The dawn of the Twentieth Century bursts upon you without needing to cross the Sierras, and bathes at once in its golden splendors, with simultaneous effulgence, the Narrows of Sandy Hook and the peerless portals of the Golden Gate.
Reid poetically describes the dawn of the 20th century as a moment of simultaneous enlightenment across the United States.
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Brushing aside, then, these bugbears, gentlemen, what are the obvious duties of the hour?
Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.
Above all, if there is a trace of politics in their work, or of seeking for political effect at home, they will fail, and deserve to fail.
They appeared at times when public men often seemed to be groping in the dark on an unknown road, but it is now evident that the road which has been taken is substantially the road they marked out.