Now if this be skulking, if this be ignoble, if this be unworthy of an American citizen or a Massachusetts Senator, then I must plead guilty to Mr. Quigg's charge. But these are the things I would have done, and this is the thing I would do now. If this counsel had been followed, not a man would have died on either side; not a drop of blood would have been spilt; not a recruit would have been needed by army or navy since the day when Manila capitulated to Otis.

I do not know what other men may think, or what other men may say. But there is not a drop of blood in my veins, there is not a feeling in my heart that does not respect a weak people struggling with a strong one.

When Patrick Henry was making his great speech in the state-house at Williamsburg for the same cause for which the Filipinos are now dying, he was interrupted by somebody with a shout of "treason." He finished his sentence, and replied, as every Essex schoolboy knows: "If this be treason, make the most of it. I am unworthy to loose the latchet of the shoes of Patrick Henry. But I claim to love

human liberty as well as he did, and I believe the love of human liberty will never be held to be treason by Massachusetts.

There were five of my name and blood who stood in arms at Concord bridge in the morning of the Revolution, on the 19th of April, 1775. My grandfather stood with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin when they presented to the Continental Congress that great paper, the bringing in of which was the foremost action of human history, which declares that the just powers of government rest upon the consent of the people, and that when a people desires it, the laws of nature and the laws of God entitle them to take a separate and equal station among the nations of the earth.

I have no right to feel any peculiar pride in the action of any ancestor of my own in those great days which tried

men's souls, and when all true Americans thought in that way, although I should be disgraced, and ought to hide my head from the gaze of men, if I were to depart from those principles. But I have a right to feel a just pride in, and to boast of something much higher than any personal kindred. I am a son of Massachusetts. For more than three-score years and ten I have sat at her dear feet. I have seen the light from her beautiful eyes. I have heard high counsel from her lips. She has taught me to love liberty, to stand by the weak against the strong, when the rights of the weak are in peril; she has led me to believe that if I do this, however humbly, however imperfectly, and whatever other men may say, I shall have her approbation, and shall be deemed not unworthy of her love. Other men will do as they please. But as for me, God helping me, I can do no otherwise.

THE MAIDEN MARTYR

ANONYMOUS.

A troop of soldiers waited at the door;
A crowd of people gathered in the street,
Aloof a little from them bared sabers gleamed
And flashed into their faces. Then the door
Was opened, and two women meekly stepped
Out of the prison. One was weak and old,
A woman full of tears and full of woes;
The other was a maiden in her morn;
And they were one in name and one in faith,
Mother and daughter in the bond of Christ
That bound them closer than the ties of blood.
The troop moved on; and down the sunny street

The people followed, ever falling back

As in their faces flashed the naked blades.
But in the midst the women simply went
As if they two were walking side by side

Up to God's house on some still Sabbath morn;
Only they were not clad for Sabbath day,
But as they went about their daily tasks;
They went to prison and they went to death,
Upon their Master's service.

On the shore

The troopers halted; all the shining sands.
Lay bare and glistening; for the tide had

Drawn back to its farthest margin's weedy mark,
And each succeeding wave, with flash and curve,
Drew nearer by a hand-breadth. "It will be
A long day's work," murmured those murderous men
As they slacked rein. The leader of the troops
Dismounted, and the people passing near
Then heard the pardon proffered with the oath
Renouncing and abjuring part with all

The persecuted, convenanted folk,

But both refused the oath: "Because, they said, "Unless with Christ's dear servants we have part, We have no part with him."

On this they took

The elder Margaret, and led her out

Over the sliding sands, the weedy sludge,

The pebbly shoals, far out, and fastened her
Upon the farthest stake, already reached
By every rising wave, and left her there;

And as the waves crept about her feet she prayed
“That He would firm uphold her in their midst,
Who holds them in the hollow of His hand.'

The tide flowed in. And up and down the shore There paced the Prophet and the Laird of Lag, Grim Grierson-with Windram and with Grahame, And the rude soldiers, jesting with coarse oaths, As in the midst the maiden meekly stood, Waiting her doom delayed, said, "She would Turn before the tide, seek refuge in their arms

From the chill waves.

But ever to her lips

There came the wondrous words of life and peace;
"If God be for us, who can be against ? "
"Who shall divide us from the love of Christ ?
"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature.'
And still the tide was flowing in;

They turned young Margaret's face toward the sea,
Where something white was floating-something
White as the sea-mew that sits upon the wave;
But as she looked it sank; then showed again;
Then disappeared. And round the shore

And stake the tide stood ankle-deep.

Then Grierson,

With cursing, vowed that he would wait

No more, and to the stake the soldier led her
Down, and tied her hands, and round her
Slender waist too roughly cast the rope; for
Windram came and eased it while he whispered
In her ear,
Come, take the test and you are free.'
And one cried, "Margaret, say but God save
The King!" God save the King of His great grace,"
She answered, but the oath she would not take.
And still the tide flowed in,

66

And drove the people back and silenced them.
The tide flowed in, and rising to her knees,
She sang the Psalm, "To Thee I lift my soul;
The tide flowed in, and rising to her waist,
"To Thee, my God, I lift my soul," she sang.
The tide flowed in, and rising to her throat,
She sang no more, but lifted up her face,
And there was glory over all the sea,

A flood of glory, and the lifted face

Swam in it till it bowed beneath the flood,
And Scotland's maiden martyr went to God.

THE STATE OF MAINE

By WILLIAM PIERCE FRYE, Lawyer; Member of Congress from Maine, 1871-81; Senator, 1881-. Born in Lewiston, Maine, 1831.

From an address delivered at the annual banquet of the New England Society in Brooklyn, December 22, 1886. See Sixth Annual Report of the Society.

But let

I love the State of Maine better than any spot in the wide, wide world. The farther I travel, the more I see, the better I love her. This may seem strange to some luxuriously fed and clothed and housed son of the Empire State. me refer to what some would call the disadvantages of my native State, and illustrate the magnificent law of compensation.

"Your soil is hard and unproductive." Yes, no poet with any practical knowledge of it would talk about "tickling it with a hoe to make it laugh with the harvest." No tickling process will do there, but it responds gratefully to hard work; and you, sir, and I know that success attained by adequate achievement is that alone which is worth anything. Did you know that Maine last year raised more wheat than all the rest of New England put together? hay crop was worth fifteen million dollars, and we have an agricultural county in the extreme northeast part of the Republic called Aroostook which has quadrupled in population and wealth since 1860.

Her

"But the surface of your State is rugged, hilly, mountainous." Yes, it is; but remember that every single mountain has a fertile valley, and that five thousand rivers seek the sea through those valleys, with currents so swift and strong that to-day they can carry every spindle in the United States of America.

"But these rivers and lakes are ice-bound one-third of the year. Yes, but sixty-five hundred men cut the ice into crystal blocks, load it on five hundred Maine vessels, and send it to every port in the United States.

"But your coast is dangerous, tempestuous, rock