Excerpt from Speeches of Wendell Phillips Stafford, 1913 The sons and daughters of Vermont, no matter where their lot is cast, return to her with steps that never waver. Or if their feet are bound in other paths their thoughts are pilgrims to her dark-green hills. We never know how dear she is until we leave her. And as we learn to count our years by scores instead of one by one, we turn to her more fondly still because she keeps the memories of childhood. Often, as we sit reading by the winter fire, her summer landscape floats across the page; and even as we go about our work a vision often comes before our eyes, - the hillside orchard, the red farm-house hiding in the trees. But most of all when we are gathered as we are tonight, when hundreds answer to the same deep thrill, when all are lifted by a common pride in her great past, - then most of all that vision of our mountain State becomes a real presence. And, oh, how beautiful she seems! We know tonight the drifted snows lie deep within her borders - the winter still is there. But in a few weeks more, we know, the lazy, loitering spring will come that way with gifts that will make rich amends for all her tardiness. She will turn the willow-wands to gold along the stream-sides. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.