Addresses Commemorative of Abraham Lincoln and John P. Hale (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1892 Excerpt: ... JOHN P. HALE. Mb. President And Fellow Citizens: When the illusions of military glory, and the delirious dream of a universal supremacy, had given way to the sober reflections of the philosopher and statesman, the august exile of St. Helena said: "I wanted no statues, for I knew that there was no safety in receiving them at any other hands than those of posterity." In a like spirit. Burke also deprecated a statue in his life-time, saying that such honors belong exclusively to the tomb, and that, frequently, such is human inconstancy, the same hands which erect pull them down. Thus these great men, both with characteristic penetration and discernment, touched upon the profound truth that every man's work is to be tested by time. That is the crucible through which all service is to be passed before it receives its final stamp and authentication. But time is a factor whose relations to history are readjusted. What required an age in an earlier day is now accomplished in a generation, by the diffusion of knowledge, the rapid circulation of intelligence, the electric rapidity of all the interchanges of thought and sentiment. Men do not wait for ages to be appreciated. By these modern instruments of precision, in the quickening of human sympathies, and the broadening of intellectual horizons, we measure the mental and moral altitude of our great actors, and determine their places in the firmament with unerring accuracy, after only that brief lapse of time which suffices for the subsidence of the passions and perturbations of contemporary judgment. And so, before a generation has passed since a great man was gathered to his rest, the people of his state meet, in unbroken accord, to do him honor by raising here a statue to his memory in the public grounds of the co...