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am I to do? See what a plight they are in. How can I possibly choose, because every one of them is equally wet? Then said my friend the captain, acting under a sudden inspiration, "Take the dry one." Take the dry one." I am sorry to say that she did so, and they lived happy ever afterwards.

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Ex. 4. THE QUEEN OF FRANCE. Burke.*

T is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy. O, what a revolution! What a heart I must have to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. The glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone.

*This extract is from a celebrated essay by the great English orator and statesman, Edmund Burke, and relates to the execution of Marie Antoinette. The scholar will often see and hear references to the famous sayings to be found in the extract concerning the "age of chivalry" and the "cheap defence of nations."

Ex. 5. — THE IMPORTATION OF

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BELIEVE that God made man i of one blood. Wherever there God's heritage, I recognize him as a brotherhood of humanity, and I wil him. I will stand by his rights at sacrifice. Whether a man comes fr rope, or the isles of the seas, whate or his religion or his faith, if he c States I would throw over him the of law. These people of China are labor contracts for long terms of yea porters make fortunes. They have country, and their labor is antagoniz of the free people of the United Sta out before us, and we ought to corre of the baleful effects of the system Peru, of the West India Islands, an I want to break up this modern slav extirpate it, and then let the China in the world, come here as individu open to all. A great many have that we would rather had stayed many bad people have come here, b many good people. All countries ha up this great nation. If Chinamen

on their own account, without these labor contracts, to cast their lot with the people of the United States, we must protect them, we must treat them as human beings, we must shield them from all harm. We must carry out our legitimate doctrines, we must give the rights of American citizenship, for it is not the interest of this country to have any degraded classes among us. We believe in God's Holy Word. We believe our government was founded on the sublime doctrines of right: this we must carry out; this we must act upon. It then becomes our duty to put an end to this system that is casting over China- a country of cheap labor-a country of Paganisma country with a civilization wholly distinct from our own-a drag-net, dragging these people together, and bringing them here as serfs. Respecting this question, it is not surprising, sir, that the workingmen of this country should say and do foolish things. I would say to them, one and all, that while they look anxiously at the matter they should do right, they should be just, they should treat all who may come here as brethren having a common Father; but they should insist that the capital of this country should not make the tour of the globe to gather up the cheap labor of the world, and bring it here under labor contracts, to reduce their earnings, and take the bread from the mouths of their children.

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THE pride, pomp, and circumstance of war,"

THE Conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward

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banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the

SELECTIONS IN PROSE.

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Not thus

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wounded and the lamentations for the slain. the Schoolmaster in his peaceful vocation. tates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution; he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily but calmly till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress, not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won. Such men men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind - I have found laboring conscientiously, though perhaps obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them and shared their fellowship in many countries. Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the prosperity of nations; their renown will fill the earth in after ages. Each one of these great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course; awaits in patience the fulfilment of the promises; and, resting from his labors, bequeaths his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble, but not inglorious, epitaph commemorating one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy."

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Ex. 7. - DEATH OF GEORGE PEABODY.— Winthrop.

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AREWELL to thee, brave, honest, noble-hearted friend! The village of thy birth weeps for one who never caused her pain before. Massachusetts mourns thee as a son who has given new lustre to her historic page; and Maine, not unmindful of her joint inheritance

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in the earlier glories of the parent state, has opened her noblest harbor, and draped her municipal halls with richest, saddest robes, to do honor to thy remains. New England, from mountain top to farthest cape, is in sympathy with the scene. This great and glorious nation, from the blue waters of the Atlantic to the golden shores of the Pacific, partakes of the pride of thy life and the sorrow of thy loss. In hundreds of schools of the desolated South the children even now are chanting thy requiem and weaving chaplets around thy name. In hundreds of comfortable homes, provided by thy bounty, the poor of the grandest city of the world even now are breathing blessings on thy memory. The proudest shrine of old England has unlocked its consecrated vaults for thy repose. The bravest ship of a navy "whose march. is over the mountain waves, whose home is on the deep," has borne thee as a conqueror to thy chosen rest, and as it passed from isle to isle and from sea to sea, in circumnavigation almost as wide as thy own charity, has given new significance to the great funeral orator of antiquity: "Of illustrious men the whole earth is the sepulchre ; and not only does the inscription upon columns in their own land point it out, but in that also which is not their own there dwells with every one an unwritten memorial of the heart."

And now around thee are assembled not only surviving schoolmates, and old companions of thy youth, and neighbors and friends of thy maturer years, but votaries of science, ornaments of literature, heads of universities. and academies, foremost men of commerce, the arts, politics, and religion, all eager to unite in paying such homage to a career of grand but simple beneficence as neither rank, nor fortune, nor learning, nor genius could ever have commanded. Nothing is wanted to give emphasis to thy example. Nothing is wanted to fill up. the measure of thy fame.

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