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

Back whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven.

Back! back, ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shore!

Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The red man owns the country, and the pale face must never enjoy it!

War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the grave. Our country must give no rest to a white man's bones.

All the tribes of the North are dancing the war dance. Two mighty warriors across the seas will send us arms.

Tecumseh will soon return to his country. My prophets shall tarry with you. They will stand between you and the bullets of your enemies. When the white man approaches you, the yawning earth shall swallow him up.

Soon shall you see my arm of fire stretched athwart the sky. I will stamp my foot at Tippecanoe, and the very earth shall shake.

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION. – Hon. S. S. Cox, House of Representatives, March 19th, 1860

Is there any American who wishes to consult European Powers as to the propriety or policy of our territorial expansion? Is there any one who fears a fatal blow from these Powers? We do not exist by the sufferance of Europe, but by its insufferance. We did not grow to our present greatness by its fostering care, but by its neglect, and in spite of its malevolence. We do not ask its pardon for being born, nor need we apologize to it for growing. It has endeavored to prevent even the legitimate extension of our commerce, and to confine us to our own continent. But if we can buy Cuba of Spain, it is our business with Spain. If we have to take it, it is our business with Providence. If we must save Mexico, and make its weakness our strength, we have no account to render unto Europe or its dynasties.

If European Powers choose to expand their empire and energize their people, we have no protests, no arms to prevent them. England may push from India through the Himalayas to sell her calicoes to the numberless people of Asia, and divide with France the empires of India, Burmah, and China. Civilization does not lose by their expansion. Russia may push her diplomacy upon Pekin, and her armies through the Caucasus, and upon Persia and Tartary; she may even plant her Greek cross again on the mosque of St. Sophia, and take the Grecian Levant into her keeping as the head of its church and civilization. France may plant her forts and arts upon the shores of the Red Sea; complete the canalization of Suez; erect another Carthage on the shores of the Mediterranean; bind her natural limits from Mont Blanc, in Savoy, to Nice, upon the sea. Sardinia may become the nucleus of the Peninsula, and give to Italy a name and a nationality. Even Spain, proud and poor, may fight over again in Africa the romantic wars with the Morescoes, by which she educated that chivalry and adventure, which three centuries ago made her the mistress of the New World. She may demand territory of Morocco, as she has, as indemnity for the war. America has no inquiry to make, no protocol to sign. These are the movements of an active age. They indicate health, not disease – growth, not decay. They are links in the endless chain of Providence. They prove the mutability of the most imperial of human institutions; but, to the philosophic observer, they move by a law as fixed as that which makes the decay of autumn the herald of spring. They obey the same law by which the constellations change their places in the sky. Astronomers tell us that the "southern cross," which guarded the adventurer upon the Spanish main four centuries ago, and which now can be seen, the most beautiful emblem of our salvation, shining down through a Cuban and Mexican night, – just before the Christian era, glittered in our northern heavens! The same GREAT WILL, which knows no North and no South, and which is sending again, by an irreversible law, the southern cross to our northern skies, on its everlasting cycle of emigration – does it not control the revolutions of nations, and the vicissitudes of empires? The very stars in their courses are "Knights of the Golden Circle," and illustrate the record of human advancement. They are the type of that territorial expansion from which this American continent can not be exempted without annihilation. The finger of Providence points to our nation as the guiding star of this progress. Let him who would either dusk its radiancy, or make it the meteor of a moment, cast again with nicer heed our nation's horoscope.

MARTHA HOPKINS. – Phœbe Cary

From the kitchen, Martha Hopkins, as she stood there making pies,
Southward looks along the turnpike, with her hand above her eyes;
Where along the distant hill-side, her yearning heifer feeds,
And a little grass is growing in a mighty sight of weeds.

All the air is full of noises for there isn't any school,
And boys, with turned-up pantaloons, are wading in the pool;
Blithely frisk unnumber'd chickens, cackling, for they can not laugh,
Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps a little calf.

Gentle eyes of Martha Hopkins! tell me wherefore do ye gaze,
On the ground that's being furrow'd for the planting of the maize?
Tell me wherefore down the valley, ye have traced the turnpike's way
Far beyond the cattle-pasture, and the brick-yard with its clay?

Ah! the dog-wood tree may blossom, and the door-yard grass may shine,
With the tears of amber dropping from the washing on the line,
And the morning's breath of balsam, lightly brush her faded cheek —
Little recketh Martha Hopkins of the tales of spring they speak.

When the summer's burning solstice on the scanty harvest glow'd,
She had watch'd a man on horseback riding down the turnpike road;
Many times she saw him turning, looking backward quite forlorn,
Till amid her tears she lost him in the shadow of the barn.

Ere the supper-time was over, he had pass'd the kiln of brick,
Cross'd the rushing Yellow River, and forded quite a creek,
And his flat-boat load was taken, at the time for pork and beans,
With the traders of the Wabash, to the wharf at New Orleans.

Therefore watches Martha Hopkins – holding in her hand the pans,
When the sound of distant footsteps seems exactly like a man's:
Not a wind the stove-pipe rattles, not a door behind her jars,
But she seems to hear the rattle of his letting down the bars.

Often sees she men on horseback coming down the turnpike rough,
But they came not as John Jackson, she can see it well enough;
Well she knows the sober trotting of the sorrel horse he keeps,
As he jogs along at leisure, with head down like a sheep's.

She would know him 'mid a thousand, by his home-made coat and vest,
By his socks, which were blue woolen, such as farmers wear out West;
By the color of his trowsers, and his saddle which was spread,
By a blanket which was taken for that purpose from the bed.

None like he the yoke of hickory, on the unbroken ox can throw
None amid his father's cornfields use like him the spade and hoe;
And at all the apple-cuttings, few, indeed, the men are seen,
That can dance with him the polka, touch with him the violin.

He has said to Martha Hopkins, and she thinks she hears him now;
For she knows as well as can be, that he meant to keep his vow;
When the buck-eye tree has blossom'd, and your uncle plants his corn,
Shall the bells of Indiana usher in the wedding-morn.

He has invited his relations, bought a Sunday hat and gown,
And he thinks he'll get a carriage, and they'll spend a day in town;
That their love will newly kindle, and what comfort it will give,
To sit down to the first breakfast in the cabin where they'll live.

Tender eyes of Martha Hopkins! what has got you in such scrape,
'Tis a tear that falls to glitter on the ruffle of her cape;
Ah! the eye of love may brighten, to be certain what it sees,
One man looks like another, when half-hidden by the trees.

But her eager eyes rekindle, she forgets the pies and bread,
As she sees a man on horseback, round the corner of the shed,
Now tie on another apron, get the comb and smooth your hair,
'Tis the sorrel horse that gallops, 'tis John Jackson's self that's there.

THE BASHFUL MAN'S STORY. – Charles Matthews

Among the various good and bad qualities incident to our nature, I am unfortunately that being overstocked with the one called bashfulness; for you most know, I inherit such an extreme susceptibility of shame, that on the smallest subject of confusion, my blood rushes into my cheeks, and I appear a perfect full-blown rose; in short, I am commonly known by the appellation of "The Bashful Man." The consciousness of this unhappy failing, made me formerly avoid that social company, I should otherwise have been ambitious to appear in: till at length becoming possessed of an ample fortune, by the death of a rich old uncle, and vainly supposing that "money makes the man," I was now determined to shake off my natural timidity, and join in the gay throng: with this view I accepted of an invitation to dine with one, whose open easy manner left me no room to doubt of a cordial welcome. Sir Thomas Friendly, an intimate friend of my late uncle's, with two sons and five daughters, all grown up, and living with their mother and a maiden sister of Sir Thomas's. Conscious of my unpolished gait, I for some time took private lessons of a professor, who teaches "grown gentlemen to dance." Having by this means acquired the art of walking without tottering, and learning to make a bow, I boldly ventured to obey the baronet's invitation to a family dinner, not doubting but my new acquirements would enable me to see the ladies with tolerable intrepidity but, alas! how vain are all the hopes of theory, when unsupported by habitual practice. As I approached the house, a dinner-bell alarmed my fears, lest I had spoiled the dinner by want of punctuality; impressed with this idea, I blushed the deepest crimson, as my name was repeatedly announced by the several livery-servants, who ushered me into the library, hardly knowing what or whom I saw. At my first entrance, I summoned all my fortitude, and made my new-learnt bow to Lady Friendly; but, unfortunately, in bringing my left foot to the third position, I trod upon the gouty toe of poor Sir Thomas, who had followed close to my heels, to be the nomenclator of the family. The confusion this occasioned in me is hardly to be conceived, since none but bashful men can judge of my distress; and of that description, the number, I believe, is very small. The baronet's politeness, by degrees, dissipated my concern, and I was astonished to see how far good breeding could enable him to support his feelings, and to appear with perfect ease, after so painful an accident.

The cheerfulness of her ladyship, and the familiar chat of the young ladies, insensibly led me to throw off my reserve and sheepishness, till, at length, I ventured to join in conversation, and even to start fresh subjects. The library being richly furnished with books in elegant bindings, and observing an edition of Xenophon, in sixteen volumes, which (as I had never before heard of) greatly excited my curiosity. I rose up to examine what it could be; Sir Thomas saw what I was about, and, as I suppose, willing to save me the trouble, rose to take down the book, which made me more eager to prevent him; and hastily laying my hand on the first volume, I pulled it forcibly; but, lo! instead of books, a board, which by leather and gilding had been made to look like sixteen volumes, came tumbling down, and unluckily pitched upon a Wedgewood inkstand on the table, under it. In vain did Sir Thomas assure me, there was no harm; I saw the ink streaming from an inlaid table on the Turkey carpet, and, scarce knowing what I did, I attempted to stop its progress with my cambric handkerchief. In the height of this confusion, we were informed that dinner was served up, and I with joy perceived that the bell, which at first had so alarmed my fears, was only the half-hour dinner-bell.

In walking through the hall and suite of apartments to the dining-room, I had time to collect my scattered senses, and was desired to take my seat between Lady Friendly and her eldest daughter, at the table. Since the fall of the wooden Xenophon, my face had been continually burning, like a firebrand; and I was just beginning to recover myself, and to feel comfortably cool, when an unlooked-for accident rekindled all my heat and blushes. Having set my plate of soup too near the edge of the table, in bowing to Miss Dinah, who politely complimented the pattern of my waistcoat, I tumbled the whole scalding contents into my lap. In spite of an immediate supply of napkins to wipe the surface of my clothes, my black silk breeches were not stout enough to save me from the painful effects of this sudden fomentation, and for some minutes my legs and thighs seemed stewing in a boiling caldron; but recollecting how Sir Thomas had disguised his torture, when I trod upon his toe, I firmly bore my pain in silence, and sat with my lower extremities parboiled, amidst the stifled giggling of the ladies and servants.