knows the whole thing." "Oh," says the corporal, "you mean old Scott!"
[Laughter.]

The Forefathers generally spared people the trouble of guessing what
they were driving at. [Applause.]

That for which they valued education was that it gave men power to think
and reason and form judgments and communicate and expound the same, and
so capacitated them for valid membership of the Church and of the State.
And that was still another original Yankee notion.

Not often has the nature and the praise of it been more worthily
expressed, that I am aware of, than in these sentences, which I lately
happened upon, the name of whose author I will, by your leave, reserve
till I have repeated them: "Next to religion they prized education. If
their lot had been cast in some pleasant place of the valley of the
Mississippi, they would have sown wheat and educated their children; but
as it was, they educated their children and planted whatever might grow
and ripen on that scanty soil with which capricious nature had tricked
off and disguised the granite beds beneath. Other colonies would have
brought up some of the people to the school; they, if I may be allowed
so to express it, let down the school to all the people, not doubting
but by doing so the people and the school would rise of themselves."

I do not know if Cardinal Gibbons is present; I do not recognize him. If
he is, I am pleased to have had the honor to recite in his hearing and
to commend to his attention these words, so true, so just, so
appreciative, of a distinguished ecclesiastic of his communion; for they
were spoken by the late Archbishop Hughes in a public lecture in this
city in 1852. [Applause.]

I would, however, much rather have recited them in the ears of those
Protestant Americans--alas, that there should be born New Englanders
among them, that is, such according to the flesh, not according to the
spirit--who are wont to betray a strange relish for disparaging both the
principles and the conduct of our great sires in that early day when
they were sowing in weakness what has ever since been rising with power.

There have always, indeed, been those who were fond of spying the
blemishes of New England, of illustrating human depravity by instances
her sinners contributed. With the open spectacle of armies of
beggars--God's beggars they are; I do not object to them--continually
swarming in across her borders, as bees to their meadows, and returning
not empty, t