“ Man was not made to live in a state of isolation, but in fellowship with his kind. The human heart craves sympathy just as naturally as the vine stretches its tendrils to [Pg 313] clasp some friendly prop, and, failing to reach it, droops and withers and bears no fruit. He, who is the centre of many loving hearts, whose interests, joys, and sorrows are his and his theirs, is stronger and happier than he who treads the brier-planted path of life alone, with no one to lean upon and share the burden or the conflict with him. We were made to find our happiness in the happiness of others. ”

“ Were I to fall, armies would lack a leader, my country one who loves her better than himself, or wife, or child. But the blood that mantles in this boy’s cheek is that of heroes; thine ancestors and mine were chieftains of the olden time; and when the lion shall breed sheep will I believe that any of our race and lineage can ever fail their country in her hour of need. Therefore, despite thy tears, mine own affection, and his tender age, from off thy bosom will I take this child and as the lion brings his whelps afield with claws half-grown and trains them on the hunters, so will I him. ”

“ LOVE [Delivered at “Donation Party,” Harpswell, September 18, 1894]
Love, my friends and neighbors, is something that defies definition and resents analysis. It is not possible to communicate the perception of it to one who has never experienced it. It must be felt in order to be known. It is likewise the most permanent of all the qualities of the mind. Anger, however violent, expires with the occasion that called it forth. Grief, however bitter and heart-rending, time will remove, and it will blunt the sting of sorrow. But love is inexhaustible and grows by what it feeds upon. ”

“ To take up such familiar relations with a man of stalwart manhood, who never lost his sympathy and love for youth, and had the faculty of putting every one at his ease and at his best, to say nothing of the provision for needful exercise by going out often with an able seaman in a stout Hampton boat, braving the terrors of the seas, and the beauties of the islands of Casco Bay,—this should bring a boy whose forces were not yet knit together in just balance, to his best of body and heart and mind, and to some clearness of purpose and steadfast resolution. ”

“ The associations of this day come home with peculiar force to the minds of those who have been familiar with the history and watched the progress of this college from the day it was a mere shrub, with bare shade sufficient to cover its own roots, to this glad hour when they rejoice that they are permitted to look upon it as a massive tree, on whose broad foliage the sunlight loves to linger and the dew lieth all night on its branches. Withered hands are lifted in benediction: the tremulous accents of age join the universal jubilee. ”

“ We thank Thee that they were equally ready to vindicate at the cannon’s mouth and maintain with property or life the principles of civil and religious liberty, and the inalienable right of every man to the fruit of his own labor.
We pray Thee that, on this day, set apart by the Executive of the nation as a day of grateful remembrance, we may appreciate the true nature of the perils we have escaped and acknowledge our indebtedness to the providence of that Being who ruleth over the affairs of nations. May we not in our prosperity forget those dark hours when all faces gathered blackness. ”

“ It embraces and concentrates in itself the germs of a thousand forces of happiness, power, and progress yet to be developed from it. So long as man wanders, and, like the savage, merely gathers what grows of itself from the soil, or captures the fish of the streams, the birds of the air, and the beasts that roam the forests, he makes no progress; he bestows no labor upon, and therefore takes no interest in, that abode which he is to abandon to-morrow. It is only when he has a permanent dwelling and produces something from the earth that progress, happiness, and the home relation begin. ”

“ The greatest poets that ever lived have sung in strains of beauty that captivated the young heart the praises of the ruby wine. It has for ages been interwoven with all festivals,—the meeting and parting of social life. It is this more than the love of liquor that attracts. In this view wine becomes the exponent of all that is genial and warm; temperance of all that is cold, forbidding, and repulsive. It is for just this purpose and to meet the enemy at just this point that associations like this have been formed. ”

“ There are keener pangs than those born of flowing blood and stiffening wounds on lonely battlefields, gashes deeper than the tomahawk and the scalping knife can make, wrestlings more terrible than those with flesh and blood. Fear not that thou shalt lack occasions to prove thy zeal. Thou shalt find all the sunny memories of thy life turned to gall. The church to whose altar thy mother had thee linked with all the sweet memories of thy childhood shall close to thee its doors. Thy children shall be excluded from those seats of learning where their kindred and their mates resort. ”

“ Neither hunger nor sickness bows his iron frame nor breaks his haughty spirit, and yet, unknown to himself, he is all the while wresting the truths of Scripture, and deems he is doing the will of God while he is consulting his own inclinations. Is the discipline of Providence therefore to waste itself upon this rugged nature, only to be repelled like the surf from the rock, in broken wreaths of foam? Will he never become as a little child that he may enter into the kingdom? ”

“ Home is not a thing that can be bought or sold in the market. You may buy a homestead or a house, you may perhaps buy a wife, but you cannot buy a woman’s love. Costly furniture, rich dresses, retinues of servants, and luxurious dishes do not make homes. It is not the residence but the affection of the occupants that constitutes the home. Those who are united in the bonds of a true affection behold themselves reflected in each other, and each is to the other as another self. ”

“ The ideal hero of Elijah Kellogg’s early boyhood was the hearty, warm-hearted, rough-handed, whole-souled pioneer who never turned his back upon a foe, whether biped or quadruped, and who never blenched in the face of a difficulty or a danger. He was the man who had in himself resources that were always called out and brought into exercise when obstacles were encountered, and invariably rose superior to the obstacles and made the man complete master of the situation, however bad that situation appeared. ”

“ The panther’s shaggy hide, the forest leaves, the dry bed of some mountain brook, shall be his couch, while on my corselet scales his cheek shall rest,—the soldier’s iron pillow; and when with growing strength and hardihood his bones endure the harness, behind his father’s buckler he shall learn to fight and bathe his maiden sword in blood.”
At the altar of Mars, surrounded by a vast throng of citizens, soldiery, and chief estates of the realm, stands Hamilcar; his helmet down conceals his features from the crowd. ”

“ It is almost superfluous to say that the man who wrote such books for boys as are the Elm Island and the Pleasant Cove series of stories was himself, when a lad, what would be called to-day an irrepressible. Without the least spice of malice or any suggestion of real harm in his nature, Elijah Kellogg was as full of mischief as a spring is of water, and it was simply impossible for parents and guardians to keep him within the bounds of Puritan propriety. It weighed not one jot with him that grave ministers and dignified elders of the church were among his forbears. ”

“ The water of the brook to quench his thirst, the dry leaves for his bed, and bread of simplest preparation supply his wants. Then, as the fierce she-wolf whose dugs nourished his ancestors doth raven for her whelps, so goes he forth to plunder and to prey among the nations, and, for the sake of stealing that which stolen is not worth the keeping, will life and fortune set upon a cast. Show to a Roman senate some patch of sand within mid-Africa, some waste of Alpine rocks, white with eternal snows, where, famished peasants watch their starving flocks and wrestle with the avalanche for life ”

“ The face is the face of a prophet. The pure white brow, which no hardship has bronzed and around which the locks of early manhood are clustering, is as radiant with goodness as heaven’s own light. The eyes suffused, not dimmed, by that mist which is the forerunner of tears, are turned toward heaven, while from their calm depths, pure as those through which wanders the light of stars, beam glances of gentle affection, a humility not assumed but ingrained like the summer flush upon the cheek of a ripened grape. ”

“ And, methinks, if I could look on something other than warrior’s harness and the blinding glare of burnished steel, and hear some other sound than death groans and armor clangs, could I but lay these throbbing temples upon the soft green turf beside my native brook, and let my hand hang over the bank into its blessed current, and feel the broad sweep of its waters, while the leaves danced over me, methinks that I could heave [Pg 208] this cursed crust from off my heart and be again a child. Yes, a child, a child! ”

“ The set of fellows with whom you cast your lot may make or mar you. College ties are strong. The boys with whom you eat and sleep, those with whom you solve the difficult problems and pick out the tangles in Greek and Latin, with whom you stroll of an evening to the falls or a Wednesday afternoon to the shore, to whom you tell your future plans, your love affairs, and your religious doubts, whose sympathies mingle with yours “like the interlacing of green, summer foliage,” those fellows are going to mould your ideals and determine your character. ”

“ Thou knowest how dear to me are these old trees beneath which in childhood I played, these swelling hills, these gently sloping vales, this fair stream whose gleam I love at the sunset hour to catch through green foliage and to whose murmur I love to listen, this chosen retreat filled with books that embalm the lore of centuries whither I may retire after drinking a thousand inspirations from without, and in silent prayer and thought make them my own, growing in the reaches of my lonely thought to greater affluence of progress and power. ”

“ Placing his little fingers on the yet quivering flesh of the victim, he said: “Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, swear, by this consecrated blood, and in the presence of that dread God of battles on whose altar it smokes, that you will neither love nor make peace with any of Roman blood; should fortune, friends, and weapons fail, you will still live and die the inexorable enemy of Rome.” ”

“ In his anguish he prostrates himself upon the floor; he cannot get low enough before his God. It is in his heart to embark with the Pilgrims, and he asks counsel of Heaven: “Father, wilt Thou that I leave these towers of my ancestors, moistened with their blood and beneath whose shadows their bones lie mouldering, and my mother now in the wane of life? Wilt Thou that I should take the wife of my bosom, my little ones reared in luxury and with tenderness, that I myself ever having lived and loved among the gifted and the great should go forth with my brethren to the wilderness? ”

“ Thus with the soul of man. Without the Christian hope it is a ship without an anchor, adrift on a stormy sea, at the mercy of its own passions, the temptations of life, and the wiles of the devil. These are the tempests which the soul must meet and struggle with; and, destitute of the gospel anchor, it must make shipwreck of faith and a good conscience.
The anchor is the seaman’s last resort. [Pg 364] He has many expedients with which to battle and make head against the tempest, but when all other methods fail, then the anchor must bring her up or she is lost. ”

“ Are we, my dear friends, wresting the Scriptures, picking and choosing among the commands of God, and obeying only those that run parallel with our inclinations? Have you gone just so far in obeying the commands of God as fashion and the custom of your acquaintances would go and stopped short when duty became self-denial? Have you done just as little for Christ as you thought could in any way consist with a fair profession in the eyes of the world, and have you gone just as far in the pleasures of the world as you in your judgment might go and still escape the fate of the unbeliever? ”

“ O Rome! Rome! thou hast been a tender nurse to me! Ay, thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd-lad, who never knew a harsher sound than a flute-note, muscles of iron and a heart of flint; taught him to drive the sword through rugged brass and plaited mail, and warm it in the marrow of his foe! to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a smooth-cheeked boy upon a laughing girl. And he shall pay thee back till thy yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy lifeblood lies curdled! ”

“ Bright tears of pride and joy glitter in her dark eyes, as, seated at his feet among the flowers, her white arm flung in careless happiness across his sinewy knees and throbbing in his gauntleted grasp, she gazes on the towering form and noble brow on which the stern traces of recent conflict still linger. Tempests have bronzed his cheek, desperate and bloody conflicts left their scars upon him; yet is he not less dear to her than when in joy of youth they crowned the altars of the gods with flowers, sporting among the sheaves at harvest home. ”

“ Ply him with liquor. Is a ruffian steeped in crime to be urged to some deed of horror from which even his hardened nature revolts? Ply him with liquor. Is a young man with his curiosity awake, his passions pure and jubilant, and his heart throbbing with warm impulses of budding life to be put upon that same descending grade opening to a like abyss of utter loathsomeness, his fair face to be rendered shameless, and his lips to reek of the pit? ”

“ Just as the red light, touching, tinged the mountain summits, a warrior, clad in gory mantle from which the blood, slow dripping, had stained his armor and clotted upon his horse’s mane, rode down the sentry, and, bursting into the midst of the camp, shouted, “Soldiers, protect a tribune of the people!” Those pregnant words, associated with all of liberty the commons had ever known, were to the chafed spirits of the soldiery as fire to flax. ”