regiment would dare to follow them to their camp in the mountains. So when Col. Pelton swooped down into their lodges with ten trusty followers, firing their Henry rifles at the rate of twenty times a minute, the Apaches fled in consternation, leaving their women and children behind. It was then that there darted out of a lodge a white woman. "Spare the women!" she cried, and fainted to the ground.

4. When the colonel jumped from his saddle to lift up the woman he found she was blind.

"How came you here, woman, with these damned Apaches?" he asked.

"I was wounded and captured," she said, "ten years ago. Take, oh, take me back again!"

"Have you any relations in Texas?" asked the Colonel. "No, my father lives in Albuquerque. My husband, Colonel Pelton, and my mother were killed by the Indians." "Great God, Bella! Is it you-my wife?"

"Oh, Albert, I knew you would come!" exclaimed the poor wife, blindly reaching her hands to clasp her husband.

5. Of course there was joy in the old ranch when Col. Pelton got back with his wife. The Apaches had carried the wounded woman away with them. The poison caused inflammation, which finally destroyed her eyesight.

When I saw the colonel in his Texas ranch he was reading a newspaper to his blind wife, while in her hand she held a bouquet of fragrant Cape jessamines which he had gathered for her. It was a picture of absolute happiness.

ESSAY-EXPOSITION

TRUE ELOQUENCE

By Daniel Webster, Jurist, Statesman, and Orator. B. 1782, New Hampshire; d. 1852, Massachusetts.

On hearing of the deaths of Adams and of Jefferson on July 4, 1826, the City Council of Boston set apart August 2, 1826, as a day to commemorate appropriately with solemn rites this sad event. Webster delivered a discourse in Faneuil Hall on "Adams and Jefferson." The following extract was given while speaking of Mr. Adams.

The style is "heavy." Downward inflections are numerous, the phrases short, the words ponderous and forceful. A strong and voluminous voice is demanded. Remember that true oratory is a broad subject, and is itself suggestive of mass and weight.

1. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction.

2. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreak of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force.

The graces taught in the schools, the costly orna

ments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object—this, this is eloquence, or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, God-like action.