“From the first anchorage, Captain Standish, as the soldier of the company, was charged with all deeds of adventure. At first, certain grave elders were sent with him for counsel. But ultimately his repute in affairs, both civil and military, was such that he was for many years the treasurer of the colony, and, during a period of difficulty, their agent in England. As a soldier, he was evidently the Von Moltke of the Pilgrims. They invested him with the general command. Even in extreme old age--the very year that he died “very auncient and full of dolorous paines”--he received his last and fullest commission against new enemies, his old friends, the Dutch. “It is singular that among the primitive people, who must often in the later Indian wars have missed his counsel and conduct, as the poet describing Venice, sighs,-- “‘Oh! for one hour of blind old Dandole.’ no clear tradition has descended of the place where the war-worn bones of the soldier-pilgrim lie. Sent, like Moses, to guide and guard a feeble people to a promised land of power that he might never see, no man knoweth his burial-place until this day. “More than one hundred years ago, the following paragraph appeared in the Boston “News-Letter,” dated Boston, January 22, 1770: “We hear from Plymouth that the 22d day of December last was there observed by a number of gentlemen, by the name of the Old Colony Club, in commemoration of the landing of their ancestors in that place.” “The fourth toast on that occasion, a hundred and one years ago, was, “To the memory of that brave man and good officer, Capt. Miles Standish.” “Over the graves of the guests at that dinner,-- “‘For fifty years the grasses have been growing.’ But the principle of public fidelity shares the immortality of God and Truth. Reverence for it never dies till the decay of nations. And to-day we come together, the dwellers in the city and the dwellers on the shore, men of every age and all professions, to dedicate one spot of this parental soil for an enduring monument to the same Myles Standish of the same unfaded record. The sunlight of near three hundred years, that has shone fatal on many a reputation since his baby eyes first saw the light of England, has only brought out the lasting colors of his fame.