Page:Education and Life; (IA educationlife00bakerich).pdf/233

 *box, and calling the soldiers, who bore the dead bodies by, untaught knaves, "to bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse betwixt the wind and his nobility." Hotspur adds: " It made me mad to see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, and tell me but for these vile guns, he would himself have been a soldier." I mean no undue disrespect to educated and refined gentlemen who stand aloof from the political field because it smells of "villainous saltpetre," and is altogether too dirty and dangerous for their respectability and ease. The intelligence of the nation should guide the nation, and any educated man who stands by and views with indifference or timidity the struggle for the triumph of the best elements of society and the best principles, deserves the objurgations of every valiant Hotspur in the land. A minister recently said: "It is as much your duty to attend the primaries as the prayer-meeting." I would have educated young men take a hand in every contest where order and justice and honesty are endangered; I would have them independently take a stand with whatever party or faction, at a given time, may represent the best cause. I would have them measure public service and public reward by the strict standard of equity; I would have them recognize the duty of active practical citizenship.

The people are keen to detect wrong aims in political life, and in their minds they speedily relegate the politician who shows himself unworthy to the plane of his motives. They as speedily recognize probity and patriotism and devotion to the commonwealth, and the truly royal men in public life are enshrined in their hearts and are made an example