Great God! we thank Thee for this home
This bounteous birth-land of the free;
Where wanderers from afar may come,
And breathe the air of liberty.
Still may her flowers untrampled spring,
Her harvests wave, her cities rise;
And yet, till time shall fold his wing,
Remain Earth's loveliest Paradise!

PARBODIE.

THE GREATEST COUNTRY

It has been said that this is the rich man's country. I deny it. It is the poor boy's country; it is our country; it is that country whose flag is the symbol for fair play throughout Christendom, and for the triumph of commerce and for a world-wide humanity - the greatest country on earth.

EXCELSIOR

The shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!

-LANDIS.

His brow was sad; his eye beneath

Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung

The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!

In happy homes he saw the light

Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!

"Try not the Pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

"Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! Beware the awful avalanche."

This was the peasant's last Good-night,
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!

At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard

Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,

A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!

A traveler, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!

There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,

Excelsior.

LONGFELLOW.

THE MAN WHO FAILED

Many years ago, in a rude garret near the loneliest suburbs of the city of London, lay a dying man. The face was that of a strong man, grown old through care more than age. There was a face that you might look upon but once, yet wear it in your memory forever. An aged minister stood beside the rough couch, and as the man trembled in the agony of death, the preacher faltered, "Would you die in the faith of a Christian?" "Christian? Christian?" echoed that strange man. "Can it give me back my honor? Come with me, old man. Come with me, far over the waters. Ha! we are there. native town. Yonder is the church in which I knelt when in

This is my

childhood. Yonder is the green on which I sported when a boy, but another flag waves there in place of the one that waved when I was but a child. And listen, old man. Were I to pass along the streets as I did when but a child, the very babes in their cradles would raise their tiny hands to curse me. The graves

in yonder churchyard would shrink from my footsteps, and yonder flag would rain a baptism of blood upon my head."

This was an awful death-bed. The minister had watched the last night with a hundred convicts in their cells, but had never beheld a scene so terrible as this one.

Then the good preacher spoke to him of faith in God of that great faith which pierces the clouds of human guilt and rolls them from the face of God.

"Faith? Faith? Can it give me back my honor? Look! ye priest, there over the waters sits George Washington, telling to his comrades the pleasant story of the eight years' war. There in his royal halls sits George of England, bewailing in his idiotic voice the loss of his colonies, and here am I, I who was the first to raise that flag, the first one to fight against that king, here am I dying ah dying like a dog."

The awestricken preacher started back from the look of the dying man.

"Hush! Silence along the lines, there!" he muttered in that wild, absent tone, as though speaking to the dead. "Silence along the lines. Not a word! Not a word on peril of your lives! Hark you, Montgomery, we will meet in the centre of the town. We will meet in victory, or die! Now up with the banner of the stars. Up with the flag of freedom, though the night is dark, and the snow falls. Now now one more blow, and Quebec

is ours!"

For a moment he stands there, erect, livid, and ghastly. Stands for a moment, then falls. Ah! what a hideous picture of unnatural loneliness, of unspeakable despair. Who was this strange man whose memory seemed to link something of heaven and more of hell?

The aged minister takes a faded parchment from the hand of the dying man. It is a colonel's commission in the Continental Army addressed to Benedict Arnold. And there in that rude hut, unknown, unwept, in all the bitterness of desolation, lay the body of the patriot and the traitor.

George LipPARD.

"THE MAN WHO DID NOT FAIL"

He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rolled;

He saw God stand upon the weaker side,

That sank in seeming loss before its foes;
Many there were who made great haste and sold
Unto the cunning enemy their swords.

He scorned their gifts of fame, and flower, and gold,
And underneath their soft and flowery words
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went
And humbly joined him to the weaker part.
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content

So he could be the nearer to God's heart,

And feel its solemn pulses sending blood

Through all the widespread veins of endless good.