the race would dwindle away before our very eyes. Listen to some
serio-comic verse upon this subject, taken out of your Lecturer's
portfolio. It is an address to America, dictated by an ancient sage:--

'Oh! latest born of time, the wise man said,
A mighty destiny surrounds thy head;
Great is thy mission, but the puny son
Lacks strength to finish what the sires begun;
Thy hapless daughters breathe the poison'd air,
Fair they may be, but fragile more than fair;
They know not, doom'd ones, that the air of heaven,
For breathing purposes to man was given;
They know not half the things which life requires,
But melt their lives away where stoves and fires,
And furnace issuing from the realms beneath,
Distils through parlor floors its poisonous breath.
Sooner or later must the slighted air
And exercise take vengeance on the fair.
Ah! one by one I see them fade and fall,
Both old and young, fair, dark or short or tall,
Till one stupendous ruin wraps them all.'

One can sometimes, in a smiling way, give utterance to truths which seem
hard and stern when spoken in grim earnest. Let us see whether we cannot
find some allegory to represent what we mean.

Some time ago, I read a tale which related that a certain gentleman was,
once on a time, digging a deep hole in his garden. He had, as I myself
had in my younger days, a perfect passion for digging holes, for the
mere pleasure of doing it; but the hole which he was now digging was by