George F. Hoar

Nothing better can be said in praise of either than that they have been worthy of her, and she has been worthy of them.

What royal house, what empire or monarchy, can show a catalogue like that of the men whom in every generation she has called to high places--Bradford, and Winthrop, and Sir Henry Vane, Leverett, and Sam Adams and John Adams and his…

I account it my supreme good fortune that my public life has been spent in the service of Massachusetts.

But America would survive them all, and the nation our fathers planted would endure in perennial life.

I believe if every man of the North were to die, the new and chastened South, with the virtues it has cherished from the beginning, with its courage and its constancy, would take the country and bear it on to the achievement of its lofty…

I believe if every man of native birth within our borders were to die this day, the men of foreign birth, who have come here to seek homes and liberty under the shadow of the Republic, would carry it on in God's appointed way.

I believe if every Protestant were to be stricken down by a lightning-stroke, that our brethren of the Catholic faith would still carry on the Republic in the spirit of a true and liberal freedom.

Yet if every Republican were to-day to fall in his place, as William McKinley has fallen, I believe our countrymen of the other party, in spite of what we deem their errors, would take the Republic and bear on the flag to liberty and glory.

What hope and confidence in the future of a people, where all men and all women of all parties and sections, of all faiths and creeds, of all classes and conditions, are ready to respond as ours have responded to the emotion of a mighty…

What pride and love must we feel for the republic that calls such men to her high places?

Ah, Fellow Citizens, amid the sorrow and the mourning and the tears, amid the horror and the disappointment and the baffled hope, there comes to us from the open grave of William McKinley a voice of good omen!

But I also believe that the rising sense of justice and of manhood in the South is already finding expression in indignant remonstrance from the lips of governors and preachers, and that the justice and manhood of the South will surely…

Last week at Dartmouth, at the great celebration in honor of Daniel Webster, that famous college gave the highest honor in its power to a Negro, amid the applause of the brilliant assembly.

When I first came to manhood and began to take part in public affairs, that greatest of crimes, human slavery, was entrenched everywhere in power in this Republic.

I believe that in spite of so many errors and wrongs and even crimes, my countrymen of all classes desire what is good, and not what is evil.

I believe that to-day is better than yesterday, and that to-morrow will be better than to- day.

The lesson which I have learned in life, which is impressed on me daily, and more deeply as I grow old, is the lesson of Good Will and Good Hope.

I only say that it has been my supreme good fortune to be the son of a Commonwealth among whose noble and high-minded people a better and more fastidious habit has prevailed.

I have never lifted any finger or spoken a word to any man to secure or to promote my own election to any office.

But I ought to say frankly that my experience has taught me that the memory of men, even of good and true men, as to matters in which they have been personal actors, is frequently most dangerous and misleading.

Men are likely to think that he claims or pretends to have lived up to them, however painfully conscious he may be that they are only dreams which even if he have done his best have had little reality for him.

If the writer set forth therein his own ideals, he is likely to be judged by them, even when he may fall far short of them.