They worked as in the fresh and dewy light of a Nation's morning, under God's eye, fearing Him and not man.

The men of New England, who planted this great Western Reserve of Ohio, were the graduates of this most perfect school of democracy. They were the sons of those wise and unpretending rural statesmen who had been formed by the town meeting; the men who framed those marvelous constitutions which excited the wonder of students in Europe and were called by Thomas Paine "the grammar of politics." Some of them had held town offices in the East. Some had learned to suffer and to obey in the Continental ranks. All had brought with them that priceless gem of true citizenship, the innate perception of the saving fact that it is brave and honorable to obey the laws; that the man who cannot master his natural impulses is unworthy to be free. That we are a community who go to church and to the polls in the same spirit of decency and duty; that murder is infamous as well as criminal among us; that work is more respected than any amount of swaggering pretense; that honesty and honor are inseparable sentiments among the Ohio men of this region, we owe to the fact that our fathers bred us with these ideas and our mothers taught them to us from our cradles. You all know the story of the immortal tinman who wrote "The Pilgrim's Progress;" when he saw a drunken, cursing ribald reeling before him, he said, "Therebut for the grace of God-goes John Bunyan." Let us teach our children to study and to meditate upon the character of the men who cleared this wilderness for corn and for civilization with their axes and their ideas. Then when they hear of riot, and terrorism, and lawlessness, and unpunished or even applauded assassination in other regions, let them devoutly consider that but for the virtues of their ancestors they might be dwelling in the midst of just such scenes of hellish license.

Never were there seen in the world, I believe, a people so superior to their circumstances. It is a hackneyed definition that "democracy means the superiority of man to his accidents." If this be true, our

fathers were the most perfect democrats that ever lived. When we consider what their "accidents" were, it is hard to understand how completely and how safely they bore through those early years and transmitted to their children the forms of civil government and household discipline and conduct. Rarely has environment exercised less influence upon human beings. They lived in cabins ruder than the huts of Cetywayo and his savage followers. Furniture in many cases, they had none; their tables were great logs smoothed with an ax on the top, and supported on sticks fastened in auger holes. Their beds were formed by driving two pronged sticks in the floor, laying a pole upon them, and on this supporting a half dozen smaller poles with their inner ends stuck between the logs of the house. A family which possessed a skillet, a sauce-pan,and a pot all at once had an immediate claim to aristocracy. The breaking of a kitchen utensil was a serious disaster. I have heard of a pioneer family who went into camp for several weeks to try to find an ax which had been dropped in a creek, A pioneer farmer, rebuking a young man who was complaining that the nearest mill was three miles away, said scornfully, "When I was your age I used to take my plow fifty miles to get it sharpened.'. It is hard for us to understand a state of things so devoid of all we call conveniences.

It was the same with what we are accustomed to consider the pleasures of life. Children had no toys. They grew up to maturity without tasting candy. I knew an intelligent old man, who told me he had never seen a piece of money until he was twelve years old. We cannot imagine the Western Reserve without schools. But in other portions of the West they were so rarely found that the children could not even enjoy the simple pleasure of playing truant. As they grew older, merry-makings were few and far between. About the only festivities were weddings, and young people, whatever their good will, could not be marrying all the time, merely to keep society lively. There was something less of romance in the courtship of those times than we have taste and leisure for. One Ephraim Stout, a mighty hunter in his day, was married frequently. His wives were taken off

with the regularity of Bluebeard's spouses, but he found no difficulty in filling their places. He was by no means handsome or well-favored, and once, when he was asked how he managed to make himself so irresistible, he said, "I always promise them they shall live in the timber, where they can pick up their own firewood." It seemed a lure no female heart could resist.

It appears a harsh and cheerless life to have lived through—but I have been at many gatherings of pioneers and old settlers, and I have never heard that early life described as a hard one. It shines rosily through the mists of memory to the hale old man or woman, recalling the time when they were young and strong: when the blood coursed merrily through the full veins, and each morning brought its toil which was a pleasure for the mighty muscles, and each night the repose which comes from a wholesome fatigue. "You don't know what fun is," said an old Illinoisan. "The only way for a man to relish his breakfast is to get up before day, get on your horse and run down your deer before you eat him."

The pioneer life is apt to lead to a relaxation of the social and political sense. Those faculties which find no exercise in the wild and isolated life of the wilderness are in danger of perishing-often do seem to perish for want of use. But it is the especial and peculiar glory of the pioneers whose memory we celebrate to-day that they never yielded one inch to the barbarizing tendencies of the wilderness, but, in the midst of adverse circumstances, were still steadfastly, perhaps unconsciously, true to the high conceptions of life with which they had left their New England homes. It was a rugged life they led, but it never was a rough one. It was remarked by one who visited the country in its early days that on approaching a clearing in the woods the traveler might well be alarmed at the solitude, the darkness gathering over the rude cabin, the gaunt and silent family who with a few words welcomed him, the ill-furnished interior, the arms that hung conspicuously displayed when he entered; but his apprehensions took flight when they gathered about the supper table and the head of the

house in a few fervent words asked the blessing of heaven upon the simple repast.

Of course there is no claim that in the Western Reserve alone this high standard of morals and civil conduct was found. In other parts of the State the same lofty ideal was pursued by men whose habit of life was plain living and high thinking. The Ohio Company, which settled Marietta and the adjoining regions, also carried civilization, ready made, into the virgin forests. They possessed to a high degree the enthusiasm of common sense. They settled their pioneers in squads of twenty on contiguous lots, for mutual aid and defense. The principles which guided them in making their municipal laws were "order, decency, sobriety, and a sacred observance of the Lord's day." Every settler was bound to release to the public use all needed highways. He was to plant at least fifty apple trees and twenty peach trees within five years. He was to keep his gun in order and his powder dry, not for the defense of his private dignity, but for the public safety. With principles and practices such as these the country prospered; how could it help prospering? Even the long and anxious years of the Indian wars could not thrust back into even temporary barbarism a people like this, who were honest from the ground up, who were law-abiding from instinct, who were industrious from sheer sanity.

In the character of these men, in the spirit which informed the institutions they planted in this fertile soil, we trace the origin of the greatness and the prosperity of this State. We do not wish to infuse one drop of bitterness in the cup of our rejoicings to-day by drawing comparisons which may wake the demon of controversy, for whom there is no room in the shadows of this grove, sacred to a gentler genius. But I hope there are some questions so finally adjudicated that we may refer to them in passing and provoke no rejoinder, and in that hope I say that the ordinance of 1787 was in great measure the occasion of our high civilization and our vast prosperity. It stood, like a granite landmark, at the headwaters of the Ohio, and said to

the emigrating thousands from the Atlantic States, "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve. On the right bank is free soil forever, on the left bank is slavery for a while." And the people who went to the right chose a different faith and a different fate from those who went to the left.

I know it is sometimes said by ill-informed brethren of ours that while we have waxed exceedingly rich and strong and powerful in all the elements of material well-being, we have not made equal progress in the things of the spirit, and have not kept alive those sentiments of chivalry and honor which are supposed to have survived in the regions to the south of us. It would not be profitable to discuss this matter about which we have, of course, our own opinions. We will rest content with our millions of well-tilled acres, our manufactures, our churches and school houses, and not quarrel with those who think we would be better without them. As to the quality of brain which a civilization like this produces, it is not becoming for you to boast. As I am not a native of Ohio, however, I may be permitted to mention what-through the modesty of Ohio people, which has been carried so far that the phrase "Western Reserve" was supposed, by Secretary Evarts, to denote a moral quality rather than a geographical division -has been hitherto unknown and unmentioned, viz: that several Ohio men have recently done pretty well in the competition of intelligence; that the editor of the first literary magazine of New England,the most delicate and fastidious writer of American English now living, the man who, with a surer hand than any predecessor, can draw the uncaricatured American his name is Howells-is from Ashtabula; that the editor of the leading newspaper of America'1 is from Cedarville, near Xenia: that the first general,' of the army comes out of Lancaster; that the second in command3, was born in Perry county; that the Secretary of the Treasury', whose works praise him beyond

"Whitelaw Reid

2William T. Sherman

Sheridan

4John Sherman