The Portland daily press., 1892-06-30
The Grafton Which Closed the Com,
meneement Exercises.
GEN. STEWART L. WOODFORD'S
ELOQUENT WORDS.
The Worlds Columbian Exposition and
the Eras in American History Which
Suggests.
. Especial to the Press.l

mencement time with the old Bridgton
Academy at North Bridgton, and today
has been the great day for both students
and alumni. This evening, General
Stewart L. Woodford of New York de-
livered the Grafton. He said: - u
General Stewart L. woodford's Address,.
Next October we shall ioin4with many
nations in keeping the birthday of the
New World, the day When Columbus
landed four hundred years ago on the
island of San Salvador. That day stands
at the gateway between the old timesand
the new, for then began those four cen
tugies of discovery, of struggle and
achievement whose wonderful results
are the browning and most perfect fruit
OF all the ages &Jf
Fifty may we give this anniversary day
that comes in this anniversary year to
sober and serious reflection on these
four centuries of American history.
y Columbus came and unveiled the is
Iands of the tropic seas and then the
coast of South America to European pos
session. He sought pathway to the
spicelands of the Indies. He died in the
thought that he had found the Easernt
shore of that mysterious continent where
the race had come into existence. and
whose history reached back into the
shadows OF Eden days. Human beings
were on the island where first he landed.
Golden ornaments were On their persons
and rude weapons were in their hands.
They told him of a land to the Southwest
whence they had gotten their gold, and
this tale 1ured him to the mainland.
Spain and Portugal followed ON these
lines of discovery. Mexico and Peru
were at last found, and the marvels of an
Occidental civilization were unfolded,
whose ruins, even as we unearth them
to-day, are startling and stupendous.
In some far earlier time some Column
bus, now forgotten, sailing eastward
from Chinese, Japanese, OF Indian shores
western edge. A civilization had grown
up peaceful. tender, gentle, which, with
out the name of Christ, was yet more
Christian than that which in
Greed of Gold and Lust of Power
cursed the islands of the gulf and the
savannahs of the main land with deadly
slavery. That story of the conquest Of
Mexico and Peru, of the slave ships, and
of the middle passage is one of the most
horrible records in the annals of time.
But strangest of all is this: These people
had been here SO long that they did not
know, even by, tradition, whence they
caIne. There is nothing new under the
slF ! These old navigators are unknown.
NJ poet sings their praise. No historian
ra Dunts their 1abors. Their names, their
we rks. their story forgotten, and their
very civilization swept away by the ciyisi
ized invader. Asia had forgotten them,
fr,p IA .xor r.
not of Europe, and Europe had never
known of them. Let us be reverently
grateful for the written languages and
printed books that keep for us the story
of our past and shall transmit our own to
the cycles that are to come.
The globe ofPtoleny, that great Egyp-
tian and pagan geographer,. made at Al
exandria early in the second century, the
discovery of the magnetic needle, and the
art of movable types, devised in Ger
many and Holland. about the middle of,
the fifteenth were the three great facts
that were essential to such work as
Columbus came to do. For it must never
be forgotten that Columbus was not an
accident, nor his effort the rash venture
Of a hair-brained zealot. Columbus was
a student, thinker, a creator His
scheme was the mathematical result of
the most accurate calculations. He
knew that the earth was spherical. He
knew that sixteen parts out of twenty
four had been visited and measured. and
that but eight remained unvisited. That
one-third hessorght to traverse. He was
not only student, mathematician, and
thinker, he was worker as well. To King
John Of Portugal; then to Ferdinand of
Spain; then by his brother to Henry VII,
of England, then starting with his boy
for the Court of France. That past comes
back. | see him stopping at nightfall ait
the monastery gate: l can hear him ask
for 5sgr Ta M
Bread and Water for his Hungry Child.
The good old friar bids them enter for
food and Sleep The kindly abbot, him
self learned and retleeting man, comes.
down to the refectory that he may get
from his guest some itidings of that outer
and 4courtly world, where once he had
into converse; his kind words draw from
the wayfarer the story of his errand his
own soul takes fire; he sends for some
shipowners of Palos; 5he goes to. the
Queen; he enlists her heart and BRAIN,
the woman's heart is won, and the jewels,
of her crown have boughs for dowry a
new world. Then | see Columbus sailing
westward on those untired seas God
helps those who help themselves, and tor
days unbroken favoring east winds press
him on his way, His sailors mutiny. He
persuades such as will listen and COM
pels those who will not, and at the last
a light in the nighttime and land at dawn
the New World is his and ours and
mans.
A century passed.
Spanish and Portuguese sailors had
pressed on lines due westward, but their
discoveries and conquests brought no re-
suits that have lifted the world to higher
development. On lines more Northern
to Carolina in 1885, to Virginia in 1907, to
New York III 1914, to Massachusetts, in
1920, the vessels came that planted the
Englishman and the Hollander upon these
shores and created the civilization that
has made the America of to-day-the
America that is here 49,;
During the first century sof Spanish
discovery and colonization, while the
northern part of the continent lay in the
silence and darkness of the primeval
forests, events have pressed forward in
Europe. Luther in Germany, Calvin in
Switzerland, John Knox in Scotland, and
finally the reformers under the political
protection of Henry VIII, in England,