Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia Part 42

AMERICA--OPPORTUNITY.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, a noted American essayist, poet, and speculative philosopher. Born in Boston, Ma.s.s., May 25, 1803; died, April 27, 1882.

America is another name for opportunity.

THE SEQUEL OF THE DISCOVERY.

There is a Columbia of thought and art and character which is the last and endless sequel of Columbus' adventure.--_Ibid._

YOUNG AMERICA.

ALEXANDER HILL EVERETT, an American scholar and diplomatist. Born in Boston, Ma.s.s., 1792; died at Canton, China, May, 1847.

Scion of a mighty stock!

Hands of iron--hearts of oak-- Follow with unflinching tread Where the n.o.ble fathers led.

Craft and subtle treachery, Gallant youth, are not for thee; Follow thou in words and deeds Where the G.o.d within thee leads.

Honesty, with steady eye, Truth and pure simplicity, Love, that gently winneth hearts, These shall be thy holy arts.

Prudent in the council train, Dauntless on the battle plain, Ready at thy country's need For her glorious cause to bleed.

Where the dews of night distill Upon Vernon's holy hill, Where above it gleaming far Freedom lights her guiding star,

Thither turn the steady eye, Flas.h.i.+ng with a purpose high; Thither, with devotion meet, Often turn the pilgrim feet.

Let the n.o.ble motto be: G.o.d--the _country_--_liberty_!

Planted on religion's rock, Thou shalt stand in every shock.

Laugh at danger, far or near; Spurn at baseness, spurn at fear.

Still, with persevering might, Speak the truth, and do the right.

So shall peace, a charming guest, Dove-like in thy bosom rest; So shall honor's steady blaze Beam upon thy closing days.

RESPONSIBILITY.

EZRA STILES GANNETT, an American Unitarian divine. Born at Cambridge, Ma.s.s., 1801; died, August 26, 1871. From a patriotic address delivered in Boston.

The eyes of Europe are upon us; the monarch, from his throne, watches us with an angry countenance; the peasant turns his gaze on us with joyful faith; the writers on politics quote our condition as a proof of the possibility of popular government; the heroes of freedom animate their followers by reminding them of our success. At no moment of the last half century has it been so important that we should send up a clear and strong light which may be seen across the Atlantic. An awful charge of unfaithfulness to the interests of mankind will be recorded against us if we suffer this light to be obscured by the mingling vapors of pa.s.sion and misrule and sin. But not Europe alone will be influenced by the character we give to our destiny. The republics of the South have no other guide toward the establishment of order and freedom than our example. If this should fail them, the last stay would be torn from their hope. We are placed under a most solemn obligation, to keep before them this motive to perseverance in their endeavors to place free inst.i.tutions on a sure basis. Shall we leave those wide regions to despair and anarchy? Better that they had patiently borne a foreign yoke, though it bowed their necks to the ground.

Citizens of the United States, it has been said of us, with truth, that we are at the head of the popular party of the world. Shall we be ashamed of so glorious a rank? or shall we basely desert our place and throw away our distinction? Forbid it! self-respect, patriotism, philanthropy. Christians, we believe that G.o.d has made us a name and a praise among the nations. We believe that our religion yields its best fruit in a free land. Shall we be regardless of our duty as creatures of the Divine Power and recipients of His goodness? Shall we be indifferent to the effects which our religion may work in the world? Forbid it! our grat.i.tude, our faith, our piety. In one way only can we discharge our duty to the rest of mankind--by the purity and elevation of character that shall distinguish us as a people. If we sink into luxury, vice, or moral apathy, our brightness will be lost, our prosperity deprived of its vital element, and we shall appear disgraced before man, guilty before G.o.d.

ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC.

JAMES A. GARFIELD, American general and statesman; twentieth President of the United States. Born in Orange, Ohio, November 19, 1831; shot by an a.s.sa.s.sin, July 2, 1881; died, September 19 in the same year, at Long Branch, New Jersey. From "Garfield's Words." By permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Publishers.

The Atlantic is still the great historic sea. Even in its sunken wrecks might be read the record of modern nations. Who shall say that the Pacific will not yet become the great historic sea of the future--the vast amphitheater around which shall sit in majesty and power the two Americas, Asia, Africa, and the chief colonies of Europe. G.o.d forbid that the waters of our national life should ever settle to the dead level of a waveless calm. It would be the stagnation of death, the ocean grave of individual liberty.

GREATEST CONTINUOUS EMPIRE.

The Right Hon. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, the noted English statesman and orator. Born at Liverpool, December 29, 1809. From his "Kin beyond the Sea."

There is no parallel in all the records of the world to the case of that prolific British mother who has sent forth her innumerable children over all the earth to be the founders of half-a-dozen empires. She, with her progeny, may almost claim to const.i.tute a kind of universal church in politics. But among these children there is one whose place in the world's eye and in history is superlative; it is the American Republic.

She is the eldest born. She has, taking the capacity of her land into view as well as its mere measurement, a natural base for the greatest continuous empire ever established by man. And it may be well here to mention what has not always been sufficiently observed, that the distinction between continuous empire, and empire severed and dispersed over sea is vital. The development which the Republic has effected has been unexampled in its rapidity and force. While other countries have doubled, or at most trebled, their population, she has risen during one single century of freedom, in round numbers, from two millions to forty-five. As to riches, it is reasonable to establish, from the decennial stages of the progress thus far achieved, a series for the future; and, reckoning upon this basis, I suppose that the very next census, in the year 1880, will exhibit her to the world as certainly the wealthiest of all the nations. The huge figure of a thousand millions sterling, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps be best expressed by saying that, if we could have started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment, we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is pa.s.sing us by as if in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is in its infancy. The England and the America of the present are probably the two strongest nations of the world. But there can hardly be a doubt, as between the America and the England of the future, that the daughter, at some no very distant time, will, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably yet stronger than the mother.

TYPICAL AMERICAN.

HENRY W. GRADY, the late brilliant editor of the Atlanta _Const.i.tution_. From an address delivered at the famous New England dinner in New York.

With the Cavalier once established as a fact in your charming little books, I shall let him work out his own stratum, as he has always done, with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fas.h.i.+on. But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of their first revolution, and the American citizen, supplanting both, and stronger than either, took possession of the republic bought by their common blood and fas.h.i.+oned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and establis.h.i.+ng the voice of the people as the voice of G.o.d. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonists, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of this ideal government--charging it with such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cheris.h.i.+ng his traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored, and in the common glory we shall win as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

GRAt.i.tUDE AND PRIDE.

BENJAMIN HARRISON, American soldier, lawyer, and statesman. Born at North Bend, Ohio, August 20, 1833. Grandson of General William Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States, and himself President, 1888-1892. From a speech at Sacramento, Cal., 1891.

FELLOW-CITIZENS: This fresh, delightful morning, this vast a.s.semblage of contented and happy people, this building, dedicated to the uses of civil government--all things about us tend to inspire our hearts with pride and with grat.i.tude. Grat.i.tude to that overruling Providence that turned hither, after the discovery of this continent, the steps of those who had the capacity to organize a free representative government.

Grat.i.tude to that Providence that has increased the feeble colonies on an inhospitable coast to these millions of prosperous people, who have found another sea and populated its sunny sh.o.r.es with a happy and growing people.

Grat.i.tude to that Providence that led us through civil strife to a glory and a perfection of unity as a people that was otherwise impossible.

Grat.i.tude that we have to-day a Union of free States without a slave to stand as a reproach to that immortal declaration upon which our Government rests.

Pride that our people have achieved so much; that, triumphing over all the hards.h.i.+ps of those early pioneers, who struggled in the face of discouragement and difficulties more appalling than those that met Columbus when he turned the prows of his little vessels toward an unknown sh.o.r.e; that, triumphing over perils of starvation, perils of savages, perils of sickness, here on the sunny slope of the Pacific they have established civil inst.i.tutions and set up the banner of the imperishable Union.

NATURE SUPERIOR.

Sir FRANCIS BOND HEAD, a popular English writer. Born near Rochester, Kent, January 1, 1893. Lieutenant-general of Upper Canada 1836-1838. Died, July 20, 1875.

In both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World. The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.

AMERICA'S WELCOME.

PATRICK HENRY, a celebrated American orator and patriot. Born at Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, May 29, 1736; died, June 6, 1799. The author of the celebrated phrase, "Give me liberty or give me death," in speaking in the Virginia Convention, March, 1775.

Cast your eyes over this extensive country; observe the salubrity of your climate, the variety and fertility of your soil, and see that soil intersected in every quarter by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to wealth. You are destined, at some time or other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people; the only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant period; lingering on through a long and sickly minority; subjected, meanwhile, to the machinations, insults, and oppressions, of enemies, foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the Old World. If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage immigration; encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants, of the Old World to come and settle in this land of promise; make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed; fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your power; and I venture to prophesy there are those now living who will see this favored land amongst the most powerful on earth; able to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy, which is always so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boasts of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nina. Santa Maria. Pinta.

THE FLEET OF COLUMBUS (See pages 216 and 282.)]

But you must have _men_; you can not get along without them; those heavy forests of valuable timber, under which your lands are growing, must be cleared away; those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Do you ask how you are to get them? Open your doors, and they will come in; the population of the Old World is full to overflowing; that population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. They are already standing on tiptoe upon their native sh.o.r.es, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye; they see here a land blessed with natural and political advantages which are not equaled by those of any other country upon earth; a land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundance; a land over which peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie down at every door. They see something still more attractive than all this; they see a land in which liberty hath taken up her abode; that liberty whom they had considered as a fabled G.o.ddess, existing only in the fancies of poets; they see her here a real divinity, her altars rising on every hand throughout these happy States, her glories chanted by three millions of tongues, and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Let but this our celestial G.o.ddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the Old World, tell them to come, and bid them welcome, and you will see them pouring in from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west; your wildernesses will be cleared and settled, your deserts will smile, your ranks will be filled, and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.