THE STARS AND STRIPES.

Fellow Citizens: It is with no ordinary pride that I, who have opposed all these sectional parties, can stand here in the city of Atlanta, in the very center of all our sorrows, and raise my voice--fearing no successful contradiction when I affirm that the Union never made war upon the South.

It was not the Union, my countrymen, that slew your children; it was not the Union that burned your cities; it was not the Union that laid waste your country, invaded your homes, and mocked at your calamities; it was not the Union that reconstructed your states; it was not the Union that disfranchised intelligent citizens and denied them participation in their own governments. No! No! Charge not these wrongs upon the Union of your fathers. Every one of these wrongs was inflicted by a diabolical sectionalism in the very teeth of every principle of the American Union.

So, equally, I say the South never made war upon the Union. There has never been an hour when nine out of ten of us would not have given our lives for this Union. We did not leave the Union because we were dissatisfied with it; we did not leave the Union to make war on it. We left the Union because a sectional party had seized it, and we hoped thereby to avoid a conflict. But if war must come, we intended to fight a sectional party and not the Union. Therefore the late war, with all its disastrous consequences, is the direct result of sectionalism in the North, and of sectionalism in the South. And none, I repeat, of these disasters are chargeable on the Union.

When unimpassioned reason shall review our past, there is no subject in all our history, on which our American Statesmanship, North and South, will be adjudged to have been so unwise, so imbecile, and so utterly deficient, as on that one subject which stimulated these sectional parties into existence.

Above all the din of these sectional quarrelings, I would raise my voice, and proclaim to all our people that there is no right or liberty for any race of any color in America, save in the preservation of that great American Union according to the principles symboled by that flag. Destroy the General Government and the States will rush into anarchy. Destroy the States and we will all rush into despotism and slavery. Preserve the General Government, preserve the States, and we shall preserve the rights and liberties of all sections, of all races, for all time.

My countrymen, have you studied this wonderful system of free government? To him who loves. liberty it is more enchanting than romance, more bewitching than love, more elevating than any other science. Our forefathers adopted this plan, with improvements in the details which cannot be found in any other system. The snows which fall on Mount Washington are not purer than the motives which begot it. Have the motives which so inspired our fathers become all corrupt in their children? Are the hopes that sustained them all poisoned in us? No! forever No! Patriots North, Patriots South! Let us hallow this year of Jubilee by burying all our sectional animosities. Let us close our ears to the men and parties that would teach us to hate each other. Raise high the flag of our fathers! Let Southern breezes kiss it; let Southern skies reflect it! Southern patriots will love it; Southern sous will defend it; Southern heroes die for it!

Flag of our Union, wave on, wave forever! But wave over freemen, not over subjects; wave over states, not over provinces! Wave over a Union of equals, not over a despotism of lords and vassals; over a land of law, of liberty, of peace, and not of anarchy, of oppression, and strife.-B. H. Hill.

THE LITTLE GNOME.

Once there lived a little gnome,
Who had made his little home

Right down in the middle of the earth, earth, earth.
He was full of fun and frolic,

But his wife was melancholic,

And he never could divert her into mirth, mirth, mirth.

He had tried her with a monkey,
And a parrot, and a donkey,

And a pig that squealed whene'er he pulled its tail, tail, tail;

But though he laughed himself
Into fits, the jolly elf,

Still his wifey's melancholy did not fail, fail, fail.

"I will hie me," said the gnome,
"From my worthy earthy home,

I will go among the dwellings of the men, men, men.
Something funny there must be

That will make her say 'He! he!'

I will find it and will bring it her again, 'gain, 'gain."

So he traveled here and there
And he saw the Blinking Bear,

And the Pattypol, whose eyes are in his tail, tail,

tail;

And he saw the Linking Gloon,
Who was playing the bassoon,

And the Octopus a-waltzing with the whale, whale, whale.

He saw the Chingo Chee,
And a lovely sight was he,

With a ringlet and a ribbon on his nose, nose, nose,
And the Baggle, and the Wogg,

And the Cantilunar Dog,

Who was throwing cotton flannel at his foes. ›es, foes.

All these the little gnome
Transported to his home,

And set them down before his weeping wife, wife,

wife,

But she only cried and cried,

And she sobby-wobbed and sighed,

Till she really was in danger of her life, life, life.

Then the gnome was in despair,

And he tore his purple hair,

And he sat him down in sorrow on a stone, stone,

stone.

"I too," he said, "will cry

Till I tumble down and die,

For I've had enough of laughing all alone, 'lone, 'lone."

His tears they flowed away
Like a rivulet at play,

With a bubble, gubble, rubble, o'er the ground, ground, ground.

But when this his wifey saw,
She loudly cried, "Haw! haw!

Here at last is something funny you have found, found, found."

She laughed. "Ho! ho! he he!"
And she chuckled loud with glee,

And she wiped away her little husband's tears, tears, tears;

And since then, through wind and weather,
They have said, "He! he!" together,

For several hundred thousand merry years, years, years.

Laura Richards, in "St. Nicholas."

ROB, THE PAUPER.

(From "Farm Legends." Copyright 1875 by Harper & Bros.)

Rob, the Pauper, is loose again
Through fields and woods he races;

He shuns the women, he beats the men,
He kisses the children's frightened faces.
There is no house by road or lane
He did not tap at the window pane,
And make more dark the dismal night,
And set the faces within all white.
Rob, the Pauper, is wild of eye,
Wild of speech and wild of thinking,
Yet there is something in his bearing
Not quite what a pauper should be wearing.
In every step is a shadow of grace,
The ghost of beauty haunts his face.

Rob, the Pauper, is crazed of brain,

The world is a lie to his shattered seeming ;
He hath broke him loose from his poorhouse cell,
He hath dragged him clear from rope and fetter.
They might have thought, for they knew full well,
They could keep a half-caged panther better.
He hath crossed the fields, the woods, the street,
He hides in the swamp his wasted features.

He hath fallen into a slough of sleep,
A haze of the past bends softly o'er him.
His restless spirit a watch doth keep
As memory's canvas glides before him.

The bright past dawns through a cloud of dreams,
And once again in his prime he seems,

For over his heart sweepeth a vision

Like to this.

A cozy kitchen, a smooth cut lawn,
Himself on the door-stone idly sitting,
A blonde-haired woman about him flitting.