Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1883-04-18
Reminlscence and Return.

rThe following is the closing paragraph
of the last Of Joseph Cooks late series of
lectures in fremont temple, Boston. His
foreign travels formed the groundwork OF
the series and the extracts quoted relate to
his impressions as he was nearing home1
For more than an hour or a day you feel
like turning back upon your course and Wis
iting again every people that you have found
struggling toward the light. Your heart is
on the Thames and the Rhine; indeed, it is
on the Tiber and the Ilissus but you find
your enthusiasm for classical lands over.
borne by the tides of new Oriental and
Southern enthusiasms. Your heart is on
the Gapges and on the Yang Use Kiang, it
is on the slopes of Fuji-yama and the Him.
iayas, it is on the shores of Australia and
in the islands Of the Pacific, it is here in the
Hawaiian group at the foot of Mauna Loa
You feel almost ready to make q resolve to
go back around the globe before you die, if
God will, and this time toward the setting
sun, aud meet once more all the nations that
the English speech can reach. You lean in
the midnight against the mast of your
ship and look upward on the familiar con-
stellations which now begin to rise out Of
the north. They are tremorless in spite Of
the tossing Of all beneath you, and your heart
is as fixed as they, never, on land or sea, TO
be disloyal to international duties. America
is dear to you as never before. The first
sight Of it, as you strain your lonely and
tbirsty eyes eastward, overwhelms you.
You have been pilgrim long. On the sun
rise of your twenty-ffth day from Sidney
the blue heights of the Coast Range, above
the dim mists that sbroud the Faralone
Islands and the Golden Gate, greet you from
you own skies. Ell Captain seems near.
Whether you have any friends left in your
native land you do not know. You make
no predictions, no promises but you are re
solved that, whatever may betide, you will
do your utmost while you live to lift your
own nation to sense Of cosmopolitan obli
cations. Nowhere on the globe is there a
nation which has such influences beyond its
own borders as our own. Great Britain has
more political, but the United States more
moral influence than any other nation. 1t
is because of the advance of education and
democracy; it is because of the progress of
Christianity, that at the bottom of the wall
of every semi.civilized people you find
American aspirations. In Switzerland
heard the news of the death of Garfield, and
all the Alps seemed quivering in sympathy
with our national bereavement. In Ceylon
heard of the death of Longfellow, and all
the tropical forests seemed trembling in pain
at our grief. In the inland sea of Japan
heard of the death of Emerson, and all the
sacred groves seemed uttering their sympa-
thy with our loss. Wherever on the earth
have put my ear upon the breast of the ma
tlons and listened, not to what the people
are ready to say publicly in the face of
tyranny, but to what they say at firesides
and in their secret thoughts, l have always
heard President LiDcoln's prayer, that gov
ernment of the people, for the people and
by the people may not perish from the earth.
There is another prayer uttered by one
whose pierced palms are molding the ages
into the pattern which he loves.-a prayer
that we all may be one. You land in Amer
lea resolved to make that prayer your own
while life lasts. You return hoping that
those pierced palms may mold you and your
nation and all the earth until the ideal of
the heart behind them becomes that of the
entire family of man. You wish to draw
the whole globe into Gods bosom so closely
that the sound Of his pulses may become the
marching song of all the ages: (:
Ring, bells, in unreared steeples-
The joy OF unborn peoples
Sound, trumpets, far off blown,
Your triumph Is my own.