T THE SOLDIER'S DREAM THOMAS CAMPBELL HE home yearnings of a soldier boy who lives in hourly expectation of facing death in any form awakens the liveliest interest and sympathy on the part of each of us. Hence the literature of war has always been popular. Life in camp frequently appears a prolonged anguish. There are letters that never come. Homesickness becomes a real and dreaded disease. Hopes that are only fulfilled in dreams throb in the breast. Bitter tears of anxiety for the safety of those at home are shed. All this creates a pathos which hallows the devotion to duty that holds the husband and father in the ranks when all the delights of home and companionship beckon him thence. The war lyrics of Campbell depict these things with rare power. The following stanzas are widely admired and quoted. They rise to a high place in the literature of the battlefield. THE SOLDIER'S DREAM Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered, When reposing that night on my pallet of straw Methought from the battlefield's dreadful array To the home of my fathers, that welcomed me back. I flew to the pleasant fields traversed so oft In life's morning march, when my bosom was young; I heard my own mountain goats bleating aloft, And knew the sweet strain that the corn reapers sung. Then pledged we the wine cup, and fondly I swore And my wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart. "Stay, stay with us!-rest! thou art weary and worn!" SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES 1. Explain "truce." (L. 1.) 2. Why "sentinel stars"? 3. Define "fagot." 4. Why did he dream this dream so often? 5. Mention some things that formed this "dreadful array." (L. 9.) 6. Explain "Life's morning march." 7. What kind of country was his home? S. What kind of husband and father was he? 9. Whose words form the quotation? (L. 21.) 10. How do the last two lines cause us to feel? REFERENCES CAMPBELL: Hohenlinden. O'HARA: Bivouac of the Dead. R. B. WILSON: Such is the Death the Soldier Dies. THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS The influence of books upon man is remarkable; they make the man. You may judge a man more truly by the books and papers that he reads than by the company which he keeps, for his associates are often, in a manner, imposed upon him; but his reading is the result of choice, and a man who chooses a certain class of books and papers unconsciously becomes more colored in their views, more rooted in their opinions, and the mind becomes fettered to their views. All the life and feeling of a young girl is fascinated by some glowing love romance, is colored and shaped by the page she reads. If it be false, and weak, and foolish, she will be false, and weak, and foolish too; but if it be true, and tender, and inspiring, then something of its truth, and tenderness, and inspiration will grow into her soul and become a part of her very self. The boy who reads deeds of manliness, of bravery, and noble daring, feels the spirit of emulation grow within him, and the seed is planted which will bring forth fruit of heroic endeavor and exalted life. EUL THE DEATH OF GARFIELD JAMES G. BLAINE ULOGIES of a nation's great are valuable contributions to its literature. They emphasize the graces and accomplishments that are most desired and admired by the citizenship of the country. The student of Cicero's orations gets a viewpoint of Roman ideals from the original source of those ideals. When a eulogy is couched, as in this selection, in language so beautiful and so apt as to make it universally popular, its influence is especially powerful. No man was better fitted by nature than James G. Blaine to deliver a funeral oration that would live forever. His training, too, was of such a character as to make his words and opinions effective. For several years he was editor of the Kennebec Journal and later he occupied a like position on the Portland Advertiser. Three times in his fourteen years of service as a member of the national House of Representatives, he was elected Speaker. He was elected United States Senator, and served two terms as Secretary of State, a position which he occupied when James A. Garfield, President of the United States, was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau, July 2, 1881. His close official and personal relations to the dead President caused him to be selected to deliver the funeral oration, of which this reading is the peroration. It is more than an oration. It is the gentle, tender, touching tribute of a friend combined with the profound, respectful admiration of a patriotic fellow citizen. THE DEATH OF GARFIELD Surely, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully before him; the next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interests, from its hopes, its inspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death, and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which stunned and dazed he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear, bright, and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes whose lips may tell! What brilliant broken plans! What baffled high ambitions! What sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships! What bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him, a proud expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding |