Jr. Horatio Alger

“ We meet not in honor of a victory achieved on the crimson field of war; not to triumph in the acquisitions of rapine; nor to commemorate the accomplishment of a vain revolution which but substituted one dynasty of tyrants for another. No glittering display of military pomp and pride, no empty pageant of regal grandeur, allures us hither. We come not to daze our eyes with the lustre of a diadem, placed, with all its attributes of tremendous power, on the head of a being as weak, as blind, as mortal as ourselves. We come not to celebrate the birthday of a despot, but the birthday of a nation ”

“ What matter, then, if to others My castle a phantom may be, Since I feel, in the depths of my own heart, That it is not so to me?
APPLE-BLOSSOMS. I sit in the shadow of apple-boughs, In the fragrant orchard close, And around me floats the scented air, With its wave-like tidal flows. I close my eyes in a dreamy bliss, And call no king my peer; For is not this the rare, sweet time, The blossoming time of the year? I lie on a couch of downy grass, With delicate blossoms strewn, And I feel the throb of Nature's heart Responsive to my own. ”

“ The story of Webster from the beginning is the very pathos of romance. A minor chord runs through it like the tenderest note in a song. What eloquence of tears is in that narrative, which reveals in this giant of intellectual strength the heart, the single loving heart, of a child, and in which he describes the winter sleighride up the New Hampshire hills when his father told him that, at whatever cost, he should have a college education, and he, too full to speak, while a warm glow ran all over him, laid his head upon his father’s shoulder and wept! ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII. THANKSGIVING AT THE FARM
The chill November days drew to a close. The shrill winds whistled through the branches of the trees, and stirred the leaves which lay in brown heaps upon the ground. But at the end of the month came Thanksgiving—the farmer's Harvest Home. The fruits of the field were in abundance but in many a home there were vacant chairs, never more, alas! to be filled. But he who dies in a noble cause leaves sweet and fragrant memories behind, which shall ever after make it pleasant to think of him. ”

“ We heed them not, for we think of the voice That we shall hear no more. We think of him at eventide, And gaze on his vacant chair With a longing heart that will scarce believe That Charlie is not there. We seem to hear his ringing laugh, And his bounding step at the door; But, alas! there comes the sorrowful thought, We shall never hear them more! We shall walk sometimes to his little grave, In the pleasant summer hours; We will speak his name in a softened voice, And cover his grave with flowers; We will think of him in his heavenly home,— In his heavenly home so fair ”

“ Forrest's Othello is a burlesque of the elder Kean's mannerisms, his air of depressed solemnity, prolonged pauses, and startling outbursts, with occasional imitations of Vandenhoff's deep-voiced utterance, varied by the Yankee nasal twang. His presence is not commanding, nor his deportment dignified; for the assumption of grandeur is not sustained by an imaginative feeling of nobleness. His passion is a violent effort of physical vehemence. He bullies Iago, and treats Desdemona with brutal ferocity. Even his tenderness is affected, and his smile is like the grin of a wolf showing his fangs. ”

“ The Proof—the Queen of Fashion The point I advance, if it need confirmation, I'll prove by a witness that few will dispute, A pink of perfection and truth in the naion Where fashion and folly are all of a suit. 'Tis “Merdle the banker”—or rather his wife, Whose fashion, religion, or music, or dress, Is followed, consulted, by many through life, As pilots are followed by ships in distress; For money's a pilot, a master, a king, Which men follow blindly through quicksands and shoals, Where pilots their ships in a moment might fling To destruction the vessel and cargo and souls. ”

“ There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New England to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. ”

“ Often they would walk up Broadway, and Helen, at least, found amusement in watching the shifting scenes which present themselves to the beholder in that crowded thoroughfare. Life in all its varieties, from pampered wealth to squalid poverty, too often the fruit of a mis-spent life jostled each other upon the sidewalk, or in the street. The splendid equipage dashes past the humble handcart; the dashing buggy jostles against the loaded dray. Broadway is no exclusive thoroughfare. ”

“ Croak, croak, croak, Till the heart is full of gloom, And croak, croak, croak, Till the world seems but a tomb. To poison the cup of life, By always dreading the worst. Is to make of the earth a dungeon damp, And the happiest life accursed. Croak, croak, croak, When the noontide sun rides high, And croak, croak, croak, Lest the night come by and by. Farewell to the dismal frog; Let him croak as loud as he may, He cannot blot the sun from heaven, Nor hinder the march of day, Though he croak, croak, croak, Till the heart is full of gloom, And croak, croak, croak, Till the world seems but a tomb. ”

“ Its ancient and lofty halls will ring with the old and well-known voices, and its gorgeous and grotesque creations pass before him like things of life and substance, rather than the airy nothings of the imagination. If such be its ordinary magic, how potent is the spell when the vision becomes half real; when the leaves of the drama, like the written responses of the ancient oracles, flutter with supernatural life; when the figures start from the lifeless canvas and live and move and have their being in the mighty art of a Forrest! ”

“ If the plan of Washington had been pursued, and our navy had been suffered to grow with the growth of our commerce and navigation, what a blow might at this moment be struck, and what protection yielded, surrounded, as our commerce now is, with all the dangers of sudden war! Even as it is, all our immediate hopes of glory or conquest, all expectation of events that shall gratify the pride or spirit of the nation, rest on the gallantry of that little remnant of a navy that has now gone forth, like lightning, at the beck of Government, to scour the seas. ”

“ It is the love of the father for his boy, compared to which his coffers of gold become as dross in his sight,—always peeping with the eyes of a dove from the ark of the old man's heart, waiting for the deluge of evil passions to subside in his child, that the olive-branch may be wafted to him,—it is this love, sublime in forgiveness, ample for protection, and which at last breaks his heart, that is so painted here by the player as to make a dramatic movement of which Shakspeare might have been the author. ”

“ We wait but thy blessing, we ask but thy smile, As our sails to the free air we fling. The winds breathe auspicious that waft us along, The sky, undisturbed, smiles serene, Hope stands at the prow, and the waters gleam bright With sparkles of silvery sheen. And thy voice, Alma Mater, so potent and sweet, Still sounds in our ears as of yore, And thy motherly counsel we hear, wisdom-fraught, As we push our frail barks from the shore. From the foam-crested waves of the mountainous sea As backward our glances we strain, We see the dear face of our mother benign, And bless her again and again. ”

“ But, to one glowing with the divine fire of genius, that wonderful electricity by which the inmost nature of man is moved, and masses are swayed as if by the wand of an enchanter, Othello is a noble character for the display of his power,—a resistless spell, by which the eye and ear and soul of the audience are held and moved and swayed. We must admit that such an actor is Mr. Forrest, and that such is the effect which his personation of the loving, tender, gentle, duped, abused, maddened Moor produced upon us, and seemed to produce upon his audience. ”

“ His form is thin and shrunken; His cheek is pale and wan; And the lines of care on his furrowed brow Are dread to look upon. But yesterday a monarch, In the flush of his pomp and pride, And, not content with his own broad lands, He would rule the world beside. He built him a stately palace, With gold from beyond the sea; And he laid with care the corner-stone, And he called it Slavery: He summoned an army with banners, To keep his foes at bay; And, gazing with pride on his palace walls, He said, "They will stand for aye!" ”

“ What can be more genuinely sensational than Niagara, Mont Blanc, the earthquake, the tempest, the forked flash of the lightning, the crashing roll of the thunder, the crouch of the tiger, the dart of the anaconda, the shriek of the swooping eagle, the prance of the war-horse in his proud pomp? And the attributes of all these belong to man, with additions of nameless grandeur, terror, and beauty beside, making him an incarnate representative of God on the earth. To see Forrest in Lear, or Salvini in Saul, is to feel this. ”

“ As we scan the fair scene that once greeted their eyes, As we tread the same paths which they trod, Let us tenderly think of our elders by birth, Who have gone to their rest, and their God. God bless the old homestead! some linger there still, In the haunts which their childhood has known, While others have wandered to places remote, And planted new homes of their own; But Time cannot weaken the ties Love creates, Nor absence, nor distance, impede The filial devotion which thrills all our hearts, As we bid our old mother God-speed. ”

“ Where are the foundations of private right more stable, or the limits of public order more inviolately observed? Where does labor go to his toil with an alerter step, or an erecter brow, effulgent with the heart-reflected light of conscious independence? Where does agriculture drive his team a-field with a more cheery spirit, in the certain assurance that the harvest is his own? Where does commerce launch more boldly her bark upon the deep, aware that she has to strive but with the tyranny of the elements, and not with the more appalling tyranny of man? ”

“ Its doors in fair prospect the world opens wide, Its prizes seem easy to win,— We are strong in our faith, we are bold in our might, And we long for the race to begin. Though dimmed are our hopes, and our visions are fled, Our dreams were but dreams, it is true; Dust-stained from the contest we gather to-night, The sweet dreams of youth to renew. Enough for to-morrow the cares it shall bring, We are boys, we are brothers, to-night; And our hearts, warm with love, Alma Mater, to thee, Shall in loyal devotion unite. ”

“ Right glad are we that we have seen this picture of Forrest, for it has an eloquent breath for our common humanity. It has given us a glimpse of his nature which long ago we should have rejoiced to see revealed, but whose richness we dreamed not was there. What a volume is a man's life! The heart's story,—always going on, always deepening the great drama of our being as it progresses to the mortal act,—this story, in a strong inveterate nature, writes in the public bearing and in all the features that falsehood as to his sensibilities which the dreadful pen of pride alone engraves. ”