 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Todd Cutler. George Washington's farewell address, 1796. Friends and Citizens The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive governments of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust. It appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made. I beg you at the same time to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country. And that, in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both. The acceptance of and continuance hitherto in the office to which your suffragers have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you, but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence impelled me to abandon the idea. I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety, and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained from my services, that in the present circumstances of our country you will not disapprove my determination to retire. The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust, I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed towards the organization and administration of the government, the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself. And every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that, if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary. I have the consolation to believe that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it. In looking forward to the moment which is intended to terminate the career of my public life, my feelings do not permit me to suspend the deep acknowledgment of that dead of gratitude which I owe to my beloved country, for the many honors it has conferred upon me, still more for the steadfast confidence with which it has supported me. And for the opportunities I have then enjoyed of manifesting my inviolable attachment by services faithful and persevering, though and usefulness unequal to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our country from these services, let it always be remembered to your praise. And, as an instructive example in our annals, that under circumstances in which the passions, agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, and situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenance the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and a guarantee of the plans by which they were affected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing vows that heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of its beneficence. That your union and brotherly affection may be perpetual, that the free constitution which is the work of your hands may be sacredly maintained, that its administration in every department may be stamped with wisdom and virtue, that in fine the happiness of the people of these states under the auspices of liberty may be made complete by so careful a preservation and so prudent a use of this blessing as will acquire to them the glory of recommending to it the applause, the affection, and adoption of every nation which is yet a stranger to it. Here perhaps I ought to stop, but a solicitude for your welfare which cannot end but with my life, in the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, I urge me, on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation and to recommend to your frequent review some sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel, nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not the similar occasion. Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment. The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so. Ferd is the main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken. Many artifice is employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth, as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively, though often covertly and insidiously directed. It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national unity to your collective and individual happiness, that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it, accustoming yourself to think and speak of it as the palladium of your political safety and prosperity, watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety, discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts. For this, you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes. But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here, every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole. The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefitting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the semen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated, and, while it contributes in different ways to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communication by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West, derived from the East, supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious. While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations, and, what is of an estimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries, not tied to the United Nations. They are divided together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense, it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear you to the preservation of the other. These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands. In contemplating the causes which may disturb our union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, northern and southern, Atlantic and western, once designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourself too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head. They have seen in the negotiation by the executive and in the unanimous ratification by the senate of the treaty with Spain and in the universal satisfaction at that event throughout the United States a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the general government and in the Atlantic states unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi. They have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire in respect to our foreign relations towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the union by which they were procured? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisors, if such they are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens? To the efficacy and permanency of your union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance however strict between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles and the distribution of its powers, uniting security and energy and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government, but the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government. All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character with the real design to direct, control, counteract or all the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendencies. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force, to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of the party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community, and according to the alternate triumphs of different parties to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reigns of government destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. Towards the preservation of your government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discounted its irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to affect in the forms of the constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions. That experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country, that facility and changes upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion exposes to perpetual change from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion. And remember especially that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government with powers properly distributed and adjusted its surest guardian. It is indeed little else than a name where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property. I have already intimated to you the danger of parties of the state with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit unfortunately is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled or repressed, but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and misers which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty. Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight, the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. There is an opinion that parties and free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true, and in governments of a monarchical caste, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character and governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume. It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments into one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public wheel against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments, ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular rung, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the constitution designates, but let there be no change by usurpation. For though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance and permanent evil, any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield. Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician equally with the pious man ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserved the oaths which are the instruments of investigation and courts of justice. And let us with caution indulge this opposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is the necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government, who that is a sincere friend to it can look within difference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric. Promote then as an object of primary importance institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. As a very important source of strength and security, cherished public credit, one method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace. But remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it. Avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in times of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should cooperate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue, that to have revenue there must be taxes, that no taxes can be devised, which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant. That the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects, which is always a choice of difficulties, ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate. Observe good faith and justice towards all nations, cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment at least is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas, is it rendered impossible by its vices? In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent and vetted antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate and venom and bloody contests. The nation prompted by ill will and resentment sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity and adopts through passion what reason would reject. At other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty of nations, has been the victim. So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate, and the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens who devote themselves to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils? Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter. Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government, but that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests. The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence, she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of our politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of our friendships or enmities. Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance, when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected. When belligerent nations under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation. When we may choose peace or war as our interests guided by justice shall counsel. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. So far I mean as we are now at liberty to do it. For let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maximum no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it therefore let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense, but in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them. Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture we may safely trust the temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand. Neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences, consulting the natural course of things, diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing. Establishing with power so disposed in order to give trade a stable course to define the rights of our merchants and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied as experience and circumstances shall dictate. Constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another, that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character, that by such acceptance it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors and yet of being reproached within gratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure which a just pride ought to discard. In offering to you, my countrymen, these councils of an old and affectionate friend, I did not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish, that they will control the usual current of the passions or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good, that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the imposters of pretended patriotism, this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated. How far in the discharge of my official duties I have been guided by the principles which have been delineated, the public records and other evidences of my conduct must witness to you and to the world. To myself the assurances of my own conscience is that I have at least believed myself to have been guided by them. In relation to the still subsisting war in Europe, my proclamation on the 22nd of April 1793 is the index of my plan. Sanctioned by your approving voice and by that of your representatives in both houses of Congress, the spirit of that measure has continually governed me, uninfluenced by any attempts to deter or divert me from it. After deliberate examination with the aid of the best lights I could obtain, I was well satisfied that our country under all the circumstances of the case had a right to take and was bound in duty and interest to take a neutral position. Having taken it, I determined as far as should depend upon me to maintain it with moderation, perseverance and firmness. The considerations which respect the right to hold this conduct, it is not necessary on this occasion to detail. I will only observe that, according to my understanding of the matter, that right so far from being denied by any of the belligerent powers has been virtually admitted by all. The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred without anything more from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation and cases in which it is free to act to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations. The inducements of interest for observing that conduct will best be referred to your own reflections and experience. With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions and to progress without interruption to that degree of strength and consistency which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes. Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my country will never cease to view them with indulgence and that after 45 years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities will be consigned to oblivion as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest. Relying on its kindness in this as in other things and actuated by that fervent love towards it which is so natural to a man who views it in the native soil of himself and his progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize without alloy the sweet enjoyment of partaking in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward as I trust of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. George Washington The End of Washington's Farewell Address A Few Sanitary Suggestions From Vanity Fair, January 18, 1862 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org A Few Sanitary Suggestions An extremely amiable, agreeable friend of ours, who from his infancy has been subject to measles, hooping cough, nettle rash, croup, Erisopelus, neuralgia, rheumatism, sciatica, jigger, lockjaw, Chiego, shortness of breath, carbuncle, tetra, lumbego, pneumonia, delirium trimmins, toothache, bronchitis, Qatar, salt room, chillblanes, inverted nails, and depression of spirits, told us a few days ago that he had partially got over several of these little troubles by following some plain rules found by him in an excellent publication entitled Hall's Journal of Health. It has long been our opinion that the American people as a nation do not take sufficient care of their health. We are nationally, as all foreigners remark, addicted directless culture of muscle regardless of the finer instincts which lead to the realization of large profits. There are but few of us who wear India rubber shoes, warm overcoats, and interior arrangements of flannel. Fewer still are those who carry umbrellas, and our houses and places of business are invariably regulated by thermometer to a maximum warmth of 60 degrees. We all gallop around on swift horses, box, fence, play single stick, kick footballs, climb greased poles, catch smelts, run foot races, indulge in rackets, swim, shoot, stalk deer, and cultivate other manly exercises instead of sitting round stoves with cigars in our mouths intensifying the idea of business. We are one big winship, in fact, and have been quite overdoing the muscle business when we ought to have been cuddling ourselves up in warm dressing gowns and giving our minds to work. The day for that kind of thing is drawing to a close. Hall's Journal of Health is going to shut down upon it. Let us cull a few of the sanitary precepts from that valuable periodical. If we do not always give them in the exact words of the text, it is because we quote them partly from a memory to which they committed themselves unbidden. If we occasionally adulterate them with our own comments, it is because of our enthusiasm and the cause of humanity of which the greatest blessing is health. Hall's Journal of Health has an intense and well-regulated objection to fresh air. In going into a colder air, says it, keep the mouth resolutely closed that by compelling the air to pass circuitously through the nose and head it may become warmed before it reaches the lungs. Also, after skating, you are to walk home or at least half a mile with your mouth closed. The above direction is well meant but incomplete in as much as it does not contain any claws respecting the lengths of the nose. In cases where that member is of unusual length and circuitousness, it is well to plug the nostrils with preserved ginger which keeps the air aired as it passes through them. Never, says Hall's Journal of Health, never put on a new boot or shoe in beginning a journey. As everybody travels on foot nowadays, the above is a very important rule and should be observed strictly. Indeed, so convinced are we of its value that we never think of wearing our boots and shoes until they are nearly worn out whether we are going on a journey or not. Never, pursues Hall's Journal of Health, never sit for more than five minutes at a time with the back against the fire or stove. This is a good rule and should be observed by all persons except those who have neither fires nor stoves. Persons who are so fortunate as to possess these articles would do well to avoid sitting on them for a longer time than that specified above. Avoid sitting against cushions in the backs of pews and churches, says Hall's Journal of Health. If the uncovered board feels cold, continues it, sit erect without touching it. We personally owe the remarkable straightness of our spinal column to the fact of our always having avoided sitting against cushions in the backs of pews and churches. Mind now we say in churches. In theaters and such other places you may plant your back against cushions as much as you will and come out alright and straight in time for oysters. Here is a fine, practical maxim promulgated by Hall's Journal of Health. Never begin a journey until breakfast has been eaten. To this we have only one objection. Hall's Journal of Health neglects to instruct us by whom breakfast is to be eaten, whether by the careful person going to begin a journey or by his horse or by his dog or by all three in Banquet Hall assembled or by others. Upon skates, Hall's Journal of Health is particularly strong. If the thermometer is below 30, says it, and the wind is blowing, no lady or child should be skating. We don't know about this. If the lady is below 30 and good looking, let her skate thermometer or otherwise. If she is the reverse, let her slide. The following professional opinion of Hall's Journal of Health will collapse the flus of those foolish persons who imagine that the goddess Hygia has an interest in Central Park lots. The grace, exercise, and healthfulness of skating on the ice can be had without any of its dangers by the use of skates with rollers attached, on common floors, better if covered with oil cloth. By doing this kind of thing you will keep your lungs inflated with plenty of good stale gas, which is wholesomer than fresh air, but do not neglect to cover yourself with oil cloth as directed. We think it is Hall's Journal of Health, but we are not sure, which states that a cold may be caught by spilling a couple of spoonfuls of water upon one's clothing. There is a curious principle involved in this, and it is the very same as that upon which a man may become thoroughly corned by placing a salt spoonful of salt upon the top of his head. It is to be hoped that our readers will follow carefully the precepts contained in Hall's Journal of Health. Thus doing they cannot fail of becoming strong and handsome and good, though of course these conditions would be sooner attained by them if they could only be prevailed upon to wrap themselves permanently up in tissue paper and live in band boxes. End of A Few Sanitary Suggestions Read by Leanne Howlett Chapter Name Francis of G.K. Chesterton's Twelve Types This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Aceticism is a thing which in its very nature we tend in these days to misunderstand. Aceticism in the religious sense is the repudiation of the great mass of human joys because of the supreme joyfulness of the one joy, the religious joy. But asceticism is not in the least confined to religious asceticism. There is scientific asceticism which asserts that truth is alone satisfying. There is aesthetic asceticism which asserts that art is alone satisfying. There is amatory asceticism which asserts that love is alone satisfying. There is even epicurean asceticism which asserts that beer and skittles are alone satisfying. satisfying. Wherever the manner of praising anything involves the statement that the speaker could live with that thing alone, there lies the germinescence of asceticism. When William Morris, for example, says that love is enough, it is obvious that he asserts in those words that art, science, politics, ambition, money, houses, carriages, concerts, gloves, walking sticks, door knockers, railway stations, cathedrals, and any other things one may choose to tabulate are unnecessary. When Omar Qayam says, A book averse beneath a bow, a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou, sitting beside me in the paradise, a wilderness where paradise he now. It is clear that he speaks fully as much aesthetically as he does aesthetically. He makes a list of things and says that he wants no more. The same thing was done by Hamid-e-evil-monk. Examples might, of course, be multiplied a hundredfold. One of the most genuinely poetical of our younger poets says, as the one thing certain, that, from quiet home and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends. Here we have a perfect example of the main important fact that all true joy expresses itself in terms of asceticism. But if, in any case, it should happen that a class or a generation lose the sense of the peculiar kind of joy which is being celebrated, they immediately begin to call the enjoyers of that joy gloomy and self-destroying. The most formidable liberal philosophers have called the monks melancholy because they denied themselves the pleasures of liberty and marriage. They might as well call the trippers on a bank holiday melancholy because they deny themselves as a rule the pleasures of silence and meditation. A simpler and stronger example is, however, to hand. If ever it should happen that the system of English athletics should vanish from the public schools and the universities, if science should supply some new and non-competitive manner of perfecting the physique, if public ethics swung round to an attitude of absolute contempt and indifference toward the feeling called sport, then it is easy to see what would happen. Future historians would simply state that in the dark days of Queen Victoria, young men at Oxford and Cambridge were subjected to a horrible sort of religious torture. They were forbidden by fantastic monastic rules to indulge in wine or tobacco during certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time before certain brutal fights and festivals. Diggots insisted on their rising at unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. Many men ruined their health in these dens of superstition. Many died there. All this is perfectly true and irrefutable. Athleticism in England is an asceticism as much as the monastic rules. Men have overstrained themselves and killed themselves through English athleticism. There is one difference and one only. We do feel the love of sport. We do not feel the love of religious offices. We see only the price in the one case and only the purchase in the other. The only question that remains is what was the joy of the old Christian aesthetics of which their asceticism was merely the purchasing price. The mere possibility of the query is an extraordinary example of the way in which we miss the main points of human history. We are looking at humanity too close and see only the details and not the vast and dominant features. We look at the rise of Christianity and conceive it as a rise of self-abignation and almost of pessimism. It does not occur to us that the mere assertion that this raging and confounding universe is governed by justice and mercy is a piece of staggering optimism fit to set all men capering. The detail over which these monks went mad with joy was the universe itself, the only thing really worthy of enjoyment. The white daylight shown over all the world, the endless forest stood up in their order. The lightning awoke and the trees fell and the sea gathered into mountains and this ship went down. And all these disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. That this scheme of nature was not accurate or well founded is perfectly tenable, but surely it is not tenable that it was not optimistic. We insist, however, upon treating this matter tale foremost. We insist that the aesthetics were pessimists because they gave up three score years and ten for an eternity of happiness. We forget that the bare proposition of an eternity of happiness is, by its very nature, ten thousand times more optimistic than ten thousand pagans Saturnaeleus. Mr. Adderley's life of Francis of Assisi does not, of course, bring this out, nor does it fully bring out the character of Francis. It has, rather, the tone of a devotional book. A devotional book is an excellent thing, but we do not look in it for the portrait of a man, for the same reason that we do not look in a love-sonnet for the portrait of a woman. Because man in such conditions of mind not only apply all virtues to their idol, but all virtues in equal quantities, there is no outline because the artist cannot bear to put in a black line. This blaze of benediction, this conflict between lights has its place in poetry, not in biography. The successful examples of it may be found, for instance, in the more idealistic odes of Spencer. The design is sometimes almost indecipherable for the poet draws in silver upon white. It is natural, of course, that Mr. Adderley should see Francis primarily as the founder of the Franciscan order. We suspect this was only one, perhaps a minor one of the things that he was. We suspect that one of the minor things that Christ did was to found Christianity. But the vast, practical work of Francis is assuredly not to be ignored. For this amazingly unworldly, and almost maddeningly simple-minded infant was one of the most consistently successful men that ever fought with this bitter world. It is the custom to say that the secret of such men is their profound belief in themselves. And this is true, but not all the truth. Workhouses and lunatic asylums are thronged with men who believe in themselves. Of Francis, it is far truer to say that the secret of his success was his profound belief in other people. And it is the lack of this that has commonly been the curse of these obscure Napoleons. Francis always assumed that everyone must be just as anxious about their common relative, the water rat, as he was. He planned to visit to the emperor to draw his attention to the needs of his little sisters, the larks. He used to talk to any thieves and robbers he met about their misfortune in being unable to give rain to their desire for holiness. It was an innocent habit, and doubtless the robbers often got round him, as the phrase goes. Quite as often, however, they discovered that he had got round them, and discovered the other side, the side of secret nobility. Conceiving of St. Francis as primarily the founder of the Franciscan Order, Mr. Adderley opens his narrative with an admirable sketch of the history of monasticism in Europe, which is certainly the best thing in the book. He distinguishes clearly and fairly between the Manichaean ideal that underlies so much of Eastern monasticism, and the ideal of self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the Christian form. But he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider, the absorbing problem of this Catholic asceticism, for the excellent reason that, not being an outsider, he does not find it a problem at all. To most people, however, there is a fascinating inconsistency in the position of St. Francis. He expresses in loftier and bolder language than any earthly thinker, the conception that laughter is as divine as tears. He called his monks the Mounted Banks of God. He never forgot to take pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water as it fell from his finger. He was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of men. Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we think the most imperious necessities. In his three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most large-hearted and poetic spirits of that age found their most congenial atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he, who loved where all men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a monk and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to have been asked. We have a suspicion that if they were answered, we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also. So it was with the monks. The two great parties in human affairs are only the party which sees life blacked against white, and the party which sees white against black, the party which macerates and blackens itself with sacrifice, because the background is full of the blaze of a universal mercy, and the party which crowns itself with flowers and lights, itself with bridal torches, because it stands against a black curtain of incalculable night. The revelers are old, and the monks are young. It was the monks who were the spend thrifts of happiness, and we who are its misers. Doubtless, as is apparent from Mr. Adderley's book, the clear and tranquil life of the three vows had a fine and delicate effect on the genius of Francis. He was primarily a poet. The perfection of his literary instinct is shown in his naming the Fire Brother and the Water Sister. In the quaint, demagogic dexterity of the appeal in the sermon to the fishes, that they alone were saved in the flood. In the amazingly minute and graphic dramatization of the life, disappointments, and excuses of any shrub or beast that he happened to be addressing, his genius has a curious resemblance to that of Burns. But if he avoided the weaknesses of Burns versus to animals, the occasional morbidity, the bombast and moralization on himself, the credit is surely due to a cleaner and more transparent life. The general attitude of St. Francis, like that of his master, embodied a kind of terrible common sense. The famous remark of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, why not, impresses us as his general motto. He could not see why he should not be on good terms with all things, the pomp of war and ambition, the great empire of the Middle Ages and all its fellows begin to look tawdry and top heavy under the rationality of that innocent stare. His questions were blasting and devastating, like the questions of a child. He would not have been afraid even of the nightmares of cosmogony, or he had no fear in him. To him the world was small, not because he had any views as to its size, but for the reason that gossiping ladies find it small, because so many relatives were to be found in it. If you had taken him to the loneliest star that the madness of an astronomer can conceive, he would have only beheld in it the features of a new friend. History of Steam on the Erie Canal Appeal for the extension of the Act of April 1871 to foster and develop the inland commerce of the state for the benefit of the canals and the commercial community, author Anonymous. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. During the maple sugar season of the spring of 1858, a well-to-do farmer of western New York whittled out a spiral or all-year-like screw propeller in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soon after went to Buffalo and contracted for a boat to be built with two of his Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam. Although advised by his builders to substitute the common four-bladed propellers, he adhered to his original design and with one propeller at either side of the rudder called Twin Propellers, she was soon ready for duty. She is the vessel known to history as the Charles Whack. She carried three-force cargo and towed another boat with full cargo and made the trip from Buffalo to West Troy in seven days total time, averaging two miles per hour. But she returned from Troy to Buffalo with half-rate in four days and 16 hours that time, averaging three and one-twelfth miles per hour without tow. This initiated the series of steamers from 1858 to 1862, and with others that soon followed created a general enthusiasm in behalf of steam transportation, which led to a trip through the canal that fall on a chartered steam tug by the Governor of the State, the Canal Board, and other Notables, and with public receptions, speeches, etc., at different cities along the route. That boat was soon followed by the SB Ruggles, a first-class steam canal boat built by the honorable E.S. Prosser of Buffalo with a first-class modern propeller and with double the engine capacity of the former. The P.L. Sternberg soon followed and was a first-class boat with modern twin propellers, but with less engine capacity than the Whack. The same season, there were some local steamers built to run regularly between different cities on the line of the canal. The following season of 1859 was the most active year the Erie Canal has ever known in regard to steam. The sea Whack was sold to Mr. Prosser, who took out her Archimedean propellers and substituted a modern propeller and doubled her engine capacity and reproduced her as the City of Buffalo. The Gold Hunter was produced by the Western Transportation Company of Buffalo. She was a short oblong tub with a square box-like bow and rounded stern, designed only to carry machinery and coal and was to be recessed into the stern of ordinary horse boats by cutting away an equivalent space therefrom. She was designed to make a trip on the canal and be immediately transferred to another boat for return trip, thus to avoid the usual loss of time at the terminal of the canal. She was abandoned after a brief trial. The Canal Boatnay Agra had the Cathcart Propeller supplied, which consisted of a union of the propeller and rudder by a universal joint in the shaft, and so adjusted as to unite them for steerage purposes. This design was tried on the steamer Cathcart upon the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in 1858 and with considerable newspaper eclat. The Rotary of New York was a new steamer for freighting purposes with a rotary engine and common propeller. This occupied but little space and worked prettily on exhibition. The eclipse of New York was new and had an oscillating propeller engine. Screwtugs. The Governor King was a medium-sized New York Harbor propeller and made repeated trips with three boats in tow and one trip with five boats. She was so slow as to be unremunerative as compared with horses. The Western Transportation Company, after the failure of the Goldhunter, built two powerful tugs, the Washington and Lafayette. They were soon withdrawn. Mr. Prosser built the first class tug-stimmers, but she had a short canal history. The tugs Bemis and Dan Brown made good runs each with three boats in tow but were short-lived cannellers, paddle wheels and other devices. During these years the paddle wheel system was thoroughly tried and under varied circumstances. As the locks prevented the use of side wheels for full frates, an adjustable stern wheel was tried. This could be raised or lowered in adaptation to the light or full cargo. The HK Velie was a first class canal steamer with stern wheel and vertical or eccentric acting paddles. These were considered by some as peculiarly well adapted to canal purposes, yet in practice proved otherwise. The fallbrook was built by Mr. John McGee of Seneca Lake, renowned for towing purposes, intended to establish a line between Seneca Lake and New York City, but her canal abilities were so poor as to cause her withdrawal to lake duty. She had powerful engines with vertical acting paddle wheel set amid ships between twin hulls, with a full flow of water from bow to stern, and was decked across, forward and after her wheel. The Lady Jane of Utica was a bow paddle wheel boat with small engines, she accomplished but little. As paddle wheel cannellers have proven less efficient than screw propellers, they are more limited in numbers. Other contemporary devices were tried. The canal boat Oswego had her stern recessed to receive a submerged horizontal centrifugal acting water wheel, which received water at a central and ejected it at a peripheral opening or propulsion. This opening could be turned for steerage or banking purposes. She was altered at Green Point and received good machinery at Brooklyn, but was soon restored to horses. Ducks feet paddles were experimented with a buffalo. A skull propulsion was tried upon the Hudson. Also hinged bladed propellers to open and close with a fore and aft movement at the stern. This last device was tried by a Dr. Hunter, who has more recently tied a fishtail propeller, the blades being made of rubber, to imitate the form and elasticity of the tail with mechanical limitations of movement. It is hardly necessary to add that these devices were all worthless and others of miscellaneous character may have been tried yet without merit. Remarks. Wealth, experience and skill have marked this first era of steam and though combined they utterly failed. Both Mr. Prosser and the Western Transportation Company were owners of fleets of splendid lake propellers and were wealthy with interests intimately identified with canals. It is evident there was no want either of money, mechanical resources or knowledge of canal business as the basis of their failures with steam. Capital flowed into the steam enterprise and various resources and ambition multiplied experiments but with no appreciable success. The difficulties lay beyond the reach of capital and beyond the reach of known resources and no adequate knowledge had been developed to solve the problem. Therefore, after suffering failures for several years, the state wisely volunteered to add extraordinary inducements by a large appropriation to encourage success. It could not have been to encourage the reproduction of former failures by the repetition of former trials. The inquiry is therefore proper as a lesson from the history of the early era of steam. What are the difficulties? Why has steam failed so absolutely and so universally? Why do the states subsequently offer a large bounty to foster and develop steam? Obviously there is some hidden difficulty, some unknown inability, because steam is the arbiter of the age. It is the great supreme motor of man's agencies throughout the world. Hence we come from the sublime to the ridiculous when we use it to load boats at Buffalo to be towed 350 miles by horses. The lessons of the early era are worthless for repetition. There's no better screw-propelling machinery known than was then tried and abandoned, but the lessons are of value to discover the difficulties which must be remedied, to teach that the success of steam lies beyond the reach of publicly known mechanical resources. The trials establish plainly and incontrovertibly that the failures were owing to the want of mechanical adaptation, to required duty, to a mechanical inability to utilize the power of steam, to a mechanical waste of power beyond their ability to control or remedy, and that the wasted power was extravagantly large and they utilized insignificantly small. A very intelligent captain of one of the best and most powerful steamers known to the Erie Canal, who had a full and carefully kept log, stated that when his engine exceeded a hundred horsepower of steam he could only equal twelve horses on the towpath. Thus over seven-eighths of his power was wastefully developed in order to render one-eighth useful. But this occurred when he was moving only two loaded boats, the steamer and one tow, but when moving four boats, three in tow, the percentage of utility was lessened and he could not exceed eight to ten percent of his steam as shown in slower movement when fewer horses on the towpath could equal him. The steamer is a reservoir and its rotary power is free to be developed inversely as its resistances. Hence when fastened to appear it is all developed in its receiving currents and, per contra, when moving, if its machinery had a perfect fulcrum it would all be developed in the run of the boat. Consequently on rivers and lakes with fine-lined steamers that cut the water like a knife it is like standing in a small boat and pushing from a large one, but on canals with their full bows it is like standing in a large boat and pushing from a smaller one. The little one runs away with the power. The more than 100 square feet area of immerse section of the full bow represents the large boat and the dozen square feet effective area of the propeller blades set at an easy angle for spiral motion and recession velocity is the little one that squanders the power so extravagantly. Increase in number of boats increases this contrast. The propeller blades of a good canaler will move 12 to 15 miles in their line of spiral movement to get 2 to 3 miles headway for the boat. A correct scientific analysis can trace the developments of the 85 to 90 percent of the inherent power of the steam that is wasted on the common canal boat and that has no resultant effect whatever in the motion of the boat just as positively as it can trace the co-developments of 15 to 10 percent that is utilized and that moves the boat. The practical man sees the truths of these statements he sees steam used with small medium and large engines for canal purposes and sees them all fail to meet the economy of transportation established by horses but he would just assume put men on the tow path to compete with the horses as to put horses into his elevators to compete with steam and that because in the elevators the power of the steam is chiefly utilized whilst on the canal it is chiefly wasted. It is therefore conclusive that there is an absolute necessity for a new mechanical system for a radically different system of transmissive mechanism for a system that can develop a considerable portion of the power of the steam in the movement of the boats. The variations of the old system of propulsion that are being continuously tried are worthless in the very nature of the case because they are in no sense a remedy for existing inabilities and because they do not in any sense whatever meet the difficulties. End of the first section. That you may tickle them with the feather. In others they are so deeply embedded in flam or so protected by the crust of ill humor that a strong thrust and a keen weapon are acquired to reach them. A laugh is in itself a different thing in different individuals. Some persons laugh inwardly, unsocially, bitterly. It is a pure grimace on your part when you join in their merriment unless you are superior to the fear of ridicule. On the other hand there is a laugh of so contagious a nature that you are irresistibly moved to sympathy while ignorant of the exciting cause or out of the sphere of its influence. You laugh loud and long and afterwards confess that you had not the least gleam of the funny idea all the while. You doubt the power of the sympathetic laugh? Come with me into the nursery. Here is a rosy little horror, a year and a half old. Sit down and take him upon your knees. Hold his dimpled hands and yours and look steadily into his roguish eyes. Repeat a nursery rhyme, no matter what, in a humdrum recitative. He is sober and very attentive. Suddenly spring a mine upon him with a boo. His hickety-hick follows and his eyes begin to shine. Repeat the experiment, hickety-hick again, more heartily than at first, with the baby on core, a din. The same process awakens the rapturous little pearls again and again, and you are quite in the spirit of the thing yourself. Now for a more ecstatic burst. You purposefully prolong his suspense. He is all atilt, expecting the delightful surprise. You draw out each word, you drone the ditty over and over again, till every tiny nerve is tense with expectation. Boo! at last, and over he goes in the complete abandon of baby Glee. His cherry lips are wide as thunder, his head hangs powerless back, and the hickety-hicks burst tumultuously from his little beating throat. And you, sir, what are you doing? Laughing, I declare, in full roar till the tears run down your cheeks. You catch the boy in your arms, toss him, almost throttle him with kisses, and so enhance the merry spasms that Mama, who has a philosophical instinct with regard to excited nerves, and dreads the reaction, comes to the rescue. Let me introduce you to another effective laughter. You shall not hear a sound, yet you cannot choose but laugh, if she does, quiet as she is about it. See how her shoulder shake, and look at her face. Every feature is instinct with mirth. The color amounts to the roots of the hair. The curls vibrate, the eyes sparkle through tears, the white teeth glisten, the very nose and ears seem to take apart. Like Norma Hall, she laughs all over, and while you wonder what the joke may be, you are laughing, too. Do you feel dismal or anxious? You should hear Elle tell a story. She is one of the very few who can undertake with impunity to talk and laugh at the same time. Look and listen while she describes some comic occurrence. There is no unladylike, boisterous noise, but musical peals of laughter come thick and fast, and faster and thicker. Pre-term naturally, fast and thick come the words with them. And yet each word is distinct. You do not lose a syllable. And I should like to see the man who can resist her, if she chooses he should laugh, even at his own expense. There is an odd sort of power, too, in the gravity with which B tells a humorous anecdote. He invariably maintains a sober face, while everybody is in an agony of laughter around him. Just as it begins to subside, the echo of his own wit comes back to him, and, as if he had just caught the idea, he bursts into one little abrupt explosion so genuine, so full of heartiness, that it sets everybody off upon a fresh score. Nothing so melts away reserve among strangers. Nothing so quickly develops the affinities in chant society as laughter. A person might be ever so polite, and even kind, and talk sentiment a whole day, and it would not draw me so near to him as the mutual enjoyment of one heartfelt laugh. It is a perfect bond of union, for the time being you have but one soul between you.