of abandoned farms.  Today I look about me, and, under skies that seem to sing, I see a land redeemed.  It was not redeemed by great wealth from without, but by resolution and dauntless effort from within.  I have spoken of the headstones that mark these graves, but the Burtons have a nobler monument.  The roads and schools and the aqueduct—­all the things that transformed the land are memorials to the man who lies just there beyond this grave where today we place his mother.  On that slab we find only the dates of birth and death and the name of Hamilton Burton; but when I look at it, I seem to read a nobler epitaph in letters of bronze which no weather can dim or tarnish.  I seem to read—­’Here lies one who put aside a blazing dream to cast his lot into a life of humbler duty.’  If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one had grown before has done a noble thing, then surely he who has turned a land of want into a land of independence and made crops grow where none grew before has won his place near the throne.”

Again the aged pastor paused and his eyes grew misty.  With bared heads bent and a stillness broken only by the rustle of the breeze through the trees and the song of a bird, his listeners stood attentive, and he resumed.

“I need not tell you, for you know, what the energy and loyal steadfastness of Hamilton Burton have done for these hills.  What they were when he came to manhood and what they are now is the answer to that—­an answer which needs no further eulogium.  But there is a thing, which you may not know, for I think—­once his hard decision was made—­he never spoke of that again.  Yet now I wish to speak of it.  It is a thing which should put the name of Hamilton Burton among those of the great—­the humble great.  In his boyhood heart blazed a mighty vision.  In his brain burned a hunger for conquest.  The man who dwelt so simply here among us, working a regeneration, and who died among us, still young, was gifted with a power which he might have put to more selfish uses.  Standing in the wintry loneliness of a mountain snowstorm, his eyes could see visions of mighty things and his soul could dream unmeasured dreams.  His heart beat responsively to an inward voice which assured him that he might equal and surpass the greatness of Destiny’s greatest sons.  He fretted for a larger world, knowing that in it he could conquer.  In Hamilton Burton dwelt the soul of a Napoleon or a Caesar ... he might have built an empire.”

The voice had grown fervent as it rose with its words, then the speaker let it fall again to quieter tones.

“And these roads and schools and this aqueduct and these redeemed acres are the monument to the sacrifice which turned its back on such a dream as that.  Hamilton Burton wrestled with his soul’s hunger and conquered it.  He elected to remain here, fighting at the head of his own community for his own land, and finding contentment in the realization that he had done his duty.  At one time—­for his forcefulness was great—­he had persuaded his family to countenance his great adventure—­and then he dreamed.  It seemed to him that he had looked ahead, and the whole great panorama of the life which lay before him, should he take that turning of the road, passed in review.  Hamilton Burton did not take it. He remained here. His work was the work of the sons of Martha.