Page:The Whitney Memorial Meeting.djvu/21



— There are some among us who can remember the time when "a certain condescension in foreigners" easily gave us pain. There was little achievement behind us as a people to awaken us to national self-consciousness and to a realizing sense of our own great possibilities. Time is changing all that. The men have come, and some, alas! are already gone, of whose achievements we may well be proud wherever we are. In the battles for the conquests of truth there are no distinctions of race. It needs no international congress to tell us that we belong to one great army. But to-night—as the very titles of these gathered societies show—Science has marshalled us, her fifties and her hundreds, as Americans. We look for the centurion, for the captain of the fifties; and he is no more! And we call, as did David, lamenting for Abner, "Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel," yea, and like Jonathan, "in the midst of the battle?"

It is in the spirit of generous laudation that we are assembled to do honor to our illustrious countryman. And it is well. AYe may praise him now; for he is gone. But I cannot help thinking of a touching legend of the Buddha. Nigh fifty years he has wandered up