Grant 175 



Grant and his fellow-soldiers who fought through 

 the war, and his fellow-statesmen who completed the 

 work partly done by the soldiers, not only left us the 

 heritage of a reunited country artd of a land from 

 which slavery had been banished, but left us what 

 was quite as important, the great memory of their 

 great deeds, to serve forever as an example and an 

 inspiration, to spur us on so that we may not fall 

 below the level reached by our fathers. The rough, 

 strong poet of democracy has sung of Grant as "the 

 man of mighty days, and equal to the days." The 

 days are less mighty now, and that is all the more 

 reason why we should show ourselves equal to them. 

 We meet here to pay glad homage to the memory of 

 our illustrious dead ; but let us keep ever clear before 

 our minds the fact that mere lip-loyalty is no loyalty 

 at all, and that the only homage that counts is the 

 homage of deeds, not of words. It is but an idle 

 waste of time to celebrate the memory of the dead 

 unless we, the living, in our lives strive to show 

 ourselves not unworthy of them. If the careers of 

 Washington and Grant are not vital and full of 

 meaning to us, if they are merely part of the storied 

 past, and stir us to no eager emulation in the cease; 

 less, endless war for right against wrong, then the 

 root of right thinking is not in us ; and where we do 

 not think right we can not act right. 



It is not my purpose in this address to sketch, in 



