The division of youth from manhood is marked by no fixed line established by law or custom. To each youth there comes a day when, without aid or counsel, he has to decide upon some important step which shall influence the whole course of his future life. According to the bias of his nature he ponders long upon this step, or he comes rapidly to some decision. The day he so decides marks for him the end of his youth, the commencement of his manhood.

When a youth so steps into manhood, he meet the world face to face, and braces himself for the encounter. Hope, which is the dowry of youth, attends upon him; he puts forth all his energies, never doubting of success, and achieves that which is deemed impossible.

Buenos Aires, long impatient of Spanish tyranny, saw her tyrant helpless; she saw a continent around her, groaning with the slavery of centuries; she felt within herself the strength of a young nation, and asked herself whether the task were not hers to give liberty to these enslaved peoples, to achieve it for herself.

Long she pondered over this question, doubting within herself whether the day were come. Having decided, with resolute hand she cast aside the trammels which bound her, broke through the subterfuges of those who still sought to impose upon her ignorance, and stood forth, free herself, and the champion of freedom for all Spanish America.

As the sun, bursting through a veil of clouds, dissipates the mists of the early morn, rousing men from the slumbers of night to the active work of day, so Buenos Aires, bursting through the traditions of centuries, dissipated for ever the mists of ignorance, under which slumbered in ignoble servitude the colonies of Spain.

The sun of May, emblem of Buenos Aires, shone forth over the New World, rousing enslaved peoples to the bold assertion of their rights as men. In the struggle which followed, this emblem was ever in the fore-front of the battle, the rallying-point of a band of heroes, whose swords achieved the liberation of an entire continent.

Buenos Aires, free herself, became at once the apostle and champion of freedom for all Spanish America.