The largest and most characterizing part of our education--perhaps it would more accurately express my meaning to say our culture--each one of us gets from his associations, from his contact with the people of all sorts around him in his infancy, boyhood, and manhood often as far on as middle age, if not sometimes farther. We get it by imitation, unconscious and conscious, and by absorption from what we see, hear, and read, etc., which absorption is often most active when we are least aware of it. Now let us consider the community of which Webster was the product. In the Plymouth oration, as we have already suggested, he exhibits the exceptional progress and acquisitions of New England. What other community ever showed greater courage against danger or greater energy against obstacles, and such wise building-up of a new country in a strange land? The Pilgrim Fathers could not have liberty and their own religion at home, and for these they went into the wilderness. There they kept the savage at bay. With soil and climate both unfavorable they wrought out general plenty and comfort. They prospered in industry. They equalized as far as they could all in property rights. And these liberty-lovers gave the regulation of local affairs to the town meeting, of which Webster says: "Nothing can exceed the utility of these little bodies. They are so many councils or parliaments, in which common interests are discussed, and useful knowledge acquired and communicated." Jefferson, the great apostle of popular self-government, most earnestly longed to see all America outside of New England divided into such townships as hers. But to return to the Pilgrims. They established schools and churches everywhere. Free education was maintained by taxation of all property. Let us sum up. Here was a country in which everybody had been well trained in the available ways of self-support and also of saving and accumulating,--the very first essential to make good citizens. Such citizens were required to administer their public affairs themselves; and thus they received the very best political education and training in a school of genuine democracy,--which is the next essential. The children of each generation were schooled better than those of the former, the colleges and universities constantly did better with the students, and libraries open to the public both multiplied and enlarged,--the third essential. And education and business were rationally mixed, until in Webster's time it might be said with truth that the average New Englander worked with a will, and wisely, every day to maintain himself and family, and also found leisure to add something of value to his store of knowledge. Here is another essential. The moral and religious atmosphere became purer and purer, and more and more on all sides good intention was conspicuous in the light, and evil intention hid itself deep in the dark. This is the last essential.