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THE DOORSTEP.

The conference-meeting through at last,
We boys around the vestry waited
To see the girls come tripping past
Like snow birds willing to be mated.

Not braver he that leaps the wall
By level musket flashes litten,
Than I, who stepped before them all,
Who longed to see me get the mitten.

But no; she blushed, and took my arm!
We let the old folks have the highway,
And started toward the Maple Farm
Along a kind of lover's by-way.

I can't remember what we said,

'Twas nothing worth a song or story; Yet that rude path by which we sped Seemed all transformed, and in a glory.

The snow was crisp beneath our feet,

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming; By hood and tippet sheltered sweet,

Her face with youth and health was beaming.

The little hand outside her muff

O sculptor, if you could but mould it!— So lightly touched my jacket cuff,

To keep it warm I had to hold it.

To have her with me there alone,—

'T was love and fear and triumph blended. At last we reached the foot-worn stone Where that delicious journey ended.

The old folks, too, were almost home;
Her dimpled hand the latches fingered,

We heard the voices nearer come,

Yet on the doorstep still we lingered

She shook her ringlets from her hood,

And with a " Thank you, Ned," dissembled,

But yet I knew she understood

With what a daring wish I trembled

A cloud passed kindly overhead

The moon was slyly peeping through it,

Yet hid its face, as if it said,

"Come, now or never! do it! do it!"

My lips till then had only known

The kiss of mother and of sister;

But somehow, full upon her own
Sweet rosy, darling mouth-I kissed her '

Perhaps 't was boyish love, yet still,
O listless woman, weary lover!
To feel once more that fresh, wild thrill
I'd give-but who can live youth over?

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

DULUTH.

[Hon. Proctor Knott was born near Lebanon, Ky., on the 29th of August, 1830. He was a Member of Congress several terms. In 1883 he was elected Governor of his native State. During his Congressional term he became widely known as a prominent Democratic statesman and a humorous speaker in the Congressional debates One of his most famous speeches was that delivered in the House of Representatives, January 21, 1871, when the question granting government aid in improving the harbor of Duluth was before Congress. In this speech he ridiculed the town and the proposition then pending before the House. His speech, for convenience, is divided into four pieces,-each may be spoken independently, or any number, or all of them may be spoken together.]

I.

If I could be actuated by any conceivable inducement to betray the sacred trust reposed in me by those to whose generous confidence I am indebted for the honor of a seat on this floor; if I could be influenced by any possible consideration to become instrumental in giving away, in violation of their known wishes, any portion of their interest in the public domain, for the mere promotion of any railroad enterprise whatever, I should certainly feel a strong inclination to give this measure my most earnest and hearty support; for I am assured that its success would materially enhance the pecuniary prosperity of some of the most valued friends I have on earth; friends for whose accommodation I would be willing to make almost any sacrifice not involving my personal honor or my fidelity as the trustee of an express trust. And that act of itself would be sufficient to countervail almost any objection I might entertain to the passage of this bill, not inspired by the imperative and inexorable sense of public duty.

But, independent of the seductive influences of private friendship, to which I admit I am, perhaps, as susceptible as any of the gentlemen I see around me, the intrinsic merits of the measure itself are of such an extraordinary character as to commend it most strongly to the favorable consideration of every member of this House, myself not excepted, notwithstanding my constituents, in whose behalf alone I am acting here, would not be benefited by its passage one particle more than they would be by a project to cultivate an orange grove on the bleakest summit of Greenland's icy mountains.

Now, sir, as to those great trunk lines of railways, spanning the continent from ocean to ocean, I confess my mind has never been fully made up. It is true they may afford some trifling advantages

to local traffic, and they may even in time become the channels of a more extended commerce. Yet I have never been thoroughly satis. fied either of the necessity or expediency of projects promising such meagre results to the great body of our people. But with regard to the transcendent merits of the gigantic enterprise contemplated in this bill, I have never entertained the shadow of a doubt.

Years ago, when I first heard that there was somewhere in the vast terra incognita, somewhere in the bleak regions of the great Northwest, a stream of water known to the nomadic inhabitants of the neighborhood as the River St. Croix, I became satisfied that the construction of a railroad from that raging torrent to some point in the civilized world was essential to the happiness and prosperity of the American people, if not absolutely indispensable to the perpetuity of Republican institutions on this continent. I felt, instinctively, that the boundless resources of that prolific region of sand and pine shrubbery would never be fully developed without a railroad constructed and equipped at the expense of the government, and perhaps not then. I had an abiding presentiment that, some day or other, the people of this whole country, irrespective of party affiliations, regardless of sectional prejudices, and “without distinction of race, color, or previous condition of servitude," would rise in their majesty and demand an outlet for the enormous agricultural productions of those vast and fertile pine barrens, drained in the rainy season by the surging waters of the turbid St. Croix.

These impressions, derived simply and solely from the "eternal fitness of things," were not only strengthened by the interesting and eloquent debate on this bill, to which I listened with so much pleasure the other day, but intensified, if possible, as I read over, this morning, the lively colloquy which took place on that occasion, as I find it reported in last Friday's Globe.

Now, sir, after listening to this empnatic and unequivocal testimony of these intelligent, competent and able-bodied witnesses, who that is not as incredulous as St. Thomas himself will doubt for a moment that the Goshen of America is to be found in the sandy valleys and upon the pine-clad hills of the St. Croix? Who will have the hardihood to rise in his seat on this floor and assert that, excepting the pine bushes, the entire region would not produce vegetation enough in ten years to fatten a grasshopper? Where is the patriot who is willing that his country shall incur the peril of remaining another day without the amplest railroad connection with such

an inexhaustible mine of agricultural wealth? Who will answer for the consequences of abandoning a great and war-like people, in the possession of a country like that, to brood over the indifference and neglect of their government? How long would it be before they would take to studying the Declaration of Independence, and natching out the damnable heresy of secession? How long before the grim demon of civil discord would rear again his horrid head in our midst, "gnash loud his iron fangs, and shake his crest of bristling bayonets"?

"Now, sir, I repeat, I have been satisfied for years that, if there was any portion of the inhabited globe absolutely in a suffering condition for want of a railroad, it was these teeming pine barrens of the St. Croix. At what particular point on that noble stream such a road should be commenced I knew was immaterial, and it seems so to have been considered by the draughtsman of this bill. It might be up at the spring, or down at the foot-log, or the water-gate, or the fish-dam, or anywhere along the bank, no matter where. But, in what direction should it run, or where should it terminate, were always to my mind questions of the most painful perplexity. I could conceive of no place on "God's green earth" in such straitened circumstances for railroad facilities as to be likely to desire or willing to accept, such a connection. I knew that neither Bayfield nor Superior City would have it, for they both indignantly spurned the munificence of the government when coupled with such ignominious conditions, and let this very same land grant die on their hands years and years ago, rather than submit to the degradation of a direct communication by railroad with the piney woods of the St. Croix ; and I knew that what the enterprising inhabitants of those giant young cities would refuse to take, would have few charms for others, whatever their necessities or cupidity might be.

Hence, as I have said, sir, I was utterly at a loss to determine where the terminus of this great and indispensable road should be, until I accidentally overheard some gentleman the other day mention the name of "Duluth."

Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses; or the soft, sweet accents of an angel's whisper in the bright joyous dream of sleeping innocence.

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