Book- 3^1 X 1 The History OF THE First North Carolina Reunion AT Greensboro, N. C. Odober Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth Nineteen Hundred and Three Compiled and Edited by George S, Bradshaw, Esq. GREENSBORO, N. C. JOS. J. STONE & CO. MCMV By Tranatet. 3JI'0S Index Page Board of Managers of the First North Carolina Eeunion 7 Resolution Authorizing the Publication of the History of the First North Carolina Reunion ^ Foreword ^ Special Message of the Governor 12 Resolution of the General Assembly 13 The Serious Purposes of the Reunion, by Charles D. Mclver 14 Welcome Home, by G. S. Bradshaw 15 Reception Committee on the Part of the State of North Carolina 16 Reception Committee on the Part of the County of Guilford 17 Reception Committee on the Part of the City of Greensboro 18 Ladies' Reception Committee 19 Local Committees 20 Official Program 21 The Proceedings 27 Sermon by Rev. Charles W. Byrd, D. D 29 Sermon by Rev. Walter W. Moore, D. D. LL. D 33 The Reunion Sermon, by Rev. A. C. Dixon, D. D 39 The Reunion Exercises 53 Opening Announcement by President Charles D. Melver 55 Address of Honorable Matthew Whitaker Ransom, on Assuming the Chair 56 Address of Welcome on Behalf of the State, by Governor Charles B. Aycock 63 Address of Welcome on Behalf of the City of Greensboro, by Colonel James T. Morehead 69 Response of Honorable Francis E. Shober, of New York 73 Response of Mr. William H. Futrell, of Philadelphia 75 Response of Mr. .lohn Wilbur .Jenkins, of Baltimore 78 Response of President R. P. Pell, of South Carolina 80 Response of Honorable L. D. Tyson, of Tennessee 81 Response of Mr. Peter M. Wilson, of Washington, D. C 85 Response of Rev. W. W. Moore, D. D., of Richmond, Va 86 Entertainments 93 At State Normal and Industrial College 95 At Greensboro Female College 96 At the Guilford Battle Ground 99 Invocation by Rev. W. W. Moore, D. D 101 Address by Honorable A. L. Fitzgerald, of Nevada 101 3 4 First North Carolina Reunion Page Address by Shepard Bryan, Esq., of Atlanta, Ga 107 Address by Dr. Paul Barringer, of the University of Virginia 109 Address by Mr. Murat Halstead, of Ohio 110 Address by Mr. R. M. Hartley, of Indianapolis, Ind 118 Address by Honorable Jos. M. Dixon, of Montana 119 Address by President E. A. Alderman, of Tulane University, Louisiana 122 Address by Kev. A. C. Dixon, D. D., of Boston, Mass 125 Remarks of Judge Francis D. Winston, of North Carolina 127 Resolutions (Guilford Battle Ground) 128 (the late Judge David Schenek) 128 Brilliant Climax 131 Resolution of Thanks l.';3 Voices of the Absent 135 Practical Results 137 Extract from Letter of Woodrow Wilson, President of Princeton University 138 Extract from Letter of Speaker Cannon 138 Extract from Letter of Representative Small 139 Extract from Letter of Samuel Hill, Esq 139 Letter from Hannis Taylor 140 Extract from Letter of Bishop Fitzgerald, of Nashville, Tenn 141 Too Good to Be Withheld 141 Echoes of the Keunion 143 A Good Thing, by Frank S. Woodson, of the Richmond Times- Dispatch 145 The Reunion, by Colonel Paul B. Means 145 Let It Be Made Permanent, by J. P. Caldwell 146 A Glorious Inspiration, l)y Colonel R. B. Creecy 147 Home-Coming Reunion, by James Wiley Forbis 148 Among Our Non-Resident Native Lawyers 149 Among the Grandsons 149 Around the Ancestral Hearthstone 151 "Reunion" Changed to "Old-Home Week" 153 Beautiful Souvenir 155 States Represented 156 North Carolina Mecca, by Joaephus Daniels 157 Guilford Courthouse Battlefield, by President Joseph M. Morehead, of the Guilford Battle Ground Company 158 Guilford Battlefield — Two Facts Emphasized, by G. S. Bradshaw, Esq. 159 North Carolina's Contribution to American Citizenship 162 Marvelous Record of North Carolina from 1890 to 1900, by C. H. Poe 163 The State 's Song— The Old North State 166 Greensboro 's Phenomenal Growth Since 1890 167 ' ' Pat ' ' Winston 's Last Message to His Old Home 169 An Epitome 170 The Purest Anglo-Saxon State on the Globe, by President George T. Winston, of the Agricultural and Mechanical College 171 Song of Scattered Sons, by John Wilbur Jenkins 173 The Coming Day, by D. C. Waddell 174 To Her Sons Who Have Wandered Afar, by Robert Dick Douglas. . . . 175 The Wanderer Back Home, by John Henrj' Boner 176 List of Illustrations'^' ■' North Carolina State Capitol Frontispiece ^^ Board of Managers of the First North Carolina Reunion Fronting Page 9 ■^ Honorable Charles B. Aycoek, of North Carolina Fronting Page 13 >^Mr. W. H. Ragan, Chairman of County Reception Committee. .Fronting Page 17 ■^ Honorable W. H. Osborn, Mavor of the City of Greensboro. . .Fronting Page 19 ' Mr. Andrew Joyner, Chairman of the Press Committee Fronting Page 21 * Honorable Walter Clark, of North Carolina Fronting Page 25 '^ Rev. C. W. Byrd, D. D., of Atlanta, Ga Fronting Page 29 ^ Rev. W. W. Moore, D. D., LL. D., of Richmond, Va Fronting Page 33 ■^ Honorable Robert M. Douglas, of North Carolina Fronting Page 37 ^ Rev. A. C. Dixon, D. D., of Boston, Mass Fronting Page 41 y Honorable F. M. Simmons, of North Carolina Fronting Page 45 ■^ Honorable W. W. Kitchin, of North Carolina Fronting Page 49 V Honorable J. M. Gudger, of North Carolina Fronting Page 53 ^ Honorable M. W. Ransom, of North Carolina Fronting Page 57 y Honorable John H. Small, of North Carolina Fronting Page 61 V Hcmorable E. Y. Webb, of North Carolina Fronting Page 65 '^ t'olonel James T. Morehead, of Greensboro Fronting Page 69 >/ Honorable Francis E. Shober, of New York Fronting Page 73 •/ Mr. W. F. Futrell, of Philadelphia Fronting Page 75 V Honorable Spencer Blackburn, of North Carolina Fronting Page 77 vMr. John Wilbur Jenkins, of Baltimore, Md Fronting Page 79 V President R. P. Pell, of Converse College, South Carolina Fronting Page 81 v' Honorable L. D. Tyson, of Tennessee Fronting Page 83 V Mr. Peter M. Wilson, of Washington, D. C Fronting Page 85 V Honorable J. Bryan Grimes, of North Carolina Fronting Page 89 / Honorable Benj. R. Lacy, of North Carolina Fronting Page 93 '' State Normal and Industrial College, Greensboro, N. C Fronting Page 95 ^ Mrs. Lucy H. Robertson, President of Greensboro Female College Fronting Page 97 ■^' Honorable A. L. Fitzgerald, of Nevada Fronting Page 101 V Honorable Robert D. Gilmer, of North Carolina Fronting Page 105 ■I Mr. Shepard Bryan, of Atlanta, Ga Fronting Page 107 >/ Dr. Paul Barringer, of the University of Virginia Fronting Page 109 'I Mr. Murat Halstead, of Ohio Fronting Page 111 ■i Honorable B. F. Dixon, of North Carolina Fronting Page 113 * Note— The editor, with pardonable pride, refers to the list of fine engravings to be found 'in this volume, the procurement of which involved no little expense, labor, and time It will be noted that the list is cotifined to those Carolinians — resident and non-resident — who personally attended or contributed to the success of the First North Carolina Reunion. In this connection, the editor acknowledges, with ijrateful appreciation, his indebtedness to Mr. Jos. J. Stone for his a(5tive and kindly assistance in the preparation of this volume. 5 6 First North Carolina Reunion •J Honorable James Y. Joyner, of North Carolina Fronting Page 117 ' Mr. R. M. Bartley, of Indiana Fronting Page 119 s Honorable Joseph M. Dixon, of Montana Fronting Page 121 V President E. A. Alderman, of Tulane University, Louisiana. .Fronting Page 123 V Honorable H. B. Varner, of North Carolina Fronting Page 125 s Honorable Francis D. Winston, of North Carolina Fronting Page 127 4 Honorable David Schenck, LL. D., First President of the Guilford Battle Ground Company Fronting Page 129 ■i Honorable S. L. Patterson, of North Carolina Fronting Page 133 V Honorable James E. Boyd, United States District Judge Fronting Page 137 ' Honorable Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois Fronting Page 139 V Honorable Hannis Taylor, Ex-Minister to Spain Fronting Page 141 •J Honorable J. C. Pritehard, United States Circuit Judge Fronting Page 145 ■i Mr. J. P. Caldwell, Editor of the Charlotte Obeserver Fronting Page 147 4 Honorable Joseph M. Hill, of Arkansas Fronting Page 149 ■/Colonel A. B. Andrews, First Vice-President of the Southern Kail way Fronting Page 153 vi Reunion Souvenir Fronting Page 155 -I Mr. Joscphus Daniels, Editor of the Raleigh News and Observer Fronting Page 157 •I Major Joseph M. Morehead, President of the Guilford Battle Ground Company Fronting Page 159 ' Honorable \. M. Aiken, of Virginia Fronting Page 161 4 Group of North Carolina College Presidents Fronting Page 1^-i 4 Geographical Location of Greensboro Page 168 4 Dr. J. Allison Hodges, of Richmond, Va Fronting Page 169 Honorable Hoke Smith, of Georgia Fronting Page 173 ^/ The Board of Managers of the First North Carolina Reunion Charles D. Mclver, Chairman J. A. Odell Robert R. King J. W. Fry Ceasar Cone George S. Bradshaw Secretary, Robert D. Douglas Treasurer, Lee H. Battle Resolution Unanimously Adopted by the Board of Managers Resolved, That Mr. George S. Bradshaw be requested, authorized, and empowered to compile, edit, and publish iu book form the proceed- ings, including the Sermons and Addresses of the First North Carolina Reunion, together with such other pertinent material as he may deem proper. Ceasar Cone Robert R. Kin Board of Manafit'rs of the First North Carolina Ki-imioii J. A. Odell Charles D. Mclver George S. Bradshaw J, \V. Fry I,ee H. Battle Foreword Pursuant to and in compliance with the foregoing resolution of the Board of Managers the task therein imposed is assumed in the hope that its fulfilment may justify the confidence thereby reposed. The idea of a Reunion of the non-resident sons and daughters of North Carolina originated in the fertile brain of Dr. Charles D. Mclver, the distinguished president of the State Normal College. It was at his suggestion and chiefly by his efforts that the city of Greens- boro, in her official capacity, and through her various business organi- zations, was induced to adopt the idea and plan for its successful development and execvition. Encouraged by the ready enthusiasm with which his idea was received. Dr. Mclver submitted it to Governor Aycock, who in turn communicated it with his hearty indorsement to the General Assembly (then in session). The result was a ringing resolution unanimously adopted by the General Assembly, in which the hearty concurrence of the State was pledged to the furtherance of the plan and in extending "to the absent sons and daughters a welcome hearty and sincere". The movement thus projected having met with such spontaneous and cordial indorsement by the press and the people of North Carolina, and with such generous and enthusiastic response from former resi- dents in other States and countries, it was deemed advisable to crystal- ize the sentiment in an organization for promoting an Annual Reunion or Old-Home Week. It was, therefore, decided to organize a permanent Reunion Association under a regular charter, which has been granted, in order to establish permanently an Annual Reunion or Old-Home Week for North Carolinians scattered throughout the country, and in order that it may be held annually on a more extended and desirable scale. At an informal meeting of the charter members and other stockholders of this Association held in the rooms of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Club, in the city of Greensboro, in August, 1903, an executive committee, consisting of Honorable James E. Boyd, Dr. Charles D. Mclver, Mr. J. A. Odell, Mr. Robert R. King, Captain J. W. Fry, and Mr. George S. Bradshaw, was appointed with authority and full power to devise the plan, scope, and details of the First North F. N. C. R.—II 9 10 First North Carolina Reunion Carolina Eeuuion, and with instructions to report the same to a mass- meeting of the citizens of Greensboro to be held in the Grand Opera House at a later date to be fixed by said committee. Accordingly, and agreeable to its instructions, this committee, after many conferences and much work, extending over many days, formu- lated and completed the plan and scope of the Reunion, selected the various committees, and mapped out the work of each. So thorough and satisfactory was its work that its report in full and in detail was unanimously adopted by the said mass-meeting. From this report, submitted through Judge Boyd, and supplemented by him with a stirring and eloqvient appeal to this mass-meeting, started the final wave of enthusiasm which culminated in the glorious success of the First North Carolina Eeunion. It was deemed appropriate to fix the date of the beginning of the Reunion proper upon the twelfth of Octo- ber, which is by statute "North Carolina Day", upon which day the schools and colleges of the State suspend their regTilar work, and devote the day to the study of North Carolina history. This, in brief, is the history of the origin of the movement, and in the following pages will be found the details of its development and execution. Whilst this hasty compilation does not aspire to the dignity of histori- cal work, and whilst many of the utterances recorded in the following pages were extempore and inspired by the occasion, the editor is induced to believe that scattered through its pages are many facts and much material which are worthy to be preserved, and which will appeal not in vain to North Carolina's future historian. In the perusal of these pages the reader will readily recognize and appreciate the embar- rassment of the editor and compiler in the attempt to present the quantity and varietj' of the material at his disposal in the most attrac- tive form. Without precedent in the line of this peculiar task he is left to the defects of his own judgment and taste, and to the charity of those who may read or review with critic's lense the compilation and arrangement of matters herein treated. Its chief, if not its only, charm is the distinctive North Carolina flavor with which its pages are spiced. Invoking and trusting to the joyous spirit of the occasion, the editor does not hesitate to assure the reader that there will be found in the utterances inspired by the First Reunion of non-resident and resident North Carolinians gems rare and racy from every field of thought and from every line of toil in which North Carolinians have wrought and won in the uplifting and upbuilding of themselves, their communities, their States, and the great institutions of their country. Nor does the writer hesitate to place on record the fact that the First North Carolina Reunion was a decided success. It was a success in its fine and joyous First North Carolina Reunion 11 spirit, in its purpose to foster a beautiful fraternal feeling, in the large attendance from home, in its home-gathering of "absent sons and daughters ' ', in the renewal of old associations, in the cementing of old ties, in the hearty hand-elasp of old f riendsliips and in the forma- tion of new ones, in the heart-to-heart and face-to-face mingling of kith and kin, in the inspiration and instruction imparted, in seeing and knowing what manner of men the old mother has reared and loaned to other States, in showing whatever of good those at home have done and wrought, in the burial of all political and other asperities, in giving vent to the genuine Tarheel pride of home and love of kin, in the filial renewal of allegiance to the sacred claim of both, in the larger knowledge and keener appreciation of the good in all, in the affectionate acknowledgments of the returning children, and in the tender benedictions of the old mother's love. This modest volume is designed to be a mere souvenir, and as such aspires only to be a simple record of the first Reunion, including com- ments thereon and utterances inspired thereby, and embracing engrav- ings of some of the Carolinians — resident and non-resident — who figured therein and contributed thereto, and is published with the sin- cere and sole purpose of stimulating State pride and fostering a greater love of the old Mother. — Editor. Special Message ot the Governor The Honorable, the General Assembly: The city of Greensboro, iu her official capacity, and through various organizations having their headquarters there, has planned a reunion of and reception for all the non-resident native North Carolinians, to be held in Greensboro on North Carolina Day, October 12, 1903. It is the desire that this be made a notable occasion. I am requested to ask your honorable body to join with the city of Greensboro and the organizations in extending an invitation to those of our citizens who have made their homes elsewhere. Our sons and daughters abroad have not forgotten the State, nor has the State forgotten them. We want to see them face to face, and learn what they have done abroad, and show them what we are doing here. The occasion will be one of great pleasure, and not without profit to all concerned. I gladly join ■\\ ith the good city of Greensboro and her people in the invitation which they are extending. I trust that your honorable body may do likewise. Very respectfully, CHARLES B. AYCOCK, Governor. 12 Honorable Charles B. Aycock Governor of North Carolinn Resolution of the General Assembly Whereas, The city of Greensboro, through its chief executive and its Industrial and Immigration Association and Young Men's Business Association, has planned a Reunion of non-resident native sons and daughters of North Carolina to be held at Greensboro, on "North Carolina Day", October 12, 1903; and Whereas, It is eminently fitting that on a day set apart by the Gen- eral Assembly as one devoted to fostering a patriotic love of the Com- monwealth and people, all sons and daughters of the State should meet together on the soil that gave them birth, and there renevi^ the bonds of love and allegiance to a common mother ; therefore, be it Resolved by the Senate, the House of Representatives concurring, that in hearty concurrence vrith this expressed purpose of our city of Greensboro, the State of North Carolina unites in extending to the absent sons and daughters of the State a cordial invitation, and in assuring them of a welcome both hearty and sincere. la The Serious Purposes of the Reunion First. To furnish an opportunity for North Carolinians at home and abroad to renew and cement old friendships and to form new ones. Second. To secure for North Carolina from those who in the for- tiines of life have left her borders and made their homes elsewhere the inspiration and instruction that their varied experience and wider view make them capable of giving. Third. To advertise to the country North Carolina's contribution to American citizenship, and to so organize her sons and daughters, resident and non-resident, that whatever of good there is in the char- acter, traditions, and history of the sturdy old commonwealth may be impressed upon our national life. CHARLES D. McIVER. 14 Welcome Home « A Mother's Welcome — Blood-Warm and Heart- Flavored Thrice Welcome to Heart and Home The Old North State opens wide her arms to the wandering son whose face is homeward set, and to the wandering danghter who jour- neys back with beaming smile and queenly step, or with furrowed cheek and measured footfall, to the playground of youth, to bask again in the sunljeams that break from the rosy dawn of childhood. It matters not whether the absent son was led by ambition's goal to wander awa3' and out from the gate of the old homestead, or was driven by the fierce storm of war, or by the mad winds of ill-fortune, or by the heavy hand of necessity or environment, his home-coming shall be joyous ; for he shall find his name — be it ever so humble — sweetly embalmed in the memory of some unforgotten love. Nor shall it matter whether on land or sea he has scaled the dizzy heights of fame, or wanders in the valley of the grim shadow of "riotous living" and dire want, there shall be for him somewhere within our gates a welcome wet with the tears of joy. We shall not pause to ask whether the absent daughter comes with laurel or -with cross ; nor shall we take note of purple linen or lack of fad or style ; but with glad heart and genei-ous hand we shall surrender every key to every heart and every home and bid tmcrowned woman- hood, whether garlanded with trophy or veiled with cypress, enter and take the earth and the fulness thereof. Flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, blood of our blood, spirit of our spirit, our welcome to them shall be as free, bounteous, and warm as October's sunshine of our sunny clime. The mill, the shop, the farm, the office, the bank, the school, the church — all shall stop and stand with doors — both back and front — imloeked and wide open. And with every curtain up — with every eye alert and eveiy heart aglow — with every home and every door and every avenue wide open, we shall show them the sturdy old Commonwealth still rolling and luxuriating in the matchless resources of an Empire ; but in a new and steadier light, living a better life, on a higher plane, with stronger faith and brighter promise. And from blue wave to white peak all with one acclaim shall join In the ever-fresh and ever-joyous outburst of the glad Father in the prodigal parable, "Bring Hither the Fatted Calf". GEORGE S. BRADSHAW. From the Reunion Edition of AV:rj and Observer of September 27, 1903 16 Reception Committee on the Part ot the State of North Carolina Executive Charles B. Aycock, Governor, Chairman; J. Byran Grimes, Secretary of State; B. F. Dixon, Auditor; B. E. Lacy, Treasurer; Robert D. Gilmer, Attorney- General; J. Y. Joyner, Superintendent of Public Instruction; H. B. Varner, Commissioner of Labor and Printing; S. L. Patterson, Commissioner of Agri- culture. Legislative Wilfred D. Turner, President of the Senate; Samuel M. Gattis, Speaker of the House. Judicial Supreme Court: Walter Clark, Chief Justice; Walter A. Montgomery, Associate Justice; Robert M. Douglas, Associate Justice; Piatt D. Walker, Associate Justice; Henry G. Connor, Associate Justice. United States Courts: Thomas R. Purnell, Judge Eastern District of North Carolina; James E. Boyd, Judge Western District of North Carolina. United States Senators F. M. Simmons, Lee S. Overman. Representatives in Congress John H. Small, Claude Kitchin, Charles R. Thomas, Edward W. Pou, William W. Kitehin, Robert N. Page, Gilbert B. Patterson, Theo. F. Kluttz, E. Y. Webb, James M. Gudger, Jr. 10 Mr. U. H. K.isan Cliairniaii of Ouilfrjnl Cfninty Cdniinissiomrs and Chnirinan of County Reception Comitiittee Reception Committee on the Part of the County of Guilford W. H. Ragan, Chairman; W. C. Tucker, Jos. A. Davidson, John L. King, J. H. Johnson, D. H. Coble, A. G. Kirkman, J. P. Turner, W. T. Whitsett, Thos. A. Sharpe, L. L. Hobbs, J. Elwood Cox, W. O. Donnell, J. Henry Gilmer, W. J. Armfield, W. G. Bradshaw, J. D. Glenn, Wescott Eoberson, J. C. Kennett, J. T. Morehead, J. A. Lindsay, D. P. Foust, W. E. Bevill, J. R. Gordon, T. C. Starbuck, W. H. Rankin, W. C. Boren, J. A. Hoskins, F. K. Trogdon, J. F. Jordan, G. H. McKinney, J. A. Holt, Chas. H. Ireland, Jesse R. Wharton, C. D. Cobb, A. C. Murrow, John A. Young, W. N. Wright, John W. Cook, J. J. Welch, T. E. Whitaker, William Ragsdale, J. Van Lindley, J. E. Menden- hall, Jos. S. Worth, G. W. Denny, C. H. Wilson, Wm. Love, Joseph Peele, L. M. Scott. Reception Committee on the Part of the City of Greensboro W. H. Osborn, Mayor, Chairman; C. G. Wright, President Industrial and Immigration Association; P. D. Gold, Jr., President Young Men's Business Association; J. J. Kelson, President Merchants' and Manufacturers' Associa- tion; R. M. Sloan, Neil Ellington, Lee H. Battle, E. P. Wharton, A. W. McAlis- ter, David Dreyfus, W. P. Bynum, Jr., J. M. Millikan, Tyre Glenn, G. A. Grimsley, J. M. Morehead, E. P. Gray, A. M. Scales, W. P. Beall, Z. V. Taylor, C. M. Vanstory, W. A. Lash, Dred Peacock, C. P. Vanstory, C. D. Benbow, C. M. Stedraan, W. P. Clegg, V. C. McAdoo, Jno. N. Wilson, T. J. Murphy, W. D. McAdoo, W. R. Land, J. W. Scott, W. W. Wood, J. S. Hunter, G. W. Patterson, A. L. Brooks, R. G. Vaughn, A. H. Alderman, W. E. Allen, Z. V. Conyers, J. N. Wills, A. B. Kimball, S. H. Boyd, E. J. Stafford, B. H. Merrimon, O. C. Wysong, J. S. Michaux, R. M. Rees, L. J. Brandt, C. H. Dorsett, J. C. Bishop, D. R. Harry, John H. Rankin, J. L. Brockmann, W. D. Mendenhall, J. A. Hodgin, T. A. Glascock, H. J. Elam, R. F. Dalton, J. W. Forbis, G. O. Coble, Dixie Gilmer, J. H. Walsh, Lee T. Blair, A. V. D. Smith, J. B. Stroud, J. E. Brooks, D. C. Waddell, J. I. Foust, M. W. Thompson, John B. Fariss, Howard Gardner, J. S. Schenck, J. T. J. Battle, J. M. Hendrix, J. W. Merritt, E. M. Andrews, J. M. Wolfe, S. L. Gilmer, C. Mebane, W. C. Bain, Geo. S. Sergeant, J. N. Longest, F. N. Taylor, John M. Dick, C. W. Hoecker, J. W. Lindau, J. T. Tate, B. D. Broadhurst, C. E. Holton, J. C. Murchison, W. E. Harrison, E. Sternberger, .J. E. Logan, J. A. Barringer, S. J. Kaufmann, J. D. Helms, E. J. Justice, M. C. Stewart, E. S. Wills. 18 Colonel W . 1:1. ()sl)oni Mayor of the City of Greensboro Ladies' Reception Committee Mrs. B. F. Dalton, Chairman; Mrs. W. E. Allen, Mrs. Lee H. Battle, Mrs. James E. Boyd, Mrs. W. P. Bynum, Jr., Mrs. Mamie Crawford, Mrs. David Dreyfus, Mrs. J. W. Fry, Mrs. J. S. Hunter, Mrs. Robert R. King, Mrs. W. D. McAdoo, Mrs. Charles D. Mclver, Mrs. Joseph M. Morehead, Mrs. J. A. Odell, Mrs. Dred Peacock, Mrs. Lucy H. Robertson, Mrs. C. M. Sted- man, Mrs. J. P. Turner, Mrs. B. G. Vaughn, Mrs. John N. Wilson, Miss Nora Balsley, Miss Lola Carraway, Miss Lizzie Leigh Dick, Miss Charlotte Gorrell, Miss Lizzie Lindsay, Miss Mabel Glenn, Miss Alice Nelson, Miss Lizzie Sergeant, Mrs. J. A. Barringer, Mrs. W. P. Beall, Mrs. Geo. S. Bradshaw, Mrs. Ceasar Cone, Mrs. Robert M. Douglas, Mrs. Neil Ellington, Mrs. J. D. Glenn, Mrs. C. H. Ireland, Mrs. W. A. Lash, Mrs. A. W. McAlister, Mrs. E. R. Miehaux, Mrs. J. C. Murchison, Mrs. "W. H. Osborn, Mrs. J. M. Reece, Mrs. A. M. Scales, Mrs. John N. Staples, Mrs. C. M. Vanstory, Mrs. C. G. Wright, Mrs. E. P. Wharton, Miss Kate Bradshaw, Miss Pattie Caldwell, Miss Elizabeth George, Miss Sue May Kirkland, Miss Bessie Merrimon, Miss Berta Mebane, Miss Rebecca Schenck, Miss Jessie Scott, Miss Nettie Sloan. 19 Local Committees COMMITTEE ON DECOEATIONS— Clarence E. Brown, Chairman; J. W. Cone, F. P. Hobgood, Jr., Mrs. C. L. VanNoppen, Mrs. Carrie G. Yates, Mrs. E. W. Myers, Mrs. David Dreyfus, Mrs. Gaston W. Ward, Mrs. James D. Glenn. COMMITTEE ON TEANSPOETATION— Zeb. V. Taylor, Chairman; A. B. Kimball, L. J. Brandt. MUSIC for the occasion to be under the supervision of the Board of Managers, with Frank A. Williams as director. COMMITTEE ON PROGRAM AND ARRANGEMENTS— G. S. Bradshaw, Chairman; P. D. Gold, Jr., A. M. Scales, T. Gilbert Pearson, V. C. McAdoo, J. E. Brooks, John N. Wilson. COMMITTEE ON DECORATIONS AND LUNCHEON AT BATTLE GROUND— Dr. W. A. Lash, Chairman; J. H. Walsh, R. M. Eees, Mrs. C. L. Van- Noppen, Mrs. R. E. King, Mrs. J. W. Lindau, Miss Alice Nelson, Mrs. John N. Staples. COMMITTEE ON BADGES, INFORMATION, AND REGISTRATION— D. C. Waddell, Chairman; C. M. Vanstory, W. R. Land. COMMITTEE ON FIREWORKS— C. H. Ireland, Chairman; E. D. Broad- hurst, J. S. Betts, W. T. Powe, C. C. McLean, F. N. Taylor, A. W. Cooke, J. M. Hendrix, H. W. Wharton, T. C. Hoyle, W. C. A. Hammel, H. C. B. Guthrie. PRESS COMMITTEE— Andrew Joyner, Chairman; J. M. Eeece, R. W. Haywood, W. M. Barber, H. M. Blair, J. F. McCulloch, Al Fairbrother. 20 Mr, Aiulrcu Joyner Chairman of the Press Committee Official Program 31 Program of the First North Carolina Reunion Greensboro, N. C. Odlober Eleventh to Thirteenth Nineteen Hundred and Three Sunday, Odlober Eleventh First Presbyterian Church — 11.00 a. m. Sermon by Rev. W. "W. Moore, D. D., President Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Va. West Market Methodist Episcopal Church — 11.00 a. m. Sermon by Rev. C. W. Byed, D. D., Atlanta, Ga. Grand Opera House — 3.00 p. m. Reunion Sermon by Rev. A. C. Dixon, D. D., Boston, Mass. Monday, Odober Twelfth Grand Opera House — 2.00 p. m. Invocation. Introduction of Honorable Matthew Whitaker Ransom as Presiding Officer, by President Charles D. McIver, Chairman Board of Managers. Address of "Welcome on behalf of the State, by Governor Charles B. Aycock. Address of Welcome on behalf of the City of Greensboro, by Col. James T. Morehead. 23 24 First North Carolina Reunion Response from the North Carolina Society of New York, Honorable Frank E. Shober. Response from the North Carolina Society of Philadelphia, W. F. FuTRELL, Esq. Response from the North Carolina Society of Baltimore, Mr. John Wilbur Jenkins. Response from the North Carolina Society of Richmond, Rev. W. W. Moore, D. D. Response from the North Carolina Society of Atlanta, Shepard Bryan, Esq. Response from the State of Nevada, Judge A. L. Fitzgerald. Response from the State of South Carolina, PREsroENT R. P. Pell. Response from the State of Tennessee, Honorable L. D. Tyson. Response from the District of Columbia, Judge J. C. Pritchard. Response from the State of Indiana, Mr. R. M. Hartley. Entertainments — 8.00 p. m. The North Carolina State Normal and Industrial College. The Greensboro Female College. Smoker at Pythian Hall to visiting Pythians. Receptions — 9.30 p. m. to 11.30 p. m. — At various headquarters. Tuesday, Oftober Thirteenth Guilford Battle Ground— 10.30 a. m. Address by Honorable Hoke Smith, of Georgia. Address by Honorable Joseph M. Dixon, of Montana. Honorable Walter Clark Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina First North Carolina Ee union 25 Address by Dr. Paul Barringer, of Virginia. Address by ^Ir- Walter H. Page, of New York. Address by President E. A. Alderman, of Louisaua. Address by Honorable Murat Halstead, of Ohio. 1.00 p. m. — Basket dinner. 3.00 p. m. — Central Carolina Fair. 8.00 p. m. — Cone Athletic Park. Fireworks. 9.30 p. m. — Smith Memorial Building: General Reception. 11.00 p. m.— State Song. Headquarters General Reunion Headquarters The Benbow University of North Carolina 108 North Elm Street Trinity College The Benbow, Rooms 324-322 Wake Forest lOli/o Ea.st Market Street Guilford College The Benbow, Rooms 316-318 Davidson College The Benbow, Room 320 Whitsett Institute The Benbow, Room 326 Oak Ridge Hotel Guilford Randolph County Greensboro National Bank Building Cumberland County City National Bank Building Knights of Pythias Pythian Building, South Elm Street Masons Masonic Hall, Greensboro National Bank Building Visiting Editors 212 South Elm Street, and The Benbow Chatham and other Counties McAdoo House Battle Ground Schedule Trains leave City : 9.00 a. m., 9.40 a. m., 10.20 a. m., 11.00 a. m. Returning : 2.00 p. ni., 2.40 p. m., 3.20 p. m. F. iV. C. R.—III The Proceedings Rev. C. VV. Bvid, U. D. Atlauta, Oa. Sunday, Odtober Eleventh The Gate City awokr to find within her gates more friends and strangers than her beautiful and imposing churches could accommodate on the opening day of the Reunion. On all the incoming trains, from every direction, since early Saturday morning, resident and non-resi- dent in throngs had passed through her gates. It was an auspicious — a glorious Sunday. Pilled with the softly-bracing air and delicious sunshine of "Sad-eyed October", brightened by the hand-clasp of home-coming loved ones, sweetened by the spirit of Reunion that had touched and warmed every heart in every home, and made gladsome and joyous by the revival of tender memories, its sweet influences drew everybody nearer to home, nearer to church, and nearer to God. It was a fit day to worship God, and touched by its hallowed environ- ments the coldest backslider wanted to follow the multitude to the sacred temples. All the churches were overflowing. Spacious and commodioiis West Market was wholly inadequate to seat the people who wished to hear Rev. Dr. Byrd. The same was true of the Old First Presbyterian, where Rev. Dr. Moore ofSciated. Following is the full text of the sermon by Rev. Charles W. Byrd, D. D., of Atlanta, Ga., delivered in West Market Methodist Episcopal Church at 11.00 a. m. : The Mission of the Master — The Impartation of Life / am come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. — John 10 : 10. This is one of the briefest and at the same time most comprehensive state- ments of the mission of Jesus that we have recorded, either in his own utter- ances or in those of his apostles. I wouUl be slow to found a doctrine on any one statement, even of Jesus himself, but the view that this brief passage states the mission of the Master is abundantly sustained in numerous other passages. In the first sermon that he ever preached in the home of his youth, he read and expounded Isaiah 61, and declared that in him was fulfilled the promise of life therein contained, to the Jewish nation, and through them to the Gentile world. He declared that he came to seek and to save the lost; but his method of saving the lost was by the impartation of life. Then he declared 29 30 First North Carolina Reunion that he came to do his Father's will; but his Father's will was that the race might be fiUed with abundant life. The closing prayer of his life was that the world might have life through his mercy and merit. So we have as the proposi- tion for our discussion on this occasion ' ' The Mission of the Master — The Impartation of Life". There is no subject, perhaps, upon which there has been more false thinking than on the purposes of Jesus' ministry. Many have thought that he came to found a new religion, and they have told us that his religion should be compared with others, and that we should take the best there is in all the systems, perhaps giving to the teachings of Christ the pre- eminence. I have no objection to the comparative study of religions, and am perfectly willing that Christ 's system should be brought into comparison with the utterances of Sidartha, Confucius, and Buddha; but what I maintain is, that Christ never came to found a religion, but to impart life to man's spiritual nature. There are three things that are absolutely essential to the founding of a religious system: the promulgation of a creed, the establishment of a system of worship, and the formation of an organization. But Christ did none of these. Roman Catholics have gone to the writings of Christ and formulated a system of theology, and declared that this is Christ's teachings; Lutherans have done the same, and so have Wesleyan Armenians. But nowhere in the utterances of Jesus is there a systematic statement of doctrine. His great purpose was not to teach men what to think, but to teach them to think; not to promulgate a creed, but to quicken the heart and intellect; not to inform the mind simply, but to lift it into communion with God. The purpose of the early teachers of philosophy in our schools was to pro- mulgate a system of philosophy, and train their pupils to hold and proclaim their teachings. But the teacher of philosophy today in our best schools would feel that he had failed in his mission if he had simply taught his pupils to think his thoughts, to utter his words, and to embody the principles of his system in their own thought. The great purpose in the course of philosophy is not to teach men to think the thoughts of others, but to think their own thoughts. This is but a return to the Master's method. No one who studies the gospels can fail to be struck with how he prodded the minds of his disciples with question, epigram, and paradox. His whole purpose seemed to be to lead them to think on the great questions of their relation to God, their relation to men, and their eternal destiny. One of the saddest features of the religion of today is, that there are so many people who are willing to let their minister do their religious thinking for them. They spend the week in thinking of stocks and bonds, real estate, dirt and dollars, social functions, and the common dissipations of life, and come to church on Sunday morning to accept the sermon of their pastor as the necessary weekly dose of religion. My deepest desire and highest purpose is to awaken in you thought upon the deep problems of life and destiny, and not to do your thinking for you. Such, I conceive, was the Master's purpose, too. Christ did not formulate a ritual or form of worship; his purpose was not to teach men how to give expression to feelings of love and gratitude and faith, but to awaken these feelings in human hearts, and leave them to find expression in the way best adapted to the individual. Therefore, Christ had no ritual. Roman Catholics and Protestants have formulated rituals, and proclaimed them as Christ's ritual; but in this they have been mistaken, for, as the birds have their own peculiar methods of praising God— the lark with his early morning song, the quail in the early hours of the afternoon, and the whip-poor-will, with First Nortli Carolina Reunion 31 melancholy tone, in the evening shadows — even 80 the human hearts, in varied ways and diverse places, give expression to the feeling of devotion that has awakened in them. And wherever there is a heart that loves God and loves to tell him so, that longs for his help and appeals for it, with feeling of gratitude for his goodness and declares it, that is penitent for sin and seeks pardon, there is worship; whether it be amid the scenes of the great cathedral, with eyes fixed upon the pitiful form of the crucifix; in the dim light of the wasting candle, and amid the stately music of well-trained choirs; or in the Quaker meeting-house, wholly unadorned and plain, where the heart rises in voiceless prayer and praise to God — this is worship. Christ formed no organization; his nearest approach to organization was when he sent out the seventy on one occasion and the twelve on another, two by two, to preach the Word in the cities of Perea and Judea. So the third essential of the new religion is utterly wanting in our Savior's work. He imparted life, and left it to find its own form of organization; and any form of organization is acceptable to him that gives expression to life, whether it be the wonderful organization of the great Catholic Church or the loosest Congregationalism. Christ performed his ofiice of "Imparter of Life" through the use of means, however. To some of these I desire to direct your thought on this occasion: First, he uses the Church for the impartation of life. And this raises the whole question of what the Church really is. I would have you realize that it is not a school of ethics, merely teaching men their duty to each other; nor is it a school of theology, merely teaching men what they ought to think about God, and the unseen as related to God. It teaches ethics, and it teaches theology; but they are only incidents of its mission. Wherever there are souls that are united by love to God, and loyalty to God, and desire to bring his kingdom — first in their own hearts, then in the hearts of their own household, then in the world at large — there is the Church of the living God. The church is not primarily a fountain of truth or of morals, but of life. It may be likened to a river that takes its rise among mountains, and leaps and laughs and sings its way down the gorges, and at length reservoirs its strength on the great millpond that turns the busy wheels of the factory or grinds the grist for a thousand hungry mouths; then gathers into pools where boys come when their work is over, and bathe, and go away refreshed and cleansed ; then sends its streams out into the broad meadows, and feeds the roots of myriad grasses and flowers and trees and vines, that are all unconscious of its life- giving power. So, the church is sometimes noisy in its praises to God; then it gathers itself into a great reservoir that turns the wheels of philanthropic endeavor and Christian enterprise; then it gathers itself into pools where on the Sabbath day multitudes come week after week, and go away refreshed and cleansed; then it sweeps out amid the busy multitudes that never think of God and eternal life, and imparts life even to these indifferent ones and scoffers. None can estimate the marvelous power of the church as a reservoir of life and salvation. To it we owe all our benevolent institutions, hospitals, asylums, and homes of refuge for the fallen and needy; and God himself has no use for the so-called church that has ceased to be the imparter of life, and has degen- erated into a school of theology that worships a creed rather than a Savior. Second, he uses the Bible for the impartation of life; but as men have thought falsely about what the church is, so have they cherished misconceptions of what the Bible is. Not a few preachers have wasted their lives over the doctrine of "verbal inspiration", and inerrancy of the sacred Scriptures; and 32 First Aorth Carolina Reunion not a few have grown gray with anxiety about the work of the higher critics, because they have thought that the Bible was a book about religion rather than a book of religion. It was never intended to be a record of scientific facts; but it is a product of men who had the life of God in their souls, and who have written it out in these sacred records. This being true, I am unconcerned about the absolute accuracy of its historic statements; knowing as I do, that it is now, as it has ever been, a great fountain of spiritual life for all who feed upon its words. The Bible is a sacred library, a collection of the best friends that have ever counseled or communed with mortals. A book is a friend; a good book is a good friend — and sometimes I prefer my friend bound in muslin or leather, rather than in flesh; for then I can make him hush while I think. I love to think of my library as a collection of friends with whom I can com- mune at will, listening to their words of wisdom, loking at the pictures they paiut with their vivid imaginations, feeling the thrill of their stories of tender- ness, adventure, and love. A few evenings ago, when I had finished my preparations for my morning sermon, I sat alone in my study. Glancing up at my book-shelves, I asked what friend should talk with me that evening. Putting my hand on a small volume, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese", I let her tell me in her own beautiful words the story of her unselfish love for the one man whose burden she had consented to help to bear, and whose joys she knew how, as no other could, to participate in. Then, taking a volume of Sophocles, I let the old master talk to me in that queen of all the tragedies, Antigone, until my mind was ablaze with the thought and feeling that pervades that marvelous work of human genius. And then I turned to, perhaps the sweetest singer of all the Latin poets, and let old Horace talk to me in the musical lines of his Sapphic measure, of the heathen gods, Boman patriotism, and human love. But when the hour for the close of the evening's study had come, and my thoughts turned to higher things and better things than Sophocles and Horace knew, I opened the Book of books to listen to the words of rapt Isaiah, and Israel 's poet king, and the sweet and tender words of Him "Who spake as never man spake ' '. As I closed the book, I knew and felt a difference that made me exclaim: "This; this, is the Book of Life!" Take its history. Is it a record of the great deeds of great men? Not always; but often the petty deeds of mean men; but in its history ami biographies we feel the breath of God, and are taught that He is in the onward march of the human race. Take its poetry. It may not compare in beauty and rhythm with the sonorous lines of Greece's blind bard, but in its beauty, whether it describes the beauties of nature, or the feelings of the human heart, it teaches you that God is back of and under all. And so it is the Book of Life, Christ's chief means of the promulgation of life in human spirits. Last of all, Christ imparts life by giving himself. Here is a mj-stery that human lijjs can not explain, and human minds can not understand. His entrance into the heart must be known by experience and spiritual intuition. I stand here today to plead with you to assume the receptive attitude, letting him have right-of-way. That you may be strengthened by the might of his spirit in the inner man. That he may dwell in your heart by faith, and fill you with his fulness. That .vou may have this experience, you must live in his presence, and let him live in your heart and in your home. He alone can impart life. I stood on a ditch bank one day, and looking down at the scragly thorn- bush, I bent down the ear of my imagination to hear what it had to say. I Rev. W. \V. Mooie, I). D., LL. l). President of Inion Theological Seiiiiiinry. Kichmoud, Va. First North Carolina Reunion 33 heard it complain in murmuring tones: "Only a briar, filled with thorns, the sign of the curse! If I were but like the violets that grow upon the bank up there, I would regale the senses of this stranger who bends over me; or if I were like the great oak over there in the field, that lifts its branches in the sunshine, I would offer shade and protection to tired man and weary beast; but I am only a briar. If I were like the wheat that is yellowing on the hills and plains, I would feed a multitude of hungry men; but I am only a briar!" Just then I saw the gardener come, and, carefully taking the thorn-bush from its place, he transplanted it in a cosy corner of his well-cultivated garden, and pruned it, and left it alone. And then I bent down the ear of my imagination to listen once more to the voice of the thorn-bush, and I heard it say: "Ah, I am still only a briar! What can the gardener have intended in placing me in this cultivated spot? It was bad enough to be a briar down there in the ditch; but oh, how much worse here among the roses; he will never be able to get anything out of me. ' ' Then I heard the gardener laugh and say, ' ' I will first put something in you"; and with keen knife he splits the bark of the old thorn-bush and places within it a tiny bud, and binds it up, and goes his way. The weeks go by, and multitudes gather around the old thorn-bush, and look with wonder and admiration; for lo, upon it is a rose of rarest beauty and sweetest fraganee. You, my brother, are the thorn-bush, full of thorns; but your father is the husbandman. He knows the worthlessness of the old root-stock; but he knows, too, how to put into you life that will come out some day in beautiful and fragrant flowers of Christian character. Let him have right-of-way. Let him put into you what he can; and he will get out of you what he wishes. The immense auditorium of the First Presbyterian Church was crowded with worshipers at 11 o'clock, and hundreds were turned away for lack of room. Rev. Walter W. Moore, D. D., LL. D., of the Union Theological Seminary, of Richmond, Va., a native of Mecklenburg, and highly distinguished in the theological world, preached a magnificent sermon. It was this beloved divine who delivered the sermon when the splendid building in which he stood this morning was dedicated, ten years ago, then, as now, one of the most splendid church edifices in the South. Dr. Moore's subject was The Making of Transitional Men — What Makes Them, and What They Make. His text was from I Samuel 3 : 20 : "And all Israel, from Dan even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord. ' ' Following is an abstract of his masterly discourse : The Making of Transitional Men / Samuel S : 30 The loftiest ideal ever set before a nation was that which God placed before the Israelites when he entered into covenant with them at Mount Sinai. It was expressed in these words: "Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests 34 First Xorth Carolina Reunion and an holy nation". This was no ideal of military glory or material wealth, such as most nations have striven to attain. It was an ideal of personal and national rijjjhteoiisness, of spiritual privilege, and of helpful service to mankind. "Ye shall be unto me an holy nation" — there was God's requirement of righte- ousness. "Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests", that is, as the construc- tion really means, a dynasty of persons invested with royal rank and priestly functions — there was God's appointment of Israel to religious privilege and religious responsibility. For priesthood implies not only privilege but duty. A priest is a mediator and teacher of God's will. Israel as a priestly nation had a ministry to the world. Her mission was to teach religion. Her call to it was clearer even than the call of Rome to teach the world organization and law, or the call of Greece to teach the world letters and art. The ideal set before Israel then was religion — intensive and extensive, if we may use these terms for lack of better, meaning by intensive religion truth and righteousness realized in their own hearts and lives, and by extensive religion the teaching of truth and righteousness to the world. You are familiar with the melancholy history of Israel 's failure to realize this splendid ideal in the generations immediately succeeding the covenant at Sinai. In order to the regular administration of the ordinances of public worship, an oflScial priesthood was organized at Sinai, in connection with the elaborate system of object-lessons in the tabernacle and its ritual, and a whole tribe was set apart to the offices of religion. This tribe, alone, had no territory allotted to it among the rest; but instead of a portion of their own the Levites were scattered among all the other tribes, occupying specified towns in different parts of the country. To this sacerdotal order, and to these Levites. thus dispersed among the people, was originally entrusted the principal part of the work of spiritual instruction and government. But, during the period of the Judges, which has been well called the Hebrew Dark Ages — a period of civil and religious disorder, the priesthood itself degenerated, as seen in the scan- dalous history of Hophni and Phineas, and the Levites, so far from fulfilling the purpose for which they had been scattered over the land, and holding the people to their spiritual ideal, became themselves leaders in idolatry, as in the case of Jonathan, the grandson of Moses. With the loss of character on the part of the priests and Levites, the ceremonialism of which they were the exponents necessarily lost its power, and religion lost its hold upon the people. Hence arose the necessity for a system of plainer and more effective teach- ing, and the demand for a leader of creative genius to organize such a system. "The ages call, and the heroes come." In this crisis of the chosen people, second only in importance to the Exodus, there appeared a leader second only to Moses. Amidst the wreck of the ancient institutions of the country, amidst the rise and growth of the new, there was one counselor to whom all turned for advice and support — Samuel, the prophet. And so grandly did he meet the crisis which evoked him, that for tliree thousand years his influence upon man- kind has been second to that of no mere man that has ever lived since his day. For (Samuel was not only the organizer of what we call constitutional govern- ment, but he was the originator of two of the most potent and beneficent agen- cies of our civilization — the pulpit and the school. He revolutionized the political and religious life of Israel. He was the last of the judges, the first of the prophets, the founder of the monarchy. He was the connecting link between the old regime and the new. He was reformer, organizer, epoch-maker of the first magnitude. And there is no career in all First North Carolina Reunion 35 Scriptural history from which the men of the transitional epoch in North Carolina can learn so much, for they have the same kind of problems to solve, and the same kind of work to do. Before proceeding to make good these statements as to his work and influ- ence, some of which may seem to you at first sight extravagant, let us call to mind once more the familiar picture of the child and the man, and the familiar story of his antecedents, character, and training. 1. And first of all, if we would know how such men are made, we should note that Samuel was the son of his mother. The most potent influence in the making of the man who made Israel, who first founded schools, and who first organized preaching, was that of a wise, gentle, just, and loving mother. It is not merely an alliterative epigram when we say, ' ' the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world". Our age has seen more clearly than any other that even the prenatal influence of a mother on her child is very great. It was not a mere accident or coincidence, as some one has pointed out, that Nero's mother was a murderess, or that Napoleon's mother was a woman of prodigious energy, or that Sir Walter Scott's mother was a great lover of poetry, or that Lord Byron 's mother was a proud woman — ill-tempered and violent, or that John Wesley's mother had executive ability enough to manage an empire, or that Washington 's mother was devout and pure and true, and of the loftiest character — the woman of whom be said: "All that I am I owe to my mother". There must be something besides mere chance in an array of facts of which these are but specimens. When to the prenatal influence is added the after influence of association, example, and instruction, moving along in the same direction through all the years of special susceptibility, nothing short of eter- nity can reveal how decisive has been the influence of a mother's life and personality upon the life and personality of her child. The development of the affections in children precedes that of the intellect. The mother governs through the affections, and, as she alone is brought into the closest relations with the children during the formative period of their lives, they learn to love her with a far different feeling from that which is inspired by the father. His is largely the rule of authority. Hers is the rule of love; and hers is infinitely stronger and more abiding. Hence the greatest need, not only of France, as Napoleon Bonaparte said, but of every nation, is mothers. Now, Hannah was a mother after God's own heart. She prayed for a son; and when a son was given her she recognized and assumed her responsibilities with a cheerful and whole-hearted devotion. She wore no crown like Queen Victoria; she led no army like Joan of Arc; she slew no tyrant like Charlotte Corday; she founded no school like Mary Baldwin; but she made the man, who made the monarchy, who planted the seeds of all constitutional government, of all opposition to tyranny, and of all organized schools and colleges, and who made the pulpit what it has ever since continued to be. If the men and women of our stock have been of any use to North Carolina or to other States in which they have lived, let us thank God today first of all for our North Carolina mothers. Astronomers tell us that the light of a star lingers lovingly around the world for centuries after the star itself has disap- peared from the firmament. However that may be, certain it is that the influ- ence of these blessed luminaries of the home abides with power upon their children and their children's children long after they have gone hence. Turn once more to that delightful little volume of Drumtochty stories, and read the sketf'h entitled "His Mother's Sermon", if you would see what "Ian Mac- laren", the most popular writer of that species of literature in the world, thinks 36 First North Carolina Reunion of the postluinious influence of a mother upon her son. A man le;irns his politi- cal and other opinions from his father and other men, but he learns his religion from his mother, and, as Thomas Carlyle has said, a man's religion is the main fact about him, it is that which more than anything else makes him what he is. 2. The circumstances attending Samuel's response to the first call of the mysterious voice show that he had also early developed the self-denial and self- control which are indispensable conditions of the highest success in life, especially in an age of intricate and irritating and explosive problems and of strenuous activity like ours. 3. The most notable thing about Samuel 's training for his great career was his gradual growth, the continuousness and consequent harmony and strength of his development. The silent, inward, unconscious growth of Samuel is in strong contrast with the violence and profligacj' of the times, and, as Stanley points out, is the expression of a universal truth. The fact that in him the vari- ous parts of his life hung together, without any abrupt transition, explains the marvelous success of his work in binding together the broken links of two diverging epochs, and imparting to the age in which he lived the continuity which he had experienced in his own life. In proportion as our minds and hearts have grown up gradually and firmly, without any violent disturbance or wrench to one side or the other; in that proportion do we accomplish our best work for God. The steady, solid, lasting work of the world is done by the men who come from Christian homes, are trained by godly mothers, and develop through a pure childhood and youth to a strong, well-balanced, and fruitful manhood. My brethren, let us learn this lesson. In our work for North Carolina henceforth, let us continue as heretofore to magnify the work of the home. ' ' And the child Samuel grew on and was in favor with God and man. ' ' If our State has been noted for any one type of character it is the balanced type. We are not men of extreme views. Other States may have more genius, but no State has more sense — good, hard, solid, everyday sense. "The maelstrom attracts more notice than the quiet fountain; a comet draws more attention than the steady star; but it is better to be the fountain than the maelstrom, and to be the star than the comet." Our people will not follow men of extreme views. They will not lay their course by sky-rockets, but the steadfast pole-star they will always follow. Symmetrical, solid, well-knit men, free from extravagances of doctrine and method, are the kind of men now needed by North Carolina. 4. Samuel was a transitional man. It is this feature of his life which invests him with peculiar interest to the j'oung men of the South, who have grown up amid the changes in our Southern land which were wrought by the great revolution in the sixties; men who have had to be at once conservative and progressive, who combine profound reverence for the past with buoyant belief in the future; steadfast in their adherence to the principles which have given their people and country a glorious past, coupled with a clear recognition of the changed conditions brought about by the war and other causes, and the consequent necessity for some changes of method in the application of those principles. Samuel was not a founder of a new state of things like Moses, nor a cham- pion of the existing order of things like Elijah. He stood literally between the two; between the living and the dead, between the past and the future, between the old and the new, with that sympathy for each which at such a time affords the best hope of any permanent solution of the questions which torment it. See his attitude towards ritualism, though brought up on the ritual of the taber- nacle; and hear his definition of religion: "Behold to obey is better than Honorable Robert M. Douglas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina First North Carolina Reunion 37 sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams". See his attitude towards the monarchy, though brought up under the old system of republic and judges. We need men today of equally open mind, broad outlook, and power of adaptation. There, then, we see what makes the transitional man; his mother's influ- ence, his early mastery of self, his gradual and symmetrical training, and his sympathy alike with the old and the new. Now what does the transitional man make? 5. The greatest work of Samuel's life was the establishment of the prophetic order, and the organization of the prophetic schools. He not only reformed the civil and religious life of his people, but he took measures to make his work of restoration permanent as well as effective for the moment. He established schools which should furnish a regular succession of trained men to teach religion. At Eamah, at Bethel, at Gilgal, at Jericho, these were gathered in companies, and ' ' Samuel stood appointed over them ' '. This is the first mention, the first express sanction, not merely of regular arts of instruction and education, but of regular societies formed for that pur- pose — of schools, of colleges, of universities, of theological seminaries. Long before Plato had gathered his disciples round him in the olive grove, or Zeno in the portico, these institutions had grown up under Samuel in Judea. On this unique occasion, in this good State, with the whole atmosphere electrical with educational enthusiasm, it is impossible not to note with peculiar interest the rise of these, the first places of regular religious and general education. For one man to have inaugurated and methodized these three great innovations — consti- tutional government, national education, and a continuous succession of trained preachers — and to have given them stability and permanence, is an unique achievement, which confers upon its author everlasting renown, and, looking to the subsequent effects of these institutions, impels us to pronounce Samuel one of the supreme benefactors of the human race. My brethren of North Carolina, believe in the teaching method, and prac- tice it with all your might — in the home, in the school, and in the pulpit. The Reunion Sermon 39 Rev. A. C. DixDU, 1). I)., ..i' Boston, Mass. who Preached the Reunion Sermon The Reunion Sermon This was delivered by Rev. A. C. Dixon, D. D., Boston, Mass., at 3.00 p. m., in the Grand Opera House, to the largest audience ever seen in that splendid auditorium. There was scarcely an inch of available standing space to be found, and hundreds were turned away by the ushers. Following is the full text of the sermon : The Vision of God and Man The heavens mere opened, and I saw visions qf God. — Eze- kiel 1:1. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and earned me out in the Spirit qf the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of hones. — Esekiel S7 : 1. Five times the heavens are said to have opened: Above Christ at his bap- tism, when he heard the approving words of t'^e Father; above Peter on the house- top, when he received his life-commission; above Stephen whilst he was being martyred, when he saw Christ at the right hand of God; above John on the Isle of Patmos, when he caught glimpses of the Celestial City; and here above Ezekiel in the land of captivity, by the river Chebar. This vision of the opening of the heavens was a preparation for the vision of dry bones. Until we get a glimpse of God, and begin to realize that divine forces respond to human, and that God is in his world, working a way worthy of himself, we are not ready for the work of transforming bones into men, making life come out of death. It was a preparation for the life-work of the prophet, and we see in this process the method by which the desert becomes a garden, the wilderness a city, and the colony with rude, lawless beginnings a state with civil and moral order. It is God coming down through the opening heavens and touching men — bringing them into life. Man is but a bone of his former self. Created in the image of God, he has so marred that image by his sin that compared with God he is only as the dry bone compared with the living body. And the question of all questions is, can these bones live? As we study this vision of God, we will find an answer to that question. Only God can bring them into life. First of all, we see the union of the human with the divine. In the peculiar creatures of this vision there are wings, and a hand under each wing. The wing everywhere in Scripture is the symbol of Deity. "The shadow of His F. N. C. R.—IV 41 42 First North Carolina Reunion wings" is a familiar phrase. The hand is the symbol of the human, so that we have the union of God with man. And you notice there is much wing and little hand. It is the wing moving the hand, rather than the hand moving the wing. God controlling the human. God managing the affairs of men. What we need today to transform the desert into a garden, and to place life where there was death is to put God in the place of pre-eminence. The tendency at this time is to magnify man and forget God. We are apt to make the hand bigger than the wing, and make man occupy a place of honor and of dignity, whilst we forget that God is the ruler of all. But when we put God first, he can still create something out of nothing. If I had a blackboard here, I would write on it the figure 1. Then I would put before it a nought, and it is only one. I put two noughts, only one; three noughts, only one. But if I write the nought after, it is ten, and two noughts it is one hundred. If j-ou put the one first, you can make ten out of one nothing, one hundred out of two nothings, and one thousand out of three nothings. When you put God first, he can create something out of nothing. When you have learned to spell God, with those three letters you can spell all that is good. I really like the religion of the good, old, colored woman in Georgia, who went to school at sixty years of age, and she went up to the teacher and said, "Miss, I just wish you'd tell me how to spell Jesus first, because I think if I could spell Jesus first, then all the rest would come easy". I tell you that is good religion. It is the kind that puts God first. He is equal to the task of transforming the human, and making it into the image of the divine. And as you gaze at these peculiar creatures in the vision, you see a winged intelligence. There is the face of a man, and the human face is always the symbol of intelligence. Reason linked with God. Reason with a wing. When man links his intelligence with God, and puts his mind, his imagination, his taste, his judgment, his whole intellectual being under the direction of the Spirit, then it is that he has power to influence and mould character. And you will find that the men who elevate reason above revelation (and we have many of them in New England) are usually controlled by the slave of self. Reason is more often in shackles than in liberty. It is controlled by ignorance, prejudice, and passion. During the French Revolution, you remember the leaders said, "Down with the church; down with the Bible; up with reason", and instead of going to the University of Paris and selecting a broad-browed philosopher as the personification of Reason, they go to a theater and select a dissolute actress, put her on a throne, and ask the people to bow at her shrine; and the men of Brittany who worship reason are the men, as far as I have learned them, who are controlled by selfishness, passion, and lust. Reason is a good courtier of the King. It does the bidding of the master; but reason exalted above revelation is an ignorant and sometimes a cruel tyrant. What we need today is to let reason listen to the God of reason. Let reason do the bidding of the King. Let reason take the promises that God has given, and draw the conclusions of mercy and power. The man who is influenced only by cold, calculating reason is as near the devil incarnate as ever lived. The man who is never influenced by gratitude or friendship or love has been demonized, and the tendency of this modern time to exalt reason above the Bible is to demonize man, is to deprive him of the pure Scriptural instinct that links him with God, and should control his reason as the master of the servant of the Almight}'. Intelligence with a wing is the ideal Christian life. As you look more closely, you will notice a winged courage. There is the face of a lion, and the liou is everywhere a symbol of courage. Courage linked First North Carolina Reunion 43 with God, conscious of God's presence and of God's power, and courage not only in the presence of danger but of difiiculty. It sometimes takes more courage to meet difficulty than danger. When God commissioned Joshua to go forth to battle, he said, "Be of good courage". When God commissioned Solomon to build the temple, he said, "Be of good courage", and it took as good courage for Solomon to face the difficulties of temple-building as for Joshua to march into the danger of battle. Many a man who could meet danger succumbs in the presence of difficulty, but God is equal to all difficulty. Difficulty does not exist in his vocabulary, and when you are linked with God you can be brave in the presence of difficulty as well as of danger. Our fathers were strong in building up this State, in establishing and maturing the church, in turning the desert into a garden, in making the wilderness a city, because they were brave not only in the presence of danger that would kill, but of difficulty that would daunt. The Cavaliers who first landed at Jamestown, and the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Eock had the courage that met danger from savage, difficulty from climate and failure of crop and internal dissension. When Chauncey Depew made the witty remark that when the Pilgrims came to this country, they landed first upon their knees and then upon the Aborigines, he struck the keynote of their success; for they were men that lived much upon their knees, and they could rise from their knees ready for the savage, or ready for the cold of the New England climate. Men that stand linked with God are ready for battle or ready for any difficulty that may meet them anj-where. As you gaze farther at this vision, you will notice a winged patience. There is the face of the ox, and the ox is always a symbol of patient toil. He bears the yoke. His mission is the unpoetic one of doing the dusty, humdrum drudgery in the deeds of everyday life. You know it takes more grit and grace just to walk every day and do its drudgery cheerfully and well than it does to mount upon wings as eagles, than it does to meet the great crises of life. Henry Stanley said he never feared the elephants in Africa. Why he could meet the elephants out openly and protect himself against them, but what he feared was the jiggers, little microscopic insects that got under the nails of his men and killed about half of them. For my part, I would rather meet a Bengal tiger, if I had a Eemington rifle, than to fight Jersey mosquitoes one night. Meeting a tiger appeals to the heroic in you, and all that is in you comes to the surface for battle; but meeting a mosquito does not appeal to anything except trepidation, fretfulness, and worry. If the truth were written on many a tombstone, the epitaph would read, "Died of jiggers and mosquito bites". Not killed by tigers, not overcome by great calamities, but destroyed by the little worries and friction of life. I come to you with the comfort that our God is a God not simply for crises and emergencies, but a God for the worries and the bothers and the humdrum and the drudgery. God can make the heart sing under the yoke as well as when it soars up above the mountain peak and cap. The great God of the universe is not too big to watch the sparrow as it falls, and label the hairs of our heads, and look after the least of his children, protecting them in danger and helping them to overcome difficulties. The most beautiful picture Murillo ever painted is a kitchen scene — a woman at the commonplace thing of cooking dinner. As you gaze at the face, you notice angel forms begin to appear. The angels are helping her cook dinner. As you gaze a little closer, you notice that the woman herself is an angel. What Murillo meant to teach was that cooking dinner is just as angelic as mov- ing in high society or sitting on a throne. As you read from this prophecy of 44 First North Carolina Reunion Ezekiel you will find that when this vision occui'S again, as it docs once or twice, the face of the ox has dropped out, and the face of an angel takes its place, as if God would teach us that honest everyday toil marks the purely angelic nature, not the great crises, rising up to the hero, but doing in the spirit of song and of joy the drudgery of everyday life. The missionary on the foreign field, with pagan death all around him; the Christian worker on the frontier, standing among the bones of character dumped from great cities; the business man on the board of managers, the majority of whom are dead to righteousness; the loyal Christian woman, surrounded by the gilded death of worldly society; the honest politician, working with those whose one thought is the spoils of ofiice; the college student, in the atmosphere of academic indifference and scepticism; indeed, every man who, having been quickened by the life of God, seeks to express that life in the midst of death, and so express it as to carry life to others, needs the patience of the ox, with the wisdom, power, and sympathy of God. And then, as j'ou gaze, you see a winged aspiration. There is the face of an eagle, and the eagle is everywhere the symbol of aspiration. Aspiration linked with God. Aspiration with wings. Aspiration that soars. There is an aspiration common in this day that simply moves on swift wings. Its ambition is to keep up with the times, the great sin of which is to lag behind. We are going so fast, there is danger that we will get left, and we must keep up, and, like some birds, it flies low, and keeps parallel with the earth, until it drops down among the bones and dust. It never soars, it rises up towards God, and I tell j-ou there is a spirit that imitates it; contemplation upon God and rising up on wings of faith, hope, and life, may not bring in the best financial returns, but it pays if you have in view high thinking and high character-building. The spirit that soars because it is linked with God, that does not try simply to go fast, but feels the presence of God daily, and lives for him. The kind of spirit that is needed for the valley of dry bones is here suggested — courage that has God in it, the patience of the ox that is linked with the wisdom, power, and sympathy of God, the aspiration of the eagle that does not rise with its own wings, but with the wings of God. You need not go into the valley of bones if you go there simply to reason, for I tell you you can not argue a bone into life. There is not any possibility of reasoning a bone into life. There is nothing but the breath of God that can make a bone live, and you need to be patient. Those of you who have been set down, in the providence of God, in the midst of the valley which is full of bones, will need the patience of the ox, the wisdom and power and sympathy of the Holy Spirit. Every man who, quickened by the life of God, wants to express that life in the midst of death, will find that he needs the very power of God for courage, and the power of God for aspiration, and the power of God for patience; and in this vision we have the human in this courage, in this intelligence, in this patience, in this aspiration, linked with God for time and for eternity. But gaze again, and you will see a winged directness. These creatures moved in straight lines. In nature the curve, we are told, is the line of grace and beauty. In marching, a straight road is the line of grace and beauty. Diplomacy, which is the art of doing things with indirection, is not among the Christian graces. Bismarck, in speaking to a company of diplomats, said, "Young gentlemen, always tell the truth; for nobody will ever believe you". A Russian General said, "I would die for my Czar, and of course I would lie for him". That sort of diplomatic spirit is in politics up in New England. It used to be in North Carolina, and is in commerce and stock exchange, and Honorablt; F. M. Simmons, of North Carolina Senior I'nileJ States Senator First North Carolina Reunion 45 sometimes in the retail store. The spirit of diplomacy, that by hook or crook we will get ahead of the other fellow, is not the spirit that is moved of God. Honesty, cheerfulness, paying your debts one hundred cents in the dollar, chastity, loyal to the truth in politics, whatever be the position, are the straight lines along which God propels his people. The Holy Spirit moves in straight lines, and every one that moves under his impulse at all moves under the impulse of honesty, cheerfulness, and virtue. Notice again, and you have a winged stability. You almost smile when you see that these creatures have the calf 's foot. The prophet said, ' ' He makes my feet like hinds' feet". The hind's foot and the calf's foot are just alike. They are made for standing on slippery and dangerous places. The hind can poise himself right over a precipice, and leap from boulder to boulder in perfect safety. Its foot is made with agility, with stability for movement, and at the same time firmness, perfect safety on the move. You remember the prayer, ' ' O Lord, establish our goings ' '. But our stayings are pretty well established. No doubt of that. We get in the ruts, and we love to stay there. But, "O, Lord, establish our goings". May we be on the move for good, full of the love of God, and yet be stable. If we are just active, that is all that is needed. If we can just get together, and do something in a very energetic way; why that is all that is needed. There has grown up in this country the spirit of a creedless creed. There are men up in Boston who believe that you ought not to believe. Their conviction is that you ought not to have any convic- tion. They are very much decided that nobody ought to be decided about any- thing. And you know they have gotten so broad until they are mighty narrow. They are out of patience with one who is not as liberal as they are. They believe in a creed without a backbone. They believe in indefinite liberality that does nothing. I was invited to New York to make an address to an infidel club on "Christ crucified". I thought it was a Methodist steward inviting me, as I saw him in a Methodist church where I preached, and I found it was the secre- tary of the greatest infidel club in the State. My first impression was not to go, but my deacons said, "You go, and we will pray for you". We had about seven hundred people present. One-fourth of them women, God help them, and the rest of them Jews and saloonkeepers, etc., and one of them a great Christian Scientist, rose and said, "We worship the everlasting It". Well, I could but reply, ' ' There is a principle as wide as the universe that you become like the object you worship, and you folks will keep on worshiping the everlasting It, until you become a lot of Its; all of you ' '. There will be no personality left, for as man advances, so is he; and a man can believe nothing until he becomes nothing. The calves have the foot of the hind that knows how to stand. You examine a man 's foot. It looks just as if it were made for backsliding. You have got to put shoes on it, and nails in the heels, to make it safe on slippery places, and that suggests that every man needs the support of divine grace. God himself has undertaken for us salvation, but when he is shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, he has got something under his foot that can stand like the hind when it is slippery, and poise itself even upon dangerous places. You know there is such a thing as making progress by standing still, and you can never make rapid progress unless you know how to stand still. Some one asked a jockey, "Can that horse run fast?" "No, but he can stand." You have got to have stability of position. You must know how to keep on your feet in movement, and you can not do that unless you know how to keep on your feet standing still. There were two sloops several years ago off the coast of Con- 46 First North Carolina Reunion necticut running a race. The wind was very strong, but the tide against them was stronger, and though they seemed to be going forward at a rapid rate, they were really drifting backward. One of the captains, looking ashore, took in the situation. So he cast anchor, and won the race, leaving the other boat half a mile in the rear. It is easy to drift with the tides of opposing currents; but those make best progress who have cast their anchors in eternal truth. What we need is the swiftness of God's wing, and the stability of God's power, movement by movement with conviction for truth, not a movement away from truth and God. but a movement with truth and God is the propelling power upwards. And that brings me to see in this strange vision a winged fellowship. All these wings are joined one to the other. They move together, and as they move together the hands move. In this practical age we are apt to think that we are simply to join hands. Syndication is the order of the day. Federation is the spirit of the times. Not an inward spiritual union, a union in God, but simply get together and join hands and do something, and that is all that is needed. If we are joined in a living union with God, we can easily work together, for then the same spirit of love inspires us. We are here on a beautiful mission — simply a reunion. We are here in memory of the old home ties. We have drifted far apart in diflferent States in this Union, and perhaps out of the United States, and yet we are one today in the unity of patriotic loyalty. We are here, not under the shadow of impulse, of any organization or form. We are here because we love North Carolina, and would like to do her honor. We are here, every one thinking about different things, with the same thing as the center of desire and purpose. I love the dear old State; not only because of my first birth, but more so because of my second. The old country meeting-house is in my mind as a picture today, when my father — blessings on his gray hairs today — preached the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ, and I accepted him as my Savior from all sin. Those plain country people wept with me over sin, and then rejoiced with me over salvation; and when I meet them now I find that though we have drifted miles apart we are together in that joy and hope; and when a few months ago they gathered with me in front of the old meeting-house, and strewed flowers upon the grave of my mother, and wept with me tears of sorrow and grief, I declare to you I felt that I had something in common with them that life and death could never touch. Most of them have remained on their farms, and I have drifted over the world, but we are akin — we are just alike in the deep things of God. The wings are still joined. The hands move in response to the wings divine, and you know these deep things of God are so deep that little things like the knowledge of Latin and Greek and science and history do not affect them at all. It is solid in God. This conviction of sin, this yearning after the divine, this transformation of character that goes on under the impulse of the Spirit, is not dependent upon culture, upon civilization, upon refinement, nor ignorance. It is way down beneath these things. It is eternal truth. The truth of the hour is not to be despised — the truth that men talk on the streets, suggested by current events — but oh, friends, there is eternal truth, good for both worlds, and all time and eternity — the relation of man to God and God to man. Education does not affect it. Sad, sad the day when education becomes a substitute for regeneration. If there is one thing that has made me prouder of North Carolina than another, it is the great revival of common school education, led by our noble Governor — I say ours because J feel that I have a part in him myself. But I tell you, friends, if I had my way First North Carolina Reunion 47 about it, I would write over the door of every school-house and every college and every university, "You must be born again". Whitewashing and galvar izing bones is not salvation. It takes the breath of God to make life, and when the new life has come into the soul, partaker of the divine nature, then there can be a betterment until we become like the perfection of Christianity in Jesus Christ ourselves. The mistake that education is all-sufficient has been made by eminent men. Bishop Colenso went to Africa, and selected a dozen bright African youths, and brought them to London, and gave them the bes'. education they would receive in the best schools, and after they had graduated from his school, he said, "Young gentlemen, you had better give your attention to Christianity". And not one of them was converted. They went back t-" their native wilds. One of them, the son of a chief, in less than a year got into battle with a rival tribe, killed his enemy, and while his body was warm cut out his heart and made a morsel of it, after all his English education. John Hans Egede went to Greenland, spent nearly thirty years trying to prepare the people for the gospel, but said they must know something about science and literature, and they must get an education to lift them up to the place where they could appreciate the religion of Jesus Christ, and he preached his last sermon on the text, "I have spent my life for nought", and went back a broken-hearted man. .John Beck went to Greenland, and the first thing he did was to preach to a crowd of savages, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son", and he had not gotten through with his sermon until Kajarnak, the chief, arose and said, "Mister, say it again. Do you tell me there is a God that loves me? Say it over." And he said it over, and then Kajarnak came to his little house and was instructed in the way of life, and accepted Jesus, and became a flame of fire in his native land. And what every child, cultured or uncultured, needs is to know God in Jesus Christ; what the savage needs is to have .Jesus Christ preached to him. John G. Payton went to the New Hebrides to help bury the bones of the victims of a cannibal feast, and he preached Jesus, and when he came back on a visit to this country I heard him say that the very men that had engaged in that cannibal feast were at that time deacons in his church. John Geddley, you will find his monument on one of those hills, with an epitaph which reads like this: "Landed here in 1837 (if I mistake not), not a Christian on the island. Died 1870, not a pagan on the island." What had done it? Schools? There had been schools formed, and the people wore educated, but the pioneer of education is the gospel missionary. The foundation of education for time and eternity is faith in Jesus Christ. Thus we have in Jesus Christ the union of spirit that expresses itself in outward form. The form is in the expression of life, but as we are joined in loyal patriotism in North Carolina, we can be joined in true loyalty unto Jesus Christ. I want to bear testimony to another fact. As I come back to the State this time, all these things have come trooping up in my memory, the touch of an old farmer's hand made me a preacher. I studied for three years at Wake Forest with a view of law. My ambition was to be a lawyer. I thought there was an opportunity for usefulness as well as fame. My father appointed a meeting to begin at New Prospect church in Cleveland county, on Saturday, and being engaged in another meeting a few miles below that was so interesting he could not leave, sent word to me to go up there and adjourn that meeting at New Prospect. I rode a mule up there, not as pleasant as a palace car, but for five or six miles I went along thinking about my law future, and I came up in front 48 First North Carolina Reunion of the old mocting-house. There was a crowd of farmers standing there talking. One of them, possibly the most illiterate among them, but one of the best that ever lived, came up and put his hand on my knee and said, "My boy, what's the matter f" "Father said he can not be here today, and you must postpone the meeting until some future time. ' ' He pressed my knee a little harder, and said, "Look here, son, why can't you come in and preach for us?" My heart went to my throat. Why, it had never dawned on me to do such a thing, and I trembled from head to foot. I was ashamed to be a coward, and he held on so lovinglj^ and so persistently that by and by I got off and went into the meet- ing-house, read a few verses of Scripture, don 't know what I commented, don 't think there was much, but there were some testimonies. I loved Jesus and had a little story to tell about it. I told it, and at the close there were some inquiries, and after that the old farmer came up and said, "Look here, my boy, how would you like to come back and preach for us tomorrowf" I said, "Why I have not a sermon in the world. 1 do not expect to preach." It scared me all over. He said, "That doesn't make any difference; you come back here tomor- row". And I was still ashamed, and promised that I would. I went back the next day, but there was a preacher there, and I didn't like that for I had my sermon— God had given it to me — and wanted to preach it. But I began a meeting there, and it went on over two weeks, and there were forty souls con- verted. I have never wanted to be a lawyer since. I have been preaching Jesus from that very day, and I would not go back to law for all the wealth of the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds put together. It was the touch of that old farmer's hand that did for me more than all the colleges on earth. Go to the university, get the highest training that the human mind is capable of, but I tell you, brother, there is something deeper than that, something in the old farmer's hand touch because it is the touch of God. God's wing joined with Immauity can make humanity powerful if it be as weak as weakness itself. Xow the prophet gives us a throne above these scenes and in relation to that throne the wheels. The wheel is the symbol of progress. Civilization goes forward on wheels. I came here on wheels. If you take the wheel out of civiliy.ation, you stop it dead still. And these wheels were so complicated, wheels within wheels, and so high that they were dreadful and all full of eyes. These wheels were under the impulse of the spiritual. They rested on the earth, and when the spirit moved they went up with the spirit, when the spirit went forward they went forward. They symbolize organization, the machinery of the church, the state, and the family, and ever\'thing that God can use for the advancement of his cause, and the teaching for us is that all this machinery should be under the spirit of God. The wheels, oh, so complicated! I tell you, brother, some have to take the complications because they try to run the wheels themselves. They get to the old windlass and turn their wheels. At our last annual meeting we had forty-two societies to make their annual report, enough to make the head whirl and just send one to the lunatic asylum if you try to run all these wheels, but it rests you just to realize that the wheels rest under God's spirit. If they do not, they should. All the machinery of God's church, in missions, in home work, in education, and everything el.'ie, is under the impulse of the divine spirit, and if they are not, they ought to be. They will never be successful until they are. These wheels were so great, they were dreadful and full of eyes, full of wisdom. The eye is the symbol of wisdom and thus safe to form great plans for God — plans that take in the evangeliza- tion of our State and country and the world, and plans such as we have for time and eternity formed for the advancement of God's kingdom. But notice Hoiun-ablf W. W . Kitchiii, of North Carolina Kepresentativf in Fifty - Eighth Congress First North Carolina Reunion 49 this, that some men who form great wheels for themselves; they think in thousands and millions for their corporations — and I declare corporations have become such wheels they are all dreadful and full of eyes — but you put one of these men on a committee for evangelizing the city or State and just listen to him talk when he begins to consider how much money he ought to give for that purpose, and go to the meeting of the committee when it is discussed, and you will find these men who have been thinking in thousands and millions for their own corporations are now thinking in dimes and dollars. Instead of having a great wheel full of eyes, they set up their own pinwheels, men that have the spirit and wisdom to build immense corporations, some of them wicked, some of them on a basis of honesty. Oh, that God would help them to form plans for him as great as his thought, as far-reaching as his salvation, for the salvation of the world. Let me say finally that the throne had a rainbow about it, and Jesus Christ upon it. The man who sees Jesus Christ on the throne is an optimist. He sees the rainbow, and no matter how complicated the wheels or how dark the pros- pect, it is about him, for he has crowned Christ in his heart, and looks upon him as holding the scepter that is his to give hope for the future. Such a man has a right to hope. I tell you, brother, if you have not crowned Christ in your heart and in your life, you have no rainbow about the throne. You have come back to the old home in North Carolina without a home in heaven. You have come here to look at the place where the house was burned, as my old homestead was; you have come here to wander in the old groves, and you will have no hope of walking amid the trees on the bank of the river; you have come to the old homestead without a title to the new home. O, is that true, friend? Howard Payne, who wrote "Home, Sweet Home", never knew what it was to have a home of his own, and most of you doubtless know the history of that song; how it was that Payne was walking down the street in a great city in Europe one night, and he went across the street, stood there upon the steps for a moment, and noted how the light shone down through the window. He took out his handbook, and, inspired by the home scene through the window, wrote these words, "Home, Sweet Home". He went off, and they were published, and have gone over the world. Years afterward Howard Payne, walking down the same street one night, said, "I will go over and sit on the steps where I wrote my poetry that has made me famous". He went over and took a seat on the steps, and while he was sitting there some ladies came in the parlor, struck a light, opened the piano, and one of them sat down and began to play his own words and music, ' ' Home, Sweet Home ' '. He sat there with his face in his hands, and wept as he thought of the fact that he had made other homes happy, and had no home himself. Suppose the owner of that home had come to the door and said, "Mr. Payne ,this home is yours. You have written about it. Will you not come in?" Do you think he would have cursed the owner of that house? I plead here this evening with every man or woman who has a home to love and a home that you owe to Jesus Christ of Calvary, will you not let that home and its sacred ties lead you to a title to the home eternal, so that when you go back to the home outside of the State you can carry a tie that unites us for time and for eternity. Some people speak of homes breaking up; and, as the world puts it, our home is broken up. The children are scattered, the mother is glorified. The dear father — we tried to induce him, unwisely as I think now, to leave his little church and place and live with us — there in his loneliness, preaching and working and praying for his boys and girls. The home has been broken, you say; and yet, friends, you never lose your homes. 50 First North Carolina Reunion The home is never destroyed. It goes with you wherever you go. It singa to you in your silence. It is a comforter to you in your silence. It is sweetness to you in the bitterness of night. At midnight you wake up, and it is a night- ingale in the dark. At midday you think, and it is the lark rising up to meet the sun. The home is never destroj-ed. It goes with us all over the world. A Christian home is eternal. Fire can not bum it. No power on earth can affect it. The Indians have a legend that when the frost comes and nips the flowers in their beautiful colors, these same colors are caught up in the rainbow on the cloud, so that the rainbow is the glorified flowers of the field. And oh, that is what the home is here, and there the flowers of hope and peace and joy are never lost. God catches them up in the rainbow about his throne. The home here is but the preface of the volume of the home beyond, if you have Jesus Christ as your Savior. May I say as a last message that our State is under God's guidance, God's protection? The State is ordained of God. You know I think what is ordained of God ought to do only what God wills. Once it was united with the free unbiblical alliance of the world. The State supported the church. Now, let us wipe off a blush, it is united with the saloon. The saloon helps the State, helps to support it; and what was ordained of God should not be supported by what was ordained of the devil. Let the divorce come — in the providence of God let the divorce come, and then the State will go forward upon the wheels of progress, propelled by the spirit who has given it its mission. God has said that marriages have only one cause for divorce, and the State that recognizes any other cause does not respond to the impulse of the Spirit. God has set apart one day in the seven as the holy type of worship and service, and I believe he would have the State recognize it as well as the church, even with the union of the church and State. The wheels of the family and the church and the State and humanity under God's impulse, going forward with Christ on the throne, and that throne on which he sits will by-and-by be pushed into sight with power and great glory, and then every crown will be his crown, and every scepter will be his scepter, and every throne his throne. I would like to call upon every individual and every family and every church and every State and every nation and every angel and every redeemed son in glory to say, "All hail the power of .lesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem And crown Him Lord of all. "Let every kindred, every tribe On this terrestrial ball, To him all majesty ascribe And crown Him Lord of all." When James Russell Lowell stood with a German friend on the top of the Alps, one of the highest peaks, he lifted his hat as he turned toward Italy and Rome, and said, "Glories of the past, I salute you". His German friend turned on his heel, and lifting his hat toward his fatherland, he said, "Glories of the future, I salute you ' '. The Apostle Paul, standing on the Alpine height of a Christian experience said, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness". "Glories of God 's grace in the past, I salute you. ' ' And lifting his hat to the future. First North Carolina Reunion 51 "Glories, greater glories of the future, I salute you". And when the time comes that every heart shall be under the impulse of God's spirit, every heart in his church, every institution ordained of him, we can stand on the Alpine height of redeemed humanity, and say as individuals and as churches and as families and as organizations, ' ' Glory of God 's grace through Calvary, we salute you". Then we can turn our faces toward the vista of eternity, and salute the greater glory that shall come in the home eternal. Honorable J. M. Gudoer, of NorLli C'aniliiia Representative in Fifty-Eighth Congress The Reunion Exercises 53 Monday, 06tober Twelfth Never before in her life did the Gate City present a scene so gay, so beaiitiful, and so brilliant as that which greeted the eye on the morning of the twelfth. From private residences on the most obscure street to the business houses and public buildings on the most prominent square, from the various headquarters of counties, States, schools, colleges, and societies, and from every vehicle and car on alley, street, and avenue, there were unfurled the State and National flags, beautiful bunting, and countless designs and devices in decorations. The headquarters of the various counties of the State, as well as those of the schools and colleges, were elaborately decorated, and presented each a picture of striking beauty. Long before noon South Ehn had been transformed into a second Broadway by the moving mass of humanity attracted thither by the open-air concerts of the brass bands. Promptly at the appointed hour the great throng surged around the entrance to the Grand Opera House, where the exercises of the day were to be held. When Dr. Mclver, the chairman of the Board of Managers, rapped the great audience to order, the auditorium was packed to its utmost capac- ity, while thousands were unable to gain admission. Following the earnest invocation by Rev. Charles W. Byrd, D. D., came the opening announcement by President Mclver, who spoke as follows : On behalf of the Board of Managers I desire to thank every citizen of Greensboro and every North Carolinian, resident and non-resident, and all others who have contributed in any way to the success of this, the first North Carolina Reunion. The purposes of the Reunion are three: First. To furnish an opportunity for North Carolinians, at home and abroad, to renew and strengthen old friendships and to form new ones. Second. To secure for North Carolina from those who, in the fortunes of life, have left her borders and made their homes elsewhere, the inspiration and instruction that their varied experience and wider view make them capable of giving to us who are actively engaged in the work of upbuilding cur mother State. Third. To advertise to the country North Carolina's contribution to American citizenship, and to so organize her sons and daughters, resident and 55 56 First North Carolina Reunion non-resident, that whatever of good there is in the character, traditions, and history of the sturdy old commonwealth may be impressed upon our national life. Naturally, this first meeting has been regarded by many as an experiment, and the Board of Managers has met various difSeuIties. It was impossible, for instance, to secure from some sections such railroad rates as it will be easy to secure after one successful Reunion. Indeed, it was impossible to secure the liberal rates finally accorded to us in time to advertise them properly in the territory where they were given. Another great difficulty, which, in large measure, has been overcome, was the idea in the minds of many people, in the State and out of it, that this was to be a meeting of only local significance. The hardest task, perhaps, has been to arrange a program, sufficiently representative, and not too long, that would leave opportunity for personal intermingling and individual greetings. The formal program upon which we are about to enter includes the names of many who, by their service, have brought honor to their native State, their adopted States, and to the country. In order that we may hear from as many of these as possible, we have arranged for only one address — that of our Governor — to be as long as thirty minutes, and for no other address to be longer than twenty minutes. We have asked that the length of most of the other addresses shall be from five to seven minutes. We hope that some whose names do not appear upon the official pro- gram, and especially citizens of those commonwealths not represented on it, may, as spokesmen for their respective States, make impromptu five-minute speeches. It is the purpose of the management to print a Reunion volume, and if any speaker has not already prepared in manuscript what he is going to say, I take this opportunity of requesting him to write out before leaving Greensboro at least the substance of what he has said, or what he intended to say, or what he ought to have said. It now becomes my pleasant duty and honor to present to you to preside over the sessions of this Reunion, a North Carolinian who has been eminent in civic service to his State and country for nearly a half-century. The Board of Managers considers itself fortunate that his knightly presence is one of the many attractions of this great occasion. The soldier, statesman, and diplomat, Matthew Whitaker Ransom, will be our permanent presiding officer. The address of Honorable Matthew Whitaker Ransom on assuming the chair as Presiding Officer of the great Reunion : Ladies and Gentlemen — North Carolinians: I approach with a profound sense of its dignity and honor, the eminent position of presiding over this distinguished convention — this ever-to-be-remem- bered Reunion of the Sons and Daughters of North Carolina from all parts of the Union, with their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, family kindred and friends, around the sacred altars of our beloved and honored mother State. It is impossible to express our emotions on beholding this unnumbered multitude; this countless throng of intelligent, happy, hopeful, expectant faces from every section of this boundless Republic; all animated with one sentiment H(»nitnil)le M . VV. Ransom Presiviing officer of the Reunion First North Carolina Reunion 57 of fervid interest and affection for the ' ' dear old home ' '. Here, right here, are united throbbing hearts, from all the divisions of our country, in one patriotic aspiration for renewed and continued brotherhood and association. One hope, one purpose — for the oblivion of every painful memory. It is an occasion for universal congratulation — not a cloud, not a shadow on the day — the whole horizon beams with promise and hope. It is a day of destiny; of power and patriotism. It is a day in history, of glorious life — a day without a discord. We can almost see the bow of peace with its covenants in the eternal skies. The first words that come to my lips, are ' ' All honor and gratitude to the noble and patriotic authors and promoters of this great, good deed"; this now hallowed consummation. Pardon me, Doctor Mclver — to you and your associates belongs the honor of originating, organizing, designing, and bringing to its present development, this magnificent undertaking. It is now a great reality. The State and the country will cherish and continue the benefaction with undying thankfulness to you and your fellow workers. This day will live as a monument to your wisdom, patriotism, and philanthropy; to your energy and high purpose. We are beginning to realize the magnitude of your achievement. You are this day planting an olive tree of perennial beauty, beneath whose shade future ages will find repose and happiness. Today, when I shook the hand of the venerable and venerated journalist from Ohio, in sight of the battle- field of Guilford Courthouse, I felt, indeed, that sectional troubles were buried and that we are one country and one people united forever. What memories! What histories, does this scene revive! We can almost behold the beautiful myth of tradition and history, and see the gallant, gifted, glorious Raleigh springing from his proud ship and planting the standard of England and the Cross on the shores of the New World near the Roanoke. We can almost hear the echoes of the great Atlantic beating its "alarms" on "deathly Hatteras". We can watch the first colonists on their frail but faithful vessels — with nothing but the love of liberty and the love of God alive in their hearts. We see colony after colony lost, and nothing left but the dismal romance of a tragedy. Finally, a settlement is established, the first permanent beginning of a free civilized government in the Western Hemisphere, destined soon to become the greatest, grandest, best, the sun has shone on. The forest is subdued — the savage is overcome — a chain of settlements from Plymouth Rock to Georgia follows. Agriculture, Commerce, Trade, the Arts succeed; the New World flourishes; the Mother Country menaces her liberties. Resistance, united resistance is made. Mecklenburg — glorious, immortal Mecklenburg — on the twentieth day of May, 1775, lights on the streets of devoted Charlotte the first fire of Ameri- can Independence. North Carolina consecrates herself to liberty and free government. A free State is organized at Halifax, "heroic Halifax". Her constitution declares for a university of learning, and for education of the people. The Battle of Moore's Creek is won. The victory of King's Mountain strikes the British with dismay. Cornwallis ' ' staggers back ' ' from Guilford Courthouse, wounded, crippled, sick, to finally surrender at Yorktown. The sword of Washington is everywhere triumphant, glorious — but greatest and best when his own great hand resigns it to the laws of his country. A united free government is founded by the States and people, and North Carolina after deliberation adopts her Constitution, and demands admission to the Union. Washington, the Father of his Country, then President of the United States of America, hails her coming into the Union, and pronounces her the "Important jF. n. c. r.— v 58 First North Carolina Reunion State of North Carolina ' '. History says of ber that she has always defied and destroyed oppression; that tyranny lies dead at her feet; that she has never worn the yoke of power; that her people may rightfully be called "The Children of Liberty". No stain of fraud, cruelty, persecution, or shame darkens her fair name; but her whole life is the unsullied record of a brave, honest, upright people, devoted to liberty, law, order, and to God. My countrymen — for one moment let us contemplate a few, a very few, of the thousand names who have honored, adorned, blessed her history. The Bevolution records no brighter or truer names than those of Caswell, Davie, Sumner, Nash, Davidson, Ashe, Cleveland, McDowell, Moore, Waddell. Time forbids us to name but few, very few, of those to whom we owe our free- dom and our homes. A more faithful, noble, illustrious, modest line of patriots, heroes, martyrs, can not be found, than our beloved State presents in our Revolutionary Histoiy. Their ashes sleep in deathless memory and gratitude among the deliverers and benefactors of their country and mankind. Among the heroes of the Revolution is the name of Nathaniel Macon — born in the county of "Bute" (now the counties of Warren and Franklin). History says "there were no Tories in Bute". The Federal Government was barely established when he appears in Congress as a representative from North Carolina. He remained in the House and Senate for thirty-seven years. Three times Speaker of the House, and twice President of the Senate. His history is known to the world. If the Senate stands for a thousand years, he will continue to stand as its model figure of honesty, and devotion to the people's rights. For two generations of men he was a landmark and lighthouse to the people. No Roman vestal ever watched the sacred fires on her altars with more vigilance and courage than Macon watched and guarded the purity of the Constitution and the equal liberties of the people. He spoke the wisest words of an American statesman and prophet when he declared that "the President should have none but honest men around. I repeat the President should have none but honest men near him. ' ' No greater truth can be spoken. Then comes the able, learned, eloquent Gaston, the proved superior of Henry Clay in parliamentary debate. Next Badger, the Master of Law; "Webster's Superior and Story's Equal"; to whom the Senate of the United States accorded the unmatched honor of unanimously declaring in solemn reso- lution recorded in its annals, its sincere regret at his leaving the Senate, and the admiration and respect of the Senators for his ability and courtesy. Time and the proprieties of this occasion, forbid me to pursue the subject. The record of North Carolina in Congress, with one broken link, has been one line of continuous ability, virtue, and patriotism, from the beginning to this hour, and constitutes in no small part the nation's fame and her own enduring inheritance of renown. As a Norm Carolinian, let me ask, what State in the Union — what country in the world, in any age of its history, can present a prouder and juster title to the admiration of mankind? Consider her contribu- tion to the character, wealth, influence, strength, intelligence, and virtue of the whole country. It is an old story, but always beautiful. For more than two thousand years it has commanded universal approbation. When Cornelia was asked by the Roman matrons to display her jewels, she proudly pointed to her two brave sons, the future Gracchi, and said "these are my jewels". North Carolina repeats the example, and improves on it. She shows her own brave sons and fair daughters, and she points to the thousand sons and daugh- ters whom she has bestowed on other States, and calls all of them the jewels of sister States and a common country. These jewels are countless. First North Carolina Eeunion 59 Let me but touch a few of the tallest oaks in the grand forest. See Daniel Boone, monarch of the woods and rifle. Look at Andrew Jackson, the one conqueror without a defeat; the crowned hero of New Orleans, the greatest battle ever fought; the invincible president and statesman, who crushed all opposition under his feet. James K. Polk, the able, just, and wise President; chief actor in the annexation of Texas; President when the Mexican War was fought; and who extended our territory and power broadly to the Pacific. Thomas H. Benton, the Hercules of the Senate for thirty years. Wm. R. King, Vice-President with Pierce. The patriots of Mecklenburg carried tlieir unwasted fires to the planes of Illinois, and in Adlai Stevenson, Vice-President with Grover Cleveland, our country had no straighter or more erect statesman. General Joseph Hawley, Senator from Connecticut — New England has no more loved or honored man — he deserves it. Joe Cannon; honest Joe Cannon; universally respected; Speaker of the House of Representatives in Congress, standing for eighty millions of people. Turn your eyes in any direction and behold your distinguished country- men. Seven beloved Bishops of the churches at one time from North Carolina. See Dr. Hawkes, the most learned and eloquent divine of the age in which he lived. Bishop Greene, of Mississippi, the gentlest, mildest, tenderest, most lovable man you ever saw. His aim and desire seemed to be to walk in the footsteps and follow with humility the example of our Savior under the cross. Chastened by bitter afflictions he never paused in giving consolation and com- fort to others. I have often thought of the calm impression he must have had on the fiery, impulsive, impetuous, but manly temper of Mississippi. How he must have been beloved by this people, as he was when pastor of his church in North Carolina, and Professor of Rhetoric at the University. I then thought him the most accomplished gentleman in the land. I now know that he was. From a heart full of gratitude and love, I drop a flower and a tear to his memory. Examples crowd on our attention. Three Presidents of proud Universities and Colleges from three great States — Texas, Louisiana, Ohio. The Chairman of the Faculty, head of the University of Virginia, all from North Carolina. The General and Lieutenant-General of our Army in the South. Bragg and Polk, both sons of our great mother. In New York, today, two young North Carolinians have by merit, and very high merit, forged their way to the front and head of the New York bar. From the rising shores of the Pacific and the teeming cities on the Atlantic, young, bright sons of our State are "rising in the ascendant", and planting their colors on the very battlements of victory. In the great center of the world's finance and commerce, we have seen the captains of industry, from plain, honest, modest North Carolina, with unconquerable genius and enter- prise, push their lines of trade to remote Asia, to far-off Africa, to the distant shores of South America, and on the very Exchange in Liverpool and London, meet, defy, and baffle the proud princes of English finance and trade. Nor can we forget the old patriot from Iowa, Judge James Grant; the eminent lawyer, whose nephew and adopted son, bearing his name, having been a boy soldier in the Southern Army, was then the popular and exemplary Governor of Colorado, returns himself to North Carolina, and by his Li'n-e donation, secured the endowment to the University of the Chair — Great Chair of History, now so ably filled by Dr. Battle. Nor must we forget General Thomas .Jefferson Green, who helped to lay the foundation of three States in the Union — Florida, Texas, and California; 60 First North Carolina Reunion then returned to North Carolina to give her his legacy of deepest affection in his son, the chivalrous and venerable Colonel Wharton J. Green; the devoted representative of the Cape Fear District in Congress, respected and esteemed all over the South for his manliness and independence; the bosom friend of Jefferson Davis. I wish that I could preserve in imperishable caskets the lives of the noble sons of North Carolina, who have achieved fame and fortune in other States. It would be a priceless legacy and monument to the State, but would take a lifetime to perform the work. But a year ago, we witnessed the Daughters of Salem Female College on the Centennial Anniversary of that time-honored institution, returning to lay their offerings and their homage at the feet of their beloved mother. I saw that grand, beautiful array. It was a spectacle worthy the contemplation of statesmen, philosophers, heroes, and divines. Noble, worthy. Christian women, educated, intelligent, pure, coming from happy homes, crowned with virtues, bearing with them the trophies of dutiful, good lives; the world made better and brighter Ijy their lovely deeds, with grateful memories of their sacred debt to their Alma Mater. I saw them in the great hall of the Academy. I saw them joining the teachers and the students in singing the holy hymn of the school, and when the chorus arose like a great wave in all the dignity of music, and ascended to the height of the great ceiling, and resounded in echoes of pathos as deep as the human soul over the vast audience, I felt as if in a better world. The majesty of women, with the power and charm of music was before me, and I could but think what must be the iniluence of an army of educated, moral, patriotic Christian women upon society and the world! How infinite, how sweet, how good! I thought of how much these noble and cherished daughters of Salem had done for reforms, for improvement, for homes, for grace, refinement, and human advancement and betterment all over the land. Their influence has been like the serene light and glory of the stars dispelling the shadows and darkness of night from the heavens. May I illus- trate the truth of which I have spoken? My countrymen, it is my duty, sacred to truth, to history, and to our whole country, to remind you of the conduct of North Carolina, our mother State, in that memorable war of the States. It is a history without a thorn. Far from reviving bitterness and cruel animosity, its exalted influence is to compose strife, to bury differences, to reconcile a people, and to strengthen fraternal union. There is nothing, literally nothing, in the history of North Carolina to give one pain to the people of any part of the country. It is as clear as a sunbeam. Not a shame on the record. Not one sinister line on her bright page. It is as direct as a ray of sunshine from the skies. She sent to the field one hundred and twenty-five thousand men, one-fifth of the Southern Army. The world knows its history by heart. In indomitable courage, for invincible fortitude, for heroic sacrifice, it has never been surpassed. For magnanimity in triumph, dignity in defeat, serene equanimity in surrender, it is without a parallel. It left its animosity with the ragged fragments of banners and arms on the field of Appomattox. It buried all hostilities in the beloved graves of its glorious battlefields. It returned to its home in peace with all mankind. Its heart did not retain a resentment, a malice, or a revenge. It was too full of sorrow, too full of honor for hatred. Its part was too great, too brave, too noble, to cherish a discord. The guns had been stacked, and its duty was peace. It had met its fate, and there was no stain on its sword. It would not perpetuate fire and blood. It would cultivate the arts of peace, of patriotism. Honorable Jolin H. Small, of North Carolina Representative in Fifty-Eighth Congress First North Carolina Reunion 61 The war was ended. The sword had settled the quarrel, and forever. North Carolinians returned to their wasted homes, to rebuild, to cultivate, to improve them, to revive her industries, to preserve her honor, to raise patriots and Christians to take their places; to preserve liberty and do their whole duty to their country and to God. They went to work, and today we behold the result in restored prosperity, in secured liberty, in increasing happiness, in sacred love to country, and in the national hope of all the enjoyment of citizens in a common brotherhood. Three years ago, a war broke out between this country and Spain. With the first call of troops, North Carolina was at the front. The great State sent her sons to the army, and the first victim of the war was the brave, beautiful, heroic Worth Bagley. In the flower of manhood, with the blessings of his beloved mother on his brow, he gave his young promising life to his country on the deck of the Winslow in Cardenas Bay. The young hero fell a noble sacrifice to his country, and poured out his lifeblood for the honor of the Union, and died with its flag in his hand. Beloved North Carolinian! The tears of his countrymen were still flowing when the wires brought the sad news that Captain Wm. Shipp, of North Carolina, the pride, the hope of his house and State, had fallen, in the front line of the charge at Santiago, bravely doing his duty. North Carolina wept over her gallant, devoted sons; she had proudly given them to the Union, and their blood had been hallowed in its defense. May it forever cement its bonds, and remain the eternal sacrament of love and peace of all the States. Let fanaticism hide its hideous head before the encircling, glorious spectacle of renewed Union. Think of the brave, heroic, bright, young Bacheler deliberately dying for his duty in the burning air of the Philippines! My countrymen, it is a great thing to know that North Carolinians are always to be found in the front line of danger and duty. North Carolinians who live out of the State, you can now understand how happy we are to see and have you here with us. It gives us real, rational joy. It is with deep, sincere affection and confidence that we receive you with open doors and open arms. You see there is nothing in the history of your great mother which can bring a blush to your cheeks. We are proud of her, we are proud of you; and it is with our whole souls that we welcome — thrice welcome — you all to our homes and our hearts. What a joy, what a glory, what a bless- ing, to know that no son of North Carolina, wherever his lot has been east, has been known to forget to love and honor his mother; and she ever responds with her whole heart to that affection! I come now to perform the high duty which has been assigned to me. I undertake it with very great pleasure and unqualified pride. It is eminently appropriate that the gentleman who has been chosen should address you. The Committee could not have selected a fitter speaker. He wishes to see every acre of our soil blooming with harvests and animated with workshop.s. He is a true, genuine, thorough North Carolinian; born, educated, and living here; a representative of our character and sentiments, of our habits and cus- toms; one of our people. He is able, learned, and wise. There is nothing false in his nature. He is affectionate, devoted, grateful. He loves his country, his friends, his home. He never forgets there is a God who rules the world with justice and mercy. He is endowed with the destiny to do good and to make happy. He is gifted with eloquence to vindicate the truth which he loves. He is inspired with the courage to defend tlie right to which he is devoted. 62 First North Carolina Reunion He is blessed witli all the qualities and fafiilties which constitute a Christian statesman. He is the fearless defender of popular education, because he knows that intelligence is the support of liberty. He is the manly exemplar of public and private morality, because he knows that virtue is the shield, health, and ornament of a free people. He loves labor, because he has learned that work, labor, is the foundation and necessity, the first law of human happiness and prosperitj'. He approves all public improvements, because he desires the improvement, progress, and elevation of the State, and wishes all the resources developed as a field for the energy of her people, and an opportunity for their genius, talent, and efforts. He is confronted by the dark problems of the age, and has determined to confront them with intelligence, justice, and benevolence; to exhaust all rightful means and ways to save the colored man from degrada- tion and utter worthlessness, and to raise him to usefulness and comfort ; but never, never to put in peril the solid foundation of white society, and the organic and cardinal principles — the lights and life of white free government. He loves the people — can not do enough for them; is always trying to do some- thing more. He is sincere, faithful, diligent. His simplicity, without arro- gance or pretensions, without vanity or deceit, without pride or ostentation, is the charm and e.xcellence of his life. He prefers the plain, simple home of Nathaniel Macon — the home of purity, of industry, of frugality, of Christian life — to the palace of a prince. He abhors luxury; he knows it is the deathbed of liberty and virtue. He can never forget that liberty perished in the palace of the Cfesars; and the vestal fires and the virgins themselves were lost and obliterated in the splendor of Imperial Rome. His heart, life, and soul are devoted, dedicated to North Carolina; but his heart is large enough and mind great enough to comprehend in its grasp the whole Union — from ocean to ocean — from the Arctic circle to the equator. He is the worthy countryman of Washington, Franklin, Adams; of Webster, Clay, Calhoun; fit successor to Morehead, Graham, and Vance. He wishes the country to love North Carolina, and North Carolina to love the country; and he rejoices with patriotic eyes to behold the star of North Carolina, unerased and unobscured, blazing on the star-spangled banner of sister States and a perpetual constitutional Union. His daily prayer is that all discords between the people of the United States may perish from the earth; and our prayer is that the laurel wreath may continue to crown his brow, and that his last hours may be cheered by the benedictions and blessings of his grateful countrymen. I present to you the Honorable Charles B. Aycock, Governor of North Carolina — your brother countryman.* * Honorable Matthew Whitaker Ransom; Born, lK2t! ; graduated from University of North Carolina, 1847; Attorney-General, 18.52-1855; Legislature, 1S69-1860 ; Peace Commissioner, 1861; Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier-General, and Major-Geueral, 18fil-1865 ; Lawyer and planter. 18t)5-lS72 ; United States Senator, 1872-18n5 ; Embassador to Mexico, 18il5-18()8 ; Planter, 1898-1S04 ; Died eighth day of October, 19CM, at his home in Halifax County, N. C. The Reunion Address of Oener.al Ransom will be noted and read with more than ordinary interest because of the fact that it was his last public utterance. Its noble thoughts and patriotic sentiments were not less characteristic than the last private utterance which fell from the lips of this great Caro- linian. The Silent Messenger touched him in the absence of his loving and lovable wife, who had not returned from her summer home at Blowing Rock, N. C. His last words to the two devoted sous, who were with him at the sudden and peaceful end, were : "Do right, boys ; God bless your mother ". —Editor Address of Welcome on Behalf of the State By Governor Charles B. Aycock Ladies and Gentlemen: The Committee in charge of this celebration have honored me with the high duty of extending to you a welcome to your old home. If I could but find fitting words in which to set before you the breadth and depth of the gladness which stirs the heart of North Carolina today the duty would be transformed for me into the highest pleasure. We are glad to have you with us once more. You come to us, not as younger sons who have wasted your portions in riotous living, but as sons who left us with our blessing to seek the favors of fortune elsewhere, and having won your places in other States have come home at last to renew your acquaintance with old friends, and rejoice again amid the scenes of your youth. We shall, therefore, kill no fatted calves for you, no robes will be brought out, and no rings placed upon your fingers. You are at home again to share with us all the things which we have. The North Carolina look is in your eye; her speech is on your lips; her ideals live in your hearts. We rejoice in your presence; take delight in your prosperity; praise you for the things which you have done, and hope the utmost of your future. We wish you to feel that this is now again your State. We would awaken the memories of your early youth, and stir afresh the old-time affection. And this State of your nativity is worthy of your love. Her history is such as to justify your pride in her. Her achievements compare with those of any other State, and make her sons, wherever they be, proud to be known as North Carolinians. You can sing with us: "Carolina, Carolina, Heaven's blessings attend her; While we live we will cherish, protect, and defend her. Though scorners may sneer at, and witlings defame her. Our hearts swell with gladness whenever we name her." She was the first of the colonies to be settled, and although that settlement was not successful, it is a source of gratification that it was made under the patronage of the soldier, navigator, scholar, statesman, and martyr, Sir Walter Raleigh. On her soil the first white child born of English parentage came to bless the western world. Here liberty had its birth, and here it rejoices in its fullest beauty. North Carolina was settled by men who found the liberty of other colonies and States short of their desires. English, Virginians, French, New Englanders, Swiss, Germans, Huguenots, Scotch, Irish, of whatever nation- ality they might be, they sought this land in order that they might found a State which should be a fit home for "the freest of the free". "They were imbued with a passion for liberty", says Bancroft; and in their earliest days 64 First North Carolina Reunion they secured for themselves and transmitted to us both "liberty of conscience and of conduct ". " With absolute freedom of conseieuee, benevolent reason was the simple rule of their conduct." "They were tender and open", gentle to the weak, and fierce only against tyranny. They were led to the choice of their residence from the hatred of restraint, and ' ' lost themselves in the woods in search of independence". "Are there any who doubt man's capacity for self-government?" says Bancroft; "Let them study the history of North Carolina. Its inhabitants were restless and turbulent in their imperfect sub- mission to a government imposed on them from abroad. The administration of the eolonj' was firm, humane, and tranquil, when they were left to take care of themselves. Any government but one of their own institution was oppressive." Living far removed from contact with the government which sought to rule them, freed from the blandishments of power, "disciplined in frugality, and patient of toil", it is no wonder that our North Carolina ancestors resisted to the utmost the tyranny of provincial and colonial rule. They were in constant warfare with their Governors, and repeatedly turned them out of the province. When the struggle with Great Britain came, North Carolina was in the front. Let me briefly give you two short pages of history. The first shall be devoted to Massachusetts, and is taken from Bancroft. "On the sixteenth day of December, 1773, the men of Boston assembled in the Old South Church. They remained in session until after dark. The church in which they met was dimly lighted. At quarter before six, Koteh appeared and satisfied the people by relating that the Governor had refused him a pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. As soon as he had finished his report, Samuel Adams rose and gave the word, 'This meeting can do nothing more to save the country'. On the instant a shout was heard on the porch. The war-whoop resounded. A body of men, forty or fifty in number, disguised as Indians, passed by the door, repaired to Griffin 's wharf, posted guards to prevent the intrusion of spies, took possession of the three tea ships, and in about three hours all the tea was emptied into the bay." This Ls the account of the great Boston Tea Party. It is world-famous. Daniel Webster, in his reply to Hayne, thinking of this great transaction among others, says, "I shall pronounce no eulogiuni on Massachusetts. She needs none. There she stands; behold her, and judge for yourselves." Now let us look at the other page, taken from a speech of Honorable George Davis. "On the sixth day of January, 1766, the sloop of war Diligence arrived in the Cape Fear, bringing the stamps. She floats gaily up the river, with sails all set and the cross of St. George flaunting apeak. Her cannon frown upon the rebellious little town of Brunswick as she yaws to her anchor. In his palace at Wilmington sits the royal Governor of the State, whose proclamation had just been issued, announcing the arrival of the stamps, and directing all persons authorized to distribute them to apply to her commander. As the sloop rounds to her anchor, there stand upon the shore Colonel John Ashe and Colonel Hugh Waddell, with two companies of friends and gallant yeomen at their backs. By threats of violence, they intimidate the commander of the sloop, and he promises not to land the stamps. They seize the vessel's boat, and hoisting a mast and flag, mount it upon a cart, and march in triumph to Wilmington. Upon their arrival the town is illuminated. Next day, with Colonel Ashe at their head, the people go in crowds to the Governor's house, and demand of him James Houston, the stamp master. Upon refusal to deliver him up, forthwith they set about to burn the house above his head. Terrified, the Governor at length complies, and Houston is conducted to the market house HoiKH-aMe ]■'. Y. Webb, of North Carolina Representativf in Fifty- Kiiihlh Congress First North Carolina Reunion 65 where, in the presence of the asembled people, he is made to take a solemn oath never to execute the duties of his office." "I shall pronounce no eulogium " on North Carolina. "She needs none. There she stands; behold her, and judge for yourselves. ' ' Mark you, ' ' this was more than ten years before the Declara- tion of Independence; more than nine years before the Battle of Lexington, and nearly eight before the Boston Tea Party ' '. You will not fail to remember that it was on the twelfth day of April, 1776, that the Provincial Congress, in session at Halifax, instructed her delegates to the Continental Congress to concur with the other Colonies in a Declaration of Independence. This was more than a month before action was taken by Virginia, the home of Washing- ton and Jefferson, the zeal of whose people had been inflamed by the words ' ' of living fire that leapt from the impassioned lips of Henry". With these facts of authentic history, known and admitted of all men, it should occasion no surprise anywhere to hear that it was this State, which on the twentieth of May, 1775, at Charlotte, in the County of Mecklenburg, issued the first Declara- tion of Independence. Men may doubt that the patriots of Mecklenburg used the very words which have been handed down to us, but certain it is that Governor Martin, whose seat of government at that time, for reasons of safety, was aboard a ship in the Cape Fear, knew that they had severed the bands which bound them to Great Britain, for in a proclamation which he issued in August, 1775, he used these words: "I have also seen a most infamous publica- tion in the Cape Fear Mercury, importing to be resolves of a set of people styling themselves a Committee for the County of Mecklenburg, most traitor- ously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws, government, and constitution of this country, and setting up a system of rule and regulation repugnant to the laws, and subversive of His Majesty's government". It can occasion no surprise then when we are told by Mr. Bancroft that "the first voice for dissolving all connection with Great Britain came, not from the Puritans of New England, the Dutch of New York, or the planters of Vir- ginia, but from the Scotch Presbyterians of North Carolina". It was another great day for liberty when the patriots of this State, on the twenty-seventh of February, 1776, gained the signal victory at Moore's Creek over the Tories who were seeking to unite their forces with those of Sir Henry Clinton. The result of that early victory for American arms broke the back- bone of Toryism, and gave to the patriots a zeal and confidence which stood them in stead in the darkest hours of the war for independence. It was your ancestors again who, in conjunction with their neighbors, won the great victory at King's Mountain. It was your ancestors who, in this very county, fought the great fight of Guilford Courthouse, and, while suffering a defeat, so crippled Cornwallis that he was compelled to yield his sword to Washington at York- town. When she had won her independence, North Carolina set such store by it that she declined to join the American Union until the sovereignty of the State and the liberty of the individual had been provided for by the proposal of the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. But, once in the Union, this State loved it. The government was one of our own formation, and our people have ever been willing to yield obedience to the laws of their own enactment. Even when the people thought the Constitution had been violated, and their rights infringed, their love for the Union was so great that with singular unanimity they determined to remain in it, and secure, if possible, under the stars and stripes that protection to which they felt themselves entitled. But when the other Southern States went out of the Union, and we were brought face to face with the necessity of taking sides, then our people 66 First North Carolina Reunion in convention assembled, without a single dissenting vote, went out of the Union, and sought at every cost to secure again that independence which our fathers had won. Late in going out, this State offered the first life on the altar of the Southern Confederacy. Having made up her mind to fight for independ- ence, she sent to the front more soldiers than there were voters within her borders. She lost more men in killed and wounded than any other Southern State; charged farthest at Gettysburg; laid down the greatest number of guns at Appomattox, and quit the fight with as deep regret as any of her sisters. I care not on which side one fought in that great contest; the achievements of North Carolina soldiers were too great to excite bitterness in any breast that loves heroic sacrifice and daring deeds. Her men won for humanity a still higher place for stubborn courage than had theretofore been gained. They went into the fight reluctantly, because of their deep love for the Union which their fathers had cemented with their blood. They went to the front well clothed, well fed, in high spirits, certain of success. They left at the end in tatters and rags, footsore and hungry, but their tears watered the ground where the greatest leader of soldiers, the highest type of Christian manhood, the purest and truest and the best of men. General Robert E. Lee, surrendered his sword. They came back to the State weaiy, worn, and sorrowful. They found the population depleted. Their farms had gone to ruin, their fences were down, their ditches were filled, their stock were slaughtered, in too many instances their houses were burned. But they did not sit down in the desolation of their despair. With a courage worthy of the great men who fought during the Revo- lution, they turned their faces to the morning, put their trust in God, and reso- lutely determined to build again their homes and do honor to their mother for whom they had suffered so much. And right well have they wrought. Todaj' our fields abound with harvest. From the mountains to the seashore there is abundance. There is not, from Hatteras to Murphy, from Virginia to South Carolina, a man, woman, or child who is hungry today. North Carolina and South Carolina manufacture sixty per cent, of all the cotton manufactured in the South, and of this sixty per cent, this State claims over half. Within this county the forty furniture factories, giving employment to thousands of skilled laborers, sell their furniture in Grand Rapids, and take tribute to their superior workmanship from every State in the Union. The census shows that we more than doubled our investments in manufactures in the last decade. We 'grow more cotton on less acreage than ever before, while our tobacco crop in value exceeds that of any State in the Union. Our vegetable gardens have grown into fields, and we feed the crowding multitudes of the Eastern cities. In every department of human activity your brothers here are forging to the front. We stand in the morning, with our faces to the light, and gladly hear the command that "we go forward". I have thought it not inappropriate to tell you these things on your return to your old home, for it is the right of one who has gone out from underneath the shade of the family tree to hear when he comes back what the folks at home have been doing. Above all, it is your right to know what we are. Whether we are sustaining the ideals of the past; what sort of structure we are rearing upon the foundation laid by your ancestors. In your travels .you may have run across "the scorners who scoff at and the witlings who defame" this State. You may have heard that she is ignorant and provincial, but I have the pleasure to inform you what your affection already knows, that there can be found nowhere within her borders a man known out of his township ignorant enough to join with the fool in saying "There is no God". There is no man First North Carolina Reunion 67 amongst us whose hand is so untrained that it does not instinctively seek his hat in the presence of a woman. There is no ear so untaught that it does not hear the cry of pity; and no heart so untutored that it does not beat in sympathy with the weak and the distressed. Illiterate we have been; but ignorant, never. Books we have not known; but of men we have learned, and of God we have sought to find out. "A gentle people and open", frank and courteous, passion- ate when aroused, and dangerous in conflict; capable of sacrifice, among warriors the first — praised by me as warriors only because of the high courage manifested there, giving promise of the wonderful achievements which lie before us in peace. These are your people; they are my people. I am proud of their history; proud of their character; and glad to introduce you to them again. Your brethren all wish you to stay among us to the utmost limit of your time, to see us and know us as we are. If you find our material condition better than it was when you left us, we claim no praise for it. If we have done well, it is because we were taught aright by those who went before us, taught at their expense; and credit belongs to them alone. We think we hold on to the truths which our fathers taught us. We believe that we still maintain a passion for liberty; that we love independence, and set more store by honor than by wealth, and that we seek wealth only in order that the kind promptings of our hearts may find a better way in which to express themselves; that our deeds may keep pace with our wishes, and that the earth may grow better by what we do. In log cabin, in frame house, in modern mansion, each and all of you will find a welcome. The latchstring hangs outside the door — but not for you. The latchstring is for the stranger only; the door stands open for you. To the representatives of those cities whose North Carolina population is large enough to justify the organization of North Carolina Societies, I am directed to express the appreciation of my people for the manifestation of your continued affection which has brought you together in your distant homes under the name of the dear old State. It is delightful to us to be thus remem- bered by you. It inspires us to our best efforts, to maintain that affection which is so beautifully expressed in your act. It deters us from doing anything to bring dishonor ujjon that fair name in whose honor you associate. It has been my pleasure once since I have been Governor of this State to be the guest of a North Carolina Society in a distant city. It was to me a great happiness. I rejoiced in their prosperity. I delighted in their manifest joy whenever the old mother State was mentioned. They tried to sing for me The Old North State, but they broke down before finishing the first stanza. Gentlemen, you can not sing the songs of Zion in strange lands. The music of The Old North State is for home. Like our scuppernong grape, it is racy of the soil, and can not be brought to perfection elsewhere. Again I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming among us. I greet you in the name of the whole people. I extend to you all the liberties of the State, and invoke that pious benediction of Tiny Tim, "God bless us everyone". Colonel James i\ Mort-lu-ail One of Ihe I^eading Members of the N-mIIi Carolina Bar Address of Welcome on Behalf of the City of Greensboro By Colonel James T. Morehead At the invitation of all the people of our common mother, extended by their representatives in the General Assembly, you have left your homes, here to meet again under her sunny skies, and you have just listened to her hearty welcome expressed by her Chief Executive. I have the honor to welcome you, specially in behalf of the people of his- toric Guilford and her capital city, and to assure you that we yield to none in genuine, heartfelt pleasure in greeting Carolina's "Scattered-abroad". I hope I may be pardoned for repeating what has been said by others, that it was a happy suggestion that this location was the most appropriate selection for this first Reunion. As this city, then a village, was the gateway through which thousands of emigrants, who in the last two decades of the first half of the last century sorrowfully passed, emigrating to the then-new states and territories, their caravans of white-covered wagons freighted with their household goods and their household gods lining its unimproved streets; so now it is the Gate City through which the great majority of those who from time to time return to visit the scenes of their early childhood and youth pass to almost every section of the State. Within forty miles, and little north-east of the center of the State; almost equidistant from the blue mountains, from whose valleys and recesses poured the patriot bands to destroy Ferguson at King's Mountain, and the birthplace of Virginia Dare, washed by the Atlantic; from her southern border, where Andrew Jackson first saw the light amidst the muttering of the storm which was soon to break the power of Britain in America, and her northern border, the birthplace of Nathaniel Macon, the great commoner, and friend and adviser of Jefferson; in the heart of that part of the State largely settled by the Scotch-Irish race, one dogma of whose religion was "Resistance to tyrants is the will of God", and who "educated, elevated, and dominated" every people among whom their lot was cast; the central county of that section which first met in armed resistance legalized oppression, at Alamance; the scene of the labors of Caldwell, one among the greatest of those who led the people to maintain their rights, and of the labors of Caruthers, his successor, who first preserved in written form the traditions of those stirring times, the result of whose labor and learning is one of the important bases of the histories of the Commonwealth. Where you now sit — then in original forest — could be heard the guns fired at old Guilford Courthouse — the beginning of the end at Yorktown. 70 First North Carolina Reunion These facts, I repeat, made the selection of Greensboro for the first Keunion peculiarly appropriate. History teaches us that wherever on the globe one of the Gallic race has settled, whatever his environment, his heart is ever turning to vine-clad France, and the ambition and hope of his life is "some day" to return again to look upon the scenes of his youth, and bask in her glorious sunlight; and equally true it is, as is now a common saying, that "Once a North Carolinian, always a North Carolinian". When the Cherokees were invited by the Federal Government to leave their mountain fastnesses, and move beyond the Father of Waters to a more fertile and better game-stocked hunting-ground prepared for them, one band in our mountains declined the offer, and "remain until this day". It is told of their Chief, Junaluski, that when he realized that the days of his pilgrimage were numbered, and he felt that the Great Spirit was beckoning him, he caused his tribesmen to lay him in his cabin door, that the last object upon which his eyes might rest should be the grand old mountain in whose shadow his childhood was passed, over the slopes of which he had chased the bear and the deer, and in whose sparkling water which flowed at its foot he had fished for his favorite trout in his youth and manhood. Though of a different race from us, he was a typical North Carolinian, in his love for the land of his nativity. Let me give you an illustration which came under my personal observation. Sometime in the Forties among the emigrants from North Carolina were some of our brethren of Scotch descent, who finally landed in Missouri. Thirty years afterwards, a young man from Guilford, seeking to better his fortune, "after Appomattox" made his home in Missouri, and married a daughter of one of our Scotchmen born to him in that State. In the course of time, the young man returned with his wife and one son, a child of six or eight years. I congratu- lated him on his return, and expressed a hope that he had "come to stay". ' ' Not exactly ' ', he replied, ' ' my wife 's parents from her infancy had spoken so often and so lovingly of 'God's Country', and especially of the old home in Guilford, she longed to visit and sec for herself the glories of which she had heard. At a family council, it was decreed that the boy could never grow up to be the right sort of a man unless he drank out of the old spring at the old homestead." Accordingly, they had brought the boy to Guilford, carried him to the old homestead, and he had been nearly water-foundered at the spring, and he was going to return to Missouri before the week was out. You have heard and read how the slay-at-home Tarheels, by their grit and perseverance since "all was lost save honor", have rebuilt the waste places, have added manufacturing to agriculture, until today the Old North State is forging to the front abreast with her more fortunate sisters. This improvement is marked in all her counties — villages have become cities, her highways have been improved, and railways cross each other in all sections. She is rapidly progressing in education, and in fact in everything that goes to make a great, happy, and prosperous commonwealth, as you will realize when you visit your old homes in every part of the State. In this city and county you have, so to speak, an object lesson. At the date of emigration in such large numbers referred to, the site of High Point was not even cleared ground — today it is a city of between five and eight thousand inhabitants. It boasts of being the largest manufacturer of wooden products in the South, and second in the United States. Guilford College, today deservedly ranking among the best and most popular, the only First North Carolina Reunion 71 Quaker College in the South, was but a simple boarding school. Oak Eidge Institute and Whitsett Institute, now entitled to be called colleges, had no existence. Greensboro had two colleges for women, whose combined patronage did not exceed one hundred students (one of which has since been destroyed by fire), and one classical institute for young men. Today within her corporate limits are located two of the State's finest colleges; one for women, with a patronage of nearly a thousand students; and the remaining one of the two first mentioned (saved to the cause of education by the loyal efforts of her alumna;, who now own it) has a patronage of more than double that of both at that time. She has five graded schools, which nearly two thousand chOdren attend, in the highest of which is taught the classics. There are in addition several graded schools in the county. At that date, this county could boast of but one cotton mill — small, but a pioneer. Today, cotton milling is prosperous in several sections of the county, anol in this city are four of the best-equipped mills in the State, and a fifth, in course of construction, is to be one of the largest in the South, if not in the whole country. These do not include a carpet factory and finishing mill. In addition to these, she is manufacturing clothing, furniture, and tobacco, everything made of wood, vehicles, material for buOding, etc.; and among her workers in iron are manufacturers of mill machinery, agricultural imple- ments, and in fact if old Tubal Cain could have joined in this Beunion we may well believe he would establish his headquarters and principal oiEce in this city. This city is not alone in this grand march of progress. I repeat, I select it as an object lesson. When you return to your homes, and recount to our absent kindred, who were prevented from meeting with us today, the glorious progress of the Old North State, I beg of you not to forget to speak of other things which you have not yet seen, but which you will see in your visits to your old homes before you return. Among these are some things ever pleasing to the eye and dear to the memory of every North Carolinian. You will see still left some of the old sedge fields, grown up in old field pines, through which you will travel on the good old country roads over red-washed gullies, filled here and there with ruts, roots, and stones, ' ' against the statute in such cases made and provided, and the peace of the State"; and your poetic souls will be excited by the sight of the good old-fashioned gristmill whose noisy and clanking machinery is moved by the ever-beloved over-shot waterwheel. And you may tell them that you saw, as in days of yore, the patrons of the mill sitting on the old benches and stones, a ' ' committee of the whole on the State of the Union ' ', and heard them gravely discuss politics and religion, interspersed now and then with neighborhood news. And I venture to assert that when you recall these pictures of the old days the broader will be the smile, and the happier the chuckle, with which it will be received. And inspired by their recollections of the old times in the Old North State many a fireside, and perhaps public gathering, will be entertained by stories of camp-meeting, contests at the bar, merry meetings at the old log schoolhouse, and perhaps the glories of exciting combats of local pugilists on the court green and at the ' ' old muster fields ' '. Again I bid you THRICE WELCOME. Honorable Frank E. Shober, of New York Representative in Fifty - Eighth Conjjress The Responses Response of Honorable Francis E. Shober, of New York Representative of the North Carolina Society of New York Mr. Chairman, Ladies, anci Gentlemen: The privilege of speaking from this platform in the presence of so distin- guished a company, on an occasion like this, fills me with the deepest emotion. I know that no one here, from far or near, howsoever many years have passed since his departure, has come back to the Old North State, the land of his birth, without feeling that great throb and thrill all men experience when after weary years of exile they reach their Home at last. I am the more impressed with this sentiment, because it was in this particu- lar section of the State that the name I bear was well known, and in the gener- ations passed has been honored in no small degree. It is also a gratification to me to remember that my mother was almost, if not quite, a native North Carolinian, for she spent her youth not many miles from this point, and doubtless there are those present who in the old days at Chapel Hill can readily recall the name of May Wheat. So I am at home, rejoicing to be back again, proud of the fact that I am a native of this grand old State. It is a grand old State, with a grand past, and a grander future. In my boyhood days, the school books were wont to describe North Carolina as noted chiefly for the production of tar and turpentine. But it might much more truthfully be said that North Carolina is distinguished chiefly for her brilliant men, and, judging by those I see before me, her beautiful women. It is true, however, that tar and turpentine were largely produced in the State; and it was from this circumstance that the name Tarheel was given to uB. Applied originally as a term of reproach, I, and the other sons of North Carolina in New York, accept it proudly; for, if the indelible stain of tar is on our heel, yet an abiding love for the old North State is imbedded in our hearts, and an unfailing memory of her is impressed upon our minds. To leave her, even in all the hopefulness and confidence and carelessness of youth, caused a wrench never to be forgotten. To return to her brings a joy to which we look forward with gladness, of which we can never tire. This morning, speeding hither to take part in this Reunion, as I looked from the car window, and saw my country once again^ — the hills all bathed in rosy light, the vales still hid in shadow, the fields all gray spread out to meet tte woods just taking on their glorious autumnal colors — when, I say, I looked F.N.C.R.— VI 78 74 First North Carolina Reunion on these things, an emotion most profound came over me. I was looking into the faces of friends of the long ago when I saw the hills and the valleys, the fields, and the woods. Over just such hills, and through just such woods, have I roamed in delight years ago. Why the very season recalled those days. It was about this time that the "rabbit hollows" were set. Just now is the time for hickory nuts and locusts and persimmons. Oh! the delights of these last. Locust and persimmon "pop" — no doubt an execrable drink, but delicious in those days. I love to think of those days, and of the friends I had. There was one in particular — a dear, dear friend. Next to my father, I thought he was the grandest man in the world. He was immensely tall, broad- shouldered, and of prodigious strength. His face was black, and his hair was kinky; but his heart was white, and his life was straight. Many a time and oft have I sat astride his mighty shoulders, clutching his woolly hair, to be borne in triumph hither and yon. His word was law to me, and his opinion supreme. He was at once my mentor, my companion, and my playmate. He taught me almost all that I know. He taught me how to fish. Down on the creek bank, where the shadows lay dank and dark and the water swirled beneath the bank, he taught me how to bait my hook, and — pardon the allusion — to spit upon the bait. I had never heard of Izaak Walton; but if he, himself, had appeared to discourse on this favorite theme, I would not have listened. Albert was there, and Albert knew. Oh! what did he not know? He was cunning with saw and plane. What toys did he not make for me? What wonderful "rabbit-hollows", which made me the envy of all my associates. And what a garden he could make — such potatoes and peas and beans as grew under his watchful care! And this man, so great in my estimation, was my dear friend. He taught me much, and I — I could only teach him to read. At night, after supper, when I had eaten of his corn pone sopped in molasses and bacon grease— a morsel to me more delicious than a delicacy from my father's table — then we began our lesson in the old blue-back spelling book. And there was Betty — Mammy Betty. She was also my friend. Many a time has she gathered me to her bosom, hushed my sobs, and wiped away my tears, "when dem mean ole white folks treat her baby bad". Oh! such friends they were — faithful, tried, and true; and they belonged to North Carolina. My friends, there were, and I believe there are many Alberts and many Bettys whom all of you know. I know that the recollections I have given, are recollections of many of you; I know that the feeling I have is the sentiment which animates you. Knowing this, therefore, I take the liberty on this occa- sion of saying with my distinguished colleague in Congress, Honorable W. E. Hearst, when speaking on the much-discussed Southern question, "Let the South alone — she will take care of her own". These are some of the recollections which come to me on the rare — alas, too rare — occasions when I come back to my native State, gaze upon her wooded hills and well-watered valleys, and breathe again the air in which I was nur- tured. And then I reflect with pride upon the history of our noble State, upon her achievements in the past; how easily she has worn her honors, and how sublimely she has borne defeat. And printed upon the records appear the names of her many sons who have attained distinction, great and small, in places far remote — in literature, in art, in the forum, on the bench, and at the seat of war. A Mr. W. F. Fiititll President of North Carolina Society of Philadelphia First North Cai'olina Reunion 75 record of which any State might well be proud! And the Old North State, fond mother that she is, yearns over her absent ones, and in this Keunion would bring them all back home for a season, that she might bless them. 'Twas a happy thought — this Reunion. May it be perpetuated, and year after year see this homecoming of North Carolina's sons from far and near, with honors great or small, in ever-increasing numbers, to do homage to our mother, and sing again in unison to Carolina. In New York, that busy mart where men run to and fro in the ceaseless pursuit of wealth, and where sentiment is perforce pushed into the background, lest it interfere in the strife, there are many North Carolinians. A goodly portion have met with honor and success well deserved. You know them all. I wish they might be here to take part in this inspiring move- ment. Another year will bring them, I am sure; for with them, as with all of us, the ties that bind them to Carolina are strong, and they draw them hither- ward persistently. Then may this good work of yearly Reunions go forward; that absent ones may be brought home again, and that all the world may be convinced of the greatness of our grand old State in the past, her still further greatness in the days to come. Her greatness in the past! Yes, as has been well said here today she was "first at Bethel; foremost at Gettysburg; last at Appomattox". She was great before that at King's Mountain, and at Guilford Court- house. There has never been a time when our beloved North Carolina was not great in war. But though great in war, blessed be God, she has shown and will show that she can be great also in peace. Response of Mr. William H. Futrell President of the North Carolina Society of Philadelphia Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: Dr. Winston, who has been sitting beside me, informed me a few minutes ago that the phrase "seven minutes" printed on the program is a joke. To say to a North Carolinian who has been away from this dear old Commonwealth for twenty years that he shall talk to his friends only seven minutes, must be an indication of how valuable time is regarded in the New South. In my day it would have been in order to talk an hour. But coming from "slow" Phil- adelphia, as I do, I can not be expected to keep pace with the times. I would remind the committee on arrangements, however, that if they do not wish to hear much speaking, it is a mistake to invite a Philadelphian to address you, unless he is told previously what is expected of him. For if I should attempt to define the difference between a North Carolina lawyer and a Philadelphia lawyer, I should say that the latter not only does not have so much tar on his heels and is, therefore, more vulnerable, but he is the more loquacious of the two. I base this definition upon the following historical fact. In the early days of Philadelphia, when the town was quite small, it is related that a citizen writing to William Penn reported: "The town is small, but flourishing", and 76 First North Carolina Reunion after referring to the varied interests and eonditions of the people added: "the citizens are healthy and peaoable. I need not, therefore, refer to the physicians and lawyers; for we are thankful to be free from the abominable drugs of the one and the pestiferous loquacity of the other". If, therefore, I should give you some pestiferous loquacity, the blame must fall upon the shoulders of the Committee, who did not inform me until after my arrival that I was expected to make even a "seven-minutes' response". Having no set address, therefore, I shall spenk to you very informally but none the less sin- cerely. I am delighted to be with you on this occasion. My heart has been filled with joy as I have met so many of my old friends, and seen so many familiar faces. And I assure you, on behalf of the North Carolina Society of Philadel- phia, that each member would like to stand here and look you in the face, and tell you how much he loves the dear Old North State. They are living active useful lives— the kind of lives which North Carolinians live wherever they are located. A few days ago I attempted to give a luncheon to some of the North Carolina boys; but I found that they were too busy to eat. One said that he could come at two o'clock; another said that he could come at three; most of them said that they could not come at all; and I was able to get together only five fellows for that luncheon. I was reminded of the statement made by one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of New York, at the Southern Society dinner given in that city last winter. In speaking of the success which South- ern people achieve wherever they go, he said that he thought it was because they were able to accommodate themselves to circumstances, that they became identified with local interests, and that they endeavored to practice those Christian virtues and patriotic sentiments so thoroughly instilled into their minds in their Southern homes. What the future of the North Carolinians in Pennsylvania will be remains to be seen. But I think that we can do no better than emulate the lives of our distinguished and patriotic forefathers of this old commonwealth. Pennsylvania and North Carolina have so much in common that those of us who live in the former State feel that we are closely identified with you. Tt was only last week that there was a celebration in Philadelphia commemor- ating the two hundred and twentieth anniversaiy of the settlement of the Germans in what is now known as Gcrmantown. And it is a remarkable co-in- cidence that at about the same time of this settlement the Germans were also settling in North Carolina. Both Commonwealths had the English, the Scotch- Irish, and the Swiss. The religious sects — the Quakers, Moravians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and others — were prominent in both States. And, however much these denominations differed in their interpretation of the Bible, all agreed that they could do without princes and nobles, but never without the church and schoolhouse. In fact, it is related, with reference to a Moravian settlement in North Carolina, that it was customary to build schoolhouses and churches before the homes of the colonists were finished. Tt is, therefore, pleasant to recall the similarity of the people, and the bond of fellowship existing between the two commonwealths. And as we compare the two States at the present time, we find that, in some respects. North Carolina e-xcels Pennsylvania. For instance, only eighteen per cent, of the population of Pennsylvania attend school; whereas in North Carolina it is twenty-two per cent. Tt is true that the school term is longer in Pennsylvania than it is in North Carolina; but I am much gratified to learn that since I left this State you have lengthened j'our school term more than fifty per cent. In Honorahlt' Spencer BUifkburu Representative -Elect in Fifty-Ninth Congress First North Carolina lieunion 11 Pennsylvania, the value of her manufactured cotton goods at the present time is about twenty-five millions of dollars, while in North Carolina, it is about twenty-eight millions of dollars. In fact, I might give other illustrations; but I remember that no man has a right to give statistics when Dr. Mclver is present. He knows 80 much that I am reminded of the story which was told years ago concerning Judge Settle. How I wish the old North Carolina stories and folklore might be preserved! Will you pardon me if I relate this story f During the so-called Vance and Settle campaign in this State, two old colored men, Uncle Abe and Uncle Aleck, met at the country store at ' ' Bryant 's Cross Roads", and proceeded to discuss the political situation. Uncle Abe reminded Uncle Aleck that Judge Settle was a "mighty smart man"; that he knew more than any man in the State. Uncle Aleck, thereupon, compared him with the President of the United States, and also with Mr. Gladstone; but Uncle Abe declared that Judge Settle knew more than either of them. "Well", said Uncle Aleck, "I reckon he don't know mo' dan de Lawd". Uncle Abe was quiet for a few minutes, and then, as if struck by a sudden inspiration, said: "Dat am so; he don't know mo' dan de Lawd; but Judge Settle is mighty young yet". It has been twenty years since I left this good Old North State. The changes have been so numerous and so marvelous that it would be an imposition upon your hospitality and patience for me to attempt to enumerate them. The fact is, I feel that I am in a new North State. The names which General Eau- som mentioned a few minutes ago, and which we used to hear spoken so fre- quently, such as Jackson, Benton, Polk, Iredell, Graham, Johnson, Mangum, Macon, Gaston, Badger, and many others, have been replaced or supplemented by other and newer names. And then one sees the flourishing villages and towns which were almost unknown twenty years ago. This old town itself has been so changed that I scarcely know where I am. Instead of arriving at a railroad station overcrowded and illy ventilated, you have a large, modern, brick building. As I rode up your main street with Dr. Mclver — I call it Broadway — the old courthouse was almost the only building which was familiar to me; and I find that even that is being enlarged and remodeled. Twenty years ago your total expenditure for education was practicallj $375,000, or twenty-seven cents per capita. Today your total expenditure for education is more than $1,000,000, or sixty cents per capita. Twenty years ago you had two hundred and fifty thousand pupils in school; today you have approximately five hundred thousand — an increase of one hundred per cent., whereas the increase in population is thirty-seven per cent. These are great results. And when I reflect that you have accomplished all of them without US, I have an answer to Dr. Mclver 's question which he put to us at the meeting of the North Carolina Society in New York last winter, when he said: "Why don't you come home?" My answer is "you are getting along very well without us". You are doing a noble work, and I am thankful to feel that it has been done and is being done by the harmonious and collective energy and action of, not a few people, but of the people as a whole. It is related that when the reign of terror in France was over, and the advocates of law and order began to emerge from their hiding places, they were surprised to find how numerous they themselves were, and how collectively strong they might have been in combating the pre-existing anarchy. It took North Carolina a long time to find out how collectively strong she was, but when once her mind was made up she advanced with characteristic boldness and patriotic zeal. 78 First North Carolina Reunion A new era has dawned. You have built a new North State upon the solid foundations of the old. This tremendous growth is followed by new responsi- bilities, and I feel sure that North Carolinians are able to meet them. And as you settle successfully the questions pertaining to the State, you are at the same time aiding in the adjustment of national difficulties. We are living in a remarkable age; and we are making history with an amazing rapidity. Our recently-acquired territory, our centralization of capi- tal, our internal dissensions in connection with labor and capital, are ques- tions which require serious consideration. And when we remember that public apathy is the root of corruption, it behooves each one of us to accept our small share of responsibility, and to inculcate those principles which stand for the highest ideals of American citizenship. The greatest empire this world ever knew, becoming intoxicated with success, lost its former ideals of citizenship, permitted bribery and corruption to flourish, until Rome, the empire itself, was sold at auction by the pretorian guards. Our country needs today, as never before, the guiding power and influence of the real Anglo-Saxon American citizen. He can be found in the South, and surely he ought to be found in North Carolina, the purest Anglo-Saxon State of the Union. Go on, then, with your good work; and in building the new upon the old see to it that you build correctly. You may "Ring out the old; ring in the new"; Provided you "Ring out the false; ring in the true". "Ring out the grief that saps the mind;" * # * * « "Ring in redress to all mankind." "Ring out the slowly-dying cause"; ***** ' ' Ring in sweeter manners, purer laws. ' ' "Ring out the darkness of the land"; ***** "Ring in the Christ that is to be." Response of Mr. John Wilbur Jenkins, of Baltimore, Md. Mr. John Wilbur Jenkins i-epresented the North Carolina Society of Baltimore, and in response to the Governor's address of welcome said, in part : When President Cleveland and a distinguished party of Washington oflScials were shooting and fishing on the sounds and banks in Eastern Carolina, they were making sport of a little "banker" boy, who had known onl}' the schooling of his native sea and the blue sky. They were asking him questions about the ownership of various belongings around there, when a flock of wild ducks came Ml'. John Wilbur Jenkins of the Baltimore Sun First North Carolina Beunion 79 flying over their heads. Seeking to puzzle him, Mr. Cleveland said, ' ' And whose ducks are those, my boy?" The little fellow dug his toes in the sand, looked up at the President, and replied, "Them ducks is they own ducks; they is". What I like most about North Carolinians is that they own themselves; and from the very foundation of the colony independence has been their most char- acteristic trait. I am glad that, slowly and gradually though it may have been, the people here have built up their own industry, and have made the State what it is. When the war ended, her soldiers, who had displayed little gold lace, but had worn proudly the powder-blackened faces and the wounds of the war that are the ' ' red badges of courage ' ', came back to the smoking embers of their homes, and with bare hands in ashes and in desolation began to build upon the ruins the structure of a new civilization. How well they have built it this great commonwealth of two million people attests. Where once was desolation, now we hear the whirring spindles and the shuttling looms. The red hillsides are covered with grain and fruit and snowy cotton. Sleepy little villages have grown into spreading cities, with crowded streets, imposing mansions, and the smoking chimneys of great industry. It is a tremendous thing to have wrought this in a generation, and to have wrought it in silence and alone. For North Carolina owns herself. Her cotton mills, her tobacco factories, her fertilizer plants, her furniture manufactories, her farms and houses are her own, built by her own citizens, in their own enterprise, with their own money. Representing the greatest of Southern cities on behalf of those sons who have gone abroad, I wish to pay a tribute to the great work of those who have stayed at home. The Land of Terrapin and Oysters gives the hearty hand of congratulation to the State of 'Possiini and Potatoes. This great Eeunion of Carolinians from all parts of the nation thrills the heart and brings tears to the eyes. For we are home again, back in our mother 's house, in the dear old fatherland. No matter how far we may wander, it is always "down home" to us. It is fitting that this Reunion is held in a city whose past is historic, whose present shows the remarkable enterprise of recent time, and whose people have their faces turned towards the future. On the battlefield of Guilford Courthouse, almost in the edge of this city, Marylanders stood shoulder to shoulder with North Carolinians in the bloody fight against Cornwallis and his British soldiers. They have been closely allied ever since that baptism of blood; and North Carolina has no reason to feel ashamed of the sons she has given to her sister State. Wherever he has gone, the North Carolinian is known for his frankness and his friendliness. Independent by heritage and tradition, carrying with him the sturdy virtues of his native State, he has been a great factor in many other commonwealths. This North Carolina spirit, "to be and not to seem", has been an important contribution to American character. But the State has been too modest to claim the credit it deserved. The organization of North Carolina Societies in New York, in Philadelphia, in Atlanta, Richmond, and Baltimore, has resulted in developing a more ardent State pride, and in binding the people of those cities closer to the place of their nativity. I believe that similar results would follow the organization of such societies in every large city and in every State in the Union, and I believe that the societies should be united in a federation that will link them together and unite their efforts for the good and glory of the old State. I propose, Mr. Chairman, that, in order to give permanency to the enthusi- asm of this great Reunion, a committee of thirty members be appointed to form- 80 First North Carolina Reunion ulate a plan for the federation of these societies, and to stimulate their organi- zation in cities and States where they do not now exist. I know what such societies can do, from what our Baltimore Society has accomplished in a single year. It has bound together the North Carolinians of Baltimore in friendship and brotherly feeling; it has brought them to know each other, and to appreciate each other. Last July, on the battlefield of Gettysburg, we held a celebration, and gathered there, forty years after that bloody conflict, some of the most notable survivors and descendants of those who won undying fame in this great- est battle in our history. There, on the very spot where the Tarheels carried the Stars and Bars "farthest at Gettysburg", right at the angle where the Confederacy swept to its highest tide, looking over the field where Pettigrew with his North Carolinians came charging across in the face of the Federal guns, we sang "Carolina", and raised the chorus, "The Old North State Forever". I have never witnessed a more affecting scene than that when Colonel John E. Lane, commander of the matchless Twenty-sixth North Carolina Regiment, standing on the battlefield where he was terribly wounded in the charge, clasped hands with Mr. Charles McC'onnell, of the Michigan Iron Brigade, who fired the shot that came so near ending the Carolinian 's life. While the band played the "Star-Spangled Banner", and hundreds of Confederates and Yankees who had met in mortal combat on that field cheered and sang the song, the tears stream- ing down their cheeks, and hands clasps in brotherhood, I felt that once more we had a re-united country. North Carolina's part in that battle, one of the most glorious pages in our history, had never received proper recognition from the outside world. This celebration gave it the widest publicity all over the United States, and, I believe, for all time set it right in the eyes of the nation. That is only one of many things that a North Carolina Society can do. I believe that we from other States who have come to this Reunion have received a fresh baptism of patriotism, and will carry back with us an even deeper love and more ardent devotion to the great State that gave us birth. Response of President R. P. Pell, of South Carolina When some of us North Carolinians left our native State, we had the happy fortune to fall into the hands of our twin sister. This hospitable matron, though smaller in stature than our beloved mother, claims the sole right to the family name, "Carolina". We have not resented this assumption, but have preferred to put upon it the charitable construction that it is an act of exquisite courtesy, intended to leave upon us the impression that we are not foreigners, but her own sons and daughters. If a stranger, wandering into her bounds, reveals any peculiar virtues, these good people, instead of investigating his Statehood, quietly take it for granted that by reason of these very excellencies he must have been born a South Carolinian, and readily absorb him into their State-con- sciousness. This unique task seems indigenous to this clime, and the only ade- quate explanation a North Carolinian can offer for it is to suppose that the whole population is composed of Ransoms and Aldermans. Let me say that, just as we are not ashamed of the people from whom we went, so we are not ashamed of the people among whom our lot has been cast. Their revei'ential devotion to the memories of a noble ancestry, their loyalty to both persons and principles, I'lfsideiit K. I*. I'lll, of Converse CoUeji't', South Ciidliiia First North Carolina Reunion 81 their philosophic insight into political problems, their lofty standard of social purity, their ever-watchful conservatism — all these command our admiration. But I am proud to declare that whatever respect and confidence we have now in our new home, are due to the moral and intellectual equipment we have received from the good Old North State. It was here, upon this blessed soil, that we learned to trust in the ultimate supremacy of true manhood, to exercise inde- pendence of thought and action, to cherish a fraternal feeling for all classes, to maintain fair-mindedness in discussion, to pay respect to constituted authority, and to keep the open mind and heart without which not even the partiality of our best friends could have rescued us from deserved obscurity. Happily, these characteristics of the two States are not mutually exclusive; but are comple- mentary; and are thoroughly appreciated by both. Let me give you an instance. Perhaps, if you could gauge the depths of Dr. Mclver's heart, you would find that pi-obably his highest ambition is to rank as one of the best expressions of the democratic spirit. Now South Carolina is the most aristocratic-democratic and democratic-aristocratic State in the Union. When Dr. Mclver came to South Carolina, at my invitation, to address us on the educational question, his slogan of "the people, the people, the people" made me quake as to its effect upon that staid audience. But he actually joked and argued them into believing that everything else in the world was absurd and unreasonable except his own speech, and to my astonishment his sallies wrung from his hearers roars of applause and characteristic North Carolina yells. Now, my brethren, when we left you our heart did not depart from you, nor did our eyes close upon you. With kindling pride we have watched your attack upon the momentous problems that have had to be confronted by all of our Southern States. Many a time have we longed to break loose for a moment from the bonds of our new citizenship, to resume our place in your ranks, and do our part in your warfare. But you have never needed our help, or that of any other man. Your campaign has been grounded, planned, and conducted upon the invincible platform (which may you never surrender), that the fullest opportunity must be given to every man to be and to do his best. When you have been temporarily defeated, you have not skulked to your homes in disgust, and repudiated the ballot; nor have you in bitterness of spirit encouraged rebel- lion against law and order; but have quietly planted your standard again and again upon your trust in the right-mindedness and right-heartedness of the people. No wonder you have been victorious, and the colony of Tarheels in South Carolina send you their congratulations, and bid you Godspeed! And, now, I have the inexpressible gratification of announcing that the memorable incident relative to the remark of the Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of South Carolina is coming to a close; for that "long time between drinks", under the beneficent effects of recent legislation, is slowly but surely drawing itself out into an eternal drought. Response of Honorable L. D. Tyson, of Tennessee Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: This is, indeed, a proud day for the sons and daughters, of Old North Caro- lina, who have wandered away from the fold, and have taken up their abode in distant lands. 82 First North Carolina Reunion There is a touch of sadness, as well as joy, as wo return here today and look into the faces of those ■whom we have left — sadness because we feel that our lot has separated us, perhaps forever, from this land and this people whom we love; but joy when we feel that we are again amongst our kith and kin, and amidst the dear old scenes of our boyhood and girlhood. For — "Breathes there a man with soul so dead. Who never to himself hath said: This is my own, my native land; Whose heart within him ne'er hath burned. As homeward his footsteps he hath turned." My friends, I love this old State. I love its people; I love its memories and associations; I love its honesty and its candor; I love its true, old-time, and generous hospitality; I love its stately old pines and grand old oaks that are found on every hand; I love its mountains and its rivers, its balmy air, and its warm, life-giving sunshine. Aye! I love everything that is in this dear old State — from its towering mountains that kiss the very dome of heaven on the West, down to that grand old ocean that beats with eternal and sublime roar upon its sandy shores on the East. This day is one that I have long looked forward to in my imagination. Many a time in my dreams, when far away, have I seen myself invited back to my native land on an occasion such as this. Until I received an invitation to be present here today, it was a dream that I never expected to see realized. But, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to say that I have never been prouder of anything in my life than I have of the invitation to appear before you here today. I feel the full significance of this Reunion; and the only regret that I have is that I have not been able to win a rich wreath of laurels to bring back and to lay at the feet of the grand old mother State, so that she might lay her hand upon my head, and say, ' ' Well done, my son ' '. The people of North Carolina have much to be proud of. I have studied the history of all the States of this Union; and I say, without fear of disparaging any other, that in patriotism, in valor, in love of freedom, in enlightenment, in hospitality, and in indomitable determination to maintain the right as God has given her to see the right, she has few peers and no superiors. But, ladies and gentlemen; I come to you today from that fair land across the Great Smoky Mountains that was once a part of this State, and which is now called Tennessee. I come from a land that is as patriotic, as rich, as beautiful, as fertile, as sunny, as balmy, and as healthful as old Carolina. I come from a land of peace and plenty, verily flowing with milk and honey; a land where nature vies with man in producing everything that is beautiful and good; a land of fertile val- leys, of verdant hillsides, of lowing herds, of rolling vistas of bluegrass and of snowy fields of cotton; a l.ind that is bounded on the East by grand and lofty mountains that gradually fade away to the Westward boundary, where glides the great Father of Waters as he slowly winds his eternal burden to the sea. The first settlers of Tennessee were almost wholly from North Carolina. They were of the same stock as the old mother State. They had been bred and born here in old Carolina, with the loftiest ideas of freedom and independence; and they have proven themselves worthy of their ancestors in every walk and circumstance of life. HoMornble L. 1). Tyson, of Tennessee speaker of the House of Representatives First North Carolina Reunion 83 The history of Tennessee is closely interwoven with the most glorious and the most stirring events of our great Republic. The early struggles of her set- tlers against the Indians is one long story of heroism and of valor. Though her population was a mere handful, with a courage and determina- tion that was sublime, her patriotic sons marched across the mountains in the darkest hour of the Eevolution, and in conjunction with a few gallant men from North Carolina and Virginia they sought out the British, and fought and won the decisive and important battle of King's Mountain, on the seventh day of October, 1780. This battle was suggested, planned, and largely led by Tennes- seeans. This decisive blow, coming as it did in the darkest hour of the Revolu- tion, was of untold benefit to the patriot cause, and perhaps the brightest jewel in the crown of Tennessee. This country can never do too much honor to the brave men who conceived and fought that memorable battle. Tennessee became a State in 1796. When her constitution was adopted, it was admitted by all that she possessed the most thoroughly democratic form of government of any State in the Union. Tennessee holds the old mother State in grateful remembrance for all the favors that she has lavished upon her daughter; but I think it will be admitted that in the last seventy-five j'ears the daughter has done great honor to the old mother, and has made a deep impress upon the history of our country. The State of North Carolina can not fail to feel proud of this fact, because a great deal of the best blood of Tennessee was contributed by North Carolina. She contributed to Tennessee the three young men who, as citizens of Ten- nessee, were to attain the highest position in the gift of the American people, and to become the Presidents of the United States, viz. : Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson. Every one of them great men — men who made their impress as statesmen on the history of the Republic. And as for old Hick- ory, by many considered the greatest soldier and statesman that this country has produced, he has so left his impress upon Tennessee and Tennesseans that his glory is a part of the glory of the State. From the year 1820 to the year 1850, the State of Tennessee produced more great men and commanded a greater influence in the nation than any other State. At the outbreak of the Mexican War, the Governor called for three thous- and volunteers, and thirty thousand responded. So many more volunteered than were needed by the Government, and there was so much rivalry as to who should be allowed to go, that it had to be decided by lot; and thus she won for herself the proud distinction of being called the Volunteer State. Her sons fought gallantly on every battlefield of that war, and added imperishable glory to the annals of our country. When the great civil war broke out in 1861, a vast number of the people of the State were opposed to secession; and while she contributed more than thirty thousand men to the Union Arm3', she nevertheless sent as many men to the Confederate Army as any other Southern State; and it is said had more men killed in battle than any other Southern State, with the single exception of North Carolina. The gallantr}' of her sons was shown on hundreds of battlefields in that great war. With the exception of Virginia, her soil was the principal battle- ground of the war; and her people suffered untold hardships. On her soil were fought some of the greatest battles of the war at Fort Donelson, Fort Henry, Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga; and 84 First North Carolina Reunion Chiekamauga, the greatest battle of the West, was practically fought upon her soil, and largely by her own troops— to say nothing of hundreds of skirmishes and combats. There never was a time from the second year of the war until its close when Federal troops were not camped upon her soil. With the exception of Georgia and Virginia, she suffered more than any other Confederate State. General Joseph E. Johnston, the great Confederate Commander, said of Tennes- see that she was the "Shield of the Confederacy". But, thank God, those trying times are forever past; the tattered flags are forever furled; the rattling drum beats are forever silenced; the bugle notes that called those intrepid hearts to battle have forever faded away; and today we stand a re-united country. But the memories of those who fell are not dead — their deeds of heroism are a heritage to our children, and to our children's children, the memory of which we will not permit to pass away. ' ' On fame 's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread; And glory guards, with solemn round, The bivouac of the dead. ' ' When the tocsin of war sounded in 1898, and this country was called upon to join in a war of humanity, to rescue the little island of Cuba from four hun- dred years of Spanish oppression and tyranny, the sons of Tennessee, with that patriotism which had always characterized them, again sprang to arms, and were ready again to sacrifice their lives on the altar of their re-united country. But, while Tennessee, throughout her history, has been renowned in war; she has been no less renowned in peace. Today only the welcome sounds of peace ,'ing there in inexhaustible quantities awaitin.^ the magic touch of man to bring untold wealth to her people. If she were cut off from every other State by an impassable barrier, she has within her own boundaries every- thing that is necessary for the happiness of man and the upbuilding of a great State. It has been said by an eminent authority that there are not forty-three thousand square miles of contiguous territory anywhere else under the sun that contain as many natural resources as Tennessee. She is striving for all that is great and good in the arts of peace. Her soil and climate are as near perfection as nature can make them. Her people are amongst the most generous, the most enlightened, and the most pro- gressive to be found in the Republic. In every period of her history she has been found in the forefront of progress, of enlightenment, and of statesmanship. Time does not permit me to recount the names of her renowned orators, soldiers, and statesmen; but their names are engraved on the tablets of fame, and enshrined in the hearts of our countrymen. But, of all the treasures of Tennessee, there are none so rare as her grand and noble women, who have stood side by side with her sons in every hour of her history, and have inspired them to whatever of good and great they have accomplished. Mr. Feler M. Wilson, of VVashin»itoM, D. C. United States Senate First North Carolina Reunion 85 Finally, there is not to be found upon the globe a country where man can enjoy life or pursue happiness or fortune with greater success than in the grand and beautiful old commonwealth of Tennessee. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, while I love my native State with all my heart, I will say to you, if you feel at any time that you wish to wander away from beautiful old Carolina, come to that land across the mountains, where you will receive a warm and sincere welcome from your own kith and kin, who have long since preceded you to that other garden spot of earth — fair old Tennessee. Response of Mr. Peter M. Wilson, of Washington, D. C. When Greensboro was still a town, there lived in it a choice spirit, the venerable Lyndon Swaini, who was not only a legislator and a very upright citizen, but an editor who wrote pure English, gentle humor, and kind words. In a letter to Hale 's Weekly, he described a visit to old Salem town, on the then-new railway. Its one passenger coach was divided by a partition that made the front end a second-class and the rear end a first-class compartment. On the return trip the numbers, but not the car, were reversed; and it was a perplexing thought to him, always, whether he was riding in the first-class end of a second-class car or the second-class end of a first-class car; and the only satisfaction he could ever get out of it was, going either way, he would land in Salem or Greensboro. So it is coming from beautiful Washington to beautiful Greensboro. Think of it! You can go to sleep in Greensboro, and wake up in Washington; and that is what every good politician dreams of, and hopes to do some night or day. But what is better, you can go to sleep in the most beautiful city of the world, the center of our great country, and wake up in Greensboro. And that is what every prodigal North Carolinian dreams about and hopes to do. You know the legend of the man who went to Heaven, and was amazed to find there a man bound with a golden cord to a graceful pine tree. "Is this the Heaven of the pagans, and is that Prometheus of the fable?" he asked, in fear and wonder. "No", said a cherub guide; "that is a man from North Carolina; and if loosed he would go straight back home". They are all tarred with the same stick. Washington, you must know, is proud of North Carolina's Representatives in Washington. They speak for themselves; and for all the rest of us, for that matter. They are all young men, in the very summer of life — serious, sober, industrious, and able. Their word is as good as their bond; and their bonds are above par. There is no scandal in their lives; and they walk upright in the light. So, as to those filling humbler positions — the scores of clerks in the great stone buildings of the State, War, Treasury, and Law Departments — they are worthy workers. Thinking of the gladness of this day, it is no doubt a long day for them; but they rejoice that it is given to their fellows to go back home even for a day; and it is what, 'way down in their hearts, they are longing to do. Does it not recur to us all that something more than social satisfaction ought to grow out of this Reunion of the Tarheels scattered abroad? Revisiting familiar scenes and grasping hospitable hands is joy enough for one day; but should not a monument be built to suggest it and recall it, and should not this 86 First North Carolina Reunion monument be practical and powerful and progressive? Would not a fund for the education of the mothers of the State that are to be appeal more to the hearts of these absent ones than almost any other thing? It is a hard heai't that is not touched to a purpose when the claims of the mother thought stand before it; and North Carolinians do not harbor such hearts. The amount of money which working girls of foreign-born parents send back in small sums to those in the motherland is so great at festival seasons that special provision has to be made for it in the exchange. But little of this goes to bring away others; nearly all of it is for the betterment of those who are in the older homes, and for their happiness. Now, is it asking too much of every absent one to sond something of his earnings yearly to build up, support, and keep young and beautiful as the grateful heart that bids him do it a "Hall of the Absent", where 3'oung women can be taught those lessons that the mothers of the givers would have them taught. If the names of all North Carolinians not living in the blessed State can be enrolled, and this wish given form in their minds, surely this Eeunion will be memorable indeed. Why can not those master minds that have brought together this congregation of happy home-comers perpetuate its beginning, and the reason of its being, by appealing to these thoughts that must be in the minds of many, and give them a habitation and a purpose? Response of Rev. Dr. W. W. Moore Represeyitative of the North Carolina Society qf Richmond, Fa. There are more natives of North Carolina now living in Virginia than in any other State in the Union, except North Carolina itself. According to the last census there were 53,235 of them. If that is a correct estimate, and there is every reason to believe that the number is now larger rather than smaller than it was in 1900, it means that, besides the scores of us who have the delight- ful privilege of responding in person to the call of our venerated mother to gather again under the ancestral roof-tree, there are some fifty thousand other sons and daughters of hers within the bounds of the Old Dominion, who think no less tenderly and proudly than we of the good old State that gave us birth; whose hearts turn wistfully to Greensboro today; and whose memories echo the stately music of Judge Gaston's hymn: "Carolina! Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her! While we live we will cherish, protect, and defend her; Though the scorner may sneer at and witlings defame her. Our hearts swell with gladness whenever we name her. ' ' For these fifty thousand Virginia-Carolinians or Carolina-Virginians, which- ever you may prefer to call them — and I do not believe that any better brand of either Carolinians or Virginians ever drew breath — for these fifty thousand brothers and sisters of ours whom North Carolina has loaned to Virginia, and who, though busy and happy in the State of their adoption, nevertheless turn longing and loving eyes toward the State of their birth, I wish to be spokesman First North Carolina Reunion 87 in part this afternoon, and especially for that thrice-happy contingent whose good fortune it is to live in the famous and beautiful city by the James, which is the capital of that commonwealth, and which was and is and ever will be in history and memory the capital also of the short-lived but immortal Confed- eracy. There is no city in the world whose name thrills the hearts of all true Caro- linians with such tender and heroic memories. When the red wave of war rolled around her forty years ago, and the troops of all the confederated States vied with each other in the defense of their beleaguered capital, there were none whose blood flowed more freely in her behalf than that of the sons of North Carolina; and so to the sons of North Carolina in every succeeding generation the very soil of Eiehmond will be holy ground by reason of that baptism with North Carolina blood. In her peaceful cemeteries at Oakwood and Hollywood, hundreds of the heroes sleep who at their country 's call left these hills and plains, which they loved no less than we, to lay down their lives on the fields of Virginia. For these reasons North Carolinians can never be indifferent to Eiehmond; nor can Richmond ever be indifferent to them. In the Confederate museum, which occupies the war-time residence of President Davis, there is a North Carolina room, along the side of which, in large letters, runs the ringing line which summarizes our record in the war — "First at Bethel, farthest at Gettysburg, last at Appomattox" — and from the walls of which, among the portraits of other men of our stock whom Virginia delights to honor, there looks down the strong and genial face of that transcen- dant North Carolinian, Zebulon B. Vance, the greatest war-governor of any State, North or South, and the man who, on a later occasion, when Virginia lacked a fit champion of her own on the floor of the Federal Senate, became her defender, and stood as fearlessly for the rights of her people as he had ever stood for the rights of his own. Virginia will never forget that service. Dis- tinguished natives and residents of the State have vied with each other in expressing their enthusiastic appreciation of the character and services of our great senator, and of the great people whom he represented. Only yesterday I was reading such a tribute from General Bradley T. Johnson, over whose bier Virginia bowed herself weeping less than a week ago. He says that Governor Vance's purchase of steamers with the State's money during the war, and his organization of a line from Wilmington to Bermuda, kept North Carolina sol- diers the best armed, best clothed, and best equipped of any in the field; and he uses the fact as an illustration of what he calls our extraordinary capacity of knowing what to do, and of doing it. For he declares that the most marked characteristic of the North Carolinian is his executive capacity — his ability to do things. And, he adds, this beats to nothing the ability to talk. He has never distinguished himself much as an orator or as a writer; he has never been a Patrick Henry nor a Jefferson; but in seeing the thing to do, and in doing it, he surpasses all Southern men. The same gallant soldier says that in 1861 the military population of North Carolina was 11.5,369, and she furnished 125,000 men to the Confederate army, nearly one-third of whom perished during the conflict. And yet, when the end came, both at Appomattox and at Greensboro, she stacked more muskets than any other State of the Confederacy. These generous words indicate, far more fittingly than anything which it would be proper for me to say, the hearty admiration felt by Eiehmond for North Carolinians, and, as I need hardly add, the North Carolinians resident there reciprocate the feeling heart and soul. One of the most honored veterans 88 First North Carolina Reunion iu Richmond, and one of my warmest personal friends, while yielding to no man in his admiration of North Carolina's devotion and courage, thinks that per- haps the claims thus put foi-ward by writers from Virginia and Maryland as to North Carolina 's part in the war have been a trifle overdrawn, but, after every abatement in the interests of absolute accuracy, it remains a glorious record. And the Virginians rejoice to recognize it. Another gallant gentleman and Confederate veteran, one of the staff oflBcers of Stonewall Jackson, now my neighbor and intimate personal friend, who could have marched with Deborah's soldiers out of Zebulum according to either the Authorized Version or the Revised, since he can handle with equal ease the marshal's baton and the pen of the writer, but who now has laid aside the sword for good, and is permanently engaged in the peaceful pursuit of editing a religious newspaper, says handsomely in his last issue that the reason there are so many distinguished non-resident natives of the Old North State is that they are in such great demand elsewhere; adding that if North Carolina were to withdraw from Virginia her many sons and daughters, there would be a serious disturbance if not a breakdown of some institutions. These kindly expressions indicate well the delightful relations existing between the North Carolinians living in Richmond and the people of the fair city of their adoption. But I hasten to turn these remarks into another channel, lest we appear to be guilty of unseemly self-praise. I was told recently of a native of North Carolina, and of my part of North Carolina, too, who had moved to one of the Gulf States, and naturally enough had been made governor of the State, and had given the commonwealth a strong, clean, prosperous administration; and who, on standing for re-election, reviewed his services to the State with par- donable pride, describing con amore and in extenso what he had done for her, and dwelling upon it with such evident satisfaction and glowing emphasis as to call forth from an old darkey who was among his hearers, and who was asked what he thought of the governor 's speech, the succinct remark, ' ' He sut 'nly do recommend hisself ". But, Mr. President, if we seem to do the same this after- noon, let it be remembered that this is our time for boasting, if ever such a time comes to such a people as ours — this is North Carolina day. Surely it may be permitted a solid, steady, thorough-going State like ours, which has ever been more renowned for doing things than for talking about them, to call attention, once in a modest way, on the occasion of the first Reunion of her scattered sons and daughters, to what the people have said about them among whom they have lived. Nay, sir; I go further. If Sir Walter Scott was correct in what he said about Roderick Dhu that "One blast upon his bugle horn Were worth a thousand men"; then, reversing the sentiment, I should say that for three hundred and thirty thousand men of North Carolina birth, living and laboring in other States, even two blasts upon a bugle horn were not a blast too much. Moreover, my point in quoting what Virginians have said about North Carolinians was to show how happy the relations are which exist between these generous and high-minded people of the Old Dominion and the North Carolinians who have gone to dwell among them. But, besides this bond of sacred sentiment to which I have referred, grow- ing out of their brotherhood in the days that tried men's souls, when shoulder Honorable J. Bryan Grimes Secretary nf State First North Carolina Reunion 89 to shoulder they marched and fought, and side by side laid down their lives — besides the respect and confidence developed in a common experience of disaster and sorrow, when both proud commonwealths were trampled and plundered — besides the grateful appreciation and affection kindled in the heai'ts of Vir- ginians by the chivalrous services rendered their State by North Carolinians, and the equally grateful appreciation and affection kindled in the hearts of North Carolinians by the no-less chivalrous services rendered their State by Virginians — besides this bond of sacred sentiment, there is between us ;i bond of common business interests, which can probably not be paralleled in the rela- tions existing between any other two States in the Union. Not only do these States lie side by side along a boundary line of some three hundred and fifty miles, like two fair sisters in loving embrace — not only is this the longest single boundary between any two of the original thirteen States, so that more of their territory is in actual juxtaposition and contact than in the case of any other two, but the line itself is an arbitrary one; determined by no natural barrier; and is, therefore, invisible and easily crossed, so that the people of the two States easily mingle. As the New Eiver flows from North Carolina into Vir- ginia and the Dan from Virginia into North Carolina; both, however, crossing and recrossing the line repeatedly, as though liking both States so nuich that they can not decide which they like best; so the people of the two cross and rccross the border, equally at home on either side. Another thing which has mightily promoted the commercial as well as social intimacy of the two commonwealths is the way in which the railroads have been built. Great trunk lines, running North and South, and traversing the whole width of both, and sending lateral ramifications this way auj that, have bound the two States together in bands of steel. Our North Carolina railways have sought the sea as much or more by the deep-water ports of Virginia than by those of our own State, and have poured our cotton and tobacco and other products, as well as our men and women, into Norfolk and Richmond in a steady and enriching stream. It is the radiating railways of Richmond which have made her so largely the distributing center of North Carolina as well as Virginia. And in this day of shifting properties and more elaborate organization, with their promise of still larger prosperity, it well becomes both Richmond and North Carolina to recall the debt they owe to the men like (Jolonel Buford and his co-laborers, who first developed the great system which has ever since been and must continue to be the keystone of the arch so far as systems of transportation between North Carolina and Virginia are concerned. We feel, then, that North Carolina has contributed no little to the upbuild- ing of Richmond. In short, we fee! that in every wmv our interests are largely identified. As Tarheels born, we can never be weaned from North Carolina; but we are thoroughly naturalized at Richmond. We feel perfectly at home there — and indeed when I meet them on the street I find it as diflSoult to tell the Richmonder who was born in Virginia from the Riehmonder who was born in North Carolina as it would be to tell the Dromio of Ephesus from the Di'omio of Syracuse. They are alike courteous, gentle, and just; manly, straightfor- ward, and true. Richmond's interests arc ouv interests, and, as we think of her splendid natural advantages, her elevated inland situation, with her swelling hills and breezy plateaus, midway between the mountains and the sea, at the head of steamboat navigation, with the falls of the James to drive her machin- ery; as we think of her business enterprise, iiistorical interest, social refinement, K N. C. R.— VII 90 First North Carolma Reunion and educational facilities, all residents of Eichmond, Tarheel and Tuckahoe alike, exclaim with affectionate pride, in the language of the great apostle, "We are citizens of no mean city". Mr. President, it was once said by a gifted son of Maryland that one of the outstanding characteristics of the North Carolinian is that he loves his State, and believes she is the best State that ever was. That is true. Your genuine Tarheel never has any other opinion. And I have this to say for the North Carolinians in Richmond, that there is not one of them who has ever harbored a disloyal or unfilial thought about the old State from which he came; not one of them who has ever tried to pillory the old mother who bore him and nourished him, to hold her up to public derision; not one of them who has spoken with scorn and bitterness of the shortcomings of the good old common- wealth; not one of them who has failed to sympathize with the enormous diffi- culties and disadvantages with which she has had to contend; not one of them who has ever felt for a moment any loss of love for her on account of a change in his place of residence. Judge Hall, of Georgia, says that when war was declared against Spain the darkies became greatly agitated, because there was talk of putting them to the front to fight the Spaniards. They offered all sorts of excuses for not enlisting. One old negro said to a gentleman who was urging him to take up arms against Spain: "Whut fur. Mars George? I ain't got nuthin' agin them Spaniels. They never dun nuthin' to me. Whut 's the use of us fightin'?" "Patriotism'", replied the gentleman; "you should tight for love of country". "Heh", said the darkey; "luv er country; I dun live in town so long I aint got no use fer de country ' '. If there are any North Carolinians of that stripe, who since moving to town feel that way about their native State, I don't know them; and what is more I don't want to know them. I would prefer the acquaintance of Benedict Arnold. At the same time, sir, we recognize the needs of our dear old State, and we are in full sympathy with the industrial, educational, and literary awakening which is the great characteristic of our time in North Carolina. As to the new era in our industries, I have no manner of doubt that we are on the threshold of a period of the greatest prosperity ever known in our history, and that our State is destined to be one of the richest in the Union, not only in the sense of possessing abundant wealth, but in the far more important sense of having that wealth well diffused among the people, instead of being congested into one or two plethoric channels. As to the educational awakening, it is one of the greatest pleasures of this unique occasion to us home-coming Carolinians to meet here again today the men who have been your leaders in that great movement, and who have done so much to roll away the reproach of our illiteracy. As to your literary activity, proper, let me say that we have welcomed with particular pleasure the appearance of the North Carolina booklets, Mrs. McCor- kle's admirable little volume of Old-Time Stories of the Old North State, for the children, and similar publications. Let this good work go on, till even the people of New England have learned something about the events of the Revo- lution in the South. Chauncey Depew says that the New England Puritan was a bigot and a sectary, fighting to preserve his own religious liberty, and to destroy that of everybody else: believing conscientiously in the political free- dom of himself, and the political suppression of everybody else. Whether that First North Carolina Beunion 91 be true or not, it looks as if his descendants had very industriously recorded and magnified their own history, and had with equal industry ignored and neg- lected the history of nearly everybody else in this country. They have been so busy magnifying Israel Putnam 's bear-trackings and horseback rides and other matters more worthy of the process, that they have had no time to read or write of decisive events like the battles of Moore's Creek, King's Mountain, and Guilford Courthouse. At any rate, Senator Hoar, who is a pretty-well- informed man about some things, declared that he had never heard of Moore 's Creek Bridge. Woe to the people whose history is written either by their enemies or by persons who are afflicted with the disease of big I and little U. Mr. President, we feel today like the little boy to whom the minister said, "Well, Johnnie, I hear you are going to school now". "Yes, sir", was the reply. "And what part of it do you like best?" asked the good man. " Comin ' home ' ', was the prompt and truthful answer. That 's the way we feel, sir. The best thing about going away from North Carolina is coming back again. Governor Ayeock, you have welcomed us today in words that will warm our hearts as long as we live. Let me say to you in reply that if the North Caro- linians who do live in North Carolina are as glad to see the North Carolinians who don't live in North Carolina as the North Carolinians who don't live iu North Carolina are to see the North Carolinians who do live in North Carolina, then, sir, this should be the happiest occasion in the history of the State. (It is a positive pleasure to roll the good old name from one 's tongue over and over.) My countrymen, in conclusion of these remarks upon the relations existing between North Carolinians and Virginians, I give you the sentiment formulated on the field of Appomattox, in the hour of his anguish, by that illustrious Vir- ginian who had watched for years, with ever-increasing admiration, tlie stead- fast courage and unsurpassed discipline of the troops from North Carolina. As he waited, heart-broken, for a courier carrying some message concerning the surrender which all now knew to be inevitable, his military ear caught the firm and steady tramp of a brigade marching into action in as good order and with as dauntless courage as though they were on the eve of a sweeping victory instead of the inevitable defeat which every man foresaw. General Lee raised his head and asked sharply, "What brigade is that?" "Cox's North Caro- lina", replied an otfieer. The great Virginian's eyes filled with tears, and, as the men swung past hir.i, he lifted his hat and said: "God bless old North Carolina ' '. Honorable Benjamin R. I.acy Treasurer of North Carolina Entertainments 93 o Entertainments The charming entertainments provided and given on the evening of the twelfth by the faculties and young ladies of the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial College, and Greensboro Female College, and by the Pythians of the Gate City, from 8 to 9.30 o'clock, and the delightful receptions given by the clubs of the city, and at the vari- ous headquarters from 9.30 to 11.30 o'clock, on the same evening, were largely attended and highly enjoyable. Unique Entertainment One of the most novel and clever entertainments ever given at the State Normal and Industrial College took place in the assembly hall of the college Monday night of Reunion, before an audience which filled the vast auditorium to overflowing. It was an entertainment given by the Normal students complimentary to the visitors in the city. The girls acquitted themselves well, and the audience was responsive and enthusiastic. The show was unique and original. The program comprised selections concerning North Carolina, her history, her industries and institutions, and her kin. Miss Inez Flow acted the part of ' ' Carolina ' '. She was tastefiilly adorned in the colors of the State and nation, and looked modest and sweet. The first item on the program was Roanoke Island, by Miss Mclver, as Mrs. Dare; Miss Lacy, as Sir Walter Raleigh, and three girls as Indians. This was followed by the "Edenton Tea Party", "The Mecklen- burg Declaration", "Battle of Guilford Courthouse", "the Civil War", and "the Spanish- American War". The representation of Mecklenburg was exceptionally good. A large hornets' nest was built on wheels, and when the curtain went up four pretty girls, playing the parts of hornets, poked their heads out of the holes in the nest. The marching of the soldiers of the "Battle of Guilford Court- house" was liberally applauded. 96 First North Carolina Reunion The civil war soldier srirls sang "TentiiiEr on the Old Camp Ground", with splendid force and effect. The second part of the program consisted of representations of the industrial life, and the educational, charitable, and penal institutions of the State. At the close of the selection, the girls sang, ' ' The Old North State ' '. Every girl who attends the Nonnal College must leara to sing that patriotic song ; that is part of the training. The following States were represented as owing North Carolina a debt of gratitude : Tennessee, her debtor for three Presidents of the United States; they being Andrew Jackson, Polk, and Johnson-, Vir- ginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Indiana, Pennsyl- vania, ^Maryland. Massachusetts, jMontana. ^Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, New York, Arkansas, Texas, and Florida. Some of the representations were fine. A coterie of pretty girls sang "Carolina", and made a chorus of "It is too long between drinks", for South Cai-olina. Texas was championed by a broncho buster, who had a fierce con- tempt for tenderfeet. Miss May Williams was the Texas. She made the audience roar. She had a swagger and a swing that was smart. The show was good from start to finish, and everybody there enjoyed it. Eight girls, dre.ssed and blacked as negresses, made cotton bags, and sung and danced like negro minstrels. They were encored. In representing Carolina, Miss Plow said: "To old and young, to high and low, Carolina brings a hearty greeting. To you that came from North and South and East and West, O, my beloved children, a joyous welcome home. With a mother's love and longing, my spirit followed you hence. With a mother's love and pride, my heart leaps to greet yours, in this, our first Reimion. My children, gi'eat and small, present and absent, are making glorious history in eveiy part of this wide world; but tonight you are only my children. Let us turn at random, then, a few pages of our old picture book." All the tableaux were splendid. Some genius had conceived them. The entertainment lasted for a little more than an hour, and was followed by a most charming infoi-mal reception, giving an opportunity for meeting friends and spending the rest of the evening delightfully. Delightful Entertainment and Reception to Visitors at Greensboro Female College One of the most enjoyable features of the Reunion ^\as the enter- tainment and reception Monday night at Greensboro Female College. Quite a large audience was present, and every one must have enjoyed Mrs. Lucy H. Robertson President of Greensboro Female College First North Carolina Reunion 97 the event. The whok^ program was very much enjoyed, especially the recitations by Miss Shattuck. After the regular program, Governor Ayeock, General Julian S. Carr, Mr. Josephus Daniels, Dr. James Atkins, Dr. C. W. Byrd, and Rev. J. D. Arnold, made a few pleasant and very happy remarks. Many of the audience remained after the regular program was con- cluded, and enjoyed a pleasant .social hour. The college was handsomely decorated in green and white — the college colors — and with the National and North Carolina flags. On Tuesday, October 13, the young ladies of the college went to the Battle Ground in a body, on a special train, and joined in the great basket picnic. At the Guilford Battle Ground 99 Horn ira bit' A. L. Fitz<^erald Cliief Justice nf the Supreme Court of Nevada Tuesday, October Thirteenth 'Diis \vas the big; day of the Reunion and scored the largest attend- ance. There were trains every forty minutes from the city to the Battle Ground, and thousands came by private conveyance from the surrounding country. At the hour fixed for the opening of the exer- cises it was estimated that there were more than twenty thousand people on the grounds of the Battle Park. It was a tj'pical North Carolina audience. Said General Ransom, "the whole face of the earth appears to be covered with home folks and strangers". Promptly at 10.30 a. m. President Melver called the great audience to order, and announced the opening- invocation by Rev. Dr. W. W. Jloore, vrho said: Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, without whose favor no people can prosper, we render tliee our humble and hearty thanks for thy good hand upon our i)eople from the beginning of their history to the present day. We thank thee for the gift of this goodh' land to our fathers, and for the gift of our fathers to this land — men who knew the right and, knowing, dared maintain. We thank theo for the freedom which they purchased with their blood and bequeathed to us with their prayers. Impress us profoundly with the fact that wc can best commemorate their services by emulating their virtues. God of our fathers, be the God of their succeeding race. May the abundant blessing of the Lord God Almighty abide upon our beloved State and upon all her song and daughters, at home and abroad, henceforth and forever. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Address by Honorable A. C. Fitzgerald Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada An Offliaud Sage-Brush Ofl'ering at the Guilford Battle Ground Zvlr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: Deep was my sympathy for the distinguished President of your Board of Managers (Dr.McIver),when it appeared, at the Opera House on yesterday, that the sun had too early hastened over the Western hills, and night was fast fall- ing before the gentlemen designated then to address you had all spoken; and 101 102 First North Carolina Reunion he announceil that those who hatl been so designated and who had not already spoken would be placed as a kind of prefatory annex to the entertainment to be given at the ' ' Battle Ground ' ' today. The Doctor's situation reminded me of a story (although, as you are aware, a North Carolinian, whether resident or non-resident, rarely indulges himself in the luxury of telling a story). An aged brother, seventy -two years old, was superintendent of a Sunday school. An aged minister, likewise sev- enty-two, visited the school; and was by the superintendent called on to pray. He prayed, and prayed, and prayed! When at last he brought his orisons to an end, the superintendent said: "Well, children, so much time has run to waste, we will not have any les- sons today ' '. I must entreat, ladies and gentlemen, that you do not press the analogies of this story too far. For instance; it is not at all intended to be insinuated that Dr. Mclver, although he is indeed venerable in knowledge and wisdom, is likewise so in years and hours. In thoughts and good deeds he has lived long; in days and years not so much so. This day should indeed be memorable. With me surely it will be ever in pleasure remembered when many other pleasant things of the bright beauty of this fair world shall have faded from my view. The first thought of the head and the first feeling of the heart with me today is gladness — gladness that I am today among you, you the sons and daughters of "the glorious Old North State", as well the non-resident as the resident. Once I had the honor to be classed among the latter, the residents; now I am to be classed among the former, the non-residents. Always have I been proud, and today am I proud, to say that I was born in the good old county of Rockingham, in the glorious old state of North Carolina — shall I add, as did an Irishman of his loved city of Dublin — "at a very early period of my life"! A year or so ago, at a gathering in Nevada, I was asked by a gentleman in what State I was born. I replied, " in that State in which the first Declaration of Independence of the British crown was made, and also the first battle of the American Revolution was fought". Are you surprised that I had, after further inquiry, to announce the name North Carolina? Such is history. From what I saw on my hitherward journey in the State, and since arrival in your good city of Greensboro, and heard from the eloquent lips of Governor Ayeock and Colonel Morehead when on yesterday, the first in the name of the State, and the second in the name of the city, gave to us who have wandered that memorable welcome, that genuine heart-welcome, characteristic even of the North Carolinian of the olden time, to that hospitality also so characteristic of the North Carolinian of the olden time — yea; also from what other eloquent lips have said to us yesterday and today — we see that North Carolina has, since the departure of us who have wandered, made progress. Progress indeed in physical things — the useful, the necessary, the convenient, and even the luxuri- ous. But glad indeed are we, the wanderers, to see that she has not lagged in the better things — things intellectual, moral, and spiritual; schools, colleges, printing presses, hospitals, and churches. These, as well as the others, appear to be many in number and good in kind. Of one thing among the improvements I can not refrain from making special mention, to wit: this gloriously famous Guilford Courthouse Battle Ground; happily now redeemed from its sometime obscurity and neglect, and set First North Carolina Reunion 103 forth in light and beauty to be hereafter ever a tribute to the merited valor and worth of Carolinian and Virginian soldiers, and likewise an incentive to the present generation and each future generation ever to imitate their noble exam- ple. For this, I am informed, the greatest honor is due to Judge David Schenck. It is not the lands and houses and mansions and goods and jewels and moneys of our ancestors that constitute the noblest inheritance that we have received from them; it is their good and great thoughts, andjtheir good and great and noble deeds, that make up their best legacy to us. In these they have left us rich indeed. Let us not by our sloth and inattention to them make ourselves poor. I see that you, the residents, have not made yourselves poor; and we, the wanderers, shall endeavor to imitate your example. Somewhere, I have seen it stated that a very large audience assembled to hear Mr. Webster when he made what in history is known as the Bunker-Hill- Monument oration. The crowd pressed around the speaking stand to such an extent that the exercises could not proceed. The efforts of the chairman and those of the committee to get it to move back were unavailing. It was sug- gested that Mr. Webster request the crowd to move back, it being supposed that his great influence with them would make them heed. He did so. Some one in the crowd called out, "Mr. Webster, it is impossible". Mr. Webster replied, "On Bunker Hill, on the Fourth of July, nothing is impossible". It is said that instantly the crowd moved back, with a simultaneous impulse, as if touched with a magic wand! So, ladies and gentlemen, it seems to me today: On this ideally-perfect day, at the Guilford Courthouse Battle Ground (itself as ideally perfect as a Greek grove, peopled with its mythological beings, nymphs and dryads, etc.), as looking into the multitude of earnest and upturned faces of this great audi- ence of brave men and fair women, descendants of the brave and the fair of the dark days of the Revolutionary Period; a few, indeed, those of the gray head and infirm step, being companions of my own youth and struggling early man- hood; I feel that nothing is impossible — nothing! Not even that I, the obscur- est and humblest of those who have wandered; I, whom the untiring energy of your Committee of Management found even away out in the land of the sage- brush, the smallest and most somber of the sisterhood of American States; I, whom they found and honored with an invitation to be present here today; aye, nothing is impossible; not even that I could make a speech! But, ladies and gentlemen, can I do it in the space of time allotted — seven minutes? When I first was informed, on the afternoon of the day before yesterday, that a speech was expected of me here today; and, after a refusal, told that I must make one; my first thought was what shall I, can I, say? That thought has been occurring to me at every moment of leisure since; such moments, too, have been, thanks to the many kindly greetings and cordial welcomes of old and new friends, few. That thought is occurring to me now. What shall I say? You are waiting to hear and I am struggling to say it; and, ladies and gentle- men, I verily believe that you will solve the problem as soon as I. But I, too. like the residents, must make progress in saying it; and O, that the genius of oratory would come for once in a long and troubled life and touch my leaden lips! What is the significance of this occasion? You, ladies and gentlemen resi- dent, have by this occasion shown to us who have wandered what you think of us, in the very kind and courteous and generous invitation that you sent us to be your guests today — sacred word guest, meaning thereby the friend who once was absent but now is present; yet still, present or absent, ever and always a 104 Flrtil Xurth Carolina Reunion friend. We, the wanderers, feel pleased ami houoreil today to be your guests^ guests in a threefold sense; first of the State, as your honored Governor has told us; second of the city, as its distinguished Mayor has informed us; and third of the fireside and the home, as the eyes that have at all times so kindly looked iuto ours continually say to us. But what is it that you have thus shown us? It is that you have remem- bered and loved us. Is it that you could have show^n moref We answer: No; and for this great showing we say truly, gratefully, sincerely, we thank you. Now, can we who have wandered show as much to you? We say we feel as much; but mistrust our skill and ability to show it. You speak your showing liy deed; we can speak ours only by the less-striking word, unless our accepting your invitation and coming to you be deeds of some little significance that we love you. Be pleased to accept them in that light. But words are not useless; they are the signs of things. Please indulge me ill a few words that are significant of things: In June of 1866, I, with sad lieart, turned my footsteps away from the then war-desolated state of North Carolina, to that new and flourishing state at the Westernmost boundary of the great Republic, California. Some months after arrival at the city by the Golden Gate, San Francisco, an incident occurred that I beg you to permit me to relate: It may have some significance to you in the way of expression of the wanderer's thought of you. There was a brilliant evening part}'. I had the honor to be there an invited guest. A very beautiful and highly-accomplished young lady — beautiful and accomplished, indeed, she was; but allow me to add not more so than were ' ' the girls I left behind me ' ' — asked me which I liked the better, North Carolina or California. I "made answer and said": If Azrael, the angel of death, should, while I was in California, take my soul, 1 should endeavor to pursuade him not to take it in a straight line in the per- pendicular up from the city by the Golden Gate to the abode of the blest; but to go with it on an incline to the eastward, until he should reach a spot imme- diately in the perpendicular over a little red hill in Kockingham County, N. C; and there place in my hand the title deed to my "mansion in the skies". That was my sentiment then. What is it now? Well, after a residence of nearly four decades on the Pacific Coast — eleven years in California, the land of gold, and twenty-five in Nevada, the land of silver and gold — should Azrael come while I am in the "land of the sage-brush", I should bespeak him thus: "Lo, Azrael; you, 1 am told, have, as the boys out West say, ' a pull' up there. Though, I am compelled to say, it can not be for your good looks; for I frankly say to you that I have yet to see the man who did not look upon your countenance with horror. It must be then for your acknowledged skill in col- onization, as both tradition and contemporaneous history say that you have been largely instrumental in the colonization of both the upper and also another place. But, however you may have gotten it, you have tlie 'jnill'; and you must help me. I need you with most pressing need. My situation is peculiar; unique; 'in a gang bj' itself. Now, the fact is, I must have two mansions up there where you are going to take me — can't get along without them: one, for reasons already stated, right in the perpendicular over the aforementioned little red hill in Eockingham County, N. C; and the other similarly right over a I'lccayed mining camp in Eureka County, Nev.; and, like Proserpine in the fable, I must be permitted by the authorities up there to spend one half of the celes- ti.al year in the Eureka and the other half in the Kockingham ' mansion in the skies '. ' ' Honorable Robert D. Gilnu r Attorney-General of North Carolina First North Carolina Reunion 105 That, beloved residents, is a somewhat, though feeble, expression of the manner in which we, the wanderers, have felt and do feel towards you, the more sedate and the more stable. Perhaps you may spare a moment to hear a few words as to what others than the North Carolina non-residents think of you. But here for the want of facts I can speak only generally, as to what Westerners sometimes think of Easterners; and by no means specifically, of what Westerners think of North Carolinians. For I know of but one North Carolinian other than myself in Nevada; and as soon as I get back there he and I are going to form a "North Carolina Society". About two years ago a new mining region was discovered in Nye County, Nev. The mines are situated on the side of a bleak, barren mountain, with desert valleys stretching miles and miles away at its foot. The new district was named Tonapah. Within one and one-half years a town of five thousand people has sprung up there. A great many Easterners have gone to it — some from intellectual Boston, some from quiet Pennsylvania, some from busy, bus- tling New York, and some from elsewhere of the East; but so far as I know none from North Carolina. Tonapah is sixty miles from the railroad; and the way thereto is across dry, hot, desert valleys, and over equally-hot and dry mountains. A party of the above-named Easterners came out on their way to Tonapah, and made inquiry as to how they could know the way from the rail- road to the camp. Father Butler told them to have no fear, that the,v could not miss it; for a great many Easterners had passed over during the Summer, and the way was blazed with beer bottles! This is the opinion the Western man entertains on a prominent character- istic of the Eastern man, to wit: his temperance. His opinion of the Eastern man 's characteristic in another direction may perhaps be illustrated by the following: A far Easterner — that is, a Cockney — came out to the mining region; and though on pleasure bent he had yet a cautious mind. Stopping at one of the well-kept mining-region hotels, he rose early as a health measure; and seeing a mountain, as he supposed, but a short distance out, concluded that an ante-breakfast walk to it would promote appe- tite. He set out; but, as is well known, the atmosphere of the mining region of the United States is so pure, so free from moisture, and so packed with ozone or some other scientific something that I know nothing about, that ob.iects seen through it "seem so near and yet they are so far''. On went our tourist liour after hour. The mountain seemed near, but really was still far. With .John Bull tenacity, having once started, he persisted, and finally reached the moun- tain, returning to his hotel calling loudly for an eleven-o'clock breakfast, his physical feeling being, as a delicate young lady said after a long round dance in hot weather, ' ' all of a glow ' '. Now, ladies and gentlemen. North Carolinians, both the resident and the non-resident, I beseech you not here to enter a ton vigorous plea for repose — per- mit me to say this phrase is elegant Nevadaese when a dull speaker is requested by a wearied auditor "to give him a rest", meaning to leave the oratorical bema — I say do not just now make a plea for repose, saying to me that you have heard all that; give us something new or repose. Of course you have heard all that, long ago; and did I not know that you had? But I will "bet the oysters for the mess" that you have not heard all of the story. What you have heard was the story of the tourist of the bygone time; that which I am to tell you is the story of him today — a "current number", so to speak. F. N. C. R.— VIII 106 First North Carolina Reunion But with me, I beg, again to the story. The landlord, kind-hearted soul, carefully explained the atmospheric phenomenon in question, ending with a few words of caution that our tourist should indeed be careful lest through the deceptive atmosphere he sometime lose his life in passing over valleys, moun- tains, and rivers. Our tourist carefully jots down in his note book, "Must be careful" — "Atmosphere very deceptive" — "Objects very distant seem very near" — ' ' May, in consequence, lose life in passing over valleys, mountains, and rivers ' '. Next day he asked his landlord for new scenes of interest and pleasure. Boniface replied that that morning he himself was going in his buggy up the grade to the charming and picturesque little mining town of Snugville; that after a half-hour spent in business there he would go down the grade on the south side of Lake Cascade to the road leading from the hotel to a new mining camp a few miles to the south, in which he was interested; that our tourist could take a seat with him in the buggy, enjoy the beautiful scenery of the drive and of the lake, and get out at the junction of the lake grade and the main road leading south, and then by a four-mile walk northward, during which he would see and cross the beautiful Cascade Kiver, get back again to his hotel in good time and with well-whetted appetite for a rare lunch that had already been ordered for him. The trip was made, and our tourist left at the junction. The landlord went to his mines and returned by the way of Snug- ville, completing there the business of the morning; and by noon reached the hotel, expecting to see our hero, if not "all aglow" as on the previous morning, yet well prepared with appetite keen for the lunch. To his surprise our tourist had not been seen. Boniface waited hour after hour for him; finally, at three o'clock p. m., set out to see what was the matter; and found our hero sitting with look deji'fted and forlorn on the opposite bank of Cascade River, a stream four feet wide and one foot deep. The landlord called out: "What is the mat- ter? How long have you been here? Why have you not come home for lunch? What are you waiting for?" The tourist, putting his hands to his mouth to form something of a speaking trumpet, responded: "Matter enough; I have been here since eleven o'clock; am hungry as Hades; and am waiting for the blasted ferry boat! ' ' This is often the opinion that the Westerner has as to one characteristic of the Easterner — that he is sometimes after being imprudently caught in "wild- cat" mining speculation likely to become a little over-cautious in legitimate mining enterprises. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen; after thanking you most sincerely for the very kind and courteous attention and reception that you have given me, allow me an additional moment to say that among the many and eloquent tributes of honor, love, and loyalty that were yesterday, and today thus far have been, and hereafter shall be, laid at the feet of our honored mother, the old North State, by her sons, both the resident and the non-resident, none will be more sincere than this humble one of mine, coming from the sage-brush land. As the variegated, brilliant, and gorgeous colors of the trees and undergrowth of your valleys and mountains, and the flowers of your fields and gardens, far outshine and overpass the somber shade of the monotonous sage-brush — if monotony can be properly predicated of a color; so far does the oratory of others outshine and overpass my leaden utterances. But as the unbrilliant hue of the sage-brush has one great merit — that is, it is sempiternal: so my humble love and loyalty to my native state has also one merit— it is unflagging and unending. Mr. SlH'i>ar(l Bryan of Atlanta. Ga. First Nortli Carolina Reunion 107 Again thanking you for the high honor that you have done me; and assur- ing you that should you or any of you or any of the others of those living in the East, the place of light, ever do the sage-brush land the high honor of visiting it (and we earnestly hope that such may be the case), we will see that neither you nor they shall be drowned in Cascade River! I bid you a loving farewell. Address by Shepard Bryan, Esq. Representative of North Carolina Society of Atlatita, Ga. /^^* Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: I was to have responded to the address of welcome, on yesterday, at the Opera House, in behalf of the North Carolina Society of Atlanta. A change in the program placed me on today's list of speakers. Before leaving Atlanta I had prepared a few words of thanks and grateful appreciation to the Eeunion authorities for this occasion and all that it imports. But my speech was spoken by the other speakers. I must have lost my manuscript, for the speakers one after another spoke my speech. They "took and carried away" (as the larceny indictments say) part after part of my speech. Beginning with the Mecklen- burg Declaration; through the Revolutionary war; on through the terrible civil conflict; and ending with the late entanglement with the safEron-hued flag of Spain, speaker after speaker spoke my speech. They left me nothing. They left me bankrupt. They left me speechless; and as I sat and listened and waited for my time to come you may imagine the keen joy and exquisite pleasure of my torture. My condition then, this morning, forcibly reminds me of the Texas Justice of the Peace, who for years was known as ' ' the law west of the Pecos River". The body of a dead man was found in his district, and concealed in his clothes were found by a zealous bailifl: a six-shooter and a twenty-dollar bill. The discovery was reported to the Justice, and he ordered the body brought before him; whereupon he sat in solemn judgment, and gravely decided that the corpse should be fined twenty dollars for carrying concealed weapons, and the pistol be confiscated in the name of the law. You can perhaps understand my feelings as I face you today with my speech — every part of it — spoken; and I bidden nevertheless to speak. While my formal words of thanks are gone, my heart is full. As the repre- sentative of the North Carolina Society of Atlanta, I bring to you fraternal greetings — greetings of love and patriotic friendship. This occasion signifies the deep and abiding love of the mother for her children; and in me, as their messenger, the North Carolina Atlantans send back the token that they love their mother with a tender and lasting affection. I voice their sentiment when I say: North Carolina, mother dear, God's richest blessings rest upon you! In behalf of the same body of Carolinians, and in my own behalf, I return my sincere thanks for the generous, the hospitable, the Carolina welcome that has been today extended to the home-comers. As I look over this splendid multitude of brave men and beautiful women, my heart swells with the thought that I am of the same blood with them; that we have common memories and common hopes; that their fathers and my fathers fought and wrought and suffered and sacrificed that this commonwealth might be, and this Republic have life. 108 First North Carolina Reunion Though separated from the land of our birth, we are ever mindful of the obligation which the nobility of honest Carolina blood lays upon us. As I speak, I recall that we are standing on Guilford Battle Ground, where the ragged Con- tinentals of the Carolina line won for themselves a crown of unfading glory and blazed out the path to Yorktown and American liberty. I remember that their sons charged at Buena Vista, and stormed the heights of Chapultepec. I remember that a generation agone North Carolina gave to a hopeless cause the flower of her youth, and that her immortal legions at Gettysburg and Chicka- mauga poured out their blood for "a nation that rose and fell"; nor can I for- get the sacrifices of her daughters in that awful struggle — their constancy, their devoted patriotism, and their sublime courage. But out of the darkness and gloom of defeat; out of the devastation and was^ of war; with all bitterness forgotten, and forgetting all the animosities of that fratricidal strife; with her eyes set to the future; she has gone about the earnest work of upbuihling and developing, and out of chaos has carved a mighty success. Fortune has led many of her sons and daughters to other States — where they have illustrated the sturdy qualities of their heritage. In the State of Georgia there are more than thirty thousand North Carolinians; and they are leaders. The lumber and turpentine kings of South Georgia; the prosperous planters of Middle Georgia; the business and professional men of North Georgia; number among their leaders many of the men of North Carolina. Atlanta, imperial city of the South, set upon her hills as the beacon-light of progress and industrial achievement, would be poorer indeed could the contributions of Carolina citizenship be blotted from her record. And I am here to affirm that I find among others no quality necessary for the making of a great and populous commonwealth; for the creation of an industrial empire; that the Carolina man does not possess in the highest degree. He has the courage — who doubts it? He has the business daring — listen to the hum of his spindles weaving cloth for the people of the earth; and his State has the raw material of every sort in her fertile fields and in the richness of her forests and mines. But what of all this? The lesson a North Carolinian who has spent the years of his manhood in a proud and successful city would bring to his own people today is this: Let the world know what opportunities North Carolina has for capital and men of character and enterprise. Advertise to the world that here capital can find safe and profitable investment, and men and women homes under fair laws, with fruitful soil, kindly and healthful climate, and every blessing that cheers the heart of man. You have capital, and you have men. But more men and more capital added to the present population and wealth would make this State the richest and most prosperous, as it is the fairest, in the world. In my city we talk a great deal about "the Atlanta spirit" — and liy this is meant the hearty co-operation of all her citizens upon any proposition for the moral or material betterment of the city. If it does not already exist let us have the "North Carolina spirit" — the spirit that believes in North Carolina; that realizes her destiny; that will sacrifice personal ends and interests for her good; that will co-operate regardless of party or creed in every work looking to her advancement and glory. This occasion is inspiring. We congratulate and thank those who have originated this home-coming. It is an inspiration and a lesson for those of us from beyond the State. We drink anew at the fountain of our early and best love, and feel again the loving arms of our mother State. We ,orntioii Ccimt First North Carolina Reunion 161 The home-coming non-resident will repair there on the second day of the great Reunion to rekindle at its altar the fiame of love for his old mother State, and to renew his allegiance to the fadeless memories of his patriotic sires, whose valor there wrote in crimson letters "the purple testament of bleeding war ' '. And whilst they linger, both non- resident and resident will strike hands in the patriotic effort to induce the national Government to extend its fostering hand of help in the permanent presei'\-ation of this great battlefield. North Carolina's Contribution to American Citizenship North Carolina has given her lifeblood most freely to the building up of other States. Today 236,037 native-born North Carolinians reside in other Commonwealths. She has contributed to American citizenship the best that the nation has to show. In the colonial period, her people stood boldly for liberty, self-government, freedom from excessive taxation and official tyranny. In adopting the Constitution, she stood for all the amendments, which were afterwards accepted, and which now form the constitutional basis of our liberties. It was her sons, Andrew Jackson and Thomas H. Benton, who wiped out all traditions and tendencies of monarchy and aristocracy, and planted deep in American soil the tree of democracy. It was her son, James K. Polk, who annexed Texas, and extended the American Republic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was her son, William A. Graham, who opened the doors of Japan to civilization, and thus made a beginning of final settlement of the Asiatic question. It was her son, Andrew Johnson, who had the North Carolina grit to jeopardize his great office, by opposing the coercive measures of Reconstruction directed against an integral part of the Union. It was her son, Richard J. Gatling, who promoted peace by invent- ing the death-dealing Gatling gun. Her sons have done great deeds and thought great thoughts wher- ever they have gone. No statesmen have surpassed them in integrity, purity, and patriotism. No soldiers have equaled them in steadfast- ness, endurance, and fortitude. They were born North Carolinians, and trained in North Carolina virtues. They loved the family fireside, and all that the family fireside means. They still love it, and, though they dwell now in cities or on plains, they long to go to the State of their birth, and see again the people who live as they lived in their youth ; to see again the Old North State, where people do not grow old before their time; where youth is buoyant and virile; manhood is strong and sturdy; and old age is full of dignity, honor, and self- respect. All hail to the sons of North Carolina who will come to this our first Reunion ! May they live to come again and again ; and may the Reunion, this year inaugurated, endure and grow greater forever! 162 Marvelous Record of North Carolina from 1890 to 1900 By C. H. Poe lu 1890 North Carolina was sixteenth in rank in population; in 1900 she was fifteenth. In 1890 North Carolina ranked twenty-third in gross value of agri- cultural products; in 1900 she was twentieth. In 1890 North Carolina ranked thirty-first in gross value of agri- cultural products; in 1900 she was twenty-eighth. In other words, during the decade we forged forward one point in population, three points in agriculture, and three points in manufac- tures — a total net gain of seven points in rank among the States. No other Southern State made such a record. In fact, if we are to accept the criterion of progress with which we started out — that of gain in rank among the States in population, gross value of agricul- tural products, and gross value of manufactured products — it appears that North Carolina is not only the most progressive Southern State, but the most progressive old State, North or South. In proof of this, I have gone over the census reports to get a rating in progressiveness of each Commonwealth, and have been as much pleased as astonished to find that North Carolina's net gain of seven points in rank was equaled by no old State, North, South, or West, and by but one new State, Montana (with a net gain of eleven points), and that wonderful new territory, Oklahoma (with a net gain of thirty- two points). Relative Rank of States and Territories Let us see ; considering together the three divisions — population, manufactures, and agriculture — and giving each State credit for the number of points gained in one or more divisions less the number of 163 164 First North Carolina Reunion points lost, if any, in any division, it develops that the following States ranked higher in 1900 than in 1890, by the number of points men- tioned : Arizona, 4; Colorado, 2; Indiana, 3; Iowa, 2; Louisiana, 3; Minne- sota, 4 ; Missouri, 1 ; Montana, 11 ; Nebraska, 6 : North Carolina, 7 ; North Dakota, 6; Ohio, 1; Oklahoma, 32; South Carolina, 1; South Dakota, 1 ; Texas, 3 ; Virginia, 2 -, Washington, 3 ; West Virginia, 5 ; Wisconsin, 4. The following States held exactly the same general rank in 1900 as in 1890 : Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee. The following States declined in population, agriculture, or manu- factures during the decade, so that their general rank was lower in 1900 than in 1890, by the number of points given. I will indicate by letter P, A, and M, in what division the decline occurred: Alabama, P, A, M, 6 ; Arkansas, P, A, M, 3 ; California, A, 3 ; Connecticut, A, 6 ; Delaware, P, A, M, 14 ; District of Columbia, P, A, M, 8 ; Florida, A, M, 5 ; Georgia, A, M, 4 ; Idaho, P, M, C ; Illinois, A, 1 ; Maine, A, JI, 7 ; Indiana, A, 1 ; Massachusetts, P, M, 6 ; Michigan, A, M, 4 ; Mississippi, A, M, 5 ; Nevada, P, A, M, 13 ; New Hampshire, P, A, M, 11 ; New Jer- sey, P, A, 3 ; New Mexico, P, M, 4 ; New York, A, 2 ; Oregon, JI, 6 ; Pennsylvania, A, 3 ; Rhode Island, A, 7 ; Utah, P, A, M, 9 ; Vermont, P, A, 6 ; Wyoming, P, M, 7. Just How North Carolina Gained The reader may wish to know by this time just how far North Caro- lina exceeded not only her 1890 rank, but her 1890 record. Here are the figures : In 1890 our population was 1,617,947 ; in 1900 it was 1,893,810. In 1890 the gross value of our agricultural products was $50,070,- 530 ; in 1900 it was .$89,309,638— nearly doubled in ten years. In 1890 the gross value of our manufactured products was $40,375,- 450 ; in 1900 it was $94,919,663— more than doubled in ten years. In 1890 the per capita value of our agricultural products was $31; in 1900, $47. In 1890 the per capita value of our manufactured products was $25 ; in 1900, $50. What It All Means Let us not overlook the plain teaching of these figures. The.v indi- cate unmistakably that North Carolina is forging more rapidly to the (Iroui) of Prominent Noi-th Carolina Educators President George T. Winston, of A. S; M. College President Charles L. Taylor, of Wake Forest College President John C. Kilgo, of Trinity College President F. P. Venahle, of the University of North Carolina President Lyndon h. Hobte, of Gnilford College President W. W. Staley, of Elon College President Henry Louis Smith, of Davidson College i Jl First North Carolina Reunion 165 front than any other old State ; that it is a new country, or, at any rate, a country with a new consciousness of power and a new realization of unused resources that is sending it forward with more rapid strides toward the top than any other State east of the Rockies is taking. It has long been said that ' ' North Carolina is a good State to move from". The verdict of the census is that it is now one of the best States iu the Union to move to. The State's Song — The Old North State Gastmi Carolina, Carolina! Heaven's blessings attend her! While we live we will cherish, protect, and defend her ; Though the seorner may sneer at and witlings defame her. Our hearts swell with gladness whenever we name her. Hurrah! Hurrah! the Old North State forever! Hurrah ! Hurrah ! The good Old North State. Though she envies not others their merited glory, Say, whose name stands foremost in Liberty's story? Though too true to herself e 'er to crouch to oppression, Who can yield to just rule a more loyal submission? Hurrah, etc. Plain and artless her sons, but whose doors open faster At the knock of a stranger, or the tale of disaster? How like to the rudeness of their dear native mountains, With rich ore in their bosoms, and life in their fountains. Hurrah, etc. And her daughters, the Queen of the Forest resembling. So graceful, so constant, yet to gentlest breath trembling. And true lightwood at heart, let the match be applied them. How they kindle and flame ! Oh ! none know but who 've tried them. Hurrah, etc. Then let all those who love us, love the land that we live in (As happy a region as on this side of Heaven), Where Plenty and Freedom, Love and Peace smile before us. Raise aloud, raise together, the heart-thrilling chorus. Hurrah, etc. 166 Greensboro's Phenomenal Growth Since 1890 Population in 1890, 3,317. Population in 1900, 10,035. Including the mill villages and other suburban settlements, the pop- ulation in 1903 is 22,000. Elevation above sea level, 843 feet. Greensboro's Location In the center of North Carolina. In the midst of the world's finest bright-tobacco belt. In the center of one of the largest and most prosperous cotton-mill sections in the South. In the heart of the furniture-manufacturing district in the South. In the midst of a fine grain region, and on the edge of the cotton- fields. In the center of the finest fruit-growing section in the entire South. Within a radius of sixty miles there are 600,000 people. Eighty-three cotton mills, with over $10,000,000 capital, 28,000 looms, and 700,000 spindles. Sixty-four furniture and chair factories. Twelve hosiery mills. One carpet mill. Dozens of all kinds of lumber manufacturing plants, tobacco fac- tories, and other industries. Some of the Things Greensboro Has 1. Railroad facilities equal to those of any town of like popula- tion in the United States. Seven lines extend from the city in as many different directions, giving unrivaled freight and passenger service. 167 168 First North Carolina Reunion Forty-two passenger and dozens of freight trains leave Greensboro every day. The city is on the main trunk line of the great Southern Railway, and is one of that system's most important points. 2. Forty-two separate and distinct diversified manufacturing plants, embracing cotton, tobacco, shoes, pants and overalls, carpets, shirts, furniture, bobbins, shuttles, cornice work, wagons and carriages, exhaust- and blow-pipes, dust-fans and dust-collectors, sash, doors, and blinds, mantels and tables, brooms, sawmills, cane-mills, plows, cast- -if' ^ .PITTSBURG ■-- PA. ;-»vt SKiRRlSBURG / „ io£l-PHl(i CINCINNari .-'I, 4'* V » "BALTIMORE \/ 3I9M1 * WASHINGTON feiMI u4'Afet/„5 MIDOLESBOR09 .«^^*^*; JfTttS»' GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF CREENSSORO, NX, \V(T;-l njluilOAO CONNECTIONS A«0 DISTANCES.. ings, stoves, candy, chewing gum, ice, etc. The products of these con- cerns find a ready market all over this country and in foreign lands. 3. Eighteen wholesale houses, supplying a large territory with dry goods, notions, shoes, drugs, groceries, hardware, mill supplies, etc. 4. Two hundred and forty-three retail stores. 5. Five separate banking houses, with assets of .$2,500,550. 6. The home oSices of two life insurance and five fire insurance companies. 7. Five separate colleges and six graded schools, with an aggregate yearly attendance of 3,200 students. Dr. Allison Hodges President of North Carolina .Society of Kichnionci, Va. First North Carolina Eeunion 169 8. Twenty-six church edifices. 9. Two companies furnishing: electricity for light and power, one company furnishing gas for light and power, water works (owned by the city), sewerage, a well-equipped fire department, and a new and up-to-date electric street railway. 10. The most modern theatre between Washington and Atlanta. 11. A new city hall and market house, just completed at a cost of $35,000. 12. A government building for the accommodation of the post- ofiice and United States courts, the resident United States district judge, and other court officers. 13. Five first-class hotels give Greensboro the best hotel accommo- dations of any city of its size in the South. 14. One of the handsomest and most-conveniently-arranged rail- way passenger depots in the South. 15. Two daily newspapers, one secular weekly, two religious week- lies, one semi-monthly magazine. — Colonel Al Fairbrother. "Pat" Winston's Last Message Extradl from letter of the late Honorable P. H. Winston Of Spokane, Wash. I can not go, but if I were present I would say: North Carolinians: hold fast to the teachings and ti'aditions of your fore- fathers. A century of inherited learning, virtue, and valor has made you of all peoples the happiest, of all peoples the most homogeneous. Nowhere is there a people with habits, faiths, and hopes so fi.xed. Nowhere is there a people whose past is more glorious; whose future is more secure. Your commonwealth is built upon imperishable foundations; law, religion, virtue, and learning — these are its cornerstones. The same spirit that animated your forefathers to bear the flag of revolution at Guilford Courthouse — that animated your fathers to bear the banner of the "Lost Cause" at Gettysburg — still dwells within your breasts. Across a continent, from a State where now lives a son of Zebulon B. Vance and a son of Patrick H. Winston, I have come to breathe once more the sweet air of childhood, and mingle once more with the companions of schoolboy days. I love your State — my State; I love its history, f\ill of glorious annals; I love its dead — matchless galaxy of greatness; I love its living. I-. N. C. R.—XII An Epitome Discovered in 1584 by Amidas and Barlowe. Temporarily colon- ized in 1585 by people sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh. Permanently settled in 1653 by colonists on the banks of the Chowan and Roanoke. Governed by the Lord Proprietors between 1663 and 1729. Governed by the Crown from 1729 to 1775. Self-governed from 1775 to 1789, when it became a member of the Union. Such is the historical etching of the State of North Carolina. But how inadequate are the outlines ! The true lines and colors are to be foimd in that portrait which but seldom meets the gaze of the great, searching, discriminating world. All epitome of material achievements may be given in a few typical figures. Because of the wanderings of her sons, the population of North Carolina increased during the past twenty years but thirty -five per cent., while that of the United States increased fifty-two per cent. But, in spite of the wanderings of her sons, thus reflected in the com- paratively small rate of increase in population, the State increased the value of its agricultural products seventy-two per cent., as against one hundred and thirteen per cent, for the whole country ; and the value of its manufactured products three hundred and seventy-two per cent., as against one hundred and forty-two per cent, for the whole country. At the same time, it reduced its white illiteracy from thirty-one and five-tenths per cent, to nineteen and four-tenths per cent., and its negro illiterac.y from seventy-seven and four-tenths per cent, to forty-seven and six-tenths per cent. ; and, as the Reunion itself demonstrated, retained its quota of orators. — Editor and Compiler. 170 The Purest Anglo-Saxon State on the Globe " Once a Tarheel, Always a Tarheel " Extract Jrom Speech qf President George T. Whiston, before the North Carolina Society of New York It has often been asked ' ' what is a Tarheel ? ' ' The first description of a Tarheel is given by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. When Achilles was born, his mother Thetis, to make him immortal, took him by the heels and dipped him in the river Styx, now known as Tar River. The magic water rendered his body invulnerable. But Thetis forgot to stick his heels under, so Achilles was mortal in the heels, and the well-aimed arrow of Paris struck him on the shins, and laid him low. Achilles was not a Tarheel, but his story gives us a satisfactory definition of a Tarheel, as follows: "A Tarheel is the sort of heel that the other fellow hasn't got." A negative definition is better than none. You have all heard the definition of horse-sense. "Horse-sense — the kind of sense a jackass hasn't got." Achilles, for all his brag and blas- ter, was weak in his shins ; was most likely an Afro-Grecian : in North Carolina today he would travel in the Jim Crow car. It has been said that North Carolina is a good State to move from. The Colonijil Governors found it so; and Cornwallis, after the battle of Guilford, was of the same opinion. It is a good State to move from, because a good State to be born and raised in. A man who has lived in North Carolina twenty-five j^ears is thereby qualified to be Governor of any other State. If to twenty-five years in North Carolina is added twenty-five years in Tennessee, there is no limit to the power of such a man. Only three men ever did it, and each of them became Presi- dent — Jackson, Polk, and Johnson. The Old North State is a Nursery of Men. People have moved from North Carolina to every other State in the Union. But few have moved to North Carolina. It is not easy for a man to break into the Old North State. It takes him a year to find out who to write to for information. Then the correspondence lasts a 171 172 Fi7-st North Carolina Rt union year. Then the newspapers announce that he is coniino;, and the people discuss it. Finally he starts, and all the trains miss connection as soon as they enter the State. Unless a prospective inunigrant starts for North Carolina before he is grown, he will be an old man on his arrival. North Carolinians are mighty particular about receiving strangers; they wish to know with whom they associate. Anybody can get out of North Carolina, but it requires a great deal of talent and character to get into the State. Less than one-half of one per cent, of our popula- tion is foreign born, not one person in 200. "We are the purest bred Anglo-Saxon community on the globe. The Old North State has made wonderful progress during the past thirty years. She is now leading the South in rate of progress. She is learning the secret of community power. Formerly the individual was everything; it was Gaston, Badger, Mangura, Graham, or More- head. Now the community is supreme; one hears no longer of indi- viduals, but of communities — of Durham, Charlotte, Asheville, High Point, Winston-Salem. Greensboro. The whole is greater than any of its parts. The community is greater than any individual. The New North State is a State of Community Powers ; of public schools, public libraries, public roads, all for public use, supported by public taxation. This is government of the people, by the people, for the people ; this is genuine Democracy. In the coming years the North State will combine the strong character of individualism which marked the Old North State, with the strong power of community action, which is making the New North State. ^^ "3^ I lonoralik- Hoke Sniilli Secretary of the Interior Diiriii;j: the Second Cleveland Administration Song of Scattered Sons Btf John Wilbur Jenkins From mount and valley, laud and sea, Their longing eyes look back to thee. Denied thine arms for many a year. They ask thy blessing, Mother Dear. Some sun-scorched in the Desert's waste, Some frozen by the Northwind's blast; Grim faces that have braved the brine. Dark hands that dug deep in the mine ; Those who found gold on every strand And those who come with empty hands — The step is slow, the hair is gray — World-weary since they went away. Some in strange lands found wealth and fame. And others graves without a name. These victors — those beside the way- Forget not one this Memory-Day. Where the blue mountains kiss the sky. In green fields that in Piedmont lie. Where hungry Hatteras gnaws the sea — Land of the gentle, frank, and free — Today the toast and song and cheer Are mingled with the tender tear ; For some we loved are in the grave. Some youthful, noble, loving, brave, Proud seious of this clear-eyed race That looks the world straight in the face. As we disperse to far-off toil, Thank God we sprang from her great soil. Baltimore, September 25, 1903. 173 The Coming Day From the Top of Pisgah, Western North Carolina B>/ D. C. Waddell The cool Dawn, in silent softness, is slowly drifting. Drifting toward the coming day : The old peaks, in distant dimness, are slumbering, Sliunbering where the white mists lay. Soft and low, the night winds blow ; The heart of the night is sighing; Her pride of stars and silver bars Over the skies are dying. The red East, in crimson richness is widely lifting, Lifting the archway of the day ; The old peaks in mighty grandeur are towering, Towering where the white mists lay. Fresh and sweet, on dewy feet. The winds of mom are playing; They ripple the mist, and listing — list! Over the earth are straying. The sunlight, in radiant brightness is swift!}' sifting, Sifting the .yellow beams of day ; The old peaks, in opal splendors are glittering. Glittering where the white mists lay. Far and wide, on every side, The white mist is swaying; Across the spray, as it circles away, The rainbows are playing. Far away, in the light of day, The snowy mist is twining; In the valleys below, where wild ferns grow, The sun is brightly shining. Greensboro, N. C, September 25. 174 To Her Sons Who Have Wandered Afar By Robert Dick Douglas, Corresponding Secretary To her sons who have wandered afar, Who have gone from the town or the farm To run with the swift, to fight with the strong, To win life's battle, however long, With tireless brain and arm, The Old North State sends greetings ; And bids them now come home. "Come back", she says, "to your mother; Come back while yet ye may ; Come back to the land that gave ye birth, And tread the dearest spot on earth, In the old familiar way ; Come, clasp the hands of your boyhood friends, Tho' it be for only a day." "Come, see what my sons have wrought. My sons whom ye left behind; For the strong, red blood that sent ye forth. Into the West or South or North, In the veins of these ye '11 find — The self -same blood that in life or death Ye all together bind." "Then come to me every one; Gather from near and far; For tho' ye 're scattered from sea to sea Your mother's love will ever be As true as the polar star ; And I thank the God who made all men For the manner of men ye are. ' ' 175 The Wanderer Back Home By John Henry Boner Back in the Old North State, Back to the place of his birth, Back throiigh the piues' colonnaded gate To the dearest spot on earth. No sweeter joy can a star feel When into the sky it thrills Than the rapture that wings a Tarheel Come back to his native hills. From coast to nioiinlain heights Old North Carolina lies, A corniicopia of delights Under her summer skies, And autumn gives rich treasure To the overflowing horn. Adding a juicy measure Of grape and rye and corn. In June a tree so fragrant Scents the delicious air That busiest bees grow vagrant And doze in its blossoms fair. ' ' Persimmons ! ' ' the wanderer cries ; And along time's frosted track The luscious purple fruit he spies, And boyhood 's days drift back ! "With fall conies the burst of the cartridge ; The squirrel and rabbit are his; DoMTi tumbles the whirring partridge, And the cook makes the wild diick siz ; But for these not so much does he care, No matter how dainty the caters; Just seat him fair in an old splint chair And give him 'possum and taters. 176 ^^^^«>k^H^rfM«M idMA^^ i^i^^^ JUL J906 uiinimii iiiiiii. : LIBRARY OF CONGRESS I II II II I 014 419 385 4