The pages of history contain no more striking exhibitions of valor than those men gave ; for instance : when Montgomery in the gray of that early winter's morning led the forlorn hope against the citadel of Quebec ; or when, at sunset of that great day at .Saratoga, after the gallant foe Frazer had been mortally wounded and his veterans beaten back into narrowest compass, they, the Continentals, mad with the wrath of outraged freeman, impetuously charged the hostile lines ; or when, on the other side of the river, scarce fifteen miles above us, Anthony Wayne led the night assault upon the frowning works of Stony Point. True, they had their Arnold, though, thanks to the unpurchasable loyalty of the common folk of this old manor, his treason came to naught ; but they had as well their Read, whom, poor as he was, all the gold of England's king could not buy. There was only one Arnold, but there were a thousand Reads, many times multiplied. And they had their Nathan Hale, whose glorious martyrdom, in advance, more than atoned for Arnold's wrong; and whose dying words still remain and ever shall remain a legaev to the republic of priceless value. Eauguage is inadequate to express the debt, which we as a people owe to them. iVll that we are, in the vast expanse of our domain, in our established principles of local self control and of Federal power, extending its protecting arm over all ; in all our material development and wealth ; in all our intellectual advancement, colleges, schools, free press and general diffusion of intelligence among the people ; and in the myriad free homes which dot our fair land as the stars gem the arches of night ; all that we are to-day and all that we may hope ever to be, we owe and shall owe to those men, -- to their keen comprehension of the true principles of human government, to their constancy through toil, suffering and defeat, and to their unsurpassed valor on fields of blood.