hundred fold and overspread
and dominate a continent, until the prophecy familiar to the Pilgrims
should be fulfilled: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose,
a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great nation."
[Applause.]

The Archbishop and Ministers of King James, who drove these men and the
26,000 who followed them, the flower of the English Puritans, from
England, like Louis XIV, when he sent the Huguenots into exile by the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, furnished an example to that master
of the school where the Eton system of flogging prevailed. On a Saturday
morning the delinquents were called up to be flogged. One of the boys
inquired, "What am I to be punished for, sir?" "I don't know, but your
name is down on the list, and I shall have to go through with it," and
the flogging was administered. The boy made such a fuss that the master
looked over the list on his return to his rooms, to see whether he had
made a mistake, and found that he had whipped the confirmation class.
[Laughter.]

They brought the foundation of a free people, they converted the
wilderness of a continent, they established the New England home, rich
only in piety, education, liberty, industry and character, from which
has gone out the best inspiration of the Republic they forecast.

There have been times in the later history of the country when the
Puritan was not altogether popular, and the feeling entertained toward
him and his descendants was expressed like that at a Liberal meeting in
Scotland, where the proceedings were being opened by prayer, and the
reverend gentleman prayed fervently that "the Liberals might hang a'
thegither." He was interrupted by a loud and irreverent "Amen" from the
back of the hall. "Not, O Lord," went on the clergyman, "in the sense
which that profane scoffer would have ye to understand, but that they
may hang thegither in accord and concord." "I dinna care so much what
kind of a cord it is," struck in the voice, "sae lang as it is a strong
cord." [Laughter.]

Fortunately for them, and perhaps for the world, opinions differed
enough to give them a chance. "You can't always tell," said a man, at
the end of a discussion, "what one's neighbors think of him." "I came
mighty near knowing once," said a citizen, with a reminiscent look, "but
the jury disagreed." [Laughter.] But with the Puritans, when discussion
ceased and other arguments began, the result was like that when the