sible the nation's wealth and greatness, is the application of machinery to agriculture.

Consider for a moment the ancient man with his sickle in one of our Western wheat fields alongside a modern combined header and thresher, which takes twenty feet at a "through" and drops the grain off in sacks, imagine, if you can, how many of these fellows with the sickle it would take to harvest our immense crops of 60,000,000 acres of wheat. Put your ancient farmer with his crooked stick for a plow in one of these wheat fields and count up, if you can, at some idle hour how many like him it would take to do the work of the man who to-day drives the modern steam gang-plow at the rate of ten miles an hour, taking twenty-four one-foot furrows at a "through."

If we to-day used the old hand methods and produced our present food supply, fifty millions of people more would need to be added to our population, and all of us would be required in our agricultural fields. Even then we should need to eat sparingly and to fast often, else the day of little harvest might come and we perish altogether.

Let your farm be a factory, where most of the crops raised shall be consumed as feed for live stock, that finished products may be made and sold as such, rather than as raw materials in which form they were raised. Such a system of farming will lead to permanent improvement of the soil; it will secure from it the highest efficiency. These things it means: there shall be diversity of crops; more live stock shall be bred and fed on the

factory-farm; the entire plant shall be managed as a business enterprise of the largest magnitude.

At the Tomb of Napoleon

Robert G. Ingersoll

This has long been a favorite for declamation, and naturally so, for it is in Ingersoll's best style. A vivid imagination, that will enable you to see, at the moment of speaking, the things described, is essential for effective delivery. Bring out naturally the changes. Note that each one of the incidents of Napoleon's career requires a different emotion. Don't ruin this part of the declamation, as is often done, by excessive gesturing. If you see the pictures vividly, your audience will also see them without constant gestures. The rate in the last paragraph should be much slower than the one preceding, where action is portrayed.

To show how military glory fails to bring happiness, Robert G. Ingersoll once said:

A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon. It is a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity. I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare Egyptian marble in which rests at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned upon the balustrade and thought of the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw him quelling the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the Bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the Pyramids. I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the

cavalry of the wild blasts scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster, driven by a million bayonets, clutched like a wild beast, banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king, and I saw him a prisoner on the rock at St. Helena, with his arms calmly folded behind his back, gazing steadfastly out upon the sad and solemn sea.

And I thought of all the widows and orphans he had made; of all the tears that had been shed for his glory; of the only woman who had ever loved him torn from his heart by the ruthless hand of ambition. And I said, I would rather have been a poor French peasant and worn wooden shoes, I would rather have lived in a hut with the vines growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun; yes, I would rather have been that poor peasant and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great.

The Making of Our Country's Flag

Franklin K. Lane

This selection has an interesting history. It was delivered by Mr. Lane, U. S. Secretary of the Interior, before an audience composed of government employees at Washington. Bring out the dialogue naturally, denoting the changes as each character speaks. The last paragraph is a strong climax, and requires sustained feeling and force.

THIS morning, as I passed into the Land Office, the flag dropped me a most cordial salutation, and from its rippling folds I heard it say: "Good morning, Mr. Flag-maker."

"I beg your pardon, Old Glory," I said, "you are mistaken. I am not the President of the United States, nor the Vice-President, nor a member of Congress, nor even a General in the Army. I am only a Government clerk."

"I greet you again, Mr. Flag-maker," replied the gay voice. "I know you well. You are the man who worked in the swelter of yesterday straightening out the tangle of that farmer's homestead in Idaho."

"No, I am not," I was forced to confess.

"Well, perhaps you are the one who discovered the mistake in that Indian contract in Oklahoma ?" "No, wrong again," I said.

"Well, you helped to clear that patent for the hopeful inventor in New York, or pushed the opening of that new ditch in Colorado, or made that mine in Illinois more safe, or brought relief to the old soldier in Wyoming. No matter, whichever

one of these beneficent individuals you may happen to be, I give you greeting, Mr. Flag-maker."

I was about to pass on, feeling that I was being mocked, when the flag stopped me with these words:

"You know, the world knows, that yesterday the President spoke a word that made happier the future of ten million peons in Mexico, but that act looms no larger on the flag than the struggle which the boy in Georgia is making to win the corn-club prize this summer. Yesterday the Congress spoke a word which will open the door of Alaska, but a mother in Michigan worked from sunrise until far into the night to give her boy an education. She, too, is making the flag. Yesterday we made a new law to prevent financial panics; yesterday, no doubt a school-teacher in Ohio taught his first letters to a boy who will write a song that will give cheer to the millions of our race. We are all making the flag."

"But," I said, impatiently, "these people were only working."

Then came the great shout from the flag. "Let me tell you who I am.

The work that we

I am not the flag,

do is the making of the real flag. at all. I am but its shadow. I am whatever you make me, nothing more. I am your belief in yourself, your dream of what a people may become. I live a changing life, a life of moods and passions, of heartbreaks and tired muscles. Sometimes I am strong with pride, when men do an honest work, fitting the rails together truly. Sometimes I droop, for then purpose has gone from