The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1885-05-28


GOV. LONGS ADDRESS.
| Mr.. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Iconfess, Mr. Chairman, that unaccnstomed as
am to these festival occasions, yet was downright
glad to get an invitation to this one. If there was
/ ever thoroughgopg provincial; if there was ever
native of the country that loyal to rural life
| if ever bear went out of rugged Oxford county
| THAI never lost his sweet tooth for her honey.
| calm to share in that distinction. Did not, Mr..
| Emery, your father and mine interchange their
| lhymiDg muses. over the hills of Paris aud Buck
held? was not born in one of Oxford's nesting
| cradles, in village lovelisr than sweet Auburn,
l0veliest village OF the pain, happier valley
than the Abyssnian seclusion of Rasselas by the
/ side of one of Oxfords streams whose music sang
me- child. to sleep. and has sung in my dreams
ever siece-under the exquisite elms that are the
grace OF her landscape, and among the falrest hills
that ever broke the goldsn sunsets of tue west or
lifted the luxuiant foliage Of a Maine summer?
Did not Old Streaked teach my youth the glory Of
the mountains well iced me with the nutriti-
| Gus and who 'esome blueberry? Did not graduate
at Hebron Academy, and 10 not recall that temple
OF learning as the most imposing architectural pi3
and spire that ever awed school boy? Was IL not
there stammeI ed my first defamation ami iu a
very still small voice tbuudered Cceros question to
Cailne, demanding now long he proposed to abuse
our patience? Was 1t not az Hebron that the song
of the frogs and the glow of the FREELY associated
themselves forever in the mind of homesick LAD
with tender melancholy which to this day they
never fail TO revive little you would suspect il
from my personal appearance? Was it not OF his
poverty stricken term at Hebron that my father
wrote to me, referring to his struggles in lines
which recall:
"How was poor and lame and lean,
Wore homespun clothes of bottle green;
Your grandsres wedding coat resigned
Turned inside out and patched behind;
My brother Toms old vest of blue,
Five summers after it new;
How could drive no costly team,
OF coursers swift or go by steam,
But rode an old plug bareback double
Three miles an hour without much trouble
With saddle-bags in which TO carry
My clothes and books and stationery;
Ia one end Cicero and Sallust,
In to'ther shirts and hose to BALLAST
And how travelled to recite
Two miles at morning, two at night,
Because could not then afford
To pay the price of nearer board,
Or people nearer did not choose
To take their pay in making Shoes
Why, sir, Oxford county to mo is volu me of DO
ems, paradise of nature. Her crests of blue
against the summer sky, and in winter white with
glistening snow, her pure waters, her cool woods,
her picturesque roaos winding over hill and down
dale her exquisite intermingling of forests and
farm are such natural park of loveliness and
nagnifcence as metropolitan wealth or art can
ever Initiate. A returning native of Buekfield
once astonished 'us boys" by Dragging that he "had
been to Sico, Biddeford and New York. | have
myself been to those remote confines of civiiza-
tion. have travelled hundreds of miles across
Western wastes where no living thing resorts and
no water runs, across praTies where with all their
mighty heros of cows and oxen you get no good
beef because it is all sent TO your markets. ana
no mix except condensed milk from the East
prepared dare say in Oxford county. have seen
the stagnant and red, muddy waters of the Rio
Grande. have at The risk of being smoked in and
drowned, rocked in a railroad car across The
swamps of Louisiana. have in artless Mississippi
been cheated by the childIike and blank freedman
into buying bitter oranges-fair but like some 9TH
er fair things, 1ull of deceit have ridden days
journey through the pine barrens of Alabama and
Georgia, where the very trees wept their own
loneliness and mutilaion and wept turpentine at
that greaG drops of resin coursing down their
Scared cheeks. saw the trees with their long
ghostly southern moss that seems to make the
whole landscape graveyard of the war. L have
heard the midnight alligator howl at the monotony
OF Florida landscape, and envied his lungs. And
all these scenes certainly nothing TO the glory
and beauty of the Oxford hills, and of the lakes
from which am just returning. You who live in a
city need no reminder from me of the sympathy
that still links you with that home Of your boy.
hood. There, and only there cluster the associa-
tions of the only home-lhe boys home. 1t was
there that you knew who lived under every roof in
the viliage-knew the play-places in every garret
and barn-perhaps the sweet recess OF every family
cupboard. 1t was there only mothers love seemed
to be the very sunshine that made the holl yhocks
and wild brier roses grow round the porch. Anu it
there too that in sort of illusion you still fancy
you will one day return to live, at least to rest
though you know that may not be. You would not
lose out of your lives, however centered elsewhere
rooted now in other social or business soil the
fragrance of your Oxford birthplace am sure you
can say with me:
ne'er shall forget when returning one day
TO my home mid the mountains Of Maine
When the summer was nigh and the fair hand Of
May
Was oedecking the country again.
What thrill of delight, inexpressiby sweet
felt while extending my gaze
Ger the scenes unforgotten, where often my feet
Had ramoled in earlier days.
Oxford is a rugged land. Its soil is hard It's
SLOWS are deep and long, Its wintry winds are
bleak. Its returns not those Of wealth or
luxury. It's sons and daughters are bears, if you
Will, Dut thelr homes were fine with the honey of
honest labor, of plain living and high thinking
For one owe it deeper debt. Enlarsing and
educating as were its physical il fueBces pay nv
tribute still more gratefully to the living influences
OF Its people. In american life and struggle be-
ieve here is no such education as that of country
boys contact IN school and at all times with the
social democracy Of country such as Oxford coun-
ty typlfes absolutely meeting the ideal of a free
ana equal people, and ignorant of such a thing as
caste or class. Ado to such q democracy the ele-
menus of the education of the com ron schools the
untettered exercise Of religious freedom, the popu-
lar political discussion OF the street corner iha
store and the hay field the frequent vacancies Of
leisure the common know ledge Of men and things.
the splendid ngrafned inheritance of English CON,
mon law ripehed into the maxims, habits converse
and system of the people, the absence on the one
hand OF any great sceumuIations of wealth and on
the other Cf any consciousness OF the depryations
of extreme poverty and especially that unconscious
unreserve and inartifciality of intercourse which
MADE the newer OF stone the free and easy Ii not
superior disputant, as well as companion Of the
owner of the teld-add all thesa ana vAu h.va an
atmosphere OF education, out of which no boy could
emerge and not have fitting for future life such as
the metropolis with its Schools the university with
its colleges, could not give-a homely familiarity
with the popular mind, inbred sympathy with
the Masses not artificial or assumed but a part of
character itself and helpful sgeucy in public ser.
vice or Ia useful conduct in life. lis fruits you see
to-uay and Tor years have in the elements
shlch from rural counties like Oxford have gone
into the busy of national life and given
enterprise, growth success to the business, to the
government, the literature and the progress of our
country.
Yes, my friends, believe we are here to utter
our gratitude to the men and women who gave
popular tone to Oxford county, worthy ct her hills
and the grandeur and strength of her physical mag
influence Ny gratitude is from full heart. /
recognize with profound emotion, the resolute,
generous and fruitful purpose and force which our
fathers put into their farms and water-courses and
trading posts. 1 look back and behold worth and
high-mindedRess and character driving the oxen in
the held, cutting the wood, tending the saw mill
leading the training field and the election doing the
the Worsted mitten over the counter, and making
the wholesomest texture of pastoral provincial
u ~ the world has ever seen or will see the
ideal combination of industry, equality, freedom
intelligence and high character.
. Q talk nowadays of poverty; we pity our city
1u OF poor; we create and foster our associations
OF charity. And yet you have among you in this
great city hardly family scanty in their means
70 comtortess in their hOmes-thanks to the inven-
tons, improvements and distributions of modern
Emes -as the pioneers of Oxford county less than
hundred years ago. We little realize the rapid
spread OF those means of making life easier, which
OF later years have given to the poorest hearths
comforts which then the richest did not dream of.
II was the best blood of Massachusetts pure En-
gnsh stock little changed even TO this day the best
families of Pilgrim and Puritan descent-thst after
the Revolutionary war made their way 10 Oxford
county; but like all pioneers, they had little of
this worlds goods and brought little except their
splendid inheritance of worth and character, their
brave hearts and honest, hard-working hands. How
illustrative of all this straghtesed circumstance is
the story of that half fisherman and half shoemak-
er, pestered by debt. and last selliug his little
farm in the mo her commonwealth, ana with his
wife and brood of children his kit and scanty house,
hold furniture, sailing by packet from Plymouth to
SALEM, and thence jpurueying overland in pion-
neers wagon, which held al hs had. loo mics into
the uplauds Of Oxford county, Maine in 1906 How
often ny father Goa bless him, has told me Of
their arrival at rhe foot of he mie-long hill az the
top OF which was the i1nrney's end aIth its cabin