It reminded me of an old friend of mind, Judge Dooley, of Georgia, who was a very provoking fellow and was always getting challenged to duels, and never fighting them. He always got out of it by being smarter than the other fellow. One day he went out to fight a man with one leg, and he insisted on bringing along a bee gum and sticking one leg into it so that he would have no more flesh exposed than his antagonist. On the occasion I am thinking of, however, he went out to fight with a man who had St. Vitus’s dance, and the fellow stood before him holding the pistol cocked and primed, his hand shaking. The judge went quietly and got a forked stick and stuck it up in front of him.

“What’s that for?” said the man.

“I want you to shoot with a rest, so that if you hit me you will bore only one hole. If you shoot that way you will fill me full of holes with one shot.”

I was reminded of that and forced to tell my friends that I could not think of speaking on top of Plymouth Rock without a rest.

But I said this, and I want to say it here again, for I never knew how true it was till I had heard myself say it and had taken the evidence of my voice, as well as my thoughts—that there is no spot on earth that I had rather have seen than that. I have a boy who is the pride and the promise of my life, and God knows I want him to be a good citizen and a good man, and there is no spot in all this broad Republic nor in all this world where I had rather have him stand to learn the lessons of right citizenship, of individual liberty, of fortitude and heroism and justice, than the spot on which I stood this morning, reverent and uncovered.

Now, I do not intend to make a political speech, although when Mr. Cleveland expressed some surprise at seeing me here, I said: “Why, I am at home now; I was out visiting last night.” I was visiting mighty clever folks, but still I was visiting. Now I am at home.

It is the glory and the promise of Democracy, it seems to me, that its success means more than partisanry can mean. I have been told that what I said helped the Democratic party in this State. Well, the chief joy that I feel at that, and that you feel, is that, beyond that and above it, it helped those larger interests of the Republic, and those essential interests of humanity that for seventy years the Democratic party has stood for, being the guarantor and the defender.

Now, Mr. Cleveland last night made—I trust this will not get into the papers—one of the best Democratic speeches I ever heard in my life, and yet all around sat Republicans cheering him to the echo. It was just simply because he pitched his speech on a high key, and because he said things that no man, no matter how partisan he was, could gainsay.

Now it seems to me we do not care much for political success in the South—for a simple question of spoils or of patronage. We wanted to see one Democratic administration since General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, just to prove to the people of this world that the South was not the wrong-headed and impulsive and passionate section she was represented to be. I heard last night from Mr. Cleveland, our great leader, as he sat by me, that he held to be the miracle of modern history the conservatism and the temperance and the quiet with which the South accepted his election, and the few office-seekers in comparison that came from that section to besiege and importune him.

Now it seems to me that the struggle in this country, the great fight, the roar and din of which we already hear, is a fight against the consolidation of power, the concentration of capital, the diminution of local sovereignty and the dwarfing of the individual citizen. Boston is the home of the one section of a nationalist party that claims that the remedy for all our troubles, the way in which Dives, who sits inside the gate, shall be controlled, and the poor Lazarus who sits outside shall be lifted up, is for the government to usurp the functions of the citizen and take charge of all his affairs. It is the Democratic doctrine that the citizen is the master and that the best guarantee of this government is not garnered powers at the capital, but diffused intelligence and liberty among the people.