I'm better now; that glass was warming- For supper and bed, or starve in the street.- But soon we shall go where lodgings are free, And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink;-The sooner the better for Roger and me. THE DEATH OF GARFIELD By JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE, Journalist, Statesman, Author; Member of Congress from Maine, 1863-76, Senator, 1876-81; Secretary of State, 1881; 1889-92. Born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, 1830; died in Washington, D. C., 1893. From a memorial oration delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Feb. 27, 1882. Taken, by permission of the publishers, from "Political Discussions," by J. G. Blaine; published by Henry Bill Publishing Co., Norwich, Conn. On the morning of Saturday, July second, the President was a contented and happy man-not in an ordinary degree, but joyfully, almost boyishly, happy. On his way to the railroad-station, to which he drove slowly, in conscious enjoyment of the beautiful morning, with an unwonted sense of leisure and a keen anticipation of pleasure, his talk was all in the grateful and gratulatory vein. He felt that after four months of trial his administration was strong in its grasp of affairs, strong in popular favor and destined to grow stronger; that grave difficulties confronting him at his inauguration had been safely passed; that trouble lay behind him, and not before him; that he was soon to meet the wife whom he loved, now recovering from an illness which had but lately disquieted and at times almost unnerved him; that he.was going to his alma mater to renew the most cherished associations of his young manhood, and to exchange greetings with those whose deepening interest had followed every step of his upward progress from the day he entered upon his college course until he had attained the loftiest elevation in the gift of his countrymen. Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him, no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully out before him. The next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave. For no Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of Murder he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death. And he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes whose lips may tell what brilliant broken plans, what baffled high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation and great darkness! And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and uni versal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the center of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the divine decree. As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison-walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longedfor healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With wan, fevered face tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders-on its far sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. CUBA By WILLIAM PIERCE FRYE, Lawyer; Member of Congress from Maine, 1871-81; Senator, 1881-. Born in Lewiston, Maine, 1831. From a speech delivered in the Senate, February 28, 1896; the Senate having under consideration a resolution relative to the war in Cuba. See Congressional Record, February 28, 1896. Mr. President, in the Committee on Foreign Relations, I voted for the pending resolution, but it is no fetich of mine. I am prepared to vote for that or for any other resolution, however drastic and however far-reaching, which can justly and without violating international obligations be passed by Congress. I have but one desire, and that is to see Cuba an independent republic, and whatever I can do justly and honorably to that end I am prepared now to do. Mr. President, I am weary and heartsick to see this splendid Republic of ours, its foundation-stones the equal rights of man, doing day after day and month after month police duty for the most wicked despotism there is to-day on this earth. When I read two or three days ago that a vessel carrying arms, ammunition, supplies, and a few men to aid the Cuban insurgents, had been successfully seized by the United States of America, I recognized the fact of the supremacy of law; but I was mortified and humiliated beyond expression, and I should have been delighted if I could have read in the very next item that Almighty God, without destroying innocent human life, had sent a commotion of nature, a grand tidal wave, and had sent skyward the seizing vessel, and had sent the succoring ship Cubaward; I should have rejoiced beyond measure. Sir, I never can forget what I felt when I read in the press years and years ago that a poor black man escaping from slavery had been seized by a United States marshal, aided by a regiment of United States soldiers, in the streets of Boston, right in front of the Cradle of Liberty, and had been manacled and sent back into slavery. I recognized that the law had been vindicated; but there was not a humane or a Christian man or woman in the entire North who would not have thanked God, who would not have rejoiced without limit, if He, in His divine providence, had right at that time paralyzed the strong arm of the law and the poor slave had gone free. Sir, I say I am tired and wearied with doing police duty for the despotism of Spain, and I look upon these resolutions and the action of Congress now as the first step in calling a halt. Mr. President, my creed in these regards has no thirtynine articles. It is a very brief one. These insurgents in this beautiful, but ill-fated and cruelly misgoverned, island have my profoundest sympathies. I cannot forget that where we had one just cause to rebel against the mother country these men have scores as just for their rebellion; and I shall do or say or vote anything, consistent with the honor and the integrity of the Republic, which shall, in my opinion, promote the success of the Cuban patriots who are to-day so bravely struggling to wrest liberty from the iron grasp of a cruel and relentless despotism. PIETY AND CIVIC VIRTUE By CHARLES HENRY PARKHURST, Preacher, Author; Pastor of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, New York City, 1880-. Born at Framingham, Mass., 1842. The fault with the mass of civic virtue is that there is not enough Christian live coal in it to make it safe to be counted on for solid effects. What a wicked man will do on election day you can tell. What a good man will do you cannot tell. Most likely he will not do anything. It is a singular fact that goodness cannot be so confidently trusted as depravity can to do what is expected of it. It is not so reliable. It takes a larger consideration to prevent a bad |