worst in the catalogue: His object must be to make money at the expense of the people-by the sale of his official services. Never vote for such a candidate under any possible circumstances! When you are willing to rely on the word of a perjurer, to trust a traitor, to employ a thief as your cashier, or a burglar as your private watchman, then it will be time enough to trust the public interests to the care of the corrupt office-seeker!

4. Whoever, therefore, nominates himself to an office of trust or profit, especially if he be apparently determined to succeed by fair means or foul, and is assisted by men of questionable reputation, should invariably be voted down by all highminded citizens. The motives of such a candidate must always be unworthy or corrupt. Honest, patriotic men never force themselves before the public. These wait until the public calls for them. The fathers of our country did not pack conventions, bribe delegations, or buy the press to secure their own elections. They waited till the office sought the man. When we peruse the illustrious names in our early history, can we not recognize the kind of men the offices sought! Let it be the duty of your generation to prove the republic still superior to monarchy, by always seeking out and promoting such citizens as the nation may justly delight to honor. Remember that the offices under our form of gov ernment were not created to gratify the ambition or rapacity of individuals. They were designed for the employment of the best talent obtainable for the service of the sovereign people. When the interests of office-holders become paramount to those of the public, then republicanism must be acknowledged a failure.

JURY DUTY.

5. You will occasionally be called on as a citizen to serve on the jury, and when summoned you will be very apt to find it inconvenient to attend. You will often begrudge the loss of time and absence from your business which this duty demands at your hands, and you will therefore get excused from it if you possibly can. But how will this disposition on your part affect the administration of justice? It is the good citizens, not bad ones, who are always busy. Suppose all the good men were to be released from the jury on such grounds, does it not follow either that the trial by jury must be abolished, or else that the idle, the dissolute, who may be the friends or even partners of indicted criminals, or of corrupt litigants, will find their way to the jury box, there to acquit the guilty, or sell their votes to the highest bidder? Yet what other result can follow the general reluctance on the part of the best citizens to serve their country as jurors?

6. Never shirk your duty when called to aid in administering the law, as a grand or trial juror. Apart from the solemn duty you will thus render to your country, you will find the service more than compensated by the instruction you will derive from it. For it will make you familiar with the forms of justice, the rights of persons, and of property, with the civil and criminal law, and the law of evidence. To study human nature in the court room is always interesting. And jury duty is excellent discipline for the mind, for it cultivates the reason and helps to form habits of discrimination between truth and falsehood, which elsewhere will serve you in good stead.

HOME.

7. Home! the abode of the highest earthly bliss, the nursery of domestic virtue, the ever-flowing fountain of

love, the beginning of our existence, the point of contact between successive generations, how sacred the associations which cling around it in every Anglo-Saxon breast! How do we all revere the self-denying father and toiling mother who brought us into being, tended our childhood, formed our earliest ideas; fed, clothed and sheltered us, during the dependent years of youth; advised us unselfishly, as only parents can, in our first essays to walk alone the slippery paths of life! What love and companionship so soothing as that of a wife; what friendship so strong as that of brothers and sisters; what enjoyment so pure as that of father and mother caressed by their own affectionate children! Will you not perform your part in perpetuating the great American idea of Home?

8. Or will you neglect your duty as a man and a citizen, by selfishly remaining single, preferring the mean, isolated gratification of avarice to the highest happiness vouchsafed to man? Or if you marry, can you expect to realize the ideal domestic life in crowded hotels and boarding houses-where fashion supplants nature; where the wife must substitute idleness, extravagance and folly for the industry and economy of her own domicile; where the husband must encounter the temptations of luxurious dissipation; and where children are not only denied their rights to liberty and health, but are merely a nuisance to the artificial society that deems itself afflicted by their presence?

9. Such was not the idea of those old puritans, Huguenots and Quakers, who, with their noble families of sturdy sons and thrifty daughters, laid the foundations of this great republic. Nor will the men and women of your generation hand down our institutions in their purity to posterity, unless they preserve from desecration the sacred idea of home.

Live, therefore, in your own house. Protect the privacy of your family. Regard the comfort, beauty and attractiveness of your dwelling as objects worthy of your careful attention, for to these your children will look back in after life as upon the bright colors of the sunset cloud. Prove yourself a good husband and father. Exert your every energy in the education of your children. See that they thoroughly understand and love the system of American ideas. And rest assured that when old age creeps over your declining years, the remembrance of duty rightly performed to those who are to come after you, will add more to your peace of mind than every other gift this world has power to bestow.

NOTE.—“ Lo, children are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord. Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate."-Psalm cxxvii : 4-6.

LECTURE IV.

THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD OF MAN.

1. “God, that made the world and all things therein, hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”*

You have gathered from the lessons of this book that mankind have always been prone to wars and persecutions. Divided into many nations, races, and religions, each point of difference has been made the subject of bloody debate. Feuds between clans and faiths have been handed down from father to son; so that even yet the smouldering em

* Acts xvii: 24, 26.

bers of ancient wars are ever ready to kindle new conflagrations among the descendants of ancient foes. Thus the Mohammedan hates the Christian; the Russian detests the Turk; the Caucasian races despise the Indian, the negro, and the Mongolian. There is a rancorous feeling between the French and Germans; between the English and the Irish; between the Protestant and the Catholic; between the Greek and Latin churches; between the Jew and Gentile; and between various Protestant sects. What are all these hereditary spites but remnants of barbarism, or the outgrowth of depraved prejudice? Shall it be said that the Christian civilization of the United States does not rise above these foolish and wicked old-world notions? Can it be that all men are invited to enjoy the blessings of civil liberty in this "land of the free"; that to all men who profess attachment to our Constitution the ballot is entrusted, irrespective of birth or of faith; that the law protects all, educates all without distinctions of any kind; and yet no higher morality than that of Europe or Asia inspires our ideas?

2. You have studied the foregoing lessons to little use, if you cannot free your mind from all prejudices of class, faith, color, or nationality. How dare you discriminate, where God does not, or deny the rights which His laws, re-enacted in American institutions, have guaranteed alike to every human being? There may be among us those who have not enjoyed your advantages of free education-the slaves of tyranny, of ignorance, and vice. But where did you acquire the right to blame such people for the accidents of their birth and early training? Had you been so born and trained would you be any more advanced than they? Have they not by nature the same reason and understanding, the same passions and feelings, the same body and mind, that you have?