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

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 goes
From 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 worn
Dresses 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 dame
Still wore it, to afford her juniors game.

Short waists departed; Taste awhile prevail'd
Till 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 deride
The 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 attire
Which 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.

BRITISH INFLUENCE. – John Randolph

Imputations of British influence have been uttered against the opponents of this war. Against whom are these charges brought? Against men who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the Councils of the Nation, or fighting the battles of your country! And by whom are these charges made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since the breaking out of the French troubles. The great autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. "Turks, Jews, and Infidels," – Melimelli or the Little Turtle, – barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle of our own institutions has been borrowed, – representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence; – against our fellow-Protestants, identified in blood, in language, in religion, with ourselves.

In what school did the worthies of our land – the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges, of America – learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots, – not more by Washington, Hancock, and Henry, – than by Chatham, and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. It ought to be remembered, too, that the heart of the English people was with us. It was a selfish and corrupt ministry, and their servile tools, to whom we were not more opposed than they were. I trust that none such may ever exist among us; for tools will never be wanting to subserve the purposes, however ruinous or wicked, of kings and ministers of state. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my imagination; of a Locke, upon my understanding; of a Sidney, upon my political principles; of a Chatham, upon qualities which would to God I possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus, upon my religion. This is a British influence which I can never shake off.

DEFENSE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. – Henry Clay

Next to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon to bestow upon the French emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia, formerly President of the United States, has never for a moment failed to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, of whom I am sorry to say, it becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir! In 1801, he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country, – and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come, – and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man! He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No! his own beloved Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides, than is this illustrious man, by the howlings of the whole British pack, let loose from the Essex kennel! When the gentleman to whom I have been compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused ancestors, – when he shall have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of a certain junto, – the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs of American history!

NATIONAL HATREDS ARE BARBAROUS. – Rufus Choate

That there exists in this country an intense sentiment of nationality; a cherished energetic feeling and consciousness of our independent and separate national existence; a feeling that we have a transcendent destiny to fulfil, which we mean to fulfil; a great work to do, which we know how to do, and are able to do; a career to run, up which we hope to ascend, till we stand on the steadfast and glittering summits of the world; a feeling, that we are surrounded and attended by a noble historical group of competitors and rivals, the other nations of the earth, all of whom we hope to overtake, and even to distance; – such a sentiment as this exists, perhaps, in the character of this people. And this I do not discourage, I do not condemn. But, sir, that among these useful and beautiful sentiments, predominant among them, there exists a temper of hostility towards this one particular nation, to such a degree as to amount to a habit, a trait, a national passion, – to amount to a state of feeling which "is to be regretted," and which really threatens another war, – this I earnestly and confidently deny. I would not hear your enemy say this. Sir, the indulgence of such a sentiment by the people supposes them to have forgotten one of the counsels of Washington. Call to mind the ever seasonable wisdom of the Farewell Address: "The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is, in some degree, a slave. It is a slave to its animosity, or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

No, sir! no, sir! We are above all this. Let the Highland clansman, half-naked, half-civilized, half-blinded by the peat-smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep, and precious hatred, set on fire of hell, alive, if he can; let the North American Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by Heaven knows what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet; let such a country as Poland, – cloven to the earth, the armed heel on the radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul incapable to die, – let her remember the "wrongs of days long past;" let the lost and wandering tribes of Israel remember theirs – the manliness and the sympathy of the world may allow or pardon this to them; – but shall America, young, free, prosperous, just setting out on the highway of heaven, "decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just begins to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and joy," shall she be supposed to be polluting and corroding her noble and happy heart, by moping over old stories of stamp act, and tea tax, and the firing of the Leopard upon the Chesapeake in a time of peace? No, sir! no, sir! a thousand times, no! Why, I protest I thought all that had been settled. I thought two wars had settled it all. What else was so much good blood shed for, on so many more than classical fields of Revolutionary glory? For what was so much good blood more lately shed, at Lundy's Lane, at Fort Erie, before and behind the lines at New Orleans, on the deck of the Constitution, on the deck of the Java, on the lakes, on the sea, but to settle exactly these "wrongs of past days?" And have we come back sulky and sullen from the very field of honor? For my country, I deny it.

MURDER WILL OUT. – Daniel Webster

An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. The fatal blow is given! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work. He explores the wrist for the pulse. He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; – no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, – and it is safe!

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds every thing as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul can not keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles, with still greater violence, to burst forth. It must be confessed; – it will be confessed; – there is no refuge from confession but suicide – and suicide is confession!

STRIVE FOR THE BEST

'Tis better to give a kindly word
Than ever so hard a blow,
To know we have by kindness stirr'd
The man who was our foe;
To feel we have a good intent,
Whatever he may feel —