The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-06-19
THE PURITAN.
Mr.. Curtis Grafton at the Unvail-
ing of the Pilgrim Statue.

The bronze statue of 1.-THE Pilgrim" by
by j. Q. A. Ward, the sculptor. was I'M
vailed in Central Park, New York, few
days ago, in the presence of the New En-
gland Society of New York and many dis
tinguished persons, among them ex-Presi-
dent Arthur, representatives from New
England societies, and a large concourse of
citizens.
The statue is heroic in size, placed upon
a granite pedestal with bronze panels. 1t
is that of man about forty years of age,
standing erect and looking away toward
the west He is attired in the old pilgrim
garb, and one hand rests on the muzZle of
of a fiint-loek musket.
The ceremonies began with prayer by
Assistant Bishop Potter. Then followed an
address by Park Commissioner Beekman,
the singing of Mrs. Heman's hymn, "Pil-
grim Fathers" by chorus societies of New
York and Brooklyn; the unvailing of the
statue by Mr.. Ward; its presentation to the
New England Society by Daniel F. Apple
ton, Chairman of the Monument Commit
tee; its formal transfer to the city of New
York on behalf of the society by General
Stewart l.. Woodford, and its acceptance
by Alderman Sanger, who represented
Mayor Grace. The societies then sang the
pilgrim chorus from Verdi's "FLombar-
da," and the ceremonies closed with COM
memorative address by George William
Curtis The speaker was frequently inter-
rupted by applause. He spoke as follows:
To-day and here, we, who are children of
New England, have but one thought, the
Puritan; one pride and joy, the Puritan story.
That transcendent story, in its larger rela-
tions, involving the whole modern develop
ment and diffusion, and organization, of En-
glish liberty, touched into romance by the
glowing imagination, is proudly repeated by
every successive generation of the English
speaking race, and lives, and breathes and
burns, in legend and in song. In its greatest
incident, the Pilgrim emigration to America,
IL is story of achievement unparalleled in
the annals of the world for the majesty of its
purpose and the poverty of its means, the
weakness of the beginning and the grandeur
OF the result. Contemplating the unnoted and
hasty flight by night of a few EngliShmen
from the lonely coast of Lincolnshire to Hol-
land-the peaceful life in eXile-the perilous
ocean voyage afterward, lest in that friendly
land the fervor of the true faith should fail
the frail settlement at Plymouth, shred of
the most intense and tenacious life in
Europe floating over the sea and clinging
to the bleak edge of America, harassed
by Indians, beset by beasts, by disease, by ex-
posture, by death in every form, beyond civil
interest of mankind, thin thin thread Of the
old world by which incalculabe destnies of
the new world hung, yet taking such vital
hold that it swiftly overspreads and domi-
mates continent, covered to-day with pop
ulatiOn more industrious, more intelligent,
happier, man for man, than any people upon
which the sun ever Shone-contemplating this
spectacle, our exulting hearts break into
language which was most.familiar to the Inns
of the Pigrims-a psean of triumph q proud
prophecy accomplished-'Th Desert shall re-
joice and bloom as the rose" "a little one
shall become thousand and small one
strong nation"
Here. indeed, we are far from the scenes
most familiar to the eyes of the Pilgrims; we
are surrounded by other traditions and So
hclted by other memories. But under these
radiant heavens, amidst this Astounding
beauty of summer, our hearts go backward
to a winter day. The roaring city sinks
lawns become barren shore This animated
throng, changed to grave-faced group in
somber garb, scans wistfully the solitary
waste. The contrast is complete.
Well may the statue of the Puritan stand
here, for in the mighty miracle of the scene
around us his hand, too, has wrought. Here
upon this teeming island the children of New
Netherlands and New England have together
built the metropolis of the continent, the far
Shining monument of their united energy,
enterprise and Skill. Together at the head of
yonder river, richer in romance and legend
than any American stream, the Puritan and
the Hollander with their associate colonists
meditated the American Tn on. Together in
this city, in the Stamp act congress, they de-
fled the power of Great Britain; and once
more, upon the Hudson, the Puritan and the
Cavalier and HOllander born again as Amer
leans, reslstlessly envelOped and overwhelmed
the army of Burgoyne, and in his surrender be-
held the end Of British authority in the COL
onies. Here, then, shall the statue stand, i'm
perishable memorial of impershabe friend
ship; blending the historic memories of the
fxXyn yfNtl1S n
Netherlands, the soldier Of old England and
the soldier of New England, at different times
and under different conditions, but with the
same unconquerable enthusiasm and courage
battling for liberty.
The spirit VIII ch is personified in this statue
had never q conpleter expression than in the
Puritan but it is far older than he Beyond
plymouth and Leyden, beyond the Manor
House of Scrooby and the dim shore of the
Humber, before Wickliffe and the German re-
formers, on heaven-kissing pastures of the
everlasting Alps, on the bright shores of the
Medicean ArnO, in the Roman forum, in the
golden day of Athens of the violet crown
wherever the human heart has beat for liber-
ty and the human consciousness has vaguely
qujckened with its divine birthright-
wherever the instinct of freedom challenges
authority and demands the reason no less
than the poetry of the tradition-there there
whatever the age, whatever the country, the
man, the costume, there is the invincble spir-
it Of the Puritan:
We must.not think of Puritanism as mere
acrid defiance and sanctimonious sectarian-
ism, nor of the Puritans as band of ignorant
and half crazy Zealots. Yet mainly from the
Vindictive caricature of voluptuous court
and a servile age is derived the popular con-
ception of the Puritan. He was only SLAM
dered by Ben Johnson's Tribulation Whole
some and Zeal of-the-land Busy. The Puritan
of whom Macaulay, following Hume, said that
he hared bear batting, not because it gave
pain to the bear, but because it gave pleas
the SDncf1t0r Puritan nj ba
plays of Charles IL, when Shakespeare had
been replaced by Aphra Behn, and the object
OF the acted drama was to stimulate a pas
sion palled by indulgence and taste brutal
lied by debauchery. The literature that
travestied the Puritan sprang from the same
impOtent hate which scattered the ashes of
W1cklitfe upon the Severn and disinterred
the dead Cromwell and hung the body in
chains at Tyburn, insulting the dust of the
hero whoJiving had made England great, and
to whose policy, after the eifeminate and
treacberOus Stuart reaction, England re-
turned. The Cavaliers ridiculed the Puritan
as Burgoyne and the idle British officers in
Boston burlesqued the Yankee patriot. They
had their laugh, their jest, their jibe. But it
is not to the rOlLcking maSqueraderS Of the
British barracks, to the scarlet soldiers of the
crown, that we look to see the living pict-
ures of our Washington and Hamilton, our
Jay and Adams who plucked from the crown
its brightest gem. 1t is not the futile rbald-
ry of tops and fribbles, of courtiers and
courtesanS, of religious slavery and political
QeSpOIlS1n, whose 1dJdI spell over England
the Puritan had broken forever, which can
truly portray the Puritan.
When Elizabeth died, the country gentle
men, the great traders in the towns, the
sturdy steady middle class in England the
class from which its character and strength
have sprung, were chiefly Puritans. Purtans
taught in the universities and sat on the
thrones of bishops. They were Peers in
Parliament, they were ambassadors and Sec
retaries Of State. Hutchinson, graced with
every accomplishment of the English gentle
man, was a Puritan. Sir Henry Vane by
whose side sat justice was q Puritan. John
John Pym, the greatest of Parliamentary
leaders, was Puritan. A fanatic? Yes, in
the high sense of Interchangeable fidelity to the
sublime idea-a fanatic like Columbus sure of
western passage to India over mysterious
ocean which no mariner had ever sailed; a
fanatic ike Calico who marked the courses
of the stars and saw. despite the iargon of
authority, that still the earth moved; a
fanatic like Joseph Warren, whom the glory
of patriotism transfgures upon Bunker Hill
This was the fanatic who read the Bible to
the English people and quickened English life
with the fire of primeval faith; who smote the
and rode with Cromwell and the Ironsides,
praising God; who, to the utmost shores of the
and in the shuddering valleys
of Piedmont, to every religious oppressor and
foe of England made the name of England
terrible. This was the fanatic soft as sum
shine in the young Milton, blasting in Crom-
well as the thunder-bolt, in EndicOtt austere
as Calvin, in Roger Williams benign as Me-
lanchton, in John Robinson foreseeing more
history do you see nobler figure? Forth
frc-T1 fho ra0ruif1or n Groocp Gonna Taopfdou