TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL.
Sebastian and his sister Viola, a young gentleman and lady of Messaline, were twins, and (which was accounted a great wonder) from their birth they so much resembled each other, that, but for the difference in their dress, they could not be known apart. They were both born in one hour, and in one hour they were both in danger of perishing, for they were shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, as they were making a sea voyage together. The ship, on board of which they were, split on a rock in a violent storm, and a very small number of the ship’s company escaped with their lives. The captain of the vessel, with a few of the sailors that were saved, got to land in a small boat, and with them they brought Viola safe on shore, where she, poor lady, instead of rejoicing at her own deliverance, began to lament her brother’s loss; but the captain comforted her with the assurance, that he had seen her brother when the ship split, fasten himself to a strong mast, on which, as long as he could see anything of him for the distance, he perceived him borne up above the waves. Viola was much consoled by the hope this account gave her, and now considered how she was to dispose of herself in a strange country, so far from home; and she asked the captain if he knew anything of Illyria. “Ay, very well, madam,” replied the captain, “for I was born not three hours’ travel from this place.” “Who governs here?” said Viola. The captain told her, Illyria was governed by Orsino, a duke noble in nature as well as dignity. Viola said, she had heard her father speak of Orsino, and that he was unmarried then. “And he is so now,” said the captain; “or was so very lately, for but a month ago I went from here, and then it was the general talk (as you know what great ones do the people will prattle of) that Orsino sought the love of fair Olivia, a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count who died twelve months ago, leaving Olivia to the protection of her brother, who shortly after died also; and for the love of this dear brother, they say, she has abjured the sight and company of men.” Viola, who was herself in such a sad affliction for her brother’s loss, wished she could live with this lady, who so tenderly mourned a brother’s death. She asked the captain if he could introduce her to Olivia, saying she would willingly serve this lady. But he replied, this would be a hard thing to accomplish, because the lady Olivia would admit no person into her house since her brother’s death, not even the duke himself. Then Viola formed another project in her mind, which was, in a man’s habit to serve the Duke Orsino as a page. It was a strange fancy in a young lady to put on male attire, and pass for a boy; but the forlorn and unprotected state of Viola, who was young and of uncommon beauty, alone, and in a foreign land, must plead her excuse.
She having observed a fair behavior in the captain, and that he showed a friendly concern for her welfare, intrusted him with her design, and he readily engaged to assist her. Viola gave him money, and directed him to furnish her with suitable apparel, ordering her clothes to be made of the same color and in the same fashion her brother Sebastian used to wear, and when she was dressed in her manly garb, she looked so exactly like her brother, that some strange errors happened by means of their being mistaken for each other; for, as will afterwards appear, Sebastian was also saved.
Viola’s good friend, the captain, when he had transformed this pretty lady into a gentleman, having some interest at court, got her presented to Orsino, under the feigned name of Cesario. The duke was wonderfully pleased with the address and graceful deportment of this handsome youth, and made Cesario one of his pages, that being the office Viola wished to obtain: and she so well fulfilled the duties of her new station, and showed such a ready observance and faithful attachment to her lord, that she soon became his most favored attendant. To Cesario Orsino confided the whole history of his love for the lady Olivia. To Cesario he told the long and unsuccessful suit he had made to one, who, rejecting his long services, and despising his person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the field, and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. Unmeet companion no doubt his grave courtiers thought Cesario was, for their once noble master, the great Duke Orsino.
It is a dangerous matter for young maidens to be the confidants of handsome young dukes; which Viola too soon found to her sorrow, for all that Orsino told her he endured for Olivia, she presently perceived she suffered for the love of him: and much it moved her wonder, that Olivia could be so regardless of this her peerless lord and master, whom she thought no one should behold without the deepest admiration, and she ventured gently to hint to Orsino that it was pity he should affect a lady who was so blind to his worthy qualities; and she said, “If a lady was to love you, my lord, as you love Olivia (and perhaps there may be one who does), if you could not love her in return, would you not tell her that you could not love, and must not she be content with that answer?” But Orsino would not admit of this reasoning, for he denied that it was possible for any woman to love as he did. He said that no woman’s heart was big enough to hold so much love, and therefore it was unfair to compare any lady’s love for him to his love for Olivia. Now, though Viola had the utmost deference for the duke’s opinions, she could not help thinking this was not quite true, for she thought her heart had full as much love in it as Orsino’s had; and she said, “Ah, but I know, my lord,”——“What do you know, Cesario?” said Orsino. “Too well I know,” replied Viola, “what love women may owe to men. They are as true of heart as we are. My father had a daughter that loved a man, as I perhaps, were I a woman, should love your lordship.” “And what is her history?” said Orsino. “A blank, my lord,” replied Viola; “she never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief.” The duke inquired if this lady died of her love, but to this question Viola returned an evasive answer; as probably she had feigned the story, to speak words expressive of the secret love and silent grief she suffered for Orsino.
While they were talking, a gentleman entered whom the duke had sent to Olivia, and he said, “So please you, my lord, I might not be admitted to the lady, but by her handmaid she returned you this answer: until seven years hence, the element itself shall not behold her face; but like a cloistress she will walk veiled, watering her chamber with her tears for the sad remembrance of her dead brother.” On hearing this, the duke exclaimed, “O she that has a heart of this fine frame, to pay this debt of love to a dead brother, how will she love, when the rich golden shaft has touched her heart!” And then he said to Viola, “You know, Cesario, I have told you all the secrets of my heart; therefore, good youth, go to Olivia’s house. Be not denied access; stand at her doors, and tell her, there your fixed foot shall grow till you have audience.” “And if I do speak to her, my lord, what then?” said Viola. “O then,” replied Orsino, “unfold to her the passion of my love. Make a long discourse to her of my dear faith. It may well become you to act my woes, for she will attend more to you than one of graver aspect.”
Away then went Viola; but not willingly did she undertake this courtship, for she was to woo a lady to become a wife to him she wished to marry; but having undertaken the affair, she performed it with fidelity; and Olivia soon heard that a youth was at her door who insisted upon being admitted to her presence. “I told him,” said the servant, “that you were sick: he said he knew you were, and therefore he came to speak with you. I told him that you were asleep: he seemed to have a foreknowledge of that too, and said, that therefore he must speak with you. What is to be said to him, lady? for he seems fortified against all denial, and will speak with you, whether you will or no.” Olivia, curious to see who this peremptory messenger might be, desired he might be admitted; and throwing her veil over her face, she said she would once more hear Orsino’s embassy, not doubting but that he came from the duke, by his importunity. Viola entering, put on the most manly air she could assume, and affecting the fine courtier’s language of great men’s pages, she said to the veiled lady, “Most radiant, exquisite and matchless beauty, I pray you tell me if you are the lady of the house; for I should be sorry to cast away my speech upon another, for besides that it is excellently well penned, I have taken great pains to learn it.” “Whence come you, sir?” said Olivia. “I can say little more than I have studied,” replied Viola; “and that question is out of my part.” “Are you a comedian?” said Olivia. “No,” replied Viola; “and yet I am not that which I play;” meaning that she being a woman, feigned herself to be a man. And again she asked Olivia if she were the lady of the house. Olivia said she was; and then Viola, having more curiosity to see her rival’s features than haste to deliver her master’s message, said, “Good madam, let me see your face.” With this bold request Olivia was not averse to comply; for this haughty beauty, whom the Duke Orsino had loved so long in vain, at first sight conceived a passion for the supposed page, the humble Cesario.
When Viola asked to see her face, Olivia said, “Have you any commission from your lord and master to negotiate with my face?” And then, forgetting her determination to go veiled for seven long years, she drew aside her veil, saying, “But I will draw the curtain and show the picture. Is it not well done?” Viola replied, “It is beauty truly mixed; the red and white upon your cheeks are by Nature’s own cunning hand laid on. You are the most cruel lady living, if you will lead these graces to the grave, and leave the world no copy.” “O sir,” replied Olivia, “I will not be so cruel. The world may have an inventory of my beauty. As, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; one neck; one chin, and so forth. Were you sent here to praise me?” Viola replied, “I see you what you are: you are too proud, but you are fair. My lord and master loves you. O such a love could but be recompensed, though you were crowned the queen of beauty: for Orsino loves you with adoration and with tears, with groans that thunder love, and sighs of fire.” “Your lord,” said Olivia, “knows well my mind. I can not love him; yet I doubt not he is virtuous; I know him to be noble and of high estate, of fresh and spotless youth. All voices proclaim him learned, courteous, and valiant; yet I can not love him, he might have taken his answer long ago.” “If I did love you as my master does,” said Viola, “I would make me a willow cabin at your gates, and call upon your name. I would write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the night; your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo, the babbling gossip of the air, cry out Olivia. O you should not rest between the elements of earth and air, but you should pity me.” “You might do much,” said Olivia; “what is your parentage?” Viola replied, “Above my fortunes, yet my state is well. I am a gentleman.” Olivia now reluctantly dismissed Viola, saying, “Go to your master, and tell him, I can not love him. Let him send no more, unless perchance you come again to tell me how he takes it.” And Viola departed, bidding the lady farewell by the name of Fair Cruelty. When she was gone, Olivia repeated the words, Above my fortune, yet my state is well, I am a gentleman. And she said aloud, “I will be sworn he is; his tongue, his face, his limbs, action, and spirit, plainly show he is a gentleman.” And then she wished Cesario was the duke; and perceiving the fast hold he had taken on her affections, she blamed herself for her sudden love; but the gentle blame which people lay upon their own faults has no deep root; and presently the noble lady Olivia so far forgot the inequality between her fortunes and those of this seeming page, as well as the maidenly reserve which is the chief ornament of a lady’s character, that she resolved to court the love of young Cesario, and sent a servant after him with a diamond ring, under the pretence that he had left it with her as a present from Orsino. She hoped by thus artfully making Cesario a present of the ring, she should give him some intimation of her design; and truly it did make Viola suspect; for knowing that Orsino had sent no ring by her, she began to recollect that Olivia’s looks and manner were expressive of admiration, and she presently guessed her master’s mistress had fallen in love with her. “Alas,” said she, “the poor lady might as well love a dream. Disguise I see is wicked, for it has caused Olivia to breathe as fruitless sighs for me, as I do for Orsino.”
Viola returned to Orsino’s palace, and related to her lord the ill success of her negotiation, repeating the command of Olivia, that the duke should trouble her no more. Yet still the duke persisted in hoping that the gentle Cesario would in time be able to persuade her to show some pity, and therefore he bade him to go to her again the next day. In the mean time, to pass away the tedious interval, he commanded a song which he loved to be sung; and he said, “My good Cesario, when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that weave their thread with bone, chant this song. It is silly, yet I love it, for it tells of the innocence of love in the old times.”
SONG.
Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white stuck all with yew,
O prepare it;
My part of death no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me oh where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there.
Viola did not fail to mark the words of the old song, which in such true simplicity described the pangs of unrequited love, and she bore testimony in her countenance of feeling what the song expressed. Her sad looks were observed by Orsino, who said to her, “My life upon it, Cesario, though you are so young, your eye has looked upon some face that it loves; has it not, boy?” “A little, with your leave,” replied Viola. “And what kind of woman, and of what age is she?” said Orsino. “Of your age, and of your complexion, my lord,” said Viola: which made the duke smile to hear this fair young boy loved a woman so much older than himself, and of a man’s dark complexion; but Viola secretly meant Orsino, and not a woman like him.
When Viola made her second visit to Olivia, she found no difficulty in gaining access to her. Servants soon discover when their ladies delight to converse with handsome young messengers; and the instant Viola arrived, the gates were thrown wide open, and the duke’s page was shown into Olivia’s apartment with great respect; and when Viola told Olivia that she was come once more to plead in her lord’s behalf, this lady said, “I desired you never to speak of him again; but if you would undertake another suit, I had rather hear you solicit than music from the spheres.” This was pretty plain speaking, but Olivia soon explained herself still more plainly, and openly confessed her love: and when she saw displeasure with perplexity expressed in Viola’s face, she said, “O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful in the contempt and anger of his lip! Cesario, by the roses of the spring, by maidhood, honor, and by truth, I love you so, that, in spite of your pride, I have neither wit nor reason to conceal my passion.” But in vain the lady wooed; Viola hastened from her presence, threatening never more to come to plead Orsino’s love: and all the reply she made to Olivia’s fond solicitations was a declaration of a resolution, Never to love any woman.
No sooner had Viola left the lady than a claim was made upon her valor. A gentleman, a rejected suitor of Olivia, who had learned how that lady had favored the duke’s messenger, challenged him to fight a duel. What should poor Viola do, who, though she carried a man-like outside, had a true woman’s heart, and feared to look on her own sword?
When she saw her formidable rival advancing toward her with his sword drawn, she began to think of confessing that she was a woman; but she was relieved at once from her terror, and the shame of such a discovery, by a stranger that was passing by, who made up to them, and as if he had been long known to her, and were her dearest friend, said to her opponent, “If this young gentleman has done offense, I will take the fault on me, and if you offend him, I will for his sake defy you.” Before Viola had time to thank him for his protection, or to inquire the reason of his kind interference, her new friend met with an enemy where his bravery was of no use to him; for the officers of justice coming up at that instant, apprehended the stranger in the duke’s name to answer for an offence he had committed some years before; and he said to Viola, “This comes with seeking you;” and then he asked her for a purse, saying, “Now my necessity makes me ask for my purse, and it grieves me much more for what I can not do for you, than for what befalls myself. You stand amazed, but be of comfort.” His words did indeed amaze Viola, and she protested she knew him not, nor had ever received a purse from him; but for the kindness he had just shown her, she offered him a small sum of money, being nearly all she possessed. And now the stranger spoke severe things, charging her with ingratitude and unkindness. He said, “This youth, whom you see here, I snatched from the jaws of death, and for his sake alone I came to Illyria, and have fallen into this danger.” But the officers cared little for hearkening to the complaints of their prisoner, and they hurried him off, saying, “What is that to us?” And as he was carried away, he called Viola by the name of Sebastian, reproaching the supposed Sebastian for disowning his friend, as long as he was within hearing. When Viola heard herself called Sebastian, though the stranger was taken away too hastily for her to ask an explanation, she conjectured that this seeming mystery might arise from her being mistaken for her brother; and she began to cherish hopes that it was her brother whose life this man said he had preserved. And so indeed it was. The stranger, whose name was Antonio, was a sea-captain. He had taken Sebastian up into his ship, when, almost exhausted with fatigue, he was floating on the mast to which he had fastened himself in the storm. Antonio conceived such a friendship for Sebastian, that he resolved to accompany him whithersoever he went; and when the youth expressed a curiosity to visit Orsino’s court, Antonio, rather than part from him, came to Illyria, though he knew if his person should be known there, his life would be in danger, because in a sea-fight he had once dangerously wounded the Duke Orsino’s nephew. This was the offence for which he was now made a prisoner.
Antonio and Sebastian had landed together but a few hours before Antonio met Viola. He had given his purse to Sebastian, desiring him to use it freely if he saw anything he wished to purchase, telling him he would wait at the inn, while Sebastian went to view the town: but Sebastian not returning at the time appointed, Antonio had ventured out to look for him; and Viola being dressed the same, and in face so exactly resembling her brother, Antonio drew his sword (as he thought) in defence of the youth he had saved; and when Sebastian (as he supposed) disowned him, and denied him his own purse, no wonder he accused him of ingratitude.
Viola, when Antonio was gone, fearing a second invitation to fight, slunk home as fast as she could. She had not been long gone when her adversary thought he saw her return; but it was her brother Sebastian who happened to arrive at this place, and he said, “Now, sir, I have met with you again? There’s for you;” and struck him a blow. Sebastian was no coward; he returned the blow with interest, and drew his sword.
A lady now put a stop to this duel, for Olivia came out of the house, and she too mistaking Sebastian for Cesario, invited him to come into her house, expressing much sorrow at the rude attack he had met with. Though Sebastian was as much surprised at the courtesy of this lady as at the rudeness of his unknown foe, yet he went very willingly into the house, and Olivia was delighted to find Cesario (as she thought him) become more sensible of her attentions; for though their features were exactly the same, there was none of the contempt and anger to be seen in his face, which she had complained of when she told her love to Cesario.
Sebastian did not at all object to the fondness the lady lavished on him. He seemed to take it in very good part, yet he wondered how it had come to pass, and he was rather inclined to think Olivia was not in her right senses; but perceiving she was mistress of a fine house, and that she ordered her affairs and seemed to govern her family discreetly, and that in all but her sudden love for him she appeared in the full possession of her reason, he well approved of the courtship; and Olivia finding Cesario in this good humor, and fearing he might change his mind, proposed that, as she had a priest in the house, they should be instantly married. Sebastian assented to this proposal; and when the marriage ceremony was over, he left his lady for a short time, intending to go and tell his friend Antonio the good fortune that he had met with. In the meantime Orsino came to visit Olivia; and at the moment he arrived before Olivia’s house, the officers of justice brought their prisoner, Antonio, before the duke. Viola was with Orsino, her master, and when Antonio saw Viola, whom he still imagined to be Sebastian, he told the duke in what manner he had rescued the youth from the perils of the sea; and after fully relating all the kindness he had really shown to Sebastian, he ended his complaint with saying, that for three months, both day and night, this ungrateful youth had been with him. But now the lady Olivia coming forth from her house, the duke could no longer attend to Antonio’s story; and he said, “Here comes the countess: now heaven walks on earth! but for thee, fellow, thy words are madness. Three months has this youth attended on me;” and then he ordered Antonio to be taken aside. But Orsino’s heavenly countess soon gave the duke cause to accuse Cesario as much of ingratitude as Antonio had done, for all the words he could hear Olivia speak were words of kindness to Cesario; and when he found his page had obtained this high place in Olivia’s favor, he threatened him with all the terrors of his just revenge: and as he was going to depart, he called Viola to follow him, saying, “Come boy, with me. My thoughts are ripe for mischief.” Though it seemed in his jealous rage he was going to doom Viola to instant death, yet her love made her no longer a coward, and she said she would most joyfully suffer death to give her master ease. But Olivia would not so lose her husband, and she cried, “Where goes my Cesario?” Viola replied, “After him I love more than my life.” Olivia, however, prevented their departure by loudly proclaiming that Cesario was her husband, and sent for the priest, who declared that not two hours had passed since he had married the lady Olivia to this young man. In vain Viola protested she was not married to Olivia; the evidence of that lady and the priest made Orsino believe that his page had robbed him of the treasure he prized above his life. But thinking that it was past recall, he was bidding farewell to his faithless mistress, and the young dissembler, her husband, as he called Viola, warning her never to come in his sight again, when (as it seemed to them) a miracle appeared! for another Cesario entered, and addressed Olivia as his wife. This new Cesario was Sebastian, the real husband of Olivia: and when their wonder had a little ceased at seeing two persons with the same face, the same voice, and the same habit, the brother and sister began to question each other, for Viola could scarce be persuaded that her brother was living, and Sebastian knew not how to account for the sister he supposed drowned, being found in the habit of a young man. But Viola presently acknowledged that she was indeed Viola, and his sister under that disguise.
When all the errors were cleared up which the extreme likeness between this twin brother and sister had occasioned, they laughed at the lady Olivia for the pleasant mistake she had made in falling in love with a woman; and Olivia showed no dislike whatever to her exchange, when she found she had wedded the brother instead of the sister.
The hopes of Orsino were forever at an end by this marriage of Olivia, and with his hopes, all his fruitless love seemed to vanish away, and all his thoughts were fixed on the event of his favorite, young Cesario, being changed into a fair lady. He viewed Viola with great attention, and he remembered how very handsome he had always thought Cesario was, and he concluded she would look very beautiful in a woman’s attire; and then he remembered how often she had said she loved him, which at the time seemed only the dutiful expressions of a faithful page, but now he guessed that something more was meant, for many of her pretty sayings which were like riddles to him, came now into his mind, and he no sooner remembered all these things than he resolved to make Viola his wife; and he said to her (he still could not help calling her Cesario and boy), “Boy, you have said to me a thousand times that you should never love a woman like to me, and for the faithful service you have done for me so much beneath your soft and tender breeding, and since you have called me master so long, you shall now be your master’s mistress, and Orsino’s true duchess.”
Olivia, perceiving Orsino was making over that heart, which she had so ungraciously rejected, to Viola, invited them to enter her house, and offered the assistance of the good priest, who had married her to Sebastian in the morning, to perform the same ceremony in the remaining part of the day for Orsino and Viola. Thus the twin brother and sister were both wedded on the same day: the storm and shipwreck, which had separated them, being the means of bringing to pass their high and mighty fortunes. Viola was the wife of Orsino the Duke of Illyria, and Sebastian the husband of the rich and noble countess, the Lady Olivia.
[QUAINT OLD GARDEN OF OUR CHILDHOOD.]
CLARA THWAITES.
Quaint old garden of our childhood,
Where we played from chime to chime,
Haunted by the mournful music
Of the belfry’s broken rhyme!
Hither came the swell of anthems,
Floating through our leafy glades,
Here the “Amen” from the cloisters
Died among our mulberry shades.
Hither came the joy of bridals,
Clash and laughter of the bells;
Hither came the muffled sorrow,
And the sob, of last farewells.
Sombre chestnuts held their torches
White, in deep funereal gloom,
O’er the sunken, mould’ring headstones,
O’er the latest daisied tomb.
Solemn curfew of our childhood,
Closing each day with a sigh,
Ringing through our peaceful slumbers
Like a tender lullaby!
Daisied meadows of our childhood,
Once a battle-field of pain!
Ah, we never dreamed of dolor
As we weaved our daisy-chain!
Shining river of our childhood,
As I watched thee ripple by,
Still I deemed thy joy and glitter
Sweetest of life’s prophecy.
See, it widens to the ocean!
See, the river overflows!
Shining river of my childhood,
Life is fullest at its close!
“To find fault, some one may say, is easy, and in every man’s power; but to point out the proper course to be pursued in the present circumstances, that is the proof of a wise counselor.”—Demosthenes.
[THE W. C. T. U. BORN AT CHAUTAUQUA.]
The origin of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was prepared, and read by Mrs. W. A. Ingham, of Cleveland, Ohio, before the national convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, held last month at Louisville, Ky.
The handful of corn upon the tops of the mountains grew apace after its wonderful planting in Ohio during the winter and spring of 1873-4.
The fruit thereof shook like Lebanon throughout the Middle and Western States, and in August of that year, many of the seed-sowers had gathered upon the shore of Lake Chautauqua for a fortnight in the woods.
In the primitive fashion we dwelt in tents, or sat in the open air about the watchfires kindled at the first National Sunday School Assembly.
Women who had drawn near to God in saloon prayer meetings felt their hearts aflame again as they recounted the wonders of the great uprising.
It was at Chautauqua, the birth-place of grand ideas, that our Union originated.
It is time the story of its beginnings was written, and there is no more fitting place for its rehearsal than in this goodly presence—the city of Louisville, where South and North meet beneath the palm to rejoice over its achievements and consecrate anew its altars.
One bright day a very few ladies were in conversation upon the subject that filled their hearts, inspiring the thought that the temperance cause needed the united effort of all the women of the country.
The suggestion came from Mrs. Mattie McClellan Brown, of Alliance, Ohio. Mrs. G. W. Manly, leader of the praying band of Akron, accepted the idea, and it was said: “Why not take steps here toward its formation?”
Upon further consultation it was decided to call a meeting, notice of which was read from the platform of the Auditorium by Rev. Dr. Vincent.
Mrs. Jennie F. Willing, of Illinois, a guest of the Assembly, maintained that so important a movement should be controlled by women engaged in active Christian work.
In order to arrange the preliminaries of the announced meeting, Mrs. Willing invited Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Manly, Miss Emma Janes, of Oakland, California, and Mrs. Ingham, of Cleveland, to meet her in a new board shanty on Asbury Avenue.
The Woman’s National Christian Temperance Union was born, not in a manger, but on a floor of straw in an apartment into which daylight shone through holes and crevices.
In a half hour’s space every detail was prepared, including a proposed formation of a Committee of Organization, to take place that very afternoon succeeding the regular three o’clock session of the Assembly.
At the temperance prayer-meeting at 4 o’clock, p. m., under the canvas Tabernacle, were, perhaps, fifty earnest Christian women; of them were several from Ohio, Mrs. H. H. Otis, of Buffalo, Mrs. Niles, of Hornellsville, and Mrs. W. E. Knox, of Elmira, N. Y.
Mrs. Willing was leader of the prayer service, and acted as presiding officer of the business session, convened afterward. At this conference women were chosen to represent various States; an adjournment being had to the following day.
At the hour appointed, August 15, 1874, a large audience had gathered, Mrs. Jennie F. Willing in the chair, and Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller secretary.
As results of the deliberation, the committee of organization was formed, and the chairman and secretary of the Chautauqua meeting were authorized to issue a circular letter, asking the woman’s temperance leagues of the North to hold conventions for the purpose of electing one woman from each Congressional district as delegate to an organizing convention, to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, November 18, 19 and 20, 1874.
The call duly appeared, to which the following names were appended, preceded by those of the chairman and secretary: Mrs. Dr. Gause, Philadelphia; Mrs. E. J. Knowles, Newark, N. J.; Mrs. M. M. Brown, Alliance, O.; Mrs. W. D. Barnett, Hiawatha, Kas.; Miss Auretta Hoyt, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mrs. Ingham Stanton, LeRoy, N. Y.; Mrs. Frances Crook, Baltimore, Md.; Miss Emma Janes, Oakland, Cal.
The writer of this paper was nominated from Ohio, but withdrew her own name, substituting that of Mrs. Brown, who was known to have made the original suggestion.
The convention assembled November 18. Mrs. Willing was chosen president. Sixteen States were represented by grand women. Lovely crusaders of the city secured entertainment for three hundred persons; one of them, Sarah Knowles Bolton, looked after the baggage of delegates and visitors. The Second Presbyterian Church, Superior street, held the gathering. An address of welcome was delivered by Mrs. L. D. McCabe, of Delaware, O., President of the Ohio State Union, which had been organized at Springfield, September 27, 1874.
The daily press pronounced the executive ability of the women to be of high order, all unused as we were to deliberative assemblies. Universal comment was excited by the remarkably thorough and able administration of the presiding officer through three difficult days. The following ladies were chosen to serve during the year:
President—Mrs. Annie F. Wittenmeyer, of Pennsylvania.
Vice-Presidents—One from each State represented.
Recording Secretary—Mrs. Mary C. Johnson, New York.
Corresponding Secretary—Frances E. Willard, of Illinois.
Treasurer—Mrs. W. A. Ingham, of Ohio.
As a reward of merit our four faces appeared not long after, engraved on wood, in the Morning, an enterprising herald of reform.
Vicissitudes have occurred during the eight years passed, but all tend, in our onward march to the fore-front of battle, to bring nearer that which overcoming faith and labor are sure to win—victory!
An agency thereto which should here be recognized is the election, in 1879, at Indianapolis, of Frances E. Willard as President of the Woman’s National Christian Temperance Union. She leads to glorious struggle the hosts of Miriam and of Deborah in a new crusade for God and home and native land.
Our present officers are capable and faithful. Our borders are extended until now forty-four States and Territories are each represented by a Vice-President. We have within this area three thousand auxiliaries. The work is divided into thirty-three departments superintended by practical women.
The novices in parliamentary usage of the Cleveland Convention are now experienced and intelligent leaders in the grand reform.
Independent, organizations, with large membership, have multiplied on both sides of the ocean until a score are in active operation as the outgrowth of the great awakening.
More than all, better than all, the “Rock of Ages” women are proving themselves worthy of the title, and are praying to-day even more earnestly than when with sublime faith they went out into the streets and saloons of Ohio, believing that ere long our Lord will say to us, “O, woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”
[GOD’S IDEAL OF A MAN.][E]
By Rev. B. M. ADAMS.
Before I announce the text I desire to clear the road for it a little. We are never reasoned out of that we are never reasoned into. A prejudice is an unreasoning thing, and oftentimes even the Scripture, holy as it is and much as we reverence it, excites prejudice. We say, “Well, I don’t know whether that can be or not.” The truth is, we read our Bibles small, when we ought to read them large. I ask you this morning to disabuse your minds of all prejudice against my subject, and wait until I am through. Do not wait until I am through, but if God sends a word to you, be hospitable to it, open to it your heart. If it is true, accept it; if it is not true, reject it.
The text that I shall read is in Genesis, seventeenth chapter and first verse: “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
The word perfect is the one that excites prejudice. Now, open the door, and if there is anything in it that is good and for your peace, take it. I most devoutly pray that God will help me to present this passage so it will do you and me good.
“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” It is followed by several other passages, referring to the covenant which God would make with him. You know something of the history of Abram, how God spoke to him in Ur of the Chaldees and called him out to go into a land that he knew not of. It appears that he listened to the call, and started with his family for his destination, “not knowing whither he went.” The Lord directed him. But he hesitated, so Stephen says, on the borders of the Land of Canaan, in which were located the Canaanites, the Perizites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were hostile, cruel, rapacious tribes. For some reason, not unlikely Abram’s love for his father, he tarried on the border of the land, and did not go over into it immediately. He hesitated, as hundreds and thousands of God’s people have hesitated on the brink of some great cross, or some great necessity. Abram was my brother, and yours.
He hesitated until his father Terah died, and then went over into the Land of Promise. After going up and down the land for some time, until two-thirds of his life was gone, this appearance came to him. I do not know how God appeared. If that poor slave-woman says the Lord spoke to her, and her hoe-handle shone with his glory, and she heard a voice, “Thy sins are forgiven,” I can not dispute it. God can speak to every heart, and he has his way of doing it. God appeared to Abram, God spoke to him. This is the record, “God appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
This word “perfect” charmed Abram. He opened his heart unto it like a rose to the sun. It is a singular thing that this word perfect excites prejudice in Christian people concerning its attainment. Yet it is the word. It has been impressed upon me for one reason, perhaps, because it is in the line of the Chautauqua idea. There are three thoughts at Chautauqua, aspiration, inspiration, attainment. In other words, seeking perfection, looking after it, striving for it. The artist sets before his mind perfection, the mechanic seeks perfection, the statesman and the social economist seek perfection, the housekeeper seeks perfection, the farmer seeks perfection, all classes and kinds of people are seeking this one thing. Why should it be ruled out in religion? Can you answer? It is impossible that there should be such a thing as perfection of the artist or mechanic, for God is the only perfect artist and mechanic, but it is not impossible for men to please God; it is not impossible for them to be so perfect as to please him.
Look at the limitation of the text. It does not say, “walk before your fellow-men and be perfect.” I will defy you to do that. The Lord Jesus Christ could not walk perfect enough to please men, and they hung him between two thieves. You may not be able to please your husband, or your wife, or your employer, in all things. No one Christian ever walked so straight as to give perfect satisfaction all around. They that will walk and live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Our dear brother said this morning, “When you please everybody, look out, there is something wrong.”
The man that is at the bottom does not please the man at the top. He who is at the bottom of the ladder does not know how it looks at the top, but the man at the top understands the bottom, because he has been there. You have seen the boys chase a wagon, and one only is swift enough to get on, and the others, filled with envy, cry, “cut behind.” That is human nature. The unsuccessful throw stones at the successful; the people who are up are envied by those who are down. Mark the limitation of the text, not walk before your fellow-men, or even before yourselves to give satisfaction. I thank God for this part of the passage, “Walk before me and be thou perfect.”
God is not hard to please. God is not so hard to please as men; it is easier to please God than to please men. The most unselfish things you do sometimes are the things that are most misunderstood. But when God sees you with a serious intent to please him, he is pleased with it. Let me illustrate this: God calls that perfection which is our best, doing the best we know how, and trusting simply in him, is what God in this text calls perfection. I will venture in the presence of a great deal of scholarship present here this morning, to say that the word perfection means vital conviction. The margin puts it “sincere,” “sincerity.” The true thought is, being true to your best thought, and that pleases God.
There are a great many things, of course, that are impossible to us. We can not have absolutely perfect actions, because there is no such thing as a perfect judgment, there is no such thing as a perfect intellect, we do not see clearly. God knows all about that; he understands it. See in the 103d Psalm the wonderfully comforting words he says: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust.”
Take a teacher: he has a boy that wants to learn to write. He sets him a copy of straight marks, and the little fellow is bound to do his best. Watch him as he goes through his contortions. The teacher tells him how to hold his pen, but he never holds it right; it is covered with ink; he sets his mouth and takes aim at his copy. He works slowly down the page, and there is a blot here and a blur there, and a great many crooked marks upon it, but the teacher knows he has done his best, and he says “well done.” The next time he does a little better. Finally, after a week upon straight marks, (there are none of them really straight or true) he brings in the book, and the teacher says it is perfect. It is far from perfect, but it is the best that little fellow can do.
I remember sitting in a house once when the mother said to the boys, (three of them were there), “It is time to bring in the wood.” The oldest was about sixteen, the next about twelve, and the youngest boy was five. They all went out. The big boy, perhaps to show off before the new minister, came in with an enormous load, piled it up, and turned around to me with pride in his face. The mother looked on with approval. The second came in with only half as large an armful, and the mother looked approvingly at him. The last one came in with but two sticks, and they were so crossed that he had great difficulty in holding them, and finally they slipped through his arms, and the little fellow fell down with them. His mother ran to him and kissed him, and said, “You have done better than they all.”
I thought is not that about the way our Heavenly Father does, when he sees us trying to be right and perfect, trying to keep step with the picket line of our best right, when he says, “Walk before me?” Faber says, “There is no place where earthly sorrows are so felt as up in heaven; there is no place where earthly failings have such kindly judgment given, for the love of God is broader than the measures of man’s mind, and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.” God is not severe, he is an easy master, a blessed keeper. “Walk before me,” said he to Abram, “and be thou perfect; be true to your best convictions.”
May I ask you to follow me a moment or two, to see how eminently common sensed these demands God makes upon us are, and how widely they are endorsed by our own internal consciousness?
There are two relations that we hold: one Godward, and the other manward. In our relation to God what does he ask of us? What does the sum total come to? God asks, first, a perfect consecration; second, a perfect faith, and third, a perfect love. This idea of perfect consecration is in the realm of human possibilities. Let me look at it. Does anybody doubt that a man may be perfectly consecrated to his business? Don’t we know men that are lost, that are really dying, wrecking body, soul, and spirit, all that they have, in business; business in the morning, noon, and night, so driven with business that they are not acquainted with their own children? When I was pastor in an inland city, I knew a great big boy of eighteen, who went to his mother one day, and whined out, “I wish you would ask father to get me a new coat.” “But why don’t you ask him yourself?” said she. “I am not acquainted with him.” That father had been so driven with business that his son was not acquainted enough with him to ask him to get him a new coat. Is not that true? Don’t we know men, in merchandise, in all the walks of life, that are thoroughly consecrated to business? Don’t you know some women that are so absolutely consecrated to the idea of keeping their house in order, that they do not care for their souls? In calling off their minds from this everlasting housekeeping, this C. L. S. C. is a blessing to some women. Don’t you know women, and some men, who are entirely consecrated to fashion, and run after it at the expense of body, soul, and spirit? Does anybody doubt the possibility of people being consecrated to an idea? Take the inventor, Goodyear. He lived in the city of New Haven, where I am acquainted. It is said that this idea of hard rubber took such possession of him that it took all he had. One day, when his money and credit were all gone, he took his axe and split up the bedstead, his bureau, and the chairs for his fire, and did not succeed after all, until sometime after that. If a man is capable of this kind of consecration in a merely worldly aspect, I ask, is it not possible for him to be entirely consecrated to God?
Take the second thought, a perfect faith. There is not a woman, if she is the woman she ought to be, that is married, who has not had a perfect faith in some man, or she would not have been married. That woman has had perfect faith in that man, and that man has had perfect faith in that woman. We show it in the use of money. We do not discover any want of faith, except now and then we find a counterfeit. We pay a debt with our money with perfect faith. We get on the railroad and check our baggage; wise people do, although once in a while people take all their luggage in the cars, a bandbox, bundles, and satchels with them, and it is a great deal of trouble to them. So people try to get to heaven. Why not check the baggage? We find it at Chautauqua, or Lakewood, or New York.
You say, “I don’t know about faith.” But you have faith in some men, and some men would trust you forever. There are some men I would trust to the end of time. So it is with friendship; you have perfect faith in men. Children have perfect faith in their fathers until they are deceived. When I used to look up to my father, I believed that he could do anything. When I went to him with my griefs, I knew, I trusted they would be right; I believed in him with all my heart. I say if men are capable of perfect faith in each other in the domestic and social relations, they are capable of perfect faith in God. I say these things are written down in common sense and in the constitution of humanity.
Third, perfect love. Suppose I go into yonder house, and I see a lady with a sweet baby in her arms, a year old it may be, just coming to the cunning stage. I see that woman kiss that child. I say, “Mother, you think a good deal of that baby.” “Yes,” she says, “I love her with all my heart.” Suppose I say, “I doubt it, madam, I don’t believe you do.” She would turn to me with supreme contempt, and say, “There is the orifice left by the carpenter in the side of the room for such as you.” I am dismissed. It is a slander upon her. I see her at night, when that babe is sick. I see her on her knees praying, with tears running down her cheeks, “God, spare my babe!” Day after day, night after night, she does not sleep. You say it is not a perfect love. I say it is a perfect love, as perfect a love as she can have for the child.
Do you say men can not have a perfect love for a profession, so that they can take all and risk all, that they have so poor an ideal that they can not face the responsibility? Do you say there is no such a thing as perfect patriotism, perfect love for one’s country? I believe there is no greater thing than this on earth, that a man lay down his life for his friends. A few years ago, how many men laid down their lives for their country. We know there is such a thing as a perfect love. When that man to-day stands by the side of that woman and gives her himself, and she gives him herself, it is a slander to say that he and she do not love each other perfectly. You may say it is imperfect, to be sure; it is limited by human weakness (we are all earthly and of the earth), but, as far as human ability goes, it is perfect. Can not we have a perfect love toward God? We are capable of it on the human plane; we are capable of it on the divine plane. I think you have laid aside prejudice against my doctrine, and I speak with frankness, I think that God demands a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, and a perfect love, and we are capable of each.
Let us examine the manward relation. It may be stated thus: I think it embraces three things. First, perfect truth; second, perfect honesty; third, perfect consecration. The thing we can not abide is a lie. When a man tells a lie, he is like a horse that slips his halter once, you buckle it up two or three holes tighter next time, so he shall not slip it again. If he tells a barefaced lie once, you fail to trust him again; he loses your respect. God desires truth in the inward parts, God asks that we shall be true to him, that when we know what is right, we shall try to do according to our best ability.
The second thing we require is honesty in dealing and words. Let me tell you, friends, the thing the world does not forget, is the sin of not paying your debts. I do not care, though your profession may be like a great four-story brownstone front house, and you may have a cupola on the top, if you do not pay one hundred cents on a dollar, your profession is not worth the paper on which it is written. You may be a fornicator, or an adulterer, if you pay one hundred cents on a dollar, the world will give you a free pass. One of the crying sins that the world does not forget, is that some Christians do not pay their debts. A preacher may preach like an angel, and if anybody says, “He owes me so and so, and I can’t get my money,” his sermons do not amount to a great deal. Perfect honesty, this is one of the things that the Christian Church needs to look at. I remember a farmer in Dutchess County, when I was pastor there, who had a fashion of throwing an extra bag of oats on every load of oats sold, especially when sinners came. A wild young sinner said to him one day, “What do you do that for?” “Well,” said he, “I may have made a mistake in measuring up those oats, and as I am going to a country that I shall never return from, and I shall meet you at the Judgment Day, where I am afraid you will be on the left side, I want things to be perfectly square with you and your kind.”
We demand this of our fellow-men, and God demands it of us toward our fellow-men. Look at this man Abram. The Lord had given him the land, but he took pains particularly to buy a burying place, and have the money carefully weighed. When he had a battle with the confederated kings and brought Lot and his family back again, and the king of Sodom wanted to give him all the spoil, he stood up in all his manly integrity and refused to take it. Walking alone with God, he could do without it. I tell you the man who walks in this ideal, walking before God in his perfect truth and honesty, need not fear the forces of the world; he need not fear to be burned at the stake; he can afford to have his name pitched out of the world as an enthusiast; he can afford to be despised.
The third thing is perfect magnanimity, which is nothing more or less than true gentlemanliness. I love to read the Bible because it introduces me to so many gentlemen. As a celebrated infidel writer says about Christ, “he was the first gentleman of the age.” What is it? It is a gentlemanliness, a true magnanimity to our fellow-men, making arrangements for the good of other people rather than ourselves, living not for ourselves but for those about us, being polite and careful in all the arrangements of our lives, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
See that man sitting in the cars, who has paid for but one seat. He occupies one seat with his feet and the other two with his baggage. People come in and say, “Is this seat taken?” He says, “Yes.” I heard a man ask one of these fellows not a long time ago, “Is this seat taken?” “Yes.” “Whom is it taken by?” “A person.” “Who is the person? Have you paid for more than one seat?” I was glad to see the man have to take up his baggage. Did you ever see a man carve a beefsteak who cuts off the tough pieces for his wife and children and keeps the tenderloin for himself? A gentleman will see that all the rest are taken care of, and he generally comes out about as good as the rest; he may lose sometimes, but he wins in many things. Emerson says a man can not afford to lose his self-respect. I often think what even some Christian men must think when they look into the looking-glass and contemplate themselves; if they would have any recollection of themselves and their meanness they would not consult the looking-glass.
With these two points—first of all, godward, a perfect consecration, a perfect faith, a perfect love, which we must admit, in our inner consciousness, is possible to us; in our manward relation, perfect truth, perfect honesty, perfect magnanimity. I believe this covers the ideal. We can understand the meaning when God says to every man, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” But some one says: “Mr. Adams, you don’t make any allowance for the weakness of human nature.” I do. Weak human nature! It is God that recognizes it in us, and it is God that requires these things as belonging to it, belonging to weak human nature. “But you don’t know about our surroundings,” you say. I may not; yet even in your surroundings you admit that this is an ideal that is in the reach of every one. “But you don’t make any theological distinctions.” I often think of what Dr. Hitchcock said before the Union Theological Seminary: “Young gentlemen, study theology, yes, study theology, but preach the Gospel.” I study theology, but I try to preach the Gospel, theology or no theology. You say: “This will not stand the straight-edged, extreme sanctification view.” I don’t care about the extreme sanctification view. There are two kinds of spurious sanctification, one so high that no one can get to it, and the other so low nobody wants it. This kind of the text is in reach of every one and what every one ought to want.
I propose to show how you may all reach it. (May the Lord help me!) I think I find it in one single expression in this text, “Walk before me, and be thou perfect. I am the Almighty God.” That is, “I am the Almighty God, to help you walk before me.” If you please God, you can take the risk about the rest. Do you say, “I am weak.” God answers it with his omnipotence. Do you say, “I am poor.” God answers it with his riches. Do you say, “I am without any useful gift, or I have peculiar surroundings.” God answers it with that one expression, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
You remember that interview that God had with Moses when he was about to send him into Egypt. How often God says, “I am the Almighty God. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What did he say that to him for? That he might encourage him to believe in him; trust him, and encourage him to go out under his might. I believe “I am the Almighty God” answered every excuse of Moses. If we put this matter in the hands of God, with perfect consecration, faith, and love toward God, and perfect truth, honesty, and magnanimity to our fellow-men, it will become easy to us, it will become the joy of our lives, and God will put us down in his blessed book as among his perfect ones.
Mark what God calls perfect is so different from what men require. We hear some persons say, “Well, C. is about perfect.” You go out and tell that thing to somebody that knows her, and does not like her very much. If I should believe the things I hear said about some men, they should be put in jail. But you can not find out that way: look up to God! Knowing how imperfect we are, and how poor we are, in all these relations of our hearts and lives, God has put it down, “I am the Almighty God. I am able to make you what you want to be.” That is what he said to Abram. Look at him. You recollect at one time in his life, under great pressure, he told a lie. And yet Abram filled the ideal, but it was in spite of that. Noah was perfect, but he got drunk. Job was perfect, and upright, and eschewed evil. If anyone will read over carefully the Book of Job, (and I recommend you to read it), he will find a perfect answer for all the skepticism of this present age. Job went so far as to curse the day in which he was born, and the day when it was said a man-child is born, and yet he was a man that was perfect in his generation, and that pleased God. He came out of that immature condition of ignorance of God.
Mark another thing. You remember in this Book of Job, with all the hard things that Job said, you can not find a place where God rebuked him. All he said was, “Stand up, Job, and let me talk to you. You can not understand my providence and government. You must trust me, Job.” So he does with hundreds and thousands. There was David who wrote the prayers and poetry of the ages. What a man he was! Yet he succeeded in pleasing God, not by his sins, but he pleased God. The truth is, the Bible is a record of bankrupt cases of men who were full of the wreck and ruin of sin, and yet grew up into this perfect stature of men in Christ Jesus our Lord. What an encouragement it is for everybody to seek to be perfect before God.
Let me hasten to the conclusion. The first reason why we should be perfect before God is this, that God has agreed to help us, “I am the Almighty God.” He will stand by in every serious and sincere attempt to be his. If you seek to keep step with your convictions, if you seek to be true to your best light, remember that God is with you to help you all he can. I know about the weight of evil; I know that when we strike out for the shore, there is some dreadful undertow that seems to draw us back. I know the earthly is weak and we seem to be drawn down. But I answer the whole of it by this great truth in this text, “I am the Almighty God.” God helps, God will strengthen us.
There is a little thing that occurred in my boyhood, that has been a great comfort to me many times in the hard work I have been called to do. When I was about fourteen years old, and my brother about twelve, my father took us out fishing on Long Island Sound. We had a poor flat-boat called a scow. We were ambitious, like all little boys, and when we turned in to go to the shore, about four miles, I was entrusted with a pair of long oars, and my brother with a shorter pair. We saw near us a boat with two boys in it about our own age, with their father, an admirably built boat, clean in her lines as a yacht. They were looking at our boat, and the man said to my father, in a sneering tone, “You have got a pretty strong crew in there, but I guess we will beat you to town.”
My father said nothing, but he straightened up and looked at his boys. How we pulled! They beat us a good deal of the way; it was their boat; I knew the boys were not any better than we, for I had thrashed the biggest one several times. We pulled away, and they were yet three or four rods ahead, when my father reached out his great hands and put them on mine, I seem to feel them to-day, and as I pulled he pushed. We beat. Many a time I have thought of it when I have been trying my best, my father pushes while I pull. “I am the Almighty God.” That is enough for me. All it means is within my reach; all the possibility it promises is within my grasp; all hope, all blessedness, all might, all victory through my Father in Heaven. “I am the Almighty God. Walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
The second thought is, the glorious independence of such a life as this. The man who walks before God, who is his with devout trust, has this as the center and circumference of his idea: “I will, I must, I shall please God, and he will help me to follow him.” He understands all. A man walks through this world with his conversation in heaven. No room for selfishness, what shall become of me? Suppose that we could interview those five smooth stones that David took out of the scrip against Goliath, that we could endow them with intelligence; every one was willing to be slung against Goliath. I don’t suppose they would have whined and said, “I wonder why he picked out such a crooked stone as that. There is something wrong about that.” But with this idea of walking before God those four stones that lay in the scrip were as happy as they lay there as the one that went whizzing against the giant. Whether we run, or wait, or stand, or go into the fight it is all one. Milton says “they also serve who only stand and wait.” The perfect independence of this life is worth all it costs. Suppose in order to do it we must have the selfish feeling in us, like a cancer, cut out. As Mrs. Browning says, “He who tears his heart in twain, and casts away the baser part, is richer for his loss.” Painful as it may be, before this wonderful and attractive idea, it is cheap.
You remember that the River Nile runs one thousand two hundred miles through a desert land without a single affluent. How do you account for it? How does that great river pour its flood through Egypt, and keep alive for one thousand two hundred miles without a single stream to feed it? It is fed away back there in Africa, by those giant lakes, and kept ever full and rich. So it is with the soul that walks with God. Its sources are in God. He draws his sustenance, not from this poor world, but far upon the hillside toward God. As the rivers of Europe, that keep it alive, are kept alive themselves by the tall mountain peaks in Switzerland, so a soul that walks with God, that pleases God, is made a wonderful and everlasting benediction to all around him, while he lives independent of all. I do not say that people who are seeking this sort of thing do not feel or have a need of human sympathy. O, no, they have a great deal of it. I do not say that this ideal is so often found, but I believe it is possible. I believe I have made a testimony for you this morning. I want you to think and remember, if you want to walk before God, he will help you.
Somebody says, “How about the profession of this thing?” The Bible don’t say anything about it. That is a matter for your individual judgment. Your wife will find out about it if you find it. When I hear a man say hallelujah very loud, I want to know always how much he pays toward the Gospel. When I hear a man say he is very happy, or holy, I want to know how he lives at home, how he carves the beefsteak. Abram did not hang out any sign, but he became so powerful that the kings all around wanted to make an alliance with him. If you are keeping step with the best ideal, it will show in the carefulness and kindness of your replies, in the grasp of your hand, in the intelligence and sweetness of your face. O, my friends, may I entreat you to set this before your eyes? I believe it is the ideal of God for man. “Walk before me, and be thou perfect.” He will help you as my father helped me to pull the boat. He will help you as every good, kind and gentle mother helps her child. He will help you every time. It will not be a flash and then over. He will make you happy, joyful and independent by day and night. Never mind the circumstances, you will be wrapped in arms so soft and hovered in a love so deep, it will not leave a desire in your souls unsatisfied; there will be such choral harmonies within, that the babel tongues of this world will not overpower them.
Some one may say, “But, Mr. Adams, how?” I say in a word, go to God and ask him, get yourselves humble; be truly penitent; be honest and sincere. Lay your hand in the hand of the Lord. You need not hypothecate any experience. You can not tell whether you are going to live long or not, but you can live with your hand in his.
If a sinner has heard me this day, he knows that this life is the life he wants. I spoke to a sinner the other day, “John, why don’t you give your heart to God?” “Oh,” said he, “I am sick of you Christians.” Said I, “Don’t you think there are Christians in the world?” “Well, that is a hard question.” “But, don’t you think there are Christians?” “Well,” said he, “I am not going back on my old mother.” “Didn’t you promise her to be a Christian?” “Yes, I believe I did.” “Why don’t you do it?” “Why there are so and so that owe me. I don’t want any of their Christianity, but I believe your kind of Christianity is true.” I believe John will give his heart to God. That is the kind that everybody wants. Nobody wants these poor, barren, lean kind, but we want this royal kind, that which fits and satisfies the feeling of our hearts.
I must close with one remark. It is a great and intense age; it is such an age as has never come to the world before. Some of the preceding ages have surpassed this in some respects, it is true, but men have never achieved as they are doing to-day. This great age demands a great piety; it demands deep, wide-spread spirituality. Let me tell you it again; a great age demands great Christians, Christians like Abram, Christians like Paul, Christians like John. Who will set themselves apart to do battle of the royal sort? To keep step with the spirit of the age? It is an age of culture. Education is the cry. There is such a thing, however, as using up your heart by giving too much education to your head. If you guard your heart with this ideal it will be all right. Oh friends, have your hearts filled with God! Follow this great idea to be perfect before God, that you may stand in the advance of the age, and may even run ahead of it. I say that an age like this, an age of lightning, steam, force, and advance in every department of human knowledge, demands that the men and women of the Christian Church should rise to the loftiest ideal of the Christian life. All the sublime achievements of Christian faith lie in the line of fidelity to your advanced convictions. It is the inspiration of souls, it makes the greatness of life. It is that which has made all the grand Christians in the world. It is that which will make Chautauqua grow from year to year in spiritual development, and surround it with a great light, as an aureola, and place it at the head of this great age.
Men and women of Chautauqua, let an unworthy servant of the Master, my Master the Lord Jesus Christ, whose I am and whom I serve, get down at your feet and beseech you to meet the greatness of this ideal. It is not enough to be a ship, it must be launched. It is not enough to have all these great qualities that God may give to you, you need to be consecrated. Hear the word of God to Abram amidst the din and clatter and roar of this age, hear him say, high out of the clear heavens, “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.” And that this may be your and my happy lot, is my earnest prayer.
[MY OWN GIRL.]
By FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.
Fifteen shillings—no more, sir—
The wages I weekly touch.
For labor steady and sore, sir,
It isn’t a deal too much;
Your money has wings in the city,
And vanishes left and right,
But I hand a crown to Kitty
As sure as Saturday night.
Bless her, my own, my wee,
She’s better than gold to me!
I must be honest and simple,
I must be manly and true,
Or how could I pinch her dimple,
Or gaze in her frank eyes’ blue?
I feel, not anger, but pity,
When workmates go to the bad;
I say, “They’ve never a Kitty—
They’d all keep square if they had.”
Bless her, my own, my wee,
She’s better than gold to me!
One day she will stand at the altar,
Modest, and white, and still,
And forth from her lips will falter
The beautiful, low, “I will.”
Our home shall be bright and pretty
As ever a poor man’s may,
And my soft little dove, my Kitty,
Shall nest in my heart for aye.
Bless her, my own, my wee,
She’s better than gold to me!
[C. L. S. C. WORK.]
By J. H. VINCENT, D. D., Superintendent of Instruction, C. L. S. C.
Read all of the required books for outlook and inspiration but study one of the books at least for discipline. Read it as you do the rest. Read it more carefully than you read the rest. Read it over and over. Read it to recall what you read. Read it with critical helps of every kind. Having read it think about it. Think and think. Think beyond it. By some thought in it be led out to some other thought not in it, but thought of because of the book. Such chosen book out of each year’s list will become dearer to you than all the rest and will make the mere reading of all the rest more profitable.
Which book shall I select out of the “required” list for 1882, to read thus thoughtfully and critically? All need not choose the same. Follow your “bent.” Take a part of one of the larger books. Begin with a limited amount. Try pages 124-199 in Prof. Wilkinson’s preparatory “Greek Course in English,” or choose one chapter in Bishop Warren’s “Recreations in Astronomy,” or one period in “Geology,” or “Evangeline.” Try the plan.
Have you seen Prang’s C. L. S. C. Mottoes? Three of them at one dollar each. In exquisite taste. He issues nothing finer. Friends of C. L. S. C. people could do no more graceful thing than to hang one or more of these mottoes, in Prang’s best style, on the Christmas tree. A good idea!
A busy housewife says: “I must write you one thing I have found out, for perhaps you have never heard it, certainly no one ever told it me: If a woman wants to find time for almost everything, she must keep house and do her own work.”
The real object of education is to give children resources that will endure as long as life endures; habits that will ameliorate in disaster; occupation that will render sickness tolerable, solitude pleasant, age venerable, life more dignified and more useful, and death less terrible.—Sidney Smith.
A little girl in Silver Creek, N. Y., has organized a “Good Grammar Society.” She has excluded words used by her father (who is a Presbyterian minister), 744; her mother, 107; herself, 98; a little friend, 59; her brother Edward in three days, 14.
Remember the five o’clock Sabbath C. L. S. C. Vespers. A few members lingering at Chautauqua through the winter will sing our “Day is Dying in the West,” and join in a prayer in the “Hall in the Grove” at five o’clock every Sabbath.
I have decided to offer a white seal to those graduates of ’82 who are already striving for a white crystal seal. This white seal will be given for the reading of the following books:
Wilkinson’s “Preparatory Greek Course in English.”
Packard’s “First Lessons in Geology.”
“Evangeline.”
“Hampton Tracts.”
“Chautauqua Text-Book No. 34.”
“How to Make a Living.” By G. C. Eggleston. Price fifty cents.
Let every student of the Circle work for the people who most need the C. L. S. C., to enlist them: the idle rich, the busy poor, the college graduate, the uneducated, the old, the young—all who would make head and heart and hands keep harmony in this world of sorrow and weariness and sin.
Pardon a personal suggestion. Nothing gives to the Superintendent of Instruction greater pleasure than to greet members of the C. L. S. C. Traveling widely as I do, I often come in contact with members. I receive letters occasionally saying: “We saw you on such a train, or in such a place, but did not like to speak to you.” I earnestly ask every member of the C. L. S. C. to introduce himself or herself at once, and by simply using the magic letters C. L. S. C., you have a watchword by which acquaintance may at once be formed.
[C. L. S. C. TESTIMONY.]
Michigan.—I have been teaching school in one of the burnt districts, Huron county, Michigan. The school was very large, and the school house very small, and my school work, with a three-mile walk morning and evening, made me feel too tired to study much at night; but, I am very glad to say, I have finished my second year at last, and am ready to commence my third. I commenced the course when I was sixteen, and at almost the same time began teaching. The course of study was just what I needed. It has helped me very much, and I do not intend to be discouraged, even if one year does creep into the next. I have read and studied alone. The nearest local circle, and, I think, the only one in Huron county, is at Port Hope, several miles from my school.
New York.—A lady writes: As I am a printer, and use my eyes all day and every day in the week, setting type, I am not sure I shall be able to stand examination, but I am enjoying the Chautauqua course very much.
Illinois.—The Chautauqua readings are a great blessing to me, as well as to the world at large. I have a great many days of illness. I can not walk or use my hands or arms much, and am prevented from benefiting my kind, except by trying to be patient under my sufferings, and in learning to wait. The Woman’s Missionary Society of our little church meets in my room, and I preside over the few ladies as best I can, endeavoring to imbue them with the spirit of missions, and aiding them in studying the mission fields intelligently.
Connecticut.—I’ve had to do the most of the work during vacations, which accounts for my being behind. I thoroughly believe in the plan, as much to quicken and keep alive college graduates as anything else, just what they need. I found that for me it bridged over many a break and filled up many an awkward opening left by a college course. And I must further avail myself of odd minutes for systematic reading in the line of special courses. An uneducated dry-goods clerk, to whom I told the plan, said he could not express his pleasure in knowing of the scheme, and that it was an incentive, such as he had never known before. He joined this term.
Ohio.—I find on my floor beside me now “Elizabeth’s Progress to London,” from Abbott’s book—in effigy—made from building blocks, with octagon wheels and elegant chariot, a gay dolly on a made-up chair, with dainty parasol over her. This his majesty, Master Harry, tells me is Queen Elizabeth, and he tells everybody she had a thousand dresses and ought to have been very good. At the right I see cavalry, extractions from Crandall’s menagerie, one steed mounted with an athlete in costume and the feet secured by small blocks. This they proclaim for “William’s horse stepping on embers.” They’ve been at Abbott’s book I see, and so we may be called a family as well as local circle.
Massachusetts.—I like the course very much and have seen many things in the Chautauquan in praise of it by the students. But one thing, which I think will be a great help to me, I have not seen mentioned, that is the use of the books for reference. If in our hurry we are not as thorough as we would like to be, I think we can remember enough when we find things in our future reading we do not understand, to know which book and where in it to find the information we need. I feel very thankful for the privileges of membership in the C. L. S. C.
Tennessee.—I must send you a few words of thanks for the C. L. S. C. I have only been a member one year, but I don’t know how I could do without the reading now. I think I am growing in knowledge—yes, and in the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. With the new year’s reading I begin life with fresh hope to attain a greater height in the study of God and his works.
California.—The C. L. S. C. has been an unspeakable blessing and comfort to me. It has been an eye-opener, a mind-opener, and a soul-opener in the deepest and broadest sense of the word.
New Jersey.—The diploma received; it is a beautiful memorial of the C. L. S. C., which I shall greatly prize, and to whose value I shall seek to add, year by year, in the form of “seals” you are so good as to bestow.
Minnesota.—I found among my daughter’s papers—Miss Harriet A. Lathrop, a member of the C. L. S. C.—a blank for examination, with an earnest request to hear from her as to her progress. This is to inform you that she passed to her final examination and was promoted May 7th last. She struggled with disease for three years, and then, having fought a good fight, she received the crown of life. I desire, if you please, that you record on your register, not that she fell out by the way, but that she pursued the course as long as she had strength, and then entered into rest. It was through no indifference that she did not respond regularly, but from sheer physical inability. She was patient, faithful, true, tried, and trusty.
Massachusetts.—My letter will inform you of the death of a member of the C. L. S. C.—Miss Mary Thurber, of this place [Attleboro]. She was about twenty-three years of age, a young lady of rare value; beautiful, physically and intellectually, and of fine spiritual attainments. She was a helpful member of the M. E. Church, and a teacher in one of our public schools. She had a large circle of friends, but in her home, among her brothers and sisters, she was the fixed star whose brightness hallowed, and the special joy of her parents. She suffered intensely for a few days only, and though shut out from her friends from the contagiousness of her disease (diphtheria), she was patient to the last, and passed from this to her higher associations in peace, last March. She was very devotedly attached to the C. L. S. C., read with eager enthusiasm, and worked for and expected great results from her connection with it. How blessed that the hope of immortality opens up to those who are seeking broader fields of truth, and assures fuller development to the hedged in of time! The entire community sympathize with the sorrowing family.
[LOCAL CIRCLES.]
[We request the president or secretary of every local circle to send us reports of their work, of lectures, concerts, entertainments, etc. Editor of The Chautauquan, Meadville, Pa.]
The growth of the C. L. S. C. has been without restraint of any kind. The organization is simple, but few officers, a brief constitution, and indeed none of the paraphernalia is required which we usually find dictated from the center of a wide-spread organization. No creed to sign, no shibboleth to pronounce. A person has simply to make out an application for membership, send it to Miss Kimball at Plainfield, N. J., and then read the books. It was natural that kindred spirits, doing the same work, should invent local circles, which, while they are not required, yet are helpful to the students. Mind coming in contact with mind will produce an intellectual quickening. Students will get more out of the books by a system of questioning. Bonds of union will be created by meeting together, and the strong will have opportunity to help the weak, and the weak will learn to appreciate the local organization because of the real helps it affords them in their studies. We invite secretaries to send us carefully prepared reports of the work done in their local circles. Do this for the benefit of others. The calls upon us are numerous for information about how to conduct local circles to make them interesting and profitable. Below we furnish our readers with some suggestive items sent us from flourishing circles. They will bear studying and in most instances are worthy of imitation.
This is the fifth year of the local circle in Oswego, N. Y., and it numbers about twenty-five members of all denominations, and meets every Monday evening. We bring nearly all our studies into the circle meetings in this way. Each Monday evening a lesson is announced by the President to be studied the following week, and a member appointed to act as teacher, who conducts the lesson on the appointed evening, using maps, blackboard, etc., having a regular class drill. A good deal of enthusiasm and interest is manifested. A critic is appointed each month. We have a literary committee, which reports each week with selections from poetic or prose writers. This committee is appointed each month. We have adopted a new plan of arranging the lessons, which distributes this part of the work among the members. A member is assigned, for instance, the work on geology with instructions to divide it into lessons, which is done and a report handed to the president, with the name of member opposite each lesson to act as a teacher. We occasionally have social gatherings at the homes of members, one of the most enjoyable of which was the art social of last winter. A resolution has been adopted naming our circle “Markham C. L. S. C. of Oswego,” in honor of Rev. W. F. Markham, who organized our circle.
Members of the C. L. S. C. in Augusta, Me., made no effort to form a local circle here till April, 1882, when the Rev. Dr. J. H. Vincent was present and gave us a talk on the C. L. S. C. work. The outgrowth was a strong sentiment in favor of forming a circle here, and after several preliminary meetings, a local circle was organized September 25. At the last meeting, October 10, the membership was increased to twenty-seven. On that evening we had essays, questions and conversation upon the reading in the course. The order of exercises is prepared by the committee of instruction, and is varied in character, only confining the topics to the subjects of the required reading. We have decided to hold meetings once in four weeks. The members anticipate a very interesting winter’s work.
Our circle in South Marshfield, Mass., was not organized till a year ago, although we were then beginning the third year of our course. Our organization was a direct result of the Round-Table held at Framingham Assembly. We meet every week. The required readings are divided into six parts; each member takes one, on which she prepares questions for the next meeting; the questions in The Chautauquan are read, and parts of the little text-books. The meetings are enlivened by the reading of two or three short essays, and by relating interesting incidents suggested by the lesson. We sometimes sing C. L. S. C. songs, and have readings from standard authors. Our meetings are usually closed by playing one of the Chautauqua games, which we consider not only pleasant, but healthful, as they give us a constant review of our work. We organized our circle this year the first of September, instead of the first of October, in order that we might take up the whole of the first volume of Grecian history, and have found that our interest is continually increasing, and our meetings this year are even superior to those of the previous year. By circulating the “Hall in the Grove,” we have gained one new member, who seems intensely interested.
In Michigan City we have a membership in our local circle of twenty-eight, twenty-three of whom intend to read the entire course, and five will do as much of the work as they can. The officers are president, vice president, and secretary. Our method of work is, no doubt, similar to other circles. We meet twice a month to review the work. Members are given topics to study and to prepare to ask the circle such questions as they may formulate. In this way the work is not left for a few to carry on, but all become interested and active working members.
Our local circle of the C. L. S. C. in Bradford, Pa., is one of several in this place, and is designated the “Longfellow Class,” in distinction from the others. We have limited our number to ten members, thinking by that means to promote individual interest. We have but two officers, a president and secretary. We meet weekly, at the homes of the different members. We have no leader appointed for the year, but every four weeks one member of the class is elected conductor of exercises for the ensuing month. The manner of reviewing the lessons varies. The conductor sometimes asks questions, when the topics are freely discussed by all; sometimes the subjects are apportioned to individual members to be talked over, or a synopsis of certain portions given by them. At the close of the lesson, fifteen minutes is devoted to discussing all rhetorical errors made during the evening.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, “Centenary Circle” numbers about thirty members. The officers are president, vice president, secretary and treasurer. Meetings are held at the house of the secretary on the first and third Wednesday evenings of the month. Thus far this year the president has conducted the meetings, asking each member of the class questions on the lesson, from which discussions often arise. Last year members of the class were sometimes asked to conduct the meeting. No essays were ever written, but sometimes each member was asked to be prepared on given topics to be recited at the next meeting. No concerts or public entertainments have been given, nor did we observe any of the memorial days except Longfellow’s. We were quite in the dark about the work when we commenced, but very anxious to take up some systematic course of reading, and would not give it up now for any consideration.
The Hockanum, Connecticut, C. L. S. C. met informally last year, and was organized September 25. Three years ago there was but one member of the C. L. S. C. in the place, the year following three, and last year six. Our membership is now eighteen, and the interest both excellent and increasing. The circle meets every Monday evening at the house of the secretary. At 7 p. m. promptly a brief Scripture reading and prayer opens the meeting. After a few moments given to business, the questions in the text-book and The Chautauquan are asked, and a record kept of those who have done the week’s required reading and memorizing. We are notified that many and varied are the household duties performed with the little text-book perched in divers nooks. The president appoints four readers and a critic for each evening. The reading is selected from some portion of the weekly required reading. This is followed by questions, remarks, or general conversation relative to the subject, etc. The reading closes at nine o’clock, after which we have music and a social chat. The circle has arranged and entered upon a course of ten public lectures on Geology, given every Wednesday evening by the president, in the vestry of the Congregational Church. The occasion is made interesting by the use of black-boards, maps, the Packard plates, neatly mounted on easels, and a cabinet of rocks and shells illustrative of Dana’s “Geologic Story Briefly Told.” The room is also made cheery by a conspicuous grouping of the class mottoes framed in gilt, and other ornamentation luminous with the monogram, C. L. S. C. The attendance is good, and the attention held closely by the youthful tyro who has won laurels by his clear and happy presentation of the subject. It is always a most instructive and enjoyable evening to the circle and their friends. Our circle early voted to observe “Memorial Days,” the observance to fall on the regular evening nearest memorial date. For Bryant’s Day we have arranged for two essays by young ladies, one on the life, the other on the works of the poet. The other members are each to give recitations of choice or favorite selections from Bryant. We are looking forward to a pleasant social time.
Norwalk, O., October 30, 1882.
We have held two regular meetings of our circle since November 1st and we are now fairly at work. The membership has more than doubled in the last two meetings and may double again before the books are closed. There never was a time before when the circle was under half so good headway at this time of year. Members who are joining now are doing so more understandingly than it was possible to do in the experimental stage of the C. L. S. C. and the results are proportionately more reliable. We meet once in two weeks in a music store at 7:30 p. m. and close at 9 p. m. Our order of exercises is prayer, roll, minutes, business, program, adjournment. We have the geological charts and begin to realize the need of a suitable place of meeting where we can accumulate maps, charts, cabinet and museum; we need just such a room in connection with and a part of our public library, convenient of access and open to visitors on this and all other occasions. There could scarcely be found a city whose people would more appreciate such a resort. Norwalk has a very fine public library, and the librarian states that since the organization of the various reading circles there has been a revolution in the class of books in demand; that while the lighter literature is seldom called for, standard works, shelf-worn for years, are now in frequent use; that she knows from the effect on the library that a change has come over the reading public. So far as we are able to discover from reports elsewhere, our circle rather excels in developing the individual talent of its members. In our entire circle there will probably not be one who will not present one or more topics in papers or addresses during the year, as time permits, and equal opportunity is given to all. Our plan is to follow down the class roll, beginning at the top, and the leader is handed a list of ten or twelve names from which he selects six or eight persons to whom he assigns topics, the roll itself being prepared for that purpose. Each member is expected to make a minute of all the topics assigned that he may prepare for the conversation, or visiting and questioning which follows each topic. From five to eight minutes is allowed for each paper, address, selection or conversation, and the president, who keeps an open watch, is expected to give notice when the time is up to persons not otherwise aware. The roll is prepared with a margin at the top for dates, and the presence of each member is marked with a cross, while those late are marked with a diagonal line; each person who discharges program duty is marked with a dot supplementing the cross of that date. The next list is made as the first, passing over the dots, always working the roll from the top and leaving it complete. The minutes are kept on the body of each page, leaving the margin on the left of the red line for anything intended for an annual report, such as number in attendance, number of visitors, number of members and a list of those in program numbered, opposite whose names, in the regular minutes, are their topics or themes. In this way a complete record of each member is kept, and by referring from each dot to the minutes of that date an individual or annual report can be readily made which otherwise would be tedious at least. Our officers and leaders are elected by ballot and we rely entirely on the leader to conduct the exercises as he thinks best. Last year, from a list of forty-six names, thirteen were reading for diplomas; this year, with a present membership of forty-one, thirty-six are reading for seals or diplomas, twelve having graduated in 1882.
[Not Required.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
ONE HUNDRED QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “PREPARATORY GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH,” INCLUDING THE TOPICS: OUR AIM, THE LAND, THE PEOPLE, THEIR WRITINGS, THE START, FIRST BOOK IN GREEK, THE GREEK READER, AND XENOPHON’S ANABASIS.
By ALBERT M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.
1. Q. What is the primary design of the series of books of which the “Preparatory Greek Course in English” is one? A. To enable persons prevented from accomplishing a course of school and college training in Latin and Greek, to enjoy an advantage as nearly as possible equivalent, through the medium of their native tongue.
2. Q. What is the specific object of the present particular volume? A. To put into the hands of readers the means of accomplishing, so far as this can be done in English, the same course of study in Greek as that prescribed for those who are preparing to enter college.
3. Q. What signal example in the modern world, and what still more signal example in the ancient, of the fact that extent of territory is not chiefly what makes the greatness of a great people? A. England in the modern world, and Greece in the ancient.
4. Q. What was the extent of the utmost area of Greece? A. Two hundred and fifty miles by one hundred and eighty miles. Greece was less than one-half the size of the State of New York.
5. Q. In what latitude is Greece? A. About the same as the State of Virginia.
6. Q. Of what three most famous peoples in the world are the Greeks one? A. The Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans.
7. Q. Of the three for what were the Greeks by far the most remarkable? A. For the variety and versatility of their genius.
8. Q. By what name did the Greeks speak of themselves, and what was their name for the land in which they lived? A. Hellenes, and Hellas was their name for the land in which they lived.
9. Q. When trustworthy history begins, what were the three chief divisions of the Hellenic stock? A. The Dorians, the Æolians and the Ionians.
10. Q. Give the names of four prominent cities of Greece. A. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth.
11. Q. Of all that the Greeks did in the world, what remains to us recognizably in the form given it by their cunning brain and hand? A. A few coins, architectural remains and sculpture, and some masterpieces of literary composition.
12. Q. For what two things is the literature of Greece equally remarkable? A. For its matter and for its form.
13. Q. What is said of the form of Greek literature? A. There never has been elsewhere in the world so much written approaching so nearly to ideal perfection in form as among the Greeks.
14. Q. Under what limitations did the ancient Greeks do their work? A. They were pagans. They groped for truth, and they missed it oftener than they found it, at least in the case of their philosophy.
15. Q. In what departments of literature do we have, without reserve, to acknowledge the supremacy of the Greeks? A. In eloquence, and in the literature of rhetoric, of taste, and of criticism.
16. Q. What was the golden age of Greek literature, Greek art and Greek arms? A. The age of Pericles.
17. Q. What is said of the pronunciation of their language by the ancient Greeks? A. Nobody knows with certainty exactly how the ancient Greeks pronounced their language.
18. Q. What has been the general rule for scholars in the pronunciation of Greek? A. To pronounce it somewhat according to the analogy of their own vernacular.
19. Q. What attempt, only partially successful, has recently been made to introduce uniformity in the pronunciation of Greek? A. To secure the common adoption of the pronunciation prevalent in Greece at the present day.
20. Q. What method, devised at first for facilitating the study of modern languages, has more lately been applied in various modifications to both Latin and Greek? A. What is called the Ollendorff method.
21. Q. What two things determine largely what Greek text-books shall be used? A. The patronage of leading colleges, and the books issued by leading publishing houses.
22. Q. What four Greek grammars are mentioned as perhaps the best? A. Hadley’s, Goodwin’s, Crosby’s, and Sophocles’.
23. Q. To what sources of Greek learning do all these manuals acknowledge their indebtedness? A. To German sources of Greek learning.
24. Q. Who is the most recent of the great German authorities in Greek grammar? A. Curtius.
25. Q. What two other German authorities, now a little antiquated, were each a great name in his day? A. Kühner and Buttman.
26. Q. In what dialect are the books chiefly written from which the selections are taken in making up Greek readers? A. The Attic dialect; that is the dialect spoken in Attica, of which Athens was the capital.
27. Q. By way of comparison what does our author say Athens was to Greece in literature? A. What Paris is, and always has been, to France.
28. Q. Where is a singularly beautiful passage found descriptive of Athens in her imperial supremacy of intellect? A. In Milton’s “Paradise Regained.”
29. Q. How many chief dialects were there of the Greek language, and how were they created? A. There were three, created in part by differences of age, and in part by differences of country.
30. Q. In whose writings is the Ionic dialect exemplified, and how is it characterized? A. In the writings of Homer and Herodotus, and is characterized by fluent sweetness to the ear.
31. Q. In what dialect were the most of the greatest works in Greek literature composed? A. The Attic.
32. Q. What is said of the Attic dialect? A. It is the neatest, most cultivated and most elegant of all the varieties of Greek speech.
33. Q. To whom are the fables commonly attributed that are generally found in Greek readers? A. Æsop.
34. Q. When was Æsop born? A. About 620 B. C.
35. Q. What is said of the fables that go under his name? A. They are mainly the collection of a monk of the fourteenth century.
36. Q. What is said of the sources of the anecdotes found in Greek readers? A. They are culled from various sources, Plutarch, the biographer, furnishing his full share.
37. Q. Give the names of some of the eminent persons about whom anecdotes are usually related in these collections. A. Diogenes, Plato, Zeno, Solon, Alexander, and Philip of Macedon.
38. Q. What Greek writer of the second century after Christ is more or less quoted from in the ordinary Greek reader? A. Lucian.
39. Q. What famous dialogues did he write? A. Dialogues of the Dead.
40. Q. Of what have these dialogues been the original? A. Of several justly admired imitations.
41. Q. In what direction did Lucian exercise his wit? A. In ridiculing paganism.
42. Q. Mention some of the kinds of other matter that goes to make up the Greek reader. A. Bits of natural history and fragments of mythology.
43. Q. From what work of Xenophon do Greek readers often embrace extracts? A. His Memorabilia of Socrates.
44. Q. What was the design of this work? A. To vindicate the memory of Socrates from the charges of impiety and of corrupting influence exerted on the Athenian youth, under which he had suffered the penalty of death.
45. Q. What is the plan of the work? A. It is largely to relate what Socrates did actually teach.
46. Q. What work by a Christian writer does pagan Socrates in large part anticipate? A. “Natural Theology,” by Paley.
47. Q. Who was the wife of Socrates? A. Xanthippe.
48. Q. In what way has the fame of Socrates associated the name of Xanthippe with his own? A. As perhaps the most celebrated scold in the world.
49. Q. What was the chief characteristic trait of the method of Socrates in teaching? A. His art in asking questions.
50. Q. Why is it that Greek readers sometimes edit the text of their extracts from the authors who furnish the matter? A. Because they sometimes contain expressions such as a strict Christian, moral or æsthetic judgment would prefer to expunge.
51. Q. What is the book usually adopted in sequel to the reader for giving students their Greek preparation to enter college? A. Xenophon’s Anabasis.
52. Q. In what two respects is this work highly interesting? A. First, as a specimen of literary art, and second, as strikingly illustrative of the Greek spirit and character.
53. Q. What is the meaning of the word “Anabasis?” A. “A march upward,” that is, from the sea.
54. Q. Of what is the book an account? A. Of an expedition by Cyrus the younger into central Asia, and the retreat of the Greek part of his army.
55. Q. Who accompanied Cyrus on this expedition? A. An oriental army of about 100,000, and a body of Greeks numbering about 13,000.
56. Q. What was the object of this invasion on the part of Cyrus? A. To obtain possession of the Persian throne, occupied by his brother Artaxerxes.
57. Q. When the two Persian brothers finally met in the collision of arms who was slain? A. Cyrus.
58. Q. What did the Greeks now have for their sole business? A. To secure their own safety in withdrawing homeward from the enemy’s country.
59. Q. In what does the main interest of the Anabasis as a narrative lie? A. Rather in the retreat than in the advance.
60. Q. From what does the whole matter of the famous advance and retreat of the ten thousand derive grave secondary importance? A. From the fact that it resulted in revealing to Greece the essential weakness and vulnerableness of the imposing Persian empire.
61. Q. When was Xenophon, the author, born and with whom was he not far from contemporary? A. He was born about 431 B. C., being thus not far from contemporary with the Hebrew prophet Malachi.
62. Q. What did Xenophon’s presence of mind and practical wisdom give him in the retreat? A. A kind of leadership which he maintained until a prosperous issue was reached on the shores of Greece.
63. Q. Among the other chief works of Xenophon what one is prominent? A. The Cyropædia.
64. Q. What is the story of the Anabasis in large a part? A. An itineracy, that is a journal of halts and marches.
65. Q. What was the starting point of the expedition? A. Sardis.
66. Q. At what time was the start made? A. In the spring of the year 401 B. C.
67. Q. In what supposition does Xenophon say Artaxerxes indulged which prevented him from suspecting Cyrus of plotting against him? A. That Cyrus was raising troops for war with Tissaphernes, a Persian governor of certain parts near the satrapy of Cyrus.
68. Q. During the march the army plundered what city where four hundred years later the Apostle Paul was born? A. Tarsus.
69. Q. When they reached the river Euphrates what did Cyrus openly tell the Greek captains as to the object of the expedition? A. That he was marching to Babylon against the great king Artaxerxes.
70. Q. What was the result of this disclosure when made to the men? A. They felt, or feigned, much displeasure, but by lavish promises the majority were prevailed upon to adhere to Cyrus.
71. Q. The remainder of the advance of Cyrus lay along the left bank of what river? A. The Euphrates.
72. Q. What Persian commander among the forces proved a traitor and met with a tragic death? A. Orentes.
73. Q. Where did the armies of Cyrus and of Artaxerxes finally encounter each other? A. At Cunaxa.
74. Q. In what way did Cyrus meet with his death? A. While engaged in a personal contest with Artaxerxes Cyrus was struck with a javelin under the eye and slain.
75. Q. During the truce that followed what five generals among the Greeks were enticed into the tent of Tissaphernes, made prisoners, and afterwards put to death? A. Clearchus, Proxenus, Menon, Agias and Socrates.
76. Q. What was one of the first steps now taken to secure the safety of the Greeks? A. A general meeting was called of all the surviving officers and new commanders were chosen to take the places of those lost, Xenophon being put in the place of his friend Proxenus.
77. Q. After this had been done what action was taken as to the rank and file? A. The men were called together and stoutly harangued by three men in succession, Xenophon being the last.
78. Q. What was one of Xenophon’s heroic propositions that was agreed to? A. To burn everything they could possibly spare on the homeward march.
79. Q. What answer did they return to Mithradates, a neighboring Persian satrap, when asked to know what their present plan might be? A. If unmolested, to go home, doing as little injury as possible to the country through which they passed, but to fight their best if opposition was offered.
80. Q. Being convinced that the mission of Mithradates was a treacherous one, what resolution did the Grecian generals take? A. That there should be no communication with the enemy by heralds.
81. Q. What was the general direction taken by the Greeks in the first part of their retreat? A. A northerly direction toward the Black Sea.
82. Q. By whom were they followed and almost daily attacked during the first portion of their retreat? A. Tissaphernes and a Persian army.
83. Q. What hostile tribe of barbarians violently opposed their march through their territory near the headwaters of the Euphrates? A. The Carduchians.
84. Q. What Persian governor did they encounter in Armenia? A. Tiribazus.
85. Q. With what foes in the elements did they next meet? A. Deep snow and a terrible north wind.
86. Q. In one portion of Armenia at what kind of a village did the Greeks find rest and food after a prolonged march through the snow? A. At an underground village.
87. Q. What do travelers tell us at the present time as to the manner in which the Armenians of that region build their houses? A. That they still build them under ground.
88. Q. Into what country did the Greeks next advance? A. The country of the Taochians.
89. Q. With what difficulty did they here meet? A. Great difficulty in obtaining a supply of provisions.
90. Q. At what mountain did the Greeks get the first view of the Black Sea? A. Mount Theches.
91. Q. At what place did they reach the sea two days afterwards? A. At Trebizond.
92. Q. What universal desire did the sight of the sea awaken in the army? A. To prosecute the remainder of their journey on that element.
93. Q. On what mission did Chirisophus go forward to Byzantium? A. To endeavor to procure transports for the conveyance of the army.
94. Q. While awaiting the transports how were the ten thousand employed? A. In marauding expeditions, and in collecting all the vessels possible.
95. Q. Chirisophus delaying to return, how did they continue their journey? A. Partly by land and partly by water.
96. Q. When they were finally joined by Chirisophus, what did he bring with him? A. Only a single trireme.
97. Q. At what place did the Greeks pass into Europe from Asia? A. At Byzantium.
98. Q. Afterwards whom did the army engage to serve in a war against Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus? A. The Lacedæmonians.
99. Q. To what number was the army now reduced? A. To six thousand.
100. Q. After the incorporation of the remainder of the ten thousand with the Lacedæmonian army, where did Xenophon go? A. To Athens.
[OUTLINE OF C. L. S. C. STUDIES FOR DECEMBER.]
For the month of December the Required C. L. S. C. Reading comprises the first part of Prof. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, and readings in English, Russian, and Religious History and Literature, studies in Ancient Greek Life, and readings from Russian Literature. The reading in Prof. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English is from the commencement of the book to page 124. The remainder of the reading for the month is found in The Chautauquan. The following is the division according to weeks:
First Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from the commencement of the book to page 33—Our Aim, the Land, the People, their Writings, the Start, First Books in Greek.
2. Studies in Ancient Greek Life, in The Chautauquan.
3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for December 3.
4. Questions and Answers on Preparatory Greek Course in English, from No. 1 to No. 25.
Second Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from page 35 to page 58—the Greek Reader.
2. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for December 10.
3. Questions and Answers on Preparatory Greek Course in English, from No. 26 to No. 50.
Third Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from page 59 to page 96—Xenophon’s Anabasis—Introductory, and first and second books.
2. History and Literature of Russia, in The Chautauquan.
3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for December 17.
4. Questions and Answers on Preparatory Greek Course in English, from No. 51 to No. 75.
Fourth Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from page 96 to page 123—Xenophon’s Anabasis—third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh books.
2. Pictures from English History, in The Chautauquan.
3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selections for December 24 and 31.
4. Questions and Answers on Preparatory Greek Course in English, from No. 76 to No. 100.
[QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY.]
By ALBERT M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.
1. How large is the county of Westchester, in the State of New York, which is about half the size of Attica? [Page 7.]
2. Why did the Romans give the name “Greeks” to the Hellenes? [Page 12.]
3. Give two examples of Spartan laconisms of speech. [Page 13.]
4. What are the literary tidings from modern Greece that seem to foretoken close at hand a signal renascence of Greek literature? [Page 20.]
5. Who was blind Melesigenes? [Page 36.]
6. Who was pronounced the wisest of men by an oracle, and by what oracle, and in what words? [Page 37.]
7. How is the monk Planudes apparently relieved of the imputation concerning the authorship of the biography of Æsop ascribed to him? [Page 39.]
8. What are some of the reasons for supposing this biography is a falsifying one? [Page 39.]
9. What is meant by “the Sacred Hetacomb?” [Page 45.]
10. Describe the ceremony of taking a prisoner by the mantle in token that he is to suffer death. [Page 81.]
11. Describe the scythed chariots of the Persians. [Page 83.]
12. From what author is the quotation, “When Greek joined Greek, then was the tug of war?” [Page 88.]
13. Describe the Persian slingers.
14. What is the origin of the familiar expression, “War even to the knife?” [Page 99.]
15. What occasioned the singular effect upon the men of the eating of honeycombs as related by Xenophon? [Page 119.]
[Note.—Answers are not required to questions for further study. The questions here given relate to subjects alluded to in the required reading for the month. After each question the page is given of Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, on which a reference is made to the subject. Members who are able to procure answers to all the questions for further study in this number of The Chautauquan will receive an acknowledgment if the replies are forwarded to Albert M. Martin, General Secretary C. L. S. C., Pittsburg, Pa., so as to reach him by the first of January. Answers will be published in the February number of The Chautauquan. The answers should be brief, and need not be sent unless to all the questions.]
[C. L. S. C. ROUND-TABLE.][F]
Dr. Wm. M. Blackburn, of Cincinnati, was at once introduced, and delivered the following address: