monument! [Applause.] There was Mistress Carver, wife of the first governor, and who, when her husband fell under the stroke of sudden death, followed him first with heroic grief to the grave, and then, a fortnight after, followed him with heroic joy up into Heaven! [Applause.] There was Mistress White—­the mother of the first child born to the New England Pilgrims on this continent.  And it was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her passengers—­a kind of amphibious prophecy that the new-born nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. [Great applause.] There, also, was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds.  And there, too, was Mrs. Winslow, whose name is even more than a fragrance; it is a taste; for, as the advertisements say, “children cry for it”; it is a soothing syrup. [Great laughter.]

Then, after the first vessel with these women, there came other women—­loving hearts drawn from the olden land by those silken threads which afterwards harden into golden chains.  For instance, Governor Bradford, a lonesome widower, went down to the sea-beach, and, facing the waves, tossed a love-letter over the wide ocean into the lap of Alice Southworth in old England, who caught it up, and read it, and said, “Yes, I will go.”  And she went!  And it is said that the governor, at his second wedding, married his first love!  Which, according to the New Theology, furnishes the providential reason why the first Mrs. Bradford fell overboard! [Great laughter.]

Now, gentlemen, as you sit to-night in this elegant hall, think of the houses in which the Mayflower men and women lived in that first winter!  Think of a cabin in the wilderness—­where winds whistled—­where wolves howled—­where Indians yelled!  And yet, within that log-house, burning like a lamp was the pure flame of Christian faith, love, patience, fortitude, heroism!  As the Star of the East rested over the rude manger where Christ lay, so—­speaking not irreverently—­there rested over the roofs of the Pilgrims a Star of the West—­the Star of Empire; and to-day that empire is the proudest in the world! [Applause.] And if we could summon up from their graves, and bring hither to-night, that olden company of long-mouldered men, and they could sit with us at this feast—­in their mortal flesh—­and with their stately presence—­the whole world would make a pilgrimage to see those pilgrims! [Applause.] How quaint their attire!  How grotesque their names!  How we treasure every relic of their day and generation!  And of all the heirlooms of the earlier times in Yankeeland, what household memorial is clustered round about with more sacred and touching associations than the spinning-wheel!  The industrious mother sat by it doing her work while she instructed her children!  The blushing daughter plied it diligently,