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Show GREETED BY NEIGHBORS. Colonel Roosevelt Talks of His Trip and Says it is Good to be Home. Oyster Bay. Every resident of the town was at the station to greet Theodore The-odore Roosevelt upon his return to his home n the 6 o'clock special. Bowing Bow-ing and shaking hands with his old friends, he walked through the mud to the park, where a grandstand had been erected. About 3,000 persons gathered on the green. Five hundred high, school pupils were the first to do the honors. They sang "Home Again." Then William J. Youngs, United States district attorney, delivered de-livered the address of welcome. Colonel Col-onel Roosevelt replied as follows: "My friends and neighbors: I hope I need not say how glad -I am to see you and be willr you again. My trip began the 23rd of March a year ago when you bade me good-bye at the station, and this is the ending, when I get through speaking. It is good to to see you again at the station and walk up behind the band. I enjoyed hearing the children sing and I hope that there are some children present from the same school that my children chil-dren attended. "I am glad to see you all again, men, women and little Oysters. A normal school boy passes his time in a state of semi-warfare at his elbojvs and I suppose I was no exception to the rule, but those who knew me as a small boy seem to have forgiven me by this time." "I can't say how much these "home-coinings "home-coinings to Oyster Bay have meant to me in the last dozen years. I know you all and I do not think there is one among you with whom I am not on good footing. I never forgot the welcome you gave me when I came back from the Spanish-American war. "I have had a most interesting trip, and enjoyed it very much, lions and everything. Perhaps I enjoyed it a little more on account of the lions. 1 started at the headwaters of the Nile, where the people are in a state of savagery, and finished up at the most highly civilized capilal in the world. I enjoyed everything in Africa and Europe, and the capitals of Europe and their rulers. -But this is not the occasion to talk of my trip. Some day I shall tell you all about it. This is merely a greeting, and I wish to thank you all. "It, touched me deeply to have so many of my neighbors come to New York and take part in the welcome and in the parade. But it touched me more deeply to see you all here; to live among you again as I have for the last forty years; to take up my duties. "The first dutyof a man is in his own fam'ly. Before a man can aspire to reform a nation, he must turn his attention to the folks at home." |