FE*^NOIS AMASA WALKEE. 



By George F. Hoar aud Carroll D. Wright. 



I. — EXTRACTS PROM ORATION BY SENATOR GEORGE F. HOAE.^ 



We have come to pay a public debt, so far as we can pay sucli debts, 

 to a public benefactor. Massachusetts has no orders of knighthood, 

 no robes, or star, or jeweled ribbon of Bath or Garter, no coronet or 

 crown for those who have served her. She gives them no title of rank 

 or nobility. She endows them with no lands or castles to leave to 

 those who bear their name. Their children must begin again, for them- 

 selves, by the side of the humblest and poorest, with no advantage but 

 the stimulant of the father's example, and the feeling, if they be of 

 noble mind, that the State holds a pledge of them. We have no 

 mausoleum, or cathedral, or abbey, like that — 



"Where Death and Glory a joint Sabbath keep," 



to which Ii^elson looked forward on the morning of his death and his 

 immortality. We do not consign the dust of the men we delight to 

 honor to sleep the last sleep among rows of warriors and walks of 

 kings. A simple Well done! coming from the heart of the i^eople, 

 takes, for us, the place of crown, and coronet, and rank, and title, and 

 broad lands, and dome, and arch. Yet we should not be here to honor 

 General Walker unless we knew that he would have preferred what 

 we have to bring — the esteem aud love of Massachusetts, with the 

 conscience that he deserved them, to all other honor, or wealth, or 

 glory. 



] do not purj)ose, in what I have to say to-night, to speak of Francis 

 Walker as a man of great and remarkable original genius, as that 

 word is commonly used. Whether he possessed or lacked that unde- 

 finable quality, it is not that which brings us here. It is because he 

 was an admirable example, perhaps the best example Massachusetts 

 has to offer in late years, of a complete and rounded citizenship. The 

 excellence and variety of his work grow upon you as you study it. 

 He was a more useful man and a safer guide than any man, with 



' From oration by Senator Hoar at the memorial meeting at Boston Music Hall, 

 October 14, 1897. 



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