Excerpt from Address on the Services of Washington

May it Please Your Honor: Fellow Citizens, Young and Old - When Boston celebrates Washington's Birthday in the Old South, it is natural to think of that winter long ago when Washington himself passed his birthday within cannon shot of the Old South, one might say. One hundred and ten years ago this day, the 22d of February, was kept by Washington in the old headquarters at Cambridge, chafing at the want of artillery that delayed his driving the English out of Boston. This house, as I trust every boy and girl here knows, was a riding school for the British troopers, who found it easier to exercise their horses in the Old South than to get hay and corn for them, with the rebel parties scouring every meadow and island, and carrying off the fodder by stacks. There is no record, so far as I am aware, of any extraordinary flood near Boston in the second week of February, 1776, though perhaps it would not have done so much harm if there had been, as people then did not think of living in the swamps and gullies into which they now crowd, and it would have been justly thought absurd and impious to turn the oozy flats west of the Common into streets and houses.

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