Read Before Historical Meeting of the Hamilton Library Association, Carlisle, Pa., April 23d, 1907, and Reprinted for the Historical Department.
Reprinted from THE SHIPPENSBURG NEWS,
Our Commonwealth possesses no richer treasure than the fair fame of her children. In the revolutions of empires, the present institutions of our land may perish, and new ones, perhaps more perfect, may arise; but the glory of our national existence cannot pass away, so long as the names of those who, in it, enlarged the boundaries of knowledge, gave tone to its morals, framed its laws, or fought its battles, ate remembered with gratitude.
The men who stamp the impressions of their genius or their virtues on their own times, influence also those which follow, and they become the benefactors of after ages and remote nations. Of such the memorials should be carefully collected and preserved; and Americans, above all others, owe it to their country and to the world to perpetuate such records, while it is possible to separate truth from fiction in all that relates to those who laid the foundation of the republic—who have sustained it by their wisdom, or adorned it by their talents.
It should be constantly borne in mind that our country stands conspicuous among nations, as a fair daughter amidst a family of elder eons; that as a Nation it has passed through no age of fabulous obscurity, nor useless years of feeble infancy, but stepped forth at maturity, in the pan-oply of war, like Minerva from the brain of Jove. In its history there is no blank; it is full of striking incidents, of original theories, and of bold experiments.
In its government it has exhibited, and is still demonstrating to the world, under new and peculiar aspects, the ability of men to rule themselves, and to protect their own rights without injury to the rights of others. The men whose names are inscribed with honor on the pages of American History, were fitted to the times and the occasions which called them forth; they were men of iron nerves and fearless hearts, of devoted action and incorruptible integrity, of splendid talents and practical common sense; who lived for the glory of their country and the happiness of their race.
On the evening of November 16th, 1906, I had the pleasure of listening to a very interesting lecture, by Dr. C. T. Winchester, under the auspices of "The Civic Club of Carlisle” —"An Old Castle", was his subject.
Redeemed from the bondage of the old, let us now give a kindly thought to a New Castle, in a new world, that long before the corner-stone upon which its foundation was reared, or a single line of history was devoted in gratitude and reverence to its illustrious dead, for the rich fruits of whose labors the nations of the earth are now paying tribute of admiration, one who held the richest church preferment in Ireland, and had the fairest prospects of advancement to the first literary and ecclesiastical dignities of that portion of the Old World, when wearied out by fruitless speculations, in which his vigorous mind found "no end in wandering mazes lost", wrote of this new starlit Castle, whose majestic feature was, and is, the warmth of useful light and strengthening hope.
Striking and magnificent as our country is in its peculiar attitude and rapid growth, presenting at one view the combined ideas of ability to resist the strong, and power to defend the weak, it is scarcely less majestic than beautiful, and in attempting to convey to you in language befitting some of the important facts connected with its early history, and the birth of its flag, would seem little less absurd, than...