Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886. 595
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Toast-master, Citizens, and Guests of Springfield, — It
gives me pleasure to be with you on this festal occasion, and to add to the over-
flowing congratulations which attend it, those of the less numerous ami more
modest branch of the Commonwealth's Congress, as you have styled it. I was
pained to observe, Mr. Toast-master, that in calhng on me to speak for that body
you did not favor us, saving an allusion to our dignity, with any expressions of
complement such as you have liberally bestowed elsewhere. This was, doubtless,
an oversight, for you know that the Legislature has many virtues. We
frequently manage to get through a day's session without doing any serious
mischief. And if the good people of Massachusetts generally knew how much
mischief we are asked to do, and how mucli of that we refrain from doing, they
would look upon the Legislature with a respect whicli. I fear, that much-abused
body has never commanded in their eyes. Tlie strength of your own represen-
tation there is one of the most creditable features of your history in the two
centuries and a half whose completion you celebrate to-day. With the earUer
part of that history I am l)ound to confess I am little familiar ; but m late years
one of your most remarkable qualities, as it appears to us who live in the eastern
part of the State, is the facility with which you acquire, and the urbanity with
wliicli you accept, the public offices. When a desirable place falls vacant in
almost any department of the government we disinterested lookers-on down
in Suffolk and thereabouts immediately say to ourselves, " What Springfield
man will have that place?" And when it goes to a Springfield man it is but just
to you to say that we always acquiesce in the propriety of the choice. I can see
at this table at least two of your distinguished townsmen on whom the mark
of destiny seems already to be set. How fortunate it would have been if this
anniversary had fallen one year later, when you probably could have graced
your feast with a lieutenant-governor and a president of the Senate of your own
And speaking
production, instead of having to fall back on an imported article !
of imports I am naturally reminded of the cloud, no larger, indeed, than a man's
hand, and not likely to be larger, the only cloud that dims the brilliancy of your
prospects to-day, even by a passing shadow, cast by the late refusal of the Presi-
dent of the United States to allow Springfield the empty honors and scanty
emoluments of a port of delivery. Don't let that disturb you. Your distinguished
fellow -citizen, the district attorney, has already pointed out to you that the denial
of that boon is really a blessuig in disguise. What are ports of dehvery? There
are hundreds of them, some hardly known even by name. " A breath can make
them, as a breath has made." But there is only one Springfield. This splendid
city, with all its wealth of character, association, and material prosperity, is
yours still, and yours it will remain, while ports of delivery come and go unheeded.