reap the corn, shortly shall hurry from its banks as did their forefathers. "Man's life," said the Witan to the Saxon king, "is the sparrow that enters at a window, flutters round the house, and flies out at another, and none knoweth whence he came, or whither he goes."1Open page The more reason that we should give to our being what permanence we can;—that we should recall the Past, and expect the Future.
Yet the race survives whilst the individual dies. In the country, without any interference of the law, the agricultural life favors the permanence of families. Here are still around me the lineal descendants of the first settlers of this town. Here is Blood, Flint, Willard, Meriam, Wood, Hosmer, Barrett, Wheeler, Jones, Brown, Buttrick, Brooks, Stow, Hoar, Heywood, Hunt, Miles,—the names of the inhabitants for the first thirty years; and the family is in many cases represented, when the name is not. If the name of Bulkeley is wanting, the honor you have done me this day, in making me your organ, testifies your persevering kindness to his blood.2Open page
I shall not be expected, on this occasion, to repeat the details of that oppression which drove our fathers out hither. Yet the town of Concord
