Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/93

 CURTIS

ished age, whose pride was that before living memory they had been minute-men of American Independence.

But with us how changed ! War is no longer a tradition half romantic and obscure. It has ravaged how many of our homes! it has wrung how many of the hearts before me! North and South, we know the pang. Our common liberty is consecrated by a common sorrow. We do not count around us a few feeble veterans of the contest, but are girt with a cloud of witnesses. We are surrounded everywhere by multitudes in the vigor of their prime — behold them here to- day sharing in these pious and peaceful rites, the honored citizens, legislators, magistrates — yes, the chief magistrate of the Republic— whose glory it is that they were minute-men of Ameri- can liberty and union. These men of to-day interpret to us with resistless eloquence the men and the times we commemorate. Now, if never before, we understand the Revolution. Now we know the secret of those old hearts and homes. We can measure the sacrifice, the courage, the devotion, for we have seen them all. Green hills of Concord, broad fields of Middlesex, that hoard the voice of Hancock and of Adams, you heard also the call of Lincoln and of Andrew, and your Ladd and Whitney, your Prescott and Ripley and IMelvin, have re- vealed to us more truly the Davis and the Buttrick, the Hosmer and the Parker, of a hun- dred years ago.

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