CENTENNIAL ODE. (Written by W. Stanwood Field.) Mountains, hills, and valleys, Back into memory's chain, Gone are our boyhood's old pleasures, years will not come again. Those Hillsides covered with flowers, And many gone on before; Many are tilling your valleys, Sumner, dear old Sumner, Be bright thy coming day, Grand the future century As this that's passed away. Loyal may we be forever, Faithfully seeking our crown, True to ourselves and our kindred, True to old Sumner our town. HISTORICAL ADDRESS. BY REV. LUCIEN MOORE ROBINSON. "We walk today the halls of story, Mid pictures of the olden time, And voices, from an ancient glory That charmes us like a silver chime." "A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors, will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered by remote decendants.' MACAULAY. It is a sure mark of savagery and barbarism not to care for the past or provide for the future. The savage lives for his little day, and his horizon is bounded by his own life, he has no records of the past and knows not how he came to be where he is, and leaves no footprints on the sands of time, which in the future some brother man may see and take heart again. He lives in and for the present and for that alone, not knowing whence he came and caring little whither he goeth. But with the advent of civilization there comes a most marked change in the attitude of man toward his past history and his future reputation. If we look to the oldest civilization of the world, in that wonderful mysterious valley of the Nile, there we find monuments of stone and records in the hardened clay, without which we of this day would be in total ignorance of a people whose arts and sciences are the wonder even of our boasted civilization. All history is but a record of the past and no nation, or country, or family, can have a history unless their deeds and words have been preserved in enduring monuments, graven in brass, cut in polished stone, or written on parchment. Gazing backward along the track of past ages of the world's history, we note with interest the changes wrought by the passage of time. We behold as in a magic mirror the mighty men of bygone times. "We enter the tent of the general, talk with the philosopher, and listen to the poet." But amid that throng are also our own ancestors, and how eagerly do we scan the multitude to discern their forms, and how gladly would we question them as Dante or Virgil did of old, about their life while here in the flesh. "We delight to examine into their character and actions and as we find them worthy or unworthy our hearts swell with pride or our cheeks glow with shame," we treasure up in memory their deeds and recall their sayings. The very instinct of our nature binds us to the past and links our fates with those of our forefathers. We are all children of the ages, inheritors of the past. We meet today to commemorate a hundred years of the history of a town. A space of time short in comparison with the long ages of the past, yet the utmost span of one human life. And what a century it has been! To us it seems that this Nineteenth Century is the culmination of all civilization; in it the nations have made the greatest progress, the world has seen the most wonderful inventions, and the people of all nations have drawn closer together. But the story of this town does not begin with the 13th of June 1798; that day, indeed, marks the ending of one epoch and the beginning of another. It was on that date that the vigorous young plantation received its freedom suit, and having reached its majority took its place among its fellow-members of that great Commonwealth, extending from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Let us not forget, however, in our thanksgiving for a hundred years of growth and prosperity, those early days of struggle and hardship, when, like Israel of old, the land was yet to be subdued, when there was need of courageous hearts and strong hands, of perseverance and pluck, of earnest and almost ceaseless toil. The story of these early years begins in that most important era of our country's history, the War for Independence. The sound of that "shot which was heard around the world," called forth from their quiet firesides those men who after seven years of fighting to win their freedom and establish in this western world a new "Republic of freemen," were \to be the founders of this town; to set up here in the › wilderness that "cradle of liberty," the New England town-meeting. When the success of the war was assured the citizen soldiers returned to their homes, often to find them in a very unsettled state; the cultivation of the farm had been abandoned, the mill and the workshop were out of repair; they had been forced to receive their pay in påper money worth scarce a fortieth of its face value; the commercial and financial world was in confusion; it was a time of change. For a century and a half previous to this, however, son had succeeded father in regular rotation on the lands of their ancestors, and there had been no inclination to wander from the old homestead. But now for seven years many of the younger men had tramped in the army from the northern wilderness of Maine and Canada to the great plains of New Jersey and Maryland, and the swamps of the Southland. A restless spirit was begotten in them which made them no longer content to sit by the old ancestral hearthstone. These days immediately succeeding the War for Independence were days of emigration and new settlements in the wilderness which stretched almost unbroken from the shores of the Atlantic back to the St. Lawrence. But before describing the first |