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the gauntlet. Two long rows of stalwart young warriors were formed. Each man had a club or stick to strike Stark as he passed. But Stark was equal to the occasion. Just as he started on the terrible race for life he snatched a club out of the hands of the nearest Indian, and knocking down the astonished savages right and left, he escaped almost unhurt. The old men of the tribe, who stood near, roared with laughter to see the spruce young warriors sprawling in the dust. Instead of torturing Stark, they treated him as a hero.

13. The Indian was a treacherous and cruel enemy, but a steadfast friend. He thought at first that the white man was a celestial being who had come from heaven to visit him. He soon found out his mistake, and acted accordingly. He could return good for good, but he knew nothing of returning good for evil; on the contrary, he always paid bad treatment by bad treatment, and never forgot to add some interest. If he made a treaty he kept it sacredly; it is said that in no instance can it be proved that he was first to break such an agreement. Those of the early white settlers who made friends with the red man had no cause to regret it.

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14. The Indian's school was the woods. Whatever the woods can teach that is useful and they can teach much that he learned. He knew the properties of every plant and the habits of every animal. The natives taught the white man many of these things, but the most useful of all the lessons the American barbarians gave the civilized Europeans was how to raise corn in the forest without first clearing the land.

15. They showed them how to kill the trees by burning or girdling them. Then when the leaves no longer grew, the sun would shine on the soil, and ripen the corn. There were times in the history of the early settlements of white men when that knowledge saved them from starvation; for often they had neither time nor strength to clear the soil for planting.

16. But the results of contact between the two races did not end here. The alliances formed between the Indians and the English on the one hand, or the Indians and French, who were rivals and enemies of the English, on the other, had important historical results. The hostility of the Iroquois nations of New York to the French in Canada prevented the French from getting possession of the Hudson River, and so separating the English colonies of New England from those of Virginia and Pennsylvania. This was a decided advantage to the English settlers, who thus got a firm foothold on the Atlantic coast.

17. Finally, the Indian wars prevented the English from scattering over the country. These contests forced them to stand by each other, and thus trained them for union and for independence.

D. H. MONTGOMERY.

VII. WHAT CONSTITUTES A STATE?

What constitutes a state?

Not high-raised battlements or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;

Not bays and broad-arm ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;

Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No! Men-high-minded men—

With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, break, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;

Men, who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain;
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
These constitute a state;

And sovereign law, that state's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits empress crowning good, repressing ill.

Smit by her sacred frown,
The fiend discretion like a vapor sinks;
And e'en the all-dazzling crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.
Such was this heaven-loved isle;

Than Lesbos fairer, and the Cretan shore!

No more shall Freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish and be men no more?
Since all must life resign,

Those sweet rewards which decorate the brave

'Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave.

SIR WILLIAM JONES.

24

FIFTH READER.

VIII. - LOVE OF COUNTRY.

I.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land;

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned,

From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well:
For him no minstrel raptures swell.
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

S

II.

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the time the sun of heaven, may I not see him shinin the broken and dishonored fragments of a once-glo Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may b fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and linge glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Re lic, now known and honored throughout the earth,

full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, 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, "Liberty first, and Union afterward;" but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, — Liberty AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND INSEPARABLE!

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1. The interposition of Divine Providence was eminently conspicuous in the first general Congress. What men! what patriots! what independent, heroic spirits! Chosen by the unbiased people, chosen, as all public servants ought to be, without favor and without fear, what an august assembly of sages! Rome, in the height of her glory, fades before it.

2. There never was, in any age or nation, a body of men, who, for general information, for the judicious use of the results of civil and political history, for eloquence and virtue, for true dignity, elevation, and grandeur of soul, could stand a comparison with the first American Congress! See what the people will do, when left to

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