for every doubt and perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of glcem or of despondency. Benoid it! Lis

speaks of victories, and sometimes of reverses, on the sea and on

and the dead. and memeries, whether of glorious men, or goricus deeds, or

But before all and above all other associations

In 17 within a few days of one year after the Declaration of Independence, the Congress of the Colonies assembled and ordained in serious national dog which we new add and leferd, and advanced it till 251 before God and all men, as the

It was no wonday fag emblazoned for gavery or tanity. It vas a stema national signal. When that banner irst unrellei or the sun, it was the simbei of all those how runs and purPOSES VICI AIrught byether the Colonial American Congress! Curing mens, then, al mat ur tathers meant in the Revolu

When Freedom from her mountain height

Unfurled her standard to the air,

She tore the azure robe of night,

And set the stars of glory there.
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land.
Majestic monarch of the cloud,

Who rear'st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumpings loud
And see the lightning lances driven,

When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder drum of heaven,—
Child of the sun! to thee 't is given
To guard the banner of the free;

To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle stroke;
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the clouds of war,

The harbingers of victory!

-JOSEPH R. DRAKE.

What Constitutes Good Citizenship

THE

HE future of American civilization, and with it the future of the world's civilization, is to be determined not by the influence of trade alone, but by the influence of trade joined with the influence of broad intelligence, humanitarian sympathies and unselfish purposes. The highest title in the new order of nobility will be neither "merchant" nor "scholar," nor yet "gentleman," in its conventional sense, but "citizen " —a title rich in its suggestion of public spirit, the recognition

of the claims of human brotherhood, the merging of the individual into the higher life of the community, of the nation, of humanity itself. A. V. V. RAYMOND.

In order to understand the theory of the American government, the most serious, calm, persistent study should be given to the Constitution of the United States. I don't mean learning it by heart, committing it to memory. What you want is to understand it, to know the principles at the bottom of it; to feel the impulse of it; to feel the heart-beat that thrills through the whole American people. That is the vitality that is worth knowing; that is the sort of politics that excels all the mysteries of ward elections, and lifts you up into a view where you can see the clear skies, the unknown expanse of the future. CHARLES A. Dana.

Few people have the leisure to undertake a systematic and thorough study of history, but every one ought to find time to learn the principal features of the governments under which we live and to get some inkling of the way in which these governments have come into existence, and of the causes which have made them what they are. JOHN FISKE.

The three great menaces to our institutions are corruption, violence, and indifference, affecting the ballot. To the two former, public discussions show that we are alive. The last, however, is more insidious and not less alarming. In some of the older communities, notably in the great cities, a large and growing class neglects all political duties. Some think themselves too busy, some affect a lofty contempt for all public affairs, while others, like Gallio, “care for none of these things." Such men are no more honest or patriotic than he who unworthily avoids any other debt or duty. They have apparently no conception of their obligations as citizens, and are unworthy of their high privileges. The man who won't do his part in public affairs, who won't vote, ought to be disfranchised. If compulsory education is right, why not compulsory suffrage? Let

the man who, without good excuse, fails to vote, be deprived of the right to vote. "Blessings brighten as they take their flight." W. H. H. MILLER.

The disfranchisement of a single elector by fraud or intimidation is a crime too grave to be regarded lightly. The right of every qualified elector to cast one free ballot and to have it. honestly counted must not be questioned. Every constitutional power should be used to make this right secure and to punish frauds upon the ballot. BENJAMIN HARRISON.

We reach the wider field of politics and shape the national policy through the town meeting and the party caucus. They should neither be despised nor avoided, but made potent in securing the best agents for executing the popular will. The influence which goes forth from the township and precinct meetings is felt in state and national legislation, and is at last. embodied in the permanent forms of law and written Constitutions. I cannot too earnestly invite you to the closest personal attention to party and political caucuses and the primary meetings of your respective parties. They constitute that which goes to make up at last the popular will. They lie at the basis of all true reform. It will not do to hold yourself aloof from politics and parties. If the party is wrong, make it better; that's the business of the true partisan and good citizen. WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

LITERATURE OF PATRIOTISM

The Declaration of Independence

In Congress, July 1776.-The Unanimous Declaration of the Turteen United States of America)

11

HEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Fowers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which pel them to the separation.

We add these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with cersain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Goverments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form & Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Ryt a be People to åter or to abolish it, and to institor dvernment, kimg its trundation en such principles and 28 powers in sica form, as to them stall NUTTIN KO) to elect når Such and Happiness. Pranot meet a State but Governments long established shall not be charged for lot and transient cases; and ac