“These voices tell me that the arts have found in these United States a soil in which they may flourish undisturbed. The blood of the Italians who have come to this country, mixed with the blood of the Poles and cooled by the blood of those of the North lands, tempered still more by the sturdy common sense of the Britons, made buoyant by the wit of the French and made strong and powerful by the blood of the three century old Americans will result in a type of man that shall cause our houses to become beautiful; that shall save our forests from destruction, that shall decorate and color and cause to blossom and run to ripe fruitage all that makes life cultivated, pure, serene and lovable. “Ladies and gentlemen, let us thank God that we are Americans; that we have been allowed to live to see this day. There are strifes and rumours of strifes in our land but everything tends to betterment, and I firmly believe that at the last we shall be found to be the chosen people of the Lord of All Things by whom all things were made.” (Cheers, and thunders of applause, in which I am free to say that Ethel and myself joined heartily.) In fact, although the speech was over flowery, it had in it a good deal that any fair-minded man could say amen to and delivered under the influence of the deep baritone of a natural orator it was stimulating. And then some one, with no sense of the fitness of things, rose and called on all to sing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” The millennium is not as close as all that. We still have the question of the rights of labour and the wrongs of capital with us, and a better hymn might have been selected. “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” would have been more in the spirit of the time. We made our way out, and as I was leaving the hall I looked back and saw the orator of the day shaking hands with James. It gave me a choky feeling, so that perhaps I was still under the influence of his speech. I will acknowledge that I set down the speech in this place in order to make fun of it, but after all it was sincere, and sincerity makes a poor butt for the shafts of ridicule. During the afternoon we took a drive in James’s wagon, and saw something of the beauty of the surrounding country, going quite a distance on the road to Springfield. We returned to Egerton by the upper road, and I had all I could do to keep the horses under control, as that end of the town was given up to the small boy, and pistols, crackers and bombs were being exploded on every hand.