EXERCISES IN EMPHASIS. 1. We are still rich in each other and our children. 2. 'What can you do, poor things?" said he. 3. We shall work and make you rich again. 4. Let no one suffer through us, and we may be happy. 5. We were none of us happy when we were rich. TH LXXVIII. OUR COUNTRY. HERE is a land, of every land the pride, 2. The wandering mariner, whose eye explores 3. For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace, 4. Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife, Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life; In the clear heaven of her delightful eye, 5. Around her knees domestic duties meet, LXXIX. THE ALARM. ARKNESS closed upon the country and upon DARKNESS closed the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the warmessage from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village; the sea to the backwoods; the plains to the highlands; and it was never suffered to droop till it had been borne North, and South, and East, and West, throughout the land. 2. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot. Its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and, ringing like bugle-notes from peak to peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean river, till the responses were echoed from the cliffs of Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale. 3. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York; in one more at Philadelphia; the next it lighted a watchfire at Baltimore; thence it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina. 4. It moved onwards and still onwards, through boundless groves of evergreen, to Newbern and to Wilmington. "For God's sake, forward it by night and by day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border, and dispatched it to Charleston, and through pines, and palmettos, and moss-clad live oaks, further to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah. 5. Hillsborough and the Mecklenburg district of North Carolina rose in triumph, now that their wearisome uncertainty had its end. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad. 6. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky; so that hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of the Elkhorn, commemorated the nineteenth day of April by naming their encampment LEXING TON. 7. With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms: with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other, "to be ready for the extreme event." With one heart, the continent cried, "Liberty or death.” George Bancroft. LXXX.-EVERY DAY. H, trifling tasks so often done, OH Yet ever to be done anew! Oh, cares which come with every sun, 2. The restless sense of wasted power, The tiresome round of little things, 3. The bowlder in the torrent's course 4. Who finds the lion in his lair, Who tracks the tiger for his life, Or conquer them in desperate strife; 5. The steady strain that never stops We feel our noblest powers decay, 6. We rise to meet a heavy blow- The drop-by-drop of little ills; 7. The heart which boldly faces death 8. And even saints of holy fame, Whose souls by faith have overcome, 9. Ah, more than martyr's aureole, And more than hero's heart of fire, We need the humble strength of soul Which daily toils and ills require;Sweet Patience! grant us, if you may, An added grace for every day! Elizabeth Akers Allen. |