Suggestive programs for special day exercises/Memorial Day/Tribute to Old Glory
TRIBUTE TO OLD GLORY.
Benjamin Harrison.
I have recently returned from an extended tour of the states, and nothing so impressed and refreshed me as the universal display of this banner of beauty and glory. It waved over the school-houses; it was in the hands of the school children. As we speeded across the sandy wastes, at some solitary place, a man, a woman, a child, would come to the door and wave it in loyal greeting. Two years ago I saw a sight that has ever been present in my memory:—
As we were going out of the harbor of Newport, about midnight on a dark night, some of the officers of the torpedo station had prepared for us a beautiful surprise. The flag at the depot station was unseen in the darkness of the night, when suddenly electric search lights were turned on it, bathing it in a flood of light. All below the flag was hidden and it seemed to have no touch with earth, but to hang from the battlements of heaven. It was as if heaven was approving the human liberty and human equality typified by that flag.