St. Joseph in 1859 had the bustling appearance of a great fair, with excited travelers preparing to make the plains journey in pra...irie schooners, "rickety old farm wagons," and even small two-wheeled push carts. many bore such mottoes as--"Faint Heart Never Won Fair Lady," "I Dare," "For Pike's Peak Ho." Before long many were to return, disappointed in their search for gold, hungry, ragged, and dispirited, their brave wagon boasts changed to "Prodigal Son," "Pike's Hell," "A Fool Is Born."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This land is a little land; too much shut up within the narrow seas, as it seems, to have much space for swelling into hugeness: t...here are no great wastes overwhelming in their dreariness, no great solitudes of forests, no terrible untrodden mountain-walls: all is measured, mingled, varied, gliding easily one thing into another: little rivers, little plains, swelling, speedily- changing uplands, all beset with handsome orderly trees; little hills, little mountains, netted over with the walls of sheep- walks: all is little; yet not foolish and blank, but serious rather, and abundant of meaning for such as choose to seek it: it is neither prison nor palace, but a decent home.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What are we? Well, if you are asking me a question, I will answer you. Here it is: we are this country and it is nothing without u...s, nothing at all.... And in spite of all this, we are poor, it is true; we are indigent, that's true; we are miserable, that's true too. But, brother, do you know why? Because of our ignorance: we do not yet know that we are a force, a unified force--all of us, the peasants, the Negroes of the plains and of the mountains put together. One day, we will have understood this fact, and we will rise from one end of the country to another, and we will form the general assembly of the masters of the dew, the great coumbite of the workers of the earth to clear away misery and plant a new life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now something more than a virtue. It is a necessity. ...When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have seen in my time two enormous extensions of the suffrage to men--one in America and one in England. But neither the negroes ...in the South nor the agricultural laborers in Great Britain had shown before they got the ballot any capacity of government; for they had never had the opportunity to take the first steps of political action. Very different has been the history of the march of women toward a recognized position in the State. We have had to prove our ability at each stage of progress, and have gained nothing without having satisfied a test of capacity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss... Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Great is your faithfulness, O God, Creator, with you no shadow of turning we see.... You do not change, your compassions they fail not; all of your goodness forever will be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice an...d the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »