Standard Selections: A Collection and Adaptation of Superior Productions from Best Authors for Use in Class Room and on the Platform
General
Standard Selections: A Collection and Adaptation of Superior Productions from Best Authors for Use in Class Room and on the Platform
Recitations
Gentlemen have said that it was I who inspired the Hungarian people. I
cannot accept the praise. No, it was not I who inspired the Hungarian
people, it was the Hungarian people who inspired me. Whatever I thought
and still think, whatever I felt and still feel, is but the pulsation of
that heart which in the breast of my people beats. The glory of battle
is for the historic leaders. Theirs are the laurels of immortality. And
yet in encountering the danger, they knew that, alive or dead, their
names would, on the lips of people, forever live.
How different the fortune, how nobler, how purer the heroism of those
children of the people who went forth freely to meet death in their
country's cause, knowing that where they fell they would lie
undistinguished and unknown, their names unhonored and unsung.
Animated, nevertheless, by the love of freedom and the fatherland, they
went forth calmly singing their national anthems till, rushing upon the
batteries whose cross fires vomited upon them death and destruction,
they took them without firing a shot,--those who fell falling with the
shout, "Hurrah for Hungary!" And so they died by thousands--the unnamed
demigods! Such is the people of Hungary. Still it is said it is I who
have inspired them. No! a thousand times, no! It is they who have
inspired me.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS[42]
WILLIAM MCKINLEY
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to be again in the City of Buffalo and
exchange greetings with her people, to whose generous hospitality I am
not a stranger, and with whose good will I have been repeatedly and
signally honored. Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They
record the world's advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise
and intellect of the people and quicken human genius. They go into the
home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open
mighty storehouses of information to the student.
The wisdom and energy of all the nations are none too great for the
world's work. The success of art, science, industry and invention is an
international asset and a common glory. After all, how near one to the
other is every part of the world. Modern inventions have brought into
close relation widely separated peoples, and made them better
acquainted. Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist,
but distances have been effaced.
Swift ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. They invade
fields which a few years ago were impenetrable. The world's products are
exchanged as never before, and with increasing transportation facilities
come increasing knowledge and trade. Prices are fixed with mathematical
precision by supply and demand. The world's selling prices are regulated
by market and crop reports. We travel greater distances in a shorter
space of time, and with more ease than was ever dreamed of by the
fathers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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