270 "ONWAED!" THE WATCHWORD. 



boisterous, like the rush of the tempest ; it was not fierce, 

 like the lightning ; it was not loud, like the thunder ; but it 

 was a still sma' voice, like a wee cricket in the wa'a.' I 

 regard the cricket that chirruped in the wall as an institu- 

 tion. One of the past to be sure, swept away by the cur- 

 rent of progress, whose course is onward always ; over 

 everything, obliterating everything, hurling the things of to- 

 day into history, or burying them in eternal oblivion. In 

 this country there is nothing fixed, nothing stationary, and 

 never has been since the first white man swung his axe 

 against the outside forest tree ; since the first green field 

 was opened up to the sunlight from the deep shadows of the 

 old forests that had stood there, grand, solemn, and bound- 

 less since this world was first thrown from the hand of God. 

 There will be nothing fixed for centuries to come. The 

 tide of progres will sweep onward in the future as it has 

 done in the past. Onward is the great watchword of 

 America, and American institutions ; onward and onward, 

 over the ancient forests ; onward, over the log-houses that 

 stood in the van of civilization ; over the great fire-places ; 

 over the cricket in the wall ; over the old house dog that 

 slept in the corner ; over the loved faces that clustered 

 around the blazing hearth in the days of our childhood ; 

 over everything primitive, everything, my friends, that you 

 and I loved when we were little children, and that comes 

 drifting along down on the current of memory bright visions 

 of the returnless past. Ah, well ! it is best that it should 

 be so. It is best that the world should move on ; that 



