Remarks in Burlington, Vermont

I thank you most warmly for the greeting you have extended to me this evening. I have enjoyed greatly my trip today through your beautiful State. Vermont has always played far more than her part to which she was by population entitled in the affairs of the country. Vermont has always furnished far more than her proportionate share of leadership because in Vermont you have always kept true to the old American ideals—the ideals of individual initiative, of self-help, of rugged independence, of desire to work, and willingness if need to fight. I feel, and I say it with all sincerity, that when I come to Vermont I come not to teach but to learn. As a nation we shall succeed very largely in proportion as we show the spirit that this State has ever shown in peace and in war. The people of Vermont work hard. For that I do not pity them. I admire them. It is a good thing for mankind to work. The people of Vermont work with honesty of purpose, the people of Vermont show by their life actions that they are true to an ideal. It was a pleasure to men and women here, my fellow citizens, to have the cavalry, the regulars, drawn up in line to receive us as we came in, and it has been a pleasure today wherever I stopped to see the men who fought in the great Civil War on hand to bear their part in welcoming the chief executive of the nation. I know that the rest of you will pardon me for saying that greatly though I value the greeting of all of you, yet I value most the greeting of those who in the supreme hour of the nation's need rose level to that heed. Gentlemen and ladies, it has always been a pleasure to me to come here to your city. I have had the great good fortune of addressing your citizens more than once and tonight it is with a peculiar sense of gratitude that I thank you again for the greeting that you have seen fit to. extend to me.