We are not a nation of hero-worshipers. We are a nation of generous freemen. We bow in affectionate reverence and with most grateful hearts to these immortal names, Washington, Lincoln, and Grant, and will guard with sleepless vigilance their mighty work and cherish their memories ever

more.

UNTER DEN LINDEN

June 16, 1871

By EMMA HUNTINGTON NASON, Poet. Born in Hallowell, Me., 1845. From "The Tower with Legends and Lyrics," published, in 1895, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York. By permission of the author.

And then, "Heart's dearest, the soldier had said,
Tracing the lines in a faltering way,

"Heart's dearest, the hospital surgeons say
That I shall be out of their hands to-day.
'Twas an ugly wound, but the danger is past;
I am coming to you, at last--at last!
Unter den Linden! Yes, we shall be there!
Come with a rose in your dark shining hair—
Not the white blossoms you once used to wear.
White roses are meet for those who are slain;
The rich wine-red, for the welcome, remain,
Red as our life-blood, and sweet as the air
That floated from Eden, sweet and as rare;
Greet me with a wine-red rose in your hair!
Germania triumphs! Come with a song;
And can you, dear heart, be patient and strong?
For slow is the crutch and ghastly the sling,
And gone is the hand that once wore the ring—
Your ring, the one pledge I promised to bring!
I yield them ungrudged, with life, should need be,
But hold fast my troth to country and thee."

THE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES OF OUR COUNTRY. 263

II.

In through the Brandenburg gateway they come,
With clashing of arms and clangor of drum!
Unter den Linden! How proudly thy shade
Quivers and thrills with the wild cannonade,
As wild as the battle's carnival made!
Borne on its passion we catch up the song;
Thrilling and swelling, it thunders along;
Hear it, ye nations afar o'er the sea!
"Germania triumphs! Germania free-
Free and united through glad victory!"'
Heroes of Saarbrück and Metz and Sedan
Tell how the torrent of victory ran!
Fair hands of women shall bring from afar
Hundreds of flowers for each bloody scar-
Scars that far dearer than rare jewels are.

66

66

The Emperor comes!'' for his guardsmen make way !—
A woman, struck faint, has fallen," ye say ?
And the troops, in their jubilant grand review,
March on through the linden-grown avenue;
But she in her death-swoon still lieth there,
A woman stone-white, yet passingly fair,
With the bloom of a wine-red rose in her hair.
Ah! what did ye hear the guardsman had said?
"Only a man, in the hospital, dead!"

THE SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES OF OUR COUNTRY

By CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, Educator; President of Harvard University, 1869. Born in Boston, Mass., 1834.

Delivered at the Washington Centennial in New York York City, April 30, 1889.

That brief phrase the schools and colleges of the United States-is a formal and familiar one; but what imagination can grasp the infinitude of human affections, powers, and wills which it really comprises ? Imagine the eight million

children actually in attendance at the elementary schools of the country brought before your view. They would fill this great house sixteen hundred times, and every time it would be packed with boundless loves and hopes. Each unit in that mass speaks of a glad birth, a brightened home, a mother's pondering heart, a father's careful joy. In all that multitude every little heart bounds and every eye shines at the name of Washington.

Next picture to yourselves the sixty thousand students in colleges and universities-selected youth of keen intelligence, wide reading, and high ambition. They are able to compare Washington with the greatest men of other times and countries, and to appreciate the unique quality of his renown. They can set him beside the heroes of romance and history -beside David, Alexander, Pericles, Cæsar, Charlemagne, John Hampden, William the Silent, Peter of Russia, and Frederick the Great, only to find him a nobler human type than any one of them, completer in his nature, happier in his cause, and more fortunate in the great issues of his career. They recognize in him a simple, stainless, and robust character, which served with dazzling success the precious cause of human progress through liberty, and so stands, like the sunlit peak of the Matterhorn, unmatched in all the world.

And what shall I say on behalf of the three hundred and sixty thousand teachers of the United States? They deserve some mention to-day. None of them are rich or famous; most of them are poor, retiring, and unnoticed; but it is they who are building a perennial monument to Washington. It is they who give him a million-tongued fame. They make him live again in the young hearts of successive generations, and fix his image there as the American ideal of a public

servant.

It is through the schools and colleges and the national literature that the heroes of any people win lasting renown; and it is through these same agencies that a nation is molded

into the likeness of its heroes.

This local commemoration

of one great event in the life of Washington and of the United States is well; but it is as nothing compared with the incessant memorial of him which the schools and colleges of the country maintain from generation to generation.

What a reward is Washington's! What an influence is his, and will be! One mind and will transfused by sympathetic instruction into millions, one character a standard for millions, one life a pattern for all public men, teaching what greatness is, and what the pathway to undying fame.

AGAINST FLOGGING IN THE NAVY

By ROBERT FIELD STOCKTON, Commodore in the United States Navy; United States Senator from New Jersey, 1851–53. Born at Princeton, N. J., 1795; died at Princeton, 1866.

Taken from a speech delivered in the Senate, January 7, 1852; the Senate having under consideration a memorial from citizens of the United States praying that the practice of flogging in the U. S. Navy should not be abolished. See Congressional Globe, Jan. 7, 1852.

There is one broad proposition upon which I stand. It is this: That an American sailor is an American citizen, and that no American citizen shall, with my consent, be subjected to the infamous punishment of the lash. If, when a citizen enters the service of his country, he is to forego the protection of those laws for the preservation of which he is willing to risk his life, he is entitled, in all justice, humanity, and gratitude, to all the protection that can be extended to him, in his peculiar circumstances. He ought, certainly, to be protected from the infliction of a punishment which stands condemned by the almost universal sentiment of his fellow citizens; a punishment which is proscribed in the best prison-government, proscribed in the schoolhouse, and proscribed in the best government on earth-that of parental domestic affection. Yes, sir, expelled from the social circle, from the schoolhouse, the prison-house, and the Army, it finds defenders and champions nowhere but in the Navy!

Look to your history, -that part of it which the world knows by heart,—and you will find on its brightest page the glorious achievements of the American sailor. Whatever his country has done to disgrace him and break his spirit, he has never disgraced her; he has always been ready to serve her; he always has served her faithfully and effectually. He has often been weighed in the balance, and never found wanting. The only fault ever found with him is that he sometimes fights ahead of his orders. The world has no match for him, man for man; and he asks no odds, and he cares for no odds, when the cause of humanity, or the glory of his country, calls him to fight. Who, in the darkest days of our Revolution, carried your flag into the very chops of the British Channel, bearded the lion in his den, and woke the echoes of old Albion's hills by the thunders of his cannon and the shouts of his triumph? It was the American sailor. And the names of John Paul Jones, and the Bon Homme Richard, will go down the annals of time forever. Who struck the first blow that humbled the Barbary flag,which, for a hundred years, had been the terror of Christendom,—drove it from the Mediterranean, and put an end to the infamous tribute it had been accustomed to extort? It Iwas the American sailor. And the name of Decatur and his gallant companions will be as lasting as monumental brass. In your War of 1812, when your arms on shore were covered by disaster, when Winchester had been defeated, when the Army of the Northwest had surrendered, and when the gloom of despondency hung like a cloud over the land,-who first relit the fires of national glory, and made the welkin ring with the shouts of victory? It was the American sailor. And the names of Hull and the Constitution will be remembered, as long as we have left anything worth remembering. That was no small event. The wand of Mexican prowess was broken on the Rio Grande. The wand of British invincibility was broken when the flag of the Guerrière came down. That one event was worth more to the Republic