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I thank you for this cordial greeting. It warms my heart. Coming from entire strangers, it would be an inspiration and would kindle a less halting and more ready tongue than mine to perhaps eloquent speech, for it would denote a perfect sympathy of the audience for the speaker, but coming from those whom, in a certain sense, I still regard as my home people, many of you friends of olden time, it brings with it a keen and added pleasure, for I take it as in some sense an expression of personal interest and perhaps regard.

I deem it a rare honor and privilege to stand before this magnificent representation of the citizenship of the Capital City of Oregon, a city which for so many years I knew as home. For strong and tender ties of sentiment unite me to this beautiful place. It was here I acquired my education. The Old Willamette was the alma mater, the tender mother, who gave me my birth into the literary and professional worlds. For three years I sat at the feet of her instructors. It was here my young manhood was spent. It was here I was married. It was here I held in my arms a tiny atom of humanity and felt the first thrill of paternal affection for a first-born child. But there is another tie more tender even than these, one indissoluble and hallowed. This is the place my mother loved best of any place on earth, It was here she loved to live. It was here she wished to die, and on the green hillside south of town both she and an honored father sleep the sleep that knows no waking. So it is with good reason I look upon the people of Salem as my own, my home people, and it is with a feeling of sadness as well as pride that I arise to address you on this occasion.