which His Honor the Mayor is understood to be a closely attentive
listener, we have at least the consolation of knowing that the talking
countries are the free countries, and that the English-speaking races
are the invincible legions of liberty.

The sentiment which you have read, Mr. Chairman, describes in a few
comprehensive words the historic characteristics of the English-speaking
race. That it is the founder of commonwealths, let the miracle of empire
which we have wrought upon the Western Continent attest:--its advance
from the seaboard with the rifle and the ax, the plow and the shuttle,
the teapot and the Bible, the rocking-chair and the spelling-book, the
bath-tub and a free constitution, sweeping across the Alleghanies,
over-spreading the prairies and pushing on until the dash of the
Atlantic in their ears dies in the murmur of the Pacific; and as the
wonderful Goddess of the old mythology touched earth, flowers and fruits
answered her footfall, so in the long trail of this advancing race, it
has left clusters of happy States, teeming with a population, man by
man, more intelligent and prosperous than ever before the sun shone
upon, and each remoter camp of that triumphal march is but a further
outpost of English-speaking civilization.

That it is the pioneer of progress, is written all over the globe to the
utmost islands of the sea, and upon every page of the history of civil
and religious and commercial freedom. Every factory that hums with
marvelous machinery, every railway and steamer, every telegraph and
telephone, the changed systems of agriculture, the endless and
universal throb and heat of magical invention, are, in their larger
part, but the expression of the genius of the race that with Watts drew
from the airiest vapor the mightiest of motive powers, with Franklin
leashed the lightning, and with Morse outfabled fairy lore. The race