4. Only timid and despairing souls are frightened into the belief that the foundations of society are breaking up on account of over-education in the common schools. Neither representatives of the Caste of Capital nor the Caste of Culture can convince the American people that vice, crime, idleness, poverty, and social discontent are the necessary result of an elementary education among the workers of society. No demagogue, with specious statements, can lead any considerable number of citizens to regard the school-master as a public enemy.

5. The free common school is the Plymouth Rock of American liberty. If the system of free schools, as now conducted and organized, fails to meet the needs of social progress, not the extent, but the kind and quality, of education must be changed. Neither high school nor university must be lopped off from our free-school system.

6. It is only through skilled labor, wisely and intelligently directed, that a people can become or remain permanently prosperous and happy; it is only by means of intelligent and educated voters that liberty can be preserved; and it is only by means of a more complete education among all classes that humanity can rise to a higher type of social evolution. There is no slavery so oppressive as that of ignorance.

29. ELEMENTS OF THE AMERICAN
GOVERNMENT.

1. The English colonists in America, generally speaking, were men who were seeking new homes in a new world. They brought with them their families and all that was most dear to them. Many of them were educated men, and all possessed their full share, according to their social condition, of knowledge and attainments of that age.

2. The distinctive characteristic of their settlement is the introduction of the civilization of Europe into a wilderness, without bringing with it the political institutions of Europe. The arts, sciences, and literature of England came over with the settlers. That great portion of the common law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of men, came also.

3. The jury came; the habeas corpus came; the tes tamentary power came; and the law of inheritance and descent came also, except that part of it which recognizes the rights of primogeniture, which either did not come at all, or soon gave way to the rule of equal partition of estates among children.

4. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the Church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things. But it could not be doustful what should be the nature and character of these institutions. A general social equality prevailed among the settlers, and an equality of political rights seemed the natural, if not the necessary consequence.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

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X

SECTION III.

RECITATIONS AND READINGS: POETRY.

1. THE CROWDED STREET.

1. Let me move slowly through the stréet,

Filled with an ever-shifting tráin,
I

Amid the sound of steps that beat |

The murmuring wálks | like áutumn ràin.

2. How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fiérce, the stony fàce;

Sóme | bright with thoughtless smiles, and sóme |
Where secret tèars | have left their tràce.

3. They páss-to toil, to strife, to rèst;

To halls in which the feast | is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guést |
In silence sits beside the dead!

4. And some to happy homes repàir,

Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute carésses | shall decláre |
The tenderness | they cannot speak.

5. And sóme, who walk in calmness hére,

Shall shudder when they reach the door |
Where one who made their dwelling déar,
Its flówer, its light, is seen no mòre.

6. Youth, with pale cheek | and slender fráme,
And dreams of greatness | in thine eye!
Goest thou to build an early náme,

Or early in the tásk| to die?

7. Keen son of tráde, with eager brów!
Who is now fluttering | in thy snàre?
Thy golden fórtunes, tówer they nów,
Or melt the glittering spires | in àir?

8. Who of this crowd | to-night | shall tread | The dance till daylight gleam again? Whó sorrow o'er the untimely dead?

Whó | writhe | in throes | of mórtal páin? 9. Sóme famine-struck, shall think how long | The cold dark hours, how slow | the light; And sóme, who flaunt amid the thróng, Shall hide | in dens of shame | to-night.

10. Each, where his tasks or pleasures cáll, They páss, and heed each other not. There is who heeds, who holds them áll,

In His large love and boundless thought.

11. These struggling tides | of life | that seem |
In wayward, aimless course to ténd,

Are éddies of the mighty stréam |
That rolls to its appointed end.

BRYANT.

2. THE BUILDERS.

1. All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Sóme with mássive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

2. Nothing | useless is [ or low;

Each thing in its place | is bèst;
And what seems | but idle shów |

Strengthens and supports the rèst.

3. For the structure that we ráise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays |

Are the blocks | with which we build.

4. Truly shape | and fashion thèse;
Leave no yawning gaps between;

Think not, because no man sées,
Such things will remain unsèen.

5. In the elder days | of árt,

Builders wrought [with greatest cáre ||
Each minute and unseen pàrt;

For the gods are everywhere.

6. Let us do our work as well,

1

Both the unseen and the sèen;

Make the house, where góds may dwell,
Beautiful, entíre, and clean.

7. Else our lives | are incomplète,
Standing in these walls of Tíme;
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

8. Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample báse,
And ascending and secúre |
Shall to-morrow find its plàce.
9. Thus alone can we attain |

To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast pláin,
And one boundless réach of sky.

3. PSALM OF LIFE.

1. Tell me not | in mournful númbers, Life is but an empty dréam; For the soul is dead that slúmbers, And things are not | what they seem, u paved are

2. Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave | is not its goal;
Dust thou árt, to dust retúrnest,
Was not spoken | of the sòul.