strong. What is it, countrymen, that we need to-day? Wealth?

Behold it in your hands. Power? God hath given it you. Liberty? It is your birthright. Peace? It dwells among you. You have a government founded in the hearts of men, built by the people for the common good. You have a land flowing with milk and honey; your homes are happy, your workshops busy, your barns are full. The school, the railway, the telegraph, the printing-press, have welded you together into one. Descend those mines that honeycomb the hills! Behold that commerce whitening every sea! Stand by your gates and see that multitude pour through them from the corners of the earth, grafting the qualities of older stocks upon one stem, mingling the blood of many races in a common stream, and swelling the rich volume of our English speech with varied music from an hundred tongues. You have a long and glorious history, a past glittering with heroic deeds, an ancestry full of lofty and imperishable examples. You have passed through danger, endured privation, been acquainted with sorrow, been tried by suffering. You have journeyed in safety through the wilderness and crossed in triumph the Red Sea of civil strife, and the foot of Him who led you hath not faltered nor the light of His countenance been turned away.

It is a question for us now, not of the founding of a new government, but of the preservation of one already old; not of the formation of an independent power, but of the purification of a nation's life; not of the conquest of a foreign foe, but of the subjection of ourselves. The capacity of man to rule himself is to be proven in the days to come, not by the greatness of his wealth, not by his valor in the field, not by the extent of his dominion, not by the splendor of his genius. The dangers of to-day come from within. The worship of self, the love of power, the lust of gold, the weakening of faith, the decay of public

virtue, the lack of private worth, these are the perils which threaten our future; these are the enemies we have to fear; these are the traitors which infest the camp; and the danger was far less when Catiline knocked with his army at the gates of Rome than when he sat smiling in the Senate-House. We see them daily face to face,-in the walk of virtue, in the road to wealth, in the path to honor, on the way to happiness. There is no peace between them and our safety. Nor can we avoid them and turn back. It is not enough to rest upon the past. No man or nation can stand still. We must mount upward or go down. We must grow worse or better. Eternal Law: we cannot change it. . . .

It is the

The years

The century that is opening is all our own. that lie before us are a virgin page. We can inscribe it as we will. The future of our country rests upon us; the happiness of posterity depends on us. The fate of humanity may be in our hands. That pleading voice, choked with the sobs of ages, which has so often spoken unto ears of stone, is lifted up to us. It asks us to be brave, benevolent, consistent, true to the teachings of our history, proving "divine descent by worth divine." It asks us to be virtuous, building up public virtue upon private worth, seeking that righteousness which exalteth nations. It asks us to be patriotic-loving our country before all other things; her happiness our happiness, her honor ours, her fame our own. It asks us, in the name of justice, in the name of charity, in the name of freedom, in the name of God.

My countrymen, this anniversary has gone by forever, and my task is done. While I have spoken, the hour has passed from us: the hand has moved upon the dial, and the Old Century is dead. The American Union hath endured an hundred years! Here, on this threshold of the

future, the voice of humanity shall not plead to us in vain. There shall be darkness in the days to come; danger for our courage; temptation for our virtue; doubt for our faith; suffering for our fortitude. A thousand shall fall before us, and tens of thousands at our right hand. The years shall pass beneath our feet, and century follow century in quick succession. The generations of men shall come and go; the greatness of yesterday shall be forgotten to-day, and the glories of this noon shall vanish before tomorrow's sun; but America shall not perish, but endure, while the spirit of our fathers animates their sons.

THE SINGER'S HILLS.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

He dwelt where level lands lay low and drear,
Long stretches of waste meadow pale and sere,
With dull seas languid tiding up and down,
Turning the lifeless sands from white to brown,-
Wide barren fields for miles and miles, until
The pale horizon walled them in, and still
No lifted peak, no slope, not even mound
To raise and cheer the weary eye was found.
From boyhood up and down these dismal lands,
And pacing to and fro the barren sands,
And always gazing, gazing seaward, went
The Singer. Daily with the sad winds blent
His yearning voice.

"There must be hills," he said,

"I know they stand at sunset rosy red,

And purple in the dewy shadowed morn;

Great forest trees like babes are rocked and borne

Upon their breasts, and flowers like jewels shine.
Around their feet, and gold and silver line
Their hidden chambers, and great cities rise
Stately where their protecting shadow lies,
And men grow brave and women are more fair
'Neath higher skies, and in the clearer air!"
One day thus longing, gazing, lo! in awe
Made calm by ecstasy, he sudden saw,
Far out to seaward, mountain-peaks appear,
Slow rising from the water pale and clear.
Purple and azure, there they were, as he
Had faithful yearning visions they must be;
Purple and azure and bright rosy red,
Like flashing jewels, on the sea they shed
Their quenchless light.

Great tears ran down

The Singer's cheeks, and through the busy town,

And all across the dreary meadow-lands,

And all along the dreary lifeless sands,

He called aloud,

"Ho! tarry! tarry ye!

Behold those purple mountains in the sea!"
The people saw no mountains!

"He is mad,"

They careless said, and went their way, and had

No farther thought of him.

And so, among

His fellows' noisy, idle, crowding throng,

The Singer walked, as strangers walk who speak
A foreign tongue and have no friend to seek.
And yet the silent joy which filled his face
Sometimes their wonder stirred a little space,
And, following his constant seaward look,
One wistful gaze they also seaward took.