Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/92

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS

standing reverently where they stood and fought and died, to swear before God and each other, in the words of him upon whom in our day the spirit of the revolutionary fathers visibly descended, that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

This ancient town with its neighbors who share its glory, has never failed fitly to com- memorate this great day of its history. Fifty years ago, while some soldiers of the Concord fight were yet living — twenty-five years ago, while still a few venerable survivors lingered — with prayer and eloquence and song you re- newed the pious vow. But the last living link with the Revolution has long been broken. Great events and a mightier struggle have absorbed our own generation. Yet we who stand here to-day have a sympathy with the men at the old North Bridge which those who preceded us here at earlier celebrations could not know. With them war was a name and a tradition. So swift and vast had been the change and the development of the country that the revolutionary clash of arms was already vague and unreal, and Concord and Lexington seemed to them almost as remote and historic as Arbela and Sempach. When they assembled to celebrate this day they saw a little group of tottering forms, eyes from which the light was fading, arms nerveless and with- ered, thin white hairs that fluttered in the wind — they saw a few venerable relics of a van- 6G

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