re in Harvard College, the parent of all the
colleges, in Massachusetts, the mother of all the North, when I consider
her influence on the country as a principal planter of the Western
States, and now by her teachers, preachers, journalists and books, as
well as by traffic and production, the diffuser of religious, literary
and political opinion, and when I see how irresistible the convictions
of Massachusetts are on those swarming populations, I think the little
State bigger than I knew; and when her blood is up, she has a fist that
could knock down an empire. And her blood was roused. [Great applause.]
Scholars exchanged the black coat for the blue. A single company in the
44th Massachusetts contained thirty-five sons of Harvard. You all know
as well as I the story of these dedicated men, who knew well on what
duty they went, whose fathers and mothers said of each slaughtered son,
"We gave him up when he enlisted." One mother said, when her son was
offered the command of the first negro regiment, "If he accepts it, I
shall be as proud as if I had heard that he was shot." [Applause.] These
men, thus tender, thus high-bred, thus peaceable, were always in the
front, and always employed. They might say with their forefathers, the
old Norse Vikings, "We sang the mass of lances from morning until
evening;" and in how many cases it chanced, when the hero had fallen,
they who came by night to his funeral on the morrow returned to his
war-path, to show his slayers the way to death!

Ah! young brothers, all honor and gratitude to you! you, manly
defenders, Liberty's and Humanity's home guard. We shall not again
disparage America, now that we have seen what men it will bear. We
see--we thank you for it--a new era, worth to mankind all the treasure
and the lives it has cost; yes, worth to the world the lives of all this
generation of American men, if they had been demanded. [Loud applause.]

* * * * *

THE WISDOM OF CHINA

[Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson at the banquet given by the City of
Boston, August 21, 1868, to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China, and his
associates, Chih Ta-Jin and Sun Ta-Jin, of the Chinese Embassy to the
United States and the European powers. Mr. Emerson responded to the
toast: "The union of the farthest East and the farthest West."]

MR. MAYOR:--I suppose we are all of one opinion on this
remarkable occ