Let us then be thankful for the assurances which the last few years have
afforded us that:
"The Pilgrim spirit is not dead,
But walks in noon's broad light."
We have seen it in the faith and trust which no circumstances could
shake, in heroic self-sacrifice, in entire consecration to duty. The
fathers have lived in their sons. Have we not all known the Winthrops
and Brewsters, the Saltonstalls and Sewalls, of old times, in
gubernatorial chairs, in legislative halls, around winter camp-fires, in
the slow martyrdoms of prison and hospital? The great struggle through
which we have passed has taught us how much we owe to the men and women
of the Plymouth Colony,--the noblest ancestry that ever a people looked
back to with love and reverence. Honor, then, to the Pilgrims! Let their
memory be green forever!
GOVERNOR ENDICOTT.
I am sorry that I cannot respond in person to the invitation of the Essex
Institute to its commemorative festival on the 18th. I especially regret
it, because, though a member of the Society of Friends, and, as such,
regarding with abhorrence the severe persecution of the sect under the
administration of Governor Endicott, I am not unmindful of the otherwise
noble qualities and worthy record of the great Puritan, whose misfortune
it was to live in an age which regarded religious toleration as a crime.
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