Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

a shining, red face, mud-bespattered, angrily creeping from the hole. His clothes clung limply to him and trickling streams meandered down his neck.

Joe apprehended danger and dashed away at a pace that left his corpulent father far in the rear. As the boy sped out of sight Mr. Eisseldorf gathered himself with a supreme effort and hurled the monkey-wrench at the fleeing form, crying:

"Mine cracious, do you dink I vas a duck?"

BE YE READY.-J. B. WALTER, M. D.

From the plains of far Judea,

From where turbid Jordan flows,

From the slopes of snow-capped Leb’non,
Where the stately cedar grows;

From where Galilee lies sleeping,
Placid 'nea h the eastern sky;

From where Israel's high-walled cities
In forgotten ruins lie;

From where once on hills and valleys,

Rich and green, the eastern sun
Poured his rays in kisses ardent-
Hills and vales now sere and dun;
From where silently on Hermon
Fell the dews at eventide ;

From Mount Pisgah to far Carmel,

Where the promised land spread wide;

From where Cedron still flows onward,
By the city loved of old

For its beauty, for its temple.

With its wealth of beaten gold;

From where rock-hewn tombs lie buried

'Neath the dust of ages past,

Rose a cry-a cry of warning

Thrilling through the spaces vast:

"For His coming be ye ready!

Make the path before him straight!"
And a pilgrim, old and weary,
Resting by a city's gate,

Looked with dim eyes up to heaven,

Clasped his feeble hands in prayer,
And a whispered, "Lord, come quickly!"
Fell upon the evening air.

Centuries, in grand procession,
Since that day have come and gone;
Ages full of blood and battle,
Cities, nations overthrown,
But adown the long, long vista
Of those swiftly flying years,
Still has rung that voice of warning,
Sounding in unwilling ears.

And our hearts to-day are beating
Quicker as we work and wait,
Toiling up the rugged pathway,
Toward the distant, pearly gate.
“Make his path straight! Be ye ready!"
Do we heed that olden call?

Can we whisper, "Lord, come quickly!"
As our evening shadows fall?

When the last rays of the sunset

Kiss the distant, purple hills,
And we listen in the twilight,
To the music of the rills;
When, in musings retrospective,
All our lives in long review

Pass before us, shall we find them
Filled with worthy deeds and true?

Shall we see along the pathway,
Trodden by our restless feet,
Sign of thought or action noble,
Bringing consolation sweet?

Have we paused to whisper comfort

To one halting by the way?

Have we tried to guide some footstep
All too prone to go astray?

Wrapt in robes of self-esteeming,
Have we, scornful, stood aside,

Watching from our coigne of vantage

Others rush with hasty stride

To their ruin? All self-righteous,

At their sad, despairing cry,

Have we stood aloof, replying,
“I am holier; stand thou by?"

Would we make us through this desert
Straight a highway for our God?
We need learn from Him a lesson
Who the way in sorrow trod.

66

Be ye ready!" What the answer?
Motionless and dumb men stand

At the warning voice still ringing

From that far Judean land.

SMALL BEGINNINGS.-CHARLES MACKAY.

A traveler on a dusty road strewed acorns on the lea,
And one took root and sprouted up and grew into a tree.
Love sought its shade at evening time, to breathe its early

VOWS,

And age was pleased in heats of noon to bask beneath its boughs;

The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, the birds sweet music bore;

It stood a glory in its place, a blessing evermore.

A little spring had lost its way amid the grass and fern,

A passing stranger scooped a well where weary men might

turn;

He walled it in, and hung with care a ladle at the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, but judged that toil might drink.

He passed again, and lo! the well, by summers never dried, Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues, and saved a life beside.

A dreamer dropped a random thought; 'twas old and yet 'twas new;

A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being true.
It shone upon a genial mind, and lo! its light became
A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory flame.

The thought was small, its issue great, a watchfire on the hill;
It sheds its radiance far adown, and cheers the valley still.
A nameless man amid a crowd that thronged the daily mart
Let fall a word of hope and love, unstudied, from the heart
A whisper on the tumult thrown,-a transitory breath,—
It raised a brother from the dust, it saved a soul from death;
O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast!
Ye were but little at the first but mighty at the last.

A TRIBUTE TO GRANT.-HENRY WATTERSON, Extract from a speech in reply to the toast, "The war is over: let us have peace!" delivered at the banquet of the Army of the Tennessee, Chicago, October 8, 1891. On the day previous, in the presence of nearly one hundred thousand spectators, the colossal bronze equestrian statue of General Grant was unveiled. The statue measures eighteen feet three inches in height from the bottom of the plinth to the crown of the slouch hat, and is the largest casting, of the kind, ever made in America. The movement to erect the statue was started in Chicago, July 23, 1885-the same day General Graut died.

The war is over; and it is well over. God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives. I am glad of that. I can conceive nothing worse for ourselves, nothing worse for our children, than what might have been if the war had ended otherwise, leaving two exhausted combatants to become the prey of foreign intervention and diplomacy, setting the clock of civilization back a century, and splitting the noblest of the continents into five or six weak and warring Republics, like those of South America, to repeat in the New World the mistakes of the old.

The war is over, truly, and, let me repeat, it is well over. If anything was wanting to proclaim its termination from every house-top and door-post in the land, that little brush we had last spring with Signor Macaroni furnished it. As to the touch of an electric bell, the whole people rallied to the brave words of the Secretary of State, and, for the moment, sections and parties sunk out of sight and thought in one overmastering sentiment of racehood, manhood, and nationality.

I shall not stop to inquire whether the war made us better than we were. It certainly made us better acquainted, and, on the whole, it seems to me that we are none the worse for that better acquaintance. The truth is, the trouble between us was never more than skin deep, and the curious thing about it is that it was not our skin, anyhow! It was a black skin not a white skiu, that brought it about.

*

*

*

*

*

I came, primarily, to bow my head and to pay my measure of homage to the statue that was unveiled yes

9

terday. The career and the name which that statue commemories belong to me no less than to you. When I followed him to the grave-proud to appear in his obsequies, though as the obscurest of those who bore any official part therein-I felt that I was helping to bury, not only a great man, but a true friend. From that day to this, the story of the life and death of General Grant has more and more impressed and touched me.

I never allowed myself to make his acquaintance un til he had quitted the White House. The period of his political activity was full of uncouth and unsparing partisan contention. It was a kind of civil war. I had my duty to do, and I did not dare trust myself to the subduing influence of what I was sure must follow friendly relations between such a man as he was and I knew myelf to be. In this I was not mistaken, as the sequel proved. I met him for the first time beneath my own figtree, and a happy series of accidents, thereafter, gave me the opportunity to meet him often and to know him well.

He was the embodiment of simplicity, integrity and Courage; every inch a general, a soldier and a man; bat in the circumstances of his last illness, a figure of he roic proportions for the contemplation of the ages. I recall nothing in history so sublime as the spectacle of that brave spirit, broken in fortune and in health, with the dread hand of the dark angel clutched about his throat, struggling with every breath to hold the clumsy, unfamiliar weapon with which he sought to wrest from the jaws of death a little something for the support of wife and children when he was gone! If he had done nothing else, that would have made his exit from the world an immortal epic!

A little while after I came home from the last scene of all, I found that a woman's hand had collected the insignia I had worn in the magnificent, melancholy pageant the orders assigning me to duty and the funera! scarfs and badges-and had grouped and framed them, unbidden, silently, tenderly; and when I reflected that

« AnteriorContinuar »