CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION by REV. HENRY V. BELLOWS., FRANK BRET HARTE (paper ebook reader TXT) 📕

CELEBRATION OF THE FOURTEENTH ANNIVER SARY OF THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA INTO THE UNION Pg 1

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 splen

did 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, con

taining 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. 

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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. 

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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.