They were a crude lot and suffered many disadvantages. Judge Sewall's diary tells how his girl Betty ran away and hid in the family coach when Captain Tuthill called and, I doubt not, the Captain was a handsome young man. What modern girl would do a thing like that? The boy didn't see so much of his girl those days. Something was left to his imagination. He was a coward anyhow. If a boy had been bad in school they made him sit with one of the gals, and after that he was careful. When she let him kiss her at last he never forgot it. To his simple mind there was a curious sublimity in the event. I suppose it was because the currency of love was on a gold basis. We have none of that sentimental nonsense these days. One tango dance and it's all over! The girl of to-day is over emancipated.

We hear much complaint about the marriers of to-day, but in the old time they married early and often. Judge Sewall writes after he had been three times married: "I could lay my weary head in Mrs. Ruggles's lap if it could be brought to pass on honest conditions." With him marriage was a dissipation, but he did insist upon honest conditions. To-day no man goes around in a panic looking for some lady who will let him lay his weary head in her lap. Our chief marriers are forehanded. They have found the new lap before they relinquish the old one.

I have heard much of the old Yankee's habit of keeping close to the soil. If that was his game, we can easily defeat him. We keep much closer to the soil than he did. His imagination and that of his children took the wings of the poet and the path of the eagle and journeyed far beyond all horizons. When we read the best seller of to-day whither does it call us? Is it up to the path of the eagle or down to that trail which is always in the slime and the dust? When it comes to keeping close to the soil there's where we're at home.

War used to be frank and furious-face to face and steel to steel. No more of that! No hard words-no loud talk these days! We are in the midst of a bloody war and it is

so refined that we are scarcely aware of it.

There are some two millions in the army of aggression. In the silence of the night when you would say the world was at peace, its skirmishers steal out upon the works of a fancied enemy, and destroy them and a part of his minions with dynamite. He doesn't even know that they are making war upon him until it's all over. Here again is an increase of refinement. As to the ideals of the old time often when I think of them I get a pain in my back. They were so distant, so abstract, so compulsory!

When I was eight years old I became a candidate for President of the United States. The nomination was a genuine surprise, for I had made no effort to secure it. As a matter of fact there were many things that looked better to me; I would have preferred the position of bass drummer in the band at the county fair, but there were those who thought they knew what I wanted better than I did. We lived in the land of Silas Wright, who spent more time declining honors than did other statesmen in trying to get them. His party wanted him to run for President, but he wouldn't. So, to the Yankees of the North, the Presidential game looked easy. My father said that all I had to do was to be as good and as great as Silas Wright and my election was sure. Governor Wright had been dead for twenty years. I soon learned that he was the greatest man that ever died-there is no distinction like that. I had no sooner got command of the theory and technique of one of his virtues than he assumed another. When I had acquired his gift of working all day and studying a part of the night, they told me that he always spent an hour in the garden, pulling weeds before breakfast. I began to understand why he was dead and also why he was so talented. Everybody was watching me and nobody was watching Silas. By and by I discovered that there were other candidates for President in the neighborhood. The Silas game had also been tried on them. We candidates got together one day over in Howard's grove and discussed the issues. We were sick

of the campaign-too many weeds in it. We all withdrew and ran away from school and spent a joyful afternoon at the old swimmin' hole. Next morning I came downstairs at breakfast time and found that the teacher had been there. I observed a general air of depression in the family.

My father said in a kindly tone: "I thought that you intended to be President."

I told him that I had withdrawn.

Then he said: "Will you please come with me?"

I went. It was a beautiful summer morning, as calm as he. A song sparrow tried to hold up my heart. A squirrel looked down at me from a tree-top as if he had a hole to recommend. I followed in silence through the garden walk and out under the orchard boughs. Not a word was spoken. My father stopped and cut a sprout from one of the trees and then another and trimmed them as he walked. He stopped and whittled, looking down thoughtfully. I stood near him. After a moment of silence he said: "I suppose you know the object of this meeting." I admitted that I did.

"I've got ye a renomination for President," he said. "It was hard work, but I did it. If you'll only do your part I'll stand by ye."

Suddenly I heard a boy yelling down in the valley. It was the voice of an ex-candidate, in an outburst of enthusiasm, as he reëntered the campaign. In a minute he knew that I was with him. The argumentum ad puerem was being administered throughout the valley. It was unanswerable and a bit rough. It has passed. Now we have the argumentum ad patrem. More refinement! After all, what did this striving to be angels and Presidents amount to? Not one of us was ever elected.

Such was the little republic of the home when I was a boy. It had its chief magistrate, its small legislature, its department of justice. It had a little school of its own in Two things were taught in it

which men were made.

loyalty and faith. Loyalty to the home and its ideals;

faith in one's self.

We've no more use for that little school. Too small! too much trouble! we are so busy making money and spending it we can't bother with making men. We educate our children by the thousand and no longer by the one. It's cheaper. Our learning, like our living, is syndicated.

There are six men who have done all the big things accomplished in America since 1850. They are: Commodore Vanderbilt, who gave us the railroad system; Abraham Lincoln, our greatest statesman; Thomas A. Edison, our greatest inventor; Horace Greeley, our greatest journalist; Samuel L. Clemens, our most original novelist; Walt Whitman, our greatest poet. Every one of them born in a cabin and mother made educated in the little school of the home and only there never went to college! I mention this not in disparagement of the college, but only that the little old school of the home shall have its proper credit.

My friends, you will presently return to your flats and palaces and the jests of the banquet will go out with its lights. But I shall have failed, and worse than failed, if I do not cause you to take to your pillows a feeling of regret for the little school that is gone. When we hear the words "home and mother" these days we smile. The sentiments they stand for have become a joke, which means that they are dying and dead. They are being crucified on the crossbeams of luxury and refinement.

Daughters of New England, this I would have you re

member:

The little republic of the home played a part in the larger republics of the town and the county, and all were training schools for the still greater republics of the State and the nation. The foundation of all was the little republic of the home, and the foundation of that was its mother. The fathers of New England have been eloquently referred to by Governor Baldwin, but we must go deeper for the sources of its power-to the mothers who lived on "the granite hills" of which we have sung. I warn you that a nation can only be made or unmade by its mothers.

Members of the New England Society and their

Guests Present at the Festival.