most miserable, and have panted for Newburyport as he never panted for Nazareth. Goethe's Weimar, Elizabeth's England, Lorenzo's Florence, Cæsar's Rome, Sappho's Greece, Solomon's Jerusalem, we should every one of us be glad enough to get out of them, when curiosity was once gratified, back to Boston and 1892. And getting back this is the principal point-we should probably find more heroes to the thousand in the population, more men and women with the stuff in them that heroes are made of, than we had encountered in our whole peregrination among the famous ages and places. The men who rallied for Salamis and Naseby rallied in no nobler spirit than those who rallied for Gettysburg; and there were not as many men in London willing to go to the stake at Smithfield for their faith as would be found ready for the stake on Boston Common to-morrow if such a test involved such immolation. The truth is, heroes are as thick as blackberries; they were never so thick as to-day. Every fire, every fever, every tempest, every shipwreck, every squall in the harbor, every accident on the railway, every election, every strike, every study of how the "other half" live, brings them to light by the score; the newspapers are vastly fuller of them than the Bibles. And yet we do not crown our heroes- - not often-with crowns as bright as those we keep for heroes of equal calibre in the past; we turn with the greater fondness to the past, and leave ours chiefly for crowning by the future whose past shall be our present. "And three of the thirty chief went down, and came to David in the harvest time unto the cave of Adullam: and the troop of the Philistines pitched in the valley of Rephaim. And David was then in a hold, and the garrison of the Philistines was then in Beth-lehem. And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Beth-lehem, which is by the gate! And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Beth-lehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it.' This story we keep a part of our Bible, read it on Sunday in the churches to generation after generation, and say, Here beginneth II. Samuel, xxiii, 13. To generation after generation we read the story of Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wounded on the field of Zutphen: "Being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought him; but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle, which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man, with these words: Thy necessity is yet greater than mine." These stories of chivalry and heroism we read, records of the Sidneys and the Bayards, without fear and without reproach, and we are thrilled as we read, and it does us credit that we are; only it does not do us credit if David and Sidney are pouring out the water of their lives before our eyes and we do not see them, if we have no eyes for the Davids and Sidneys and Bayards of America, but only ears for those of France and Holland and Judea. And-by this long road we came back to the point from which we started—it would seem as if this America, this year four centuries old, did not have eyes for heroes, if it can read the story of such a life as this of Armstrong, if it can read of such a work as this at Hampton, and not rise up in a great common enthusiasm and crown the hero while he is yet with us, while he is yet a living man and not a dead man, with the glad assurance that the great work for which he has poured out his life is placed on the firm foundations of permanent and full success. Whittier, whose poem has just been helping us teach our truth, and whose own eyes are as open to what is good and true and beautiful to-day as to what was good yesterday, has said that he knows of no other man in America who is doing so much good as General Armstrong is doing at Hampton. There is no kind of good work needing to be done in America more important or imperative than that of uplifting, by the power of education, these two races which we have trodden down, and fitting them for good citizenship in the republic. The sword was not sheathed at Appomattox before Armstrong saw the imperativeness of this work so far as concerned the negro at the South; and from that day to this, forgetting all else, he has thought only of this one thing, pouring out his great energies like water, ever doing ten men's work, ever bearing ten men's burden, until the force of nature could carry him no farther and, struck down by paralysis, he fell. All the records of chivalry show no nature more chivalrous than his, no knight more fearless or blameless, no stronger, whiter soul. It has been no sporadic heroism, it has been a life of heroism. What Bethlehem, Picardy, and Zutphen saw for a moment, Hampton has seen uninterruptedly for almost thirty years. Thy necessity is greater than mine, said this man to his black brother first entering into his freedom; and, putting self behind forever, putting all behind but this great duty, he has gone on saying this through life. This noble life, this hero before our own eyes, makes an appeal to every heart with capacity for heroworship in it, as strong and stirring as the work itself to which he is devoted; the man and the work are one. And across the centuries comes the voice of the elder heroes, to rebuke us if, in chanting their praises, we forget our duties and fail to know the men in whom their spirit lives on to-day. If we long, when we read the story, to fly to the Bethlehem hills and make the Judean king hear our Well done! we straightway hear his word: If ye say it unto Armstrong, ye say it unto me. If we long to prove to Bayard and to Sidney that our hearts glow and that we are grateful because they were true and heroic, we hear their word: If ye prove it unto Armstrong, ye prove it unto me. And we hear the word of a greater than Sidney, and greater than David: Inasmuch as ye do it unto Armstrong and unto the least of these whom he has loved with me, ye do it unto me. Few more impressive meetings have ever been held in the Old South Meeting House than that which was held there a little while ago, when General Armstrong was struck down by paralysis in Boston, to take measures for meeting the immediate needs of Hampton and to assure him that the interests which he had so anxiously at heart should not suffer in his, illness. "When, nearly twenty years ago," said Edward Everett Hale, who presided, "it was promised to the people of Boston that this meeting-house should always be ready for the discussion of any of the central subjects of social order, of public spirit, of education, of anything that relates to the service of man, I doubt if one of us ever thought that so important a subject could he brought before us as is now brought. We are here for two purposes. One of these purposes we are sorry for: the other we are glad for in the same proportion. We are glad to extend to our dear friend Armstrong some such expression of sympathy as shall make him feel sure that we are going to carry his work forward: we are profoundly sorry that he cannot be here to speak with his usual words of fire. Our purpose is to say that that work shall go forward, and that he shall not chafe in his sick-room at the thought that it may be set back by an inch or by a minute." He went on to speak of the signal importance of the work at Hampton, and concluded: "I think that General Armstrong has done more in the problem of reconstruction than any man before the country like to say that, and we might say much more. He has committed himself to the business of reconstruction in a practical way, and it is our business to see his work through." Dr. Samuel Eliot spoke at length of the character of the education given at Hampton, with which he was personally so familiar, — the intellectual, the industrial, and the moral training. "There is a moral training in that school," he said, "such as I hardly dare to claim for any of our public schools in Boston." He called attention to the fact that forty thousand colored children in the South to-day are in charge of Hampton graduates, who are serving as teachers. "Why," he exclaimed, "to look back on such work for one year is to look on something like a miracle, that a school founded in Virginia in the dark period following the war should train a sufficient number of teachers to take forty thousand children into their arms!" Speaking of General Armstrong, he said: "It was said of the Duke of Wellington that his first object was to help his country, by the sword, if necessary, or by the pick-axe, if necessary. He whose presence is almost as visible on this platform as if he were here has helped his country literally by the sword, and almost as literally by the pick-axe; for he has broken up the crusts of two races, hardened by generations, and has let in the light of seed-time and of harvest.' Rev. Samuel J. Barrows also spoke of the work at Hampton, from a basis of still more intimate knowledge. He spoke of the origin of the work, of which he had been a witness, and of its wonderful influence throughout the length and breadth of the South, and of the North as well. "You think," he continued, "that General Armstrong has conducted but one process of education? No: he has had three processes going on. One has been for the Negro and the Indian, another the education of the white men of the South. But he has had to do something more. He has had to educate the people of the North into confidence and faith in his work. The first process, the education of the Negro and the Indian, must and will go on. The education of the Southern man is also going on. But is it not time that the education of the North was finished? It will not be finished until the endowment of Hampton is complete. We are told that there is no work for the principals of these schools so hard during the year as that of coming North to gather the fagots to keep the fire burning at Hampton and Tuskegee. Is there one of us who would not shrink from the responsibility of that blow which has crippled the General? And yet, if his work had been supported as it might have been, would it have occurred? God be thanked for the noble men and women who have held up his right hand; but I ask myself, if the other hand had been held up with equal generosity, would it have been necessary for it to fall? In all the history of Hampton there is no appeal more pathetic, more earnest, for its work, than the appeal of that crippled arm.' Rev. H. B. Frissell, the vice-principal of Hampton, explained the present needs of the school; and the most impressive address of the day was that which followed, by Mr. Booker T. Washington, the young colored man, graduate of Hampton, who now stands at the head of the similar work at Tuskegee. "To a young man just emerging from slavery," he said in a voice tremulous with emotion, "and entering into the pure, strong, unselfish influence of General Armstrong's personality, as it was my privilege with hundreds of others to do, there came all at once a new idea of the possibilities and opportunities of life that it is hard for most of this audience to appreciate." He spoke of the deep feeling of obligation of the colored race to General Armstrong, and of the love and confidence of those who had been his students. "When, engaged in our own work in the South, we have become discouraged by reason of the many difficulties by which we have been surrounded, it has been the mental picture of General Armstrong that has given us strength to go on and conquer. When we have been inclined to yield to selfish thoughts and live for ourselves, it has been the vision of General Armstrong, who lived only for others, that has made us ashamed of our selfishness; and when we have been inclined to grow inactive and indifferent, we have thought of General Armstrong, who never rested day or night, winter or summer, and this has given us new zeal and activity. General Armstrong," he said, "has actually worn away his life, not for his own cause, or for Hampton's cause, but for the nation's cause, your cause, and my The question which comes to each of us with renewed emphasis, as the hero lies prostrate, is, What will we give of our service and substance, that his work may continue and be perpetual?" cause. Rev. Edward G. Porter and Rev. George A. Gordon followed with words of earnest appeal; and the closing address was given by Phillips Brooks: "I am anxious," said Mr. Brooks, "that this should be not simply a meeting filled with a sense of pity for General Armstrong. If there is any man in this country to be congratulated upon the life which he has lived and the work which he has done, it is he who is to-day incapacitated for that work by sickness. Think what it has been! Think what he has done! It has been given to him to lay a firmer grasp upon the problem which specially confronts and has peculiarly appalled our country than any other man. We have all been tending, in the study of this problem, to the thought that the key to it lies in education. General Armstrong is the man who has distinctly applied that key. He is the man who has proved that which we believe. He has done the thing which we have been talking about. " General Armstrong, Mr. Brooks said further, had given a voice to a dumb race. He had been a later Garrison, a later Lincoln, carrying far forward the work of emancipation. He had touched the fountains of generosity in stingy men, and made men feel as they never dreamed of feeling. He had had one special, distinct thing to do, and he had said that he had come nearer to accomplishing the ideal of his life than was given to almost any man. "We should then give to General Armstrong," concluded Mr. Brooks, "not merely our pity and sympathy, but our profound congratulations. Let us tell him how we rejoice with him. And, if it be so that from the door of the great mystery into which it seemed he was just going to enter, God has called him back to live a little longer and work a little more, let us not come merely with pity to console him by the contributions that we can make, but let us offer him our hearts, our hands, and our purses, and beg him to give us the privilege of sharing with him the life which God has given back to him." An appeal was made by the Committee appointed at this Old South meeting to raise the amount needed to meet the immediate needs of Hampton. Twenty thousand dollars were asked for, for this purpose; and that sum, and a few thousand dollars more, was quickly contributed, chiefly by the people of Boston. But a greater problem than this is presented to the American people presented largely to the people of New England, who have ever been the great supporters of this great work. This problem is that of the adequate endowment of Hampton - an endowment that shall once and forever put an end to every financial anxiety and concern in connection with the school. The present year should not come to an end without seeing this endowment complete — and it should not be less than a million dollars. The New York Tribune is publishing in these days lists of our millionnaires. It finds a thousand and more of them, we think, in New York alone; it finds some hundreds of them in Boston - and so on. If a tithe of these American millionnaires would send to Hampton a tithe of the amount which they will contribute to add to the extravagances of these June weddings, the work would be done. But be the work done as it may, by one or by a thousand, let it be done; and let it be done now, that it may be not only the American people's provision for carrying on the noble work, but the American people's crown upon General Armstrong's heroic life. THE simple fact that Hampton is not yet, after nearly thirty years, adequately endowed, and that the rich American people have quietly looked on watching General Armstrong wear out his life in the effort to get the institution upon a sound basis, suggests anew the strange disproportion in men's interests and activities, and their distorted sense of values. We do not think the remark we have just made, that enough money will be wasted on useless wedding presents in this month of June to adequately endow Hampton if it was turned thither, an at all extravagant remark. We suppose it costs our national government about the same amount to build a big gunboat that it would take to endow Hampton. Our people are very jealous about having the national government spend much money on educational enterprises: we see this in the fights over the appropriations for the Smithsonian Institution, we see it in the failure to make decent provision for the Bureau of Education, we saw it especially in the nature of many of the arguments against the Blair bill. But there is no jealousy about money for gunboats, the chief use of which is to make it easy for us to bully weak peoples and get into wars which we should never run any risk of getting into, but avoid by simple conference like reasonable men, if we didn't have the gunboats. We have spent enough money in killing Indians and maintaining injustice against them, in the last hundred years, to have made Harvard grad uates of all the Indians in our borders and settled them all at good industries, if we had chosen to be Christians toward them instead of savages. Were half the money spent each year by Germany and France and Italy on their great armaments devoted instead to the promotion of industry and the actual good of the people, the millennium would seem approaching within ten years. We send money and wheat to Russia, to feed the starving people; it is a solemn question whether it is right to do it while the Russian government has no trouble in raising twenty times as much money every year for supporting armies to oppress the people and threaten the peace of Europe as would suffice to remove from her borders all danger of starvation and suffering. Coming closer home, is it too much to say that if half the money now spent by the City of Boston upon jails and almshouses and hospitals were spent instead in measures for decently housing and educating and disciplining and keeping at good work the classes from which these institutions are filled, the need of their existence would rapidly disappear? We are unwilling to deal in a great way with education and industry, but we then build prisons in a great way, because we must do that to keep things even. We will not attend to the fountain together, but we will build dams together, because we must to pay for neglecting the fountains. We will not bake bread in our corporate capacity, so in our corporate capacity we must kill It will not do to organize righteousness, and so we organize wickedness or the things we suspect to be wicked or the things that have to be organized to curb wickedness. In a word, we have up to date only learned how to act efficiently with regard to the negative things, not the positive things. When we get beyond our freshmen year in politics, we shall not starve our schoolmasters and celebrate our gunboats. men. MR. HERBERT WELSH, the public-spirited and energetic secretary of the Indian Rights Association, who has rendered conspicuous service in behalf of pure politics in Philadelphia, was one of the speakers in the course of lectures given before the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Good Citizenship, at the Old South Meeting House in Boston this spring. He was also one of the lecturers in the Old South course for young people two years ago; and his impressions of the Old South work and its importance were such as have led him to issue an address to the people of Philadelphia, which is printed in a little leaflet, urging the inauguration of similar work in that city. His address is so interesting that we print it entire. Mr. MacAlister, the president of the new Drexel Institute, and other wise and earnest people are with Mr. Welsh in his desire and effort to establish "Old South" work in Philadelphia; and the effort is sure to succeed. There is none of our cities where the teaching of American history to the young people can be carried on under more favorable surroundings than in Philadelphia. Impressive object lessons are all about the young people. As the lessons at the Old South have double emphasis from being spoken within the walls which have echoed the words of Samuel Adams and Otis and Warren, so the lessons given at Philadelphia will be illuminated and enforced by Carpenters' Hall and Independence Hall and all the associations of the old city of the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention and the administration of Washington. The Philadelphia lecturers are to be felicitated on the inspirations and the helps which they will find so plentifully close at hand. We wish Mr. Welsh and his friends the highest success. Mr. Welsh's "open letter" is as follows: Many Philadelphians are doubtless familiar with the Old South Lecture Course, which had its origin in Boston, in the historic meeting-house from which it derived its name as a local habitation, and from which a vigorous shoot, as we are informed, has taken root and now flourishes in Chicago. The object of the Old South lecture plan was the development of a wholesome spirit of patriotism in the public-school children of Boston, a spirit somewhat in danger, apparently, of falling into a declineand the cultivation of that knowledge of the duties of good citizenship, and of a sense of responsibility for a performance of them, which was felt to be a public necessity. The generosity of a single public-spirited and wealthy woman saved the Old South Church building from destruction when it was threatened by the tides of the city's growth, and gathered within walls which had once listened to the words of Warren, Otis, and of Washington, hundreds of public-school children, to be informed of the incidents of the lives of American patriots and of the principles which had made them illustrious. The plan seems to have worked well, judging by the number of years that it has been in operation, and by the great number of young people brought under its influence, and in whom it has aroused a strong sense of responsibility for the right use of their national inheritance. Of course, like most sound educational schemes, its strength lies in wise seed-planting and in patient restraint from expectations of a hasty harvest. We are told that one able and energetic woman has obliged Tammany to sweep the streets of New York. If Boston and New York can do this much (the one city for education, the other for cleanliness) through the public spirit of a woman, why should the New Philadelphia do less? Cannot the Colonial Dames or the New Century Club furnish a Jael who shall emulate in courage, if not in craft, her Hebrew prototype, and smite fatally the Sisera of municipal corruption and misrule? And why should not this simple and effective plan of the Old South Lecture Course, whereby the civic courage, independence, homely belief in public honesty, in duty and self-sacrifice- all the elements of a national life truly and permanently great are placed in an attractive and impressive form before the children of to-day, be made use of in Philadelphia? The secret of the success of the Old South plan is that it teaches history from a living and most practical standpoint. It is the application of the best that our past has given to the brain and heart of the youth of the present. It aims to get a hearing from the young men and the young women just entering active life on behalf of moral aspiration and of duty, before the low motives and false standards of the business or social or political world have had time to exert their evil influence. To a reasonable extent, at least, such a plan, if wisely and patiently carried out, is sure to succeed. Men, who under its provisions talk on American history and good citizenship to the public-school children, are chosen so to do because they are authorities on their special subjects, and are themselves scholars both of the closet and of the world, and are engaged in practical efforts for lifting the standards of American citizenship. They have upon them the smell of the smoke of the same battle into which they call the children. That fact is a potent one. 44 Suppose the Old South shall be planted in Philadelphia, (and why should the city where Independence rang out be afraid to again follow the lead of the city which threw the invading tea into the waters of Boston Harbor?) what a fine double object-lesson we shall have, right to hand, for bringing home to youthful minds the principles we wish to instil! We can point the publicschool children of Philadelphia to the Old State House, not only as a building peopled with the figures, and haunted with the memories of a great past- a building which once gathered within its walls the makers of the nation, and where were reaffirmed the ancient rights of free Englishmen, in words that, like the shot of Lexington, "echoed round the world"-but we can also bid them note those curious, and, in the judgment of some of us, alarming evidences of the changes and decay in popular government that are now taking place under the same roof which covers the cracked Liberty Bell. Had one of the Old South lectures been given in Philadelphia yesterday noon, for example, to an audience of six hundred children, at the conclusion of the lecture a delegation chosen from their number might, with great profit, have gone at three o'clock direct to the Council Chamber, and there have witnessed a highly instructive exhibition of modern representative government. The value of maps as an aid to the study of history is generally admitted, but no map could so assist the youthful student of municipal government to understand this question as would his bodily presence in the Select Council Chamber have done. The effigy of Washington - a bad and distorted copy of Stuart's original picture-confronting him, with equally unfortunate portraits, artistically con sidered, of more modern public men, hanging as pendants beside it, would at once have placed the sensitive studentobserver in harmony with his surroundings. The atmosphere, thick with the fumes of tobacco rising from the mouths of the municipal legislators present, would have made still more evident to him that degree of dignity which is now accorded to the transaction of public business. On his right, and facing the legislators, he would have seen a large body of serious-faced and observant citizens, representing various kinds of business, trades, and professions, watching with keen, though not hopeful, interest the determination by their representatives of a pending question of vital public interest. Immediately in front of him he would have seen seated the astute and apparently unconcerned agent of a powerful corporation, which habitually confuses the city's affairs with its own, watching, however, with equal interest the votes of his representatives in the Chamber. And then our student might have been interested further to note a suggestive incident of the occasion. When the legislators who obey the mandates of the corporation referred to were voting in its interest, and one of their number, a representative from the Fourth Ward, unexpectedly failed to record his vote, the surprise and alarm of the corporation agent so completely overcame him that he sprang forward toward the derelict member with an exclamation of warning, in an undertone but quite distinct, "Bill! Bill!" He was reassured by a glance, however, from the member, whose silence he had misinterpreted, and the latter, when the corporation votes were all in, seized the opportunity for greater emphasis which he had awaited, and in loud tones recorded the vote of obedience which his superior desired. In a word, no finer opportunity could be afforded for realistic study-in harmony with the realistic spirit of our day-of that gradual absorption of the powers of legislation and of the control of public affairs, once exercised by the people, which, on the part of powerful and wealthy corporations, is now going on. If the Old South lecture plan shall be adopted in Philadelphia, the older children of our public schools might have all the educative advantage, which has been suggested, of seeing the actual process of this unhealthy growth-the strength of the oak waning under the embrace of the parasite. But even if the public-spirited women of Philadelphia do not start the Old South plan here, there is no reason why the male adults of the city should not avail themselves of the chance to drop in some fine afternoon on a council meeting, when some important question is upthe gift of a hundred miles of streets, for example, to a street railway company-just to see how the thing is done. They might glance, on their way out, at the window from which the Declaration of Independence was read, and then go home to make up their minds whether the "kickers should be helped or "knocked out" at the next municipal election. Either experiment, or both, would advance the political welfare of the public." "WORSHIPPERS OF LIGHT ANCESTRAL." To the namesake of a great man. COULD Dante's spirit roam this earth again, Since death, as into hell it walked before, But scant reminder of that other shore Perchance would meet his risen eyes. Yet when The sacred circle of the "upper ten " He gained, he sure would ask outside the door, "Whence comes that voice I thought to hear no more? Alas, poor Farinata ! 1 Art thou then Here, too, to greet me? Cam'st thou here to dwell And shriek those selfsame words thou didst in Hell?" "Who were thine ancestors, say, who?" The cry Yet louder grown, then would the bard repeat, "Is't he?" And thus the guide would make reply, "Dear Dante, no, these live on Beacon Street." -A. S. Bridgman. A TREASURER-Trove. COME, Grandsire, I have you out at last, To think That you should scribble rhymes to Prudence, Priscilla, Chloris, Phyllis, and a score Of tell-tale papers, that I found to-day In a neglected, curious old press, Gives evidence that in your bosom burned A love like mine. Here's one inscribed to Come, prepare to blush! I look upon the heavens high, And find the selfsame hue. They say that Heaven is there above, I know that Heaven is here. How's this! How's this! My grandmother's were gray! Her eyes were gray, for I remember them! 1 See Canto X., line 42 of " The Vision of Dante." BENEATH the gilded dome had party strife Cuts deeper than sharp words, and my mind, rife In the same flash, as warped, I saw. Quick, then, And Righteousness and Truth are not yet dead.” Those wind-swept trees will greet the morning light Unchanged, but I stand straight again to-night. -A. S. Bridgman. |