Respect for Self

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THE TWELFTH CENSUS. 603

may aid the little army of census workers that will call on them in this month of June, and thus insure the gathering of facts which shall enable our commonwealth to take her place in that high niche of national life and fame to which her material resources, and the moral, religious, and intellectual virtues of her people entitle her.

RESPECT FOR SELF.

"It is only shallow-minded pretenders who make either distinguished origin a matter of personal merit, or obscure origin a matter of personal reproach. A man who is not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early condition. It did happen to me to be born in a log-cabin, raised amid the snowdrifs of New Hampshire, at a period so early that, when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of white man's habitation between it and the settle-

ments on the rivers of Canada. Its remains still exist; I make it an annual visit. I carry my children to it, and teach them the hardships endured by the generations before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the narrations and incidents which mingle with all I know of

this primitive family abode. I weep to think that none who then inhabited it are now among the living; and if ever I fail in affectionate veneration for him who raised it, and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all domestic comforts beneath its roof, and through the fire and blood of seven years' revolutionary war shrunk from no toil, no sacrifice to serve his country, and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name and the name of my posterity be blotted from the memory of mankind." Daniel Webster.