The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-06-14
WELCOME TO SONS
 AND DAUGHTERS
(contlnued from First Paea)

(Contlnued from First Psca)
 him on was love of liberty, the beacon l of hls dreams, the light of the fireside. 1 He cut clearing in the wildwood and | called 1t home. He read not romance, he , made it; nor poetry, he lived it, his the forest epic, the Iload of the canebrake, | the Odyssey of the frontier. the uncon- | seious prose-poem of the rife and the l camp the blockhouse and the blow, the Holy Bible, and the old field school | Happy the man who has sat in child | hood upon a well-loved grandsire's knee. awed by the telling of the wondrous tale; how even as the Dardanae followed Aen- eas, the Virglnians followed Boone The l route from Troy to Fiber not wearier. | nor fanked by greater hazard than that | betwixt the shores of the Chesa peake and | the falls of the Ohio the mountains standing gorgon-like, across the painless way as if defending each defie. to hold | inviolate some dread, forbidden secret | the weird wastes of wilderness beyond | the fordless stream. the yawning chasm l the gleam of the tomahawk and the hiss of the serpent: yet ever onward, in spite l of the haunting voice of the elements | stripped for the death struggle with man. spite of the silence and the solitude of reluctant nature. like some fawn-eyed | maiden resisting his rude intrusion: ever
 
 the hunters vision; in his soul the grace | Of God. the fear of hell, and the love of Virginia!
 God bless Virginia, Heaven smile upon her as she prepares to celebrate with fit ting rite three centuries of majestic achievement. the star crown upon her brow. the distaff in her hand, nor spot. nor blur to dim the radiance of her | shield
 ''They came the Vlrginans. in their | home-spun, in quest of homes; their war rant their rifles; their payment the blood 1 of heroes: nor yet forgetting a proverb the Chinese have that 1t needs hundred men to make fortress, but only woman can make a home. For they were quick ! to go back for their women, their wives and their sweethearts; our grandmoth- CTS, who stood by their side, beautiful and dauntless. to load their fowling pieces, to dress their wounds. to cheer them on to battle, singing their simple requiem over the dead at Boonesborough and bringing water from the spring at Bryan's station, heartbroken only when the news came back from the River Raisin
 Welcome Extended.
 T am here to welcome you in the name of all the people of this lively city, in the name of all the people of the re- nowned commonwealth, to welcome you as kith and kin; but you will not expect | me- l am sure, to add thereto more than 1 the mereSt outline of the history of Ken | lucky. as 1t Is known to each and every one of you, from the time when the path finders. under the lead of Harrod and Henderson of Boone and Kenton blazed their way through the forest, and the heroes, led by Logan and Shelby. by Scott and Clark, rescued the land from the savage, to the hour which smiles upon us here this day; a history resplendent with illustrious names and deeds; separating itself into three great epochs and many | episodes and adventures in woodcraft and warcraft and statecraft; the period of the Clays. the Breckenridges and the Critten- | dens, with It's sublime struggle to pre- | serve the Union of states, as 1t had come down to them from the revolution, with always the Marshalls and the Wickllffes. | the Boyles and the Rowans the John sons and the Browns. the Adairs, the Deshas and the McDowells. somewhere at the fore-"Old Ben Hardin having a | niche all to himself-none of them greater | than he; the period of the war of sections, when even the Clays and the Crittendens and the Breckenridges were divided. when for a reason the skies were hung in sable and all was dark as night. the very sacrifices that had gone before seeming to have been made In vain, the dark and bloody ground of barbaric fancy, come into actual being through the passions and mistakes of Christian men: and, final ly the period after the war of sections, when the precept once a Kentuckian, always a Kentuckian,' was met by the answering voice, blood is thicker than water and the Goodloes the Ballards and the Speeds the Harlands, the Frys and the Murrays, clasped their hands across the breach and made short shift of the work of reconstruction with the Buckners, the Prestons and the Dukes. This is 1t that there at least, the per plexed grandchild cannot distinguish be- tween the grizzled grandfather who wore the blue and the grizzled grandfather who wore the grey.
 Kentucky, which gave Abraham Lin colp to the north and Jefferson Davis to the south, contributing a very nearly equal quota of soldiers to each of the contending armies of that great conflict In point of fact, as many fighting men as had ever voted in any election-a larg- CT percentum of the population than has ever been furnished in time of war by any modern state-Kentucky, thus rent by civil fued, was first to know the battle was ended and to draw together in re- united brotherhood.
 First Blow for Freedom.
 Kentucky struck the earliest blow fol freedom, furnished the first martyrs tc liberty in Cuba. It was a Crittenden smiling before file of Spanish musketry refusing to be blindfolded or to bend th' knee for the fatal volley, who uttered | the keynote of his race "a kentuckiar always faces his enemy and kneels only | to his God It was another kentuckian the gallant Holland, who, undaunted by the dread decimaton. the cruel death-by- lot. having drawn a white bean for him self brushed his friend aside and drew another in his stead An yes: we have our humors along with our heroics, ano laugh anon at ourselves, and our nus- haps and our jokes; but we are nowise a bloody-minded people, the rather a sentimental. hosptable kindly people caring, perhaps. too much for the pictur- esoue and too little for consequences