In the words that I have chosen as my text[9] we have a foreign-born Roman citizen. Exactly where he was born we do not know; we do know that he was born outside Roman citizenship. He was, therefore, an adopted citizen of the Roman Empire, and to this he refers in the words that I have quoted, “With a great sum obtained I this citizenship.” There are three implications in these words: the cost of citizenship to this man; the privilege of citizenship to him; his duty as a Roman citizen. These three points will be a convenient guide to us in our discussion of the subject of the morning--“The Foreign-born American Citizen.” 1. First of all, then, there is the cost to this man of citizenship in the Roman Empire. He obtained it with a great sum; to get it made him poor. There are few among native-born American citizens who understand the sacrifice made by the foreign-born citizens of the heritage of childhood and boyhood in the wonder world of early life. There is the bereavement of the early mystic, unfathomable touch of nature that comes to one only through one’s native land. Never again to see the sun rise and set over the dear old hills, with the hero’s mantle like the bloom of the heather resting upon them, and the shadow of an immemorial race, is truly a great bereavement. Never again to see the green pastures, with the flocks quietly feeding in them, under the shade of the plot of trees here and there mercifully provided by the humanity of previous generations, nor to hear the music of the river that has sung into being and out of being forty generations of human lives; never again to see the fields covered with corn, nor to hear the reaper’s song among the yellow corn; never again to see the light that welcomed you when you were born, that smiled on you when you were baptized, that went with you to school, that watched your play, that constituted the beautiful, the glorious environment of your early days; never again to hear the song of the native birds, the skylark in the morning, the mavis at nightfall, and the wild whistle of the blackbird under the heat of noon from his thorny den,--all this is simply inexpressible bereavement. Nature is inwoven with the soul in its earliest years; its beauty, its wildness, its soul becomes part of the soul of every deep-hearted human being, and never again can nature be seen as she was seen through the wonder of life’s morning. It is this spell of nature over the young soul that gives its exquisite pathos to Hood’s world-familiar melody: “I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon. Nor brought too long a day, But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away! ...