244 BANQUBT. 
can see them step off the train, 3,000 miles and more away from home, some 6,000 miles 
away from home; you can see them step on foreign soil, and ask:—‘* Where is the shoot- 
ing gallery?’’ You say there is death on the other side; yes, but it is for America. 
With a total abandon of all thought of self, with a laugh on their lips and a shout in the 
air, Americans have always gone forward to danger for the nation, and that spirit is 
amongst us yet—that spirit is not quenched; that spirit has not been stilled. 
Next Monday morning, 23,000,000 children, boys and girls, will go into the school- 
houses of this country, and as you used to sing ‘“‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” so they 
will sing, ‘‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee,’ and as you read what Nathan Hale said:—‘‘I 
regret I have but one life to give for my country,” so they will read, ‘‘I regret I have 
but one life to give for my country,” and the sentiments, the aspirations, the hopes 
and the ambitions that welled up in your childhood bosom will well up in their bosoms, 
because they, too, will feel that they want some day to do something great for this 
country of ours. 
It means that the republic is safe, for, added to the 23,000,000 children now attend- 
ing school, there are millions more who have never been spoiled by a life of luxury, 
never been spoiled by hatred of government, who seek no better form of government 
than a representative democracy such as ours, who seek nothing else but the chance 
or hope to go upward and onward that you have had, who will seek in their sons to 
have duplicated the opportunities which were apparent in the life of Lincoln, who will 
look at their boys and say:—‘‘Some day we hope in America they can push up and 
do better than we have done, and be better than we are,’’ who hope that the avenue 
up will be kept free from hurdles, or, if there be hurdles, that those hurdles will be com- 
mon to all the citizenship, and that all will meet the same conditions. This keeping 
the way open for childhood is the hope of America, and if we can keep alive in the breasts 
of the 23,000,000 children of America the feeling and thought that here, regardless of 
parentage, regardless of ancestry, regardless of the country from which their parents 
came—that here in America the way up for childhood is open, we will be true to the ideals 
of America. It is our duty to build up a great representative democracy where each 
shall count as one, to keep forever hope alive in the human breast, so that childhood 
looking at our flag can say :—‘‘There is no land like this; no flag like that flag; no spot in 
all the world where I can better develop the God-given qualities which I possess; no other 
spot where I can better be what I want to be; here character counts for more than gold; 
here not who are you, but what are you that counts.”’ (Loud applause.) 
Tue ToASTMASTER:—I am sure you will join with me in the warmest thanks to 
Judge MacCrate for his wonderful address. 
Our program is now finished, and I desire to express my great appreciation of 
the splendid attention given tonight to the addresses. I wish you all good-night. 
The company then dispersed. 
