Only a short time after the landing on Plymouth Rock, the great
republican poet, John Milton, wrote his "Comus," so wonderful for beauty
and truth. His nature was more refined than that of the Pilgrims, and
yet it requires little effort of imagination to catch from one of them,
or at least from their beloved pastor, the exquisite, almost angelic
words at the close--


"Mortals, who would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime.
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."




THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING RACE

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS


Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce:--I rise with some
trepidation to respond to this toast, because we have been assured upon
high authority, altho after what we have heard this evening we can not
believe it, that the English-speaking race speaks altogether too much.
Our eloquent Minister in England recently congratulated the Mechanics'
Institute at Nottingham that it had abolished its debating club, and
said that he gladly anticipated the establishment in all great