The Portland daily press., 1898-07-05

| lease had been finally contaminated, Presi
dent Little congratulated the stockholders
| tina while ten years before, not a dollar of
capitalshad been raised, not spade been
put in the ground. "We now have more than
four hundred miles of railroad in actual
and successful operation, connecting the
waters of the Atlantic ocean at Portland
with the waters of the river st. Lawrence
and of the great western lakes, at Montreal
and Quebec
And he adds: "Our great railway under
taking is no longer q project of visionary
| experiment. 1t is a reality, whose benign
influences re already felt, but whose ul-
innate operations have hardly begun to de-
velop themselves. This must necessarily
be work of time. There is, however, even
at this day. a moral certainty, that under
n wise iudicious and enlightened manage
ment of its concerns on the part of the
lessees of the road, it will attain TO the rela-
tive and important position and accomplish
all the purposes and open to the people of
| our CITY and state, all the recourses of trade
contemplated by its early friends..'
But what would he have said, if he could
have known that grown men, who listened
| to his words that day, would live to see
those ssfour hundred miles" become four
thousand? What would have been his emo
lions if his eyes could have pierced the al
most immediate future, and seen not mere
| ly the ''wealth of the interior brought to the
waters of Portland,," but the wealth of the
Dominion of Canada. the products of the
Mississippi valley and the exports of the
great Northwest pouring into Portland over
this railroad on their way to the m arkets
of the Old World? To appreciate that the
expectations and hopes OF the projectors of
this enterprise have been more than real
| lied, one has but to stand on the slope of
this hill and watch the arriving and depart
| ing trains. The letterings of the different
cars. showing the railroads from which they
came, suggest the tower of Babel. Their
| cargoes are equally diverse. Each train is a
representative of the others that come thun-
dering in laden with the products of the Ia
| Dor of nation.
/ But great as has been the contributions of
| this enterprise to the material prosperity of
both nations, there has been another result
with consequences as much greater, as the
welfare of humanity rises above the consid-
Grafton of mere dollars and cents. The
projectors saw the shadows of coming events
and rejoiced that this enterprise would aid
in their coming.
If you will go back with me, only thirty
four years before the gala day when ground
was broken for this railroad, you will see
the men OF our fair city busily engaged in
throwing up entertainments to defend it
against the fathers of those who are our
guests today. The generation of that day
and their children (many Of whom are Here
| today still remembered and felt the ami
mostly of war, which three decades had
failed to eradicate.
| To mortal ken, "The mills of God grind
Slow" but thousand years in His sight are
as one day. The fathers of this railroad be-
| lieved that it would unite ottr Canadian
neighbors to us not only in commerce and
/ business, but in the bonds of friendship and
fraternity; that it would almost literally
''grapple them to our eoulssswith hoops of
steel and as Judge Preble then said that
| it would begin to usher in that day, when
men "should beat .their swords into plow-
| shares and their spears into pruning hooks
| and nations should learn war no more"
| This idea had even more prominence than
| the business view. For the first time in the
history of the city the American and Bit
| ish flags foated together here. On one
| side of the triumphal arch under which the
procession passed, waved the Stars and
Stripes ana on the other the Triple Cross;
the bands played alternately "Hail Column
bia" and "God Save the Queen;' and in
fraternal feeling that day, every son of Brit
ain was an American, and every American
| q Briton.
But to give still greater emphasis to this
idea and with singular felicity, the site of
the old Fort Lawrence was selected for the
ceremonies of the day The flags of the two
nations fioated side by side on the top of the
parapet their representatives were stand
ing together sin union, joy and peace;' and
the first shovelful of earth that went to con-
struct the railway, went to demolish the
fort
Did not Angels rejoice when the foes of
the past thus united in devoting this NOR
umen to their former hostility to each other
to means of union that gave promise Of
peace never to be broken?
This promise has grown in strength
twelve years later British soldiers bearing
arms came to Portland and were received
with royal welcome; and today we have
another pledge of the friendship of the two
nations; today you are again welcomed; to-
day we again give bonds to each other that
between you and us, not even the shadow
| of war can ever come.
And may I not go further? May not
give expression to the faith that is i'll me.
that all who speak the English tongue will
|henceforth stand together for the peace of
the world? If the English speaking peoples
whether springing from "Merrie England
dear "Auld Scotia,'' "The Emerald Isle,''
the Businesses of Wales, or Continental
Europe, or all of them (as most of us in
America do) stand together for tue peace of
the world, there will be peace.
Our own Longfellow has already seen it
in celestial allegory:
"Then through the silence overhead,
An Angel, with trumpet said,
ForeVermore, Forevermore,
The reign of violence is DER,
Then, like an instrument which filings
Its music upon another's strings,
The trumpet Of the Angel cast
Upon the heavenly Tyre its blast
And on, from sphere to sphere, the words
Re-echoed down the burning chords,
Eoreyermore, Foreyermore,
The reign of violence is oer.'
Then there was more singing. The