CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION by REV. HENRY V. BELLOWS., FRANK BRET HARTE (mobi reader .txt) 📖
- Author: REV. HENRY V. BELLOWS., FRANK BRET HARTE
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The fourteenth anniversary of the admission of California
into the Union, was duly celebrated by the Pioneer Association
on the 9th of September. The day was exceedingly auspicious
for a public demonstration, and at the hour appointed for as
sembling in the Hall, large numbers of the Society were pre
sent.
About 1^ o'clock the procession, under the direction of CHAS.
BOND, Esq., Marshal of the Society, preceded by the splendid Band of Chris. Andres, formed in front of the Hall, and
in the following order took up their line of march : First, the
Band, and next, the President of the Pioneers, J. W. WINANS,
ESQ., officers and members of the first class, making some fifteen
members, and all wearing the red rosette. The officers and
ex-officers wore yellow scarfs. The flags of the Society and
the Union were also borne in the procession, the former by
D. PIPER, and the latter by S. F. KEM. A barouche, containing the Orator of the Day, Rev. Dr. H. W. BELLOWS, and
Chaplain, Rev. ALBERT WILLIAMS, followed. The second class
or '49 Pioneers, numbering two hundred and seventy eight
members, each wearing the white rosette, completed the pro
cession.
Amongst the members we observed the veteran General
John A. Sutter, Hon. Stephen J. Field, Hon. T. G; Phelps,
and Ex-Presidents Brannan, Roach, Sutton and Abell. The
4 CELEBRATION OF THE
procession moved down Montgomery street to California,
through California to Market, through Market to Montgomery,
and up Montgomery to Pine, and along Pine to Mapuire's
Academy of Music. Here the band halted and played an in
spiriting air. whilst the Pioneers entered the building. The
stage and parquette having been reserved for their accommo
dation, were speedily filled. The dress-circle was occu
pied by ladies, arid the upper tiers by the public generally.
Throughout the route of the procession, the sidewalks and
windows of the buildings on either side were filled with the
admiring multitude, who seemed to gaze with peculiar interest
upon these founders of this great Pacific State.
EXERCISES AT THE THEATRE.
The band occupying the orchestra box played a national air.
CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION Pg 2
when the President announced that the Chaplain would offer a
prayer, which he did in eloquent and fervent language. More
music from the band, and then the President announced that
owing to the unavoidable absence of FRANK BRET HARTE, the
poet of the day, the REV. DR. BELLOWS would read the poem,
which he proceeded to do, making the most of the many
stirring and truly poetic thoughts and sentiments therein con
tained. The band again played, after which the orator deliv
ered his address.
It was a masterly production, the theme being "California
and Californians." For originality of thought, felicity of ex
pression, humor, pathos, patriotism, and novelty, it has never
been equalled by any similar address heretofore delivered be
fore this time-honored Association.
The benediction by the Chaplain closed the literary portion
of the exercises. The procession returned to their Hall in
the same order as they marched to the Academy.
THE COLLATION.
The social festivities in the Hall partook of an intellectual
character, also. After the viands had been duly disposed of,
and the inner man refreshed, both by choice edibles and fluids.
CALIFORNIA PIONEERS. 5
The President called the brethren to order. He proposed
as the first regular toast :
"The President of the United States."
To this sentiment Dr. Bellows responded in a very happy
vein, and seized upon the occasion to pay a passing tribute to
the energy, honesty and patriotism of our next, as of our pre
sent Executive, Abraham Lincoln.
The only other regular toast given was "The State of Cali
fornia" to which E. H. Washburn, Esq., made a glowing
speech in response, which elicited great applause.
Volunteer sentiments and speeches followed in rapid suc
cession, toasts being proposed to the "Army and Navy," "Gen
eral Sutter," "The Clergy," "General Sherman," and others.
At the mention of the hero of Atlanta's name, there was a
spontaneous burst of enthusiasm, which made the welkin
ring.
Dr. Bellows was again pressed into the arena, and passed a
beautiful eulogium on the brave Pioneer.
Whilst the festivities were at their height, Grant's letter en
dorsing the nomination of Lincoln, was brought in, and rea.d
by the President.
CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION Pg 3
Long-continued cheering followed, only in
terrupted by brief tributes to the valor of the Lieutenant-
General, by patriotic members. The President, in the earlier
part of the festivities, toasted the Orator of the Day in a speech
fraught with eloquence and feeling. For hours the feast of
reason and flow of soul continued, and not until the shades of
evening began to fall, did the Society of California Pioneers
conclude their celebration of the natal day of the State,
founded by themselves on these shores of the Occident.
ORATION
PIONEERS :
In the hurry of the short and intensely occupied visit to this
coast, and in press of the few last days of my stay, I find my
self called by your partiality to the honorable privilege of ad
dressing you on the fourteenth anniversary of your revered, if
not venerable, organization. It would be folly in me, with my
recent and superficial acquaintance with the local history of
California, to enter into an unequal rivalry with the native
Orators, who have exhausted, on your previous festival days,
all that your public and private libraries afford, and all that the
memory of the oldest settlers contain in the elucidation of the
discovery, successive occupation, and final conquest by the
American Flag, of this Golden Soil. I have participated in
none of the trials, and am flavored with none of the arduous
but rich experiences, which can alone qualify or entitle any
man to treat that great theme. Nay, I am confident that you
called me to this position to-day for the very reason that I am
a stranger among you, receiving his first rude impressions of
your country, and with the expectation of deriving your satis
faction mainly from feeling your own riper views contrasted
with those of a mere novice in your region. I intend to
gratify you, therefore, by not studying profundity, affecting a
knowledge I do not possess, or an experience I have not suffered
or enjoyed, but simply and frankly telling you how your
country strikes me not presuming that my opinions are valu
able, permanent or instructive, but only that you possess at
least curiosity enough to give an hour to hearing what they
are. I do not forget however, that this is an important ocasion.
It is impossible to revisit the cradle of a powerful State with
out emotion. And you, Pioneers, who rocked that cradle, al-
8 ORATION.
though yet in the prime of your lives, cannot but feel as you
recall the first motions your own arms gave it, how much con
trolled by a Power above you, and directed to ends far be
yond your own purposes, were all the movements of what was
then deemed either accident or choice.
CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION Pg 4
The infant Hercules,
you swathed and lullabied was no demigod in your eyes ; the
Kingly State, now wearing a golden diadem upon his head, a
silver sceptre in his hand, was then a puling babe, nursed at
no mother's bosom ; a foundling brought up in tents by mascu
line hands, vagrants at that, and ready to suck his rind of pork
in place of any tenderer pap. He sat on the edge of his foster
father's Long Tom, and got his softest rocking there. His
milk, was from the cocoa nuts of the Isthmus, or the creamy
contents of the miners' ditch. He had no brother, for children
were not known in those bachelor days ; and no aunts or grand
mother, for women were scarcer than gold in the time when
Pioneers, finding among some rubbish a straw bonnet, quitted
all work and danced about it in mad joy for the rest of the day.
He could net toddle over the nursery floor, for there was not
any nursery, nor any floor ; no grandam cautioned him against
tumbling down stairs, for his house was only one story high,
nor forbade him to risk his neck by looking out of the window,
for sashes in his day had not come in. He never went crying
to school, nor pouting to church. His alphabet dropped the
alpha, and was only strong on the Bet. Exceedingly thirsty
from the unusual dryness of the climate, he ran neither to the
pump nor the pail, but with obliging indifference tapped the
nearest vessel, barrel, keg or jug that contained a fluid, and
left a pinch of dust from his muddy fingers, as he hurried to
the next counter. For lack of other toys, he early played
with fire-arms and cutlery, which sometimes went off suddenly
in his hands, or flew out of them with the most unintentional
violence, leaving a permanent vacancy where they lighted.
His sugar-plums were quids of tobacco, and his soap-bubbles
wreaths of tine cut. For a wooden horse, he rode a mustang,
and when he jumped a rope he was dangling from a limb. His
cup and ball was a bullet mould. He played " hide and seek '
in the placer diggings, and if he was ever "tardy" it was not
ORATION. 9
in hunting for bigger claims. So this gypsy bantling grew
grew as nothing except yo.ur beats and squashes, your pears
and plums ever grew, before or since, grew faster than that
stick a man cut up in Yuba County and walked with a fort
night, and happening at night to set it down rather hard in
the corner of the house outside, found it rooted so deep in the
morning he could not pull it up ; so it grew and fourteen months
after yielded a bushel of pears ; faster than the three lengths of
fence the farmer built up in the Sacramento Valley, which grew
all round his farm while he was gone down to Frisco for supplies.
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