Talk about dissipations, ye who have ever seen the old-fashioned sideboard!  Did I not have an old relative who always, when visitors came, used to go upstairs and take a drink through economical habits, not offering anything to his visitors? [Laughter.] On the old-fashioned training days the most sober men were apt to take a day to themselves.  Many of the familiar drinks of to-day were unknown to them, but their hard cider, mint julep, metheglin, hot toddy, and lemonade in which the lemon was not at all prominent, sometimes made lively work for the broad-brimmed hats and silver knee-buckles.  Talk of dissipating parties of to-day and keeping of late hours!  Why, did they not have their “bees” and sausage-stuffings and tea-parties and dances, that for heartiness and uproar utterly eclipsed all the waltzes, lanciers, redowas, and breakdowns of the nineteenth century, and they never went home till morning.  And as to the old-time courtships, oh, my!  Washington Irving describes them. [Laughter.]

But though your Forefathers may not have been much, if any, better than yourselves, let us extol them for the fact that they started this country in the right direction.  They laid the foundation for American manhood.  The foundation must be more solid and firm and unyielding than any other part of the structure.  On that Puritanic foundation we can safely build all nationalities. [Applause.] Let us remember that the coming American is to be an admixture of all foreign bloods.  In about twenty-five or fifty years the model American will step forth.  He will have the strong brain of the German, the polished manners of the French, the artistic taste of the Italian, the stanch heart of the English, the steadfast piety of the Scotch, the lightning wit of the Irish, and when he steps forth, bone, muscle, nerve, brain entwined with the fibres of all nationalities, the nations will break out in the cry:  “Behold the American!” [Applause.]

Columbus discovered only the shell of this country.  Agassiz came and discovered fossiliferous America.  Silliman came and discovered geological America.  Audubon came and discovered bird America.  Longfellow came and discovered poetic America; and there are a half-dozen other Americas yet to be discovered.

I never realized what this country was and is as on the day when I first saw some of these gentlemen of the Army and Navy.  It was when at the close of the War our armies came back and marched in review before the President’s stand at Washington.  I do not care whether a man was a Republican or a Democrat, a Northern man or a Southern man, if he had any emotion of nature, he could not look upon it without weeping.  God knew that the day was stupendous, and He cleared the heaven of cloud and mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for the returning warriors to pass under.  From Arlington Heights the spring foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and the sparkling