Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President--before the praise of New England has died on my lips--that I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots, and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and awoke to read the record of 26,000 Republican majority! May the God of the helpless and heroic help them! HENRY W. GRADY _Henry W. Grady born, 1851_ April Twenty-Fifth Her lot may be hard, her skies may darken; To Dixie's voice we'll ever hearken; Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. The coward may shirk, the wretch go whining, But we'll be true till the sun stops shining, Look away, away, away down South in Dixie. Chorus: I wish I was in Dixie; Away, away; In Dixie's land I'll take my stand, And live and die in Dixie. Away, away, Away down South in Dixie. MARIE LOUISE EVE April Twenty-Sixth Homes without the means of support were no longer homes. With barns and mills and implements for tilling the soil all gone, with cattle, sheep, and every animal that furnished food to the helpless inmates carried off, they were dismal abodes of hunger, of hopelessness, and of almost measureless woe. GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON _Joseph E. Johnston surrenders at Greensboro, N. C., 1865_ April Twenty-Seventh The twilight hours, like birds, flew by, As lightly and as free; Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand in the sea; For every wave, with dimpled face, That leaped into the air, Had caught a star in its embrace And held it trembling there. AMELIA B. WELBY April Twenty-Eighth Too much roseate nonsense has been indulged about life on the plantation or in the city in the ante-bellum days. Neither the planter nor the factor nor the lawyer led a life of idle ease and pleasure; they were workers, whose energy built up the State; they lived often rather in rude profusion than in luxury. PIERCE BUTLER _James Monroe born, 1758_ April Twenty-Ninth Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. THOMAS JEFFERSON April Thirtieth To Jefferson's initiative and farsightedness we owe it that we secured without bloodshed, for a trifling sum of money, a territory which doubled our republic, assured its expansion to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Pacific, and thus lifted us, by a stroke of genius, into a world power of the first class. THOMAS E. WATSON _Jefferson acquires the Louisiana territory from France, 1803_ _Washington inaugurated first President of the United States, 1789_ May AT ARLINGTON