the Boy Scout Oath

In my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country,
 and to obey the scout law;

 To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
 mentally awake,
 and morally straight.

Down in Lehigh Valley

Let me sit down a minute, stranger,
I ain't done a thing to you.
You needn't start your swearin',
A stone got in my shoe.

Yes, I'm a tramp, what of it?
Some folks think we're no good;
 But a tramp has to live, I reckon,
Though they say we never should.

 Once I was young and handsome,
Had plenty of cash and clothes,
But that was before I tripped,
And booze colored up my nose.

It was down in Lehigh Valley
Me and my people grew;
 I was the village blacksmith,
Yes, and a good one, too.

 Me and my daughter Nellie;
 Nellie was just sixteen:
And she was the prettiest creature
The valley had ever seen.

 Beaus, she had a dozen,
 They came from near and far;
But most of them were farmers,
And none of them suited her.

Along came a stranger,
 Young, handsome, straight and tall,
 Damn him, I wish I had him,
Strangled against that wall.

He was the man for Nellie,
Nellie knew no ill,
Her mother tried to tell her,
 But you know how young girls will.

 Well, it's the same old story,
 Common enough you'll say,
He was a smooth-tongued devil,
And he got her to run away.

 It was less than a month later,
That we heard from the poor young thing;
He had gone away and left her,
Without a wedding ring.

Back to our home we brought her,
Back to her mother's side,
Filled with a raging fever,
She fell at our feet and died.

Frantic with grief and trouble,
Her mother began to sink,
Dead in less than a fortnight,
That's why I took to drink.

Give me a drink, bartender,
And I'll be on my way,
And I'll hunt the runt that stole my girl,
If it takes 'til judgment day.

Long Long Ago

Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,
 Long, long ago, Long, long ago.
Sing me the songs I delighted to hear,
Long, long ago, long ago.
Now you are come, all my grief is removed,
 Let me forget that so long you have roved,
 Let me believe that you love as you loved,
Long, long ago, long ago.

Do you remember the path where we met,
 Long, long ago, Long, long ago?
Ah, yes, you told me you ne'er would forget,
 Long, long ago, long ago.
Then, to all others, my smile you preferred,
 Love, when you spoke, gave a charm to each word,
Still my heart treasures the praises I heard,
 Long, long ago, long ago.

 Tho' by your kindness my fond hopes were raised,
Long, long ago, Long, long ago.
You by more eloquent lips have been praised,
Long, long ago, long ago.
But by long absence your truth has been tried,
Still to your accents I listen with pride,
 Blest as I was when I sat by your side,
Long, long ago, long ago.

Thomas H. Bayly

Take Back Your Gold

I saw a youth and maiden on a lonely city street,
And thought them lovers at their meeting place;
Until, as I drew near, I heard the girl's sad voice entreat
 The one who heeded not her tear-stained face.
"I only ask you, Jack, to do your duty, that is all,
 You know you promised that we should be wed."
And when he said, "You shall not want, whatever may befall,"
She spurned the gold he offered her and said

Chorus:
"Take back your gold, for gold can never buy me;
 Take back your bribe and promise you'll be true;
 Give me the love, the love that you'd deny me;
Make me your wife, that's all 1 ask of you."

 He drew her close unto him and to soothe her then he tried,
 But she in pride and sorrow turned away,
And as he sought to comfort her, she wept and softly sighed,
"You'll rue your cruel actions, Jack, some day."
 "Now, little one, don't cry," he said, "for though tonight we part,
 And though another soon will be my bride,
 This gold will help you to forget"; but with a breaking heart,

She scorned his gift and bitterly replied:
 (Chorus.)

Louis W. Paitzakow

My Mother

Who fed me from her gentle breast
 And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses prest?
My mother.

When sleep forsook my open eye,
Who was it sung sweet lullaby
And rocked me that I should not cry?
My mother.

Who sat and watched my infant head
When sleeping in my cradle bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed?
My mother.

vVhen pain and sickness made me cry,
Who gazed upon my heavy eye
And wept, for fear that I should die?
My mother.

Who ran to help me when I fell
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the part to make it well?
My mother.

Who taught my infant lips to pray,
To love God's holy word and day,
And walk in wisdom's pleasant way?
My mother.

And can I ever cease to be
Affectionate and kind to thee
Who wast so very kind to me,¬
My mother.

Oh no, the thought I cannot bear;
And if God please my life to spare
I hope I shall reward thy care,
My mother.

When thou art feeble, old and gray,
My healthy arm shall be thy stay,
And I will soothe thy pains away,
My mother.

And when I see thee hang thy head,
'Twill be my turn to watch thy bed,
And tears of sweet affection shed,¬
My mother.

Jane Taylor

the Great Lover

I have been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendor of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
The inenarrable godhead of delight?
Love is a flame:-we have beaconed the world's night.
A city:-and we have built it, these and I.
An emperor:-we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
And the high cause of Love's magnificence,
And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that men may know,
To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming. . . .
These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . .
Dear names, And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames;
Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing:
Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain;
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam
That browns and d~indles as the waves go home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mold;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass,
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold the.m with me through the gate of Death.
They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust
And sacramental covenant to the dust.
Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make
New friends, now strangers. . . .
But the best I've known Stays here, and changes,
breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
Nothing remains.
0 dear my loves, 0 faithless, once again
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed
Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."

Rupert Brooke

the Gettysburg Address

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can¬not dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

November 19, 1864

Lasca

I want free life and I want fresh air;
And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,
The crack of the whips like shots in a battle,
 The medley of horns and hoofs and heads
 That wars and wrangles and scatters and spreads;
 The green beneath and the blue above,
 And dash and danger, and life and love.

And Lasca! Lasca used to ride
On a mouse-gray mustang close to my side,
 With blue serape and bright-belled spur;
 I laughed with joy as I looked at her!
Little knew she of books or of creeds;
 An Ave Maria sufficed her needs;
Little she cared, save to be by my side,
 To ride with me, and ever to ride,
From San Saba's shore to Lavaca's tide.

She was as bold as the billows that beat,
She was as wild as the breezes that blow;
From her little head to her little feet
She was swayed in her suppleness to and fro
 By each gust of passion; a sapling pine,
That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff,
 And wars with the wind when the weather is rough,
 Is like this Lasca, this love of mine.

She would hunger that I might eat,
Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet;
 But once, when I made her jealous for fun,
At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done,
 One Sunday, in San Antonio,
To a glorious girl on the Alamo,
She drew from her garter a dear little dagger,
 And-sting of a wasp! it made me stagger!
An inch to the left, or an inch to the right,
And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight;
 But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound
 Her torn reboso about the wound,
That I quite forgave her.
Scratches don't count In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.

Her eye was brown-a deep, deep brown;
 Her hair was darker than her eye;
And something in her smile and frown,
 Curled crimson lip and instep high,
 Showed that there ran in each blue vein,
 Mixed with the milder Aztec strain,
 The vigorous vintage of Old Spain.
She was alive in every limb
With feeling to the finger tips;
And when the sun is like a fire,
And sky one shining, soft sapphire,
 One does not drink in little sips.

The air was heavy, the night was hot,
I sat by her side, and forgot-forgot;
Forgot the herd that were taking their rest,
 Forgot that the air was close opprest,
That the Texas norther comes sudden and soon,
 In the dead of night or the blaze of noon;
 That once let the herd at its breath take fright,
 Nothing on earth can stop the flight;
And woe to the rider, and woe to the steed,
 Who falls in front of their mad stampede!

 Was that thunder? I grasped the cord
Of my swift mustang without a word.
I sprang to the saddle, and she clung behind.
Away! on a hot chase down the wind!
But never was fox hunt half so hard,
And never was steed so little spared.
 For we rode for our lives. You shall hear how we fared
 In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.
The mustang flew, and we urged him on;
There was one chance left, and you have but one; 
Halt, jump to ground, and shoot your horse;
 Crouch under his carcass, and take your chance;
 And, if the steers in their frantic course
Don't batter you both to pieces at once,
You may thank your star; if not, good-by
To the quickening kiss and the long-drawn sigh,
 And the open air and the open sky,
 In Texas, down by the Rio Grande!

The cattle gained on us, and, just as I felt
 For my old six-shooter behind in my belt,
 Down came the mustang, and down came we,
 Clinging together, and-what was the rest
A body that spread itself on my breast.
 Two arms that shielded my dizzy head,
 Two lips that hard on my lips were prest;
 Then came thunder in my ears,
As over us surged the sea of steers,
Blows that beat blood into my eyes,
And when I could rise¬ Lasca was dead!

 I gouged out a grave a few feet deep,
And there in Earth's arms I laid her to sleep;
 And there she is lying, and no one knows,
 And the summer shines and the winter snows;
 For many a day the flowers have spread
 A pall of petals over her head;
And the little gray hawk hangs aloft in the air,
 And the sly coyote trots here and there,
And the black snake glides and glitters and slides
 Into a rift in a cottonwood tree; A
nd the buzzard sails on,
 And comes and is gone,
Stately and still like a ship at sea;
And I wonder why I do not care
For the things that are like the things that were.
 Does half my heart lie buried there
 In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.
Frank Desprez 

the American flag

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 trumping 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 cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!

Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
 The sign of hope and triumph high!
 When speaks the signal-trumpet tone,
 And the long line comes gleaming on,
 Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
 Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,
 Each soldier's eye shall brightly turn
 To where thy sky-born glories burn,
 And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And when the cannon-mouthings loud
 Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
 And gory sabres rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall,
 Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
 And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
 That lovely messenger of death.

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave;
 When death, careering on the gale,
 Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
 And frighted waves rush wildly back
 Before the broadside's reeling rack,
 Each dying wanderer of the sea
 Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
 And smile to see thy splendors fly
 In triumph o'er his closing eye.
Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
 By angel hands to valor given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
 And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
 Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
 And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us!
 Joseph Rodman Drake

Souce of news

Absolute knowledge I have none,
 But my niece's washerwoman's son
 Heard a policeman on his beat
 Say to a laborer in the street
 That he had a letter last week
 Written in the finest Greek,
 From a Chinese coolie in Timbuctoo,
Who said that the niggers in Cuba knew
 Of a colored man in a Texas town,
 Who got it straight from a circus clown,
 That a man in the Klondike heard the news
 From a gang of South American Jews,
 Who heard of a society female rake,
 Whose mother-in-law will undertake
To prove that her husband's sister knows,
 As stated in a printed piece,
That she has a son, who has a friend
Who knows when the war is going to end

Gifts

Give a man a horse he can ride,
Give a man a boat he can sail;
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health,
 On sea nor shore shall fail.

Give a man a pipe he can smoke,
Give a man a book he can read:
And his home is bright with a calm delight,
 Though the room be poor indeed.

 Give a man a girl he can love,
As I, 0 my love, love thee;
And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,
 At home, on land, on sea.
 James Thompson

On conciliation with America

America, gentlemen say, is a noble object. It is an object well worth fighting for. Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art will, of course, have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the State may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management than of force, considering force not as an odious, but a feeble, instrument for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us. First, sir, permit me to observe, the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again; and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be conquered.

My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force; and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed you are without resource, for conciliation failing, force remains, but force failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness, but they can never be begged as alms by an impoverished and defeated violence. A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest. Nothing less will content me than whole America. I do not choose to consume its strength along with our own, because it is in all parts the British strength that I consume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy at the end of this exhausting conflict, and still less in the midst of it. I may escape; but I can make no insurance against such an event. Let me add, that I do not choose wholly to break the American spirit, because it is the spirit that has made the country.

Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their growth and their utility has been owing to methods altogether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said to be pursued to a fault. It may be so; but we know, if feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary than our penitence.

These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated.

But there is still behind a third consideration concerning this object, which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its population and its commerce, I mean its temper and character. In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is the predominating feature, which marks and distinguishes the whole; and, as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least' attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth, and this from a variety of powerful causes, which, to understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. . . .

The Americans will have no interest contrary to the grandeur and glory of England, when they are not oppressed by the weight of it; and they will rather be inclined to respect the acts of a superintending legislature, when they see them the acts of that power which is itself the security, not the rival, of their secondary importance. In this assurance my mind most perfectly acquiesces, and I confess I feel not the least alarm from the discontents which are to arise from putting people at their ease; nor do I apprehend the destruction of this empire from giving, by an act of free grace and indulgence, to two million of my fellow-citizens, some share of the rights upon which I have always been taught to value myself. . . .

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government; they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it once be understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual rela¬tion; the cement is gone; the cohesion is loosened; and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple, consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces toward you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have. The more ardently they love freedom, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it in Spain; they may have it from Prussia; but, until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity price of which you have the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navigation, which binds to you the commerce of the colonies, and through them secures to you the wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break the sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. . . .

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians, who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of the empire are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned have no substantial existence, are, in truth, everything and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our place as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public proceedings in America with the warning of the church, sursum corda. We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious temple, and have made the most extensive and only honorable conquests not by destroying but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Let us get an American revenue as we have got an American empire. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges will make it all that it can be.

(From the Speech to the House of Commons, Mar. 22, 1775)

Edmund Burke 

Epitaph placed on his daughter's tomb

 Warm summer sun, Shine kindly here.
 Warm southern wind, Blow softly here.

Green sod above, Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart, Good night, good night.

 (Mark Twain, adapted from Robert Richardson)

How to tell bad news

MR. H. Hal Steward, how are you, my old boy? How do things go, on at home?
 STEWARD. Bad enough, your honor; the magpie's dead.

 H. Poor Mag! So he's gone. How came he to die?
 S. Overeat himself, sir.
 H. Did he? A greedy dog; why, what did he get he liked so well?
 S. Horseflesh, sir; he died of eating horseflesh.
 H. How came he to get so much horseflesh?
 S. All your father's horses, sir.
 H. What! are they dead, too?
 S. Ay, sir; they died of overwork.
 H. And why were they overworked, pray?
 S. To carry water, sir.
 H. To carry water! and what were they carrying water for?
 S. Sure, sir, to put out the fire.
 H. Fire! what fire?
 S. 0, sir, your father's house is burned to the ground.
 H. My father's house burned down! and how came it to set on fire?
S. I think, sir, it must have been the torches.
 H. Torches! what torches?
 S. At your mother's funeral.
 H. My mother dead!
 S. Ah, poor lady! she never looked up, after it.
 H. After what?
 S. The loss of your father.
 H. My father gone, too?
 S. Yes, poor gentleman! he took to his bed as soon as he heard of it.

 H. Heard of what? S. The bad news, sir, and please your honor.
 H. What! more miseries! more bad news!

S. Yes, sir; your bank has failed, and your credit is lost, and you are not worth a shilling in the world. I make bold, sir, to wait on you about it, for I thought you would like to hear the news.

our troubles

If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Socrates

My Last Walk With The Schoolmistress

I can't say how many walks she and I had taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the school-house steps.

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public.

---I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow, whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them.

---Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tips of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she was not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman put on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself, or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, said a wise old friend to me, he was a boor. Better too few words from the woman we love, than too many; while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself. Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.

Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress, or not, whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon, whether I cribbed them from Balzac, whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian wisdom, or whether I have just found them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience (who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things, and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report. . . .

Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, but she goes into all the corners and attends to the leaves as much as to the covers. Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A woman (of the right kind), reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.

But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together. I thought I knew something about that, that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the purpose.

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up water, to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pore lying seven years in a tan-pit, to have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume upon its float-boards, to have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score years, to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of its delirium, and then, just at the point when the white hot passions have cooled down to a cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province.

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.

I never addressed one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon, with the condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing of all this, of course, as yet.

It was on the Common that we were walking. The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it. I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, Will you take the long path with me? Certainly, said the schoolmistress, with much pleasure. Think, I said before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more! The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by, the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down, I said. No, no, she answered, softly, I will walk the long path with you!

The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,-"Good morning, my dears!"

(From the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table)

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Evolution

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
 In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
 We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
 Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
 My heart was rife with the joy of life,
 For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
 And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
 We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
 The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
 And crept into light again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
 And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
 Or trailed through the mud and sand.
 Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
 Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
 To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
 And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
 Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
 And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
 And the night of death was past.

 Then light and swift through the jungle trees
 We swung in our airy flights,
 Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
 In the hush of the moonless nights;
 And oh! what beautiful years were there
 When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
 In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
 And breath by breath and death by death
 We followed the chain of change.
 Till there came a time in the law of life
 When over the nursing side
 The shadows broke and the soul awoke
 In a strange, dim dream of God.

 I was thewed like an Auroch bull
 And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
 Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
 When the night fell o'er the plain
 And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
 We mumbled the bones of the slain.

 I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
 And shaped it with brutish craft;
 I broke a shank from the woodland lank
 And fitted it, head and haft;
 Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
 Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone
I drove the stone
 And slew him upon the brink.

 Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
 Loud answered our kith and kin;
 From west and east to the crimson feast
 The clan came tramping in.
0' er joint and gristle and padded hoof
 We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl 
We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
 With rude and hairy hand;
 I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
 That men might understand.
 For we lived by blood and the right of might
 Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
 Till our brutal tush were gone.

And that was a million years ago
 In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light 
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
 Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new, 
Your soul untried, and yet

 Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
 And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
 And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old
 And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
 We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
 And furnished them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
 And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
 Where the crook-bone men make war
And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves
 Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here 
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
 Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

Langdon Smith

Casey Jones

Come all you rounders for I want you to hear
 The story told of a brave engineer;
Casey Jones was the rounder's name
On a heavy six-wheeler he rode to fame.

Caller called Jones about half past four,
 Jones kissed his wife at the station door,
 Climbed into the cab with the orders in his hand,
 Says, "This is my trip to the promised land."

Through South Memphis yards on the fly,
He heard the fireman say, "You've got a white eye."
 All the switchmen knew by the engine's moans,
 That the hogger at the throttle was Casey Jones.

Fireman says, "Casey, you're runnin' too fast,
 You run the block signal the last station you passed."
 Jones says, "Yes, I think we can make it, though,
 For she steams much better than ever I know."

Jones says, "Fireman, don't you fret,
Keep knockin' at the firedoor, don't give up yet;
 I'm goin' to run her till she leaves the rail
 Or make it on time with the southbound mail."

Around the curve and a-down the dump,
Two locomotives were a-bound to burpp,
 Fireman hollered, "Jones, it's just ahead,
We might jump and make it but we'll all be dead."

'Twas around this curve he saw the passenger train,
 Something happened in Casey's brain;
Fireman jumped off, but Jones stayed on,
 He's a good engineer but he's dead and gone.

Poor Casey Jones was always all right,
 He stuck to his post both day and night;
They loved to hear the whistle of old Number Three
As he came into Memphis on the old K.C.

Headaches and Heartaches and all kinds of pain
 Are not apart from a railroad train;
 Tales that are earnest, noble and gran'
 Belong to the life of a railroad man.

Old Ironsides

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down
Long has it waved on high,
 And many an eye has danced to see
 That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;
The meteor of the ocean air
 Shall sweep the clouds no more!
 Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
 Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
 No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
0, better that her shattered hulk
 Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
 And there should be her grave;
 Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!

Oliver Wendell Holmes

From Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address

FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of the country, I will avail myself of that portion of my fellow citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye-when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. . .

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind the sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possesses their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonized spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong, that this government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history an¬swer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an over-ruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter-with all these blessings, What more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens-a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. . . .

Christmas Day In The Workhouse

It is Christmas Day in the workhouse, and the cold, bare walls are bright
 With garlands of green and holly, and the place is a pleasant sight,
 For with clean-washed hands and faces in a long and hungry line
 The paupers sit at the table, for this is the hour they dine.
 And the guardians and their ladies, although the wind is east,
 Have come in their furs and wrappers to watch their charges feast;
 To smile and be condescending, putting on pauper plates.
To be hosts at the workhouse banquet they've paid for-with the rates.
0, the paupers are meek and lowly with their "Thank'ee kindly, mums!"
So long as they fill their stomachs what matter it whence it comes?
 But one of the ,old men mutters and pushes his plate aside,
 "Great God!" he cries, "but it chokes me; for this is the day she died! "
The guardians gazed in horror, the master's face went white;
 "Did a pauper refuse their pudding? Could that their ears believe aright?"
Then the ladies clutched their husbands, thinking the man would die,
Struck by a bolt, or something, by the outraged One on high.
 But the pauper sat for a moment, then rose 'mid silence grim,
 For the others had ceased to chatter and trembled in every limb:
 He looked at the guardians' ladies, then, eyeing their lords, he said
 "I eat not the food of villains whose hands are foul and red;
"Whose victims cry for vengeance from their dark, unhallowed graves."
 "He's drunk," said the workhouse master, "or else he's mad and raves."
"Not drunk or mad," cried the pauper, "but only a haunted beast,
 Who, torn by the hounds and mangled, declines the vulture's feast.
"I care not a curse for the guardians, and 1 won't be dragged away;
 Just let me have the fit out, it's only on Christmas Day
 That the black past comes to goad me and prey on my burning brain;
 I'll tell you the rest in a whisper-I swear 1 won't shout again.
"Keep your hands off me, curse you! Hear me right out to the end.
 You come here to see how paupers the season of Christmas spend;
 You come here to watch us feeding, as they watched the captured beast;
 Here's why a penniless pauper spits on your paltry feast.
"Do you think I will take your bounty and let you smile and think
 You're doing a noble action with the parish's meat and drink?
 Where is my wife, you traitors-the poor old wife you slew?
Yes, by the God above me, my Nance was killed by you.
 "Last Winter my wife lay dying, starved in a filthy den.
 I had never been to the parish-I came to the parish then;
I swallowed my pride in coming! for ere the ruin came
I held up my head as a trader, and 1 bore a spotless name.
"I came to the parish, craving bread for a starving wife
Bread for the woman who'd loved me thro' fifty years of life;
 And what do you think they told me, mocking my awful grief,
 That the house was open to us, but they wouldn't give out relief.
"I slunk to the filthy alley-' twas a cold, raw Christmas Eve
And the bakers' shops were open, tempting a man to thieve;
 But 1 clenched my fists together, holding my head awry,
So I came to her empty-handed and mournfully told her why.
"Then I told her the house was open; she had heard of the ways of that,
For her bloodless cheeks went crimson, and up in her rags she sat,
 Crying, 'Bide the Christmas here, John, we've never had one apart;
 I think I can bear the hunger-the other would break my heart.'
 "All through that eve I watched her, holding her hand in mine,
 Praying the Lord and weeping till my lips were salt as brine;
 I asked her once if she hungered, and she answered 'No.'
 The moon shone in at the window, set in a wreath of snow.
"Then the room was bathed in glory, and I saw in my darling's eyes
The faraway look of wonder that comes when the spirit flies;
 And her lips were parched and parted, and her reason came and went.
 For she rav'd of our home in Devon, where our happiest years were spent.
 "And the accents, long forgotten, came back to the tongue once more.
For she talked like the country lassie I woo'd by the Devon shore;
 Then she rose to her feet and trembled, and fell on the rags and moaned,
And, 'Give me a crust-I'm famished-for the love of God,' she groaned.
 "I rushed from the room like a madman and flew to the work house gate,
Crying, 'Food for a dying womanl' and the answer came, 'Too late;'
 They drove me away with curses; then I fought with a dog in the street
And tore from the mongrel's clutches a crust he was trying to eat.
"Back through the filthy byways! Back through the trampled slush!
 Up to the crazy garret, wrapped in an awful hush;
 My heart sank down at the threshold, and I paused with a sudden thrill,
For there, in the silv'ry moonlight, my Nance lay cold and still.
 "Up to the blackened ceiling the sunken eyes were cast
 I knew on those lips, all bloodless, my name had been the last;
 She called for her absent, husband-O God! Had I known
 Had called in vain, and, in anguish, had died in that den alone.
"Yes, there in a land of plenty, lay a loving woman dead.
 Cruelly starved and murdered for a loaf of the parish bread;
 At yonder gate, last Christmas, I craved for a human life,
 You, who would feed us paupers, what of my murdered wife?
"There, get ye gone to your dinners, don't mind me in the least;
 Think of the happy paupers eating your Christmas feast;
And when you recount their blessings in your parochial way,
 Say what you did for me, too, only last Christmas Day."
 George R. Sims 

Love Me Little, Love Me Long

Love me little, love me long,
 Is the burden of my song:
 Love that is too hot and strong
Burneth soon to waste.
I am with little well content,
 And a little from thee sent
Is enough, with true intent,
To be steadfast friend.

Love me little, love me long,
 Is the burden of my song.
Say thou lov'st me while thou live,
 I to thee my love will give,
Never dreaming to deceive
While that life endures:
Nay, and after death in sooth,
I to thee will keep my truth,
As now when in my May of youth,
This my love assures.

Love me little, love me long,
 Is the burden of my song.
Constant love is moderate ever,
 And it will through life persever,
 Give to me that with true endeavor
I will it restore:
 A suit of durance let it be,
 For all weathers, that for me,
 For the land or for the sea,
Lasting evermore.
Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song.

Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair

I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
Borne, like a vapor, on the summer air;
I see her tripping where the bright streams play,
 Happy as the daisies that dance on her way.
Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour,
 Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o'er: 
Oh! I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
 Floating, like a vapor, on the summer air.
 I long for Jeanie with the day-dawn smile,
 Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile;
I hear her melodies, like joys gone by,
Sighing round my heart o'er the fond hopes that die:
Sighing like the wind and sobbing like the rain,
 Wailing for the lost one that comes not again:
 Oh! I long for Jeanie, and my heart bows low,
 Never more to find her where the bright waters flow.

Stephen Foster

Labor

 Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things ought to belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others, without labor, have enjoyed a larger proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor as nearly as possible is a worthy object of any good government.

(From First Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1861)
 Abraham Lincoln

public trust

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

-Thomas Jefferson