a byword to the world. Or is it possible that the very conditions of our commercial life are likely to create among us a new idealism; not the languid and æsthetic taste which drives people away from our democracy and makes them at home among aristocracies, monarchies, castles, and ruins, but the robust and virile idealism which issues from great tasks, summoning to their service the best that is in men? Many signs of the times, I think, may encourage one in the thought. There is a bridge at Geneva, set where two rivers meet in the turbulent rivalry of conflicting currents. One stream, the Rhone, has flowed down between pasture banks and runs clear as crystal in a broad, deep channel. The other stream, the Azr, is a glacial torrent, hurrying and tumultuous with the melting of the ice. For a time the muddy torrent seems to overwhelm the broader Rhone, and its tranquillity and transparency are submerged and defiled; but soon the glacial impurities sink to the bottom of the stream, and the Rhone sweeps unvexed and unpolluted to the sea. So meet the forces of commercialism and idealism in American life, and the turbulent current seems to overwhelm the tranquil flow; and as one leans over the bridge of time it seems as though the resulting river must be a turbid glacial stream. Steadily, however, from the fountains of an honorable past the springs of idealism send down their full supply, until at last the broader current of idealism may subdue the rush of commercialism, and the Rhone of American democracy flow to the ocean of its destiny, unvexed and free.

The Reign of the Common People

Henry Ward Beecher

This selection is adapted from a lecture delivered in Exeter Hall, London, in 1886, when Mr. Beecher was making his last tour of Great Britain. The first two paragraphs are largely expository: they state the subject for discussion. Don't slight the touch of humor in the second paragraph. The last paragraph is serious discussion and earnest appeal.

WHEN you look upon the experiment of selfgovernment in America you may not have a very high opinion of it. Why, men will say: "It stands to reason that 100,000,000 people ignorant of law, ignorant of constitutional history, ignorant of jurisprudence, of finance, and taxes and tariffs and forms of currency-100,000,000 people that never studied these things are not fit to rule. What fitness is there in these people? Well, it is not democracy merely; it is a representative democracy. Our people do not vote in mass for anything; they pick out captains of thought, they pick out the men that do know, and they send them to the Legislature to think for them, and then the people afterward ratify or disallow them.

But when you come to the Legislature I am bound to confess that the thing does not look very much more cheering on the outside. Do they really select the best men? Yes; in times of danger they do very generally, but in ordinary time, "kissing goes by favor." You know what the duty of a regular Republican-Democratic legislator is. It is to get back again next winter. His second duty is what? His second is to put himself under that

extraordinary providence that takes care of legislators' salaries. Their next duty after that is to serve the party that sent them up and then, if there is anything left of them, it belongs to the commonwealth. Someone has said very wisely, that if a man traveling wishes to relish his dinner traveling he had better not go into the kitchen to see where it is cooked; if a man wishes to respect and obey the law, he had better not go to the Legislature to see where that is cooked.

There are many great faults in self-government, and yet I say that self-government is the best government that ever existed on the face of the earth. How should that be with all these damaging facts? "By their fruits, ye shall know them." What a government is, is to be determined by the kind of people it raises, and I will defy the whole world in time past and in time present to show so vast a proportion of citizens so well off, so continued, so remunerated by their toil as in America. The average of happiness under our self-government is greater than it ever has been or can be, found under any sky, or in any period of human history. And the philosophical reason is not far to find; it belongs to that category in which a worse thing is sometimes a great deal better than a better thing. No man ever yet learned by having somebody else learn for him. A man learns arithmetic by blunder in and blunder out, but at last he gets it. A man learns to write through scrawling; a man learns to swim by going into the water, and a man learns to vote by voting. Now we are not attempting to

make a government; we are attempting to teach 100,000,000 people how to conduct a government by self-control, by knowledge, by intelligence, by fair opportunity to practice. It is better that we should have 100,000,000 men learning through their own mistakes how to govern themselves, than it is to have an arbitrary government with the whole of the rest of the people ignorant.

The Public Duty of Educated Men

George William Curtis

This is an extract from a Commencement address at Union College, June 27, 1877. Be sure to place the emphasis so as to bring out the thought. Use the circumflex inflections to express the satire at the close of the first paragraph. Note and express the contrast in viewpoints in the last paragraph; "then remember" begins an emphatic appeal that requires much more force than the preceding part of the

sentence.

PUBLIC duty in this country is not discharged, as is often supposed, by voting. A man may vote regularly, and still fail essentially of his political duty, as the Pharisee who gave tithes of all that he possessed and fasted three times in the week, yet lacked the very heart of religion. When an American citizen is content with voting merely, he consents to accept what is often a doubtful alternative. His first duty is to help shape the alternative. This, which was formerly less necessary, is now indispensable. In a rural community such as this country was a hundred years ago, whoever was nominated for office was known to his neighbors, and the consciousness of that knowledge was a

conservative influence in determining nominations. But in the local elections of the great cities of today, elections that control taxation and expenditure, the mass of the voters vote in absolute ignorance of the candidates. The citizen who supposes that he does all his duty when he votes places a premium upon political knavery. Thieves welcome him to the polls and offer him a choice, which he has done nothing to prevent, between Jeremy Diddler and Dick Turpin. The party cries of which he is responsible are: "Turpin and Honesty," "Diddler and Reform."

There is not an American merchant who would send a ship to sea under the command of Captain Kidd, however skillful a sailor he might be. Why should he vote to send Captain Kidd to the legislature or to put him in command of the ship of state because his party directs? The party which to-day nominates Captain Kidd will to-morrow nominate Judas Iscariot, and to-morrow, as to-day, party spirit will spurn you as a traitor for refusing to sell your master.

But let us not be deceived. While good men sit at home, not knowing that there is anything to be done, nor caring to know; cultivating a feeling that politics are tiresome and dirty, and politicians vulgar bullies and bravos; half persuaded that a republic is the contemptible rule of a mob, and secretly longing for a splendid and vigorous despotism-then remember it is not a government mastered by ignorance, it is a government betrayed by intelligence; it is not the victory of the slums, it is the surrender