Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/50

Rh was cast from that he had taught us to expect! I have been but a journeyman. Only to a small, a very small extent, I know, can I, like the Ulysses of that other of our prophet voices, declare—

None the less,—

We were told in those, our 'prentice days, of the heroism of the past and the materialism of our present, when "who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's wares or his word," and "only not all men lied;" and yet, when, in 1853, you, Mr. President, the young journeyman, descended, as I, the coming apprentice, ascended those steps, "the cobweb woven across the cannon's mouth" still shook "its threaded tears in the wind." Eight years later the cobweb was swept away; and though, as the names graven on the tablets at the entrance of this hall bear witness, "many were crushed in the clash of jarring claims," yet we too felt the heart of a people beat with one desire, and witnessed the sudden making of splendid names. I detract nothing from the halo of knighthood which surrounds the heads of Sidney and of Bayard; but I was the contemporary and friend of Savage, of Lowell, and of Shaw. I had read of battles and "the imminent deadly breach;" but it was given to me to stand on the field of Gettysburg when the solid earth trembled under the assault of that Confederate Virginian column, then performing a feat of arms than which I verily believe none in all recorded warfare was ever more persistent, more deadly or more heroic.

And our prophet spoke to us of the beauty of silent work, and he held up before us the sturdy patience of the past in sharp contrast with the garrulous self-evidence of that deteriorated present, of which we were to be a part; and yet, scarcely did we stand on the threshold of our time, when a modest English naturalist and observer broke years of silence by quietly uttering the word which relegated to the domain of fable that which, since the days of Moses, had