The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-10
MRS. OWENS ADDRESS TO
 MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION

Mrs. Thomas M. Owen, state vice president of the Southe Confederate Memorial association, in welcoming the association in behalf of the state, said Madam President and Ladies of the Confederated Southern Memorial As sociation, Veterans.
 A great American poet has said: "What is excellent,
 AS God lives, is permanent,
 Hearts are dust, hearts loves remain" The very fact of your presence here today in honor of the majestic mem- cries of the Lost Cause, wellnigh a halt century after an unloving brothers mailed hand made of our country u desolation and called it peace, attests to the permanence and the excellence of the principles of that cause.
 We are assembled in glorious mem- ory of those mighty deeds of yalor per- formed by southern hosts, deeds of heroic daring that shall live in mar tial song and story as long as the sons of God deem courage a virtue, deeds that shall glow with heightened time as
 Departed suns their trails of
 Splendor draw across departed sum-
 mer.'
 Today as we walk along the streets we hear the old rebel yell," that in its lessened power of sound seems but an echo from the fields of Manassas and of Shiloh. As we recall the vigorous youths who marched to war a half hundred years ago, to strike for their altars and their firesides. and then be- hold the thin gray line of old men, bowed, on the borderland of the Great Beyond, we feel that surely we have wandered into a haunted room, and see but ghosts within spectral mirror. With awed eagerness we listen to the whisperings of those voices that in the long ago were resolved into primeval silence, and as we listen there steals over us
 A feeling of Sadness and longing
 That is not akin to pain,
 And resembles sorrow only
 As the mist resembles the rain.
 It is said that leach lost day has it's patron saint" and to you, the women of the Confederacy, the soldiers com rade in hope, his consolation in defeat, the patron saint of the Lost Cause, l am privileged to speak on behalf Of Alabama, our welcome.
 You have crossed over our borders on the north over hill and dale through our corn fields, standing in serried ranks, like plumed knights saluting you with waving blades-a garden of swords.
 You have come in on the east where your way was through strands of gold and your path with marble laid.
 You have come up from the south where the bay glistens in amaranthine blue, on her bosom floating great argosies of world circling commerce. the south where the golden hearted jasmane broke for you. her alabaster box of sweet perfume, and the tall magnolia flung white-souled kisses as you passed.
 You have come in by the west, where, from without Gods hand there fell with the centuries those sunbeams that lie in the earths heart, to give us the fires that cheer ten thousand hearts and send our ships around the globe.
 We welcome you to the state that stands first upon the roll of states, Alabama!
 We welcome you to that country whose ancient mounds Took the gar nered ages in the face" and hold the secret of their builders as inyiolable as the inscrutable Egyptian Sphinx.
 We welcome you to the land that was the home of the four great Indian tribes, the Cherokees, the Creeks, the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, those stout warriors and zealous patriots who died in untold thousands, defend- ing their birthright and their liber- ties, a noble race whose enforced ex- odus from their native heath is the Miserere of American history.
 'Though mid the forests where they
 roved
 There rings no hunters shout;
 Yet tn cir names are on our waters, And we may not wash them out"
 We welcome you to the land of Tus- | caloosa, that giant among chiefs, who died with 10 900 of his braves in that great battle with De Soto's mara uding steel-clad hosts on the plains of Mauvila.
 We welcome you to land that was exploded within the life time of many of those adventurous seamen who. with