Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1910-12-23
FOREFATHERS' IN NEW
YORK.
Speakers at Annual Dinner
of New EnqIand Society.


The annual dinner of the New Eng
land Society in the city of New York is
one of the great events of that nature
in the metropolis. 1t is always held on
December 22nd, and in recent years at
the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. The presi-
dent of the society is the Hon. Seth
Low, by whose invitation President
Thomas responded to the toast, Fore
fathers Day." He said in part:
To one whose home is in the real
New England, hard by her rocks and
rills, this gathering of the strength of
this city in honor of the Forefathers is
indeed a token of courage. But OBJ
serve difference between this fair
assembly and the celebrations of Fore
fathers Day to which l am accustomed.
You observe a pious feast to the glory
of the dead; we of the northland, in the
little hamlets where the snow and the
violets dispute for the major portion of
the year, conjure the spirits of William
Bradford and John Winthrop for grip
on New England's present tasks, in the
hope that the New England of the
future may be not tradition of giants,
but the home of strong men still.
1T is said that the New England of
the present is far to the westward; that
the little commonwealths to the east of
the Hudson have done their work and
are no longer needed to furnish inspira-
ton to brave independence of spirit, to
high conservation of the last man of the
State to the common good, to thought
full reasonableness in the worship of
Almighty God. The praries, they tell
US, have caught the lessons of the stony
fields of Massachusetts, and henceforth
they can muster the men whom liberty
needs for her soldiery.
For the conquest of the nation by
the ideals of New England, for the
spread to the Pacific of the New Eng
lander's independence of judgment and
resolute devotion to the right, the God
of the Puritan be praised. But have
a notion-and Yankee has a right to
have notion now and then that there
is relation between an idea and the
soil which nourished it; that political
and spiritual convictions are not quite
the same when they are transplanted to
another locality; that if you would pre-
serve for the benefit of the future any
political creed, or any cluster of relig-
ious ideals, or any particular type of
manhood, you must also preserve them
in the region of country where they
had their birth.
You may remind me that the Scots
man is ever Scotch, wherever in the
world you may find him, unpleasant if
he is orthodox, and reasonable uncom-
Portable if he isn't. But that is be-
cause wherever you find him he can
sing,
My hearts in the highlands,
My heart is not here.
He knows the heather is over the sea,
and he warns the smile you feel but do
not see upon its sunset glow across the
far leagues and nourishes his canny
dourness on the shaggy rocks that fade
never from his dreams. 1t is because
Scotland is still Scotch, persistent in its
homeland in its national traits, that the
sweet accent fingers in every Scotch
home in the last corners of the world.
"Across from Glasgow is the little
green island where rain and sunshine
mingle, where mountains and rocks take
on fantastic forms, as though the great
artificer had there his toy-shop, and
there you find people child-like in
simplicity, imaginative and mystical in
religion, uncertain in mood as their
laughing-weeping skies, and loyal to