for you know, what the energy and loyal
steadfastness of Hamilton Burton have done for these hills. What they
were when he came to manhood and what they are now is the answer to
that--an answer which needs no further eulogium. But there is a thing,
which you may not know, for I think--once his hard decision was made--he
never spoke of that again. Yet now I wish to speak of it. It is a thing
which should put the name of Hamilton Burton among those of the
great--the humble great. In his boyhood heart blazed a mighty vision. In
his brain burned a hunger for conquest. The man who dwelt so simply here
among us, working a regeneration, and who died among us, still young,
was gifted with a power which he might have put to more selfish uses.
Standing in the wintry loneliness of a mountain snowstorm, his eyes
could see visions of mighty things and his soul could dream unmeasured
dreams. His heart beat responsively to an inward voice which assured him
that he might equal and surpass the greatness of Destiny's greatest
sons. He fretted for a larger world, knowing that in it he could
conquer. In Hamilton Burton dwelt the soul of a Napoleon or a Caesar ...
he might have built an empire."

The voice had grown fervent as it rose with its words, then the speaker
let it fall again to quieter tones.

"And these roads and schools and this aqueduct and these redeemed acres
are the monument to the sacrifice which turned its back on such a dream
as that. Hamilton Burton wrestled with his soul's hunger and conquered
it. He elected to remain here, fighting at the head of his own community
for his own land, and finding contentment in the realization that he had
done his duty. At one time--for his forcefulness was great--he had
persuaded his family to countenance his great adventure--and then he
dreamed. It seemed to him that he had looked ahead, and the whole great
panorama of the life which lay before him, should he take that turning
of the road, passed in review. Hamilton Burton did not take it. _He
remained here._ His work was the work of the sons of Martha.

"'As in the thronged and the lightened ways, so in
the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days, that their brethren's
days may be long in the land.'

"If Hamilton Burton put aside such ambitions as most of us never know in
our dreams, and chose the humbler combat of a simple life, close to
God's immortal granite, you have all been sh