and property, there is no power on earth that can permanently stay our progress.'

If my life in the past has meant anything in the lifting up of my people, and the bringing about of better relations between your race and mine, I assure you from this day it will mean doubly more. In the economy of God there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed, there is but one for a race. This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little. During the next half-century and more, my race must continue passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance; to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. This, this is the passport to all that is best in the life of our Republic, and the negro must possess it or be debarred.

While we are thus being tested, I beg of you to remember that wherever our life touches yours we help or we hinder. Wherever your life touches ours you make us stronger or weaker. No member of your race in any part of our country can harm the meanest member of mine without the proudest and bluest blood in Massachusetts being degraded. When Mississippi commits crime, New England commits crime, and in so much lowers the standard of your civilization. There is no escape,—man drags man down, or man lifts man up. In working out our destiny, while the main burden and center of activity must be with us, we shall need, in a large measure, in the years that are to come, as we have had in the past, the help, the encouragement, the guidance that the strong can give the weak. Thus helped, we of both races in the South shall soon throw off the shackles of racial and

sectional prejudice and rise, as Harvard University has risen and as we all should rise, above the clouds of ignorance, narrowness, and selfishness into that atmosphere, that pure sunshine, where it will be our highest ambition to serve man, our brother, regardless of race or past condition.

THE SOLDIER BOY

By JOHN DAVIS LONG, Lawyer, Author; Governor of Massachusetts, 1882-88; Secretary of the Navy, 1897--. Born in Buckfield, Maine, 1838.

From an oration delivered before the Grand Army Posts of Suffolk County, Boston, May 30, 1882.

Reprinted, by permission of the author, from "After Dinner and Other Speeches," published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, copyright, 1895, by John D. Long.

Memorial Day will hereafter gather around it not only the love and tears and pride of the generations of the people, but more and more, in its inner circle of tenderness, the linking memories of every comrade, so long as one survives. As the dawn ushers it in, tinged already with exquisite flush of hastening June, and sweet with the bursting fragrance of her roses, the wheels of time will each year roll back, and lo! John Andrew is at the State-house, inspiring Massachusetts with the throbbing of his own great heart; Abraham Lincoln, wise and patient and honest and tender and true, is at the nation's helm; the North is one broad blaze; the boys in blue are marching to the front; the fife and drum are on every breeze; the very air is patriotism; Phil Sheridan, forty miles away, dashes back to turn defeat to victory; Farragut, lashed to the mast-head, is steaming into Mobile Harbor; Hooker is above the clouds,—ay, now indeed forever above the clouds; Sherman marches through Georgia to the sea; Grant has throttled Lee with the grip that never lets go; Richmond falls; the armies of the Republic pass in that last great review at Washington; Custer's plume is there, but Kearney's saddle is empty; and, now again, our veterans come marching home to receive the welcome of a grateful

people, and to stack in Doric Hall the tattered flags which Massachusetts forever hence shall wear above her heart.

In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspiration to our children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of our patriots with flowers, to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it were but yesterday you recall him. He had but turned twenty. The exquisite tint of youthful health was on his cheek. His pure heart shone fair hair clustered from

from frank, outspeaking eyes. His beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his home at this season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mothers and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth. . .

And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward. You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters to his mother, written as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him the routine of service, the life of camp and march! How eager the wish to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause! What pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or its strap upon his shoulder! . . .

...

They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby and grew gaunt and haggard with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. He tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached the line; and, with his hand grasping

at freedom, they caught and took him back to captivity. He was exchanged at last; and you remember, when he came home on a short furlough, how manly and war-worn he had grown.

But he soon returned to the ranks and to

the welcome of his comrades. They recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the rifle-pits around Petersburg you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion of the upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis over whom the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin, nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. Do you ask who he was? He was in every regiment and every company. He went out from every Massachusetts village. He sleeps in every Massachusetts burying-ground. Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but there is none that is his peer.

THE UNKNOWN SPEAKER

By GEORGE LIPPARD, Author.

Born near Yellow Springs, Penn., 1822; died in Philadelphia, 1854.

It is the Fourth day of July, 1776. In the old Statehouse in the city of Philadelphia are gathered half a hundred men to strike from their limbs the shackles of British despotism. There is silence in the hall-every face is turned toward the door where the committee of three, who have been out all night penning a parchment, are soon to enter. The door opens, the committee appear.

The three advance to the table.

The parchment is laid there. Shall it be signed or not? A fierce debate ensues. But still there is doubt, and one pale-faced man whispers something about axes, scaffolds, and a gibbet.

66 Gibbet? echoes a fierce, bold voice through the hall, "Gibbet? They may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land; they may turn every rock into a scaffold; every tree into a gallows; every home into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment there can never die! They may pour our blood on a thousand scaffolds, and yet from every drop that dyes the axe a new champion of freedom will spring into birth. The British king may blot out the stars of God from the sky, but he cannot blot out His words written on that parchment there. The works of God may

perish; His words, never!

The words of this declaration will live in the world long after our bones are dust. To the mechanic in his workshop they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines, freedom; but to the coward-kings these words will speak in tones of warning they cannot choose but hear.

They will be terrible as the flaming syllables on Belshazzar's wall! They will speak in language startling as the trump of the Archangel, saying: 'You have trampled on mankind long enough! At last the voice of human woe has pierced the ear of God, and called His judgment down! You have waded to thrones through rivers of blood; you have trampled on the necks of millions of fellow beings. Now kings, now purple hangmen, for you come the days of axes and gibbets and scaffolds.'

66

'Sign that parchment! Sign, if the next moment the gibbet's rope is about your neck! Sign, if the next minute this hall rings with the clash of the falling axes! Sign by all your hopes in life or death as men, as husbands, as fathers, brothers; sign your names to the parchment, or be accursed forever!