t his own. In the activities that have wrought these
changes, he was always the first and last to work with tireless zeal.
When the railroad came it was through his untiring effort. He held the
determination with fighting Burton courage that adversity should not
drive him from the land his forefathers had conquered.

"In wondering what things would have befallen all these people had a
lad's ambition led them into a different life, I find myself treading
paths of doubt. Perhaps noble achievements might have resulted--but I
know that in remaining here they have made our land to blossom and to me
it seems enough. I can, for some reason, no more think of Thomas Burton
transplanted without hurt than I can think of some great patriarch of
the forest, which has buffeted storms and hail for decades, being
uprooted and planted anew in a trim garden and a different clime. Then
he died, too--

"'And as he trod that day to God, so walked he from his birth,
In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth.'"

The speaker talked deliberately. At times his voice mounted into a sort
of oratorical fire. At times it fell until his listeners bent forward
that they might miss none of his words. Now and again he would stop
altogether and his eyes would turn to the blue skies, and when they did
a devout and intense light glowed in their pupils. His hearers were
simple and easily touched and an occasional sob came from the women.

"I said that Hamilton Burton died young," he resumed. "He died almost a
boy with a boy's youthful heart beating in his bosom. If he could so
bring out of desolation a land like this, while yet he was hardly a man
in years, who can say that his dream of power was all a dream? If he who
never left these hills and never saw the world beyond save as he saw it
in the exaltation of his flaming imagination, could do such things, what
man can say that with maturity and opportunity he might not have become
a Caesar? But the feet of these people never trod beyond the nearer ways
of a simple life. Hamilton Burton burned to go out and try the eagle's
wings of his life. He had won the acquiescence of his family. He did not
go. None of them went. They lived here and died here and they fought
discontent, and to my mind they were conquerors of the earth."

Once more there was a pause and after it came other words.

"I suppose that they all dreamed. After the stress of that hurricane of
powerful personality, with