dren are gathered, and to drape them there, that the eyes of the young and of the old may look upon that flag as one of the familiar adornments of the American home. Have we not learned that not stocks nor bonds nor stately houses nor lands nor the product of the mill, is our country? It is the spiritual thought that is in our minds. Our country is the flag and what it stands for its glorious history. It is the fireside and the home. It is the high thoughts that are in our hearts, born of the inspiration which comes with the stories of our fathers, the martyrs to liberty. It is the graveyards into which our careful country has gathered the unconscious dust of those who have died for its defense. It is these things that we love and call our country, rather than things, however rated, that can be touched or handled. To elevate the morals of our people; to hold up the law as that sacred thing, which, like the ark of God of old, cannot be touched by irreverent hands; to frown upon every attempt to displace its supremacy; to unite our people in all that makes home pure and honorable, as well as to give our energies to the material advancement of the country: these services we may render every day; and out of this great demonstration do we not all feel like reconsecrating ourselves to the love and service of our country? THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH 139 THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH GEORGE F. HOAR Taken from Senator Hoar's speech at the banquet of the New England Society, held at Charleston, S. C., December 22, 1898. Printed by permission. The American people have learned to know, as never before, the quality of the Southern stock, and to value its noble contribution to the American character; its courage in war, its attachment to home and State, its love of rural life, its capacity for great affection and generous emotion, its aptness for command; above all, its constancy, that virtue above all virtues, without which no people can long be either great or free. After all, the fruit of this vine has a flavor not to be found in other gardens. In the great and magnificent future which is before our country, you are to contribute a large share both of strength and beauty. The best evidence of our complete reconciliation is that there is no subject that we need to hurry by with our fingers on our lips. The time has come when Americans-North, South, East, and West-may discuss any question of public interest in a friendly and quiet spirit, without recrimination and without heat, each understanding the other, each striving to help the other, as men who are bearing a common burden and looking forward with a common hope. I know that this is the feeling of the people of the North. I think I know that it is the feeling of the people of the South. In our part of the country we have to deal with the great problems of the strife between labor and capital, and of the government of cities where vast masses of men born on foreign soil, of different nationalities and of different races, strangers to American principles, to American ideas, to American history, are gathered together to exercise the unaccustomed functions of selfgovernment in an almost unrestricted liberty. You have to deal with a race problem rendered more difficult still by a still larger difference in the physical and intellectual qualities of the two races whom Providence has brought together. If there be a single lesson which the people of this country have learned from their wonderful and crowded history, it is that the North and the South are indispensable to each other. They are the blades of mighty shears, worthless apart, but, when bound by an indissoluble Union, powerful, irresistible, and terrible as the shears of Fate; like the shears of Atropos, severing every thread and tangled web of evil, cutting out for humanity its beautiful garments of Liberty and Light from the cloth her dread sisters spin and weave. THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT ROBERT C. WINTHROP The corner-stone of the Washington Monument at the national capital was laid on the Fourth of July, 1848. Mr. Winthrop, who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, was chosen to deliver the oration on that occasion. The following extract is taken from his address. Let us seize this occasion to renew to each other our vows of allegiance and devotion to the American THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT 141 Union, and let us recognize, in our common title to the name and fame of Washington, and in our veneration for his example and advice, the all-sufficient centripetal power which shall hold the thick-clustering stars of our confederacy in one glorious constellation forever. Let the column we are about to construct be at once a pledge and an emblem of perpetual union. Let the foundations be laid, let the superstructure be built up and cemented, let each stone be laid and riveted, in a spirit of national brotherhood. Lay the corner-stone of a monument which shall adequately bespeak the gratitude of the whole American people to the illustrious Father of his Country. Build it to the skies: you cannot outreach the loftiness of his principles. Found it upon the massive and eternal rock you cannot make it more enduring than his fame. Construct it of the peerless Parian marble: you cannot make it purer than his life. Exhaust upon it the rules and principles of ancient and modern art you cannot make it more proportionate than his character. But let not your homage to his memory end here. Think not to transfer to a tablet or a column the tribute which is due from yourselves. Just honor to Washington can be rendered only by observing his precepts and imitating his example. He has built his own monument. We, and those who come after us in successive generations, are its appointed, its privileged guardians. The widespread Republic is the true monument to Washington. Maintain its independence; uphold its constitution; preserve its union; defend its liberty. Let it stand before the world in all its original strength and beauty, securing peace, order, equality, and freedom to all within its boundaries, and shedding light and hope and joy upon the pathway of human liberty throughout the world,-and Washington needs no other monument. Other structures may fitly test our veneration for him; this, this alone can adequately illustrate his services to mankind. CENTENNIAL ORATION WILLIAM M. EVARTS An extract from the Centennial Oration delivered at Philadelphia, July 4, 1876, on the one hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The spirit of the nation is at the highest-its triumph over the inborn, inbred perils of the Constitution has chased away all fears, justified all hopes, and with universal joy we greet this day. We have not proved unworthy of a great ancestry; we had the virtue to uphold what they so wisely, so firmly established. With these proud possessions of the past, with powers matured, with principles settled, with habits formed, the nation passes, as it were, from preparatory growth to responsible development of character and the steady performance of duty. What labors await it, what trials shall attend it, what triumphs for human nature, what glory for itself, are prepared for this people in the coming century, we may not assume to foretell. "One generation passeth away and another |