Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides. Various

by the vote of the individual States; therefore they framed an organic law at the foundation of our common government, which gave the men of Carolina and Massachusetts a name dearer than any sectional name – the name of an American citizen! In that conflict of opinions, by a temper of conciliation and brotherly love, by an earnest loyalty to freedom and profoundest reverence for law, they framed that constitution which has been the admiration of the world.

      I yield to no man in my admiration for those noble men whose names are our household words; but in this history I see the hand of God and acknowledge that our nationality was his gift and not the fruits of our fathers' wisdom. Ours is not the only nation who have sought to be free. Strong arms and stout hearts have often failed – the world is filled with the lamentations of the patriots and dirges for the dead. God always gives to a nation its birthright and its name. A nation is not a mere aggregate of households, or villages, or States – national life is something beyond the fact that individual men have banded together for mutual defense. This belonged to the savage tribes who once roamed over this goodly land. They may be strong, daring, freedom-loving men, without national life. There never was a nobler race than the people who dwelt in the fastnesses of Scotland, but their tie was only one of kindred; the family became a clan, separate clans warred with each other in murderous strife, and Scotland was a field of blood. Until the cross was firmly planted in Britain, England had no nationality – it was a land of faction until the law and providence of God became the people's guide, and then the nobler name of Saxon became a Christian name to tell of all that is manly and true. Our national life is the gift of God. No other hand could gather out of other lands millions of people of different tongues and kindred, and mold these into one mighty nation that shall receive into itself the men of every clime, and stamp on them its own mark of individuality, teaching them its language, making them its kin, and binding them as one household under its own constitution and laws.

      INDEPENDENCE BELL. – July 4th, 1776

      When it was certain that the Declaration would be adopted and confirmed by the signatures of the delegates in Congress, it was determined to announce the event by ringing the old State-House bell which bore the inscription, "Proclaim liberty to the land: to all the inhabitants thereof!" and the old bellman posted his little boy at the door of the hall to await the instruction of the doorkeeper when to ring. At the word, the little patriot-scion rushed out, and, flinging up his hands, shouted "Ring! Ring! RING!"

      There was tumult in the city,

      In the quaint old Quaker's town,

      And the streets were rife with people

      Pacing restless up and down;

      People gathering at corners,

      Where they whisper'd each to each,

      And the sweat stood on their temples,

      With the earnestness of speech.

      As the bleak Atlantic currents

      Lash the wild Newfoundland shore,

      So they beat against the State-House,

      So they surged against the door;

      And the mingling of their voices

      Made a harmony profound,

      'Till the quiet street of chestnuts

      Was all turbulent with sound.

      "Will they do it?" "Dare they do it?"

      "Who is speaking?" "What's the news?"

      "What of Adams?" "What of Sherman?"

      "Oh, God grant they won't refuse!"

      "Make some way there!" "Let me nearer!"

      "I am stifling!" "Stifle, then!

      When a nation's life's at hazard,

      We've no time to think of men!"

      So they beat against the portal,

      Man and woman, maid and child;

      And the July sun in heaven

      On the scene look'd down and smiled,

      The same sun that saw the Spartan

      Shed his patriot-blood in vain,

      Now beheld the soul of freedom

      All unconquer'd rise again.

      See! See! The dense crowd quivers

      Through all its lengthy line,

      As the boy beside the portal

      Looks forth to give the sign!

      With his small hands upward lifted,

      Breezes dallying with his hair,

      Hark! with deep, clear intonation,

      Breaks his young voice on the air.

      Hush'd the people's swelling murmur,

      List the boy's strong joyous cry!

      "Ring!" he shouts, "Ring! Grandpa

      Ring! Oh, Ring for Liberty!"

      And straightway, at the signal,

      The old bellman lifts his hand,

      And sends the good news, making

      Iron-music through the land.

      How they shouted! What rejoicing!

      How the old bell shook the air,

      Till the clang of freedom ruffled

      The calm gliding Delaware!

      How the bonfires and the torches

      Illumed the night's repose,

      And from the flames, like Phœnix,

      Fair Liberty arose!

      That old bell now is silent,

      And hush'd its iron tongue,

      But the spirit it awaken'd

      Still lives, – forever young.

      And while we greet the sunlight,

      On the fourth of each July,

      We'll ne'er forget the bellman,

      Who, twixt the earth and sky,

      Rung out Our Independence;

      Which, please God, shall never die!

      THE SCHOLAR'S DIGNITY. – Hon. George E. Pugh July 5th, 1859

      The purpose of all genuine effort, beyond the satisfaction of physical wants, should be to enlarge the compass of human sympathy and desire, to purify, elevate, ennoble the intellectual constitution of our race. God has so created us that these results can be attained by simple and even direct agencies. Man is a sympathetic being; and the full discharge of his obligation toward his own family, his friends, his neighbors, is the method by which he can best discharge his duty in other relations; toward God and his country, toward the millions of his fellow-beings now alive, and the millions who will inherit the earth in a course of ages. Hence arise man's real pleasures, and (not less) his noblest responsibilities and actions. But, as our nature is composed of appetites and passions which rightly adjusted, each with another, lift us almost to the dignity of the Godhead, but when disorganized, show us to be meaner than the brutes; so civil society, or the association of mankind pursuant to the Divine order, while capable, in its normal state, of the utmost happiness for all its members, is now disorganized and demoralized, its sweet bells of sympathy turned to discord, even its charities stained by selfishness and base pretension; its capacities for good entirely perverted to the oppression, to the cruel debasements of the multitude, and to the unjust advantage of a few. Here is the field of chivalry for him – scholar and squire who would be something more – conscious of his earnest duty, of the vast rewards which must crown success, and alive to the inspiration of all the past, the present, and the future; here is a field on which he may win the gilded spurs of knighthood, and where, with his own arm, he can truly redress the innocent, rescue the unfortunate, and reclaim even