American Ideas for English Readers

The following reply from the Hon. J. RUSSELL LOWELL to an address presented to him by the Mayor of Worcester on behalf of the citizens was read at the meeting of the Worcester Town Council on the evening of June 2, 1885, and ordered to be recorded on the minutes:

MR. MAYOR AND GENTLEMEN, -- While I cannot but feel highly honored by the beautiful proof you have just given me that I am not forgotten by the ever-faithful city, I value even more the kindly sentiment which prompted it, and to which you have given such graceful expression. I am well aware that it is to what I represent far more than to any merit of my own that I owe this distinction, and that consciousness makes it doubly grateful to me. They who endured exile and danger and every form of hardship to found the great kindred commonwealth beyond the sea -- and what that exile must have been they only can feel who know how beautiful and how justly dear was the land they left -- took with them, not only such seeds as would bear good fruit for the body, but those also of many a familiar flower that could serve only as food for sentiment and affection. Yet the most precious gems of all were those of memory and tradition, that had the gift of fern-seed to go with them invisibly.