so onward, by and across
the broad, shallow Connecticut,--dull red road and dark river woven in
like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting engine; then
Springfield, the wide-meadowed, well-feeding, horse-loving, hot-summered,
giant-treed town,--city among villages, village among cities; Worcester,
with its Daedalian labyrinth of crossing railroad-bars, where the
snorting Minotaurs, breathing fire and smoke and hot vapors, are stabled
in their dens; Framingham, fair cup-bearer, leaf-cinctured Hebe of the
deep-bosomed Queen sitting by the seaside on the throne of the Six
Nations. And now I begin to know the road, not by towns, but by single
dwellings; not by miles, but by rods. The poles of the great magnet that
draws in all the iron tracks through the grooves of all the mountains
must be near at hand, for here are crossings, and sudden stops, and
screams of alarmed engines heard all around. The tall granite obelisk
comes into view far away on the left, its bevelled cap-stone sharp
against the sky; the lofty chimneys of Charlestown and East Cambridge
flaunt their smoky banners up in the thin air; and now one fair bosom of
the three-pilled city, with its dome-crowned summit, reveals itself, as
when many-breasted Ephesian Artemis appeared with half-open chlamys
before her worshippers.

Fling open the window-blinds of the chamber that looks out on the waters
and towards the western sun! Let the joyous light shine in upon the
pictures that hang upon its walls and the shelves thick-set with the
names of poets and philosophers and sacred teachers, in whose pages our
boys learn that life is noble only when it is held cheap by the side of
honor and of duty. Lay him in his own bed, and let him sleep off his
aches and weariness. So comes down another night over this household,
unbroken by any messenger of evil tidings,--a night of peaceful rest and
grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was dead and is alive
again, and was lost and is found.

THE INEVITABLE TRIAL

[An Oration delivered before the City Authorities of Boston, on the 4th
of July, 1863.]

It is our first impulse, upon this returning day of our nation's birth,
to recall whatever is happiest and noblest in our past history, and to
join our voices in celebrating the statesmen and the heroes, the men of
thought and the men of action, to whom that history owes its existence.
In other years this pleasing office may have been all that was requir