Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year Part 48

No other people have a government more worthy of their respect and love, or a land so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look upon, and so full of generous suggestion 15 to enterprise and labor. G.o.d has placed upon our head a diadem, and has laid at our feet power and wealth beyond definition or calculation. But we must not forget that we take these gifts upon the condition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power, and that the upward 20 avenues of hope shall be free for all the people.

I do not mistrust the future. Dangers have been in frequent ambush along our path, but we have uncovered and vanquished them all. Pa.s.sion has swept some of our communities, but only to give us a new demonstration that the great body of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding. 5 No political party can long pursue advantage at the expense of public honor, or by rude and indecent methods, without protest and fatal disaffection in its own body. The peaceful agencies of commerce are more fully revealing the necessary unity of all our communities, and 10 the increasing intercourse of our people is promoting mutual respect. We shall find unalloyed pleasure in the revelation which our census will make of the swift development of the great resources of some of the states. Each state will bring its generous contributions to the great aggregate of 15 the nation's increase. And when the harvests from the fields, the cattle from the hills, and the ores from the earth, shall have been weighed, counted, and valued, we will turn from all to crown with the highest honor the state that has most promoted education, virtue, justice, and patriotism 20 among its people.

1. When was Benjamin Harrison President? What did he know about the party defeats he mentions? Was he ever a defeated candidate?

2. What are the leading political parties of our country at present? Are they essential to our form of government? Support your answer by reasons.

3. Explain what Harrison meant by: "A party success . . . achieved by unfair methods"; "the arbitrament of the ballot"; "justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power"; the last sentence.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

BY KATHARINE LEE BATES

O beautiful for s.p.a.cious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain!

America! America! 5 G.o.d shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impa.s.sioned stress 10 A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness!

America! America!

G.o.d mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, 15 Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! 20 America! America!

May G.o.d thy gold refine Till all success be n.o.bleness And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees, beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears!

America! America! 5 G.o.d shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

1. The author mentions many ways in which America is beautiful. Which of these are real, matter-of-fact? Which are not?

2. To whom is the reference in lines 9-10 applicable? Explain lines 14-16. Paraphrase line 19. What is meant by line 7, page 353?

3. Memorize at least one stanza of the poem.

O BEAUTIFUL! MY COUNTRY!

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

This is a part of Lowell's "Commemoration Ode"

written in honor of the heroes of Harvard College, killed in the Civil War. Lowell here imagines America as a beautiful woman--a G.o.ddess of Liberty--now fully restored to her worshipers.

O beautiful! My Country! ours once more!

Smoothing thy gold of war-disheveled hair O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, . . .

What were our lives without thee?

What all our lives to save thee? 5 We reck not what we gave thee; We will not dare to doubt thee, But ask whatever else, and we will dare!

THE PROBLEMS OF THE REPUBLIC

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

The following is extracted from the inaugural address of President Roosevelt, delivered March 4, 1905. It is of special interest to read it in connection with Mr. Hughes's speech (page 356) and to compare the ideas of citizenship and of our country as expressed in the two. In reading this speech you should bear in mind that the era was one of peace, long undisturbed by war. Our problems then were the ordinary problems of everyday living.

Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of 5 administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, also have brought the care and anxiety 10 inseparable from the acc.u.mulation of great wealth in industrial centers.

Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government 15 throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.

There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, 20 neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us, nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.

Yet after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our 5 fathers who founded and preserved this republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits 10 of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the free men who compose it.

But we have faith that we shall not prove false to memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work; 15 they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an a.s.sured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children's children.

To do so, we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical 20 intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, of endurance, and above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this republic in the days of Washington; which made great the men who preserved this republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln. 25

1. Give a full report of Roosevelt's life and activities--political, literary, personal. Try to describe the kind of man you think he was.

2. Find in this section of your Reader expressions similar to lines 10-13, page 355.

3. What qualities does Roosevelt say we must display if our country is to survive? Why does he speak of our form of government as an experiment?

THE MEANING OF AMERICANISM

BY CHARLES EVANS HUGHES

Charles Evans Hughes (1862- ) has had a conspicuous political career. He has been successively governor of New York for two terms, a justice of the Supreme Court; Republican nominee for the Presidency; and Secretary of State.

At the time of the delivery of this speech Europe was in the throes of the World War. America was soon to join forces with the Allies against Germany. This extract from Mr. Hughes's speech should be read with the spirit of portending war in mind. But the four-square interpretation of Americanism that is herein set forth holds to-day with as much force as in 1916. Read the selection especially to get the notion of an ideal America and the ideal citizen.

We want something more than thrills in our patriotism--we want thought; we want intelligence--a new birth of the sentiment of unity in the nation.

My dream of America is America represented in public office by its best men working entirely for the good of the 5 Republic and according to the laws and ordinances established by the people for the government of their conduct, and not for personal or political desires and ambitions; America working her inst.i.tutions as they were intended to be worked, with men whose sole object shall be to secure 10 the end for which the offices were designed.

And if one will throw his personal fortunes to the winds, if he will perform in each place, high or low, the manifest obligations of that place, we will soon have those victories of democracy which will make the Fourth of July in its 15 coming years a far finer and n.o.bler day than it has ever been in the fortunate years of the past.

When we are thinking of the ideals of democracy, we are thinking of the schools, and we deplore every condition in which we find man lower than he should be under a free government, and we want greater victories of democracy, that the level of success shall be raised. 5