John G. Moore, John Brooks, Edward H. R. Lyman, Edward A. Quintard, Dr. Charles Inslee Pardee, and all the others to whom the limit of time will not allow a tribute worthy of their honorable lives and work.
We do well to recall upon such occasions as this, as an inspiration, the story of the emigration of our Pilgrim ancestors to America, involving, as it does, the whole modern development, diffusion and organization of English liberty, which lives and breathes and burns in legend and in song. It is unparalleled in the annals of the world, in the majesty of its purpose and the poverty of its means, the weakness of the beginning and the grandeur of the result. It is unparalleled in classic or modern history, in its exhibition of courage, patience, persistence, steadfastness in devotion to principle. Beginning with the hasty flight from Lincolnshire to Holland, the peaceful life in exile, the perilous ocean voyage in a crazy craft in mid-winter, the frail settlement at Plymouth—a shred of the most tenacious life in Europe—floating over the waste of waters and clinging on the bleakest edge of America, beset by Indians, wild beasts and disease, starving, frozen and dying, remote from succor and beyond the knowledge of their kin, like a seed from the Old World floated to the New by ocean currents, containing the elements which, like the mustard seed, should yield a hundred fold and overspread and dominate a continent, until the prophecy familiar to the Pilgrims should be fulfilled: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great nation." [Applause.]
The Archbishop and Ministers of King James, who drove these men and the 26,000 who followed them, the flower of the English Puritans, from England, like Louis XIV, when he sent the Huguenots into exile by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, furnished an example to that master of the school where the Eton system of flogging prevailed. On a Saturday morning the delinquents were called up to be flogged. One of the boys inquired, "What am I to be punished for, sir?" "I don't know, but your name is down on the list, and I shall have to go through with it," and the flogging was administered. The boy made such a fuss that the master looked over the list on his return to his rooms, to see whether he had made a mistake, and found that he had whipped the confirmation class. [Laughter.]
They brought the foundation of a free people, they converted the wilderness of a continent, they established the New England home, rich only in piety, education, liberty, industry and character, from which has gone out the best inspiration of the Republic they forecast.
There have been times in the later history of the country when the Puritan was not altogether popular, and the feeling entertained toward him and his descendants was expressed like that at a Liberal meeting in Scotland, where the proceedings were being opened by prayer, and the reverend gentleman prayed fervently that "the Liberals might hang a' thegither." He was interrupted by a loud and irreverent "Amen" from the back of the hall. "Not, O Lord," went on the clergyman, "in the sense which that profane scoffer would have ye to understand, but that they may hang thegither in accord and concord." "I dinna care so much what kind of a cord it is," struck in the voice, "sae lang as it is a strong cord." [Laughter.]
Fortunately for them, and perhaps for the world, opinions differed enough to give them a chance. "You can't always tell," said a man, at the end of a discussion, "what one's neighbors think of him." "I came mighty near knowing once," said a citizen, with a reminiscent look, "but the jury disagreed." [Laughter.] But with the Puritans, when discussion ceased and other arguments began, the result was like that when the lady said to her clergyman, who was paying her an afternoon call, of her little boy, who bore the marks of a struggle: "Johnny has been a bad little boy to-day; he has been fighting and has got a black eye." "So I see," said the clergyman. "Come into the next room with me, Johnny, and I will pray with you." "You had better go home and pray with your own little boy, he has got two black eyes." [Laughter.]
The forty-one families who came in the "Mayflower," and the thousand of English Puritans who came in the next decade, are not entitled to all the credit for the development of the country, for there were others of their kind in Virginia, and, unlike the Boers of the Transvaal, they gave later comers a show. [Laughter and applause.] The process of appropriation by one people of a country, even if they are the first settlers, can be carried too far even for advantage to them or to inspire credulity in its possibility. A returned traveller, relating his adventures, said: "The most remarkable experience I ever had occurred a short time ago in Russia. I was sleighing on the Steppes, miles from my destination, when, to my horror, I found I was pursued by a pack of wolves; I fired blindly into the pack, killing one of them, and, to my relief, saw the others stop to devour him; after doing this, however, they still came on. I repeated the shot, with the same result, and each shot gave me an opportunity to whip up my horses. Finally there was only one wolf left, yet on it came with its fierce eyes glaring in anticipation of a good hot supper." "Hold on, there," said a man who had been listening, "by your way of reckoning, that last wolf must have had the rest of the pack inside of him." [Laughter.] "Well," said the traveller, "now I remember it, he did wobble a bit." [Laughter.]
It was wise in our forefathers to welcome those who, like them, were pioneers in the wilderness, to give them equal rights and to assimilate them into American citizenship. The qualities of which we boast in our Pilgrim ancestors still linger with their descendants, though among 75,000,000 of people there may not be enough to go around. The expectation of it would be what Dr. Johnson said of a man who had married his third wife, as the "triumph of hope over experience." [Laughter.] But we must, on occasions like this, make some assumptions, like the lady of whom a friend said: "She puts on a good deal of style now she has a box at the opera." "Good gracious," said the other lady, "the woman must put on something when she goes to the opera." [Laughter.]
Too many, it is true, deserve to be under the suspicion expressed by the market-man who was exhibiting his array of "newly-laid eggs, fresh eggs, and plain eggs," to a young housekeeper, who finally asked, as to the latter: "Are these eggs really fresh?" "Well, madam," he replied, "we call them Saturday night eggs; they've tried all the week to be good." [Laughter.] And we are so compromising and tender in dealing with doubtful subjects that we follow the advice given to a man who asked how to tell a bad egg: Well, if you have anything to tell to a bad egg you had better break it gently. [Laughter.] Some have that kind of a conscience which was described by a small boy as the thing that makes you feel sorry when you get found out, and their idea of commercial integrity was expressed by the man who said, proudly, "At last I can look the world in the face as an honest man. I owe no one anything; the last claim against me is outlawed." Some aim high, but from the result they must have shut their eyes when they fired, and although as a Nation we pride ourselves upon our common sense, so that we can truly say not every man is made a fool of, the observer of men and things might say every man has the raw material in him. [Laughter.]
But seriously speaking, we abate in no degree the claim that the best traditions of our forefathers have not degenerated in these modern days. Our hearts beat with a quicker throb at the recollection of the achievements of these last pregnant years; the eye lights with enthusiasm at the sight of the flag whose fluttering folds have witnessed such scenes of danger and inspired such daring deeds, and our voices shout in unison of acclaim the achievements of what a wondering African called "the angry Saxon race." [Applause.]