24 to the mountain pine. Florida and Georgia will lay the ribs and knees, North Carolina will careen and caulk the democrat’s vessel, Lake Superior mines will bolt and sheathe it, Maine will send its suit of spars, and Kentucky strain them with her hemp. Pennsylvania shall build the boiler and feed the fires beneath it, and the Great West shall victual New England sailors as they go floating round the world with a cargo of Rights, Intelligence and Freedom, samples of the failure of a Democracy. What a house this is to build, furnish and stock with comforts, to set wide open to starving spinners and weavers, colliers, peat-burners, all the landless and the hopeless, where they can come to hear our mother’s daily lessons of thrift, usefulness and the true dignity of man, as she goes in and out of all her rooms, cleanly, cheerily, helpfully, with hands whose touch is order, with a shape whose noble lines are full of grace, with a countenance that can leap from serenity to power, and unchain pure lightnings at those eyes. She is the mother of us all, Thanksgiving America, divorced from hideous wedlock with slavery, all her beauty coming back to her, all her gifts enhanced, and with a deeper meaning in her face than ever when she bids all her children again to the glittering board which she spreads between the Atlantic and Pacific seas.
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