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EXTRACTS FROM WHITTIER'S BALLAD.

121

Gone the summer's harvest mowing,

And again the fields are gray.
Yet away, he's away!

Faint and fainter hope is growing

In the hearts that mourn his stay.

Nowhere fairer, sweeter, rarer,
Does the golden-locked fruit-bearer

Through his painted woodlands stray,
Than where hillside oaks and beeches
Overlook the long, blue reaches,
Silver coves and pebbled beaches,
And green isles of Casco Bay:
Nowhere day, for delay,

With a tenderer look beseeches,

"Let me with my charmed earth stay."

On the grain-lands of the mainlands
Stands the serried corn like train-bands,
Plume and pennon rustling gay;

Out at sea, the islands wooded,

Silver birches, golden-hooded,.

Set with maples, crimson-blooded,

White sea-foam and sand-hills gray,
Stretch away, far away,

Dim and dreary, over-brooded
By the hazy autumn day.

Gayly chattering to the clattering
Of the brown nuts downward pattering
Leap the squirrels, red and gray.

On the grass-land, on the fallow,
Drop the apples, red and yellow;
Drop the russet pears and mellow,

Drop the red leaves all the day.
And away, swift away,

Sun and cloud, o'er hill and hollow,
Chasing, weave their web of play.

"Martha Mason! Martha Mason!
Prithee tell us of the reason

Why you mope at home to-day:

Surely smiling is not sinning;

Leave your quilling, leave your spinning:

What is all your store of linen,
If your heart is never gay?
Come away, come away!
Never yet did sad beginning

Make the task of life a play.

"Vain your calling for Rob Rawlin!
Some red squaw his moose-meat's broiling,
Or some French lass, singing gay.

Just forget as he's forgetting:
What avails a life of fretting?

If some stars must needs be setting,
Others rise as good as they."
"L Cease, I pray; go your way!"
Martha cries, her eyelids wetting:

"Foul and false the words you say !"

When the shadows vail the meadows,
And the sunset's golden ladders

Sink from twilight's walls of gray-
From the window of my dreaming,
I can see his sickle gleaming,
Cheery-voiced can hear him teaming
Down the locust-shaded way;
But away, swift away,

Fades the fond, delusive seeming,
And I kneel again to pray.

When the growing dawn is showing,
And the barn-yard cock is crowing,

And the horned moon pales away;

From a dream of him awaking,
Every sound my heart is making

Seems a footstep of his taking;

Then I hush the thought and say,
"Nay, away, he's away!"

Ah! my heart, my heart is breaking
For the dear ones far away.

Look up, Martha! worn and swarthy,
Glows a face of manhood worthy;

"Robert !" "Martha !" all they say. O'er went wheel and reel together, Little cared the owner whither;

A COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION.

Heart of lead is heart of feather,

Noon of night is noon of day!
Come away! come away!

When such lovers meet each other,
Why should prying idlers stay?

Quench the timber's falling embers,
Quench the red leaves in December's
Hoary rime and chilling spray.
But the hearth shall kindle clearer,
Household welcomes sound sincerer,
Heart to loving heart draw nearer,
When the bridal bells shall say:
Hope and pray, trust alway;
Life is sweeter, love is dearer,
For the trial and delay!

123

A COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION.-HORACE BUSHNELL.

THE chartered privileges of education furnished by our Colleges can be more highly valued by no one than myself. But still it should be understood that an educated man is a MAN ALIVE. Many a boy who does not know Latin from Dutch, and has never seen any University but his mother's and the District School, having attained to the distinction of a living soul, is, in the highest sense, educated. Could this, which is the only just view of the case, be once established in the public mind, it would do much to encourage attempts at self-education, and would greatly endear the system of Common Schools.

Many years ago, in an obscure country school in Massachusetts, an humble, conscientious, but industrious boy was to be seen, and it was evident to all that his soul was beginning to act and thirst for some intellectual good. He was alive to knowledge. Next we see him an apprentice on the shoemaker's bench, with a book spread open before him. Next we see him put forth, on foot, to settle in a remote town in this State, and pursue his fortunes there as a shoemaker, his tools being carefully

sent on their way before him. In a short time he is busied in the post of County Surveyor for Litchfield County, being the most accomplished mathematician in that section of the State. Before he is twenty-five years old we find him supplying the astronomical matter of an almanac published in New York. Next he is admitted to the bar, a self-qualified lawyer. Now he is found on the bench of the Superior Court. Next he becomes a member of the Continental Congress. There he is made a member of the Committee of Six to prepare the Declaration of Independence. He continues a member of Congress for nearly twenty years, and is acknowledged to be one of the most useful men and wisest counsellors of the land. At length, having discharged every office with a perfect ability, and honored, in every sphere, the name of a Christian, he dies regretted and loved by his State and Nation. Now this Roger Sherman, I maintain, was an educated man. Do you ask for other examples? I name, then, Washington, who had only a common domestic education. I name Franklin; I name Rittenhouse; I name West; I name Fulton; I name Bowditch; all Common School men, and some of them scarcely that, but yet all educated men, because they were MADE ALIVE. Besides these I know not any other seven names of our countrymen that can weigh against them. These are truly American names, and there is the best of reasons to believe that a generous system of public education would produce many such. Let them appear, and if they shall embody so much force, so much real freshness and sinew of character as to decide for themselves what shall be called an education, or shall even be able to laugh at the dwarfed significance of College learning, I know not that we shall have any reasons for repining.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS THE LIFE OF THE NATION.

INTELLIGENT free laborers are working out the great problem of civilizing this continent; intelligent fighting men are consolidating its Government; and, underlying all, the public schools are

PUBLIC SCHOOLS THE LIFE OF THE NATION.

125

silently forming a sound national character. Free as air, vital as electricity, and vivifying as the sunlight, they act on the organic forces of the nation, as these three physical agents build up the life of the globe out of inorganic matter.

The insurrection will be put down by the sword and the bayonet; treason will be rooted out by armed men; but even then the only strength of the Union will be in a public opinion based on an intelligent comprehension of national affairs by the people of the whole nation. Unless the laws of the several States are administered by rulers chosen by electors whose ballots fall vitalized by intelligence, no standing armies, no Constitutions, can hold them in harmonious spheres around the central sun of a representative government. They will shoot off in eccentric orbits into the unfathomable darkness of dissolution and chaos, never to return.

It is a Prussian maxim, "Whatever you would have appear in the life of the nation you must put into the schools." If the schools inculcate, with intellectual training, love of country, cordial submission to lawful authority, moral rectitude some knowledge of the theory and organic structure of our government, and a true spirit of patriotism, then shall our citizens be truly men, and our electors princes indeed.

When I consider the power of the public schools, how they have disseminated intelligence in every village and hamlet and log house in the nation, how they are molding the plastic elements of the next generation into the symmetry of modern civilization, I cannot think that our country is to be included in the long list

"Of nations scattered like the chaff
Blown from the threshing-floor of God."

I hold nothing in common with those faint-hearted patriots who are beginning to despair of the future of our country. The latent powers of the nation are just coming into healthful and energetic action, and, in spite of treason, are moving the republic onward and upward to a higher stand-point of liberty. What though it comes to us amid the storm of battle, and the shock of contending armies!

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