t what the game round it is when it is
on this or that square.

Can any man look round and see what Christian countries are now doing,
and how they are governed, and what is the general condition of society,
without seeing that Christianity is the flag under which the world sails,
and not the rudder that steers its course? No, Sir! There was a great
raft built about two thousand years ago,--call it an ark, rather,--the
world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made to be
launched right out into the open waves of life,--and here it has been
lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the water,
men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who should have
the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side because they could
not agree about the points of compass, but the great vessel never getting
afloat with its freight of nations and their rulers;--and now, Sir, there
is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing
out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they
mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads
of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out
into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall
the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in
the dock-mud where it is lying!"

It's a slow business, this of getting the ark launched. The Jordan was
n't deep enough, and the Tiber was n't deep enough, and the Rhone was n't
deep enough, and the Thames was n't deep enough, and perhaps the Charles
is n't deep enough; but I don't feel sure of that, Sir, and I love to
hear the workmen knocking at the old blocks of tradition and making the
ways smooth with the oil of the Good Samaritan. I don't know, Sir,--but
I do think she stirs a little,--I do believe she slides;--and when I
think of what a work that is for the dear old three-breasted mother of
American liberty, I would not take all the glory of all the greatest
cities in the world for my birthright in the soil of little Boston!

--Some of us could not help smiling at this burst of local patriotism,
especially when it finished with the last two words.

And Iris smiled, too. But it was the radiant smile of pleasure which
always lights up her face when her little neighbor gets excited on the
great topics of progress in freedom and religion, and especially on the
part which