George F. Hoar

It is kept in the State Library, open at the spot which contains the Compact made on board the Mayflower--the first written Constitution in history.

I pledge the faith of the Commonwealth that for all time it shall be guarded in accordance with the terms of the decree under which it is delivered into her possession as one of her chiefest treasures.

The American people, in the midst of all their material activities, their desire for wealth and empire, are a sentimental people, easily and deeply stirred by anything that touches their finer feelings, especially anything that relates to…

But his restoration was an act of purest kindness.

I think, as I had occasion to say to the British Ambassador afterward, that the restoration of this priceless manuscript did more to cement the bonds of friendship between the people of the two countries than forty Canal Treaties.

Or, if you treat it as booty, in which last case, I suppose, by the law of nations ordinary property does change, no civilized nation in modern times applies that principle to the property of libraries and institutions of learning.

I think this book ought to go back to Massachusetts.

But I longed especially to see the manuscript of Bradford at Fulham, which then seemed to me, as it now seems to me, the most precious manuscript on earth, unless we could recover one of the four gospels as it came in the beginning from…

I declared then that this precious history ought to be in no other custody than that of their children.

So the great Conde' slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame!

One is fighting; the other dancing with the girls.

There are but two things, Sir, for a boy like you to be doing.

They have got over their old coldness with which they were apt to receive their American cousins, although they were always the most delightfully hospitable race on earth when you had once got within the shield of their reserve.

As the light struck the faces of the statues and the busts, it seemed for a moment that the countenances changed and stirred with a momentary life, as if to give a welcome to the guest who had come to break upon their long repose.

But just as the body was let down into the earth, the sun came out for a moment from the clouds, cheering and lightening up the nave and aisles and transepts of the mighty building.

Among the most impressive recollections of my life is the funeral of Tennyson in Westminster Abbey.

And the measure which I think would have been beaten by a pugnacious opposition in either House of Congress, got through.

To send an Ambassador instead of a Minister was to show a most undemocratic deference to titles, abhorrent to every good republican.

The United States representative must not adopt the customs as to dress of the effete monarchies of the old world.

The American Minister is compelled by our rules to wear a dress which exposes him to be mistaken for a waiter at any festive gathering.

The Americans have never maintained their representatives abroad with a dignity becoming a great power like the United States.

It was my good fortune to be instrumental, after this visit, in correcting an evil which had caused great annoyance to our representatives abroad for a good many years.

It seemed to me that he had probably never read a page of Emerson in his life, and had got his notion from some writer for a magazine, before either of these great men was well known.

I told him the famous story of Lincoln's reply to the man who had left with him his poem to read, when he gave it back.

But an opportunity came soon after, to send him first to Russia, and then to Germany, where he has represented what is best in the character, ability, desire, interest and scholarship of the American people.