“I regret to state that my engagements for the month of August are such as to render it impossible for me to join you on that memorable occasion. It is unnecessary for me to say that I deeply sympathize with the object of your meeting. I have been an admirer of the character of Myles Standish from my boyhood up, and would like to be identified with any body of gentlemen engaged in commemorating his great virtues. To me, his civil and military character towers far above his contemporaries, and they, if I mistake not (when history shall be truthfully written), will be made to appear to be the most remarkable body of men that ever lived. Viewed from our present standpoint, in my opinion, they are now entitled to that judgment. It will be a graceful act on the part of our friends, to erect a monument to his memory; but it must not be expected to add to his fame or immortality. Industry, valor, and integrity were regarded as the cardinal virtues of our forefathers, and I hope they will never be held in less estimation by their descendants. One of our gifted poets has happily named ‘Plymouth Rock’ as the corner-stone of the nation. The superstructure promises to be worthy of the foundation. With great respect, I have the honor to be your friend and servant, “J. HOOKER, _Major-General_.” Replies of a similar character were returned by Generals Sherman, Sheridan and Burnside, and by W. C. Bryant. General Horace Binney Sargent delivered the oration on this occasion. It was very eloquent in its truthful delineation of the character and career of the illustrious Puritan Captain. Every reader will peruse with interest the following graphic sketch from its pages: “About the time that all Christendom was in mourning for the murdered Prince of Orange, and deploring in his death the overthrow of the bulwark of the Protestant faith, a little fair-haired child was playing among the hedge-rows of England, who was destined to learn the art of war in the armies of that king’s more warlike son, Prince Maurice, then a boy of seventeen, and to be a tower of defence to the unsoldierly Pilgrim colony of Protestant America. “That child--whose bones, after nearly fourscore years of toil and war, were laid somewhere on this hill-side, perhaps under our unconscious feet--was Myles Standish, the great Puritan Captain! He was born about the year 1580, of English ancestry, dating back to rank and opulence as far as the thirteenth century. Of his childhood, little is known. To defeat the title of his line to lands in England, the rent-roll of which is half a million per annum, the hand of fraud is supposed to have defaced the page that contained the parish record of his birth.