_The Flag of Our Union_
A song for our banner! The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station;
United we stand—divided we fall;
It made and preserves us a Nation.
GEO. P. MORRIS.
_The Army_
They who stand side by side in struggle, share the peril, and do battle
for the maintenance of the integrity of the government.—GEN. GEORGE G.
MEADE.
Where are warriors found
If not on our Republic’s ground?
SCOTT, “Lord of the Isles.”
Defenders of our soil,
Who from destruction save us; who from spoil
Protect the sons of peace.—CRABBE.
_The Navy_
It doth command the empire of the sea.
SHAKESPEARE, “Antony and Cleopatra.”
Naval strategy has for its end to found, support, and increase, as well
in peace as in war, the sea power of the country.—CAPT. A. T. MAHAN.
Hearts of oak are our ships,
Hearts of oak are our men.
DAVID GARRICK.
_The City_
The union of men in large masses is indispensable to the development and
rapid growth of the higher faculties of men. Cities have always been the
first places of civilization whence light and heat radiated out into the
dark cold world.—THEODORE PARKER.
_The Pulpit_
That to believing souls
Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.
SHAKESPEARE, “2 Henry VI.”
His preaching much, but more his practice wrought,
A living sermon of the truths he taught.—DRYDEN.
_The Law_
When we’ve nothing to dread from the law’s sternest frowns,
We all laugh at the barrister’s wigs, bags, and gowns;
But as soon as we want them to sue or defend,
Then their laughter begins, and our mirth’s at an end.
Old Epigram.
“Whate’er is best administered is best,” may truly be said of a judicial
system, and the due distribution of justice depends much more upon the
rules by which suits are to be conducted than on the perfection of the
code by which rights are defined.—LORD CAMPBELL, “Lives of the
Chancellors.”
_Medicine_
Physicians mend or end us,
_Secundum artem_; but although we sneer
In health—when ill, we call them to attend us,
Without the least propensity to jeer.
BYRON, “Don Juan.”
He professed a higher opinion of the medical, or rather the surgical
profession, than any other. “Their mission,” said he, “is to benefit
mankind, not to destroy, mystify, or inflame them against one another,
and they have opportunities of studying human nature as well as
science.”—“Mémoires de l’Empereur Napoléon.”
_Woman_
For where thou art, there is the world itself;
With every several pleasure in the world;
And where thou art not, desolation.
SHAKESPEARE, “Henry VI.”
O woman! lovely woman! nature made thee
To temper man; we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you;
There’s in you all that we believe of heaven;
Amazing brightness, purity and truth,
Eternal joy, and everlasting love.
THOMAS OTWAY, “Venice Preserved.”
Not she with trait’rous kiss her Saviour stung,
Not she denied him with unholy tongue;
She, while apostles shrank, could danger brave,
Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.
E. B. BROWNING.
The woman of the coming time—
Shall man to vote appoint her?
Well, yes or no; your bottom dime
He’ll do as she’s a mind ter!
We know she “will” or else she “won’t,”
‘Twill be the same as now;
And if she does, or if she don’t,
God bless her, anyhow!
When pain and anguish wring the brow
A ministering angel thou.—SCOTT, “Marmion.”
_Christian Charity_
“O my leddie! when the hour o’ trouble comes that comes to mind and
body, and the hour o’ death comes that comes to high and low, it is no’
what we ha’ done for ourselves but what we ha’ done for others, that we
think on maist pleasantly.”—EFFIE DEANS, “_The Heart of Midlothian_.”
_Sexual Affinity_
As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman:
Though she bends him, she obeys him;
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other.
LONGFELLOW, “Hiawatha.”
Not like to like, but like in difference:
But in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care
Till at the last she set herself to man
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To be
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other, even as those who love.
TENNYSON, “Princess.”
_Temperance_
Honest water is too weak to be a sinner; it never left man in the mire.
SHAKESPEARE, “Timon of Athens,” i. 2.
_The Press_
There various news I heard of love and strife,
Of peace and war, health, sickness, death and life,
Of loss and gain, of famine, and of store,
Of storm at sea and travel on the shore,
Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,
Of fall of favorites, projects of the great,
Of old mismanagements, taxations new;
All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.
ALEXANDER POPE, “Temple of Fame.”
_Modern Transportation_
Of all inventions, the alphabet and printing-press excepted, those
inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of
our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits
mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only
facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and
art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to
bind together all the branches of the great human family.—MACAULAY,
“History of England.”
_Erskine’s Toast_
Sink your pits, blast your mines, dam your rivers, consume your
manufactures, disperse your commerce, and may your labors be in _vein_.
_Our Dead_
Alexander the Great, before giving signal for the banquet to be served,
looked searchingly around upon the faces of all present and called out:
“Are all here who fought at Issos?” After a pause Clitus answered, “All,
Alexander, but those who fell there.” Which was thought to be an ill
response for such an occasion, but to which Alexander quickly replied:
“Then all who fought at Issos are here, since the glorious dead are
always in our memory.”—CTESIPPUS TO ARISTOTLE.
_Good-Night_
At the supper parties at Abbotsford Scott was fond of telling amusing
tales, ancient legends, ghost and witch stories. When it was time to go,
all rose, and, standing hand in hand round the table, Scott taking the
lead, they sang in full chorus:
Weel may we a’ be;
Ill may we never see;
Health to the King
An’ the gude companie.