I love to think of those plain men, however far from plain their dress sometimes was, who assembled in this hall.  One is startled to think of the variety of costume and color which would now occur if we were let loose upon the fashions of that age.  Men’s lack of taste is largely concealed now by the limitations of fashion.  Yet these men, who sometimes dressed like the peacock, were, nevertheless, of the ordinary flight of their time.  They were birds of a feather; they were birds come from a very simple breeding; they were much in the open heaven.  They were beginning, when there was so little to distract their attention, to show that they could live upon fundamental principles of government.  We talk those principles, but we have not time to absorb them.  We have not time to let them into our blood, and thence have them translated into the plain mandates of action.

The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of it all, all the suggestions which come from its restoration, are reassuring things—­things which it becomes a man to realize.  Therefore my theme here to-day, my only thought, is a very simple one.  Do not let us go back to the annals of those sessions of Congress to find out what to do, because we live in another age and the circumstances are absolutely different; but let us be men of that kind; let us feel at every turn the compulsions of principle and of honor which thy felt; let us free our vision from temporary circumstances and look abroad at the horizon and take into our lungs the great air of freedom which has blown through this country and stolen across the seas and blessed people everywhere; and, looking east and west and north and south, let us remind ourselves that we are the custodians, in some degree, of the principles which have made men free and governments just.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SOUTHERN COMMERCIAL CONGRESS

[Delivered at Mobile, Alabama, October 27, 1913.]

YOUR EXCELLENCY, MR. CHAIRMAN: 

It is with unaffected pleasure that I find myself here to-day.  I once before had the pleasure, in another southern city, of addressing the Southern Commercial Congress.  I then spoke of what the future seemed to hold in store for this region, which so many of us love and toward the future of which we all look forward with so much confidence and hope.  But another theme directed me here this time.  I do not need to speak of the South.  She has, perhaps, acquired the gift of speaking for herself.  I come because I want to speak of our present and prospective relations with our neighbors to the south.  I deemed it a public duty, as well as a personal pleasure, to be here to express for myself and for the Government I represent the welcome we all feel to those who represent the Latin-American States.