Report of the John Tower Ter-Centenary

Celebration and Tower Reunion at

Hingham, Masssachusetts,

May 29, 30 and 31, 1909

INTRODUCTORY.

An ancient poet and sage once said in cynical vein:

"When on your house falls unforeseen distress,

Half-clothed come neighbors; kinsmen stay to dress,”

and literature is bespattered with like reflections, in purport showing that those to whom our thoughts tend by ties of blood, fail oftenest of respect for our ideals, and even for that regard for our commoner interests which would be prompted by the spirit of neighborly kindness or by ordinary human sentiment.

But they show only that for our own kinsmen we set another ideal, and of them expect conduct different from that which we require of humanity at large. Moreover, they, together with the records of disloyal action toward those of the same kindred, are the blots which mar, but do not efface, the stronger testimony of history and of human literature to the good that has been accomplished by respect for and devotion to family. In whatever situation placed, the noble or the peasant has, we may believe, seldom lost and often gained by a proper admixture in his composition of the sentiment expressed in the common saying that "blood is thicker than water.'

To feel any sentiment or obligation toward those who bear our name, we must first know them, and, in our country, which is so widely separated geographically and politically from the lands of our ancestors, many ties have been severed. Now, under more settled con

ditions and with greater leisure than fell to the lot of our pioneer forefathers, but aware of the growing complexity of our national life, we turn with increasing attention to the principles and characters of our robust ancestors which, after nearly three hundred years still find expression in our American life. Hence it is that the custom of holding "Family Reunions" is one which, among us, appeals to an increasing number of people, and this growing interest is evidence of good, signifying, as it does, increasing regard for the basic sentiments which are the safeguard of society.

Unfriendly critics of American society, comparing unfavorably our "aristocracy of wealth" with the more settled, hereditary forms of leadership in non-republican Europe, also point out that we too have our pride in ancestry-our petty and local pride in "First Families," "Mayflower Descendants," "New England Settlers "all in obvious contradiction to the democratic spirit which we profess.

Now pride may spur and fashion may dictate, but loyalty, the sentiment which prompts to noble deeds and persistent effort, is, or should be, rather than mere pride in ancestry, the bond that unites the various members of a family, large or small. And Loyaltyloyalty also to family-is as necessary to-day in republican America as ever it has been in monarchical Europe.

For the natural and first object for the attachment of this sentiment is the family, represented in the person of a common ancestor or ancestors. Before ever the state was, the family existed. The father, the patriarch, was the first king, and loyalty to him the whole duty of man.

Loyalty to our forebears, if this be the sentiment