erreshoff
Manufacturing Company, builders of several defenders of the America Cup.
In spite of his blindness, he is perfectly at home in his shops or on
board ship.

THE OWNERS OF THE SOIL.

BY EDWARD EVERETT.

The man who stands upon his own soil, who feels that, by the law of the
land in which he lives, he is the rightful and exclusive owner of the land
which he tills, feels more strongly than another the character of a man as
the lord of an inanimate world. Of this great and wonderful sphere, which,
fashioned by the hand of God, and upheld by His power, is rolling through
the heavens, a part is _his_--his from the center to the sky! It is the
space on which the generation before moved in its round of duties, and he
feels himself connected by a visible link with those who follow him, and
to whom he is to transmit a home.

Perhaps his farm has come down to him from his fathers. They have gone to
their last home; but he can trace their footsteps over the scenes of his
daily labors. The roof which shelters him was reared by those to whom he
owes his being. Some interesting domestic tradition is connected with
every enclosure. The favorite fruit-tree was planted by his father's hand.
He sported in boyhood beside the brook which still winds through the
meadow. Through the field lies the path to the village school of earlier
days. He still hears from the window the voice of the Sabbath-bell, which
called his fathers to the house of God; and near at hand is the spot where
his parents lay down to rest, and where, when _his_ time has come, he
shall be laid by his children.

These are the feelings of the owners of the soil. Words cannot paint
them--gold cannot buy them; they flow out of the deepest fountains of the
heart; they are the very life-springs of a fresh, healthy, and generous
national character.

* * * * *

Edward Everett was an American of culture, of elegance, of scholarship, at
a time when culture and elegance and scholarship were not commonly met
with in America. He was clergyman, professor, public lecturer, diplomat,
statesman; he held positions as eminent yet as separated as president of
Harvard College and Secretary of State, and at other times between his
birth, in 1794, and his death, in 1865, he was editor of the _North
American Review_, member of Congress and of the Senate, Governor of
Massachusetts, minister to Great Britain. This is the man who pronounced
so m