"

But if the Pilgrim Fathers were not the sweetest warblers, they at least
never wobbled. They always went direct to their mark. As Emerson said of
Napoleon, they would shorten a straight line to get at a point. They
faced the terrors of the New England northeast blast and starved in the
wilderness in order that we might live in freedom. We have literally
turned the tables on them and patiently endure the trying hardships of
this festive board in order that their memories may not die in
forgetfulness.

We can never forget the hardships which they were forced to endure, but
at the same time we must recognize that they had some advantages over
us. They escaped some of the inflictions to which we have been compelled
to submit. They braved the wintry blast of Plymouth, but they never knew
the everlasting wind of the United States Senate. [Laughter.] They
slumbered under the long sermons of Cotton Mather, but they never
dreamed of the fourteen consecutive hours of Nebraska Allen or Nevada
Stewart. They battled with Armenian dogmas and Antinomian heresies, but
they never experienced the exhilarating delights of the Silver debate
or throbbed under the rapturous and tumultuous emotions of a Tariff
Schedule. [Laughter.]

They had their days of festivity. They observed the annual day of
Thanksgiving with a reverent, and not infrequently with a jocund,
spirit; but advanced as they were in many respects, they never reached
that sublime moral elevation and that high state of civilization which
enable us in our day to see that the only true way to observe
Thanksgiving is to shut up the churches and revel in the spiritual
glories of the flying wedge and the triumphant touchdown. [Laughter.]
Their calendar had three great red-letter days of celebration:
Commencement day, which expressed and emphasized the foremost place they
gave to education in their civil and religious polity; Training or
Muster day, which illustrated the spirit and the skill that gave them
victory over the Indians and made them stand undaunted on Bunker Hill
under Warren and Putnam until above the gleaming column of red-coats
they could look into the whites of the enemies' eyes; and Election day,
upon which, with its election sermon and its solemn choice of rulers,
they acted out their high sense of patriotic duty to the Commonwealth.
We are deeply concerned in these days about the debasement of the
ballot-box. Perhaps we could find a panacea in the practice of