ld have turned itself into a festival of peace on the old field
of Yorktown--peace illustrated by the happy faces of a vast multitude,
and by all the evidence of thrift and prosperity and well-being; peace
illustrated by the very citizen-soldiery who appeared there to ornament
as a pageant, with their brilliant bayonets that peaceful festival;
peace illustrated by the warmth of a grand popular welcome offered to
the honored representatives of the Old World; peace illustrated, still
more, by their friendly meeting upon American soil whatever their
contentions at home may have been; peace glorified by what has already
been so eloquently referred to by Dr. Storrs and Mr. Evarts; that solemn
salute offered to the British flag, to the very emblem of the old
antagonism of a hundred years ago; and that salute, echoing in every
patriotic American heart, to be followed as the telegraph tells us now,
by the carrying of the American flag in honor in the Lord Mayor's
procession in London--all this a cosmopolitan peace festival, in which
the Old World sent its representatives to join in rejoicing over the
prosperity and progress of the New. [Cheers.]

There could hardly have been a happier expression of this spirit of
harmony than was presented in the serenade offered to these
gentlemen--representatives of the honored name of Steuben on the evening
of their arrival in New York, the band playing first "The Watch on the
Rhine," followed by the "Marseillaise" and "God Save the Queen," and
then the martial airs of the Old World resolving themselves into the
peaceful strains of the crowning glory of "Hail, Columbia!" and "Yankee
Doodle." [Cheers.]

The cordiality of feeling which binds the Old and the New World
together, and which found so touching, so tender, so wonderful an
expression in the universal heartfelt sorrow of all civilized mankind at
the great national bereavement, which recently has befallen us [the
assassination of President Garfield], can hardly fail to be strengthened
by this visit of the Old World guests whom we delight to honor.
[Cheers.]

They have seen now something of our country, and our people; most of
them, probably, for the first time, and I have no doubt they have
arrived at the conclusion that the country for which Lafayette and
Steuben and Rochambeau fought is a good country, inhabited by a good
people [cheers]; a good country and a good people, worthy of being
fought for by the noblest men of the earth;