And now, friends, that is all I have got to say of the personalities in this contest. I have not been interested in them in any shape or way. I have no personal feeling whatever in the matter. I will support any man as long as that man renders service to the people of the United States. [Great applause and cheers.] And when he ceases rendering service I shall cease to support him. [Great applause.] APPEAL TO THE PATRIOTS. And now, friends, to you men and women of Massachusetts, I wish to make as strong an appeal as I know how. I come from another State. I have no New England blood in me, but nine-tenths of the men in our nation’s past to whom I have looked up most have been men of New England blood. [Cries of “Hear! Hear!” and applause.] And I ask Massachusetts now to stand as Massachusetts has ever stood, to stand in the van of the forward movement and not to be dragged reluctantly onward behind the other States that go forward. [Applause.] Massachusetts stood by Abraham Lincoln. [Applause.] Massachusetts gave her mighty support to the rail splitter from Illinois when he announced as his cardinal doctrines the right of the people to rule, and their good sense which would so guide them as to bring nearer the day when social and industrial justice should prevail in this Republic of ours. [Applause.] THE REAL KIND OF FIGHT. And I ask Massachusetts to support us in this campaign, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. [Applause.] I appeal to you because this is the only kind of a fight worth going into, the kind of fight where the victory is worth winning and where the struggle is difficult. Here in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, we have against us the enormous preponderance of the forces that win victory in ordinary political contests. [A voice: “They won’t do it this time.”] We have against us 95 per cent of the old regular political leaders. We have against us 95 per cent of the great corporations, which either legitimately fear that we would not tolerate their benefiting by privilege or else which are merely panic-struck and fail to realize that we will do absolute justice――just as much justice to the big man as the little man, but no more. [Cheers.] SILK STOCKINGS AGAINST HIM. Friends, we have against us also, I am sorry to say, 95 per cent of the respectable, amiable, silk-stocking vote. [Laughter.] And it is amusing to see how exactly the conditions now parallel the conditions 55 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was making his fight for the Union and for freedom. After his defeat by Douglas in 1858, in November of that year, he wrote a letter to a friend, dating the letter at Springfield, Ill. It’s a letter I should like to have framed at this moment in every house in the Back Bay. [Laughter.] He said: