The citizens of Boston, in tender memory of their fellow-citizen, John Boyle O'Reilly, and in recognition of the loss they have sustained, have assembled on this second day of September, 1890, to give expression to their appreciation of his character.
They are grateful, first of all, that he was their fellow-citizen; that he was one with them in thought and feeling; that he strove with them for the welfare and prosperity of the city of Boston, which he loved as they love it.
Holding no public office and wishing none, he exemplified the influence of the good citizen who is earnest in well-doing, and who is animated only by the desire to serve his kind.
His loss to this city will be felt in every good work, in every field of usefulness.
While they recognize their loss of his association with them as a fellow-citizen and friend, they fully appreciate that he was a man of too wide sympathies and too generous humanity to be restricted within the limits of any city.
As a patriot he had suffered for the country of his birth, and so lovers of liberty throughout the world hail him and claim him as their brother.
As a poet he had sung songs that had won the hearts of men and turned their thoughts upward, always toward a higher reach for humanity; and the sick, the suffering, and the oppressed, the downtrodden and those who had grown faint-hearted, took
