Now, there are serious aspects to this subject.  I believe that one of the responsibilities of having ancestors is the necessity of not being ashamed of them.  I believe if you have had persons of this sort as your forefathers you must really try to represent them in some sort of way.  And you must set yourselves off against the other elements of population in this country.  You know that we have received very many elements which have nothing of the Puritan about them, which have nothing of New England about them; and that the chief characteristic of these people is that they have broken all their traditions.  The reason that most foreigners come to this country is in order to break their traditions, to drop them.  They come to this country because these traditions bind them to an order of society which they will no longer endure, and they come to be quit of them.  You yourselves will bear me witness that these men, some of them, stood us in good stead upon a very recent occasion:  in last November. [Applause.  “Hear!  Hear!”] We should not at all minimize the vote of the foreign-born population as against the vote of some of the native-born population on the question of silver and gold.  But you will observe that there are some things that it would be supposed would belong to any tradition.  One would suppose it would belong to any tradition that it was better to earn a dollar that did not depreciate, and these men have simply shown that there are some common-sense elements which are international and not national.

One of the particulars in which we are drawn away from our traditions is in respect to the make-up and government of society, and it is in that respect we should retrace our steps and preserve our traditions; because we are suffering ourselves to drift away from the old standards, and we say, with a shrug of the shoulders, that we are not responsible for it; that we have not changed the age, though the age has changed us.  We feel very much as the Scotchman did who entered the fish market.  His dog, being inquisitive, investigated a basket of lobsters, and while he was nosing about incautiously one of the lobsters got hold of his tail, whereupon he went down the street with the lobster as a pendant.  Says the man, “Whustle to your dog, mon.”  “Nay, nay, mon,” quoth the Scotchman, “You whustle for your lobster.”  We are very much in the same position with reference to the age; we say, whistle to the age; we cannot make it let go; we have got to run.  We feel very much like the little boy in the asylum, standing by the window, forbidden to go out.  He became contemplative, and said, “If God were dead and there were not any rain, what fun orphan boys would have.”  We feel very much that way about these New England traditions.  If God were only dead; if it didn’t rain; if the times were only good, what times we would have.