Grand and beautiful; in calmly mood,

Like an infant in placid slumber dreaming."

You will observe a finger pointing heavenward in the following lines,

"Mortal! remember that life to thee was given
By Him who rules o'er earth and heaven;

The universe was made by His Almighty hand,
And He empowered man to subdue the land."

Elsewhere he says,

"Where'er we stray, O God, we find,
Some marks of thy Almighty Hand.”

COL. E. D. BAKER.

Among the great orations of Col. Edward Dickinson Baker were his great Union speech made in Platt hall, San Francisco, while on his way to Washington, as senator-elect from Oregon; his oration on the occasion of celebrating the laying of the Atlantic cable, made in 1853; his oration on the occasion of the death of Broderick. One who heard Col. Baker's oration at Salem on the Fourth of July, 1860, said: "The orator's fame had spread far and near, and when the speaker began the crowd was so vast that fully one-fourth were fortunate in finding standing room; but the eloquence of the speaker was such that in less than twenty minutes all were standing."

The following is selected from his great Union speech, and is especially appropriate in this place:

Here, then, long years ago, I took my stand by Freedom; and where the feet of my youth were planted, there my manhood and my age shall march. And, for one, I am not ashamed of Freedom. I know her power; I glory in her strength. I have seen her again and again struck down on a hundred chosen fields of battle. I have seen her foes gather around her, and bind her to the stake. I have seen them give her ashes to the winds, regathering them again, that they might scatter them yet more widely. But when they turned to exult, I have seen her again meet them, face to face, clad in complete steel, and brandishing in her strong right hand a flaming sword, red with insufferable light. And, therefore, I take courage. The people gather around her once more. The genius of America will at last lead her sons to Freedom."

May we briefly follow him as a poet while he reads a page from the volume of nature? He was probably along the shore near where Golden Gate swings out into the deep, or where Empire City looks out upon the sea, or at Seal Rock, where the Siletz, the Alsea, and the Yaquina Indians met in festivity; or he may have been where the mighty Columbia mingles with that eternity of waters, the Pacific ocean. It was evidently just after the evening twilight, when the dark gray of the night was

coming on, and the beautiful stars, "the lovely forget-me-nots of the angels were blossoming in the infinite meadows of heaven." Overhead was the sky as silent as a summer cloud; and before him was the sea ever changing, ever heaving, ever restless as in the ages. A wave caught his attention, and he said:

Dost thou seek a star, with thy swelling crest,

O wave, that leavest thy mother's breast?
Dost thou leap from the prisoned depths below,
In scorn of their calm and constant flow?

Or art thou seeking some distant land,

To die in murmurs upon the strand?"

A prophet, scholar and poet-his mind sweeps overt he wrecks of navies and armadas, and visions of battles, where the honor of nations was contested, rise before him; and poet-like, he regards the ocean as a living, breathing, sympathizing creatture, and thus addresses it:

"Hast thou tales to tell of the pearl-lit deep,
Where the wave-whelmed mariner rocks in sleep?
Canst thou speak of navies that sunk in pride
Ere the roll of their thunder in echo died?
What trophies, what banners are floating free
In the shadowy depths of that silent sea!"

But when the poet comes down with his message from the mountain of the ideal into the plain of the real, he regards the land and the sea with

the wisdom of a philosopher; so he is reminded that the vast ocean will roll a million of years after the man is gone and forgotten; and he is then surprised-yea, astonished at himself for having presumed to ask these questions; and conscientious as he is conscious, he hastens to acknowledge— "It were vain to ask, as thou rollest afar,

Of banner, or mariner, ship or star;

It were vain to seek in thy stormy face Some tale of the sorrowful past to trace. Thou art swelling high, thou art flashing free, How vain are the questions we ask of thee!" Again the wave demands his attention; it recedes, but is followed by another; by a third; then by a fourth, a fifth, a sixth; and then comes the seventh that overrides them all. This is in turn overwhelmed by another seventh; and so on throughout the days. Like the true poet, he again drinks in a lesson as a thinks of the Napoleons, the Caesars, the Alexanders, that were overwhelmed by some higher wave in the tide of human affairs; and he teaches us the vanity of ambition, and the certainty of death, as he applies the lesson to himself in these words

"I, too, am a wave on a stormy sea;

I, too, am a wanderer, driven like thee;

I, too, am seeking a distant land,

To be lost and gone ere I reach the strand;

For the land I seek is a waveless shore,

And they who once reach it shall wander no more."

TROUBLE.

Gov. Geo. L. Curry.

With aching hearts we strive to bear our trouble,
Though some surrender to the killing pain;
Life's harvest-fields are full of wounding stubble,
To prove the goodness of the gathered grain.
With aching hearts we struggle on in sorrow,
Seeking some comfort in our sorest need;
The dismal day may have a bright to-morrow,
And all our troubles be as "precious seed."
As precious seed within the heart's recesses,

To germinate and grow to fruitage rare,
Of patience, love, hope, faith and al that blesses,
And forms the burden of our daily prayer.

With aching heart we cling to heaven's evangels,
The beautiful, the good, the true, the pure,
Communing with us always like good angels,
To help us in the suffering we endure.
Indeed, to suffer and sustain afflictions

Is the experience which we all acquire;
Our tribulations are the harsh restrictions

To consummations we so much desire.

With aching hearts life's battle still maintaining, The pain, the grief, and death we comprehend, As issues we accept without complaining,

So weary are we for the end.

Alas! so weary, longing for the ending,