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1682.

Penn's Colony Founded.

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and most loyal subjects. No Quaker blood was ever shed by Indian hand in the Pennsylvanian territory.

Soon after Penn's arrival, he invited the chief men of the Indian tribes to a conference. The meeting took place beneath a huge elm-tree. The pathless forest has long given way to the houses and streets of Philadelphia, but a marble monument points out to strangers the scene of this memorable interview. Penn, with a few companions, unarmed, and dressed according to the simple fashion of their sect, met the crowd of formidable savages. They met, he assured them, as brothers" on the broad pathway of good faith and good will.” No advantage was to be taken on either side. All was to be 'openness and love;" and Penn meant what he said. Strong in the power of truth and kindness, he bent the fierce savages of the Delaware to his will. They vowed "to live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the moon and the sun shall endure." Long years after, they were known to recount to strangers, with deep emotion, the words which Penn had spoken to them under the old elm-tree.

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The fame of Penn's settlement went abroad in all lands. An asylum was opened "for the good and oppressed of every nation." Of these there was no lack. Grave and God-fearing men from all the Protestant countries sought a home where they might live as conscience taught them. The new colony grew apace. Its natural advantages were tempting. Penn reported it as "a good land, with plentiful springs, the air clear and fresh, and an innumerable quantity of wild-fowl and fish. During the first year twenty-two vessels arrived, bringing two thousand persons. In three years Philadelphia was a town of six hundred houses.

When Penn, after a few years, revisited England, he was able truly to relate that "things went on sweetly with the Friends in Pennsylvania; that they increased finely in outward things and in wisdom."

OGLETHORPE AND GEORGIA.

The thirteen States which composed the original Union were Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

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Of these the latest born was Georgia. Only fifty years had passed since Penn established the Quaker State on the banks of the Delaware. But changes greater than centuries have sometimes wrought had taken place. The Revolu

tion had vindicated the liberties of the British people. The era of despotic government had closed. The real governing power was no longer the king, but the Parliament.

Among the members of Parliament during the rule of Sir Robert Walpole was one almost unknown to us

now, but deserving of honor beyond most men of his time. His name was James Oglethorpe. He was a soldier, and had fought against the Turks and in the great Marlborough wars against Louis XIV. In advanced life he became the friend of Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson urged him to write some account of his adventures. "I know no one," he said,

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1732.

Oglethorpe and Georgia.

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"whose life would be more interesting; if I were furnished with materials I should be very glad to write it." Edmund Burke considered him "a more extraordinary person than any he had ever read of." John Wesley "blessed God that ever he was born." Oglethorpe attained the great age of ninetysix, and died in the year 1785. The year before his death he attended the sale of Dr. Johnson's books, and was there

met by Samuel Rogers, the poet. "Even then," says Rogers, "he was the finest figure of a man you ever saw, but very, very old; the flesh of his face like parchment."

In Oglethorpe's time it was in the power of a creditor to imprison, according to his pleasure, the man who owed him money and was not able to pay it. It was a common circumstance that a man should be imprisoned during a long series of years for a trifling

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multitudes who but for him might have ended their lives in captivity.

This however did not content him. Liberty was an incon

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