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gradually westward, until, in the last decade, it lay in Indiana at a point sixty-five miles south of Indianapolis.

The older Indiana towns enjoyed in their beginnings all the benefits that may be bestowed upon new communities by a people of good social antecedents. Many of these towns have lost their prestige, owing to changed political or commercial conditions; the departed glory of some of them is only a tradition among the elders; but the charm of many remains. Indiana, as Territory and State, has had three political capitals, Vincennes and Corydon having enjoyed the distinction before Indianapolis finally attained.

Great care had been taken to assure to the Northwest religious liberty and free schools. The ordinance of 1787 touched directly on the questions of religion and education in the Northwest Territory. "No person," it declared, "demeaning himself in a peaceable, orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments in the said territory;" and "religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be for ever encouraged." The ordinance has clearly been one of the great guiding influences of the nation. It prepared the way in the Ohio Valley for the attitude of the people toward slavery; and its assurance of religious freedom and friendliness to learning brought to the new territory the benefit of the experience of those

who had striven for such liberties and advantages in the seaboard colonies. The history of civilization in Indiana may be said to date from its passage.

The prevailing note of the landscape is tranquillity. There is hardly a spot in the State that touches the imagination with a sense of power or grandeur, and yet there are countless scenes of quiet beauty. The Wabash gathers breadth and grace as it flows southward. Long curves here and there give to the eye the illusion of a chain of lakes, and the river's valley is a rich garden. The Tippecanoe is another beautiful river, famous among fishermen, and there are a number of charming lakes in the northern part of the State. The Kankakee marsh was long haunted by the migrant wild birds, and in recent years a wild goose was found there with a piece of an Eskimo arrow, made of reindeer bone, through its breast. Poets and novelists have found inspiration in the Kankakee. The possibilities of mixed forests are nowhere more happily illustrated than in Indiana, whether in the earliest wistful days of spring or in the full glory of autumn. The beech and the elm, the maple, the hickory and the walnut, and the humbler sassafras and pawpaw are companions of a royal order of forestry, from which the sycamore-the self-constituted guardian of rivers and creeks-is excluded by nature's decree, confirmed by man's preference.

The variety of cereals that may be grown saves the

tilled areas from monotony. The corn ripens between wheat stubble on one hand, and green pastures or remnants of woodland on the other. The transitional seasons bring more of delight to the senses than the full measure of winter and summer, and have for the observer constant novelty and change. There are qualities in the spring of the Ohio Valley-qualities of sweetness and wistfulness that are peculiar to the region; and when the winds are all from the south, and the winter wheat is brilliant in the fields; when the sap sings beneath. the rough bark of the old forest trees, and the young orchards are a blur of pink and white, spirits are abroad there with messages for the sons of men.

From "The Hoosiers." Abridged.

April cold with dropping rain
Willows and lilacs brings again,
The whistle of returning birds,
And trumpet-lowing of the herds;
The scarlet maple-keys betray
What potent blood hath modest May;
What fiery force the earth renews,
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;
What Joy in rosy waves outpoured,
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.

THE GOTHIC CHURCH

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The Gothic church plainly originated in a rude adaptation of the forest trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as the bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, when the barrenness of all other trees shows the low arch of the Saxons. In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest. Nor can any lover of nature enter the old piles of Oxford and the English cathedrals, without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and plane still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, oak, pine, fir and spruce.

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish as well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.

From the essay, "History."

THE SNOW-STORM

BY JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE

The speckled sky is dim with snow,
The light flakes falter and fall slow;
Athwart the hill-top, rapt and pale,
Silently drops a silvery veil;
And all the valley is shut in
By flickering curtains gray and thin.

But cheerily the chickadee

Singeth to me on fence and tree;

The snow sails round him as he sings,
White as the down of angels' wings.

On turf and curb and bower-roof
The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof;
It paves with pearl the garden walk;
And lovingly round tattered stalk
And shivering stem its magic weaves
A mantle fair as lily-leaves.

Abridged.

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