tact and therefore loses the inspiration.

I love to think of those plain men, however far from plain their dress
sometimes was, who assembled in this hall. One is startled to think of
the variety of costume and color which would now occur if we were let
loose upon the fashions of that age. Men's lack of taste is largely
concealed now by the limitations of fashion. Yet these men, who
sometimes dressed like the peacock, were, nevertheless, of the ordinary
flight of their time. They were birds of a feather; they were birds come
from a very simple breeding; they were much in the open heaven. They
were beginning, when there was so little to distract their attention, to
show that they could live upon fundamental principles of government. We
talk those principles, but we have not time to absorb them. We have not
time to let them into our blood, and thence have them translated into
the plain mandates of action.

The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of it all, all the
suggestions which come from its restoration, are reassuring
things--things which it becomes a man to realize. Therefore my theme
here to-day, my only thought, is a very simple one. Do not let us go
back to the annals of those sessions of Congress to find out what to do,
because we live in another age and the circumstances are absolutely
different; but let us be men of that kind; let us feel at every turn
the compulsions of principle and of honor which thy felt; let us free
our vision from temporary circumstances and look abroad at the horizon
and take into our lungs the great air of freedom which has blown through
this country and stolen across the seas and blessed people everywhere;
and, looking east and west and north and south, let us remind ourselves
that we are the custodians, in some degree, of the principles which have
made men free and governments just.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONGRESS

[Delivered at Mobile, Alabama, October 27, 1913.]

YOUR EXCELLENCY, MR. CHAIRMAN:

It is with unaffected pleasure that I find myself here to-day. I once
before had the pleasure, in another southern city, of addressing the
Southern Commercial Congress. I then spoke of what the future seemed to
hold in store for this region, which so many of us love and toward the
future of which we all look forward with so much confidence and hope.
But another theme directed me here this time. I do not need to speak of
the South. She has, perhaps