As Lincoln finishes speaking, two men in modern dress come
toward the rock, looking seaward.
The first speaker:
"This was the port of entry of our Freedom.
Men brought it in a box of alabaster
And broke the box and spilled it to the West,
Here on the granite wharf prepared for them.
Second speaker:
"And so we have it."
Firstspeaker:
"Have it to achieve;
We have it as they had it in their day,
A little in the grasp - more to achieve."
Then we hear these significant words:
"I wonder what the Pilgrims if they came
Would say to us, as Freemen? Is our freedom
Their freedom as they left it to our keeping,
Or would they know their own in modern guise?
Across the back of the field to the grand triumphal strains of
martial music pass the flags of the allies, so lighted that they
show brilliantly. Nearer move the French and British flags, and
then all wave and beckon. There follows a hush. Suddenly from
far out on the Mayflower a bugle calls in the darkness and light
begins to glow on the vessel, but very faintly.
Then again the voice from the Rock is heard: "The path of the
Mayflower must be forever free." Forty-eight young women bear
the state flags. The pageant ground is now ablaze with lights,
and as the wonderful chorus that has carried you on its mighty
tide of harmony dies away; the field darkens until there is only
light on the Mayflower.
Again the voice from the Rock fills the place with deep sonorous
tones, like celestial music, as we listen to these fitting
words: "With malice toward none and charity for all it is for us
to resolve that this nation under God shall have a new birth of
freedom."
What is there in Europe, or the whole world, in the way of
pageants that can compare with this? When we consider its
import, viewed in the full, bright light of the rising sun of
Liberty; wafted by the delicate electric threads of this busy
commercial world which are silently conveying with a certain
majesty of movement its significance, we may well say that this
celebrated one of the most eventful deeds of man since time
began.
"As we go back to that shadowy and evanescent period when
history and culture of ancient Chaldea unroll before us, with
the overpowering greatness of Assyria followed by the swift rise
and fall of Babylon, let us try and extract some truths in
regard to the growth of Civilization. Even though nations rise
and fall, and races come and go, has not human development been
ever upward and onward?"
Let us then look forward to the dawning of a better day.
