I announce at this table an
axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress:-
The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries.
Corollary. It was the Polish LANCE that left Poland at last with
nothing of her own to bound.
"Dropped from her nerveless grasp the SHATTERED SPEAR!"
What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for liberty with a
fifteen-foot pole between her and the breasts of her enemies? If
she had but clutched the old Roman and young American weapon, and
come to close quarters, there might have been a chance for her; but
it would have spoiled the best passage in "The Pleasures of Hope."
- Self-made men?--Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and
respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in
that way than not to be made at all. Are any of you younger people
old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at
Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with
his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one
could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in
outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A
regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was
a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people
praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had
succeeded.
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