good fortune to enjoy this famous anniversary
festival. Though often honored by your most tempting invitation, and
longing to celebrate the day in this goodly company of which all have
heard so much, I could never excuse myself from duties in another place.
If now I yield to well-known attractions, and journey from Washington
for my first holiday during a protracted public service, it is because
all was enhanced by the appeal of your excellent president, to whom I am
bound by the friendship of many years in Boston, in New York, and in a
foreign land. [Applause.] It is much to be a brother of New England, but
it is more to be a friend [applause], and this tie I have pleasure in
confessing to-night.

It is with much doubt and humility that I venture to answer for the
Senate of the United States, and I believe the least I say on this head
will be the most prudent. [Laughter.] But I shall be entirely safe in
expressing my doubt if there is a single Senator who would not be glad
of a seat at this generous banquet. What is the Senate? It is a
component part of the National Government. But we celebrate to-day more
than any component part of any government. We celebrate an epoch in the
history of mankind--not only never to be forgotten, but to grow in
grandeur as the world appreciates the elements of true greatness. Of
mankind I say--for the landing on Plymouth Rock, on December 22, 1620,
marks the origin of a new order of ages, by which the whole human family
will be elevated. Then and there was the great beginning.

Throughout all time, from the dawn of history, men have swarmed to found
new homes in distant lands. The Tyrians, skirting Northern Africa,
stopped at Carthage; Carthaginians dotted Spain and even the distant
coasts of Britain and Ireland; Greeks gemmed Italy and Sicily with
art-loving settlements; Rome carried multitudinous colonies with her
conquering eagles. Saxons, Danes, and Normans violently mingled with the
original Britons. And in more modern times, Venice, Genoa, Portugal,
Spain, France, and England, all sent forth emigrants to people foreign
shores. But in these various expeditions, trade or war was the impelling
motive. Too often commerce and conquest moved hand in hand, and the
colony was incarnadined with blood.

On the day we celebrate, the sun for the first time in his course looked
down upon a different scene, begun and continued under a different
inspiration. A few conscientious Englishmen, in o