street hear it and burst forth in one long shout.

Old Delaware hears it and gives it back on the cheers of her thousand sailors. The city hears it and starts up, from desk and workshop, as if an earthquake had spoken.

Under that very bell, pealing out at noonday, in an old hall, fifty-six traders, farmers, and mechanics had assembled to break the shackles of the world. The committee, who have been out all night, are about to appear. At last the door opens and they advance to the front. The parchment is laid on the table. Shall it be signed or not? Then ensues a high and stormy debate. Then the faint-hearted cringe in corners. Then Thomas Jefferson speaks his few bold words, and John Adams pours out his whole soul.

Still there is a doubt; and that pale-faced man, rising in one corner, squeaks out something about "axes, scaffolds, and a gibbet." A tall, slender man rises, and his dark eye burns, while his words ring through the halls: "Gibbets! They may stretch our necks on every scaffold in the land. They may turn every rock into a gibbet, every tree into a gallows; and yet the words written on that parchment can never die. They may pour out our blood on a thousand altars, and yet, from every drop that dyes the ax or drips on the sawdust of the block, a new martyr to freedom will spring into existence. What! are

these shrinking hearts and faltering voices here, when the very dead upon our battlefields arise and call upon us to sign that parchment or be accursed forever?

"Sign! if the next moment the gibbet's rope is around your neck. Sign! if the next moment this hall ring with the echo of the falling ax. Sign! by all your hopes in life or death, as husbands, as fathers, as men! Sign your

names to that parchment!

"Yes! were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity, were this voice choking in the last struggle, I would still, with the last impulse of that soul, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember this truth: God has given America to the free. Yes! as I sink down into the gloomy shadow of the grave, with my last breath I would beg of you to sign that parchment."

edifice building.

GEORGE LIPPARD.

-fire: light up; brighten. shackles: something that prevents free action. - cringe draw one's self together, as in fear or servility. — gibbet: a framework on which wrong-doers were formerly hanged.

King's Mountain.

A Ballad of the Carolinas

Hark! 'tis the voice of the mountain,
And it speaks to our heart in its pride,
As it tells of the bearing of heroes,

Who compassed its summits and died!
How they gathered to strife as the eagles,
When the foemen had clambered the height!
How, with scent keen and eager as beagles,
They hunted them down for the fight!

Hark! through the gorge of the valley, 'Tis the bugle that tells of the foe; Our own quickly sounds for the rally,

And we snatch down the rifle and go.
As the hunters who hear of the panther,
Each arms him and leaps to his steed,
Rides forth through the desolate antre,
With the knife and the rifle at need.

From a thousand deep gorges they gather
From the cot lowly perched by the rill,
The cabin half hid in the heather,

'Neath the crag

where the eagle keeps still;

Each lonely at first in his roaming,

Till the vale to the sight opens fair,

And he sees the low cot through the gloaming, When his bugle gives tongue to the air.

Thus a thousand brave hunters assemble
For the hunt of the insolent foe;
And soon shall his myrmidons tremble

'Neath the shock of the thunderbolt's blow.
Down the lone heights now wind they together,
As the mountain brooks flow to the vale,
And now, as they group on the heather,
The keen scout delivers his tale: -

And now is the moment to prove
To the women whose virtues have won us,
That our virtues are worthy their love!
They have swept the vast valleys below us
With fire, to the hills from the sea;
And here would they seek to o'erthrow us,
In a realm which our eagle makes free!"

No war council suffered to trifle

With the hours devote to the deed;

Swift followed the grasp of the rifle,

Swift followed the bound to the steed;