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They

OCTOBER 4

went backward, and not forward. Jeremiah 7:24.

A Retrograde Institution.

(Reply to Stephen A. Douglas, on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Springfield, Illinois, October 4, 1854.)

Be not deceived. The spirit of the Revolution and the spirit of Nebraska are antipodes, and the former is being rapidly displaced by the latter. Shall we make no effort to arrest this? Already the liberal party throughout the world expresses the apprehension "that the one retrograde institution in America is undermining the principles of progress and fatally violating the noblest political system the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of enemies, but the warning of friends. Is it quite safe to disregard it, to disparage it? Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith? In our greedy haste to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we cancel and rend in pieces even the white man's character of freedom. My distinguished friend Douglas says it is an insult to the emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to suppose that they are not capable of governing themselves. We must not slur over an argument of this kind because it happens to tickle the ear. It must be met and answered. I admit the emigrant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but I deny his right to govern any other person without that person's consent.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

-Pope.

OCTOBER 5

One whom his mother comforteth. Isaiah 66: 13.

My Angel Mother.

(Nancy Hanks Lincoln died in Spencer County, Indiana, October 5, 1818, aged 35 years.)

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother, blessings on her memory.

I can remember her prayers, and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

I promised my precious mother only a few days before she died that I would never use anything intoxicating as a beverage, and I consider that promise as binding to-day as it was the day I made it.

Ah! mother of as grand a son

As ever battled in the van

To prove the brotherhood of man,
Such lives as thine are never done.

We can but wonder, we who read

The past with backward searching look,
Its pages open as a book,

If thou foresaw where he would lead.

-Ben D. House.

OCTOBER 6

Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations. Isaiah 58: 12.

Foundations of New Societies.

(Extract from speech in the seventh and last joint debate with Mr. Douglas, at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858.)

The principle upon which I have insisted in this canvass is in relation to laying the foundation of new societies. I have never sought to apply these principles to the old States for the purpose of abolishing slavery in those States. It is nothing but a miserable perversion of what I have said, to assume that I have declared Missouri, or any other slave State, shall emancipate her slaves. I have proposed no such thing. But when Mr. Clay says that in laying the foundations of societies in our Territories where it does not exist, he would be opposed to the introduction of slavery as an element, I insist that we have his warrant-his license-for insisting upon the exclusion of that element which he declared in such strong and emphatic language was most hateful to him.

Great God! we thank thee for this home-
This bounteous birthland of the free;
Where wanderers from afar may come

And breathe the air of liberty!

Still may her flowers untrampled spring,
Her harvests wave, her cities rise;
And yet, till Time shall fold his wing,
Remain earth's loveliest paradise.

-W. J. Pabodie.

The Lincoln Tomb at Springfield, Ill.

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