The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-06-16
NattersOn Pays Beautiful Tri- bute to the Silent Heroes
LARGE CROWD HEARS HIM
Reviews Rise of Country Since War With the Tecumsehs, and Says Life Is Lottery With More
 Prizes Than Blanks.

Lafayette, Ind, June 15.-The Tippeca- noe Battlefield Association held its an- nual exercises in the tabernacle at the battle ground today. Special trains were run on all roads and an immense crowd attended. The graves of the men who fell at the battle of Tippecanoe were beautifully decorated. An address was delivered by the Hon. Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. his subject being Heroes in Homespun." MT Watterson was accompanied to the battlefield by a committee of fifty prom inent citizens. At the conclusion of the ceremony on the battlefield the party re- turned to the city, where MT. Watterson was banquted at the Lafayette Club and a reception was held in his honor.
 The address of MT. Watterson follows:
 MT. Watterson's Speech.
 Travelling from out the twilight of the past into the radiance of the present, and tracing as we go the history of the country along the glorious but rugged route of battle-fields by the glare of fagot-fame and rifie-fash, it seems ages since Tippecanoe; since Harrison and his hunting-shirts met and vanquished the hordes of the two Tecumsehs; yet, are there men still living, and here to- day, who, If they were not contemporary with the event and its valiants can dis tinctly recall the spirit of those times; the aspects the very familiar features, of those valiants; the atmosphere the form and body of an epoch, when, from Faneuil Hall in Boston, from Raleigh Tavern, in Virginia, to Fort Wayne and old Vincennes upon the confines of his borderland, the redskin and the redcoat alike stirred to its depths the heart of the young republic.
 There were giants In those days; and there was need that there should be. No vestibuled trains, nor palace coaches waited to fetch them hither; no noisy procession, with banners waving and brrss haaIS- paying marched forth to honor their arrival They journeyed for the most part afoot. They picked their way through trackless canebrake and wooded waste, across swift-running, bridgeless streams, their fnt-locks their commissariat. They had quilted what they regarded as the overcrowded cen tres of the populous east to seek the lonely but roomier wilds of the far west, keenly alive to the idea of bettering their condition, having fine sense of pure air and arable land; it may be for town sites; but their hearts beat true to the principles of civil and religious liberty, and they brought with them two ac- coutrements of priceless valuN: the new made constitution of their country and the well-worn family Bible; for they were God-fearng, Christian soldiers; heroes in homespun as chivalric and un- doubting as mailed Knights of the Cross; hating with holy hate the Indians and the British; revering the memory of the patriots and sages who had made the Declaration of Independence, warm xryfth fhp of tIn echoes of Lexington and Bunker Hill, of Kings Mountain and Yorktown still ringing in their ears
 Descendants Equally Capable,
 dare say their descendants are equally capable of sacrifices. But 1t Is not of ourselves that we are to speak. It is to commemorate the slain who lie here and hereabout; to weep their deeds and their worth for long aye green; to confess the debt we owe them: to garland their graves. If, in paying this homage from the living to the dead. we rekindle with in us the spirit of the dead, we shall with each annual recurrence of the day the surer approve of our coming and grow better as we come.
 Our lot has been cast in easier times has been laid on broader, larger lines. We live in an age of miracles We gath CT the fruit of the tree which these our
 
 their camp fires rise the school house and the court house. The church marks the spot where the block house stood The war whoop of the savage Is succeeded by the neigh of the iron horse, the gleam of the tomahawk by the flare of the elec- tric lamp. Danger of the kind that was their daily, hourly companion is to us unknown Privation such as they sus- tained assails not honest toll, however humble. Wealth and luxury wait atten- dant upon thrift and skill Primogeni- ture no longer cheats merit of it's due. Entail no long, T usurps the present and puts mortgages on the future. Opportu- nity and peace and order and law are the portion of the poorest. Struck by the wizard hand of Progress the sleeping beauty, Solitude. has a akened a Me tropolis; touched by tn finger of mod ern invention, the prair.e and the forest, as by enchantment have revealed their secrets and poured their riches into the lap of labor Upon the loose cobble stones of what was but huddle of small provinces, each claiming for itself squalid sovereignty and held together by a rope of sand, rises proudly, grandly, securely a nation built upon the firm foundation of an indissoluble compact of States, cemented forever by the blood of a patriotic brave, homogeneous peo- ple. The bucolic republic of Washington and Franklin, the sylvan idyl of Jeffer- son-the government which equally at home and abroad had from the first to fight for its existence-is a world power; and, to the present generation of Amer jeans these things have come without any effort of their own as a rich inher- itance which for good, or for evil, they are but beginning to administer and en- 1oy. I pray them well to weigh It's re- responsibilities: deeply to ponder the chang es wrought by a century of acquisition and development; prayerfully to consider the exceptional conditions and the pecul- far perils of the present as these dis tinguish the present from the past; bear ng in mind the truth that now. as ever eternal vigilance Is the price, not alone of liberty, but of all the better ends of life.
 Each Man Ills Own Master.
 Ours is a government resting on public opinion. Each man is his own master. He can blame nobody but himself if he goes astray Has not the telegraph an- Hated time and space? Does not the daily newspaper bring him each day the completed history of yesterday? Is he lot able to read, to mark and, inwardly