?Of course it would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it, they pay the penalty, but compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant. Oftentimes the inconvenience and loss fall on the innocent. This is all a part of the price of freedom. Unless the people struggle to help themselves, no one else will or can help them. It is out of such struggle that there comes the strongest evidence of their true independence and nobility, and there is struck off a rough and incomplete economic justice, and there develops a strong and rugged national character. It represents a spirit for which there could be no substitute. It justifies the claim that they are worthy to be free.? Calvin Coolidge

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. Address Before The Ohio Wesleyan University At DelaWare, Ohio, June 20, 1893. Mr. President, Members Of The Board Of Trustees, MemBers Of The Faculty, Ladies And Gentlemen: Rutherford Birchard Hayes, nineteenth President of the United States, born in this city on October 4,1822, was a great and good man--great in all that was good; good in all that was great. He was a fortunate man; fortunate in his ancestry; fortunate in his noble mother; fortunate in all the influences of a Christian home; fortunate in his early training and higher education; fortunate in the happiest of marriages; fortunate in his professional experience, in his service as a volunteer soldier, in the uncertain paths of politics; fortunate in every public and private relation. He was fortunate, and he deserved to be. He improved his opportunities; he accepted every responsibility as a sacred trust for which true account must be rendered. He received his earliest education in the Delaware public schools. From here he went to the Academy at Norwalk, Ohio, and later to the preparatory school at Middletown, Conn., to prepare for college. He entered Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio, in the fall of 1838. He was a close student, one of the best debaters in the literary societies of that college, and at his graduation was probably one of the most popular men of his class--that of 1842. He graduated at the head of his class and delivered a valedictory which even now is remembered as one of the best of such productions. After leaving Kenyon, young Hayes studied law with Sparrow and Matthews at Columbus, and completed his professional studies at Harvard Law School in January, 1845. He entered the practice of his profession in May, 1845, at Lower Sandusky, or...