O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father! this arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck, you've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My Captain does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage is closed and done;

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! but I with mournful tread Walk the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead. "On Lincoln."

AIM AND PURPOSE

WALT WHITMAN.

In all successful oratory there must be a clearly defined aim and purpose. The speaker should endeavor to find out where his special power lies and work in that direction, always remembering that the loftier the aim the greater the possible achievement. Beecher said: "Let no man who is a sneak try to be an orator.' There must be intrinsic worth. A man must be and not seem. An audience can not long be deceived. The speaker will shortly be estimated at his true value. The development of the sympathetic nature should not be neglected. The transforming power of deep affection is described by Balzac, when he says of Père Goriot, "Père Goriot was stirred out of himself. Never till now had Eugène seen him thus lighted up by the passion of paternity. We may here remark on the infiltrating, transforming power of an over-mastering emotion. However coarse the fiber of the individual, let him be held by a strong

and genuine affection, and he exhales, as it were, an essence which illuminates his features, inspires his gestures, and gives cadence to his voice."

1. And, since the thoughts and reasonings of an author have, as I have said, a personal character, no wonder that his style is not only the image of his subject, but of his mind. That pomp of language, that full and tuneful diction, that felicitousness in the choice and exquisiteness in the collocation of words, which to prosaic writers seem artificial, is nothing else but the mere habit and way of a lofty intellect. Aristotle, in his sketch of the magnanimous man, tells us that his voice is deep, his motions slow, and his stature commanding. In like manner, the elocution of a great intellect is great. His language expresses, not only his great thoughts, but his great self. Certainly he might use fewer words than he uses; but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germinates into a multitude of details, and prolongs the march of his sentences, and sweeps round to the full diapason of his harmony, rejoicing in his own vigor and richness of resource.

CARDINAL NEWMAN.

2. I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do not prophesy. The present is all-absorbing to me, but I cannot bound my vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just past, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; a land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes, and whose children and children's children shall for ages hence bless the American Republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland and set them in the pathway of the world's best civilization.

"Our Duty to the Philippines."

WILLIAM MCKINLEY.

3. At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,

When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where by death, fools think, imprisonedLow he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,-Pity me?

Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?

Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel-Being-who?

One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, tho right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,

"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,-fight on, fare ever There as here!"

"Epilog."

BROWNING.

4. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you can not hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians,

or the pen of Moses or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, all rich, all eloquent, with thousandcloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

"Self-reliance."

5. Grow old along with me! the best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made:

EMERSON.

Our times are in His hand who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Then, welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Be our joys three parts pain: strive and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

So take and use Thy work, amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same! "Rabbi Ben Ezra," BROWNING.

6. And did I say, my friends, that I was unable to furnish an entirely satisfactory answer to the question, in what the true excellence of the character of Washington consists? Let me recall the word as unjust to myself and unjust to you. The answer is plain and simple enough; it is this, that all the great qualities of disposition and action, which so eminently fitted him for the service of his fellow men, were founded on the basis of a pure Christian morality, and derived their strength and energy from

that vital source. He was great as he was good; and I believe, as I do in my existence, that it was an important part in the design of Providence in raising him up to be the leader of the revolutionary struggle, and afterwards the first President of the United States, to rebuke prosperous ambition and successful intrigue; to set before the people of America, in the morning of their national existence, a living example to prove that armies may be best conducted and governments most ably and honorably administered, by men of sound moral principle; to teach to gifted and aspiring individuals, and the parties they lead, that, tho a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.

"The Character of Washington.”

EDWARD EVERETT.