Shut now, the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers? Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes enumerated within the limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this! Was it the winter's storm beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching, in its last moments, at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea? was it some or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious? 'E don't take vagrants in, sir, WE And I am alone to-day, Leastwise, I could call the good manHe's not so far away. You are welcome to a breakfast I'll bring you some bread and tea; You might sit on the old stone yonder, Under the chestnut tree. You're traveling, stranger? Mebbe You've got some notions to sell? We hev a sight of peddlers, But we allers treat them well, For they, poor souls, are trying Like the rest of us to live: Not that I meant a word, sir- I think, now I look at it closer, Don't say? Under Sherman, were you? I had a boy at Shiloh, Kearney-a sergeant-Joe! Joe Kearney, you might a' met him? The pride of his mother's heart. We were off to Kittery, then, sir, Small farmers in dear old Maine ; He was all we had, was Joseph; Had sort o' growed together, I wasn't a looking for trouble Well, well, 'taint no use o' talking, Well, the heart and the flesh are rebels, Hunted by dogs, did you say! My Joe! there's his name and the date; "Joe Kearney, 7th Maine, sir, a sergeantLies here in a critical state "Just died-will be buried to-morrowCan't wait for his parents to come." Well, I thought God had left us that hour, As for John, my poor man, he was dumb. Didn't speak for a month to his neighbors, Scarce spoke in a week, sir, to me; And you were from Maine! from old Kittery? I just disremember the fellows That marched out of town with our Joe. Lord love ye! come into the house, sir; It's getting too warm out o' door. Now make yourself easy. We're humbler, The Right Must Conquer. It is what 'N this world, with its wild whirling eddies and mad foam oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no justice? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. the wise in all times were wise because they denied, and knew forever not to be. again, there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below: the the true thing. I tell thee just thing, My friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trundling at thy back in support of an unjust thing, and infinite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, I would advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton and say, "In Heaven's name, no!" Thy "success"? Poor fellow! what will thy success amount to? If the thing is unjust, thou hast not succeeded; no, not though bonfires blazed from north to south, and bells rang, and editors wrote leading articles, and the just things lay trampled out of sight, to all mortal eyes abolished and annihilated things. It is the right and noble alone that will have victory in this struggle; the rest is wholly an obstruction, a postponement and fearful imperilment of victory. Towards an eternal center of right and nobleness, and of that only, is all confusion tending. We already know whither it is all tending, what will have victory, what will have none. The heaviest will reach the center The heaviest has its deflections, its obstructions, nay, at times its reboundings; whereupon some blockhead shall be heard jubilating, "See your heaviest ascends!" but at all moments it moves centerward as fast as is convenient for it, sinking, sinking; and by laws older than the world, old as the Maker's first plan of the world, it has to arrive there. Await the issue. In all the battles, if you await the issue, each fighter has prospered according to his right. His right and his might, at the close of the account, were one and the same. He has fought with all his might, and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed; but his work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Wallace, quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scotland become, one day, a part of England; but he does hinder that it become, on tyrannical, unfair terms, a part of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a just, real union, as of brother and brother-not a false and merely semblant one, as of slave and master. If the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland; no, because brave men rose there and said, "Behold, you must not tread us down like slaves, and ye shall not and cannot!" Fight on, thou brave, true heart, and falter not, through dark fortune and through bright. The cause thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no further, yet precisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it ought to be; but the truth of it is part of nature's own laws, co-operates with the world's eternal tendencies and cannot be conquered -Thomas Carlyle. R1 Ring Out, Wild Bells. ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying clouds, the frosty light; The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new— Ring out the grief that saps the mind, For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of paltry strife; Ring in the nobler rodes of life, With sweeter manners. purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, Ring out old shapes of foul disease, Ring out the narrowing lust of gold, Ring out the thousand wars of old; Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man, and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be. |