oing to be?" gives a
boundless play to the imagination, and makes a man a poet before he
knows it. And then a poet must have grand subjects in nature. And what
does a poet want that he does not find in New England? Wooded glens,
mysterious ravines, inaccessible summits, hurrying rivers; the White
Hills, keeping up, as Starr King said, "a perpetual peak against the
sky"; the Old Man of the Mountains looking down the valley of the
Pemigewasset, and hearing from afar the Ammonoosuc as it breaks into a
hundred cataracts; Katahdin, Kearsarge, setting its back up higher than
ever since that little affair off Cherbourg; the everlasting ocean
inviting to adventure, inspiring to its own wild freedom, and making a
harbor in every front yard, so that the hardy mariner can have his smack
at his own doorstep. [Laughter.] (Need I say I mean his fishing-smack?)
What more can a poet desire?

And then life in New England, especially New England of the olden time,
has been an epic poem. It was a struggle against obstacles and enemies,
and a triumph over nature in behalf of human welfare.

What would a poet sing about, I wonder, who lived on the Kankakee Flats?
Of course, the epic poet must have a hero, and an enemy, and a war. The
great enemy in those parts is shakes; so, as Virgil began, "I sing of
arms and the man," the Kankakee poet would open:

"I sing the glories of cinchona and the man
Who first invented calomel."

Yes, if the Pilgrims had landed upon the far Western prairies or the
Southern savannas, they would never have made America; they would never
have won a glory beyond that of Columbus, who only discovered America,
whereas these men created it. [Applause.]

But not a place alone. New England is also a race; the race that plants
colonies and makes nations; the race that carries everywhere a free
press, a free pulpit, an open Bible, and that has almost learned to
spell and parse its own language; the race which began the battle for
civil and religious liberty in the time of Elizabeth, which fought the
good fight at Edgehill, which, beside Concord Bridge, "fired the shot
heard round the world," which made a continent secure for liberty at
Appomattox. [Applause.]

And New England is not alone a place and a race; it is as well an idea,
or a congeries of ideas, so closely joined as properly to be called but
one; and this idea is not the idea of force, but the force of ideas.

But, gentlemen, I am in danger of forgetti