2i6 Reminiscences of 



departed from these shores for the distant land of Amer- 

 ica, where in New England for seven generations, with 

 intermarriage with their own class, they lived on, and I 

 am, so far as I know, of the first to return home again. 

 I was not consulted as to the place of my birth, and if 

 I had been I was too young to have had voice; and 

 what mattered it, if by your acquiescence I have not 

 lost my birthright, and you do not deprive me of the 

 memories which cluster about the land of my origin ? 



A few centuries ago your ancestors and mine fought 

 out together for the great rights of liberty in advance 

 of the world and established the bulwark of civiliza- 

 tion, and to them mutually belonged the renown of 

 our illustrious men whose bones are interred in your 

 sacred temples of sepulture. 



You will not deny from me a share of the loyalty 

 you all feel, or the wholesome pride and emotion you 

 experience when passing through the immuring walls 

 of the Abbey, or contemplating on the shore of the 

 Avon the resting-place of the remains of the gentle 

 bard whose imprint on the face of time is everlasting. 



Great and glorious is the record of your race, and 

 the illustrations of progress given by your ancestors in 

 the expanse of other climes. It is, however, but the 

 exemplification of the sturdy, inborn merit inherited 

 from the motherland. Not too far away are they 

 from their old home to be reached by the friendly hand 

 of recognition, though rolling seas intervene, nor can 

 they be stayed in their courage and indomitable energy 

 and intelligent perceptiveness until the whole world 

 shall yield to their progress and accept the domination 

 of our mother tongue. 

 ^ Then, when one shall come again as I have from 



