as neither born nor
bred for that. I drew my first breath in a little town not far off, a
poor little town where the farmers and mechanics first unsheathed that
Revolutionary sword which, after eight years of hewing, clove asunder
the Gordian knot that bound America to the British yoke. One raw
morning in spring--it will be eighty years the 19th of this
month--Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great
Deliverance, were both at Lexington; they also had "obstructed an
officer" with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came
to seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of
Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia
came together before daylight "for training." A great, tall man, with
a large head and a high, wide brow, their Captain,--one who "had seen
service,"--marshalled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bad
"every man load his piece with powder and ball." "I will order the
first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered; "Don't
fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war,--let it begin
here." Gentlemen, you know what followed: those farmers and mechanics
"fired the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the
bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred
honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their
lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up amid the memories
of that day. When a boy my mother lifted me up, one Sunday, in her
religious, patriotic arms, and held me while I read the first
monumental line I ever saw:--

"SACRED TO LIBERTY AND THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND."

Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome in
many an ancient town; nay, on Egyptian Obelisks have read what was
written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of
Egypt, but no chiselled stone has ever stirred me to such emotions as
those rustic names of men who fell

"IN THE SACRED CAUSE OF GOD AND THEIR COUNTRY."

Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early
fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. That monument covers the bones
of my own kinsfolk; it was their blood which reddened the long, green
grass at Lexington. It is my own name which stands chiselled on that
stone; the tall Captain who marshalled his fellow farmers and
mechanics into stern array and spoke such brave and dangerous words as
opened the War of American Indep