SUMMER MEETING AT BROOKFIELD. 105 



craft every day when he can get the chance to swing the ax at Ha war- 

 den. Another one of his cabinet, who has just crossed the dark river, 

 and who years ago was spoken of as a possible president when Great 

 Britain should become a republic, worked in his early life as factory 

 hand. Did anyone ever say, or dream even, that labor degraded John 

 Bright or Gladstone ? 



But allow me to furnish some more proof of my proposition from 

 the great and honored names of our own country. Our own Washing- 

 ton, whom a grateful nation reveres as the Father of his Country, was 

 a farmer, and a civil engineer. Lincoln, the liberator, by whose pen 

 millions of slaves were set free, was the rail-splitter and flat-boat hand. 

 Grant, the custodian and general, was a tanner and a harness-maker. In 

 Liberty hall in Philadelphia, you can see their medallion portraits with 

 the Latin incription, pater, liberator, custos. I quote : 



The youth who has some honest calling, is intelligent, industrious, temperate 

 and persevering, holds the keys to many positions of prominence. Take the 

 late President Garfield. No life sums up so well the advantages and possibilities of 

 American citizenship. Born in an humble home, in one of the rural districts of 

 Ohio, where the hardships of his lot were increased by the loss of his father, he 

 was first a farm hand, then a canal-boatman, a student, dividing his time between 

 the carpenter's bench and the academic halls, a college professor, and a represent- 

 ative in the legislature of his native State, a soldier in the late war — on such 

 modest foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. Thus he comes be- 

 fore us : 



A gifted man, 

 Whose life in low estate began. 



And on a simple village green ; 

 Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 



And grapss the skirts of happy chance 



And breats the blow of circumstance 

 And grappless with his evil star ; 

 And moving up trom high to higher, 



Becomes on fortune's frowning slope, 



The pillar of a people's hope, 

 The center of a world's desire. 



Were these degraded by laboring in the humble walks of life "? Do 

 not such examples rather confer dignity upon labor "? But among the 

 living also we can find many noble and brilliant examples : The head 

 of public instruction in our neighboring State, east of the Mississippi, 

 worked at the carpenter's bench until twenty years of age ; to-day there 

 is not a more honored name in Illinois than that of Dr. Edwards. Our 

 present Postmaster- General, a merchant prince and millionaire, highly 

 honored all over the land, worked up from an office boy, and when to 

 manhood grown, invested his savings of a few hundred dollars ia 

 clothing and set up store. 



