Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Address Delivered Before the City Government and Citizens, on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of Worcester, October 14, 1884
I am, this evening, but a voice. As we strive to clasp the two hands which seem to stretch out to us, on either side, through the mist, - the hand of our ancestry, and the hand of our posterity, - I can only imperfectly utter what is in the bosoms of all of you. The hour is consecrated to simple and common emotions and yet to the emotions which most dignify and ennoble human life. The imperfect instinct of affection for parent and offspring, which nature has given to the brute, is confined to the period of infancy. In man, it becomes parental love and filial reverence. It is the tie that binds us together in the household. It extends beyond the grave, and reaches back to remote ancestors. It goes out with unspeakable yearn ing even to the soil where the ashes of those we have loved repose. It impels us to seek, with those who are our kindred, a companionship, even in death Where the heart has laid down what it loved most, says the greatest of New England orators, there it is desirous of laying itself down. N o sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever burning taper that would drive away the darkness of the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to' coverus, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the objects of our affections. But human love rises to its highest dignity, and reaches its pro foundest depth of tenderness, when its object is that political being to which we give the endearing name of country, or the town which is our birthplace, or the city which we fondly call our home. There are men in this audience whose blood would ?y to their cheeks at the charge that some little town where they were born, had committed an act of dishonor two hundred years ago, as if the imputation were upon one of their own kindred to-day. That tones of triumph and joy stir the heart like those which celebrate our country's glory? What note of sorrow comes down through the ages like theirs who wept when they remembered Zion?
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