The next speech differed very much in style from the two preceding. Major John C. Park, a member of the bar, then a State Senator, who had been long associated with the militia, followed. He had taken affront at the oration, regarding it as an indignity to the military guests. He spoke in a clear, ringing voice, and with the vigorous manner which carries an audience tempered like the one before him. According to contemporary records he was coarse and personal in his references to Sumner, condemning with severity his perversion of a festive occasion; and ending with the remark that Boston was a city of notions, but the strangest notion of all was the orator's. More than any speaker, Mr. Park expressed the sentiment of the hour; and he received loud applause, particularly from the military guests. Then came a succession of speakers,—officers of the navy and of the militia, a judge of the Police Court, and others,—all of whom treated the oration with censure, ridicule, or some kind of criticism. One gave as a toast: ‘The millennium! When the nations shall learn war no more, and when our swords shall be turned into ploughshares and pruning-hooks, the principles of the orator of the day will be susceptible of practical application.’
General Oliver, who had listened to the orator with more equanimity than the rest of his brethren in uniform, while no less emphatic than they in his dissent from some of the positions taken in the oration concerning the profession of arms, expressed the hope that the day might not be distant when its theory would be applicable to the condition of the world; and
