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COMIC.

"YOUNG AMERICA" ON PROGRESS.

DOW, JR.

TEXT.-Drive on your horses.

MY HEARERS: The spirit of the age is drive ahead! If you upset your wagon, and spill your milk, keep up with the popular crowd, and leave the old, slow, careful coaches in the lurch. "Get out of the way, old Dan Tucker!" is all the go nowadays, musically, morally, and mechanically speaking. A flood is upon us that is fast washing all the old works of the old music masters into the dead sea of oblivion. The old heavy drama is too slow a coach altogether for the present day. A lighter and a faster one we must have a regular trotting concern. Poor Shakspeare! his house is sold, and he has stepped out. His taper shines with a sickly glare in the misty moonlight of the pasta mere glowworm upon a dark and distant moor. Alas! I am afraid he was not for a time, but for all day; and it's now about to be all day with him. But good-by, Bill; I must drive on my horses, or take the dust of unpopularity.

My friends, we are a fast people, and live in a fast age. Perhaps you may say we are only riding down hill on a handsled: the more we increase in velocity, the sooner we shall reach the bottom; and then have to get back again the best way we can. No; the way is comparatively level, and the road is clear. All we have to do is to keep up steam, and push ahead-propel. When I speak of keeping up the steam, I do not mean that you shall fire up with that liquid,

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the effect of which is to "put a brick in hat" your - in other words, to intoxicate-for thereby you may burst your boilers; but I have reference to maintaining that ambitious spirit of rapid progression, to which neither the everlasting mountains, nor the eternal hills, can set any bounds. Ours is already a great country, but we want to make it a big country. No pent-up Blackwell's Island shall contract our powers; but the whole boundless continent must belong to us. Republicanism, with his new, big boots, is bound to travel and no power on earth shall say, "Thus far shalt thou come, and no further." Emperors, kings, princes, and potentates! get out of the way, for we are coming with our fast horses! Clear the track for Young America! We intend honestly to vote ourselves farms; but if voting don't get them, by General Jupiter Jackson, we 'll take them whether or no! Shall we lumber along the road, and allow other nations to pass us with a whiz? No, never!-our horses are fast, and we must give the world an awing specimen of their speed. Take care then, by Basil! we are running a race with Britain for Cuba; and if you do n't look out, you may get injured. We must progress advance expatiate till two-thirds of the globe is ours; and then if we are compelled to stop by some unforeseen circumstance, what will be the consequence? Why, we shall fall to fighting among ourselves, and be brought back to the borders of primitive insignificance.

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My friends, the world plays us a great game, and every man must look out for his handful. For my part, I take my time, and cheerfully accept of what providence assigrs me. But don't be guided by me-a pauper dependent upon

chance.

Drive on your horses; keep ahead if possible, and let the laziest nation be the hindmost. So may it be!

INDEPENDENCE.

DOW, JR.

TEXT. Independence is the thing,

MY HEARERS:

And we're the boys to boast on't.

Next Thursday is the birthday of American Liberty the day upon which our star-spangled banner first waved in the fair breeze of Freedom- the day that the proud eagle of the mountain first looked down from his eyry on a free and independent nation the day upon which the fat, ragged, and saucy children of Columbia broke loose from the apron-strings of their mother-country, and kicked up their heels for joy, like so many colts released from the bondage of winter confinement. You ought, on this occasion, to be as full of glory as a gin bottle, that this blessed anniversary is about once more to dawn upon your heads, and find you reaping the harvest of those blessings which your fathers sowed in revolutionary soil, watered with their own blood, and manured with their own ashes. Yes, you ought to throw up your caps, and make the halls of Freedom ring with loud huzzas, and then sit down and meditate on the groans, and the pains of travail, which attended this mighty Republic during the delivery of her first-born- LIBERTY.

My friends, next Thursday the celebration will take place. Then the whole nation will be alive like a beggar's shirt; there will be a general stirring up of the genus homo from one end of the nation to another. The fires of enthusiasm will be kindled in every breast; and many of those who look in patriotic glory will, doubtless, supply themselves with the article at the booths round the Park.

But, my dear friends, this sixpenny patriotism is most horrible stuff; it is patriotism of the head, and not of the heart. It makes you feel too independent altogether. It induces

you to fight in times of peace, and takes all the starch out of your courage in times of war. While this artificial patriotism is effervescing in your cocoa-nuts, your boasts of independence are loud and clamorous; but when its spirit has evaporated, you are the veriest serviles that ever writhed under the lash of despotism. If you suppose, my friends, that the proper way to observe our national independence is by drinking brandy slings and gin cocktails, you are just as mistaken as the boy was who set a bear-trap to catch bed-bugs.

My dear hearers, I like to hear you boast of your independence, if it be not done in a vain and bragadocial spirit; and my gratuitous prayer is, that you may maintain it as long as you are permitted to squat this side of the deep, still river of death. To preserve your collective strength, your hearts, your feelings, and your pure sympathies must be all joined together, like the links of a log chain. You must all hang together like a string of fish, and stick to one another through thick and thin, like a bunch of burdocks in a bell-wether's fleece. Remember, my friends, that, with all your boasted independence, you are poor, weak, miserable, dependent beings. That same Almighty hand which provides you with soup and shirts, beef and breeches, can take them all from you in a little less than a short space of time, and leave you as naked as an apple-tree in winter. Yes, my friends, you must recollect that you are dependent, as well as independent; and that all the favors you receive are donations from heaven, brought down by angels of mercy, and distributed impartially among the grabbing, snatching, and thieving sons of sin.

EARLY RETIRING AND RISING.

DOW, JR.

TEXT. Early to bed, and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

MY HEARERS: The text I have chosen for my present discourse is most beautifully homely; but it contains the keen kernels of truth, without husk or chaff. All the brute creation close their peepers at the setting of the sun, save such as see best in the dark; and whose deeds are evil: why should man be an exception, since he is not an owl, nor a bat, that sleeps through the day for the want of properly-adapted optics? I see no reason under the planet of Jupiter, why you should not go to bed as soon as Evening empties her soot-bag upon the earth, and get out of it at the first blush of morn. Even ten hours sleep would do you no harm, after you get used to it; and I know that most of you are able to bear almost twice the quantity without a grunt.)

My dear friends, look at that man, the early riser. The rose of health blooms upon his cheek; his eye sparkles with the fire and glow of youth; his step is as elastic as though his legs were set with wire spiral-springs, and his body composed of Indian rubber. He is strong, too; ay, stronger than last winter's butter-stronger than an argument — stronger than a horse, and tougher than bull-beef. He can outjump, outwalk, outrun, and outlive any human being that never leaves his bed-chamber until nine o'clock, I do n't care where you bring him from whether from the hardy Greenland, or from the soft, sunny clime of the equator. He is infusible. He is not to be fried in his own fat by the melting heat of a midsummer's sun; and he can bare his bosom to the bitter northern blast, with no more sign of a shake or a shiver, than the Bunker Hill Monument in a snow-storm.

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