I would add, as a motive to immediate action, that if we do fail in our great experiment of self-government, our destruction will be as signal as the birthright abandoned, the mercies abused, and the provocation offered to beneficent Heaven.  The descent of desolation will correspond with the past elevation.

No punishments of Heaven are so severe as those for mercies abused; and no instrumentality employed in their infliction is so dreadful as the wrath of man.  No spasms are like the spasms of expiring liberty, and no wailing such as her convulsions extort.

It took Rome three hundred years to die; and our death, if we perish, will be as much more terrific as our intelligence and free institutions have given us more bone, sinew, and vitality.  May God hide from me the day when the dying agonies of my country shall begin!  O thou beloved land, bound together by the ties of brotherhood, and common interest, and perils! live forever—­one and undivided! 
          
                                                —­Lyman Beecher.

LX.  RIDING ON A SNOWPLOW. (231)

Benjamin Franklin Taylor, 1822-1887, was born at Lowville, New York, and graduated at Madison University, of which his father was president.  Here he remained as resident graduate for about five years.  His “Attractions of Language” was published in 1845.  For many years Mr. Taylor was literary editor of the “Chicago Journal.”  He wrote considerably for the magazines, and was the author of many well-known fugitive pieces, both in prose and verse.  He also published several books, of which “January and June,” “Pictures in Camp and Field,” “The World on Wheels,” “Old-time Pictures and Sheaves of Rhyme,” “Between the Gates,” and “Songs of Yesterday,” are the best known.  In his later years, Mr. Taylor achieved some reputation as a lecturer.  His writings are marked by an exuberant fancy. ###

Did you ever ride on a snowplow?  Not the pet and pony of a thing that is attached to the front of an engine, sometimes, like a pilot; but a great two-storied monster of strong timbers, that runs upon wheels of its own, and that boys run after and stare at as they would after and at an elephant.  You are snow-bound at Buffalo.  The Lake Shore Line is piled with drifts like a surf.  Two passenger trains have been half-buried for twelve hours somewhere in snowy Chautauqua.  The storm howls like a congregation of Arctic bears.  But the superintendent at Buffalo is determined to release his castaways, and clear the road to Erie.  He permits you to be a passenger on the great snowplow; and there it is, all ready to drive.  Harnessed behind it, is a tandem team of three engines.  It does not occur to you that you are going to ride on a steam drill, and so you get aboard.