TWO LITTLE HANDS.
(To be recited with appropriate gestures.)
Two little hands so soft and white,
This is the left and this is the right.
Five little fingers standing on each,
So I can hold a plum or a peach.
When I get as big as you.
Lots of things these hands can do.
HO! BONNY BOY.
WALTER M. HAZELTINE.
Ho! bonny boy, with cheek of brown,
In the river wading.
What the dreams within your head,
Slowly, slowly fading?
Vacation’s nearly gone, you say.
With school-time growing nearer.
And every moment of the day
Is growing sweetly dearer.
Slowly summer steals away,
Vacation joys are fading,
While every moment is so dear,
In the river wading.
Turtle sleeping on a log.
Sand-peep where the beach is;
Cherries growing in the sun,
Where the cat-bird screeches.
But the river, bonny boy.
Is not always sleeping;
There is work for it and you.
There is joy and weeping.
Time in summer for your fun,
Time to work in winter.
For the race is always won.
By the fleetest sprinter.
Ho! curly-head, this lesson learn,—
The world is only seeming
To the boy who idly stands
And wastes the day in dreaming.
There’s a work for you somewhere,
And a way to follow;
There’s a joy for every care,
A hill for every hollow.
THE MORAL DIGNITY OF LABOR.
Human talent, industry, wisdom, and skill, under the favoring blessing of Heaven, must now go forth to sow and to gather in the harvest of the earth. We are teaching lessons of political economy which the world has never heard before. It is a noble dispensation for our country. Other nations may see us, but not with the vines or olives of Italy or France, nor with the oranges and grapes of Spain or Portugal, nor even the rich and glowing verdure and teeming harvests of England and the lowland of Scotland.
The magnificence of their time-honored architecture we have not attained. And yet there are intelligence, prosperity, dignity, independence, and self-respect marking the laboring classes of our population, which lifts us far above all envy of the grandeur and glory of European display. They see that we have a people, flourishing and prosperous beyond comparison
It is the province of America to build, not palaces, but men; to exalt, not titled stations, but general humanity; to elevate, not the few, but the many; and to make herself known, not so much in individuals as in herself, spreading to the highest possible level (but striving to keep it level still), universal education, prosperity, and honor.
The great element of this whole plan of effort and instruction, is the moral relative dignity of labor; an element which we are to exalt, in public estimation, in the
