158 A QUESTION OF MENTAL 



bosoms the white sails of commerce are spread, and through 

 whose waters countless steamboats plough their way. These 

 stupendous changes are the results of human energy, and 

 they reach, in their moral prestige, their progressive influ- 

 ence, through every vein and artery of governmental and 

 social compacts, affecting political institutions, shaping na- 

 tional policy, and forcing, by their resistless demonstrations, 

 change and mutations of opinions upon all men, 



" As it has been in the past century, so it is now, and 

 BO it will be through all the long future. Forward, and 

 forward, is the word, and forward will be the \fc>rd for cen- 

 turies to come. And why ? Because all men here, in this 

 free Republic, are free to think, free to speak, free to will, 

 free to act. No traditions of the past bind them ; no here- 

 ditary policy controls their action ; no customs, covered with 

 the dust of ages, fetter them ; no physical or intellectual 

 gyves, corroded by the rust of centuries, are eating into their 

 flesh. Because thinking American men everywhere live in 

 the present, ignoring and defying the dead past, and build- 

 ing up the mighty future. Because they ' speak their opi- 

 nions of TO-DAY in words hard as rocks, and their opinions of 

 TO-MORROW in words just as hard, although their opinions of 

 to-morrow may contradict their opinions of to-day.' They 

 are fearless of personal consequences. As free men, they 

 will think, as free men they will speak, and as such they will 

 act, regardless of the jibe and sneer of those who accuse 

 them of change, of inconsistency, of being mutable and un 



