George F. Hoar: “Can there be found in the history of Massachusetts such a record of shameless dishonor and such a terrible indictment…”

We speak of a light that makes darkness visible; and similarly there are sounds that deepen the long intervals of silence with which they alternate.

We are here in the sweet silence of a summer morning, eighteen hundred years after such a scene, and able mentally to catch some glimpse of it; some echo of the storm that has left behind it so ineffaceable a mark.

We bring you a more costly and precious gift than any jewel or diadem, though it came from an Emperor's treasury.

We bring you the heart's love of Boston where you were born, and Worcester where you took the early vows you have kept so well; of Massachusetts who knows she has no worthier son, and of the great and free country to whom you have taught…