97. The World Grows Brighter.
I have a dream that this world is growing better and better every day and every year; that there is more charity, more justice, more love every day. I have a dream that prisons will not always curse the earth; that the shadow of the gallows will not always fall on the land; that the withered hand of want will not always be stretched out for charity; that finally wisdom will sit in the legislature, justice in the courts, charity will occupy all the pulpits, and that finally the world will be controlled by liberty and love, by justice and charity. That is my dream, and if it does not come true, it shall not be my fault.
98. The Column of July
I stood, a little while ago, in the city of Paris, where stood the Bastile, where now stands the column of July, surmounted by the figure of Liberty. In its right hand is a broken chain, in its left hand a hammer; upon its shining forehead a glittering star—and as I looked upon it I said, such is the Republican party of my country.
99. A Nation of Rascals
Samuel J. Tilden says we are a nation of thieves and rascals. If that is so he ought to be President. But I denounce him as a calumniator of my country; a maligner of this nation. It is not so. This country is covered with asylums for the aged, the helpless, the insane, the orphan, the wounded soldiers. Thieves and rascals don't build such things. In the cities of the Atlantic coast this summer, they built floating hospitals, great ships, and took the little children from the sub-cellars and narrow, dirty streets of New York city, where the Democratic party is the strongest—took these poor waifs and put them in these great hospitals out at sea, and let the breezes of ocean kiss the rose of health back to their pallid cheeks. Rascals and thieves do not do so. When Chicago burned, railroads were blocked with the charity of the American people. Thieves and rascals did not do so.