3 8o
��NEW LONDON CENTENNIAL ADDRESS.
��perform my allotted task no better. Yet I feel that I have done the best I could under all the circumstances of the case.
But I feel, my friends, that this is a day of jubilee. The town welcomes home her children ; the mother calls home her sons and her daughters from afar, to mingle in the general joy. The citizens of the town have opened their houses and their hearts to bid us all welcome. As we return to the old places we see many of the old familiar faces that we left behind us. We find the same old pictures on the walls, the same curtains by the windows, as smooth and as white today as they were when we were children, and per- chance some of the old crockery on the table. These things recall to our minds pleasant reminiscences of early days. They fill the memory with images of the past. They speak to us of childhood, and in fancy we will live over again for a few brief hours our childhood's happy days.
But while we thus go back in mem- ory to recall the joys of youth, we are reminded that many others of the familiar faces of those days are with us no more forever here on earth ; that
��in the beautiful cemetery yonder repose the ashes of the fathers and the mothers, while the green turfs of the new-made graves tell us of griefs more recent still, and of the inroads of death upon all classes and ages of our friends. Thus it is ever with us here on earth. Sad- ness and joy, sorrow and gladness, are strangely commingled in a day like this, and such is human life. Its little history is made up of joys and sorrows, following each other in such rapid suc- cession that it is often impossible to dis- tinguish the line that separates them.
But my friends, when this reunion is over, and we again leave these homes of our childhood and go out again into the battle of life, may it be with fresh strength and firmer wills and renewed courage for the performance of all life's duties, and as generation after genera- tion shall come and go in the future centuries, as we have come and shall go in this, may the virtues of our fathers never be forgotten. May their princi- ples of justice and truth and patriotism ever be maintained. May peace and prosperity forever dwell in the midst of this people, and may the God of the fathers of this goodly town be the chil- dren's God and portion forever.
��ALOFT.
��BY MARY HELEN BOODEY.
��Oh ! little do we know what shining heights Do wait for our ascending, nor can we
Measure, with mortal eyes, the heavenly flights The soul may take when light as air, and free,
Like the sweet lark it upward mounts and sings, The rainbow of life's morning on its wings.
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