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calamity from him, but if not, to give him resignation to submit. He then burst into tears and his reason again fled.

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What preacher need moralize on this story, what words save the simplest are requisite to tell it? It is too terri5 ble for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dispenser of life, death, happiness, victory. "O brothers!" I said to those who first heard me in 10 America, "O brothers! speaking the same dear mother tongue-O comrades! enemies no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand by this royal corpse and call a truce to battle! Low he lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was cast lower than 15 the poorest; dead, whom millions prayed for in vain. Driven off his throne, buffeted by rude hands, with his children in revolt, the darling of his old age killed before him untimely, our Lear hangs over her breathless lips and cries, Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little!'

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Vex not his ghost oh let him pass he hates him

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That would upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer!'

Hush! Strife and Quarrel, over the solemn grave! Sound, trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, 25 upon his pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy."

the darling of his old age: Princess Amelia, his favorite child. see" King Lear," Act V, Scene 3.

Lear:

AMERICAN FREEDOM AND PATRIOTISM

ORVILLE DEWEY

ORVILLE DEWEY (1794-1882) was a distinguished American preacher.

Freedom is the natural school of energy and enterprise. The soul was not made to walk in fetters. To act powerfully, it must act freely; and it must act, too, under all the fair incentives of an honest and honorable ambition. 5 This applies especially to the mass of the people. There may be minds, and there are, which find a sufficient incentive to exertion in the love of knowledge and improvement, in the single aim at perfection. But this is not, and cannot be, the condition of the mass of minds. They 10 need other impulses.

Open then, I say, freely and widely to every individual, the way to wealth, to honor, to social respect, and to public office, and you put life into any people. Impart that principle to a nation of Turks, or even of Hindoos, 15 and it will be as a resurrection from the dead. The sluggish spirit will be aroused; the languid nerve will be strung to new energy; there will be a stir of action and a spring to industry all over the country, because there will be a motive.

Alas! how many poor toilers in the world are obliged to labor, without reward, without hope, almost without motive! Like the machinery amidst which they labor,

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and of which they are scarcely more than a part, they are moved by the impulse of blind necessity. The single hope of bettering their condition, which now, alas! never visits them, would regenerate them to a new life.

5 Now it is with such life that this whole nation is inspired. It is freedom that has breathed the breath of life into this people. I know that there are perils attending this intense action and competition of society. But I see, nevertheless, a principle that is carrying forward this 10 country with a progress altogether unprecedented in the history of the world. Invention, internal improvement, and accumulation among us are taking strides before unheard of. More schoolhouses, colleges, and churches. have been builded in this country within the last twenty 15 years; more canals and railroads have been constructed; more fortunes have been acquired, and, what is better, more poor men have risen to competence; and, in fine, more enterprises and works of social and religious beneficence have been achieved than ever were done, take them all 20 together, in an equal time, by an equal population, under heaven.

For these things I love and honor my country. For these things I am thankful to heaven that my lot is cast in it. And this I say not in the spirit of boasting but 25 because I think the time has come when it needs to be said; because I believe that many of us are insensible to our advantages; because the eyes of the world are fixed upon

us for inquisition and for reproach, and incessant foreign criticism is likely to cool the fervor of our patriotism.

Nay, I will go further, and confess the secret hope I have long entertained, that the liberty wherewith, as I believe, God has made us free, that the equal justice, 5 the impartial rewards which encourage individual enterprise in this country, will produce yet more glorious and signal results; results that will proclaim to all the world that political equity is the best pledge for national dignity, strength, and honor; results which will, effectually and 10 forever, break down the pernicious maxim that a certain measure of political injustice and favoritism is necessary to the order and security of the social state. As I believe in a righteous Providence, I do not believe in this maxim; and I trust in God that it will receive its final and anni- 15 hilating blow in this very country.

It is not that I challenge for our people any natural superiority to other people. It is not to the shrine of national pride that I bring the homage of this lofty hope, but to the footstool of divine goodness. It is to our signal 20 advantages, and especially to the equal justice of our institutions, that I look for accomplishment of this great hope. I believe that freedom -free action, free enterprise, free competition -will be found to be the best of auspices for every kind of human success. I believe that our citizens 25 will be found to act more effectively and more nobly, for being free; that our citizen soldiers will, if called upon,

fight more valiantly for being free; that our laborers will toil more cheerfully for being free; that our merchants will trade more successfully; nay, and little as it may be expected, that our preachers and orators will discourse. 5 more eloquently, and that our authors will write more. powerfully, for the spirit of freedom that is among us.

The future, indeed, must tell us whether this is a dream of enthusiastic patriotism. But I would fain have the most generous of principles for once laid at the heart of a 10 great people, and see what it will do. Alas! for humanity -never yet has it been treated with the confidence of simple justice. Never yet has any voice effectually said to man, "God has made thee to be as happy and glorious, if thou wilt, as thy most envied fellow." When that voice 15 does address the heart of the multitude, will it not arouse

itself to loftier efforts, to nobler sacrifices, to higher aspirations, and more generous virtues than were ever seen to be the offspring of any unequal and ungenerous system that ever man has devised? God grant that the hope 20 may be realized and the vision accomplished! It were enough to make one say, "Now let me depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!"

omens.

in fine in conclusion. - made us free: see Galatians v. 1. auspices: The ancient Romans, on the eve of any undertaking, always consulted the auspicia. These were signs in the sky or in the flight of birds whereby Jupiter was supposed to indicate his approval or disapproval. For instance, lightning flashing from left to right was considered a favorable sign; from right to left an unfavorable one. - depart in peace: see St. Luke ii. 29.

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