May Twenty-Fifth A rich and well-stored mind is the only true philosopher's stone, extracting pure gold from all the base material around. It can create its own beauty, wealth, power, happiness. It has no dreary solitudes. The past ages are its possession, and the long line of the illustrious dead are all its friends. GEORGE DAVIS May Twenty-Sixth Cease firing! There are here no foes to fight! Grim war is o'er and smiling peace now reigns; Cease useless strife--no matter who was right-- True magnanimity from hate abstains. Cease firing! MAJOR WILLIAM MEADE PEGRAM _The last Confederate army, under General Kirby Smith, surrenders at Baton Rouge, 1865_ May Twenty-Seventh Representing nothing on God's earth now, And naught in the water below it, As a pledge of a nation that's dead and gone, Keep it, dear Captain, and show it. Show it to those who will lend an ear To the tale this paper can tell Of liberty born, of the patriot's dream, Of a storm-cradled nation that fell. Too poor to possess the precious ores, And too much of a stranger to borrow, We issued to-day our promise to pay, And hoped to repay on the morrow. MAJOR S. A. JONAS (_From "Lines on the back of a Confederate note"_) May Twenty-Eighth Old time negroes intuitively knew who "belonged" to them and who did not. The following incident is told of Senator Sumner's visit to friends at Gallatin, Tennessee, some years before the war; the colloquy is between the Senator and "Old Virginia Jeff:" "Jeff, I hear you call all the white folks down here 'Marse'--'Marse Henry,' 'Marse John' or what not, isn't that true?" "Yas, sah." "And you always call me 'Mister Sumner.' Now, Jeff, here's a quarter. During the rest of my visit you call me Marse Charles, you hear?" MAJOR JOHN C. WRENSHALL _P. G. T. Beauregard born, 1818_ May Twenty-Ninth If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! PATRICK HENRY _Patrick Henry born, 1736_ May Thirtieth Those who oppose slavery in Kansas do not base their opposition upon any philanthropic principles, or any sympathy for the African race. For, in their so-called Constitution, framed at Topeka, they deem that entire race so inferior and degraded as to exclude them all forever from Kansas, whether they be bond or free. ROBERT J. WALKER _Kansas given territorial rights by Congress, 1854_ May Thirty-First SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE