But who are they who dare accuse us of wishing to weaken the administration and impede its course?  Bring the question to light!  If there be one thing more than another which those who demand emancipation desire, it is that the central government should be strengthened—­aye, strengthened as it has never been before; so that, in future, there can be no return of secession.  We have never been a republic—­only an aggregate of smaller republics.  If we had been one, the first movement toward disunion would have hurled the traitors urging it to the dust.  Aye, strengthen the government; and let its first manifestation of strength and will be the settling of the negro question.  Give the administration as full power as you please—­the more the better; it is only conferring strength on the people.  There is no danger that the men of the North will ever lose a shadow of individual rights.  They are too powerful.

And now let the freemen of America speak, and the work will be done.  A great day is at hand; hasten it.  The hour which sees this Union re-united will witness the most glorious triumph of humanity,—­the greatest step towards realizing the social aim of Christianity, and of Him who died for all,—­the recognition of the rights of every one.  Onward!

* * * * *

BROWN’S LECTURE TOUR.

I.—­HOW HE CAME TO DO IT.

My last speculation had proved a failure.  I was left with a stock of fifty impracticable washing-machines on my hands, and a cash capital of forty-four cents.  With the furniture of my room, these constituted my total assets.  I had an unsettled account of forty dollars with Messrs. Roller & Ems, printers, for washing-machine circulars, cards, etc.; and—­

Rap, rap, rap!

[Enter boy.]

’Mr. Peck says as how you’ll please call around to his office and settle up this afternoon, sure.’

[Exit boy.]

  New York, Nov. 30, 1859.

  Mr. GREEN D. BROWN,

  TO JOHN PECK, Dr.

  To Rent of Room to date $9 00

  Rec’d Pay’t,

I came to the emphatic conclusion that I was ‘hard up.’

I kept bachelor’s hall in Franklin Street, in apartments not altogether sumptuous, yet sufficiently so for my purposes,—­to wit, to sit in and to sleep in; and inasmuch as I took my meals amid the gilded splendors of the big saloon on the corner of Broadway, I was not disposed to reproach myself with squalor.  Yet the articles of furniture in my room were so far removed, separately or in the aggregate, from anything like the superfluous, that when I calmly deliberated what to part with, there was nothing which struck me as a luxury or a comfort as distinct from a necessary of life.  I took a second mental inventory:  two common chairs, a table, a mirror, a rocking-chair, a bed, a lounge, and a single picture on the wall.