Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1906-04-17
N lloyd
Meeting at Nora Springs Last
Night Was Large and
Enthusiastic
OVATION ALONG THE LINE
Streets Decorated With FIcss in Honor
of the Governors Vsit-Eloquont
Tribute to the Flas-cumnins SUIT
ferins From Sore Throat-Political
News.
Special to Times-Republican.


Nora Springs was decorated with
flags in honor of the governor when he
arrived here yesterday morning, but
the cordial reception he met in this
city was but a continuation of the
greeting which was accorded him at
stations and on the train from EN-
metsburg. Many of the delegates TO
the Hancock county convention We're
passengers part of the way, going to
Garner, and they gathered about the
governor. expressing their good wishes
and their congratulations upon the rls-
ing tide of sentiment in his favor. Al
the meeting in the opera house mere
last evening the governor, no doubt
inspired by the sight of the flags with
which homes and business houses were
decorated and with which the walls OIL
the auditorium We're hung, gave utter
ance to a SURPRISING burst of elo-
quence:
II sometimes think that If it had not
been for little incident that hap
pened in Des Moines toward the close
of last summer / could not have been
tempted or persuaded to again under
take the labors thru which l am now
passing. l will tell you what it was.
''For years the old battle fiags--the
battle flags that were carried by the
Iowa regiments during the war-had
been in wooden cases on the second
floor of the capitol building, waiting
until. in the course of time, their flnal
home should be prepared for them IL
came about in the REIMBURSEMENT and
the reconstruction of the capitol that
this home was ready. and invited all
the old soldiers of Iowa. not to witness
the ceremony. but to participate In IL.
1 felt that every one of them should
see those sacred evidences of the valor
and the courage of their generation
borne to the places that they will oc-
cupy so long as that building shall en-
dure, and I especially asked the old
color bearers. in so far as they We're yet
in the land of the living. to come and
once more carry those old flags, in the
eyes of this generation. as they carried
them so valiantly and so courageously
and SO periodically forty years and
more ago.
"And so they came--hundreds of old
soldiers-and massing on the second
floor of the capitol building, by the
library door, they passed out, each TAX
ing up his old flag, and they marched.
two by two. side by side, down that
grand stairway; and I stood there and
saw them coming-those old men, weak
and lettering of step, with their faces
lined and furrowed by the passage of
years, with their hair silvered in the
SHOWS of many winters, and with the
tears streaming down their cheeks, as
they bore those old flags, fragrant and
redolent with the smoke of Shiloh,
pierced and torn by the shot and she'll
of Corinth and of Atlanta and of Look
out Mountain-there they were, not
bright as this emblem of our sover-
eighty which now pleases all of us, but
worn and faded with the sunshine and
the rain upon camp and upon battle
field, and in Sherman's march to the
sea. Down they came and filled that
great rotunda, lifting up their spires to
heaven, as tho asking the last blessing
and benediction of the ruler of the uni
verse Himself.
AS / looked up at these forests Of
devotion, pointing up to heaven,
saw there, and you will see there
whenever you visit that building, these
words, in letters of living gold: This
nation shall, under God, have a new
birth of freedom, that government of
the people, by the people, for the peo-
pie, shall not perish from the earth"
1na.4i.,,oa an I1ifth panaN