Each was a notable and significant event.  On each occasion I had the honor to say a few poor words.  We celebrated with bowed heads and with garlands the deeds of the heroic dead, and now have consecrated ourselves to the opportunities and possibilities of peace under the law—­to the revelation of the temper of our new civilization which, tried in the furnace of war, is to be a grand and vital power for the advancement of the human race, for the righteous furtherance of the brotherhood of man.  What is the hope of the world?” he asked.  “America—­these United States, a bulwark against tyranny, an asylum for the aspiring and the downtrodden.  The eyes of the nations are upon us.  In the souls of the survivors and of the sons and daughters of the patriots who have died in defence of the liberties of our beloved country abide the seed and inspiration for new victories of peace.  Our privilege be it as the heirs of Washington and Franklin and Hamilton and Lincoln and Grant to set the nations of the earth an example of what peace under the law may accomplish, so that the free-born son of America from the shores of Cape Cod to the western limits of the Golden Gate may remain a synonym for noble aims and noble deeds, for truth and patriotism and fearlessness of soul.”

The speaker’s words had been uttered slowly at the outset—­ponderous, sonorous, sentence by sentence, like the big drops before a heavy shower.  As he warmed to his theme the pauses ceased, and his speech flowed with the musical sweep of a master of platform oratory.  When he spoke of war his voice choked; in speaking of peace he paused for an appreciable moment, casting his eyes up as though he could discern the angel of national tranquillity hovering overhead.  Although this opening peroration seemed scarcely germane to the occasion, the audience listened in absorbed silence, spell-bound by the magnetism of his delivery.  They felt sure that he had a point in reserve to which these splendid and agreeable truths were a pertinent introduction.

Proceeding, with his address, Mr. Lyons made a panegyric on these United States of America, from the special standpoint of their dedication to the “God of our fathers,” a solemn figure of speech.  The sincerity of his patriotism was emphasized by the religious fervor of his deduction that God was on the side of the nation, and the nation on the side of God.  Though he abstained from direct strictures, both his manner and his matter seemed to serve a caveat, so to speak, on the other nations by declaring that for fineness of heart and thought, and deed, the world must look to the land “whose wide and well-nigh boundless prairies were blossoming with the buds of truth fanned by the breeze of liberty and fertilized by the aspirations of a God-fearing and a God-led population.  What is the hope of the world, I repeat?” he continued.  “The plain and sovereign people of our beloved country.  Whatever menaces their liberties, whatever detracts from their, power and