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Lectures and addresses. Cumback, Will. (William), 1829–1905 
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Will Cumback

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LECTURES AND ADDRESSES.

BY

WILL CUMBACK

.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY

JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D.

CINCINNATI:
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY CRANSTON & CURTS.
1892.

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Copyright
BY WILL CUMBACK,
1892.

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To my Wife,
MARTHA H. CUMBACK,
and my Daughter,
ELLA J. LOVETT,
and my Son,
WILL CUMBACK,
This Book is Affectionately Dedicated.

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CONTENTS.

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INTRODUCTION.

AMONG the offices of friendship none is more agreeable, none more consistent with the better parts of our intellectual and spiritual nature, than that which suggests the introduction of an author's book—gift of his brain and heart—to the public by some one of his associates. In such a case esteem and affectionate regard are the sentiments which inspire the choice, and to a large degree determine the character of the product. It is as if friend should accompany friend on the sunny morning of his marriage-day, walking at times a few steps before him, and giving him a hand, if somewhere the path be narrow, and saying at the door of the crowded church, "This is our guest, the groom."

It is a sentiment, a motive such as this, which provokes the present introduction, and gives thereto whatever value and appropriateness it may possess. For a long time the writer of the same and the author of this volume have journeyed much together in the far-reaching highways and byways of the mortal life. Each has known the other up to the period of maturity; each has seen upon the head of the other the vertical sun-rays of the noontide pour down straight from a nearly always cerulean sky; each has wished well to the other; and now it is the office of the one page: 8[View Page 8] to say a few words by way of introducing the book of his trusted friend to the public,—it is an office gladly performed, and in every sense delightful.

Some of the relations of Book and Introduction are these: No introduction can make a book of something that is not. No book can be created, or even be born again, by what another may say about it. There is nothing more absolute, nothing more independent, nothing that more completely is or is not than a book. Many things are factitious. They are made—caused to be. Contrivance, as it respects many human enterprises, goes very far; but a book is essential; that is, it is a thing of its own essence and life. If it have no essence, no life, neither the one nor the other can be given thereto by any extraneous agency. If a book is, it is. If it is not, why then the deep saith, It is not in me, and the sea saith, It is not in me.

True it is, however, that while an introduction may not make the book, or to any considerable degree conduce to its existence, it may mar it. It is one thing to make, quite another thing to mar. The office of an introduction is to say to the world: "This is a book. It has certain qualities and worth. Take it and read it, and you shall be better thereby,"—to say this, and to say it well, appropriately, modestly, firmly, as one would introduce his friend in a public assembly. But suppose the introduction be bad in matter and form? How greatly, in that event, will the effect be marred! How great the difference between the introduction good and the introduction indifferent, mouthy, and maudlin—dreary, and devoid of delicate taste!

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Of the book and the introduction to the book this other thing also may well be said: that the former is, in many instances, the only source of merit and meaning to the latter. Indeed it is well that the introduction should derive its life and sense and sentiment wholly from the thing introduced. Here again the analogy is from the office of friend and friend before the public. When the great man comes to the country town, it falls to the lot of the small man to introduce him to the assemblage. What a day that is for the small man! And how the great man must secretly and silently smile—not indeed upon the visible face, but around the heart within—at the manifest illumination and brief glory of him who makes the introduction! In such case also stands, many times, the writer who essays, by words of exposition and eulogium, to send off the book of his friend on its unknown voyage.

Custom has exacted the introduction. As for the book, that is born of the spirit. It may well surprise to note how all things are clad about with a certain penumbra of form and formality. Usage takes the living thing, and clothes it in this way or in that. How strong is habit—habit in the individual first, in society next, and in all history finally! The modern book is the result of an evolution which has been at work from the time when, in remote continents and inconceivably distant ages, men first began to record and transmit their thoughts. History, with her viewless fingers, has wrought at the production of the book with as much interest and constancy as she has wrought at the problem of government, at the institutions of religion, at the structure of language, page: 10[View Page 10] and much more than she has ever wrought at the building of temples and pyramids and tombs.

In the evolution of the book precedent has given much. Current custom has contributed not a little. The fitness of things has added its sum. So that at last the book has come—the book of paper and of print, uttered in our land's language, formulated and devised into chapters and paragraphs, made according to usage and fashion, bearing not only its subject-matter, but its style, and hailing the reader, first of all, with—an Introduction.

What, then, shall we say in the way of introducing this volume to the public? First of all, it is appropriate to give to the author personally such words of praise as his life and work in the great society of the West have so richly deserved. Few men have won a larger or more enduring place in the esteem and affection of the people than has Will Cumback. His acquaintance is as broad as the magnificent country in which for nearly forty years he has been one of the principal actors.

It was the fortune of the writer of this volume to be launched into public life at the age when most men are still reckoned as boys. Scarcely had he passed his majority until he was already a distinguished personage. Elected to Congress at the early age of twenty-five, he was at once thrown into contact with the leading men of the Nation. He arose with the dawn of that great day which was to witness the renovation of the United States. He was a participant in that hot and victorious struggle which resulted in the election of Nathaniel P. Banks to the Republican speakership of the House of page: 11[View Page 11] Representatives. The event was the driving down of the first strong stake in the new pavilion of human liberty; and it is to the everlasting honor of the author of this volume that, young as he was, he was one of those who helped to drive the stake and stretch the first cords around the sacred place which was to be dedicated to the freedom of all men and the perpetuity of the American Union.

Since his first introduction to public life, Will Cumback has been almost constantly in the conspicuous view of the people. This is said, not only of the people of his own State, but of all the States west of the Alleghanies. Few men have been more abroad than he. In the trying ordeal of the war his life was as busy and useful as that of his great contemporaries. His work as paymaster of the army was one of the most serious and severe ordeals of those days of unmeasured responsibilities and fiery tests of virtue. Through his hands passed in payment to the soldiers who fought our battles more than sixty millions of dollars, and at the close of the trial his accounts were so clear and correct as to elicit the unstinted and exceptional praise of the Government.

This is not the place for any extended biographical notice of the author of the present volume; but we can not forbear to emphasize the extent and variety of his acquaintance with his fellow-men, and the degree of their confidence which he enjoys. There is hardly a considerable town in all the West where his figure is not known, where his voice has not been heard. His life has been pre-eminently that of a public man, whose thoughts and principles and page: 12[View Page 12] conduct alike have been known and read of the people.

In a time when seclusion has almost vanished, and when private life itself has been well-nigh abolished by the illumination of the press and the curious scrutiny of modern society, Colonel Cumback has walked abroad with the proud step of a fearless and invulnerable spirit. His manners and disposition have won upon the affectionate regard of his fellow-men at the same time that his abilities as a writer and speaker have commanded their respect and admiration.

It is one of the striking peculiarities of our age that its thought and its affairs no longer draw asunder. In modern life the thought and the affair are blent together. Ideality no longer floats adrift in one direction and business in another. They are combined rather as spirit and substance in the same character. Life has been unified by the incorporation of its best thought in its best action. One of the most promising and interesting features of the age is the marriage of thought, of literary ability, with the duties and responsibilities of an active public life.

The history of England within the present century furnishes many conspicuous examples of men of that particular type which, if we mistake not, must prevail more and more hereafter—the type which combines within itself, on the one hand, scholarship, information, mental power, and literary activity, with the serious and severe discipline of official life and duty on the other. The intellectual and public history of Great Britain would shine with greatly abated luster if the names of Macaulay and Bulwer, of page: 13[View Page 13] Disraeli and McCarthy and Gladstone were stricken away. These men conspicuously represent the brilliant class of literary statesmen—one of the most attractive, fascinating, and valuable types of manhood known to modern history.

In America this type is unfortunately less prevalent than in England. There has been in our country a strong disposition on the part of a coarse and ignorant public management to keep itself divorced from the higher intelligence, and in particular from the literary genius of the American people. In a country where every man is supposed to be in some sense a politician, it must needs be that the many can, with the power of the ballot, combine to exclude from trust and reputation the more gifted and accomplished sons of the morning. It is at once the hardship and the disgrace of the Republic that it runs in this direction.

The domination of party thus becomes the enemy of the intellectual life in all of its manifestations. The party does not, and will not, think. The battering-rams of the Romans did not think. They were not intelligent. A catapult, whether for throwing stone or throwing mud, has no thought. It has neither perception nor conscience. Whatever force of mind stands behind it and operates its brutal machinery, is, in the nature of the case, as coarse and low, as selfish and sordid as the machine itself. The modern party is a battering-ram of sheer force, a catapult of personal interest and revenge—a thing of violence and destruction, subserving the purposes of civilization only in the sense that physical evil may be said to contribute to the moral welfare of the world.

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Notwithstanding the adverse conditions present in our country, that form of intellectual life which combines itself with public activity has been displayed in instances not a few. Among our public men there is a considerable measure of literary aspiration. Some have risen so high as to understand that literary fame is the most truly immortal of all human monuments. The great leaders of our armies have contributed by their pens to that glorious record in which the story of the American Civil War and its gigantic issues is written for posterity. The real leaders of public affairs—not the ostensible figure-heads of American life—have shared this ambition so conspicuously present in our generals. If Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, Johnston and Longstreet, have written of those immortal events, quarum pars magna fuerunt, so in like manner have Benton and Sumner, Seward and Cox and Blaine, transmitted themselves and their work to posterity by their writings.

Will Cumback has been a publicist of this class. His education and youthful ambitions might well have led him into the broad and open field of literature. Cast as he was into public life, the refinements of letters remained with him, combining with his active and arduous duties, and painting an aureole around his whole official career. During the eighteen years of his official life he wrote much and well on many subjects. Writing, with him, so far from being an irksome, mechanical task, has been a delightful passion. In the intervals of official duty he has ever found an agreeable occupation with his pen.

The personal sympathies, likewise, of the author of this volume have drawn him to literary pursuits and page: 15[View Page 15] literary affiliations. His companionship and confidence have reached rather to men of letters and to the work in which they engage than to those with whom office-getting and office-holding are the principal pursuit. He is better and more widely known among the intellectual classes than he is even in the official circles of public life.

At one time Lieutenant-Governor of Indiana, Colonel Cumback strongly identified himself with his office. As presiding officer of the Senate he became henceforth affectionately known to the people of his own State and throughout the country as Governor Cumback. This title has been fondly cherished and perpetuated by his friends. It seems to have been a case in which the appellative fits the man. The title has remained with him as an honorable and respectful sobriquet, which the public will not willingly let die.

These are but glances at the life and character of one of the best-known and most highly appreciated of our Western public men. Governor Cumback has always had a passion for public speaking. To speak is, with him, so natural as to constitute almost a necessary part of his every-day life. His career for many years has been essentially that of a lecturer, a platform orator, a maker of addresses. The wave of public success has carried him in this relation into almost every State of the Union. It is thus that his acquaintance with the American people has been broadened and deepened until it is almost universal.

Very few men upon the public platform of to-day have addressed so many audiences on so many occasions, with so great success. For him as an orator, the graces of his style, the merits of his subject-matter, page: 16[View Page 16] the magnificence of his voice, and the impressiveness and dignity of his presence on the rostrum, have commanded universal admiration and applause. In his character of lecturer he has traveled from Passamaquoddy to San Diego, and from St. Augustine to Port Angeles, addressing as large and intelligent audiences as have honored almost any orator of the day. As a man of the lyceum and the platform his life has been pre-eminently successful.

It is from this point of view that we obtain one of the best estimates of Governor Cumback's abilities, dispositions, and genius. He has evidently been moved in the activities of his recent years by the passion of being a public teacher. This has been the prevailing motive in determining his career on the platform. He has had the instincts and purposes of a man of the university—we may say the University of Life. He has sought to teach from the rostrum, not so much to instruct technically by the exposition of a given theme in science or the arts, but rather to inculcate and enforce some principle of human conduct tending to reform and the betterment of the age. This is the secret of his inspiration as a man of the platform, and the sufficient explanation of what constitutes the major part of this volume.

Let us say that all public speech in our age derives its true value from, and, if we mistake not, exerts its true influence by, the ethical quality in it. The history of the American lyceum is full of interest. The study has a large value to the student of philosophy as well as the student of mere affairs. The lyceum in America began its work with the public exposition of scientific subjects. At the first the lecturer was a page: 17[View Page 17] teacher of science, explaining by means of written manuscript, diagrams, and charts the philosophical import and governing laws of some group of natural phenomena. From this the range of topics was widened to include social, industrial, political, and finally religious subjects.

The platform at length became a fact in American civilization. The lyceum as an institution was rapidly developed. Lecturers arose by the legion. The rostrum swarmed, first with celebrities, then with speakers of the middle class of talent, and finally with the small—even the microscopic. Lecturing grew suddenly into great public favor. It was the fashion of an epoch. Every town had its hall, every village its platform and its course.

We may not speak lightly of that age in our history which thus brought forth so abundantly of public speech. In a democratic country such an institution as the lyceum must needs flourish with a sudden blossoming and an abundance of green fruit. But we should not fail to note the great impulses in American public opinion which were started and driven like ocean waves by the stress and wind of the rostrum. He who had aught to say might arise and say it. Could he persuade his fellow-men that he was right, he found a following. Could he discover an issue of genuine human interest, then he found a cause. He might be contradicted freely by another whose opinions clashed with his own. The commotion thus produced was one of our fruitful sources of intellectual growth. The phenomena which we here describe antedated the Civil War, ran parallel therewith, reached a climax in the seventh decade, and then began to sink away.

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The close student of our intellectual history as a people will have noted the decline of the lyceum. For a score of years the platform was the rage of the winter-time. No other fact in our current life gained greater attention and popularity than that form of public address known as lecturing. The reaction came afterwards. Several of our great lecturers disappeared from the stage. Among the new aspirants only a few had in them the elements of greatness and strength. A revolt of public sentiment against the lyceum came coincidently with that severe contraction of our currency which passed under the high-sounding name of the resumption of specie payments. Hard times and a pessimistic generation followed in the wake, and for a while it seemed that the lecture-platform was extinct.

For seasons not a few the time went by, and the lecture-course seemed to be a forgotten fact in society. The appearance, however, was fortunately delusive. The platform had not passed away, but was undergoing repairs! As a matter of fact, it had been broken down by the superincumbent pressure of the small. The structure which had been able to sustain two or three Titans in the war epoch had given way under an aggregation of diminutives. Such things happen in the intellectual carpentry of the world. The rostrum, however, was not wrecked, but only rendered untenable to the people of Lilliput. A new lyceum arose in place of the old—more rational, more permanent, less abounding in sensations, less pyrotechnic and iridescent, but better lighted with the lamp of ethical truth and the radiance of enduring day.

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It was out of this historical and intellectual condition that the material of the present volume was evoked. Governor Cumback is one of the products, as well as one of the ornaments, of the new lyceum. He belongs to the age of public speakers who are the survival and residue of the larger and less useful class that were stranded when the old lyceum became a wreck.

The new lyceum rises and flourishes. It has borne as one of its principal fruits the lectures and addresses which compose the subject-matter of the present volume. This is a book of public speech. It is the echo caught from the utterances of one who, in the character of a teacher, addresses his fellow-men from the platform. It is the gathering up of a bundle of sheaves—of summer sheaves not yet quite yellowed with the autumnal frost—from the fresh harvest-field, still smelling sweet with the fragrance of golden wheat and new-cut stubble.

In this field the wealth of the gleaner lies here and there. It is rimmed about with the glorious woods. The strong fence, built by brawny and honest hands, divides it from the unreclaimed forest beyond, and protects it from the inroads of lawless creatures. Above are patches of sunny cloud and the blue curtain of an infinite sky; and in the stubble here and there the mother quail have built their nests or gather about the shocks of heavy grain their broods of dappled offspring.

In the following pages the author has discussed many of the most important questions of the day. This is a book of social science. It deals with society. It recognizes the virtues of society as well as page: 20[View Page 20] its faults and foibles. Society is the theme. It echoes and re-echoes in all these addresses, and is the key-note of the whole. The author himself is nothing if not social in his prevailing sympathies and yearnings. Hardly does he lift up his voice without addressing his thought to the existing social estate. He sees behind the present form and aspect of things another form and aspect more perfect, more sublime. He appeals from the existing condition to the ideal; not indeed to the unattainable, but to that better and nobler condition of things toward which every true and thoughtful spirit reaches as towards a goal.

It is from this point of view that these lectures and addresses must be read and understood in order to be appreciated. The author is an ethical teacher. As to the moral purpose of what is here written there can be no mistake. The whole purport and significance of this volume is an appeal for right and truth, for reform and fraternal good-will among men. The author addresses himself not less to the conscience than to the understanding of his auditors. We say auditors rather than readers, for in these pages the audience is ever present. The speaker is here. The people are gathered. It is evening. The hall is lighted. The subject is announced. Attention is commanded. The theme is touched, and turned, and viewed from many angles, but always in the manner of the orator. Take away this element from the book, and the spirit, the soul, of it departs.

Of all books, perhaps the orator's book is most alive. The orator writes with his audience ever before him. There is the sea of upturned faces. page: 21[View Page 21] Here is the rostrum. The scene is set. As his pen moves, the vision is constantly before him. Such a book has only two of the grammatical persons—the first and the second. The third is wanting. The author does not speak of men, of principles, of things, so much as he speaks to the living intelligence of his fellow-men gathered and warmed with his presence and the sound of his voice. It is you and I, and only rarely they and it.

It is in this spirit and with this intent that Governor Cumback has, in the following pages, taken up many of the most important topics of modern society. He has discussed them with the sense of a philosopher and the soul of a philanthropist. These Lectures and Addresses have been especially effective as one of the motive forces determinative of the public opinion of our day. The honesty and candor of the principles expounded in these pages can no more be doubted than the ability of the writer or the cogency of his argument.

The strongly moral tone pervading every chapter and paragraph of this volume distinguishes it widely and laudably from the majority of books composed, as this is, of popular addresses. The average orator is prone to trim his sails. The motive for doing so is stronger with him than with the recluse of the library. The orator would fain please, as well as instruct and persuade. He would fain have the applause, as well as the admiration, of his auditors. But the auditors are not always in the right. In instances not a few, the ethical teacher must set himself firmly, unyieldingly against the time-honored prejudices and profound bias of them who hear. The page: 22[View Page 22] temptation of the public speaker to yield a little for the sake of favor is very great.

Particularly is this true in the case of one who has taken large part in public life. The political leader must of necessity assume the leadership by standing at the head of the column and shouting a command which is but the unexpressed voice of the phalanx. In a country devoted to democracy, this motive and policy are stronger than in any other. To meet the temptation squarely, to face the wrong when it is popular, to cry aloud and spare not, to utter the truth because it is the truth, to dare unpopularity and detraction for the sake of a righteous cause,—all these argue in him who does it, not only a large measure of courage, but that peculiar moral courage, the lack of which is, if we mistake not, the intellectual and ethical weakness of our age and country.

A careful perusal of these Addresses will show no moral flaw. They are absolutely impervious to the base mildew which appears as applause to-night, but spreads as a canker and mold in the morning. Vainly will the pessimist seek to find in this volume a line or word that does not ring on the moral counter with the clear resonance of the unalloyed coin of the realm. Though in many places the author traverses established opinions, attacks intrenched abuses, does not hesitate to strike with keen sarcasm some hoary respectabilities which still dominate modern society to its hurt, he never for an instant forgets his attitude as a teacher of morality and truth. It is a part of the merited praise of this volume that its tone, its purpose, its end and aim, can in no wise be mistaken.

The major portion of the subject-matter of this page: 23[View Page 23] volume has already been heard by thousands of people. These Addresses have, in their spoken form, been received with applause on many occasions and in many States. The same matter is now transmuted into literature proper. In the literary dress the volume goes to its trial at the hands of the silent reader. It may be confessed that, in this translation from the platform to the library, the ordeal is severe. Many things agreeably said with the graces of oratory, and well received in a situation where what Lord Bacon calls "the idols of the tribe" hold sway, can not bear the trial of intellectual scrutiny at the busy man's evening table or under the scholar's lamp. Many a brilliant paragraph, running its rapid course like the skater's well-draped figure, sails easily and safely over the illogical and treacherous ice-flaws under foot, which would instantly go down, with a crash and splash, to the frozen baptism of rhetorical death, if it dared to pause until the mental gaze could be fixed upon it. Oratory has many illusions that are dispelled in that truthful, candid, and serious print which is the final test of all that we think and say.

If we mistake not, this volume of Lectures and Addresses will suffer less than is commonly the case by translation from the rostrum to the printed page. These orations were composed, in the first place, with conscientious care. They have taken their final form through much revision and study. They have been perfected by use and adaptation until they have reached a style and method not often attained in written addresses. This is to say that they have passed from the strictly oratorical into the literary page: 24[View Page 24] form, and have become a series of Essays on Life and Conduct.

Though the author of this volume has spoken much on occasion—though he has prepared not a few of the following addresses for some particular day and event—the occasional quality is not conspicuous in them. Governor Cumback has selected themes of wider import, and therefore of larger literary capacity, than may be found among the ordinary topics of occasional oratory. A glance at the subjects of these elegant papers will show how large and varied are the themes.

It may be that the verve and piquancy of the strictly occasional address is, to a certain extent, sacrificed by this method; but at the same time there is a clear gain in literary quality and in permanence of interest. If we mistake not, these Addresses will endure. Both the subjects and the treatment are of a kind to warrant us in the reasonable expectation of a future life and interest in these scholarly and able lectures.

To a very large degree this volume reveals the author in its pages. In many kinds of literary work we are unable to discover the writer. In other kinds we catch but brief and uncertain glimpses of his personality. It is so in the drama. It is so to a large degree in history. In biography, likewise, the writer must conceal himself behind his subject. He must not idealize or mythologize his character, or make him other than he was. In no other kind of writing—not even in poetry and fiction—is the author capable of revealing his own spirit and purpose so well as in a volume of addresses. Here, indeed, he page: 25[View Page 25] may not be mistaken for another. Here he is himself displayed. Here he speaks for himself, and not in persona. Here, if he be honest and have a transparent soul, he will reveal not only his intellectual capacity but also that inner ethical nature and religious life which constitute the enduring and immutable basis of his power and individuality.

Of this brief pilgrimage that we call life, no memorial or landmark can be set up by the wayside of mortality more beautiful than the book. The book contains the living thought, almost the life itself, of the writer. How fairer is this to the sight of the pilgrims than is some pallid and sculptured index of death, done in marble, or granite, or bronze! Let us believe that the sons of men are beginning at last to understand that the true monument is not an obelisk of stone.

He who has the lofty ambition to transmit himself to the century following—to make the acquaintance of the unborn, to walk hand in hand with the sons and daughters of another age—must freely commit his living part, his thought, his spirit, his best hope to the custody of the waters. This he does by sending abroad his book—his book wherein the far-off day may see reflected, not so much his face and form, as the outline of that immortal and winged creature which sits enthroned in the glow of his brain.

Gladly do we, in this half-cursive manner, send forth to the public, with words of good cheer, this interesting and valuable contribution to the oratorical literature of our period. We doubt not that this volume will receive—as it deserves to receive—at the hands of the critical and the general reader a hearty page: 26[View Page 26] welcome. The particular charm and glory of literary effort is that the brutal law of competition can never be laid upon it! Here no man crowds another from his pedestal. Here no man builds a throne for another to occupy. Here none toils and sorrows to gather the jewels and weave a crown for the brows of another. No true book ever yet thrust another from its place. No real product of literary genius ever made less cordial and generous the opportunity of another. On the contrary, literary taste and yearning grow with all the fruits they feed upon. There is room for this book.

  • "There is place in the land of your labor,
  • There is room in your world of delight,
  • Where Change has not Sorrow for neighbor,
  • And day has not night."

There is room for this book, and there is room for its author. There is an ample and gracious place for both in the luminous thought and the open heart of this best of all the ages and among this truest of all the peoples.

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