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AT THE

PLYMOUTH FESTIVAL,

ON

THE FIRST OF AUGUST, 1853,

IN COMMEMORATION OF

THE EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS.

BY

Ꭼ Ꭰ Ꮃ Ꭺ Ꭱ Ꭰ Ꭼ Ꮩ Ꭼ Ꭱ Ꭼ Ꭲ Ꭲ .

BOSTON:

CROSBY, NICHOLS, AND COMPANY,

111 WASHINGTON STREET.

CAMBRIDGE:

METCALF AND COMPANY, FRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

REMARKS.

You have been good enough, Mr. President, to intimate that, among our numerous honored guests, (to whom your complimentary remarks, with possibly a single exception, might have applied with as much justice as to myself,) I am the individual to whom you look, to respond to the toast that has just been announced. I rise to obey the call. It is true that there is a single circumstance for which it is possible that the allusion may be more exclusively applicable to me than to any other gentleman present. It is most true, that, on one pleasant occasion on which I have been at this delightful and beloved Plymouth, I suggested that it might be expedient, not always, but occasionally, to transfer the celebration of the great day from the winter to the summer season. Supposing that to be the allusion which you had in your mind, I feel that I may without impropriety obey your call by rising to respond to the toast that has just been given.

It is now hard upon thirty years since I had the honor, on the 22d of December, to address the sons and daughters of the Pilgrims, assembled at this place. I deemed it a peculiar privilege and honor. I deem it, sir, a still greater privilege to find myself here on this joyous occasion, and to be permitted to participate in this happy festival, where we have an attendance of so many distinguished friends and fellow-citizens from distant parts of the country,—from almost every State in the Union, sir, you have already told us; where we are favored with the company of the representatives of the New England Society of New York, one of those institutions which are carrying the name and principles of the Pilgrims to the farthest ends of the land; where we are grat ified with the presence of our military friends from the same city, the great commercial emporium of the United States; where we are honored by so much of the gravity, the dignity, and the character of the community, and are favored with the presence of so much of its beauty, grace, and loveliness.

I do indeed, sir, feel it to be a privilege to be here under these circumstances, and I deem myself most highly honored in being called upon to respond to the toast which you have just announced, in commemoration of the embarkation of the Pilgrims, and its results. The theme is vast; I shrink from it; I know not where to begin, or where to end. It seems to me, sir, that you yourself, in the remarks with which you have favored the company, struck the keynote of this great theme, in alluding to the state of

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