rights of human nature. Happiness, liberty, life we laid on the altar of offering, or committed to the furies of destruction, while our minds were lifted up to a great thought and our hearts swelled to its measure. We were beckoned on by the vision of destiny; we saw our Country moving forward charged with the sacred trusts of man. We believed in its glorious career; the power of high aims and of strong purpose; the onward, upward path of history, to God. This is the spirit in which, having set on high the old flag telling of one life and one body, one freedom and one law, over all the people and all the land between the four great waters, we now come, as it were, home; we look into each other's eyes; we speak in softer tones; we gather under the atmosphere of the sacred thoughts and memories,—like the high, pure air that shines down upon us to-day, flooding these fields where cloud and flash and thunder-roll of battle enshrouded us and them in that great three-days' burial, to celebrate this resurrection; to rear on these far-away fields memorials of familiar names, and to honor the State whose honor it was to rear such manhood and keep such faith that she might have part in such far-away things. She stood on these hills and slopes a generation ago, of the foremost of the people's defenders. Whether on the first, the second, or the third day's battle; whether on the right caught and cut to pieces by the great shears-blades of two suddenly enclosing hostile columns; on the left, rolled back by a cyclone of unappeasable assault; or on the center, dashed upon in an agony of desperation, terrible, sublime; wherever there was a front, the guns of Maine thundered and her colors stood. And when the long, dense, surging fight was over, and the men who made and marked the line of honor were buried where they fell, the name of Maine ran along these crests and banks, a blazonry of ennobled blood. Now you have gathered these bodies here. You station them here on the ground they held,—part of the earth they glorified, part also of the glory that is to be. Ever hence forth under the rolling suns, when the hills are touched to splendor with the morning light, or smile a farewell to the lingering day, the flush that broods upon them shall be rich with a strange and crimson tone,—not of the earth, nor yet of the sky, but mediator and hostage between the two. Reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and, lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls. This is the great reward of service. To live far out and on in the life of others; this is the mystery of the Christ, to give life's best for such high sake that it shall be found again unto life eternal. BANTY TIM By JOHN HAY, Author, Poet, Lawyer, Diplomat; Ambassador to Eng- I reckon I git your drift, gents, — You're Dimocrats, you say; And whereas, and seein', and wherefore, The nigger has got to mosey From the limits o' Spunky P'int! Le's reason the thing a minute: I'm an old-fashioned Dimocrat too, But I come back here, allowin' To vote as I used to do, Though it gravels me like the devil to train Now dog my cats ef I kin see, What you've got to do with the question Ef Tim shill go or stay. And furder than that I give notice, Ef one of you tetches the boy, He kin check his trunks to a warmer clime Why, blame your hearts, jest hear me! When our left struck Vicksburg Heights, how ripped When the rest retreated I stayed behind, Fur reasons sufficient to me, With a rib caved in, and a leg on a strike, Lord! how the hot sun went for us, And br'iled and blistered and burned! That nigger-that Tim-was a crawlin' to me The Rebels seen him as quick as me, And the bullets buzzed like bees; But he jumped for me, and shouldered me, Though a shot brought him once to his knees; But he staggered up, and packed me off, So, my gentle gazelles, thar's my answer, He trumped Death's ace for me that day, You may rezoloot till the cows come home, He'll wrastle his hash to-night in hell, By HENRY U. JOHNSON, Lawyer; Member of Congress from Indiana, 1891-99. From a speech made in the House of Representatives, February 22, 1898. See Congressional Record, Feb. 22, 1898. Mr. Chairman, I antagonize the pending treaty for another reason. It sets a precedent-a bad precedent, a vicious precedent; a precedent which, I imagine, will be followed, and that, too, at a very early day. You will find, gentlemen, that in this matter increase of appetite" will grow by what it feeds on. This is the most lamentable feature of this entire transgression, if, indeed, we are at all disposed to take the first step in the transgression. 66 66 To-day the cry is, "Give us Hawaii! Yield to this in a moment of weakness, and to-morrow you will hear the cry, "Give us Cuba!" Accede to this in an hour of irresolution, and the day after you will hear the cry, Give us Samoa!" And each one of these demands will be fortified by the artful sophistries evolved from the fertile brains of gentlemen who know full well how to pander to the national vanity and to appeal to the national cupidity. Such a policy excites cupidity; it provokes avarice; it breeds oppression; it inflicts injustice; it levies taxes; it incurs expenses; it stirs up strife; it sheds human blood; it is a step in the direction of dismemberment; and the inevitable goal to which the nation tends which follows it is that of national disintegration and decay. Let the nations of the Old World go on pursuing this policy to their heart's content, if they desire to do so. Let them, I beg you, have a full monopoly of the evils which follow in its train. Let them saddle their people with enormous debts that they may equip great navies and raise great armies to precipitate them into conflicts in which they spend millions of treasure and shed oceans of human blood. Let the mother country, less fortunately situated than ourselves-obliged by the narrow confines of her island home to draw upon her colonies for subsistence and to draw upon them also largely for her commerce and her wealth-boast, if she pleases, that the sun never goes down upon British soil. We can point her to the fact that neither does the sun go down upon the wretchedness and misery which her remorseless policy has produced. We can point her to the revolts in India, to the difficulty of maintaining her supremacy in South Africa, to the enormous expense of keeping up her lines of communication, to the wars and rumors of wars which bring anxiety to the faces and sadness to the hearts of her people. We can point her-and we can do it with pardonable pride-to the flower of her colonies, which for seven long years she sought by the expenditure of money and blood to retain, breaking away from her grasp and in a little over a century, by pursuing directly the opposite policy to that which she has pursued in this respect, not only rivaling but outstripping her in progress and in material development and in everything that makes a nation great and respected in the eyes of mankind. No, Mr. Chairman, while these nations are teaching avarice, let us preach contentment. While they are exciting |