Nobly dare the wildest storm, Stem the hardest gale, Brave of heart and strong of arm, You will never fail.
When the world is cold and dark, Keep an aim in view; And toward the beacon-mark Paddle your own canoe.
Every wave that bears you on To the silent shore, From its sunny source has gone To return no more.
Then let not an hour's delay Cheat you of your due; But, while it is called to-day, Paddle your own canoe.
If your birth denies you wealth, Lofty state and power, Honest fame and hardy health Are a better dower.
But if these will not suffice, Golden gain pursue; And to gain the glittering prize, Paddle your own canoe.
Would you wrest the wreath of fame From the hand of fate?
Would you write a deathless name With the good and great?
Would you bless your fellow-men?
Heart and soul imbue With the holy task, and then Paddle your own canoe.
Would you crush the tyrant wrong, In the world's free fight?
With a spirit brave and strong, Battle for the right.
And to break the chains that bind The many to the few-- To enfranchise slavish mind-- Paddle your own canoe.
Nothing great is lightly won, Nothing won is lost; Every good deed, nobly done, Will repay the cost.
Leave to Heaven, in humble trust, All you will to do; But if you succeed, you must Paddle your own canoe.
JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE
John Cabell Breckinridge, the youngest of the American vice-presidents, distinguished as a public speaker, was born near Lexington, Kentucky, January 21, 1821. He was educated at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, and then studied law at Transylvania University. Breckinridge lived at Burlington, Iowa, for a year, when he returned to Lexington, Kentucky, to practice law. He served in the Mexican War, and was afterwards a member of Congress. In 1856, when he was about thirty-five years of age, he was elected vice-president of the United States, with James Buchanan as president. In 1860 Breckinridge was the candidate of the Southern slaveholders for the presidency, but Abraham Lincoln received 180 electoral votes to his 72, Kentucky failing to support him. He took his seat in the United States Senate in March, 1861, as the successor of John J. Crittenden, and he at once became the champion of the Southern Confederacy in that body. He was expelled from the Senate on December 4, 1861, on which occasion he delivered his farewell address. Breckinridge then went South. He was appointed a major-general, and he saw service at Shiloh, Chickamauga, Cold Harbor, Nashville, and in several other great battles. From January to April, 1865, General Breckinridge was Jefferson Davis's secretary of war. When the Confederacy surrendered, he made his escape to Europe, where he remained for three years, when he returned to Lexington and to his law practice. General Breckinridge died at Lexington, Kentucky, May 17, 1875. Ten years later an imposing statue was erected to his memory on Cheapside, Lexington. He was a man of most attractive personality, an eloquent orator, a capable advocate, a brave soldier, an honest public servant, the greatest member of the house of Breckinridge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Library of Oratory_ (New York, 1902, v. x); J.
C. S. Blackburn's oration upon Breckinridge; _McClure's Magazine_ (January, 1901). For many years Col. J. Stoddard Johnston has been engaged upon a life of Breckinridge.
HENRY CLAY
[From _Obituary Addresses on the Occasion of the Death of the Hon.
Henry Clay_ (Washington, 1852)]
Imperishably associated as his name has been for fifty years with every great event affecting the fortunes of our country, it is difficult to realize that he is indeed gone forever. It is difficult to feel that we shall see no more his noble form within these walls--that we shall hear no more his patriot tones, now rousing his countrymen to vindicate their rights against a foreign foe, now imploring them to preserve concord among themselves. We shall see him no more. The memory and fruits of his services alone remain to us.
Amidst the general gloom, the Capitol itself looks desolate, as if the genius of the place had departed. Already the intelligence has reached almost every quarter of the Republic, and a great people mourn with us to-day, the death of their most illustrious citizen. Sympathizing as we do deeply with his family and friends, yet private affliction is absorbed in the general sorrow. The spectacle of a whole community lamenting the loss of a great man, is far more touching than any manifestation of private grief. In speaking of a loss which is national, I will not attempt to describe the universal burst of grief with which Kentucky will receive these tidings. The attempt would be vain to depict the gloom that will cover her people, when they know that the pillar of fire is removed, which has guided their footsteps for the life of a generation.
The life of Mr. Clay, sir, is a striking example of the abiding fame which surely awaits the direct and candid statesman. The entire absence of equivocation or disguise, in all his acts, was his master-key to the popular heart; for while the people will forgive the errors of a bold and open nature, he sins past forgiveness who deliberately deceives them. Hence Mr. Clay, though often defeated in his measures of policy, always secured the respect of his opponents without losing the confidence of his friends. He never paltered in a double cause. The country was never in doubt as to his opinions or his purposes. In all the contests of his time, his position on great public questions was as clear as the sun in a cloudless sky. Sir, standing by the grave of this great man, and considering these things, how contemptible does appear the mere legerdemain of politics! What a reproach is his life on that false policy which would trifle with a great and upright people! If I were to write his epitaph, I would inscribe, as the highest eulogy, on the stone which shall mark his resting-place, "Here lies a man who was in the public service for fifty years, and never attempted to deceive his countrymen."
While the youth of America should imitate his noble qualities, they may take courage from his career, and note the high proof it affords that, under our equal institutions, the avenues of honour are open to all. Mr. Clay rose by the force of his own genius, unaided by power, patronage, or wealth. At an age when our young men are usually advanced to the higher schools of learning, provided only with the rudiments of an English education, he turned his steps to the West, and amid the rude collisions of a border-life, matured a character whose highest exhibitions were destined to mark eras in his country's history. Beginning on the frontiers of American civilization, the orphan boy, supported only by the consciousness of his own powers, and by the confidence of the people, surmounted all the barriers of adverse fortune, and won a glorious name in the annals of his country.
Let the generous youth, fired with honorable ambition, remember that the American system of government offers on every hand bounties to merit. If, like Clay, orphanage, obscurity, poverty, shall oppress him; yet if, like Clay, he feels the Promethean spark within, let him remember that his country, like a generous mother, extends her arms to welcome and to cherish every one of her children whose genius and worth may promote her prosperity or increase her renown.
Mr. Speaker, the signs of woe around us, and the general voice announce that another great man has fallen. Our consolation is that he was not taken in the vigour of his manhood, but sank into the grave at the close of a long and illustrious career. The great statesmen who have filled the largest space in the public eye, one by one are passing away. Of the three great leaders of the Senate, one alone remains, and he must follow soon. We shall witness no more their intellectual struggles in the American Forum; but the monuments of their genius will be cherished as the common property of the people, and their names will continue to confer dignity and renown upon their country.
Not less illustrious than the greatest of these will be the name of Clay--a name pronounced with pride by Americans in every quarter of the globe; a name to be remembered while history shall record the struggles of modern Greece for freedom, or the spirit of liberty burn in the South American bosom; a living and immortal name--a name that would descend to posterity without the aid of letters, borne by tradition from generation to generation. Every memorial of such a man will possess a meaning and a value to his countrymen. His tomb will be a hallowed spot. Great memories will cluster there, and his countrymen, as they visit it, may well exclaim--
"Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, Shrines to no creed or code confined; The Delphian vales, the Palestines, The Meccas of the mind."
JAMES WEIR, Sr.
James Weir, Senior, an early Kentucky romancer, was born at Greenville, Kentucky, June 16, 1821. He was the son of James Weir, a Scotch-Irish merchant and quasi-author. He was graduated from Centre College, Danville, Kentucky, in 1840, and later studied law at Transylvania University. He engaged in the practice of law at Owensboro, Kentucky--first known as the Yellow Banks--and on March 1, 1842, he was married to Susan C. Green, daughter of Judge John C.
Green of Danville. Weir wrote a trilogy of novels which do not deserve the obscurity into which they have fallen. They were called _Lonz Powers, or the Regulators_ (Philadelphia, 1850, two vols.); _Simon Kenton, or the Scout's Revenge_ (Philadelphia, 1852); and _The Winter Lodge, or Vow Fulfilled_ (Philadelphia, 1854). All of these romances were thrown upon historical backgrounds, and they created much favorable criticism at the time of their publication. Weir wrote numerous sketches and verses, but these were his only published books.
Business, bar sufficient to all literary labors, pressed hard upon him, and he practically abandoned literature. In 1869 he was elected president of the Owensboro and Russellville railroad; and for nearly forty years he was president of the Deposit bank at Owensboro. Weir died at Owensboro, Kentucky, January 31, 1906. His son, Dr. James Weir, Junior, was an author of considerable reputation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _History of Kentucky_, by R. H. Collins (Covington, Kentucky, 1882); letters of Mr. Paul Weir to the Author.
SIMON KENTON
[From _Simon Kenton; or, The Scout's Revenge_ (Philadelphia, 1852)]
By the side of the Sergeant [Duffe, in whose North Carolina home the tale opens] sat a stout, powerfully framed, and wild-looking being, whose visage, though none of the whitest (for it was very unfashionably sunburnt), betokened an Anglo-Saxon; whilst his dress and equipments went far to proclaim him a savage; and, had it not been for his language (though none of the purest), it would have been somewhat difficult to settle upon his race! In a court of justice, especially in the South, where color is considered _prima facie_ evidence of slavery, we wouldn't have given much for his chance of freedom. Simon Kenton, or Sharp-Eye, for such were the titles given him by his parents, and by his border companions, and he answered readily to them both, in his dress and appearance, presented a striking picture of the daring half savage characters everywhere to be found at that day (and, indeed, at the present time) upon our extreme western frontier. A contemporary of Boone, and one of the most skillful and determined scouts of Kentucky, or the "Cane-Land," as it was then sometimes called, Kenton's dress, composed of a flowing hunting-shirt of tanned buckskin, with pants, or rather leggins, of the same material--a broad belt, buckled tight around his waist, supporting a tomahawk and hunting-knife--a gay pair of worked moccasins, with a capacious shot-pouch swung around his neck and ornamented with long tufts of black hair, resembling very much, as in truth they were, the scalp-locks of the western Indian, gave him a decidedly savage appearance, and declared at once his very recent return from a dangerous life upon the frontier. He had been a fellow-soldier of Duffe during the Revolution; but, after the war, being of an adventurous and daring disposition, had wandered out West, where he had already become famous in the many bloody border frays between the savage and early settler, and was considered second, in skill and cool bravery, to no scout of the "Dark and Bloody Ground."
On a visit to the Old States, as they were called at that period to distinguish them from the more recent settlements in the West, Kenton was sojourning, for the time, with his old friend and companion in arms, not without a hope that, by his glowing descriptions of the flowing savannas beyond the Blue Ridge, and of the wild freedom of a frontier life, he might induce the latter to bear him company upon his return to Kentucky. Six feet two inches in his moccasins, with a well-knit sinewy frame to match his great height, and with a broad, full, and open face, tanned and swarthy, it is true, yet pleasant and bright, with a quiet, good-humored smile and lighted up by a deep-blue eye, and with heavy masses of auburn hair, and whiskers sweeping carelessly around and about his countenance, Kenton exhibited in his person, as he sat before the fire of the Sergeant, a splendid specimen of the genuine borderer, and no wonder the Indian brave trembled at the redoubted name of Sharp-Eye, and instinctively shrank from a contest with so formidable a foe. Although, now surrounded by friends, and in the house of an old comrade, the scout, as was natural with him from long custom, still held grasped in his ready hand the barrel of his trusty rifle, from which he never parted, not even when he slept, and, at the same time, kept his ears wide awake to all suspicious sounds, as if yet in the land of the enemy, and momentarily expecting the wild yell of his accustomed foe. Notwithstanding he was well skilled in every species of woodcraft, an adept at following the trail of the wild beasts of the forest, and familiar with all the cunning tricks of the wily savage; yet, strange as it may appear, he was the most credulous of men, and as simple as a child in what is generally termed the "ways of the world," or, in other words, the tortuous windings of policy and hypocrisy, so often met with under the garb of civilization. Indeed, it has been said of him "that his confidence in man, and his credulity were such that the same man might cheat him twenty times; and, if he professed friendship, he might cheat him still!" At the feet of the scout lay the inseparable companion of all his journeyings, his dog; and Bang, for such was the name of this prime favorite, was as rough a specimen of the canine species as his master's countenance was of the face divine! But Bang was, nevertheless, a very knowing dog, and, ever and anon, now as his master became excited in his descriptions of western scenes and adventures, he would raise his head and look intelligently at the narrator, and so wisely did he wag his shaggy tail, that more than once the warm-hearted hunter, breaking off suddenly in his narrative, would pat his trusty comrade upon the head, and swear, with a hearty emphasis, "that Bang knew all about it!"
MARY E. W. BETTS
Mrs. Mary E. Wilson Betts, the author of a single lyric which has preserved her name, was born at Maysville, Kentucky, in January, 1824.
Miss Wilson was educated in the schools of her native town, and, on July 10, 1854, she was married to Morgan L. Betts, editor of the _Detroit Times_. She died at Maysville two months later, or on September 19, 1854, of congestion of the brain, believed to have been caused by the great gunpowder explosion near Maysville on August 13, 1854. Mrs. Betts's husband died in the following October. While she wrote many poems, her brief tribute to Col. William Logan Crittenden, kinsman of John J. Crittenden, who was a member of Lopez's filibustering expedition to Cuba, in 1850, has preserved her name for the present generation. Colonel Crittenden was captured by the Cubans, shot, and his brains beaten out. Before the shots were fired he was requested to kneel, but he made his now famous reply: "A Kentuckian kneels to none except his God, and always dies facing his enemy!"
When, in her far-away Kentucky home, Mrs. Betts learned of Crittenden's fate, she wrote her tribute to the memory of the gallant son of Kentucky, which was first printed in the _Maysville Flag_. The editor introduced the little poem thus: "The lines which follow are from one of Kentucky's most gifted daughters of song. Upon gentler themes the tones of her lyre have oft been heard to breathe their music. To sing to the warrior, its cords have ne'er been strung till now; the tragic death, and last eloquent words of the gallant Crittenden, have caused this tribute to his memory." This poem has been republished many times and in various forms. During the Spanish-American war in 1898 it was often seen in print as being typical of the courage of the soldiers of this country.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba_, by A. C. Quisenberry (Louisville, 1906); _Kentuckians in History and Literature_, by J.
W. Townsend (New York, 1907).
A KENTUCKIAN KNEELS TO NONE BUT GOD!
[From _The Maysville Flag_]
Ah! tyrants, forge your chains at will-- Nay! gall this flesh of mine: Yet, thought is free, unfettered still, And will not yield to thine!
Take, take the life that Heaven gave, And let my heart's blood stain thy sod; But know ye not Kentucky's brave Will kneel to none but God!
You've quenched fair freedom's sunny light, Her music tones have stilled, And with a deep and darkened blight, The trusting heart has filled!
Then do you think that I will kneel Where such as you have trod?
Nay! point your cold and threatening steel-- I'll kneel to none but God!
As summer breezes lightly rest Upon a quiet river, And gently on its sleeping breast The moonbeams softly quiver-- Sweet thoughts of home light up my brow When goaded with the rod; Yet, these cannot unman me now-- I'll kneel to none but God!