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Show Behold it! Listen to it Every star has a tongue; every stripe is articulate. There is no speech nor language where their voices are not heard. There is magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every question of duty. It has a word of good cheer for every hour of gloom or of despondency. Behold it! Listen to it! It speaks of earlier and of later struggles . It sper.ks of victories and sometimes of reverses, on the sea and on the land. It speaks of patriots and heroes among the living and, among the dead; and of him, the first and greatest of them all, around whose consecrated ashes this unnatural and abhorrent ab-horrent strife has been so long raging. But, before all other associations asso-ciations and memories whether of glorious men, or glorious deeds, or. glorious places its voice is ever of Union and Liberty, of the Constitution and of the Laws. Robert C. Winthrop. TIIE FLAG OF OUR COUNTPvY There is the national flag. He must be cold indeed who can lock upon its folds, rippling in the breeze, without pride of country. If he be in a foreign land, the flag is companionship and country itself, it-self, with all its endearments. Who, as he sees it, can think of a state merely? Whose eyes once fastened upon its radiant trophies, can fail to recognize th i..-nge of the vhole nation? It has been called a "floating piece ol p-r lry," and yet I know not if it has an intrinsic beauty beyond othei ci;5,ir-r::;. lis highest beauty is in what it symbolizes. It is because ii r .r-rts all, that ail gaze at it with delight and reverence. It is a piece of bunting lifted in the air; but it speaks sublimely v.: A t'.rtj p?.rt has a voice. Its stripes of alternate red and while ro' I.iim the; original union of thirteen slates to maintain the Dc ci-rstiorv cf Independence. Its stars of white on a field of blue j.i"cl.-jiin liiut union of states conslitutir g our national constellation v. l.i' b re- f i : -s a new star with every new state. The two togethci ;,. ;:nfy union p;it and present. I !.e veiy colon have a language which was officially recognizee bv our f;il!iers. White is for purity, red for vyfor, blue for justice ;i - I ;ll to-ylher bunting, stripes. Mars and colors, bbizing in th :-k nvke the flag of our country to be :heriohed by all our hearts lo be upheld by all our hands. I have aaid enough, ancj more than enough', to manifest the spir i' in v li.' h this fl-ig i.s now coirinii! texl lo your charge. It is llx 1 ! ': , pi.rc art' nirnple, dearer tr all hearts at this moment v I ii i lo inn gale and see no other ai:;n of hope upon the Btorrr fl''id wl.i'h rolls and r;ittles above it, save that which is its owr 1 ; 1 1 -1 1 , t hi"- le.ir r, a thousandfold dearer to us all than ever i ' "' ' ' f v!n.; gilded by the mruihi k: of yjrosi'erily and playini v.h i;. - ' hvts f peace. It will pceji for i I :,- f f...r more clo :i!y t ! 1 1 1 I can ipeak fr it. |