ip at her feet. And
here in this garden of the West, here in this land of aspiring hope, where
innocence is equity, and talent is triumph, the exile from every land finds
a home where his youth may be crowned with happiness, and the sun of life's
evening go down with the unmolested hope of a glorious immortality. Who is
not proud of being an American citizen, and walking erect and secure under
the Stars and Stripes?

"If there be a place on earth where the human mind, unfettered by
tyrannical institutions, may rise to the summit of intellectual grandeur,
it is here. If there be a country where the human heart, in public and in
private, may burst forth in unrestrained adulation to the God that made it,
it is here, where the immortal heroes and patriots of more than one hundred
years ago succeeded in establishing these United States, as the 'land of
the free and the home of the brave.' Here, then, human excellence must
attain to the summit of its glory. Mind constitutes the majesty of man,
virtue his true nobility. The tide of improvement which is now flowing like
another Niagara through the land, is destined to flow on down to the latest
posterity, and it will bear on its mighty bosom our virtues, or our vices,
our glory, or our shame, or whatever else we may transmit as an
inheritance. Thus it depends upon ourselves whether the moth of immortality
and the vampire of luxury shall prove the overthrow of this country, or
whether knowledge and virtue, like pillars, shall support her against the
whirlwinds of war, ambition, corruption, and the remorseless tooth of time.
And while assembled here to-night, in this, the very cradle of liberty, let
us not forget that there are evils to be shunned and avoided by us as
individuals and as a common people.

"It is about one of these evils that is threatening the stability,
prosperity, and happiness of this whole country that I would talk to you
to-night. Let us approach near to each other and talk, if possible, soul to
soul, and heart to heart, I would talk to you to-night of liberty, that
liberty that frees us, body, soul, and spirit, from the slavery of the
intoxicating bowl; a slavery more soul-wearing and life-destroying than any
Egyptian bondage. Why, it is but a few years ago that this whole continent
rocked to its very center on the question as to whether human slavery
should endure upon its soil! That was but the slavery of the body, a
slavery for this life; and that was bad