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16. AMERICA THE CHILD OF DESTINY.

I MAY be an enthusiast, but I cannot but give utterance to the conceptions of my own mind. When I look upon the special developments of European civilization, and see on the southern shore of that continent an humble individual, amidst untold difficulties and repeated defeats, pursuing the mysterious suggestions which the mighty deep poured unceasingly upon his troubled spirit, till at last, with great and irrepressible energy of soul, he discovered that there lay, in the far western ocean, a continent open for the infusion of those elementary principles of liberty which were dwarfed in European soil,—I have conceived that the hand of Destiny was there!

When I saw the emigration of the Pilgrims from the chalky shores of England, in the night fleeing from their native home; when father, mother, brother, wife, sister, lover, were all lost by those melancholy wanderers "stifling the mighty hunger of the heart," and landing amidst cold and poverty and death, upon the rude rocks of Plymouth, I have ventured to think the Will of Deity was there!

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When I have remembered the Revolution of 1776,the seven years of war; three millions in arms against the most powerful nation in history, and vindicating their independence, I have thought that their sufferings and death were not in vain!

When I have gone and seen the deserted hearthstones, looked in upon the battle-field, upon the dying and dead, heard the agonizing cry, "Water, for the sake of God! Water!" seen the dissolution of this being, pale lips pressing in death the yet loved image of wife, sister, lover, — I will not deem all these in vain!

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Like the Roman who looked back upon the glory of his ancestors, in woe exclaiming,

"Great Scipio's ghost complains that we are slow,
And Pompey's shade walks unavenged among us,"

Lawrence speaks, "Don't

the great dead hover about me. give up the ship!" and Henry, "Give me Liberty or give me death!" and Adams, "Survive or perish, I am for the Declaration!" and Allen, "In the name of the living God, I come!"

Come, then, thou Eternal! who dwellest not in temples made with hands, but who, in the city's crowd or by the fair forest stream, revealest thyself to the earnest seeker after the true and the right, inspire my heart; give me undying courage to pursue the promptings of my spirit; and, whether I shall be called in the shades of life to look upon as sweet and loved faces as now, or, shut in by sorrow and night, horrid visions shall gloom upon me in my dying hour - 0 my Country, mayst thou yet be free!

CASSIUS MARCELLUS CLAY.

17. THE PACIFIC SHORE.

From Swett's "Common School Readings," H. H. Bancroft & Co., San Francisco, California.

LONG years ago, a little band

Of Pilgrims, from a distant shore,
Found a wild home in that cold land
Where the Atlantic surges roar.
They were strong, iron-hearted men,-
Oppression's stern, unbending foes;
And in each rugged mountain glen

The village church and school-house rose.

Those Pilgrim sires have passed away,
But still they live in deathless fame;
And Pilgrim mothers of that day

Are crowned with an immortal name.
They have departed, but have left
A glorious legacy behind,
Of which we cannot be bereft,-

The freedom of the human mind.

We find a new and pleasant home,
From want, and war, and danger free,
Spanned with warm skies and crystal dome,
Laved by Pacific's calmer sea.

The church and school-house, side by side,
Were nurseries of New England's men;
And may they be our boast and pride,
Adorning every golden glen.

Great God, thy kind and bounteous care
Hath cast our lot in goodly lands,
With summer skies and valleys fair,
And rivers paved with golden sands.
God of our fathers, crown and bless
This golden land of Pacific's shore,
With plenty, peace, and happiness,
And liberty, forevermore !

ANON.

18. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

FROM Address delivered by President Gates of Amherst College, while at Rutger's College, New Jersey, to students upon completion of a course of college study. (Contributed.)

WHAT is the age in which you are called to act?

You belong, by God's appointing, to the twentieth century, that century whose vast titanic forces, the thun

dering machinery of this, our age of steam, but half foretells; while the flashing light and subtle force of electricity, which we are only beginning to draw from its exhaustless reservoirs, gives us lightning-like glimpses of the vast potentialities and the intensified activities of the unknown coming age, in which you shall be actors. For you are to be American citizens; and in the next. century, America is to give form and color to the life of the world.

When the eighteenth century drew to a close, all eyes were bent upon France. A desperate struggle with the king was followed in swift succession by the terrible scenes of the French Revolution, and the wars of Napoleon, with their world-wide transforming issues. France was the vortex of the seething whirlpool in that period of transition and transformation, out of which has come the nineteenth century, with the abolition of human slavery, with the ballot placed in every man's hands. The nation which is to give color and form to the life of the twentieth century was hardly yet full-born when the nineteenth century opened. From May until September, 1787, the Convention in Philadelphia was engaged in those earnest debates from which emerged the Constitution of the United States, which Gladstone calls "the most wonderful work ever struck off at one time by the mind and purpose of men." The nation which was then feeling its way through the dark dawning of our history, stands, to-day, among the mightiest of earthly powers. Thoughtful men, the world over, are convinced that the closing decade of this century, like that of the last, will be a transition period, ushering in great social and economic changes in Europe and throughout the world. In all such changes toward more popular forms of government, America must be, as she is to-day, the world's example.

We believe in God's government of the world. We

believe that the mighty evolution of government " of the people, by the people, for the people," is of God's own evoking. At such a time, called to be citizens in such a nation, you do well to ask earnestly, "What are the strong sweeping tendencies of the age? What is their true significance for me?"

The nineteenth century, as it draws to a close, seems to sound out as a keynote to the twentieth century, "Now that all men govern, it is decreed that all men must be laborers too! If all are to govern, all must serve! Fitness for kingship is only proved by fitness to serve!" This is the emphasized utterance of our times. The rich man who uses his wealth is a true laborer for the common welfare. But he must vitalize it, animate it, if he would prove the wealth is really and properly his. The rich man who does not aim to do anything for the world with his money, is but an able-bodied pauper. God's law holds everywhere of property and of personal power of every kind: “Use it, or lose it."

This doctrine will always meet with a protest; but protest to whom? To God? His answer is clear: "If any will not work, neither shall he eat." Will they address their protest to their fellow-men? The solid phalanx of laborers, the world's honestly-busied millions, with ballots in their hands, answer the protest thus: "Under God's Providence, we, the working majority, make the laws. Work has not made us wiser than the laws of God, and we say, too, If any will not work, neither shall he eat."

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Get work, young men! You will be in harmony with the keynote of your century. But know well that no plan can be devised by which men can be made good and happy in the mass. A century of constant legislation has not made happiness universal. This is not due to bad laws in society, or to bad laws in nature, but

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