look down upon the visitor when the weather is favorable.

Benjamin Franklin was baptized and attended worship here, prior to his
wonderful invention of lightning. Here on each succeeding Sabbath sat the
man who afterwards snared the forked lightning with a string and put it
in a jug for future generations. Here Whitefield preached and the rebels
discussed the tyranny of the British king. Warren delivered his famous
speech here upon the anniversary of the Boston massacre and the "tea
party" organized in this same building. Two hundred years ago exactly,
the British used the Old South as a military riding school, although a
majority of the people of Boston were not in favor of it.

It would be well to pause here and consider the trying situation in which
our ancestors were placed at that time. Coming to Massachusetts as they
did, at a time when the country was new and prices extremely high, they
had hoped to escape from oppression and establish themselves so far away
from the tyrant that he could not come over here and disturb them without
suffering from the extreme nausea incident to a long sea voyage. Alas,
however, when they landed at Plymouth rock there was not a decent hotel in
the place. The same stern and rock-bound coast which may be discovered
along the Atlantic sea-board to-day was there, and a cruel, relentless sky
frowned upon their endeavors.

Where prosperous cities now flaunt to the sky their proud domes and
floating debts, the rank jimson weed nodded in the wind and the pumpkin
pie of to-day still slumbered in the bosom of the future. What glorious
facts have, under the benign influence of fostering centuries, been born
of apparent impossibility. What giant certainties have grown through these
years from the seeds of doubt and discouragement and uncertainty! (Big
firecrackers and applause.)