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GRAND ELOQUENCE.
Bob Ingersoll's Apostrophe to the
Boys in Blue

BOB INGERSOLL'S peroration on the
Boys in Blue is likely to become clas-
sical. No utterance since LINCOLN's
unsurpassed Gettysburg oration has
taken such a firm hold upon the hearts
of the people and it promises to live
as long as history of the war for
freedom and Union shall be read and
remembered. Last night the celebra-
ted elocutionist, MURDOCH, read it to a
great audience in Pike's Opera House,
Cincinnati. It is as follows
"The past rises before me like a
dream. Again we are in the great
struggle for National Life. We hear
the sounds of preparation - the music
of the boisterous drums - the silver
voices of heroic bugles. We see thou-
sands of assemblages and hear the ap-
peals of orators; we see the pale cheeks
of women and the flushed faces of
men ; and in those assemblages we see
all the dead whose dust we have cov-
ered with flowers. We lose sight of
them no more. We are with them
when they enlist in the great army of
freedom. We see them part from
those they love. Some are walking
for the last time in quiet woody places
with the maidens they adore. We
hear the whisperings and the sweet
vows of eternal love as they lingering-
ly part forever. Others are bending
over cradles, kissing babies that are
asleep. Some are receiving the bless-
ings of old men. Some are parting
who hold them and press them to their
hearts again and again, and say noth-
ing; and some are talking with wives
and endeavoring with brave words
spoken in the olden tones, to drive
from their hearts the awful fear. We
see them part. We see the wife stand-
ing in the door, with the babe in her
arms - standing in the sunlight sobbing
- as the turn of the road a hand waves
- she answers by holding high in her
loving hands the child. He is gone,
and forver.

"We see them all as they march
proudly away under the flaunting
flags, keeping time to the wild, grand
music of war - marching down the
streets of the great cities - through the
towns and across the prairies -
down the fields of glory, to do and die for the
eternal right.

"We go with them one and all, We
are by their side on all gory fields -
in all the hospitals of pain - on all
the weary marches. We stand guard
with them in the wild storm and under
the quiet stars. We are with them in
ravines running with blood - in the
furrows of old fields. We are with
them betweens contending hosts, una-
ble to move, wild with thirst, the life
ebbing slowly away among the with-
ered leaves. We see them pierced by
balls and torn with shells in the
trenches by forts, and in the whirl-
wind of the charge, where men become
iron, with nerves of steel.

"We are with them in the prisons of
hatred and famine; but human speech
can never tell what they endured.

"We are at home when the news
comes that they are dead. We see the
maiden in the shadow of her first sor-
row. We see the silvered head of the
old man bowed with the last grief.

"The past rises before us and we see
four millions of human beings govern
ed by the lash: we see them bound
hand and foot; we hear the strokes of

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cruel whips; we see the hounds track-
ing women through tangled swamps;
we see babes sold from the breasts of
mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Out-
rage infinite!

"Four million bodies in chains; four
million souls in fetters. All are sacred
relations of wife, mother, father and
child trampled beneath the brutal feet
of might. And all this was done un-
der our own beautiful banner of the
free.

"The past rises before us. We hear
the roar and shriek of the bursting
shell. The broken fetters fall. These
heros died. We look. Instead of
slaves we see men and women and
children. The wand of progress
touches the auction block, the slave
pen, the whipping post, and we see
homes and firesides, and school houses
and books and where all was want
and crime and cruelty and fetters, we
see the faces of the free.

" These heroes are dead. They died
for liberty; they died for us. They
are at rest. They sleep in the land
they made free, under the flag they
rendered stainless, under the solemn
pires, the sad hemlock, the tearful
willows and the embracing vines,
They sleep beneath the shadows of the
clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of
storm, each in the windowless palace
of rest. Earth may run red with wars
- they are at peace. In the midst of
battle, in the roar of conflict they
found the serenity of death. (A voice,
'Glory') I have one sentiment for the
soldiers living and dead- cheers for the
living and tears for the dead."

LITTLE BROWN HANDS.

They drive home the cows from the pasture,
Up through the long shadowy lane,
Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat field
That is yellow with ripening grain;
They find, in the thick waving grasses,
Where the scarlet-lipped strawberry grows,
They gather the earliest snow-drops,
And the first crimson buds of the rose.

They toss the hay-in the meadow.
They gather the elder bloom white,
They find where the dusky grapes purple
In the soft-tinted October light.
They know where the apples hang ripest.
And are sweeter than Italy's wines,
They know where the fruit hangs the thickest,
On the long thoring blackberry vines

They gather the delicate seaweeds,
And build tiny castles of sand;
They pick up the beautiful seashells--
Fairy barks that have drifted to land.
They wave from the tall, rocking tree-tops
Where the oriole's hammock nest swings
And at night-time are folded in slumber
By a song that a fond mother sings.

Those who toil bravely are strongest;
The humble and poor become great;
And from those brown-handed children
Shall grow mighty rulers of state.
The pen of the author and statesman,
The noble and wise of the land
The sword and chisel and pallets,
Shall be held in the little brown hand

- Mary H. Krout.

HOW TO GROW BEAUTIFUL, - Persons may outgrow
disease and become healthy by proper attention to the
laws of their physical constitution. By moderate and
daily exercise men become active and strong in limb
and muscle. But to grow beautiful how? Age dims
the lustre of the eye, and pales the roses on beauty's
cheek; while crow's-feet and furrows and wrinkles and
lost teeth and gray hairs and bald head and tottering
limbs and limping most sadly mar the human form di-
ine. But, dim as the eye is, pallid and sunken as may
be the face of beauty, and frail and feeble that once
strong, erect and manly body, an immortal soul, just
fledging its wings for its home in heaven, may look out
through those faded windows as beautiful as the dew-
drop of summer's morning, as melting as the tears that
glisten in affection's eye, by growing kindly, by culti-
vating sympathy with all human-kind, by cherishing
forebearance toward the follies and foibles of our race,
and feeding day by day on that love to God and man
which lifts us from the brute and makes us akin to
angels.

SLANDERS issuing from beautiful lips are like spiders
crawling from the blushing heart of a rose.

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The Half-Knit Sock.

A mother sat by her sleeping child,
Busily, cheerily knitting -
Chanting a lullaby sweet and mild,
Thinking - singing and knitting.
For every stitch was a loving thought,
In that little sock by the mother wrought.

The baby sleeps, and the mother dreams;
Happy her dreams and sweet,
While her fingers weave the stitches and seams
For the darling's little feet.
Slumber, little one - mother, dear,
Waits and watches, is ever near.

Happy that mother, working and dreaming;
Dreaming as mothers will -
Love in the heart through her soft eyes gleaming,
Knitting and knitting still.
And she little thinks, while so peacefully sitting,
That o'er her child an angel is flitting.

The baby moves and wakes once more -
Opens her wondering eyes,
Looks at the mother, as never before,
Out of her violet eyes -
Watches the fingers, and needles, and yarn,
Weaving the sock, ah! ne'er to be worn.

She looks and listens, as if to say -
"An angel waits and lingers;"
Then catches the ball, as though in play,
From the mother's busy fingers,
The thread so frail has snapped in twain,
Never to join the sock again.

So the thread of that little life so dear
In the mother's heart interwoven,
Has snapped with a touch, with one end here,
The other safe in Heaven.
Cord and cable it now will be,
Drawing her heart, dear Saviour, to Thee.

The mother no more sits knitting and dreaming,
Dreaming, as oft, before -
For useless now is the knitting and seaming,
Seaming as of yore.
The half-knit sock with its broken thread,
Emblem of all that she loved - now dead.

For closed now are the violet eyes -
Closed, did I say? Ah, no!
They opened that day in Paradise,
For Jesus tells us so.
"Oh such is the Kingdom of Heaven," said He;
"Suffer the children to come unto Me."

LEAVES.

If this were all -
The cradle couch, the coffin-pall,
And then the end - as leaves to fall,
The gain were small.

But dropping leaves
Reveal the bud that's newly formed,
That, by the autumn sunshine warmed,
New strength receives.

The covering
Drops off our soul, as the leaf doth,
And shows the fruit-bud in its growth,
Waiting for spring.

The autumn is
The sister of spring, and clasps
Her hand 'cross winter's chasm; grasps
The coming bliss.

And so we lie,
With souls that meditate upon
The year to come, the year that's gone.
And wait reply

To questions broad;
While shadows of eternity
Wave across our souls which see
But dimly God.

The untranslate
Within us stirs; but, strong and wise,
God's hand lies heavy on our eyes;
We feel it's weight.

And, powerless,
We lie throughout the winter's cold.
And hide our feelings manifold
In lowliness.

Yet all is right -
The tree that last year blossomed well,
And bore of fruitage branches full,
This year bears light.

And souls, as trees,
Must have their rest, their winter-time,
Hidden beneath its snow and rime
As snows hide these.

When warm days come
The buds stir 'neath their covering;
Our thoughts awake; we dream of spring,
And press for room.

It is difficult to conceive anything more beautiful
than the reply given by one in affliction, when he was
asked how he bore it so well. "It lightens the
stroke," said he, "to draw near to him who handles
the rod."

EVERY year of our lives we grow more convinced
that it is the wisest and best to fix our attention on
the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as pos-
sible on the evil and the false.