o the hands of men, opening innumerable resources in the earth
and revealing new secrets and harmonies in the skies.

The increasing beneficence and intelligence of our own day, the
broad-spread sympathy with suffering, the widening thoughts of men, the
longings of the heart for a higher condition on earth, the unfulfilled
promises of Christian progress are the auspicious auguries of this happy
future. As early voyagers over untried realms of waste we have already
observed the signs of land. The green and fresh red berries have floated
by our bark, the odors of the shore fan our faces, nay, we may seem to
descry the distant gleam of light, and hear from the more earnest
observers, as Columbus heard, after midnight from the masthead of the
Pinta, the joyful cry of "Land! Land!" and lo! a new world broke upon
his early morning gaze.

THE HOPE OF THE REPUBLIC

H. W. GRADY

I went to Washington the other day and I stood on the Capitol hill, and
my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's
Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous
significance, of the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the
President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered
there; and I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on
a better sight than that majestic home of a Republic that had taught the
world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom
and justice dwelt therein, the world would at last owe that great house,
in which the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged, its final
uplifting and its regeneration.

But a few days afterwards I went to visit a friend in the country, a
modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple,
unpretentious house, set about with great trees and encircled in meadow
and field rich with the promise of harvest; the fragrance of the pink
and the hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the aroma of the
orchard and the garden, and the resonant clucking of poultry and the hum
of bees. Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift and comfort.

Outside there stood my friend, the master, a simple, independent,
upright man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing
crops--master of his land and master of himself. There was the old
father, an aged and trembling man, but happy in the heart and home of
his son. And, as he started to enter his home, the hand of the old man
went d