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The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) by Various
page 88 of 537 (16%)
to wish themselves again at home."

Children of these exalted Pilgrims! Is there one among you who can
hear the simple and pathetic energy of these expressions without
tenderness and admiration? Venerated shades of our forefathers! No,
ye were, indeed, not ordinary men! That country which had ejected
you so cruelly from her bosom you still delighted to contemplate in
the character of an affectionate and beloved mother. The sacred bond
which knit you together was indissoluble while you lived; and oh,
may it be to your descendants the example and the pledge of harmony
to the latest period of time! The difficulties and dangers, which so
often had defeated attempts of similar establishments, were unable
to subdue souls tempered like yours. You heard the rigid
interdictions; you saw the menacing forms of toil and danger,
forbidding your access to this land of promise; but you heard
without dismay; you saw and disdained retreat. Firm and undaunted in
the confidence of that sacred bond; conscious of the purity, and
convinced of the importance of your motives, you put your trust in
the protecting shield of Providence, and smiled defiance at the
combining terrors of human malice and of elemental strife. These, in
the accomplishment of your undertaking, you were summoned to
encounter in their most hideous forms; these you met with that
fortitude, and combatted with that perseverance, which you had
promised in their anticipation; these you completely vanquished in
establishing the foundations of New England, and the day which we
now commemorate is the perpetual memorial of your triumph.

It were an occupation peculiarly pleasing to cull from our early
historians, and exhibit before you every detail of this transaction;
to carry you in imagination on board their bark at the first moment
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