A

Ann Sophia Stephens.

BORN in Derby, Conn., 1813. DIED in Newport, R. I., 1886.

QUEEN ESTHER'S ROCK.

[Mary Derwent. 185-.]

CLOUD of white rose upon the water as they swept downward, sending back cries and shrieks of anguish. It sunk and rose again, this time nearer the shore. Then some human being, Indian or white, dashed through the brushwood, leaped into the stream, striking out for that mass of floating white. A plunge, a long, desperate pull, and the man was struggling up the bank, carrying Mary in his arms.

It was the missionary. He held her close to his heart; he warmed her cold face against his own, searching for life upon her lips, and thanking God with a burst of gratitude when he found it.

Mary stirred in his embrace. The beat of her arms on the waters had forced them to deal tenderly with her; and the breath had not yet left her bosom. For a moment she thought herself in heaven, and smiled pleasantly to know that he was with her. But a prolonged yell from the plain, followed by a slow and appalling death-chant, brought her to consciousness with a shock. She started up, swept back her hair, and looked off towards the sound. There she met a sight that drove all thoughts of heaven from her brain. A huge fragment of stone lay in the centre of a ring, from which the brushwood had been cut away, as an executioner shreds the tresses of a victim, in order to secure a clear blow. Around this rock sixteen prisoners were ranged, and behind them a ring of savages each holding a victim pressed to the earth. thus the doomed men sat face to face, waiting for death.

And

As she gazed, Queen Esther, the terrible priestess of that night, came from her work on Monockonok Island, followed by a train of Indians, savage as herself, and swelled the horrid scene. With her son's tomahawk gleaming in her hand, she struck into a dance, which had a horrid grace in it. With every third step, the tomahawk fell, and a head rolled at her feet. The whole scene was lighted up by a huge fire, built from the brushwood cleared from the circle, and against this red light her figure rose awfully distinct. The folds of her long hair had broken loose and floated behind her, gleaming white and terrible; while the hard profile of her face cut sharply against the flames, like that of a fiend born of the conflagration.

Mary turned her eyes from this scene to the missionary: he understood the appeal.

"I will go," he said; "it may be to give up my life for theirs." “And I,” said Mary, with pale firmness-" God has smitten me with a great power."

She touched her deformed shoulder, as an angel might have pointed out its wings, and sped onwards towards the scene of slaughter-her feet scarcely touched the earth. The missionary, with all his zeal, could hardly keep pace with her.

Queen Esther's death-chant increased in volume and fury as the chain of bleeding heads lengthened and circled along her tracks. Life after life had dropped before her, and but two were left, when Mary Derwent forced herself through the belt of savages and sprang upon the rock.

แ

Warriors, stop the massacre—in the name of the Great Spirit, I command you."

She spoke in the Indian tongue, which had been a familiar language since her childhood; her hand was uplifted; her eyes bright with inspiration; around her limbs the white garments clung like marble folds to a statue.

Queen Esther paused and looked up with the sneer of a demon in her eyes. But the Indians who held the men yet alive withdrew their hold, and fell upon their faces to the earth.

The two men crouched on the ground, numb with horror; they did not even see the being who had come to save them.

The missionary bent over them and whispered— "Up and flee towards Forty Fort."

They sprang up and away. The Indians saw them, but did not move. Queen Esther heard their leap, and ended her chant in a long low wail. Then she turned in her rage, and would have flung her tomahawk at the angel girl, but the Indians sprang upon the rock and guarded her with their uplifted weapons. Superstition, with them, was stronger than reverence for their demon queen.

The rage of that old woman was horrible. She prowled around the phalanx of savages like a tigress; menaced them with her weapons with impotent fury, and, springing on her horse, galloped through the forest by the smouldering fort and across the plain, until she came out opposite the little island where her son was buried. Her horse paused on the brink of the stream, white with foam and dripping with sweat, but she struck him with the flat of her tomahawk and he plunged in, bearing her to the island. Here she cast her steed loose, staggered up to the new-made grave, dropped the reeking tomahawk upon it, and fell down from pure physical exhaustion, bathed with blood as a fiend is draped in flame.

As the aged demon took her way to that grave, the angel girl turned

to her path of mercy. For that night the massacre was stayed. To the Indians she had appeared as a prophetess from the Great Spirit, who had laid his hand heavily upon her shoulder as a symbol of divine authority.

FOR

Stephen Arnold Douglas.

BORN in Brandon, Vt., 1813. DIED in Chicago, Ill., 1861.

HIS COUNTRY FIRST.

[Address, on the War, to the Illinois Legislature, 25 April, 1861.]

OR the first time since the adoption of this Federal Constitution, a widespread conspiracy exists to destroy the best government the sun of heaven ever shed its rays upon. Hostile armies are now marching upon the Federal capital, with a view of planting a revolutionary flag upon its dome. The boast has gone forth by the secretary of war of this revolutionary government that on the first day of May the revolutionary flag shall float from the walls of the Capitol at Washington, and that on the fourth day of July the revolutionary army shall hold possession of the Hall of Independence. The simple question presented to us is whether we will wait for the enemy to carry out this boast of making war on our soil, or whether we will rush as one man to the defence of this government, and its capital, to defend it from the hands of all assailants who have threatened it. Already the piratical flag has been unfurled against the commerce of the United States. Letters of marque have been issued, appealing to the pirates of the world to assemble under that revolutionary flag, and commit depredations on the commerce carried on under the stars and stripes. Hostile batteries have been planted upon its fortresses; custom-houses have been established; and we are required now to pay tribute and taxes without having a voice in making the laws imposing them, or having a share in the distribution of them after they have been collected. The question is whether this war of aggression shall proceed, and we remain with folded arms inactive spectators, or whether we shall meet the aggressors at the threshold and turn back the tide.

I ask you to reflect and then point out any one act that has been done, any one duty that has been omitted to be done, of which these disunionists can justly complain. Yet we are told, simply because one party has succeeded in a Presidential election, therefore they choose to consider that their liberties are not safe, and therefore they will break up the govern

ment. I had supposed that it was a cardinal and fundamental principle of our system of government that the decision of the people at the ballotbox, without a fraud, according to the forms of the Constitution, was to command the explicit obedience of every good citizen. If their defeat at a Presidential election is to justify the minority, or any portion of the minority, in raising the traitorous hand of rebellion against the constituted authorities, you will find the future history of the United States written in the history of Mexico. According to my reading of Mexican history, there never has been one presidential term, from the time of the revolution of 1820 down to this day, when the candidate elected by the people ever served his four years. In every instance, either the defeated candidate has seized upon the presidential chair by the use of the bayonet, or he has turned out the only duly elected candidate before his term expired. Are we to inaugurate this Mexican system in the United States of America? . . The first duty of an American citizen, or of a citizen of any constitutional government, is obedience to the constitution and laws of his country. I have no apprehension that any man in Illinois or beyond the limits of our own beloved State will misconstrue or misunderstand my motive. So far as any of the partisan questions are concerned, I stand in equal, eternal, and undying opposition to the Republicans and the Secessionists. You all know that I am a good partisan fighter in partisan times. And you will find me equally as good a patriot when the country is in danger. Permit me to say to the assembled Representatives and Senators of our good old State, composed of men of both political parties, that in my opinion it is your duty to lay aside your party creeds and party platforms, to lay aside your party organizations and partisan appeals, to forget that you were divided, until you have rescued the government and the country from their assailants. Then resume your partisan positions, according to your wishes. Give me a country first, that my children may live in peace; then we will have a theatre for our party organizations to operate upon. I appeal to you, my countrymen, men of all parties, not to allow your passions to get the better of your judgments. Do not allow your vengeance upon the authors of this great iniquity to lead you into rash and cruel and desperate acts upon those who may differ from you in opinion. Let the spirit of moderation and of justice prevail. You cannot expect, within so few weeks after an excited political canvass, that every man can rise to the level of forgetting his partisan prejudices and sacrifice everything upon the altar of his country; but allow me to say to you, whom I have opposed and warred against with an energy you will respect, -allow me to say to you that you will not be true to your country if you ever attempt to manufacture partisan capital out of the miseries of your country. When calling upon Democrats to rally to the tented field,

leaving wife, child, father, and mother behind them, to rush to the rescue of the President that you elected, do not make war upon them and try to manufacture partisan capital out of a struggle in which they are engaged from the holiest and purest of motives. Then I appeal to you, my Democratic friends, do not allow the mortification growing out of a defeat in a partisan struggle, and the elevation to power of a party that we firmly believed to be dangerous to the country,-do not let that convert you from patriots to traitors to your native land. Whenever our government is assailed, when hostile armies are marching under rude and odious banners against the government of our country, the shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war. The greater the unanimity the less blood will be shed. The more prompt and energetic is the movement, and the more important it is in numbers, the shorter will be the struggle.

I am not prepared to take up arms, or to sanction a policy of our government to take up arms, to make any war on the rights of the Southern States, on their institutions, on their rights of person or property, but, on the contrary, would rush to their defence and protect them from assault: but, while that is the case, I will never cease to urge my coun trymen to take arms to fight to the death in defence of our indefeasible rights. Hence, if a war does come, it is a war of self-defence on our part. It is a war in defence of our own just rights, in defence of the government which we have inherited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic fathers, in defence of our great rights of freedom of trade, commerce, transit, and intercourse from the centre to the circumference of this great continent. These are rights we must struggle for and never surrender.

I see no path of ambition open in a bloody struggle for triumphs over my countrymen. There is no path of ambition open to me in a divided country. Hence, whatever we do must be the result of duty, of conviction, of patriotic duty, the duty we owe to ourselves, to our posterity, and to the friends of constitutional liberty and self-government throughout the world.

My friends, I can say no more. To discuss these topics is the most painful duty of my life. It is with a sad heart, with a grief that I have never before experienced, that I have to contemplate this fearful struggle; but I believe in my conscience that it is a duty we owe to ourselves, our children, and our God, to protect this government and that flag from every assailant, be he who he may.