Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/234

224 be the first to understand that free speech is not only the great propelling power of progress, but also the great bulwark of peace and security. [Hearty applause.]

Is it necessary that in the heart of New England I should spend my voice in illustrating the idea that the freedom of speech is the great agency of human progress? A year ago, on a November day, I went from Albany by Worcester to Providence. Nature was stripped of its autumnal beauty, and the frosty breath of winter had clad your hills and valleys in monotonous grey. And yet the landscape was far from leaving a dreary and melancholy impression upon the mind. For wherever the eye turned, there were the cheerful evidences of human ingenuity, of successful labor, of thoughtful enterprise. Here busy waterfalls, surrounded with the stirring bustle of manufacture, there the neat farm-house on the small patch of arable ground between the hills, there clusters of dwellings and tidy villages bespeaking general thrift and contentment, all following upon each other in rapid succession—everywhere dead nature enlivened with human thought translated into living action. We left Worcester in the dusk of the evening; the air was chilly, the sky dark, and the prospect of the trip unpleasant. But hardly was the railroad station behind us, when I saw a sight, the recollection of which will never leave my memory. On the right and left a grand and almost continuous illumination; factory after factory far and near, with thousands of windows brilliantly shining, as though hundreds of Christmas trees were burning within. I have seen the capitals of the old world illuminated, when the masters of kingdoms and empires tried to honor themselves in honoring each other; artificial suns baffling the moonlight, thousands of rockets mocking the stars; but of all the splendor I could recall to my memory, none equalled that endless sea of light which in the barren