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Show - . , . . . i - ; 1 1 ErjTUGUiAns home today Ir and forgive Mm, yea, to sop rravy with htm out of the selfsame dish, those words of the vambond poet, whose tins the P.e-coroing' P.e-coroing' Angel long ago blotted out of his book,- have come to me and sun to me and cheered me even as a mother's lullaby: lul-laby: In-All Hy "Wanderings. : . ' "In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs-and God has given my share, I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, ' . Amid these rural scenes to lay me down. To husband out life's taper at the close. And keep the flame from wasting by re-sose, re-sose, . I still had hopes for pride attends us still Among the swains to show my, book- - learned skill. Around my Are an evening group to draw, And teU of all I felt and all I saw, i And as a hare whom hounds and horns I pursue, j Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, . I still had hopes my long vexations past, Here to return and die at home at last." Home! there may be words as sweet, words as tender, . words more resonant and high, but within our language round,-is round,-is there one word so all-embracing as that simple word home? Home, "be it ever so humble, there's no place like home" the old Kentucky home; the home of your fathers fa-thers and of mine; of Innocent childhood, of happy boyhood, of budding manhood; when all the world seemed bright and fair; and hearts were full and strong; when life was a fairy-tale, and the wind, as it breathed upon the honeysuckle about the door, whispered naught but of love and fame; the glory strode the sunbeams, sun-beams, and there was no such music as the low of cattle, me whir of the spinning-wheel, the call of the dinner-horn, and the creaking of the barnyard gate. Home . Take the bright sheel : From its home on the lea, And wherever it goes It will sing of the sea. . So take tne fond heart From its home by the hearth, ' 'Twill sing of the loved ones To the ends of the earth. the blue and the grizzled grandfather who wore the gray. Rent by Civil Teud. . ' Kentucky, which rave Abraham Lincoln Lin-coln to the North and. Jefferson Davis to the South, contributing a very nearly equal quota of soldiers to each of the contending con-tending -armies of that- great conflict In point of fact, as many, fighting men as had ever voted in any election a larger percentum of the population . than has ever been furnished in time of war by any modern State, -Kentucky thus rent by civil feud, was first to know the battle t was ended and to draw together in reunited re-united brotherhood In Cuba. -It was a Crittenden, smiling before a file of Spanish Span-ish musketry, refusing to be blindfolded or to bend the knee for the fatal volley, who uttered the keynote of his race, "A Kentucklan always faces his enemy and kneels only to his God." It was another Kentucklan, the gallant Holman, who, undaunted by the dread decimation, the cruel death-by-lot, having drawn a white bean for himself, brushed his friend aside and drew another in his stead. Ah, yes; we have our humors along with our heroics, hero-ics, and laugh anon at ourselves, and our mishaps and our Jokes; but we are nowise no-wise a bloody-minded people; rather a sentimental, hospitable, kindly people, caring perhaps too much for the picturesque pictur-esque and too little for consequences. Though our Jests be sometimes rough, they are robust and clean. We are a provincial pro-vincial people and we rejoice in our provincialism. pro-vincialism. We have always piqued ourselves our-selves upon doing our lovemaklng and our lawmaking, as we do our ploughing, in a straight furrow; and yet It is true that Kentucky never encountered darker days than came upon us when the worst that can befall, ar --commonwealth seemed passed and gone. The stubborn war between be-tween the Old Court party and the New Court party was bitter enough: but it was not so Implacable as the strife which strangely began with the discussion of an honest difference qt opinion touching a purely economic question, of national, not State, policy. Can . there be one living Kentucklan who does not look back with horror and amasement upon the passions and Incidents of those evil days? What Orant Said. Gen. Grant once said to 'me. "You Ken-tucklans Ken-tucklans are a clannish set. - Whilst I was In the White House, if a Kentucklan happened to get in harm's way. or wanted want-ed an office, the Kentucky contingent began be-gan to pour in; in case he was a Republican, Repub-lican, the Democrats said he was a perfect per-fect gentleman; in case a Democrat, the Republicans said the same thing; can it be that you are all perfect gentlemen"? With unblushing candor, I told him that we were, tt-at we fought out battles as we washed our linen, at home, but that outside, out-side, when trouble .came. It was Kentucky Ken-tucky .against the universe. Mr. TUden said of a lad in the Bluegrass country who had fallen from a second story window win-dow upon a stone paving without a hurt and had run away to his play, that it fui-nished fui-nished conclusive proof that "he was destined for a great career, in Kentucky politics." Let me frankly confess tha. peacemaker thougn I am, and at once the most amiable and placable of men, there have been times, when I, even I, half wanted to go down to the crossroads and "swear, at the court." .That was when things did not swing to suit me. . That was when the majority appeared to think they knew more than I did. We grew so used to blessings that we heed them not. end look .beyond.. Tet when trouble or danger assail us, or humiliation or sorrow or when leagues, continents, oceans lie between ourselves and the vanished land from whose sacred lintels ambition has lured us.-or duty torn and the familiar scenes rise up before us how small these frictions seem,, how small they are and how they perish from us! I have stood upon the margin of a distant sea and watched the ships go by, envious that their prows were westward bent. I have marked the glad waves dancing to the setting sun heart sick with thoughts of home, and thus wistful, yearning, ready to take my dearest enemy by the hand LOUISVILLE. , Ky., June 11 - Hon. Henry Wattersoa spoke as follows In hts ' ja speech of welcome to the visiting Ken-' .ttuckiana attending , the , "Home-coming t Festival" today: ' v - ; - . v Once a Kentucklan. always a, Kentuck-yian.'From; Kentuck-yian.'From; the- cradle to -the grave, the' of the mother-land, stretched forth f'iin mother-love the bosom of the mother-' mother-' i?and, immortal aa the ages, yet mortal In' imaternal affection, warmed by the. rich..: kred blood of Virginia the voice of the" mother-land, ' reaching the farthest cor-Jfners cor-Jfners of the earth In tones of heavenly; : music summon the errant to the roof- ' tree's shade and bid the wanderer Wine.1 ..What wanderer yet was ever loth . to tcomeT" Whether upon the heights of for-.' for-.' tune and fame, or down amid the shad-t shad-t .tows, of the valley of death and despair, . the true .Kentucklan, seeing the shining : - . Aeyes and hearing the mother-call, sends -back the answering refrain: ' ", " ; -'o ' "Wherer I roam," whatever realms I see, My heart, un traveled, .fondly turns to . thee." , , 'j Behold, In this great, exultant . multitude, multi-tude, the proof 1 . . ,.-' ,.-' Jf am to Conjure "With.' ' !t Kentucky! Old Kentucky! The very name has' had a charm,, has .wrought. a spell, has mad a-music, aU its own; has woven on lta sylvan loom a glory quite .-apart 'from the glory of Virginia, Kentucky Ken-tucky mother, and the 'glory of'Ten-nessee, of'Ten-nessee, Kentucky's sister. It haa bloomed v in all hearts where manhood and woman-JioodJiold'the. woman-JioodJiold'the. right -of. way. The drama. of the ages, told im pulse-beats, finds here -' aa Interlude which fiction vainly emulates and history may not o'erleap. Not as . --eekv seeking Promethean fire and .CMi-of Delphoe, 'nor aa the Roman filled with the Joy of living and the lust , of conquest; not as the Viking, springing to the call of wind and wave, nor as the Latin, d ax sled by the glitter of gold, -in' with the thirst' for glory; neither as the Briton and the Teuton, eager for. Mastership onr land and sea, -the Kentuck-' Jfin,. whom we, In filial . homage, salute progenitor. He was as none of these.' Big in bone and strong of voice the full-grown full-grown man prefigured by the psalmist never the ocean mirrored his fancies nor snow-clad peaks that reached the skies inspired; but the - mystery of strange 1-nds, the savagery of nature and the t.n of the greenwood tree, v Love of liberty. . The star that shone above him and led him on was love' of liberty, the beacon of his dreams, the light of the fireside. He cut a clearing in the wlldwood' and called it home. He read not romance, he made It; nor poetry, he lived it, his the Forest Epic, the Iliad of the Canebrake, the Odyssey of the frontier, the unconscious uncon-scious prose-poem of the rifle and the camp, the blockhouse and the plow, the Holy Bible, and the Old Field school. Happy the man who has sat in childhood, child-hood, upon a well-loved grandslre's knee, awed by the telling of the wondrous tale; bow even as the Dardanae followed Aeneaa, the Virginians followed Boone; the route from Troy to Tiber not wearier, weari-er, nor flanked by greater hazard, than that betwixt the shores of -the Chesapeake Chesa-peake and the Falls of the Ohio; the mountains standing gorgon-Iike, across the pathless way as if, defending each defile, to hold inviolate some dread for-bidden for-bidden secret; the weird Wastes of wll- derness beyond; the fordless stream,' the yawning chasm; the gleam of the tomahawk toma-hawk and the hiss of the serpent; yet ever onward, spite of the haunting voice of the elements, stripped for the death-struggle death-struggle . with man, spite of the silence vand the solitude of reluctant nature, like some fawn-eyed maiden resisting his rude intrusion; ever onward;, before -him the promised land of the hunter's vision; in his soul the grace of God. the fear of hell and' -the love of Virginia! . The Mother State. . j . - God "bless Virginia! Heaven smile upon her as she prepares to celebrate with fitting fit-ting rite three centuries of majestic achievement,- the star crown upon her irow,i the distaff in her hand, nor spot nor." blur to dim the radiance of her shield! , They came, the Virginians, in their homespun in quest of homes; their warrant war-rant their rifles; their payment the blood of heroes; nor yet forgetting a proverb the Chinese have that "it needs a hundred" hun-dred" men to make a fortress.- but only a woman can make a home" for they were quick to go back for their women; their wives ana their sweethearts; our grandmothers, grand-mothers, who stood by their side, beautiful beau-tiful and dauntless, to load their fowling-pieces, fowling-pieces, to" dress their wounds, to cheer them on to battle, singing their simple requiem over the dead at Boonesborough and. bringing .water from the spring at Bryan's Station, heartbroken only when the news came back from the River Raisin. Rai-sin. . : - -Gives Hearty "Welcome. :i I am here to welcome you' In the name of.all the people of this lively city, in the name of all the people of the renowned commonwealth, to welcome you as kitn and kin; but you will not expect me. I am sure, to add thereto more than the. merest mer-est outline of the history of Kentucky, aa it is known to eacu and every one el you, from the time when the pathfinders, under un-der the lead of Harrod and Henderson, or Boone and' Kenton, blazed their way through the forest, and the heroes, led by Logan and Shelby, by Scott and Clark, rescued the land from the savage, to the hour which smiles upon .us here this day; a history resplendent with illustrious names and . deeds; separating itself into three great epochs and many episodes ana adventures in woodcraft and warcraft and statecraft: the period of the Clays, the Brecklnridges and the Crittendens. with its sublime struggle to preserve the union of the States, as it had come down to them from the Revolution, with always al-ways the Marshalls and the Wlckllffes, the.Boyles and the Rowans; the Johnsons John-sons and the Browns, the Adalrs, the De-shas'and De-shas'and the McDowells, somewhere at the fore rOld Ben Hardin" having a niche all to himself none of them greater great-er than he: the period of the war of sections, sec-tions, when the Clays, the Crittendens and the Brecklnridges were divided, when for a season the skies were hung in sable sa-ble and all -was dark as night, the very sacrifices that had gone before seeming to have been made in vain, the "dark and bloody ground" of barbaric fancy come into actual being through the passions and mistakes of Christian men; and finally the period after the war of sections, sec-tions, when the precept, "Once a Kentucklan, Ken-tucklan, always a Kentucklan," was met by the answering voice, "Blood is thicker than water." and the Goodloea, the Bal-lards Bal-lards and the Speeds, the Harlands, the Frys and the Murrays clasped their ha'nds across the breach and made short shrift of the work of reconstruction with the Buckners. the Prestons and the Dukes. Thus Is It that here, at least, the perplexed per-plexed grandchild cannot distinguish be-tween be-tween the grizzled grandfather who wore Home, Home, Home. ' - For It's "Home, home, home," sighs the exile on the beach, and It's "Home, home, home," cries the hunter from the hills and the hero from the wars. . "Hame to my ain countree," always home, whether it be tears or trophlea we bring; whether we come with laurels crowned, or bent with anguish and sorrow and failure, having none other oth-er shelter in the wide, wide world beside, the prodigal along with the victor often in bis dreams, yet always in his hope-turns hope-turns him home! Tou, too, friends and brothers Ken-tucklans Ken-tucklans each and every one you, too, home again; this your castle, Kentucky's flag, not wholly hid beneath the folds of the Nation's, above It; this your cottage, Kentucky-like, the latch string upon the outer side; but whether castle or cottage, an altar and a shrine for faithful hearts and hallowed memories. Be sure from yonder skies they look down, upon us this day; the Immortal ones who built this commonwealth; and left it consecrate, a rtch inheritance and high responsibility to you and me; who, like the father of Daniel Webster, shrank from no danger, no toll, no sacrifice, to serve their country coun-try and raise 'their children to a condition condi-tion better than their own. In God's name and in Kentucky's name, I bid you something more than welcome; I bid you know and feel, and carry yourselves, as if you knew and felt that you are no longer dreaming, that this Is actually God's country, your native soil, that, standing knee-deep in bluegrass, you stand fully length, in all our homes and all our hearta! |
