Faye Huntington

“ It was not in commemoration of a victory upon the battlefield, it was not the celebration of a victory, but rather as we observe with fitting ceremonies the anniversaries of the firing of the first guns in any contest of right against wrong, so in this last centennial year we commemorated the first booming of cannon in the great war against the rum traffic, the beginning of a war that is not ended yet; all along down the century the booming has been heard, and to-day this moral fight is waging fiercely. ”

“ So closed this great little life. The greatest soldier who ever lived, as men talk about soldiers, but an utter failure in the sight of him who said: "He that ruleth his own spirit, is greater than he that taketh a city." ”

“ His courage, his patriotism, his unflinching devotion to the cause he had sworn to live and die for and his faithfulness to what he believed to be his duty, or as he would probably have expressed it his destiny. We must pity him that when he had grown old, disappointed and discouraged, he had no other resource in his troubles but to plunge himself into an unknown world by his own act. ”

“ William Penn lived to see his enterprise achieve a grand success. Philadelphia had grown to be a city of no small dimensions and no little importance. The colony had grown to be a strong, self-supporting State, capable of self-government.
"I will found a free colony for all mankind," [Pg 102] said William Penn. Were these the words of a great man?
Unswerving integrity, undaunted courage, adherence to duty, and devotion to the service of God—are these the characteristics of a great man?
Then William Penn may well be placed in our Alphabet of Great Men. ”

“ We are born, we die, and the years which are counted in between the two dates, filled with the work we do, whether we do good or evil, make up our record, and stand as our monument, or if we have not built well lie as a tumbling mass of ruins. ”

“ We are all one flesh and blood. Being brethren, no advantage shall be taken on either side. Between us there shall be nothing but openness and love."
And they replied, "While the rivers run and the sun shines, we will live in peace with the children of William Penn." ”

“ Perhaps any one of these things would have made him what men call great, but this which has been said of him is worth more than position, scholarship, or eloquence: "he will longest be remembered as one whose every word and gesture was untiringly and grandly employed in animating his hearers to the best and loftiest ends." ”

“ Shall we not then give honor to one who so cheerfully laid aside his own cherished plans, ever ready to serve the public, doing his work so well in varied capacities, and of whom it could be said that "the annals of the country must be searched in vain to find one who had done more to advance every public interest and patriotic cause?" ”

“ There is love and reproach and despair. When a chosen friend turns against us we feel that we are undone.
Well, what have we found out about Cæsar's greatness? He was great in generalship, great in statesmanship, and great in oratory, and Macaulay says, "He possessed learning, taste, wit, eloquence, the sentiments and manners of an accomplished gentleman." ”

“ Have we not need of an army of strong, fearless men and women who shall lift up the standard of the Gospel against the tide of sin? One thought more: will each of my young readers enlist in this army and be diligent in preparing to meet the attacks of the enemy? ”

“ I would like to have you study the characters of the great men whose names I have written down above and there are others—great men whose initial letter is "G"—Gough, Garrison, Garibaldi—indeed there seems to be no end to the list! At present we will speak of only one. I have headed the list with the name of Gordon, not intentionally, but it seemed to come first. Was that because he is greatest? Perhaps not. My boys, there are noble men in this list, some of them your own countrymen, who have done much for humanity. ”

“ NEWTON, SIR ISAAC.
"Every body in nature attracts every other body with a force directly as its mass and inversely as the square of its distance." This has been called "The magnificent theory of universal gravitation which was the crowning glory of Newton's life." I doubt not many of you have struggled manfully with this law as laid down in your school-books, and, having conquered it, and fixed the principle in your minds to stay, you may like to know something about the philosopher himself. In 1642, a puny, sickly baby was supposed to be moaning away its young life in Lincolnshire, England. ”

“ Nothing hypocritical, foolish or untrue can find harbor in this man; a pure and manly, silent tenderness of affection is in him; touches of genial humor are not wanting under his severe austerity. A most clear-cut, hardy, distinct and effective man; fearing God without any other fear. There is in Knox throughout the spirit of an old Hebrew prophet-spirit almost altogether unique among modern men. ”

“ Gordon, Grant, Greeley, Garfield, Gladstone—such an array of names as sound in my ears when I think of this alphabetical list of great men! We have come to a letter that is prolific in subjects, and it is hard to choose. ”

“ But our hero who set out to conquer Rome was at last conquered. After many years of success in Italy, a danger threatened his own Carthage. The Romans had determined to carry the war into Africa; and Hannibal was obliged to hasten home to defend the city. He met the Roman forces under Scipio at Zama, and was defeated and forced to sue for peace. He would not have yielded, but his countrymen compelled him to accept the terms which Rome offered, humiliating though they were. ”

“ A lawyer who wrote books that the lawyers of to-day study carefully.
Also he wrote essays on a great variety of subjects—essays that scholars in these days read and enjoy. In fact, as I look them over, I see many sentences which girls and boys might enjoy before they are old enough or wise enough to be called scholars. Isn't that a queer idea, that you must be quite wise before people will say of you "he, or she, is a scholar?"
I have been reading Lord Bacon's essay on "Cunning," and it certainly shows that the people who lived hundreds of years ago, were at least as cunning as they are now. ”

“ Not very long did he serve the University in that way; his countrymen had other work for him. He had delivered some brilliant lectures at Harvard, but an oration delivered during the last visit of Lafayette to this country, settled the question, if any doubt yet remained as to his eloquence; it was on that occasion pronounced matchless, and the people of Massachusetts determined that such powers ought and should be made to do service in the political world. At the call of the people he left the seclusion of college walls and entered public life as a Representative in Congress. ”

“ Boys, we build oftentimes upon our failures! We need not be discouraged if we are not successful at first. Many of our great men have made wretched work of their first efforts in the line of their ambition. But rising above their despondency, setting themselves at work anew with increased energy, they have conquered. So may you! Disraeli was admitted to the peerage in 1876, and was known as Lord Beaconsfield. Afterwards, because of some great service rendered to his country while he was a member of the Congress of Berlin, the Queen made him a Knight of the Garter. ”

“ CÆSAR, CAIUS JULIUS.
Our Alphabet would not be complete if we left out one of the most remarkable men that ever lived. Perhaps we shall discover why he is called a remarkable man.
Let your thoughts go back along the years to the first years you can remember anything about, to the times of which your father and mother or perhaps your grandfather and grandmother have told you. ”

“ He said that God furnished man with food, and all they needed; could they not spare this little creature who was not destructive, and who had as much right to his share of God's bounty as they had; could they not spare to him the little food necessary to existence? Should they in selfishness and cold-heartedness take the life which they could not restore again, and which God had given? ”

“ In 1809 Abraham Lincoln was born in a lonely cabin on the banks of a small river or creek in Kentucky; born to poverty, hardship and obscurity, born to rise from obscurity, through poverty, hardship and toil to the highest point of an American boy's ambition. ”

“ Hannibal was the victor not only in many minor engagements, but at last he obtained a complete victory at a place called Cannæ, where he destroyed the Roman army. This battle has been considered his greatest exploit in the line of [Pg 54] fighting. The spot where this bloody battle was fought is called the field of blood, and when we know that forty thousand men were slain there, we would almost expect to see even to this day, the soil stained with blood, and surely the stain if washed out of the soil cannot be washed out of the history of those nations. ”

“ A printed missionary sermon preached in England was the means of turning his thoughts to the heathen. One day while walking alone in the woods meditating and lifting his heart to God in prayer for direction, the command "Go into all [Pg 64] the world and preach the Gospel to every creature," came to him with a new power and meaning, and he then resolved to obey the command. I suppose you have all heard the story of the haystack prayer-meeting, when four young men consecrated themselves to the work of carrying the Gospel to the heathen. ”

“ Whatever may be our political opinions, what [Pg 50] ever we may think of the work he was set to do, and in doing which he lost his life, we are sure of one thing, this man's devotion to duty was supreme and absolute. And death found him not shirking or hiding from duty and from danger, as ever fearless and bold, walking in the line of what he considered his duty. A chivalrous Christian soldier has ended his warfare, leaving behind a fragrant memory, a shining example of Christian faith. ”

“ Those who know the Alps, and who also know what it means to lead an army through difficult passes, tell us that it was an undertaking of tremendous magnitude, and it would not have seemed strange if after undergoing such fatigue and hardship, the army had been defeated by the Roman forces which awaited them at the foot of the southern slope. ”

“ You know that "he that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." And, too, without this triumph over his own spirit, do you think he would have won those other battles which have made him famous? ”

“ Imagine our government giving a young man a salary to travel around with, just so that he might get ready to work for it! Joseph went to France, and to Italy, and to Switzerland. Wait, did I tell you where he was born? In Wiltshire, England. His father was a minister. I don't think the government was so very good to him, though, for it forgot to pay his salary, after the first year, and he had to pay his own travelling expenses. He seems to have worked hard at his writing, and some of the poems which people read and admire to-day were written during these journeys. ”

“ Driven back again and again to the few, we should read them more carefully and make the thoughts our own, and perhaps the stock of ideas gathered from books would even exceed that which we gain from the multitude of books we have in these days of bookmaking. Whether you read much or little, few books or many, boys, read with careful thought. ”

“ I want to take you back to the sixteenth century, into rugged Scotland, and into the rugged times of that period of its history. I want to introduce to you a man of whom it was said, "No grander figure can be found in the history of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox."
John Knox was a boy when the Reformation movement began in Germany; indeed it was ten years after that when he was ordained a priest. It was twelve years later that he avowed himself a Protestant, and thus incurred the wrath of the Cardinal. ”

“ The young and beautiful queen of Scotland tried her powers of pleasing upon the heroic man who had dared to speak plainly of the sins even of the court. "But the faces of angry men could not move him, neither could the beauty of the young queen charm him, nor her tears melt him." ”

“ I have received just such letters as that, and sometimes they are from boys and girls. Remember, the great Lord Bacon does not say that it is a wise thing to do, but "a point of cunning."
I do not find that he wrote about getting into debt, but perhaps he did, for he certainly knew a great deal about it. He has the name of having been all his life in debt to some of his friends. So, wise man as he was, like most other men, we can, as soon as we begin to study his life, find something to avoid, as well as something to copy. ”

“ Doctor Judson's life of consecration, his self renunciation, can but influence the hearts of all who make it a study. I have heard of a young man who was so impressed upon reading the life of this wonderful man, that he went out into a field and there alone with Christ gave himself up to the service of the Lord. The era of foreign missionary work began with the hour when the few Christian students at Williams and Andover gave themselves to the work.
A conscientious decision may revolutionize the world. ”

“ Upon going abroad again he was received more as a prince than as a plain American citizen, kings and their subjects giving him honor. It may be believed that even in his wildest flights of fancy Professor Morse did not dream of the rapid spread of the use of his invention, or look forward to the time within a few years, when the telegraph wires would weave together the ends of the world and form a network over the entire Continent. ”

“ While a student at the University, Penn and his Quaker friends rebelled against the authority of the college and was expelled. The occasion of the rebellion was in the matter of wearing surplices and of uncovering the head in the presence of superiors. You know that the Quakers always keep their hats on, thinking it wrong to show to man the honor which they consider belongs only to God. ”