USA > Vermont > Rutland County > Rutland > Centennial celebration of the settlement of Rutland, Vt., October 2d, 3d, 4th and 5th, 1870, including the addresses, historical papers, poems, responses at the dinner table, etc. > Part 7
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"The eye affecteth the heart." No man who saw 1770 also sees 1870. It has, however, been my lot to survey Europe twice, with an interval of a quarter of a century between my visits. My sec- ond journey, in 1867, was gladdened from first to last by the advancement I everywhere beheld from the status of 1842. Having
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been drawn by horses from Glasgow to Naples, as well as through- out Germany, I was the more exhilarated, while careering over those routes and five times as far, with locomotives. My first jour- ney was as "through a hedge of thorns," owing to passport vexa- ' tions; on my second no passports were needed, save in Russia and Rome. Having of old been in suspense for a month without Ameri- can tidings, I felt a double zest in daily telegrams by the trans- Atlantic cable.
Revisiting France, I was astonished at the increment of her com- mercial marine in Bordeaux and Marsailles, at her steam lines across our ocean and to every Mediterranean port, at the peerless archi tectural improvements along Parisian streets, and at the World's Fair, uniting mankind as Babel had dispersed them,-the bright, consummate flower of all civilizations,-a concentration of curiosities such as no man had seen before, and such as I fear none of us will live long enough to see again.
As a youthful student, I had rambled through Germany when its governments were forty save two, so small that I had ridden by diligence through seven of them in one day, and those " dissevered, discordant, belligerent." In middle life, I gazed on Germany con- solidated in a Union worth as much to its citizens as ours is to us, united as one individual soul, and therefore confident against a world in arms. The statue of Luther, which I had seen excluded from the Walhalla, I lived to admire enshrined in that temple of glory, while Catholics, vying with Protestants, delighted to honor the dedication of his monument in Worms.
. On my early pilgrimage I had been a looker-on in Vienna, and judged it a Gibraltar impregnable to reform, and all Austria incura- bly conservative of medieval follies. But the summer before my later tour, the needle guns at Sadowa pierced the cancer of Haps- burg conceit, not hurtfully but healingly.
" As he who struck at Jason's life, Aiming to make his purpose sure. With a malicious, vengeful knife, Did wound him but to cure."
But no part of my second journey was more jubilant than my Italian tour. I had left in Italy eight principalities ; when I returned all had become one kingdom,-all but one half of the old pope- dom,-a kingdom with monasteries abolished and primary schools
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established, and those on Vermont models, thanks to the Vermonter who represents us in Florence. In Milan I addressed a band of seventeen theological students, who had been collected by another Vermonter, our consul there. Venice, so long drugged as with burglar's chloroform by Austria, I rejoiced with as she clapped her hands in new-born transports. The lion of St. Mark, so glorified by her artists, there half appeared pawing to get free, then sprang as broke from bonds, and rampant shook his braided mane. But for Napoleonic intervention, I should have hailed Rome as the Queen of all Italy. In fact, I came to the Pope while his temporal power hung in doubt before him, the gates of Rome walled up or with earthworks before them, sand-bags on the ramparts, loopholes for riflemen knocked through the ancient walls. The speech of the people, no less than the aspect of the place, betokened that Italy bides its time to perfect its union and regain its time-honored head.
In England, between my two visits there had been progress upon progress: extensions of the ballot, anti-corn laws, disestablishment of the Irish church, insuring a similar reform of the English,-boons I had not at my first coming dared to hope for,-my eyes at length beheld.
In 1842, trial by jury and open courts were scarcely known out. side of England and France. They were distrusted by German judges ; but a quarter of a century later I observed that they had crossed the continent to Moscow. When I said to a provincial Russian, in my hotel there : "Let us walk to the palace where the crowns, sceptres, jewels and thrones of the ten kingdoms, which Russia has successively absorbed, are reposited." "Nay," said he ; "let us rather visit first the Hall of Justice, where jury trials were first witnessed, last November."
During my first sojourn in Naples, I counted the heads of sixteen malefactors, hanging high on the outer wall of the prison. When I was last abroad, no such sight shocked me, even in Grand Cairo.
In '42 I had seen many women harnessed, and drawing coal carts-in '67 I saw none. At the former date, beggars were every- where as numerous as at the latter, only in Spain and Egypt. Hav- ing on one journey heard our country commiserated as lacking union between the Church and the State, on another journey I heard it, in the self-same countries, admired and envied, owing to the
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self-same lack. When I was first abroad, and news came of that tempest in a teapot, Dorr's Rhode Island rebellion, "Alas for you !" cried German friends, "you have no standing army ! and so you are alike defenseless against foes without and foes within." Every- , where was our Union compared to a meal bag open at both ends. . My second travels were just after that meal-bag had been tied up, and pinned with a million bayonets, and I spoke with few Euro- peans who did not confess exemption from a standing army to be the climax of our blessings, and the climax of their own curses to be the military incubus.
But for standing armies, who believes that France and Prussia would be at war to-day? The sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done. But for warriors ready at hand, those nations would have been reconciled before they could get ready to fight, just as in the quarrels of lovers it is proverbial that they make friends before they get through returning their kisses and other love tokens.
My later travels also carried me into regions before unvisited,- into Spain, in the lull before the revolutionary earthquake, and there I was promised the religious equality now enjoyed where, eleven years after the founding of Rutland, a heretic had been burnt alive. My travels carried me among Russian serfs just emancipated, but each on his own patch of land, and, like those used to the dark. seeing much by little light. They carried me into Egypt, where I voyaged on the man-made river which, navigable for all craft that can sail out of London, cutting asunder two continents and halving the distance between all commercial emporiums, will transport Christendom throughout the Orient. They carried me into Turkey. where I saw the Sultan on the very day when, a newspaper full of satire on his administration falling into his hands, he demanded all the past and all the future numbers of that print. They carried me among the Sandwich Islanders, who ate up Capt. Cook long after the era we now call to mind, but whom I saw doing more, in pro- portion to their ability, to maintain Christian institutions than we do.
On the whole, I stand before you as an eye witness of such pro- gress, during one-quarter of the last century, as you know wel from other sources to have been sweeping on throughont that entire cycle.
History has been called "the stern-lights of a ship, which illu-
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minate only the wake it leaves behind." Let me rather liken it to the head-light of a locomotive, which throws its splendors forward along the track it is about to traverse. Whether we look at Rut- land, or our country, or the world, the century now closing abounds in auspicious omens for the period until the Rutlanders of 1970 shall here meet, as we are met to-day. What has been will be, as surely as the Missouri, which has flowed two thousand miles to Nebraska, has thus gained more strength to flow further, spreading broad and more broad till it reaches the sea.
It can hardly escape our notice that advancement in the world at large, and pre-eminently in Rutland, has been accelerating as the century has rolled on. During the last third of it there has been as much progress as during the two previous thirds. I might use stronger language. Improvement, which entered Rutland on an ox cart, long ago mounted the steam engine. Tramp, tramp, along the land she rides. Splash, splash, across the sea. In 1842 I was at a dinner in Rome on Washington's birthday, and one toast was, "The Yankees! in 1676 they beat King Philip, in 1776 they beat King George, and in 1876 they will beat all the kings of the earth !" A republican Napoleon, the Prince of Canino, was called up to respond, and asked to have the last date read again, as he did not hear it, and then said he feared that in 1876 there would be no kings left to beat. Since that dinner, how many a potentate has been discrowned ! While we have been preparing for this festival, the Napoleonic balloon, that had soared so high, has collapsed,-
Just like bubbles when they burst, All at once and nothing first.
In view of improvements marching on with an ever quickening pace, I feel that the organizations of the twentieth century for enlarging the domains of knowledge, as well as for diffusing among men principles which will promote the greatest good of the greatest number, must be such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered the heart of man. Let us trust that one of these ameliorating elements in the coming age will be Peace-till the weapons of Mars, as in a Pompeian painting, shall all become the playthings of Cupid. "Let us have peace!"
Fellow Townsmen: Though my remarks have run through a wide range, I hope they have not outrun the boundaries of the time.
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All are but parts of one stupendous whole. There is a greater as well as a lesser Rutland. Its men have gone further than its mar- ble. New wine will burst old bottles. As the Athenians bounded their valley,-one not unlike this,-north by rye, south by vines, `east by wheat and west by olives, so the Green Mountain Boy, who has his birth here, will have his being wherever he can best make his own the boons best worth having. In 1860, three-fourths as many Vermonters were residing elsewhere as within their own State. One year ago last September, on the cone of a Hawaiian volcano, I encountered one long resident there, a nephew of Luther Daniels, and whose sister had been among my earliest sweet- hearts.
One among our early members of Congress used to say that the yellow butter and white girls of Vermont were better than the yel- low girls and white butter at Washington. No doubt they always will be; and yet Green Mountain Boys will wander to Washington,- yes, to all golden gates. Nevertheless, they will hold fast their individuality, as tenaciously as that Englishman did who, when afraid of chills in Indiana, was assured by his landlady that he was out of danger, because he carried with him so many British airs, such a John Bull atmosphere, that he would be safe while all Hoosiers were shaking.
Rutland will grow beyond the dreams of its founders,
Its honors with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging while they flow.
But those born here, becoming continentals, will build up other Rutlands in Nebraska. New wine will burst the old bottles. A Rutlander, once a schoolboy here with me, Moses M. Strong, thirty- three years ago staked out a town twelve days' journey west of Lake Michigan, now my home and the capital of Wisconsin, which has three times the population of Vermont.
Farmers in this half bushel have hoed among rough stones till they have beaten them all smooth; they will be off for prairies where there are not stones enough to give stone bruises to their barefooted boys, or to free homesteads (which yield even the slovenly farmer from each acre thirty bushels of wheat, forty of barley, fifty of oats or seventy-five of corn, and where at harvest time the farm- ers first fill up all out doors with their crops, and then gather the
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remnant into barns), or to grazing grounds where steers gain three pounds a day. Thus their plows, as was well remarked by the ear- liest and best historian of Vermont, "will enlarge the boundaries of the habitable creation."
Some outside pressure is indeed needful to push one nurtured here out of this amphitheatre into that Mediterranean valley where he will never see a mountain until he gets faith enough to move one, but when he has once possessed a prairie it is harder to draw him east again than to move a mountain, or even a meeting-house. Hence, he is like one of his own contrary calves. You must pull his ears off before he will begin sucking,-and then you must pull his tail off before he will stop.
Again, according to the census of 1860, the males in Iowa out- numbered the females by more than thirty-nine thousand. No wonder when you tell an Iowan he ought to take a wife, he answers : " Whose wife shall I take?" and that railroad conductors, at refresh- ment stations, cry out: "Twenty minutes for dinner and Chicago divorces." On the other hand, New England had nearly thirty- seven thousand more females than males. In this heyday of woman's rights will the fair, like Jepthah's daughter going up and down the mountains, bewail their virginity in Vermont, where they can no more find husbands than hair on a bald head, or than Spain can find a king ?- or will they hunt husbands in the West ?
Neither. Nevertheless, where the carcass is the eagles will be gathered. Green Mountain girls will cross the Missouri in order to visit some cousin, or to teach, or even to do plain sewing. But school houses are Cupid's mouse-traps. Their needles may be warranted not to cut in the eye, but it will turn out that that is more than can be said concerning the users of them.
Where angel visits are few and far between, men cannot pass by angel's unawares. A Vermont girl must be greener than her native hills, or the Iowa lady she goes to see will be soon writing back to her mother in this style : " My son Boaz and your daughter Ruth no sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason. no sooner found the reason but they sought the remedy and so they have made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they will incontinently climb."
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In the future, more and more Rutlanders becoming not only continentals but cosmopolitans, leaving those who will, to sluggar- dize at home, will see abroad the wonders of the world,-earth's kingdoms and their glory. Notwithstanding they will return, as I did, from all continents of memory to our own, as the continent of hope. Standing in Karnac, Jerusalem, Thebes, Rome, where stones themselves to ruin grown, are gray and death-like old, I have been haunted by thick-coming forebodings, but after all my hopes pre- dominate.
By our government uncursed with standing army, aristocracy, or hierarchy, by the peaceful crusaders who pilgrim hither in ever growing hosts, by the legacies we inherit from all civilizations, by enlightenment through the school and press, and religion through the pulpit, here pre-eminently pervasive, by our Union consecrated by myriads of good men who died that it might not die, and have passed on
From glory here to glory where, The banner blue in field of air Is bright with stars forever there Without the stripes of red.
By all these tokens is ours sealed as the continent of Hope.
Its honors with increase of ages grow As streams roll down enlarging while they flow. Through broader climes than Roman eagles saw
Why boast we liberty restrained by law ? Why call we classic spoils from foreign lore ? Why people sons of every raee our shore ? No sword unsheathed, no hiss of murderous ball The book of knowledge legible by all ? Hunger unfelt, commerce a silver cord, Why false philosophy at length abhorred,
The tongue, the pen, the pencil's mysteries,
The press, an carthquake impulse, wherefore these ?
Must these all plunge as down a cataract And tragic scenes of anarchy enact ?
Nay, God ordained these marvels to emerge Where all the ends of earth and time converge. God, who an end seeures by tiniest mote Of myriads that in boundless other float, And choicest wheat from mildewed harvest gleans,
Much more shall wonders work by wondrous means, Wherefore has he thronghont our borders wrought, By enginery transcending human thought " Sure the day dawns when all shall hail as queen The Bride of God, arrayed in heavenly sheen.
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Townsmen! sweet is this reunion, like the evening gathering together those whom morning had scattered. Worthy is it to be called a jubilee and proclaimed in the old Hebrew fashion with silver trumpets. It is a scene, take it for all in all, we ne'er shall
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look upon its like again,-the hospitable home-keepers bidding us, outsiders, come and see them every week and stay a fortnight everytime. It reminds me of a way-side settee along the highways in Germany, beneath shade or fruit-trees,-a shelf behind its back on which way-farers may rest their burdens, a fountain and flowers before it, the road trodden and to be trod in full view, castle, cathedral, city, in the distance.
Coming up to this convocation of old friends who make the world warmer and of new friends.who make it wider, we seem like those climbing different sides of the same mountain, rising to broader views, and drawing nearer at once to each other and to heaven. It is next to the recognition of friends in the skies. Speaking in a lighter vein,-no ingredient is wanting for concocting a bowl of soul-full punch-
Where strong, insipid, sharp, and sweet, Each other duly tempering, meet.
Of course I mean teetotaler's punch,-the bright, champaigny " old particular" brandy punch of genial and congenial feeling.
It is good to be here, and we would fain clip the wings of so good a time,-or like Joshua bid the sun stand still. Should we be taking leave as long a term as we have yet to live, the lothness to depart would grow.
But it is not permitted us to tabernacle on the Mount of Trans- figuration. Yet this crisis soon past in time will always be present in its influence as the ter-centennial commemoration of the Reforma- tion by Germans in 1817, is said to have reformed Germany.
Two soldiers who had served under the bravest of brave officers, visiting his grave whetted their swords on his tombstone. At the sepulchres of our fathers may we gain double strength to dare, do, and endure. And as we go down from this mount of beatitude our mutual valedietories may well be these memorable words-
"Forever, and forever farewell! Townsmen !
If we shall meet again we do not know,
Therefore our everlasting farewell take. If we do meet again, then we shall smile, If not, wby then this parting was well made."
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After the address of the Rev. Dr. Butler, the following Poem, written for the occasion by Mrs. Julia C. (Ripley) Dorr, was read by her son, Russell R Dorr :
THE DEAD CENTURY.
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1770-1870. - -
I. Lo! we come
Bearing the Century cold and dumb !!
Folded above the mighty breast
Lie the hands that have earned their rest ;
Hushed are the grandly speaking lips;
Closed are the eyes in drear eclipse;
And the sculptered limbs are deathly still,
Responding not to the eager will, As we come, Bearing the century, cold and dumb !
II. Lo! we wait
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Knocking here at the sepulchre's gate!
Souls of the Ages passed away,
A mightier joins your ranks to-day ;
Open your doors and give him room
Buried Centuries, in your tomb ! For calmly under this heavy pall Sleepeth the kingliest of them all, While we wait At the sepulchre's awful gate!
III. Yet-pause here
Bending low o'er.the narrow bier!
Pause ye awhile and let your thought Compass the work that he hath wrought; Look on his brow so scarred and worn ; Think of the weight his hands have borne; Think of the fetters he hath broken, Of the mighty words his lips have spoken Who lies here Dead and cold on a narrow bier!
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IV. Ere he goes Silent and calm to his grand repose,- While the Centuries in their tomb Crowd together to give him room, Let us think of the wondrous deeds Answering still to the world's great needs, Answering still to the world's wild prayer, He hath been first to do and dare! Ah! he goes Crowned with bays to his last repose.
v. When the earth
Sang for joy to hail his birth,
Over the hilltops, faint and far,
Glimmered the light of Freedom's star. Only a poor, pale toreh it seemed-
Dimly from out the clouds it gleamed-
Oft to the watcher's eye 't was lost
Like a flame by fierce winds rudely tossed. Scarce could earth Catch one ray when she hailed his birth!
VI. But ere long
His young voice, like a clarion strong, Rang through the wilderness far and free, Prophet and herald of Good to be! Then with a shout the stalwart men Answered proudly from mount and glen,
Till in the brave, new, western world
Freedom's banners were wide unfurled! And erc long The Century's voice, like a clarion strong,
VII. Cried, "O Earth, Pæans sing for a Nation's birth! Shout hosannas, ye golden stars, Peering through yonder cloudy bars! Burn, O Sun, with a clearer beam ! Shine, O Moon, with a softer gleam ! Join, ye winds, in the choral strain! Swell, rolling seas, the glad refrain! While the Earth Pæans sing for a Nation's birth!"
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VIII. Ah! he saw- This young prophet with solemn awe- How after weary pain and sin, Strivings without and foes within, Fruitless prayings and long suspense, And toil that bore no recompense- After peril and blood and tears, Honor and Peace should crown the years!
This he saw While his heart thrilled with solemn awe.
IX. His clear eyes
Gazing forward in glad surprise,
Saw how our land at last should be
Truly the home of the brave and free !-
Saw from the old world's crowded streets,
Pestilent cities and close retreats, Forms gaunt and pallid with famine sore
Flee in hot haste to our happy shore, Their sad eyes Widening ever in new surprise.
x. From all lands
Thronging they come in eager bands ; Each with the tongue his mother spoke; Each with the songs her voice awoke; Each with his dominant hopes and needs, Alien habits and varying creeds,- Bringing strange fictions and fancies they came,
Calling old truths by a different name, When the lands Sent their sons thither in thronging bands.
XI. But the Seer-
This dead Century lying here- Rising out of this chaos, saw Peace and Order and Love and Law! Saw by what subtle alchemy Basest of metals at length should be Transmuted into the shining gold, Meet for a king to have and hold. Alı, great Seer! This pale Century lying here!
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XII. So he taught Honest freedom of speech and thought; Taught that Truth is the grandest thing Painter can paint or poet sing; Taught that under the meanest guise It marches to deeds of high emprise;
Treading the paths the prophets trod Up to the very mount of God! Truth, he taught, Claims full freedom of speech and thought.
XIII. Bearing long Heavy burdens of hate and wrong, Still has the arm of the Century been
Waging war against crime and sin. Still has he plead Humanity's cause; Still has he prayed for cqual laws; Still has he taught that the human race Is one in despite of hue or place,
Even though long It has wrestled with hate and wrong.
XIV. And at length,- A giant arising in his strength,-
The fetters of serf and slave he broke, Smiting them off by a single stroke! Over the Museovite waste of snows, Up from the fields where the cotton grows,
Clearly the shout of deliverance rang
When chattel and serf to manhood sprang,- As at length The giant rose up in resistless strength.
XV. Far apart,- Each alone like a lonely heart,- Sat the Nations, until his hand Wove about them a wondrous band; Wrought about them a mighty chain
Binding the mountains to the main! Distance and time rose dark between Islands and continents still unseen, While apart None felt the throb of another's heart.
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XVI. But to-day
Time and space hath he swept away!
Side by side do the Nations sit, By ties of brotherhood closer knit ;- Whispers float o'er the rolling deep ;- Voices echo from steep to stecp ;- Nations speak, and the quick replies Fill the earth and the vaulted skies;
For to-day Time and distance are swept away.
XVII. If strange thrills
Quicken Rome on her seven hills ;
If afar on her sultry throne
India wails and makes her moan;
If the eagles of haughty France
Fall as the Prussian hosts advance,
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All the continents, all the lands, Feel the shock through their clapsed hands, And quick thrills Stir the remotest vales and hills.
XVIII. Yet these eyes, Dark on whose lids Death's shadow lies,
Let their far-reaching vision rest
Not alone on the mountain's erest; Nor did these feet with stately tread Follow alone where the Nations lcd ; Nor these pale hands, so weary-worn, Minister only where States were born. These clear eyes, Soft on whose lids Death's slumber lies,
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