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

From "Spit" – head, "Cooks" go o'er to "Greece,"
And while the "Miser" waits
His passage to the "Guinea" coast,
"Spendthrifts" are in the "Straits."

"Spinsters" should to the "Needles" go,
"Wine-bibbers" to "Burgundy;"
"Gourmands" should lunch at "Sandwich Isles,"
"Wags" at the Bay of "Fun" – dy.

"Bachelors" flee to the "United States,"
"Maids" to the "Isle of Man;"
Let "Gardeners" go to "Botany" Bay,
And "Shoe-blacks" to "Japan."

Thus emigrate, and misplaced men
Will they no longer vex us;
And all who ain't provided for
Had better go to "Texas."

PURITY OF THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.By Hon. Henry Wilson. 1859

While the exalted heroism of the illustrious men who, in the Cabinet and field, defied and baffled the whole power of the British empire, excites the admiration of mankind, the consciousness that the founders of American Independence were not allured into that deadly struggle by the lust of dominion and power, by the seductions of interest and ambition, or by the dazzling dreams of glory and renown, excites far higher and holier emotions. Theirs was not a contest of interest, of ambition or of glory, – theirs was a contest for principle, for the inherent and indefeasible rights of humanity. They accepted the bloody issues of civil war, rather than surrender the liberties of the people. When the terrific struggle began, which was not to be closed until the power of England on the North American continent was broken, they reverently "appealed to the supreme Ruler of the universe for the rectitude of their intentions;" and when it closed with the Independence of America achieved, they avowed to mankind in the sincerity of profound conviction that they "had contended for the rights of human nature." They "deduced from universal principles," in the words of the brilliant and philosophic Bancroft, "a bill of rights as old as creation and as wide as humanity." They embodied in this bill of rights, the promulgation of which made this day immortal in history, these sublime ideas: "all men are created equal;" "endowed by their creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" "to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;" and "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." The embodiment of these ideas, these self-evident truths, which "are as old as creation, and as wide as humanity," into the organic law of Independent America, associated the names of the founders of national independence with the general cause of human liberty, development and progress. They were champions of American Independence, – they were, also, the champions of the sacred rights of human nature, and mankind proudly claims them, in the words of Mirabeau, "as the heroes of humanity."

OLD AGE. – Theodore Parker

The old man loves the sunshine and fire – the arm-chair and the shady nook. A rude wind would jostle the full-grown apple from its bough, full ripe, full colored, too. The internal characteristics correspond. General activity is less. Salient love of new things and of persons, which hit the young man's heart, fades away. He thinks the old is better. He is not venturesome; he keeps at home. Passion once stung him into quickened life; now, that gadfly is no more buzzing in his ears.

Madame de Stael finds compensation in silence for the decay of the passion that once fired her blood; heathen Socrates, seventy years old, thanks the gods that he is now free from that "ravenous beast" which has disturbed his philosophic meditations for many years. Romance is the child of passion and imagination – the sudden father that, the long-protracting mother this. Old age has little romance. Only some rare man, like Wilhelm Von Humboldt, keeps it still fresh in his bosom.

In intellectual matters, the old man loves to recall the old time, to review his favorite old men – no new ones half so fair. So in Homer, Nestor, who is the oldest of the Greeks, is always talking of the olden times, before the grandfathers of the men then living had come into being; "not such as living had degenerate days." Verse-loving John Quincy Adams turns off from Byron and Shelley, and Wieland and Goethe, and returns to Pope. * * * Elder Brewster expects to hear St. Martin's and Old Hundred chanted in heaven. To him heaven comes in the long-used musical tradition.

The middle-aged man looks around at the present; he hopes less and works more. The old man looks back on the field he has trod: "this is the tree I planted – this is my footstep;" and he loves his old home, his old carriage, cat, dog, staff and friend.

In lands where the vine grows, I have seen an old man sit all day long, a sunny Autumn day, before his cottage-door, in a great arm-chair, his old dog lay couched at his feet, in the genial sun. The autumn winds played in the old man's venerable hairs. Above him on the wall, purpling in the sunlight, hung the full clusters of the grapes, ripening and maturing yet more. The two were just alike – the wind stirred the vine-leaves and they fell, stirred the old man's hairs and they whitened yet more – both were waiting for the spirit in them to be fully ripe.

The young man looks forward – the old man looks back. How long the shadows lie in the setting sun – the steeples, a mile long, reaching across the plain, as the sun stretches out the hills in grotesque dimensions! So are the events of life in the old man's consciousness.

BEAUTIFUL, AND AS TRUE AS BEAUTIFUL

[Paul Denton, a celebrated itinerant Methodist preacher and missionary, in the early days of Texas, when the State, then a Mexican province, was the outlaw's home, collected a large crowd at a barbecue where he promised there should be plenty to drink of the best of liquors. Denton did this to collect a crowd that he might preach to them. After the barbecue was over, one of the boldest told Paul that he lied. "Where is your liquor?" said he. Drawing himself up to his full height, Paul thus broke forth in a strain that remains unsurpassed:]

"There – there is the liquor which God, the Eternal, brews for his children.

"Not in the simmering still, over smoking fires choked with poisonous gases, and surrounded with stench of sickening odors and rank corruption doth your Father in Heaven prepare that precious essence of life, pure cold water. Both in the green shade and grassy dell, where the red deer wanders and the child loves to play, there God brews it; and down, low down in the deepest valleys, where the fountains murmur and the rills sing; and high up on the mountain tops, where the naked granite glitters like gold in the sun; where hurricanes howl music; where big waves roar the chorus, sweeping the march of God – there, he brews it, that beverage of life, health-giving water.

"And everywhere it is a thing of beauty; gleaming in a dew-drop; singing in the summer rain, shining in the ice-gem, till the trees seem turning to living jewels, spreading a golden vail over the setting sun; or white gauze round the midnight moon; sporting in the glacier; dancing in the hail-shower; folding bright snowy curtains softly above the wintry world, and weaving the many-colored iris, that seraph's zone of the sky, whose warp is the rain of earth, whose woof is the sunbeam of heaven, all checkered o'er with celestial flowers by the mystic hand of refraction – still always beautiful; that blessed cold water. No poison bubbles on its brink; its foam brings not madness and murder; no blood stains its liquid glass; pale widows and starving orphans weep not burning tears in its clear depths; no drunkard's shrieking from the grave curses it in words of despair! Speak out, my friends, would you exchange it for the demon's drink, alcohol?"

THE DELUGE

The judgment was at hand. Before the sun
Gathered tempestuous clouds, which, blackening, spread
Until their blended masses overwhelmed
The hemisphere of day: and, adding gloom
To night's dark empire, swept from zone to zone —
Swept the vast shadow, swallowing up all light,
And covering the encircled firmament
As with a mighty pall! Low in the dust

Bowed the affrighted nations, worshiping.
Anon the o'ercharged garners of the storm
Burst with their growing burden; fierce and fast
Shot down the ponderous rain, a sheeted good,
That slanted not before the baffled winds,
But, with an arrowy and unwavering rush,
Dashed hissing earthward. Soon the rivers rose,
And roaring fled their channels; and calm lakes
Awoke exulting from their lethargy,
And poured destruction on their peaceful shores.

The lightning flickered in the deluged air,
And feebly through the shout of gathering waves
Muttered the stifled thunder. Day nor night
Ceased the descending streams; and if the gloom
A little brightened when the lurid morn
Rose on the starless midnight, 'twas to show
The lifting up of waters. Bird and beast
Forsook the flooded plains, and wearily
The shivering multitudes of human doomed
Toiled up before the insatiate element.

Oceans were blent, and the leviathan
Was borne aloft on the ascending seas
To where the eagles nestled. Mountains now
Were the sole landmarks, and their sides were clothed
With clustering myriads, from the weltering waste
Whose surges clasped them, to their topmost peaks
Swathed in the stooping cloud. The hand of Death
Smote millions as they climbed; yet denser grew
The crowded nations, as the encroaching waves
Narrowed their little world.
And in that hour,
Did no man aid his fellow. Love of life
Was the sole instinct; and the strong-limbed son,
With imprecations smote the palsied sire
That clung to him for succor. Women trod
With wavering steps the precipice's brow,
And found no arm to grasp on the dread verge
O'er which she leaned and trembled. Selfishness