The crude ore lies in the mines of the hills all over the earth, potential in its possibilities, yet heavy, dull, inert, awaiting the day when man shall dig it from its hiding place, try it in the fires of the furnace, beat it on the anvil and transform it into the polished rail that ties together the ends of civilization, that will shape it into the massive engine that carries the fruits of industry and commerce to the uttermost parts of the world, that moulds it into the type and press that spreads intelligence and frees the soul, and that fashions it into the sword that frees the slave. And as the ore, so is man; he must be tried in the fires to be re-made for the work he is to do. The elements lie everywhere; circumstances and conditions weld and mould him into nations. He may creep on into the centuries dull, heavy, oppressed, carrying the thrall of the master, content that he shall eat and drink and sleep in the peace of ignorance, content that his master shall do his thinking and fighting, heedless who the master is, for the hands of all are heavy; taking his religion and his lot from him who rules and starves him.
Others there are who have lived for centuries watching the tide of civilization and the higher life sweep by them, too hotly engaged in the struggle of life and death to snatch the prizes as they go by. Such a land for the long centuries has been Ireland. Seven hundred years has Ireland felt the edge of the sword, and for seven centuries she has shown the naked breast and empty hand to the oppressor, beaten but unsubdued.
Into the fires of hate and oppression, into the hell of battle and persecution, into the inferno of famine, misgovernment, robbery, torture, and all the evils that cold, deliberate malice and wickedness could invent, Celt and Saxon, Norman and French, Dane and Norse, Englishman and Scotchman were thrown, to be fused and mingled, that, in the cooling, God might draw from the ashes the Irishman.
In all those long dark centuries his courage never failed, his hope never dimmed, his faith in God never faltered; he never acknowledged the right of might; he accepted nothing from the man who boasted himself the conqueror of him who is to-day unconquered; he believed the day would come, and it is coming, when the forces of evil would sink beneath the scorn of the world.
In this terrible school the Irishman was made; here was learned the infinite patience of his kind; here was bred that mental alertness, that wit and humor, tinged with the melancholy the world calls typical; here he drank into his blood the courage and flame and battle, that marches him to death with a song and a laugh; here every fiber and tissue of his elemental parts were made over, and upon the green sod, that blood-soaked soil, he preserved the virtues of the man who lives with God and nature.
THIS IS THE IRISHMAN.
The man born on Irish soil, breathing Irish air, drinking in the beauty of the hills and vales and streams and loughs of Ireland, listening to whispering winds of Irish seas, hearing the story and legend of the Irish days long gone, his heart and soul responding to the hopes of those around him, be his father English or Norman, Scotch or Welsh, Dane or Norse, French or Dutch, that man will grow into an Irishman. This is the verdict of history; this is the experience of seven centuries. Let them come from where they will, those who plunge into the Irish Lethe emerge on the other bank Irishmen, better betimes than the son of the older race, more Irish than the Irish.
Conditions, climate, environment are more potent than blood; they are the instruments with which God works. The normal man born on Irish soil and growing to manhood on it is an Irishman. Carry him to the most remote quarter of the earth, and he is still Irish, and his children even to the tenth generation.
On May 4, 1897, the sad tidings reached the society of the death of Admiral Meade, the President of the society. He was born in New York City, 1837; appointed midshipman Oct. 2, 1850; first sea service in sloop-of-war Preble, 1851; warrant as master and commission as lieutenant, 1858; lieutenant-commander, 1862; was a commander in 1870; commissioned captain in 1880; became a commodore in 1892, and rear-admiral in 1894; admitted to the society at its organization, Jan. 20, 1897, and chosen President-General of the same, being the first to hold the office.
The Meade family has been to a wonderful extent identified with the growth and development of our national life. A glance at the societies of which Admiral Meade was a member, will show the active and heroic part this family has taken in every movement since the settlement of the land.