plain,
  Gives all creation to rejoice around,
  And life and light extends o’er nature’s utmost bound. 
  Though shone thy life a model bright of praise,
  Not less the example bright thy death portrays,
  When, plunged in deepest we, around thy bed,
  Each eye was fixed, despairing sunk each head,
  While nature struggled with severest pain,
  And scarce could life’s last lingering powers retain: 
  In that dread moment, awfully serene,
  No trace of suffering marked thy placid mien,
  No groan, no murmuring plaint, escaped thy tongue,
  No lowering shadows on thy brow were hung;
  But calm in Christian hope, undamped with fear,
  Thou sawest the high reward of virtue near,
  On that bright meed in sweetest trust reposed,
  As thy firm hand thine eyes expiring closed,
  Pleased, to the will of heaven resigned thy breath,
  And smiled as nature’s struggles closed in death.

* * * * *

THE MAJESTIC EMINENCE OF WASHINGTON

BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

In an Address, February 22, 1888

“Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

As the human race has moved along down the centuries, the vigorous and ambitious, the dissenters from blind obedience and the original thinkers, the colonists and state builders, have broken camp with the morning, and followed the sun till the close of day.  They have left behind narrow and degrading laws, traditions, and castes.  Their triumphant success is pushing behind every bayonet carried at the order of Kaiser or Czar; men, who, in doing their own thinking, will one day decide for themselves the problems of peace and war.

The scenes of the fifth act of the grand drama are changing, but all attention remains riveted upon one majestic figure.  He stands the noblest leader who ever was intrusted with his country’s life.  His patience under provocation, his calmness in danger, and lofty courage when all others despaired, his prudent delays when delay was best, and his quick and resistless blows when action was possible, his magnanimity to defamers and generosity to his foes, his ambition for his country and unselfishness for himself, his sole desire of freedom and independence for America, and his only wish to return after victory to private life, have all combined to make him, by the unanimous judgment of the world, the foremost figure of history.

* * * * *

FOR A LITTLE PUPIL

ANONYMOUS

  “Napoleon was great, I know,
    And Julius Caesar, and all the rest,
  But they didn’t belong to us, and so
    I like George Washington the best.”

* * * * *

WASHINGTON’S FAME

BY ASHER ROBBINS