Roussillon's
nose.
The orator winced and jerked his head back, but nobody saw it,
save perhaps Father Gibault, who laughed heartily.
Great sayings come suddenly, unannounced and unexpected. They have
the mysterious force of prophetic accident combined with happy
economy of phrasing. The southern blood in M. Roussillon's veins
was effervescing upon his brain; his tongue had caught the fine
freedom and abandon of inspired oratory. He towered and glowed;
words fell melodiously from his lips; his gestures were
compelling, his visage magnetic. In conclusion he said:
"Frenchmen, America is the garden-spot of the world and will one
day rule it, as did Rome of old. Where freedom makes her home,
there is the centre of power!"
It was in a little log church on the verge of a hummock
overlooking a marshy wild meadow. Westward for two thousand miles
stretched the unbroken prairies, woods, mountains, deserts
reaching to the Pacific; southward for a thousand miles rolled the
green billows of the wilderness to the warm Gulf shore; northward
to the pole and eastward to the thin fringe of settlements beyond
the mountains, all was houseless solitude.
If the reader should go to Vincennes to-day and walk southward
along Second Street to its intersection with Church Street, the
spot then under foot would be probably very near where M.
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