THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

DECORATION DAY

Address by Colonel Higginson, delivered at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass., Decoration Day, May 30, 1870. His introduction "Hints on Speech-Making" is given in Volume II.

WE meet to-day for a purpose that has the dignity and the tenderness of funeral rites without their sadness. It is not a new bereavement, but one which time has softened, that brings us here. We meet not around a newly-opened grave, but among those which Nature has already decorated with the memorials of her love. Above every tomb her daily sunshine has smiled, her tears have wept; over the humblest she has bidden some grasses nestle, some vines creep, and the butterfly-ancient emblem of immortality-waves his little wings above every sod. To Nature's signs of tenderness we add our own. Not "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," but blossoms to blossoms, laurels to the laureled.

The great Civil War has passed by-its great armies were disbanded, their tents struck, their camp-fires put out, their muster-rolls laid away. But there is another army whose numbers no Presidential proclamation could reduce; no general orders disband. This is their camping-ground-these white stones are their tents—this list of names we bear is their muster-roll— their camp-fires yet burn in our hearts.

I remember this "Sweet Auburn" when no sacred associations made it sweeter, and when its trees looked down on no funerals but those of the bird and the bee. Time has enriched its memories since those days. And especially during our great war, as the Nation seemed to grow impoverished in men, these hills grew richer in associations, until their multiplying wealth took in that heroic boy who fell in almost the last battle of the

war. Now that roll of honor has closed, and the work of commemoration begun.

Without distinction of nationality, of race, of religion, they gave their lives to their country. Without distinction of religion, of race, of nationality, we garland their graves to-day. The young Roman Catholid convert, who died exclaiming "Mary! pardon!" and the young Protestant theological student, whose favorite place of study was this cemetery, and who asked only that no words of praise might be engraven on his stone-these bore alike the cross in their lifetime, and shall bear it alike in flowers to-day. They gave their lives that we might remain one Nation, and the Nation holds their memory alike in its arms.

And so the little distinctions of rank that separated us in the service are nothing here. Death has given the same brevet to all. The brilliant young cavalry general who rode into his last action, with stars on his shoulders and his death-wound on his breast, is to us no more precious than that sergeant of sharpshooters who followed the line unarmed at Antietam, waiting to take the rifle of some one who should die, because his own had been stolen; or that private who did the same thing in the same battle, leaving the hospital service to which he had been assigned. Nature has been equally tender to the graves of all, and our love knows no distinction.

What a wonderful embalmer is death! We who survive grow daily older. Since the war closed the youngest has gained some new wrinkle, the oldest some added gray hair. A few years more and only a few tottering figures shall represent the marching files of the Grand Army; a year or two beyond that, there shall flutter by the window the last empty sleeve. But these who are here are embalmed forever in our imaginations; they will not change; they never will seem to us less young, less fresh, less daring, than when they sallied to their last battle. They will always have the dew of their youth; it is we alone who shall grow old.

And, again, what a wonderful purifier is death! These who fell beside us varied in character; like other men, they had their strength and their weaknesses, their merits and their faults. Yet now all stains seem washed away; their life ceased

at its climax, and the ending sanctified all that went before. They died for their country; that is their record. They found their way to heaven equally short, it seems to us, from every battlefield, and with equal readiness our love seeks them to-day. "What is a victory like ?" said a lady to the Duke of Wellington. "The greatest tragedy in the world, madam, except a defeat." Even our great war would be but a tragedy were it not for the warm feeling of brotherhood it has left behind it, based on the hidden emotions of days like these. The war has given peace to the nation; it has given union, freedom, equal rights; and in addition to that, it has given to you and me the sacred sympathy of these graves. No matter what it has cost us individually-health or worldly fortunes-it is our reward that we can stand to-day among these graves and yet not blush that we survive.

The great French soldier, de Latour d'Auvergne, was the hero of many battles, but remained by his own choice in the ranks. Napoleon gave him a sword and the official title “The First Grenadier of France." When he was killed, the Emperor ordered that his heart should be entrusted to the keeping of his regiment-that his name should be called at every rollcall, and that his next comrade should make answer, "Dead upon the field of honor." In our memories are the names of many heroes; we treasure all their hearts in this consecrated ground, and when the name of each is called, we answer in flowers, "Dead upon the field of honor."

GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR

SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS

Address by George F. Hoar, lawyer, statesman, United States Senator from Massachusetts since 1877 (born in Concord, Mass., 1826; died, 1904), delivered at the banquet of the New England Society of Charleston, S. C., December 22, 1898. The theme and range of discussion mark this oration as an occasional address rather than a typical after-dinner speech, and accordingly it is placed in this department of "Modern Eloquence." His speech on the "Subjugation of the Philippines Iniquitous" is given in Volume XI and his introduction, "Eloquence," in Volume IX,

MR. PRESIDENT:-I need not assure this brilliant company how deeply I am impressed by the significance of this occasion. I am not vain enough to find in it anything of personal compliment. I like better to believe that the ties of common history, of common faith, of common citizenship, and inseparable destiny, are drawing our two sister States together again. If cordial friendship, if warm affection (to use no stronger term), can ever exist between two communities, they should exist between Massachusetts and South Carolina. They were both of the "Old Thirteen." They were alike in the circumstances of their origin. Both were settled by those noble fugitives who brought the torch of liberty across the sea, when liberty was without other refuge on the face of the earth.

The English Pilgrims and Puritans founded Massachusetts, to be followed soon after by the Huguenot exiles who fled from the tyranny of King Louis XIV, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Scotch Presbyterianism founded Carolina, to be followed soon after by the French exiles fleeing from the same oppression. Everywhere in New England are traces of the footsteps of this gentle, delightful, and chivalrous race. All over our six States, to-day, many an honored grave, many a

stirring tradition bear witness to the kinship between our early settlers and the settlers of South Carolina. Faneuil Hall, in Boston, which we love to call the Cradle of Liberty, attests the munificence and bears the name of an illustrious Huguenot. These French exiles lent their grace and romance to our history also. Their settlements were like clusters of magnolias in some warm valley in our bleak New England.

We are, all of us, in Massachusetts, reading again the story of the voyage of the Mayflower, written by William Bradford. As you have heard, that precious manuscript has lately been restored to us by the kindness of his Grace the Lord Bishop of London. It is, in the eyes of the children of the Pilgrims, the most precious manuscript on earth. If there be anything to match the pathos of that terrible voyage, it is found in the story of Judith Manigault, the French Huguenot exile, of her nine months' voyage from England to South Carolina. Her name, I am told, has been honored here in every generation since.

If there be a single lesson which the people of this country have learned from their wonderful and crowded history, it is that the North and South are indispensable to each other. They are the blades of mighty shears, worthless apart, but, when bound by an indissoluble Union, powerful, irresistible, and terrible as the shears of Fate; like the shears of Atropos, severing every thread and tangled web of evil, cutting out for humanity its beautiful garments of Liberty and Light from the cloth her dread sisters spin and weave.

I always delight to think, as I know the people of South Carolina delight to think, of these States of ours, not as mere aggregations of individuals, but as beautiful personalities, moral beings, endowed with moral characters, capable of faith, of hope, of memory, of pride, of sorrow and of joy, of courage, of heroism, of honor, and of shame. Certainly this is true of them. Their power and glory, their rightful place in history, depended on these things and not on numbers or extent of territory. It is this that justifies the arrangement of the Constitution of the United States for equal representation of States in the upper legislative chamber, and explains its admirable suc

cess.

The separate entity and the absolute freedom, except