NINETEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART III 179 



Well, fust I knowecl, I'd give them blooms a kiss; 



They tasted like Good-Night on your white face. 

 I reached my arms out wide, an' hugged 'em — say, 



I dreamp' your little heart was hammerin' me! 

 I broke this branch off for a love-bo'quet; 



'F I'd be'n a giant, I'd 'a' plucked the tree! 

 The blooms is kind o' dusty from the road. 



But you won't mind. And, as the feller said, 

 "When this you see remember me" — I knowed 



Another poem; but I've lost my head 

 From seein you! 'Bout all that I kin say 



Is — "I'm the happiest man in I-o-way." 



Well, comin' 'long the road I seen your ma 



Drive by to town — she didn't speak to me! 

 An' in the farthest field I seen your pa 



At his spring-plowin', like I'd ought to be. 

 But, knowin' you'd be here all by yourself, 



I hed to come — for now's our livin' chance. 

 Take off yer apern, leave things on the shelf — 



Our preacher needs what th' feller calls "romance." 

 Ain't got no red-wheeled buggy; but the mare 



Will carry double, like we've trained her to. 

 Jes' put a locus' blossom in your hair 



An' let's ride straight to heaven — me an' you! 

 I'll build y' a little house, an" folks '11 say: 



"There lives the happiest pair in I-o-way." 



You have given me a topic tonight that I would like to spend a month 

 on before I made you a speech, "The Spirit of America." Oh, gentle- 

 men, what does the spirit of America mean today and tonight in the life 

 of the world? We lit our torch 140 years ago, held it aloft, and the 

 oppressed of the world have seen it. In all that time they have seen 

 it, and it has been the thing that has kept alive the hopes of the op- 

 pressed peoples throughout the world, a desire for the freedom that is 

 now coming to them. I tell you, this spirit of America started something 

 in the world, and now having started it, and having come out from 

 oppression, millions upon millions of our brothers are face to face with 

 chaos and are looking to us to be a great steadying influence in the life 

 of the world to see that this experiment which we started, which we 

 more than any other nation thrust upon the world, is made a success 

 among those in whom we have raised this ambition. I want it to be 

 said in the history of the world — I want it to be said in this great era 

 of chaos, when down-trodden peoples are being raised into self-govern- 

 ment, I want the historians of the world to write, after I am gone, that 

 the three nations which held the world steady were France, England 

 and the United States, the great self-governing nations. And when you 

 think of the spirit of America, you wonder what it is. If there is any- 

 thing that you can say concerning it, that would crystallize that spirit, 

 I think it is this: It was daring, what we Americans call "initiative;" 



