in the name of outraged honor, in the interest of violated sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, for the sake of men everywhere and of our common humanity, for the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom on earth, your country calls upon you to stand by her through good report and through evil report, in triumph and in defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western civilization, Queen of the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of earth’s emancipated peoples; until the flag that fell from the wall of Fort Sumter floats again inviolate, supreme, over all her ancient inheritance, every fortress, every capital, every ship, and this warring land is once more a, United Nation!

CINDERS FROM THE ASHES.

The personal revelations contained in my report of certain breakfast-table conversations were so charitably listened to and so good-naturedly interpreted, that I may be in danger of becoming over-communicative.  Still, I should never have ventured to tell the trivial experiences here thrown together, were it not that my brief story is illuminated here and there by a glimpse of some shining figure that trod the same path with me for a time, or crossed it, leaving a momentary or lasting brightness in its track.  I remember that, in furnishing a chamber some years ago, I was struck with its dull aspect as I looked round on the black-walnut chairs and bedstead and bureau.  “Make me a large and handsomely wrought gilded handle to the key of that dark chest of drawers,” I said to the furnisher.  It was done, and that one luminous point redeemed the sombre apartment as the evening star glorifies the dusky firmament.  So, my loving reader,—­and to none other can such table-talk as this be addressed, —­I hope there will be lustre enough in one or other of the names with which I shall gild my page to redeem the dulness of all that is merely personal in my recollections.

After leaving the school of Dame Prentiss, best remembered by infantine loves, those pretty preludes of more serious passions; by the great forfeit-basket, filled with its miscellaneous waifs and deodauds, and by the long willow stick by the aid of which the good old body, now stricken in years and unwieldy in person could stimulate the sluggish faculties or check the mischievous sallies of the child most distant from his ample chair,—­a school where I think my most noted schoolmate was the present Bishop of Delaware, became the pupil of Master William Biglow.  This generation is not familiar with his title to renown, although he fills three columns and a half in Mr. Duyckinck’s “Cyclopaedia of American Literature.”  He was a humorist hardly robust enough for more than a brief local immortality.  I am afraid we were an undistinguished set, for I do not remember anybody near a bishop in dignity graduating from our benches.