THE GREAT DANGER OF THE REPUBLIC.

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the necessities of the highest civilization and development fulfil the prophecy of the romancer of the Arabian Nights, and let loose a genius with equal and unequalled capacity for both mischief and beneficence. The attendants and disturbers of our splendid conditions are the socialist, the communist, and the anarchist. In the simpler and more primitive days, cities grew slowly, by healthful and natural increase, and the country was the conservative power in the State. Business was so limited that it was capable of management by small capital, and the masses of the population were independent and self-reliant. A multitude of men were the masters of their own pursuits, with the attendant safety which comes from responsibility and the protection of one's own property and business. But the telegraph, the railway, and the steamship have brought all nations in such close communion that trade and manufactures now require enormous capital. It is only by the aggregation of the money of many in corporations that these means of communication can be built and maintained, and they have created competition so severe that the small dealer is disappearing, to become an employé in the great factory or store.

The requirement of crowds of workers at common centres to carry on these enterprises, is concentrating populations and activities of all kinds, both good and bad, in great cities. To meet capital upon safer grounds, and for selfprotection against injustice or wrong, this countless army of the employed is combined in societies, brotherhoods, and unions. Thus, outside the farmer and the professions, these two mighty forces of capital and labor, each unable to live without the other, stand at best in relations which are merely a compromise, subject to constant breaches. A conflict involves the overthrow of law and order, and the reign of anarchy and chaos. The conserving influences, which will ward off disaster, and make all forces work together for the common good, and better the condition of every one, are to be found only in the development of character and conduct, along with intelligence. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

TRUTH IN RHETORIC.

AN American writer, while painting a vivid picture of the state of society in ancient Rome, gives an electrical emphasis to his statement that everywhere throughout the empire, in the progress of decline, "rhetoric supplanted truth" But how could this be? What antagonism is possible between rhetoric and truth, so that one can supplant the other? Rhetoric is truth, and truth is rhetoric: truth combined with the imagination: truth moist with emotion: truth directed to the accomplishment of a purpose; and none the less true because so combined and directed. There can be

no poetry apart from truth, for the ideal is the highest, truest, real. Neither can there be any rhetoric apart from truth, for the true is one of its essential elements. Because in a production accordant with rhetorical rules, results of the reasoning process only are given, and not the reasoning process itself, truth is none the less there. Because conclusions only are stated, and not the premises by which those conclusions are reached, the truth is none the less there. In its national emblem, its harp, its lilies, its thistle, its lion, its eagle, a whole nation sees the truth of a proposition expressing the national character, the national hope, the national power; and this is the glory of that emblazonry. And the proposition is none the less true to every mind, because in the national emblem it is so vivid to the imagination of every eye. So, many a proposition may be conveyed into our minds through the feelings of our hearts, as well as through the logic of our heads, or the perceptions of our eyes; and it is none the less true for that. A thought may be so transfused, flooded all over with passion, that not only are we mentally convinced of its truth, but our hearts respond, sometimes so warmly that every fibre thrills with emotion. This does not make that truth false, The words may suggest to our ear but the tap of a drum, or a single strain of a song we've

but all the more true.

THE EAGLE'S DOVE.

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heard at home: in the words we may see only the wave of a flag, or the glance of an eye, or the flight of a bird that used to build its nest in the old orchard where we played when we were boys: if our hearts respond to what we see and hear, if we feel its meaning so that every man of us is conscious of a quiver, is it any the less true because pulses beat quicker and moistened eyes flash brighter? And yet how many will insist that we are descending from the heights of truth into the contradictions of falsehood, when we affirm, that is rhetoric. Rhetoric everywhere is all of logic and much more. It is logic vivified, brightening, enlightening logic on fire, melting: logic suffused, tenderly moving logic passionate, exalting. Rhetoric is not falsehood poetic or passionate; it is systematized truth, combined with imagination and feeling, for the accomplishment of a purpose.

ANSON J. UPSON.

"THE EAGLE'S DOVE."

“WHO is it lyin' in that coffin thar?”

Why, stranger, that's my wife-now dead and cold. The raven's wing is pale beside her ha'r

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Pretty?" Wall, yas. "Her age?" Eighteen years

old.

I married her one year ago this June ;

I won her from Dave Dawson-a stake at cards,

The roses on her cheeks war just in bloom;

And so they war in my heart, sar-and in my pard's. Dave staked and lost, and so she clung to me,

For I had "bet my all," and "bet it free."

But ever since that day Dave Dawson's acted quar,
And "Madge" has said he'd do me deadly harm.

But as I'd always acted on the squar,

Dividin' up the "mine" and "Texas farm,"

I could not think Dave Dawson wished me ill,
Or "winin'" her would drive him on to kill.

"Jealous?" Wall, yas; he challenged me to fight, And raised his gun, and I, sar, drew my knife, When "Madge" came flyin', like a flash of light,

And cried: "Hold, Davy; he won me, I'm his wife; If naught but murder will requite your love,

6

Don't harm the eagle,' but wing the eagle's dove."

And standin' thar betwixt my foe and me,

I saw my pictur in her wondrous eye :

She looked, sar, like an angel-if such thar be—
As pretty, as sweet, and too brave to die.

Dave Dawson ground his teeth like a "grizzly hurt,”

And yelled, "Do you mean it, Madge?" "I do," she

cried.

"Then curse the day I brought you to 'Gold Dirt,'

And curse the 'hand' that won you as a bride! "And did he fire?" Yas, by heaven, he did;

وو

And, coward-like, fled to the hills and hid.
"Hunt him?” Yas, hunted three days and nights;
All "Gold Dirt" armed-sarched cliff and peak.
All night, alone, by her, I watched thar lights,
Hopin' 'twas all a dream, and she would speak.

Yas, sar, they tracked him to the "hanted mine
The very place Dave Dawson dreaded most;
For it's a settled fact-since "forty-nine

وو

The shaft's been 'nipulated by a ghost. Some say Dave Dawson did foul murder thar, How true it is, I'm not the man to say,

Sartin it is, a ghost with snowy ha'r

وو

Works it with grim-faced miners night and day.

Yas, sar, they met--Dave screamed-the ghost but laughedThey clinched, and stumblin', both went down the shaft.

ROBERT RANTOUL.

So mornin' come agin; then night crept down the hill,
And flung her gloomy shadows over all.

And, settin' by her, all alone and still,

I'd start sometimes, and swar I heard her call.

Afore

you

entered, I'd swar she spoke ;

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She called my name, and said: "Now, Tom, be brave— Don't take to drink beneath this wreckin' stroke,

But, sober, every day come see my grave."

I'll do it, "Madge"—I'll keep my word and o'er—
I swar it, with your lips a-touchin' mine;

And so I did, sar, as you come in the door;

And, stranger, that oath I'll keep throughout my time. "You'll pray for me?" See here, sar, don't fling fun At me, in the face of my white dead one!

"A parson?" are you? beg pardon; take my hand— My heart lies still in that coffin thar

You'll be at the buryin', then you'll pictur the land Where "Madge" has gone to outshine every star? "To-morrow?" yas, sar-the grave's just out thar"You'll come?" Thanks, parson-good-evenin', sar. MARSHALL C. WOOD.

Note 50.

ROBERT RANTOUL.

SUPPOSE We stood in that lofty temple of jurisprudence, on either side of us the statues of the great lawyers of every age and clime; and let us see what part New EnglandPuritan, free New England-would bear in the pageant. Rome points to a colossal figure, and says: "That is Papinian, who, when the Emperor Caracalla murdered his own brother, and ordered the lawyer to defend the deed, went cheerfully to death, rather than sully his lips with the atro