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THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Delivered by Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the field of one of the great battles of the Civil War, a portion of which was dedicated as a national cemetery.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this; but in a larger sense we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us--the living--rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave that last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under

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God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that govern ment of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

TO AUTUMN

BY JOHN KEATS

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless.

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

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THE SEA FIGHT

BY LEW WALLACE

General Wallace worked over seven years on Ben-Hur. He had never visited the Holy Land, but patient, long-continued study of books and maps brought it vividly before his mind. General Wallace served his country in the Mexican and Civil Wars and as Minister to Turkey. He was born in Brookville, Indiana, in 1827, and died at Crawfordsville in 1905. Ben-Hur has been called one of the ten great novels.

Ben-Hur, a young Jew of old and wealthy family, living in Jerusalem in the first century, is unjustly accused of attempting to kill the Roman governor. His mother and sister are imprisoned, his house confiscated, and he himself condemned to row in the galleys as a slave. One day, after three years' toil, his high bearing, intelligence and endurance, attract the attention of Arrius, a noble Roman on board, and from that time on he secretly hopes for release.

Every soul aboard, even the ship, awoke. Officers went to their quarters. The marines took arms, and were led out, looking in all respects like legionaries. Sheaves of arrows and armfuls of javelins were carried on deck. By the central stairs the oil-tanks and fire-balls were set ready for use. Additional lanterns were lighted. Buckets were filled with water. The rowers in relief assembled under guard in front of the chief. As Providence would have it, Ben-Hur was one of the latter. Overhead he heard the muffled noises of the final preparations-of the sailors furling sail, spreading the nettings, unslinging the machines, and hanging the armor of bull-hide over the sides. Presently quiet settled about the galley again; quiet full of vague dread and expectation, which interpreted, means ready.

At a signal passed down from the deck, and communicated to the hortator by a petty officer stationed on the stairs, all at once the oars stopped.

What did it mean?

Of the hundred and twenty slaves chained to the benches, not one but asked himself the question. They were without incentive. Patriotism, love of honor, sense of duty, brought them no inspiration. They felt the thrill common to men rushed helpless and blind into danger. It may be supposed the dullest of them, poising his oar, thought of all that might happen, yet could promise himself nothing; for victory would but rivet his chains the firmer,

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