n a century
ago, was a God-fearing Yankee. New England influences everywhere
predominate. I do not mean to say that many men from the South have not,
especially since the war, found homes and citizenship in the West, for
they have; and most of them are now holding Federal offices. [Laughter.]
It is nevertheless true that from New England has come the great, the
overwhelming influence in moulding and controlling Western thought.
[Applause.]

New England thrift, though a hardy plant, becomes considerably modified
when transplanted to the loam of the prairies; the penny becomes the
dime before it reaches the other ocean; Ruth would find rich gleanings
among our Western sheaves, and the palm of forehandedness opens
sometimes too freely under the wasteful example which Nature sets all
over our broad plains; but because the New England ancestor was
acquisitive, his Western descendant secures first of all his own home.
[Applause.] The austere and serious views of life which our forefathers
cherished have given way to a kindlier charity, and we put more hope and
more interrogation points into our theology than our fathers did; but
the old Puritan teachings, softened by the years and by brighter and
freer skies, still keep our homes Christian and our home life pure. And
more, far more than all else, the blood which flows in our veins, the
blood of the sturdy New Englanders who fought and conquered for an idea,
quickened and kindled by the Civil War, has imbued and impregnated
Western men with a patriotism that overrides and transcends all other
emotions. Pioneers in a new land, laying deep the foundations of the
young commonwealths, they turn the furrows in a virgin soil, and from
the seed which they plant there grows, renewed and strengthened with
each succeeding year, an undying devotion to republican institutions,
which shall nourish their children and their children's children
forever. [Prolonged applause.]

An earnest people and a generous! The Civil strife made nothing right
that was wrong before, and nothing wrong that was right before; it
simply settled the question of where the greater strength lay. We know
that

"Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe,"

and that if more remains to be done, it must come because the hearts of
men are changed. The war is over; the very subject is hackneyed; it is a
tale that is told, and commerce and enlightened self-interest have
obliterated all lin