 A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift It is a melancholy object to the mind of those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and in portuning every passenger for annulms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work or leave their dear native country to fight for the pretender in Spain or sell themselves to the Barbados. I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance, and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the commonwealth would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars. It is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets. As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year with little other nourishment, at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging. And it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as, instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and rayament for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding and partly to the clothing of many thousands. There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast. The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about 200,000 couple whose wives are breeders, from which number I subtract 30,000 couple who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many under the present distresses of the kingdom. But this being granted, there will remain in 170,000 breeders. I again subtract 50,000 for those women who miscarry or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain in 120,000 children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how is this number to be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed, for we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture. We neither build homes, I mean in the country, nor cultivate land. They can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learned the rudiments much earlier, during which time they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers. As I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavern, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art, I am assured by our merchants that a boy or girl before twelve years old is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half a crown at most, on the exchange, which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom the charge of nutriments and rags having been at least four times that value. I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well-nourished is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty-thousand children already computed, twenty-thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males, which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. At the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered and sailed to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the four or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseeth to twenty-eight pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. This flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after, for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries nine months after Lent. The markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of poppish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage by lessening the number of poppish among us. I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child, in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers, to be about two shillings per annum, rags included, and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings need profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. Those who are more thrifty, as I must confess the times require, may flay the carcass, the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting, although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do with roasting pigs. A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their dear, he conceived that the want of venison might well be supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age, nor under twelve, so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service. And these to be disposed of by their parents if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments. For as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience that their flesh was generally tough and leaning, like that of our schoolboys, by continual exercise and their taste disagreeable, and to fatten them would not answer the charge. And as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission, be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves. And besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censor such a practice, although indeed very unjustly, as a little boarding on cruelty, which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well so ever intended. But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Salm Anasar, a native of the island of Formosa, who came from thence to London above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend that in his country, when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty, and that, in his time, the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty's prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court and joints from the gibbet at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at a playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about the vast number of poor people who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous and encumberance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying, and rotting, by cold and famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot get work and consequently pine away from want of nourishment to a degree, that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not the strength to perform it, and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious in many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of Papist, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than to stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate. Secondly, the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by lobbying be liable to a distress, and help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown. Thirdly, whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old, and upwards, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings apiece per annum, the nation stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom, who have any refinement in taste, and the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. Fourthly, the constant breeders, besides the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year. Fifthly, this food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where the ventures will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge and good eating, and a skillful cook who understands how to oblige his guests will contrive to make it as expensive as they please. Sixthly, this would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public to their annual profit instead of expense. We should soon see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy, as they are now of their mares in full, their cows in calf, or sell when they are ready to ferro, nor offer to beat or kick them, as is too frequent a practice for fear of miscarriage. Any other advantages might be enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine's flesh, and the improvement in the art of making good bacon. So much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables, which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat yearly child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a Lord Mayor's feast or at any other public entertainment, but this, and many others, I omit, being studious of brevity. Supposing that one thousand families in the city would be constant customers for infant's flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses, and the rest of the kingdom, where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper, the remaining eighty thousand. I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or I think, ever can be upon earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedience, of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound, of using neither clothes nor household furniture except what is of our own growth and manufacture, of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury, of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women, of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance, of learning to love our country wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of top and anbu, of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken, of being a little less cautious not to sell our country in consciences for nothing, of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy toward their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedience till he hath at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice. But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence to omit a long continuance insult, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it. After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how will they be able to find food and rayament for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs? And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two million of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with their wives and children, who are beggars in effect. I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an answer that they will first ask the parents of these mortals whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through, by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclinancies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed forever. I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavouring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single penny, the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past childbearing. End of A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift, read by Mr. Ferking. The National Flag, by Henry Ward Beecher. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bill Mosley. The National Flag, by Henry Ward Beecher. Address delivered to two companies of the Brooklyn 14th. Many of them members of Plymouth Church. The Church on that day contributed $3,000 to aid in the equipment of this regiment. Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Psalm 60 verse 4. From the earliest periods nations seemed to have gone forth to war under some banner. Sometimes it has been merely the penin of a leader, and was only a rallying signal. So doubtless the habit began of carrying banners to direct men in the confusion of conflict, that the leader might gather his followers around him when he himself was liable to be lost out of their sight. Later in the history of nations, the banner acquired other uses and peculiar significance from the parties, the orders, the houses, or governments that adopted it. At length, as consolidated governments drank up into themselves all these lesser independent authorities. Nations became significant chiefly of national authority, and thus in our day every people has its peculiar flag. There is no civilized nation without its banner. A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself, and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag, the government, the principles, the truths, the history that belong to the nation that sets it forth. When the French tricolor rolls out to the wind, we see France. When the newfound Italian flag is unfurled, we see resurrected Italy. When the other three-colored Hungarian flag shall be lifted to the wind, we shall see in it the long-buried but never-dead principles of Hungarian liberty. When the United Crosses of St. Andrew and St. George, on a fiery ground set forth the banner of Old England, we see not the cloth merely. There rises up before the mind the idea of that great monarchy. This nation has a banner too, and until recently wherever it streamed broad men saw daybreak bursting on their eyes. For until lately the American flag has been a symbol of liberty, and men rejoiced in it. Not another flag on the globe had such an errand, or went forth upon the sea carrying everywhere the world around such hope to the captive and such glorious tidings. The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the bright morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light. As at early dawn the stars shine forth even while it grows light, and then as the sun advances that light breaks into banks and streaming lines of color, the glowing red and intense white striving together, and ribbing the horizon with bars effulgent. So on the American flag stars and beams of many colored lights shine out together, and wherever this flag comes and men behold it, they see in its sacred and blazing red no ramping lion and no fierce eagle, no embattled castles or insignia of imperial authority. They see the symbols of light. It is the banner of dawn. It means liberty, and the galley slay, the poor oppressed conscripts, the troddened-down creature of foreign despotism, sees in the American flag that very promise and prediction of God, the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. Is this a mere fancy? On the 4th of July 1776 the Declaration of American Independence was confirmed and promulgated. Already for more than a year the colonies had been at war with the mother country, but until this time there had been no American flag. The flag of the mother country covered us as during all our colonial period, at each state that chose at a separate and significant state banner. In 1777, within a few days of one year after the Declaration of Independence and two years and more after the war began, on the 14th of June the Congress of the colonies or the confederated states assembled and ordained this glorious national flag which now we hold and defend, and advanced it full high before God and all men as the flag of liberty. It was no holiday flag, gorgeously emblazoned for gaiety or vanity. It was a solemn national signal. When that banner first unrolled to the sun it was the symbol of all those holy truths and purposes which brought together the colonial American Congress. Consider the men who devised and set forth this banner. The Rutleges, the Pinkneys, the Jays, the Franklins, the Hamilton's, the Jefferson's, the Adams's, these men were all either officially connected with it or consulted concerning it. They were men that had taken their lives in their hands and consecrated all their worldly possessions. For what? For the doctrines and for the personal fact of liberty, for the right of all men to liberty. They had just given forth to the world a declaration of facts and faiths out of which sprung the Constitution and on which they now planted this new devised flag of our union. If one then asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, it means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant. It means the whole glorious revolutionary war which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known, or has since known, the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties. In solemn conclave our fathers had issued to the world that glorious manifesto, the Declaration of Independence. A little later that the fundamental principles of liberty might have the best organization they gave to this land, our imperishable Constitution. Our flag means then all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means all that the Constitution of our people organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history, and American feelings. Beginning with the colonies and coming down to our time in its sacred heraldry, in its glorious insignia, it has gathered and stored chiefly this supreme idea, divine right of liberty in man. Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every form of star and beam or stripe of light means liberty, not lawlessness, not license, but organized institutional liberty. Liberty through law and laws for liberty. This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. Not an atom of crown was allowed to go into its insignia. Not a symbol of authority in the ruler was permitted to go into it. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant. That it means, and by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time. For God Almighty be thanked, that when base and degenerate southern men desired to set up a nefarious oppression, at war with every legend and every instinct of old American history, they could not do it under our bright flag. Its stars smote them with light like arrows shot from the bow of God. They must have another flag for such work. And they forged an infamous flag to do an infamous work. And God be blessed, left our bright and starry banner untainted and untouched by disfigurement and disgrace. I thank them that they took another flag to do the devil's work, and left our flag to do the work of God. So may it ever be that men that would forge oppression shall be obliged to do it under some other banner than the stars and the stripes. If ever the sentiment of our text then was fulfilled, it has been in our glorious American banner. Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee. Our fathers were God-fearing men. Into their hands God committed this banner, and they have handed it down to us. And I thank God that it is still in the hands of men that fear him and love righteousness. Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed. And displayed it shall be, advanced full against the morning light, and born with the growing and the glowing day. It shall take the last ready beams of the night and from the Atlantic wave clear across with eagle flight to the Pacific. That banner shall float, meaning all the liberty which it has ever meant, from the North, where snows and mountain ice stand solitary, clear to the glowing tropics and the gulf. That banner that has hitherto waved shall wave and wave forever. Every star, every band, every thread, and fold significant of liberty. The speaker paused to check the two demonstrative enthusiasm of the audience and continued. I do not doubt your patriotism. I know it is hard for men that are full of feeling not to give expression to it. Yet excuse me, if I request you to refrain from demonstrations of applause while I am speaking. It is not because I think Sunday too good a day, nor the Church too holy a place for patriotic Christian men to express their feelings at such a time as this, and in behalf of such sentiments, that because by too frequent repetition applause becomes stale and common that I make this request. Besides, outward expression is not our way. We are rather of a silent stock. We let our feelings work inwardly, so that they may have deeper channels and fuller floods. Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Because of that very truth we will display it, not in mere national pride, not in any wantonness of vanity, not merely because we have been reared to honor it, not because we have unhereditary reverence for it, but with a full intelligence of what it is and what it means, and because we love the truth that is written in lines of living light all over it. We will advance it and maintain it against all comers from earth and hell. The history of this banner is all on the side of rational liberty. Under it rode Washington and his armies. Washington much beloved and much abused by those that are his eulogists that have described all that he was except his love of liberty, which has been forgotten. But Washington would be like a man without a heart if you left out of him that high, almost imperial, chivalric love of liberty for every human being. Under this banner rode he and his armies. Before it, Borgoyne laid down his arms. It waved on the highlands at West Point. It floated over old Fort Montgomery as over another Montgomery. At that time, Montgomery, Alabama was the capital of the Southern Confederacy. Afterwards, removed to Richmond, Virginia. As over another Montgomery, it shall float. When Arnold would have surrendered these valuable fortresses and precious legacies, his night was turned into day and his treachery was driven away by the beams of light from this starry banner. It cheered our army, driven out from around New York and in their painful pilgrimages through New Jersey, sacred state of New Jersey, small but comely and rich and imperishable in the drops of precious blood that have redeemed her sainted soil from barrenness. In New Jersey, more than in almost every other state grows the trailing Arbitus. He thinks it is sacred drops of pilgrim blood that come forth in beautyous flowers on this sandiest of soils. For this sweet blossom that lays its cheek on the very snow is the true pilgrim's Mayflower. This banner streamed in light over the soldiers' heads at Valley Forge and at Morristown. It crossed the waters rolling with ice at Trenton. And when its stars gleamed in the cold morning with victory, a new day of hope dawned on the despondency of this nation. When South Carolina, in the revolutionary struggle, utterly forgot what she never well remembered, courage and personal liberty, and yielded herself, the only one ignominious and infamous of all the revolutionary band of states that gave in an adhesion again to the British governments. When she forgot courage and personal liberty and yielded herself up and made her peace solitary and alone with British generals, then it was this banner that led on the Virginia forces who conquered both the British and Carolinian armies and brought the state again into our Confederacy. Alas, that the head should become the tail. Alas, that old Virginia that brought back the Recreant South Carolina should be tied to and be dragged about the rebel camp at the tail of that same South Carolina. And when at length the long years of war were drawing to a close, underneath the folds of this immortal banner sat Washington, while Yorktown surrendered its hosts and our revolutionary struggle ended with victory. It waved thus over that whole historic period of struggle and over that period in which sat that immortal convention that framed our constitution. It cheered the hardy pioneers that then began to go forth and explore the Western wilds in all their desperate stripes with savage Indians. It was to them a memorial and symbol of comfort. Our states grew up under it. And when our ships began to swarm upon the ocean to carry forth our commerce and inspired by the genial flame of liberty to carry forth our ideas and Great Britain arrogantly demanded the right to intrude her search warrants upon American decks. Then up went the lightning flag and every star meant liberty and every stripe streamed defiance. The gallant fleet of Lake Erie. Have you forgotten it? The thunders that echoed to either shore were overshadowed by this broad ensign of our American liberty. Those glorious men that went forth in the old ship constitution carried this banner to battle and to victory. The old ship is alive yet. The new traders of the South could not burn her. They did not sink her and she has been hauled out of the reach of hostile hands and traitorous bands. Bless the name, bless the ship, bless her historic memory and bless the old flag that waves over her yet. The Perrys, the Lawrence's, the Bitties, the McDonald's, the Porter's and a host of others whose names cannot die. Do you forget that they fought under this national banner and fought for liberty? How glorious then has been its origin. How glorious has been its history. How divine is its meaning. In all the world is there another banner that carries such hope, such grandeur of spirit, such soul-inspiring truth as our dear old American flag. Made by liberty, made for liberty. Nourished in its spirit, carried in its service and never, not once in all the earth, made to stoop to despotism. Never, did I say. Alas, only to that worst despotism, Southern slavery has it bowed. Remember, every one of you, that the slaveholders of the South, alone of all the world have put their feet upon the American flag. And now this banner has been put on trial. It has been condemned. For what? Has it failed of duty? Has liberty lost color by it? Have moths of oppression eaten its folds? Has it refused to shine on free men and given its light to despots? No. It has been true, brave, loyal. It has become too much a banner of liberty for men who mean and plot despotism. Remember, citizen, remember Christian soldier. The American flag has been fired upon by Americans and trodden down because it stood in the way of slavery. This is all that you have reaped for your long patience, for your many compromises, for your generous trust and your Christian forbearance. You may now see through all the South just what kind of patriotism slavery breeds. East of the mountains, I suppose you might travel through all Washington state and not see one star nor one strike. Thank God Washington is dead and has not lived to see the infamy and the disgrace that have fallen upon that recreation state. In all North Carolina, I fear you shall find not one American flag. In Florida, you shall not find one. In Georgia, I know not, except in the mountain fastnesses. If there be one. With a like exception, there is not one in Alabama. Either is there one in repudiating Mississippi, nor in Louisiana, nor in Texas, ungrateful, nor in Arkansas. In all this waste and wilderness of states, this banner has gone down. And a miserable counterfeit, a poor forgery has been run up upon the recurrent pole to stand in the stead of the glorious old revolutionary historic American flag. And how is it in the great middle brood of states? As a star is obscured for an instant by a passing cloud and then shines forth again. So in Maryland, the flag and its stars were hid for a day, but they now flame out again. Maryland is safe. All honor to Delaware, she has never flinched. In Kentucky and Tennessee and Missouri, the banner is at half-mast, uncertain whether it will go up or down. And of all these states, I can say with all my heart and soul in the language of the apocalypse, I would thou word cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. God hates lukewarm patriotism as much as lukewarm religion. And we hate it too. We do not believe in hermaphrodite patriots. We want men to be men from the crown of their head to the sole of their foot, and to say no to oppression, and yes to liberty, and to say both as if thunder spoke. But this is not the worst. That this banner should have been lowered by the hands of requerents. It was upon these streaming bars and upon these bright stars that every one of that immense, concentric range of guns was aimed when the Sumter was lifted up in the midst, almost like another witnessing calvary. And that flag, which Russia could not daunt, nor France intimidates, nor England conquer, has gone down beneath the fire of treacherous states within our own union. And do you know that when it was fallen in the streets of a southern city, it was trail hooded at, pierced with swords. Men that have sat in the Senate of the United States ran out to travel upon it. It was fired on and slashed by the mob. It was dragged through the mud. It was hissed at and spit upon, and so it was carried through the southern cities. That our flag, which has found on the ocean, in the Indian islands, in Sumatra, in Japan, in China, and in all the world, no enemies, either barbarian or civilized, that dare to touch it with foul aspersion, that this flag should, in our own nation, and by our own people, be spit upon and trapled under foot, is more than the heart of man can bear. And what was its crime? If it had forgotten its origin, if it had gone over to oppression, if it had set these stars like so many blazing jewels in the tiara of imperial despotism, I should not have wondered that it's going down. If it had been recreate to its trust of ideas of liberty, I should have expected to see it go down. But it has not failed to defend liberty. Have there been quartered on its armorial bearings any bastard symbol significant of oppression? None. It is guilty of nothing but of too much liberty. Its stars have too much promise in them for those that are born slaves, and it strives stream too bright a light to those that sit in darkness. That is the crime of our national banner. And now God speaks by the voice of His providence saying, lift again that banner, advance it full and high. To your hand, and to yours, God and your country commit that imperishable trust. You go forth self-called, or rather called by the trust of your countrymen and by the spirit of your God to take that trailing banner out of the dust and out of the mire. And lift it again where God's reigns can cleanse it, where God's free air can cause it to unfold and stream as it has always floated before the wind. God blessed the men that go forth to save from disgrace the American flag. Accept it then in all its fullness of meaning. It is not a painted rag. It is a whole national history. It is the Constitution. It is the governments. It is the free people that stand in the government on the Constitution. Forget not what it means. And for the sake of its ideas, rather than its mere emblazony, be true to your country's flag. By your hands, lift it, but let your lifting it be no holiday display. It must be advanced because of the truth. That flag must go to the capital of this nation and it must go not hidden, not secreted, not in a case or covering, but advanced, full, high, displayed bright as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners. For a single week that disgraceful crook, that shameful circuits may be needful. But the way from New England, the way from New York, the way from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Washington lies right through Baltimore. And that is the way the flag must and shall go. The route through Baltimore was closed and for weeks Washington was reached through Annapolis. But that flag borne by 10,000 and thrice 10,000 hands from Connecticut, from Massachusetts. God bless the state and all her men. From Shipbuilding, Maine, from old granite New Hampshire, from the Vermont of Bennington and Green Mountain Boy patriotism, from Rhode Island, not behind any in zeal and patriotism. From New York, from Ohio, from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Delaware, and the other loyal states, that flag must be carried bearing every one of its insignia to the sound of the drum and the fife into our national capital, until Washington shall seem to be a forest in which every tree supports the American banner. And it must not stop there. The country does not belong to us from the lakes only to Washington, but from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The flag must go on. The land of Washington shall see Washington's flag again. The land that sits in darkness and in which the people see no light, shall yet see light dawn and liberty flash from the old American banner. It must see Charleston again and float again over every fort in Charleston Harbor. It must go further to the alligator state and stand there again, and sweeping up through all plantations and over all fields of sugar and rice and tobacco and every other thing. It must be found in every state till you touch the Mississippi. And bathing in its waters, it must go across and fill Texas with its sacred light. Nor must it stop when it floats over every one of the states. That flag must stand, bearing its whole historic spirit and original meaning in every territory of this nation. Have you not had enough mischief of slavery? Do you not see what men it breeds? It hatches cockatrice's eggs. Slavery breeds traitors and the masters and miserable slaves in the subjects. Slavery is the abominable poison that has circulated in the body politic. It corrupted this whole nation almost past healing. Blessed be God, there is a medicine found. Now having had experience and having seen what slavery does to the slave and what it does to the slave is the least part of the evil. The slave is to be envied in the comparison. I would to God that the white man were half as little hurt by slavery. Seeing how it blights the heart's core, how it corrupts the most sacred sentiments, how it brings down natures born for better things to the degradation of despotism. Having seen these things, can you? I ask every man that has conscience or reason or hope or fear or love in his soul. Can you meet God Almighty's judgment or the inquiring eye of God? If while you live, you permit that evil to roll unchecked 3,000 miles to the Pacific Ocean. Let then this banner go again and into every recurrent state and float over every inch of territory saying defiance to slavery all hail to liberty. Nor is it enough that that banner shall stand and merely reassert its authority. It is time now that that banner shall do as much for each man in our own country as it will in every other land on the globe. If I go to Constantinople and a mob threatens me, that banner shines like lightning out of heaven and I am safe. If I go to Jerusalem or among the Bedouin Arabs, I have but to show that symbol and I am safe. If I go to Africa and skirt its coasts among the natives and exhibit the colors of my country, I am safe. I can go around the globe under the protection of this flag, but it has denied me to go to Washington. I cannot go from my door to the capital of this nation because the American flag does not defend Americans on their own soil. I cannot go to Virginia, nor North Carolina, nor South Carolina, nor Florida, nor Georgia, nor Alabama, nor Mississippi, nor Louisiana, nor Texas, nor Arkansas, nor to most of Kentucky and of Tennessee. We have not had a government for 50 years that dared to do a thing that slavery did not wish to have done. I suppose that within the last 20 years, uncounted multitudes of men have been mulked in property, mobbed, hung, murdered, for whose wrongs and blood no government has ever made any inquisition. It is permitted to this hour to one man to maltreat, to murder, to rob, to strip, to destroy another man in Nashville, in Memphis, in New Orleans, in Mobile, in Charleston, and even in Richmond, close up under the eye of government. There has never been an hour for the last 25 years when government would lift a voice or stretch out a hand to protect northern men against the outrages committed upon them by men at the South. Now I demand that when the American flag is next unfurled in South Carolina, it shall protect me there as it protects a South Carolinian in New York. I demand that it shall protect me in Mobile as it protects a Mobilean here. I demand that this shall be a common country and that all men shall enjoy the imperishable rights which the Constitution guarantees to every American citizen. I demand that there shall be such a victory of this flag as shall make the whole and undivided land a common possession of all and every one of its citizens. If any man asks me whether I will consent to a compromise, I reply, yes, I love compromises. They are dear to me if I may make them. Give me a compromise that shall bring peace. Let me say, hang the ring-leading traders, suppress their armies, give peace to their fields, lift up the banner and make a highway in which every true American citizen minding his own business can walk unmolested, free the territories and keep them free. That is our compromise. Give to us the doctrine of the fathers. Renew the Declaration of Independence. Refill the Constitution with the original blood of liberty, destroy traitors and treason. Make the doctrine of secession a byword and a hissing. Make laws equal. Let that justice for which they were ordained be the same in Maine or Carolina, to the rich and to the poor, the bond and the free and thus we will compromise. But as long as compromise means yokes upon us and license to them, silence for liberty and open mouth freedom to despotism, so long compromise is a devil's juggle. No man that is a free man and a Christian should be caught in any such snare as that. I ask for nothing except that which the fathers meant. I ask for the fulfillment of Washington's prayer. I ask for the carrying out of the designs of those sacred men that sat in conclave at Independence Hall in Philadelphia and framed our immortal constitution. I ask for liberty in New York, in Carolina, in Alabama, in every state and in every territory. I ask for it throughout the whole land. I ask no Northern advantage. It is a mere geographical accident that liberty is in the North. It is not because it is the North, but because the North is free that I ask for the ascendancy of Northern principles. That Daniel Webster had lived to see what we do. That strong man whose faith failed him in a fatal hour of ambition. I will read from a speech of his better days, one of the noblest passages that ever issued from the uninspired pen of man. It is appropriate for this hour. Quote, when my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious union. On states, dissevered, discordant, belligerent. On a land rent with civil feuds or drenched it may be in fraternal blood. Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, is still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, what is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, but liberty first and union afterwards. But everywhere spread all over in characters of living-like, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land and at every wind under the whole heavens. That other sentiments, dear to every true American heart, liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable. End quote. God grant it, God grant it. You live in a civilized age, you go on a sacred mission. The prayers and sympathies of Christendom are with you. You go to open again the shut-up fountains of liberty and to restore this disgraced banner to its honor. You go to serve your country in the cause of liberty. And if God brings you into conflict air long with those misguided men of the South, when you see their miserable, new-vamped banner, remember what that flag means. Treason, slavery, despotism. Then look up and see the bright stars and the glorious stripes over your own head and read in them liberty, liberty, liberty, and if you fall in that struggle. May some kind hand wrap around you the flag of your country and may you die with its sacred touch upon you. It shall be sweet to go to rest lying in the folds of your country's banner, meaning as it shall mean, liberty and union, now and forever. We will not forget you. You go forth from us not to be easily and lightly passed over. The waves shall not close over the places which you have held. But when you return, not as you go, many of you inexperienced and many of you unknown, you shall return from the conquests of liberty, the reputation and a character established forever to your children and your children's children. It shall be an honor. It shall be a legend. It shall be a historic truth. And your posterity shall say our fathers stood up in the day of peril and laid again the foundations of liberty that were shaken and in their hands, the banner of our country streamed forth like the morning star upon the night. God bless you. End of The National Flag by Henry Ward Beecher. Recording by Bill Moseley, Frelsburg, Texas, USA. Not to counterfeit Being Sick by Michel de Montagne, translated by Charles Cotton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. There is an epigram in Marshall and one of the very good ones, for he has of all sorts, where he pleasantly tells the story of Kylius, who to avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their rising and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout. And the better to colour this anointed his legs and had them lapped up in a great many sway things and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance of a gouty person. Till in the end, Fortune did him the kindness to make him one indeed. Quantum cura potest et ars doloris, desid fingere Kylius podagram. How great is the power of counterfeiting pain. Kylius has ceased to feign the gout. He has got it. I think I have read somewhere in Appian a story like this, of one who sought to escape the prescriptions of the triumpheers of Rome and the better to be concealed from the discovery of those who pursued him. Having hidden himself in a disguise, would yet add this invention, to counterfeit having but one eye. But when he came to have a little more liberty and went to take off the plaster, he had a great while worn over his eye. He found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed and that it was absolutely gone. Dispossible that the action of sight was dulled from having been so long without exercise and that the optic power was wholly retired into the other eye. For we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow so that it will swell and grow bigger. And so, in action, with the heat of ligatures and plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon the counterfeiter in Marshall. Reading in Fressard the vow of a troupe of young English gentlemen to keep their left eyes bound up till they had arrived in France and performed some notable exploit upon us. I have often been tickled with this thought that it might have befallen them as it did those others and they might have returned with but an eye a piece to their mistresses for whose sakes they had made this ridiculous vow. Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when they count of it having but one eye, squinting, lameness or any other personal defect for besides that their bodies, being then so tender, may be subject to take an ill-bent. Fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking us at our word and I have heard several examples related of people who have become really sick by only feigning to be so. I have always used, whether on horseback or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand and even to effect doing it with an elegant air. Many have threatened that this fancy would one day be turned into necessity. If so, I should be the first of my family to have the gout. But let us a little lengthen this chapter and add another anecdote concerning blindness. Pliny reports of one who, dreaming he was blind, found himself so indeed in the morning without any preceding infirmity in his eyes. The force of imagination might assist in this case as I have said elsewhere and Pliny seems to be of the same opinion but it is more likely that the motions which the body felt within, of which physicians, if they please, may find out the cause, taking away his sight were the occasion of his dream. Let us add another story, not very improper for this subject, which Seneca relates in one of his epistles. You know, says he, writing to Lucilius, that herpaste, my wife's fool, is thrown upon me as an irredatory charge, for I have naturally an aversion to those monsters. And if I have a mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far. I can laugh at myself. This fool has suddenly lost her sight. I tell you a very strange but a very true thing. She is not sensible that she is blind but eternally importunes her keeper to take her abroad because she says the house is dark. That what we laugh at in her, I pray you to believe, happens to every one of us. No one knows himself to be avaricious or grasping and again the blind call for a guide while we stray of our own accord. I am not ambitious, we say, but a man cannot live otherwise at Rome. I am not wasteful, but the city requires a great outlay. It is not my fault if I am choleric, if I have not yet established any certain course of life. It is the fault of youth. Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves. Tis in us and planted in our bowels and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick renders us more hard to be cured. If we do not be times begin to see to ourselves when shall we have provided for so many wounds and evils wherewith we abound. And yet we have a most sweet and charming medicine in philosophy. For of all the rest we are sensible of no pleasure till after the cure. This pleases and heals at once. This is what Seneca says that has carried me from my subject, but there is advantage in the change. End of not to counterfeit being sick by Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton. Read by Martin Giesen. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in private and retiring, for ornament is in discourse, and for ability is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute and perhaps judge of particulars one by one, but the general councils and the plots and marshaling of affairs come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth. To use them too much for ornament is affectation. To make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature and are perfected by experience. For natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study, and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them, for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above them, one by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, some to be chewed and digested. That is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy and extracts made of them by others, but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books. Else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, a witty man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory, if he confer little, he had need have a present wit, and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend. A bayant studia in mores. Nay, there is no staund or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, writing for the head, and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics, for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or define differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are Simoni sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyer's cases, so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. End of Studies by Francis Bacon Read by Mr. Frerking Religion and Money by George W. Fudd This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite Religion and Money by George W. Fudd Religion is a getting religion. For though I myself get nothing, I am subordinate to those that do. So you may find a lawyer in the temple that gets little for the present, but he is fitting himself to be in time one of those great ones that do get. Selden's Table Talk The Divine stands wrapped up in his cloud of mysteries and the amused laity must pay tides and veneration to be kept in obscurity, grounding their hope of future knowledge on a competent stock of present ignorance. George Farquhar Religion and Priestcraft may not be the same thing in essence. That is a point on which we do not intend to dogmatize, and this is not the opportunity to argue it, but practically religion and priestcraft are the same thing. They are inextricably bound up together and they will suffer a common fate. In saying this, however, must be understood to use the word religion in its ordinary sense as synonymous with theology. Religion as non-supernatural as the idealism of morality, the sovereign bond of collective society is a matter with which we are not at present concerned. Priestcraft did not invent religion. To believe that it did is the error of an impulsive and uninformed skepticism, but Priestcraft developed it, systematized it, enforced it, and perpetuated it. This could not be affected, however, except in alliance with the temporal power, and accordingly in every country, savage, barbaric, or civilized, the priests and the privileged classes are found in harmony. They have occasional differences, but these are ultimately adjusted. Sometimes the priesthood overrules the temporal power, but frequently the former gives way to the latter. Indeed, it is instructive to watch how the course of religion has been so largely determined by political influences. The development of Judaism was almost entirely controlled by the political vicissitudes of the Hebrews. The political power really decided the great controversy between Arianism and Athanasianism. Politics again, twelve hundred years later, settled the Reformation, not only for the moment, but for subsequent centuries. Where the Prince's sword was thrown into the scale, it determined the balance. England, for instance, was non-Papal Catholic under Henry VIII, Protestant under Edward VI, Papal Catholic under Mary, and Protestant again under Elizabeth, although every one of these changes, according to the clergy, was dictated by the Holy Ghost. Priests and the privileged classes must settle their differences in some way, otherwise the people would become too knowing and too independent. The cooperation of imposter and robber is necessary to the bamboozlement and exploitation of the masses. This cooperation indeed is the great secret of the permanence of religion, and its policy is two-fold, education and the power of money. The value of education may be inferred from the frantic efforts of the clergy to build and maintain schools of their own, and to force their doctrines into the schools built and maintained by the state. In this respect there is nothing to choose between church and descent. The reading of the Bible in board schools is a compromise between themselves, lest a worse thing should befall them both. If one section were strong enough to upset the compromise, it would do so. In fact, the church party is now attempting this stroke of policy on the London school board, with the avowed object of giving a church color to the religious teachings of the children. The very same principle was at work in former days when none but churchmen were admitted to the universities or public positions. It was a splendid means of maintaining the form of religion which was bound up with the monarchy and the aristocracy. Learning and influence were as far as possible kept on the side of the established faith, which thus became the master of the masters of the people. This is perfectly obvious to the student of history, and free thinkers should lay its lesson to heart. It is only by driving religion entirely out of education from the humblest school to the proudest college that we shall ever succeed in priestcraft and freeing the people from the bondage of superstition. We could write a volume on this theme, the power of education in maintaining religion, but we must be satisfied with the foregoing at present and turn our attention to the power of money. It is a wise adage that money is the sinews of war. Fighting is very largely often wholly a question of resources. Troops may be ever so brave, ever so skillful, but they will be beaten unless they have good rifles and artillery, plenty of ammunition, and an ample commissariat. Now the same thing obtains in all warfare. It would be foolish no less than base to deny the inspiring efficacy of ideas, the electric force of enthusiasm, but however highly men may be energized, they cannot act without instruments, and money buys them. The instruments be rifles and artillery, or schools, or churches, or any kind of organization. Given churches with great well, as well as control over public education, and it is easy to see that they will be able to perpetuate themselves. Endowments are specially valuable. They are rooted, so to speak, in the past and hold firm. They bear golden fruit to be plucked by the skillful and powerful. Besides, the very age of an endowed institution gives it a venerable aura, and its freedom from the full necessity of caging lends it a certain respectability, like that of a man who lives on his means instead of earning his living. It is not an extravagant calculation that in England alone twenty millions a year are spent on religion. The figures fall glibly from the think first of a thousand, then of a thousand thousand, then of twenty times that. Take a single million and think what its expenditure might do in the shaping of public opinion. A practical friend of ours, a good radical and free thinker, said that he would undertake to create a majority for home rule in England with a million of money, and if he spent it judiciously, we think he might succeed. Well then, just imagine not a million, but twenty millions spent every year in maintaining and propagating a certain religion. Is it not enough and more than enough to perpetuate a system which is firmly founded to begin with on the education of little children? Here lies the strength of Christianity. It is not true. It is not useful. Its teachings and pretensions are both seen through by tens of thousands, but the wealth supports it. Without money and without price is the fraudulent language of the pious prospectus. It would never last on those terms. The money keeps it up. Withdraw the money and the black army would disband, leaving the people free to work out their secular salvation without the fear and trembling of a foolish faith. End of Religion and Money WF St. Augustine by Frank R Stockton from Southern Stories Retold from St. Nicholas This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Bologna Times. The city of St. Augustine on the eastern coast of Florida stands in one respect preeminent among all the cities of the United States. It is truly an old city. It has many other claims to consideration, but these are shared with other cities. But in regard to age, it is the one member of its class. Compared with the cities of the old world St. Augustine would be called young. But in the United States a city whose buildings and monuments connect the middle ages with the present time may be considered to have a good claim to be called ancient. After visiting some of our great towns where the noise and bustle of traffic, the fire and den of manufacturers the long lines of buildings stretching out in every direction with all the other evidences of active enterprise proclaim these cities creations of the present day and hour. It is refreshing and restful to go down to quiet St. Augustine where one may gaze into the dry moat of a fort of medieval architecture walk over its drawbridges pass under its portacollis and go down into its dungeons and where in soft semi-tropical air the visitor may wander through narrow streets resembling those of Spain and Italy where the houses on each side lean over toward one another so that neighbors might almost shake hands from their upper windows and are surrounded by orange grows and rose gardens which blossom all the year. St. Augustine was founded in 1565 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles who was then governor of Florida. Here he built a wooden fort which was afterward replaced by the massive edifice which still exists. St. Augustine needed defences for she passed through long periods of war and many battles for her possession. At first there were wars in Florida between the Spanish and the French and when the town was just 21 years old Sir Francis Drake captured the fort carrying off 2,000 pounds in money and burned half the buildings in the town. Then the Indians frequently attacked the place and committed many atrocities and half a century after Drake the celebrated English buccaneer Captain Davis captured and plundered the town. Much later General Moore, Governor of South Carolina, took the town and held it for three months but was never able to take the fort. In 1740 General Oglethorpe, Governor of Georgia attacked St. Augustine planting batteries on the island opposite and maintaining a siege for 40 days but he was obliged to withdraw. Years later he made another attack but succeeded no better. Even now one can see the dents and holes made in the fort by the cannon balls fired in these sieges. In 1819 Florida was ceded to our government and St. Augustine became a city of the United States. Approaching St. Augustine from the sea the town looks as if it might be a port on the Mediterranean coast. The light colored walls of its houses and gardens masses of rich green foliage cropping up everywhere in the town and about it, the stern old fortress to the north of it and the white and littering sands of the island which separates its harbor from the sea make it very unlike the ordinary idea of an American town. In the center of the city is a large open square called the Plaza de la Constitución surrounded by beautiful live oaks and pride of India trees with their long hanging mosses and sweet smelling blossoms. Most of the streets are narrow without sidewalks and from the high walled gardens comes the smell of orange blossoms while roses and other flowers bloom everywhere and all the time. At the southern end of the town stands the old convent of St. Francis which is now used as barracks for the United States soldiers. The old palace of the governor still stands but now contains the post office and other public buildings. There was once a wall around the town and one of the gates of this still remains. There is a tower on each side of the gateway and the sentry boxes and loopholes through which the guards used to look out for Indians and other enemies are still there. Along the harbor edge the town is a wall nearly a mile long built at great expense by the United States government as a defense against the encroachments of the sea. This is called the sea wall and its smooth top four feet wide is a favorite promenade. Walking northward on this wall or on the street beside it if you like that better we reach a little outside of the town what I consider the most interesting feature of St. Augustine. This is the old fort of San Marco which since it came into the possession of our government has been renamed Fort Marion. The old fort is not a ruin but is one of the best preserved specimens of the style of fortification of the Middle Ages. We cross the moat and the drawbridge and over the stone doorway we see the Spanish coat of arms and under it an inscription the fort was built during the reign of King Ferdinand the 6th of Spain with the names and titles of the dons who superintended the work. It took 60 years to build the fort and nearly all the work was done by Indians who were captured and made slaves for the purpose. Passing through the solemn entrance we come to an open square surrounded by the buildings and walls of the fort which in all cover about an acre of ground. On the right is an inclined plane which serves as a stairway to reach the ramparts where the cannon were placed. The terraplane or wide flat surface of the ramparts makes a fine walk around the four sides of the fort from which we can have views of land and sea. At each corner was a watch tower three of which remain and into these one can mount through the narrow slits of windows get a view of what is going on outside without being seen himself. At one end of the fort is the old Spanish chapel and all around the square are the rooms that used to be occupied by the officers and the soldiers. Into the chapel the condemned prisoners used to be taken to hear their last mass before being marched up to the north rampart and shot. Down in the foundations of the fort are dungeons into which no ray of sunlight can enter. After the fort came into the possession of our government a human skeleton was found in one of the dungeons chained to a staple in the wall and in another dungeon without door or window and completely walled up there were discovered two iron cages which had hung from the walls each containing a human skeleton. The supports of one of the cages had rusted away and it had fallen down but the other was still in its place. A great many romantic stories were told about these skeletons and by some persons it was supposed that they were the remains of certain heirs to the Spanish throne whose existence it was desirable utterly to blot out. One of the skeletons was that of a woman or girl. The cages and skeletons have been removed and can go into the dungeons if we take a lantern. Anything darker or blacker than these underground cells cannot be imagined. I have seen dungeons in Europe but none of them were so hopelessly awful as these. In another part of the fort is a cell in which Osceola, the celebrated Indian chief, was once imprisoned in company with another chief named Wildcat. There is a little window near the top of the cell protected by several iron bars and it is said that Wildcat starved himself until he was thin enough to squeeze between two of the bars having first mounted on the shoulders of Osceola in order to reach them. Whether the starving part of the story is true or not it is certain that he escaped through the window. When I last visited San Marco there were a couple of Indian prisoners who had been captured in the far west. Some of them were notorious for their cruelties and crimes but in the fort they were all peaceable enough. It was one of these Indians a big ugly fellow who lighted me into the dungeon of the skeleton cages. This fort, which is in many respects like a great castle is not built of ordinary stone found by the accumulation of seashells which in the course of ages have united into a mass like solid rock. On Anastasia Island opposite St. Augustine there are great quarries from which the cooking stone is taken and of this material nearly the Holtown is built. It is interesting to visit one of these quarries which are linked while the lower we look down the more and more solid and stone like the masses become. The harbor of St. Augustine is a portion of the seas cut off by Anastasia Island. Southward the Matanzas river extends from the harbor and in all these waters there is fine fishing. On the sea beaches there is good bathing for the water is not too cold St. Augustine is an attractive place at all seasons of the year and its three superb hotels the Ponce de Leon the Alcazar and the Cordova are among the most celebrated in America. In winter people come down from the north because its air is so warm and pleasant and in summer people from the southern states visit it because its sea breezes are so cool and refreshing it is a favorable resort for yachts and its wide smooth harbor may often be seen some of the most beautiful vessels of this class. St. Augustine is not only a delightful place in which to stay but it is easy to reach from there some points which are of great interest to travelers the great St. John's river is only 14 miles away and is connected with the town by a little railroad Decoy, the river terminus of the railroad people who wish to penetrate into the heart of Florida with its great forests and lakes and beautiful streams can take a steamer and sail up the St. John's which, by the way, flows northward some 200 miles in some parts the river is six miles wide resembling a lake and in its narrow portions the shores are very beautiful about 40 miles above Decoy, the Oclawaha river runs into the St. John's and there are few visitors to St. Augustine who do not desire to take a trip up the Little River which is in many respects the most romantic and beautiful stream in the world. At Decoy we take a little steamboat which looks like a very narrow two-story house mounted upon a little canal boat and in this we go up the St. John's until we see on the right an opening in the tree-covered banks this is the mouth of the Oclawaha and, entering it we steam directly into the heart of one of the great forests of Florida the stream is very narrow and full of turns and bends indeed its name which is Indian signifies crooked water and sometimes the bow of the boat has even to be pushed around by men with long poles of course we go slowly but no one objects to that for we do not wish to hurry through such scenery as this on each side we see green trees with their thick evergreen foliage with vines and moss hanging from many of them and the ground beneath covered with the luxuriant shrubbery which grows in these warm regions sometimes we can see through the trees into the distant recesses of the forest then again we are shut in by walls of foliage now and then we may see an alligator sending himself on a log and as our boat approaches he rolls over into the water and plumps out of sight water turkeys whose bodies are concealed in the bushes run out their long necks to look at us presenting the appearances of snakes darting between the leaves while curlews, herons and many other birds are seen on the banks and flying across the river in some places the stream widens and in the shallower portions near the banks grow many kinds of lilies beautiful reeds and other water plants for long distances there is no solid ground on either side of the river the water penetrating far into the forest and farming swamps near the edge of the river we frequently see myriads of tree-rids bent almost at right angles giving the trees the appearance of standing on spider legs in the water sometimes the forest opens overhead but nearly all the way we are covered by a roof of green and at every turn appeared new scenes of beauty and luxurians occasionally the banks are moderately high and we see long stretches of solid ground covered with ferdere there is one spot where two large trees stand one on each bank close to the water and the distance between the two is so small that as our boat glides through this natural gateway there is scarcely a foot of room to spare on either side although the river is such a little one that we are apt to think all the time we are sailing on it that we must soon come to the end of its navigation we go on more than a hundred miles before we come to the place where we stop and turn back the trip up the aqua waha requires all the hours of a day and a great part of a night and this night trip is like a journey through fairyland on the highest part of the boat is a great iron basket into which as soon as it becomes dark are thrown quantities of pine knots these are lighted in order that the pilot may see how to steer the blazing of the resinous fuel lights up the forest for long distances in every direction and as may easily be imagined the effect is wonderfully beautiful when the fire blaze is high the scene is like an illuminated lacework of tree trunks, vines, leaves and twigs the smallest tendrils shining out bright and distinct while through it all the river gleams like a band of glittering silver then as the pine knots gradually burn out the illumination fades and fades away until we think the whole glorious scene is about to melt into nothing when more sticks are thrown on the light blazes up again and we have before us a new scene with different combinations of illuminated foliage and water it often happens that during the night our little steamer crowds itself to one side of the river and stops then we may expect to see a splendid sight out of the dark depths of the forest comes a glowing radiant apparition, small at first but getting larger and larger until it moves down upon us like a tangle of moon and stars drifting through the trees this is nothing but another little steamboat coming down the river with its lighted windows and decks and its blazing basket of pine knots there is just room enough to squeeze past us and then Heradians gradually fades away in the darkness behind us we travel thus night and day until we reach Silver Springs which is the end of our journey this is a small lake so transparent that we can see down to the very bottom of it and watch the turtles and fishes as they swim about a silver coin or any small object thrown into the water we see distinctly seen lying on the white sand far beneath us the land is high and dry about Silver Springs and the passengers generally go on shore and stroll through the woods for an hour or two then we re-embark and return to St. Augustine as we came it must not be supposed that St. Augustine contains nothing but buildings of the olden time although many parts of the town are the same as they were in the old Spanish days and although we may even find the descendants of the minorcans who were once its principal citizens the city now contains many handsome modern dwellings and hotels some of which are exceptionally large and grand hundreds of people from the north have come down to the city of orange scented air eternal verdure and invigorating sea breezes and have built handsome houses and during the winter there is a great deal of bustle and life in the narrow streets in the plaza and on the sunny front of the town many of the shops are of a kind only to be found in semi-tropical towns by the sea and have for sale bright-colored sea-beans ornaments made of fish-gales of every variety of hue corals, dried sea-friends and ever so many curiosities of the kind we may even buy if we choose some little black alligators alive and brisk and about a foot long as to fruit we can get here the best oranges in the world which come from the Indian river in the southern part of Florida and many sorts of tropical fruits that are seldom brought to northern cities if St. Augustine were like most American cities and had been built by us or by our immediate ancestors and presented an air of newness and progress and business prosperity its delightful climate and its natural beauties would make it a most charming place to visit but if we add to these attractions the fact that here alone we can see a bit of the old world without leaving our young republic and that in two or three days from the newness and busy den of New York or Chicago we may sit upon the ramparts of a medieval fort and study the history of those olden days when the history of Spain England and France was also the history of this portion of our own land we cannot fail to admit that this little town of coquena walls and evergreen foliage and traditions of old world antiquity occupies a position which is unique in the United States End of St. Augustine by Frank R Stockton