McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader Part 53

He offered us luxury. How movable a thing is one's standard of comfort! A two-roomed pine shanty, board walls, board floors, board ceilings, board part.i.tions not reaching to the roof, looked to us that night like a palace. To have been entertained at Windsor Castle would not have made us half so grateful.

It was late before the "city" grew quiet; and, long after most of the lights were out, and most of the sounds had ceased, I heard one solitary hammer in the distance, clink, clink, clink. I fell asleep listening to it.

CII. IMPORTANCE OF THE UNION. (362)

Mr. President: I am conscious of having detained you and the Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to suppress the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I can not, even now, persuade myself to relinquish it, without expressing once more my deep conviction, that, since it respects nothing less than the union of the states, it is of most vital and essential importance to the public happiness.

I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and, although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that, I seek not to penetrate the veil. G.o.d grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise. G.o.d grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.

Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original l.u.s.ter, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured--bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards--but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!

--Daniel Webster.

NOTE.--This selection is the peroration of Mr. Webster's speech in reply to Mr. Hayne during the debate in the Senate on Mr. Foot's Resolution in regard to the Public Lands.

CIII. THE INFLUENCES OF THE SUN. (364)

John Tyndall, 1820-1893, one of the most celebrated modern scientists, was an Irishman by birth. He was a pupil of the distinguished Faraday. In 1853 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Inst.i.tution of London. He is known chiefly for his brilliant experiments and clear writing respecting heat, light, and sound. He also wrote one or two interesting books concerning the Alps and their glaciers.

He visited America, and delighted the most intelligent audiences by his scientific lectures and his brilliant experiments. The scientific world is indebted to him for several remarkable discoveries.

As surely as the force which moves a clock's hands is derived from the arm which winds up the clock, so surely is all terrestrial power drawn from the sun. Leaving out of account the eruptions of volcanoes, and the ebb and flow of the tides, every mechanical action on the earth's surface, every manifestation of power, organic and inorganic, vital and physical, is produced by the sun. His warmth keeps the sea liquid, and the atmosphere a gas, and all the storms which agitate both are blown by the mechanical force of the sun. He lifts the rivers and the glaciers up to the mountains; and thus the cataract and the avalanche shoot with an energy derived immediately from him.

Thunder and lightning are also his transmitted strength. Every fire that burns and every flame that glows, dispenses light and heat which originally belonged to the sun. In these days, unhappily, the news of battle is familiar to us, but every shock and every charge is an application or misapplication of the mechanical force of the sun. He blows the trumpet, he urges the projectile, he bursts the bomb. And, remember, this is not poetry, but rigid mechanical truth.

He rears, as I have said, the whole vegetable world, and through it the animal; the lilies of the field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscles, he urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the lion's foot; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, he slides in the snake.

He builds the forest and hews it down, the power which raised the tree, and which wields the ax, being one and the same. The clover sprouts and blossoms, and the scythe of the mower swings, by the operation of the same force.

The sun digs the ore from our mines, he rolls the iron; he rivets the plates, he boils the water; he draws the train. He not only grows the cotton, but he spins the fiber and weaves the web. There is not a hammer raised, a wheel turned, or a shuttle thrown, that is not raised, and turned, and thrown by the sun.

His energy is poured freely into s.p.a.ce, but our world is a halting place where this energy is conditioned. Here the Proteus works his spells; the selfsame essence takes a million shapes and hues, and finally dissolves into its primitive and almost formless form. The sun comes to us as heat; he quits us as heat; and between his entrance and departure the multiform powers of our globe appear. They are all special forms of solar power--the molds into which his strength is temporarily poured in pa.s.sing from its source through infinitude.

NOTE.--Proteus (pro. Pro'te-us) was a mythological divinity. His distinguishing characteristic was the power of a.s.suming different shapes.

CIV. COLLOQUIAL POWERS OF FRANKLIN. (366)

William Wirt, 1772-1834, an American lawyer and author, was born at Bladensburg, Maryland. Left an orphan at an early age, he was placed in care of his uncle. He improved his opportunities for education so well that he became a private tutor at fifteen. In 1792 he was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law in Virginia; he removed to Richmond in 1799. From 1817 to 1829 he was Attorney-general of the United States. His last years were spent in Baltimore. Mr. Wirt was the author of several books; his "Letters of a British Spy," published in 1803, and "Life of Patrick Henry," published in 1817, are the best known of his writings.

Never have I known such a fireside companion. Great as he was both as a statesman and philosopher, he never shone in a light more winning than when he was seen in a domestic circle. It was once my good fortune to pa.s.s two or three weeks with him, at the house of a private gentleman, in the back part of Pennsylvania, and we were confined to the house during the whole of that time by the unintermitting constancy and depth of the snows.

But confinement never could be felt where Franklin was an inmate; His cheerfulness and his colloquial powers spread around him a perpetual spring.

When I speak, however, of his colloquial powers, I do not mean to awaken any notion a.n.a.logous to that which Boswell has given us of Johnson. The conversation of the latter continually reminds one of the "pomp and circ.u.mstance of glorious war." It was, indeed, a perpetual contest for victory, or an arbitrary or despotic exaction of homage to his superior talents. It was strong, acute, prompt, splendid, and vociferous; as loud, stormy, and sublime as those winds which he represents as shaking the Hebrides, and rocking the old castle which frowned on the dark-rolling sea beneath.

But one gets tired of storms, however sublime they may be, and longs for the more orderly current of nature. Of Franklin, no one ever became tired.

There was no ambition of eloquence, no effort to shine in anything which came from him. There was nothing which made any demand upon either your allegiance or your admiration. His manner was as unaffected as infancy. It was nature's self. He talked like an old patriarch; and his plainness and simplicity put you at once at your ease, and gave you the full and free possession and use of your faculties. His thoughts were of a character to shine by their own light, without any advent.i.tious aid. They only required a medium of vision like his pure and simple style, to exhibit to the highest advantage their native radiance and beauty.

His cheerfulness was unremitting. It seemed to be as much the effect of a systematic and salutary exercise of the mind, as of its superior organization. His wit was of the first order. It did not show itself merely in occasional coruscations[1]; but, without any effort or force on his part, it shed a constant stream of the purest light over the whole of his discourse. Whether in the company of commons or n.o.bles, he was always the same plain man; always most perfectly at his ease, with his faculties in full play, and the full orbit of his genius forever clear and unclouded.

[Transcriber's Footnote 1: coruscations: flashes of light.]

And then, the stores of his mind were inexhaustible. He had commenced life with an attention so vigilant that nothing had escaped his observation; and a judgment so solid that every incident was turned to advantage. His youth had not been wasted in idleness, nor overcast by intemperance. He had been, all his life, a close and deep reader, as well as thinker; and by the force of his own powers, had wrought up the raw materials which he had gathered from books, with such exquisite skill and felicity, that he has added a hundred fold to their original value, and justly made them his own.

NOTES.--Benjamin Franklin (b. 1706, d. 1790) was one of the most prominent men in the struggle of the American colonies for liberty. He was renowned as a statesman, and, although not an author by profession, was a very prolific writer. His "Autobiography," which was first printed in France, is now a household volume in America. See page 431.

Boswell, James, (b. 1740, d. 1795,) was a Scotch lawyer, and is chiefly known as the biographer of Dr. Johnson, of whom he was the intimate friend and companion.

Johnson, Samuel. See biographical notice, page 78.

CV. THE DREAM OF CLARENCE. (368)

SCENE--Room in the Tower of London. Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY.

Brak. Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?

Clar. O, I have pa.s.sed a miserable night, So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams, That, as I am a Christian, faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 't were to buy a world of happy days, So full of dismal terror was the time!

Brak. What was your dream? I long to hear you tell it.

Clar. Methoughts, that I had broken from the Tower, And was embarked to cross to Burgundy; And, in my company, my brother Gloster; Who, from my cabin, tempted me to walk Upon the hatches; thence we looked toward England, And cited up a thousand fearful times, During the wars of York and Lancaster, That had befallen us. As we paced along Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling, Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard, Into the tumbling billows of the main.

Oh, then, methought, what pain it was to drown!

What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!

What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept, As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems, Which wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.

Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death, To gaze upon the secrets of the deep?

Clar. Methought I had; and often did I strive To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air; But smothered it within my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony?

Clar. Oh, no; my dream was lengthened after life; Oh, then began the tempest to my soul, Who pa.s.sed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in-law, renowne'd Warwick; Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"

And so he vanished. Then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud: "Clarence is come! false, fleeting, perjured Clarence!

That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury: Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!"

With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends Environed me, and howled in mine ears Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, I, trembling, waked, and, for a season after, Could not believe but that I was in h.e.l.l; Such terrible impression made the dream.

Brak. No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you; I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

Clar. O Brakenbury, I have done those things, Which now bear evidence against my soul, For Edward's sake; and see how he requites me!

O G.o.d! if my deep prayers can not appease thee, But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, Yet execute thy wrath in me alone: Oh, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!

--I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me; My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

Brak. I will, my lord: G.o.d give your grace good rest!