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

"One of the few, the immortal names,That were not born to die."

OHIO. – Bancroft's Oration at Cleveland, Sept. 10th, 1860

Ohio rises before the world as the majestic witness to beneficent reality of the democratic principle. A commonwealth younger in years than he who addresses you, not long ago having no visible existence but in the emigrant wagons, now numbers almost as large a population as that of all England when it gave birth to Raleigh, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and began, its continuous attempts at colonizing America. Each one of her inhabitants gladdens in the fruit of his own toil. She possesses wealth that must be computed by thousands of millions; and her frugal, industrious, and benevolent people, at once daring and prudent, unfettered in the use of their faculties, restless in enterprise, do not squander the accumulations of their industry in vain show, but ever go on to render the earth more productive, more beautiful, and more convenient to man; mastering for mechanical purposes the unwasting forces of nature; keeping exemplary good faith with their public creditors; building in half a century more churches than all England has raised since this continent was discovered; endowing and sustaining universities and other seminaries of learning. Conscious of the dynamic power of mind in action as the best of fortresses, Ohio keeps no standing army but that of her school-teachers, of whom she pays more than 20,000; she provides a library for every school-district; she counts among her citizens more than 300,000 men who can bear arms, and she has more than twice that number of children registered as students in her public schools. Here the purity of domestic morals is maintained by the virtue and dignity of woman.

In the heart of the temperate zone of this continent, in the land of the corn, of wheat, and the vine, the eldest daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths, that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world. Hither should come the political skeptic, who, in his despair, is ready to strand the ship of state; for here he may learn how to guide it safely on the waters. Should some modern Telemachus, heir to an island empire, touch these shores, here he may observe the vitality and strength of the principle of popular power; take from the book of experience the lesson that in public affairs great and happy results follow in proportion to faith in the efficacy of that principle, and learn to rebuke ill-advised counselors who pronounce the most momentous and most certain of political truths a delusion and a failure.

OLIVER HAZARD PERRY. – Ibid

This anniversary of the great action of Oliver Hazard Perry is set apart for inaugurating a monument to his fame. Who has not heard how gallantly, forty-seven years ago, the young hero, still weak from a wasting fever, led his squadron to battle? As if shielded by a higher power, he encountered death on his right hand, and death on his left, ever in advance, almost alone for two hours fighting his ship, till it became a wreck, so that but one of its guns could be used any longer, and more than four-fifths of his crew lay around him wounded or killed; then unharmed, standing as beseemed his spirit, he passed in a boat to the uninjured Niagara, unfurled his flag, bore down within pistol-shot of his enemy, poured into them broadsides starboard and broadsides port, and while the sun was still high above the horizon, left no office to be done but that of mercy to the vanquished. If the comparison does not seem fanciful, I will call his conduct during those eventful hours a complete lyric poem, perfect in all its parts. Though he was carried away and raised above himself by the power with which he was possessed, the passion of his inspiration was tempered by the serene self-possession of his faultless courage; his will had the winged rapidity of fiery thought, and yet observed with deliberateness the combinations of harmony and the proportions of measured order.

Nor may you omit due honors to the virtues of the unrecorded dead; not as mourners who require consolation, but with a clear perception of the glory of their end. The debt of nature all must pay. To die, if need be, in defense of the country is a common obligation; it is granted to few to exchange life for a victory so full of benefits to their fellow-men. These are the disinterested, unnamed martyrs, who, without hope, or fame, or gain, gave up their lives in testimony to the all pleading love of country, and left to our statesmen the lesson to demand of others nothing but what is right, and to submit to no wrong.

"We have met the enemy," were Perry's words as he reported the result of the battle. And who was that enemy? A nation speaking another tongue? A state abandoned to the caprices of despotism? A people inimical to human freedom? No! they were the nation from whom most of us sprung, using the same copious language, cherishing after their fashion the love of liberty, enjoying internally the freest government that the world had known before our own. But the external policy of their government has been less controlled by regard for right than their domestic administration; and a series of wanton aggression, upon us, useless to England, condemned by her own statesmen and judges as violations of the law of nature and the law of nations, forced into a conflict two peoples whose common sympathies should never have been disturbed. And is this aggressive system forever to be adventured by her rulers? How long is the overshadowing aristocratic element in her government to stand between the natural affections of kindred nations.

OUR DOMAIN. – Ibid

Even now a British minister, whose past career gave hope of a greater fairness, is renewing the old system of experiments on the possible contingency of the pusillanimity, the indifference, or the ignorance of some future American administration, and disputes our boundary in the Northwest, though the words of the treaty are too plain to be perverted, and though the United States claims no more than the British secretary of state, who offered the treaty, explained as its meaning before it was signed. British soldiers are now encamped on part of our territory which bears the name of Washington. With a moderation that should have commanded respect, the United States waived their better claim to Vancouver, and even to any part of it, thinking it conducive to peace to avoid two jurisdictions on different parts of the same island; and in return for this forbearance the British Minister, yielding perhaps to some selfish clamor of a trading company, as much against British interests as against American rights, reproduces on an American island the inconvenience of divided occupation, which it was the very purpose of the treaty to avoid.

If the hum of the American seaboard is in part the echo of sentiments from abroad, here the unmixed voice of America may be heard, as it pronounces that it is too late to wrest territory from the United States by prevarication, by menace, or by force. From the English dockyards it is a long voyage to San Juan; the only good land route across the continent lies south of Lake Superior; in a few years there will be three Ohios on the shores of the Pacific. It is England's interest as well as duty to give effect to the treaty as it was interpreted by her own minister to ours. Your voices on this memorable day give the instruction to our own Government to abide by the treaty faithfully, on the condition that Britain will do the same; but the treaty must bind neither party or both – must be executed in good faith or canceled. The men who honor the memory of Perry will always know how to defend the domain of their country.

Has any European statesman been miscounting the strength of this nation, by substituting a reminiscence of our feeble confederation for the present efficient and almost perfect organism of the body politic? Has any foreign ruler been so foolish as to listen with credulity to the tales of impending disunion? Every man of the people of Ohio, this great central highway of national travel, will, without one exception, tell the calumniator or the unbeliever that the voices of discontent among us are but the evanescent vapor of men's breath; that our little domestic strifes are no more than momentary disturbances on the surface, easily settled among ourselves; that the love of Union has wound its cords indissolubly round the whole American people.

So, then, our last word shall be for the Union. The Union will guard the fame of its defenders, and ever more protect our entire territory; it will keep alive for mankind, the beacon lights of popular liberty and power; it will dissuade nations in a state of unripeness from attempting to found republican governments before they spring up naturally by an inward law; and its mighty heart will throb with delight at every true advance in any part of the world, toward republican happiness and freedom.

SYSTEMS OF BELIEF. – Rev. W. H. Milburn, 1860

Pleasure is right, and right is pleasure; and hence comes the system of Epicurus. Epicurus fasted because it gave him an exquisite taste and enjoyment of his meal; Epicurus slept not unduly because with his waking he found his intellect balanced and his physique refreshed. He awaked and remained awake, in order that his slumber might bring him quiet and repose. Thus starting from his condition we come very naturally to the luxury of the Sybarite, where the crimson wine sparkles and obscenity riots, and where the forms of vice and beastly debauchery flourish, in the saloons, the gambling-houses, and drinking-shops of this city. In all the forms of impurity and sensuality you have the practical life of this Epicurean philosophy: virtue is pleasure; therefore, pleasure is virtue, and wherever there is wrong done to our nature, by the gratification of our animal passions; wherever God's law is degraded and man's nature reduced to the level of the brute – you have the practical exposition of the tenets of the system.

Upon the other hand, the system of Zeno seems to stand in direct opposition, in antipodal relations to that of Epicurus. Virtue sufficeth, says Zeno. Virtue is the law of the universe; the universe is law, law and law only. Dead, mechanical force, iron necessity; the sweep of fatalism in its terrific circle; this, and nothing more. No pulse of pity; no heart of tenderness; no thought of God in all the sweep of imagination or circle of reason. I, man, am a microcosm, a synopsis of all the laws and facts of the universe; I am not only part and parcel of it, but an image and reflection of it; virtue is resident in the mind, and has nothing to do with pain or pleasure. Pain and pleasure are of the senses and are wholly alien to the understanding, says Zeno. I am to be master of all suffering. What care I for infirmity? I stand here the noblest being in the whole creation; may I not be master of that creation? The brutes may writhe in their ecstasy of pain, they may shriek in the fearful spasms of their suffering; but I, a man, that seem to be a mirror of creation, may I not be master of these agonies, and stand, with folded arms, disdainful of every sort of sorrow, of all pangs of pity, or tenderness, or affection? of what is called friendship, love? These things are the whimpering sentimentalities of women and children, and I have nothing to do with them. The folded arms, the clenched fist, the tightly drawn lips, be mine; and if pain become too strong for suffering there is a portal which my own hand can open; it swings apart obedient to my poignard, and suicide is my resort; therefore apathy is the perfection of human character; a deadness of sentiment, a hardihood of courage, a noble daring, a port of pride, a disdainful mien – these are what become the intellect as the master of the earth. Therefore, my brain is to be all crystal, my heart of adamant. Such is the Stoical system. In both there was much of beauty and ingenuity, of philosophical insight and depth, largeness of conception, fullness and admirableness of treatment. But they both, in common with all other systems, aside and apart from our holy faith, lacked one master-power; the great power of the heart, which appeals to the heart of the whole earth.

I might convince your understanding of the propriety of Epicureanism, of the grandeur and nobleness of Stoicism; I might warm you in this direction; I might chill you in that; but when I speak to that part of your nature which is deeper and nobler than the intellect; when I come to ask the suffrage of a simple human nature, I must be armed with a sublimer word than the language of either. Take Christianity in comparison with them; it teaches that there is consistency and coherency between virtue and pleasure, but that I am to be loyal to virtue. It unites the opposite systems of Epicurus and Zeno; it takes their half-truths and solidifies and unites them in one complete full-orbed and rounded whole.

THE INDIAN CHIEF

[The following poem is founded on a traditionary story which is common on the borders of the great Falls of Niagara, although differing in some unimportant particulars.]The rain fell in torrents, the thunder roll'd deep,And silenced the cataract's roar;But neither the night, nor the tempest could keepThe warrior chieftain on shore.The war-shout has sounded, the stream must be cross'dWhy lingers the leader afar?'Twere better his life than his glory be lost;He never came late to the war.He seized a canoe as he sprang from the rock,But fast as the shore fled his reach,The mountain wave seem'd all his efforts to mock,And dash'd the canoe on the beach."Great Spirit," he cried "shall the battle be given,And all but their leader be there?May this struggle land me with them or in heaven!"And he push'd with the strength of despair.He has quitted the shore, he has gained the deep;His guide is the lightning alone!But he felt not with fast, irresistible sweep,The rapids were bearing him down!But the cataract's roar with the thunder now vied;"Oh, what is the meaning of this?"He spoke, and just turn'd to the cataract's side,As the lightning flash'd down the abyss.All the might of his arm to one effort was given,At self-preservation's command;But the treacherous oar with the effort was riven,And the fragment remain'd in his hand."Be it so," cried the warrior, taking his seat,And folding his bow to his breast;"Let the cataract shroud my pale corpse with its sheet,And its roar lull my spirit to rest."The prospect of death with the brave I have borne,I shrink not to bear it alone;I have often faced death when the hope was forlorn,But I shrink not to face him with none."The thunder was hush'd, and the battle-field stain'd,When the sun met the war-wearied eye,But no trace of the boat, or the chieftain remain'd,Though his bow was still seen in the sky.

THE INDEPENDENT FARMER. – W. W. Fosdick

Let sailors sing the windy deep,Let soldiers praise their armor.But in my heart this toast I'll keep,The Independent Farmer:When first the rose, in robe of green,Unfolds its crimson lining,And round his cottage porch is seenThe honeysuckle twining;When banks of bloom their sweetness yield,To bees that gather honey,He drives his team across the field,Where skies are soft and sunny.The blackbird clucks behind his plow,The quail pipes loud and clearly;Yon orchard hides behind its boughThe home he loves so dearly;The gray, old barn, whose doors enfoldHis ample store in measure,More rich than heaps of hoarded gold,A precious, blessed treasure;But yonder in the porch there standsHis wife, the lovely charmer,The sweetest rose on all his lands —The Independent Farmer.To him the spring comes dancing gay,To him the summer blushes;The autumn smiles with mellow ray,His sleep old winter hushes.He cares not how the world may move,No doubts or fears confound him;His little flock are link'd in love,And household angels round him;He trusts in God and loves his wife,Nor grief nor ill may harm her,He's nature's noble man in life —The Independent Farmer.

MRS. GRAMMAR'S BALL. – Anon

Mrs. Grammar she gave a ballTo the nine different parts of Speech, —To the big and the tall,To the short and the small,There were pies, plums, and puddings for each.And first, little Articles came,In a hurry to make themselves known —Fat A, An, and The,But none of the threeCould stand for a minute alone.Then Adjectives came to announceThat their dear friends the Nouns were at hand.Rough, Rougher, and Roughest,Tough, Tougher, and Toughest,Fat, Merry, Good-natured, and Grand.The Nouns were, indeed, on their way —Ten thousand and more, I should think;For each name that we utter —Shop, Shoulder, and Shutter —Is a Noun: Lady, Lion, and Link.The Pronouns were following fastTo push the Nouns out of their places, —I, Thou, You, and Me,We, They, He, and She,With their merry, good-humor'd old faces.Some cried out – "Make way for the Verbs!"A great crowd is coming in view —To Bite and to Smite,And to Light and to Fight,To Be, and to Have, and to Do.The Adverbs attend on the Verbs,Behind them as footmen they run;As thus: – "To fight Badly,They run away Gladly,"Shows how fighting and running were done.Prepositions came – In, By, and Near,With Conjunctions, a poor little band,As – "Either you Or me,But Neither them Nor he"They held their great friends by the hand.Then, with Hip, Hip, Hurra!Hushed Interjections uproarious —"Oh, dear! Well-a-day!"When they saw the display,"Ha! ha!" they all shouted out, "Glorious!"But, alas, what misfortunes were nigh!While the fun and the feastings pleased each,There pounced in at onceA monster – a Dunce,And confounded the Nine parts of Speech!Help, friends! to the rescue! on youFor aid Noun and Article call, —Oh, give your protectionTo poor Interjection,Verb, Adverb, Conjunction, and all!

HOW THE MONEY COMES

Queer John has sung, how money goes,But how it comes, who knows? Who knows?Why every Yankee mother's sonCan tell you how "the thing" is done.It comes by honest toil and trade;By wielding sledge and driving spade,And building ships, balloons, and drums;And that's the way the money comes.How does it come? Why, as it goes,By spinning, weaving, knitting hose,By stitching shirts and coats for Jews,Erecting churches, renting pews,And manufacturing boots and shoes;For thumps and twists, and cuts and hues,And heads and hearts, tongues, lungs, and thumbsAnd that's the way the money comes.How does it come? The way is plain —By raising cotton, corn, and cane;By wind and steam, lightning and rain;By guiding ships across the main;By building bridges, roads, and dams,And sweeping streets, and digging clams,With whistles, hi's! ho's! and hums!And that's the way the money comes.The money comes – how did I say?Not always in an honest way.It comes by trick as well as toil,But how is that? why, slick as oil, —By putting peas in coffee-bags;By swapping watches, knives, and nags,And peddling wooden clocks and plums;And that's the way the money comes.How does it come? – wait, let me see,It very seldom comes to me;It comes by rule I guess, and seale,Sometimes by riding on a rail,But oftener, that's the way it goesFrom silly belles and fast young beaux;It comes in big, nay, little sums,Ay! that's the way the money comes.

THE FUTURE OF THE FASHIONS. – Punch

There was a time when girls wore hoops of steel,And with gray powder used to drug their hair,Bedaub'd their cheeks with rouge; white lead, or meal,Added, to stimulate complexions fair;Whereof by contrast to enhance the grace,Specks of court-plaster deck'd the female face.That fashion pass'd away, and then were wornDresses whose skirts came scarce below the knee,With waists girt round the shoulder-blades, and scorn,Now pointed at the prior finery,When here and there some antiquated dameStill wore it, to afford her juniors game.Short waists departed; Taste awhile prevail'dTill ugly Folly's reign return'd once more,And ladies then went draggle-tail'd;And now they wear hoops also, as before.Paint, powder, patches, nasty and absurd,They'd wear as well, if France had spoke the word.Young bucks and beauties, ye who now derideThe reasonable dress of other days;When time your forms shall have puffed out or dried,Then on your present portraits you will gaze,And say what dowdies, frights, and guys you were,With their more precious figures to compare.Think, if you live till you are lean or fat,Your features blurred, your eyes bedimm'd with age,Your limbs have stiffen'd; feet grown broad and flat:You may see other garments all the rage,Preposterous as even that attireWhich you in mirrors now so much admire.

LOYALTY TO LIBERTY OUR ONLY HOPE. – Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota

The love of country is the gift of God – it can not dwell in homes of sin, it has no abiding place in saloons of vice or dens of infamy, it belongs not to infidel clubs or fanatical conventions, they would tear down the sacred edifice which they have never loved; they are impatient for change, for in the seething caldron of rebellion they are brought to the surface. With nothing to lose, they have no fear of the days of terror; their only dread is in the majesty of the law. The love of country belongs to a God-fearing people; it is seen in the purity of private life, in the privacy of Christian homes, in the devotions of the closet, in the manliness of Christian character. The church is its nursing mother. Loyalty to God and to His institutions is her first and last lesson; it is the earnest cry of her loyal children "that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety may be established among us for all generations." The love of country belongs to loyal men. The power of self-government depends upon a loyal people.

The protection of the nation depends not on the wisdom of its senators, not on the vigilance of its police, not on the strong arm of standing armies: but the loyalty of a united people. Other nations have equaled us in all the arts of civilization, in discoveries, in science, in skill, and in invention; they have kept even step with us and often surpassed us in philosophy and literature; they have been brave in war and wise in council; they have clustered around their homes all that art can lavish of beauty – but ripe scholarship, cunning in art, or skill in invention, never gave to the people a constitution. This is the outgrowth of a manly spirit of loyalty. It teaches men duty– a right manly word for right manly men. Loyalty was God's gift to our fathers; it was learned in the hard school of adversity, and by self-denial and suffering inwrought into the nation's life; it grew up in the sheltered valleys and on the rocky hillsides of New England, it was cradled in Virginia, in New York, in the Carolinas, among the patricians of Virginia; it gave to the world a Washington, and from the shop, the store, the farm, and professional life there sprung up from the people many who shared his spirit to become the founders of the Republic.

OUR COUNTRY FIRST, LAST, AND ALWAYS. – Ibid

The first defense to any people is in the love of country. The nation is one great family, with one common interest, welfare, and destiny; a nation dwelling together in love must be a happy people. Kindness begets kindness, and love awakens love; this is that magic touch which makes the world of kin. A confederacy like ours can not be held together by the strong arm of a central government; if the band of unity is gone, such a union is no whit better than a rope of sand. The danger which besets us is not in individual sins which fasten on the body politic – we may labor with forbearance and firmness for their removal. Our danger lies in that spirit of selfishness and self-will which forgets brotherhood and God. In a nation like ours, with its countless differing interests of rival productions, its conflicts of trade and sectional rivalries of commerce, we must differ on questions of public policy; but it may be the manly difference of manly men. Never did men differ more widely than the fathers of the republic, never did earnest hearts battle with more zeal for their rival interests, nor contend more fiercely inch by inch in political struggles. Never did the rallying cry of parties take a deeper hold on its liege-men, or braver shouts of triumph herald in its victory. But there was a deeper love of country, which made the brotherhood of a nation, and a charity which more respected the opinions of those from whom they differ. The Christian patriot dare not close his eye to the evils which mar the nation; for their removal he will work and pray, but never with rash hand tear down the sacred edifice of the Constitution, because some stains deface its walls. The query may well arise whether we are not fast reaching the time when the question is not of the right or wrong of this or that legislation, the benefit of this or that public policy, but whether this or that party shall divide the spoils of office among their political camp followers. We hear of angry words and fierce invectives, of rumors of corruption, of bribery in public office; they belong to no one party, they are not ranked under any one leader; these things came because the people have lost sight, in the strifes of men for office, of that great destiny which God offers to Americans. I believe the love of country dwells in the people's hearts. The honest-hearted sons of toil will be true to the country and its constitution. That love may have slumbered for a time, but the great heart of the country will be true to itself. Its love can not be hedged in by the paling of any man's door-yard. It will sweep away every barrier of strife, and keep us one united people.