I refer to this without the least irritation.  I do not complain of it.  On the contrary, I glory in it.  I love her for the enemies she has made. [Laughter.]

She is the church member among the communities, and must catch it accordingly.  It is the saints who are always in the wrong. [Laughter.]

Elijah troubled Israel.  Daniel was a nuisance in Babylon.  And long may New England be such as to make it an object to find fault with her. [Hearty applause.]

Such she will be so long as she is true to herself—­true to her great traditions; true to the principles of which her life was begotten; so long as her public spirit has supreme regard to the higher ranges of the public interest; so long as in her ancient glorious way she leaves the power of the keys in the hands of the people; so long as her patriotism springs, as in the beginning it sprang, from the consciousness of rights wedded to the consciousness of duties; so long as by her manifold institutions of learning, humanity, religion, thickly sown, multitudinous, universal, she keeps the law of the Forefathers’ faith, that “Man lives not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” [Prolonged applause.]

* * * * *

THE SOLDIER STAMP

[Speech of Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, of Hartford, Conn., at the eighty-sixth annual dinner of the New England Society in the city of New York, December 22, 1891.  J. Pierpont Morgan, the President, occupied the chair.  Mr. Twichell responded to the toast, “Forefathers’ Day.”]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—­The posture of my mind the last fortnight relative to the duty of the present hour—­which, indeed, I was proud to be assigned to, as I ought to have been, but which has been a black care to me ever since I undertook it—­has a not inapt illustration in the case of the old New England parson who, when asked why he was going to do a certain thing that had been laid upon him, yet the thought of which affected him with extreme timidity, answered:  “I wouldn’t if I didn’t suppose it had been foreordained from all eternity—­and I’m a good mind to not as it is.” [Laughter.] However, I have the undisguised good-will of my audience to begin with, and that’s half the battle.  The forefathers, in whose honor we meet, were men of good-will, profoundly so; but they were, in their day, more afraid of showing it, in some forms, than their descendants happily are.

The first time I ever stood in the pulpit to preach was in the meeting-house of the ancient Connecticut town where I was brought up.  That was a great day for our folks and all my old neighbors, you may depend.  After benediction, when I passed out into the vestibule, I was the recipient there of many congratulatory expressions.  Among my friends in the crowd was an aged deacon, a man in whom survived, to a rather