anything in the expressions I use, or in any minor matter which any one of you thinks had best be changed, I shall be glad to receive your suggestions. One other observation I will make. I know very well that many others might, in this matter as in others, do better than I can; and if I was satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But though I believe I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more; and, however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I must do the best I can and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.'

"The President then proceeded to read his Emancipation Proclamation, making remarks on the several parts as he went on, and showing that he had fully considered the subject in all the lights under which it had been presented to him."

The Proclamation was amended in a few matters of detail. It was signed and published that day. The world knows the rest, and will not forget it till "the last syllable of recorded time.”

THE EMANCIPATION GROUP1

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Moses Kimball, a citizen of Boston, presented to the city a duplicate of the Freedman's Memorial Statue erected in Lincoln Square, Washington, after a design by Thomas Ball. The group, which stands in Park Square, represents the figure of a slave, from whose limbs the broken fetters have fallen, kneeling in gratitude at the feet of Lincoln. The verses which follow were written for the unveiling of the statue, December 9, 1879.

Amidst thy sacred effigies

If old renown give place,
O city, Freedom-loved! to his
Whose hand unchained a race

Take the worn frame, that rested not
Save in a martyr's grave;

The care-lined face, that none forgot,
Bent to the kneeling slave.

Let man be free! The mighty word
He spake was not his own;
An impulse from the Highest stirred
These chiselled lips alone.

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide,
Along his pathway ran,

1 By special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

And Nature, through his voice, denied
The ownership of man.

We rest in peace where these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife, and pain;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.

O symbol of God's will on earth
As it is done above!

Bear witness to the cost and worth
Of justice and of love.

Stand in thy place and testify

To coming ages long,

That truth is stronger than a lie,
And righteousness than wrong.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CHRISTMAS GIFT1

BY NORA PERRY

'Twas in eighteen hundred and sixty-four,
That terrible year when the shock and roar
Of the nation's battles shook the land,
And the fire leapt up into fury fanned,

The passionate, patriotic fire,

With its throbbing pulse and its wild desire
To conquer and win, or conquer and die,
In the thick of the fight when hearts beat high

1 By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

With the hero's thrill to do and to dare, 'Twixt the bullet's rush and the muttered prayer. In the North, and the East and the great Northwest,

Men waited and watched with eager zest

For news of the desperate, terrible strife,—
For a nation's death or a nation's life;
While over the wires there flying sped
News of the wounded, the dying and dead.

"Defeat and defeat! Ah! what was the fault
Of the grand old army's sturdy assault
At Richmond's gates?" in a querulous key
Men questioned at last impatiently,

As the hours crept by, and day by day
They watched the Potomac Army at bay.
Defeat and defeat! It was here, just here,
In the very height of the fret and fear,

Click, click! across the electric wire
Came suddenly flashing words of fire,
And a great shout broke from city, and town
At the news of Sherman's marching down,-

Marching down on his way to the sea
Through the Georgia swamps to victory.
Faster and faster the great news came,
Flashing along like tongues of flame,-

McAllister ours! And then, ah! then,

To that patientest, tenderest, noblest of men, This message from Sherman came flying swift,"I send you Savannah for a Christmas gift!"