ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

A REMARKABLE CLIMATE

[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the seventy-fifth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1880. The President, James C. Carter, in introducing General Grant, said: "Gentlemen, it is our good fortune to have with us to-night as a guest an illustrious fellow citizen, who in a great and fortunate career has been enabled to render signal service to his country and to achieve a just renown for himself. [Applause.] Long may he live! But however long, he cannot outlive the regard or the affection of the sons of New England. I give you, gentlemen, 'The Health of General Grant.'" The announcement of the toast was greeted with loud and prolonged cheers, the company standing.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK:—I suppose on an occasion of this sort that you will expect me to say something about this Society and the people of New England and the pilgrims who first landed on Plymouth Rock. It was my fortune last night to attend a banquet of this sort in the principal city on New York harbor. [Applause and laughter.] I did not know until I went there [Brooklyn] that it was the principal city [laughter]—the principal city of the harbor of New York, a city whose overflow has settled up Manhattan Island, which has built up fine houses, business streets, and shown many evidences of prosperity for a suburb, with a waste of people flowing across the North River that forms a third if not one-half the population of a neighboring state. [Applause.] As I say, it was my good fortune to attend a banquet of this sort of the parent society [laughter], and to which all the societies known, even including the one which is now celebrating its first anniversary in Las Vegas, New Mexico, owe their origin. [Laughter.] I made a few remarks there, in which I tried to say what I thought were the characteristics of the people who have descended from the Pilgrims. I thought they were a people of great frugality, great personal courage, great industry, and possessed within themselves of qualities which built up this New England population which has spread out over so much of this land and given so much character, prosperity, and success to us as a people and a nation. [Applause.] I retain yet some of the views I then expressed [peals of laughter], and should have remained convinced that my judgment was entirely right if it were not that some speakers came after me who have a better title to speak for the people of New England than myself, and who dispelled some of those views. [Renewed laughter.]

It is too many generations back for me to claim to be a New Englander. Those gentlemen who spoke are themselves New Englanders who have, since their manhood, emigrated to this great city that I speak of. They informed me that there was nothing at all in the Pilgrim fathers to give them the distinguishing characteristics which we attribute to them [laughter], and that it was all entirely dependent upon the poverty of the soil and the inclemency of the climate where they landed. [Shouts of laughter.] They fell upon an ungenial climate, where there were nine months of winter and three months of cold weather [laughter], and that had called out the best energies of the men and of the women, too, to get a mere subsistence out of the soil, with such a climate. In their efforts to do that they cultivated industry and frugality at the same time, which is the real foundation of the greatness of the Pilgrims. [Laughter.] It was even suggested by some that if they had fallen upon a more genial climate and more fertile soil, they would have been there yet, in poverty and without industry. [Laughter.] I shall continue to believe better of them myself, and I believe the Rev. Dr. Storrs, who spoke here, will agree with me that my first judgment of them was probably nearly correct.

However, all jesting aside, we are proud in my section of the country of the New Englanders and of their descendants. We hope to see them spread over all this land, and carry with them the principles inculcated in their own sterile soil from which they sprang. [Applause.] We want to see them take their independence of character, their self-reliance, their free schools, their learning, and their industry, and we want to see them prosper and teach others among whom they settle how to be prosperous. [Applause.] I am very much obliged to the gentlemen of the infant New England Society [laughter] for the reception which they have accorded to me and the other guests of this evening. I shall remember it with great pleasure, and hope that some day you will invite me again. [Long-continued applause.]

* * * * *

CHARACTERISTICS OF NEWSPAPER MEN

[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the eighth annual dinner of the New York Press Club, January 6, 1881. John C. Hennessy, President of the Press Club, was in the chair, and read the third toast: "The Republic's Honored ex-President." General Grant, on being introduced to respond to this toast, was received with a tumult of applause.]

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB:—I confess to a little embarrassment this evening in being called upon unexpectedly to say a word to a set of such different men as compose not only the Press Club, but those associated with the Press of the country. I thought this was an evening that I was going to spend where all would be quiet and good order [laughter]; where nobody would have anything to say. We all know the characteristic modesty of the people associated with the Press [laughter], they never want to inquire into anybody's affairs, [laughter], to know where they are going, what they are going to do, what they are going to say when they get there. [Uproarious laughter.] I really thought that you would excuse me this evening, but I suppose you will expect me to say something about the Press—the Press of New York, the Press of the United States, the Press of the world. It would take a good deal to tell what is possible for the Press to do. I confess that, at some periods of my life when I have read what they had to say about me, I have lost all faith and all hope. [Great laughter.] But since a young editor has spoken of the Press, and has fixed the lifetime, the generation of newspaper men at about twelve years [laughter], I have a growing hope within me that in the future the Press may be able to do some of the great good which we all admit is possible for it to do. [Laughter.] I have been somewhat of a reader of the newspapers for forty years—I could read very well when I was eight years of age. [Laughter.] It has given me forty years of observation of the Press; and there is one peculiarity that I have observed from reading it, and that is, in all of the walks of life outside of the Press, people have entirely mistaken their profession, their occupation. [Laughter.] I never knew the Mayor of a city, or even a Councilman in any city, any public officer, any government official—I never knew a member of Congress, a Senator or a President of the United States, who could not be enlightened in his duties by the youngest member of the profession. [Great laughter and applause.] I never knew a general of the Army to command a brigade, a division, a corps of the Army who could begin to do it as well as men far away in their sanctums. [Renewed laughter.] I was very glad to see that the newspaper fraternity were ready to take with perfect confidence any office that might be tendered to them, from President to Mayor [laughter], and I have often been astonished that the citizens have not done so, because then all these offices would have been well and properly filled. [Laughter and applause.]

Well, gentlemen, I am very happy to have been here with you, and I hope when a new generation, about twelve years hence, comes on, that I shall again dine with the Press Club of New York City, and that I shall see that those of this generation who were so well fitted to fill all of the civil offices have all been chosen, and that there will be nothing left for them to criticise. [Peals of laughter.] Thank you, gentlemen. [Great applause, with "Three cheers" for General Grant.]

* * * * *

THE ADOPTED CITIZEN

[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the 115th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, May 8, 1883. George W. Lane, President of the Chamber of Commerce, presided, and announced as the first regular toast: "The United States—the great modern Republic—the home of a new cosmopolitan race; may those who seek the blessings of its free institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose." The orchestra played "The Star-Spangled Banner," and General Grant, who was called upon to respond to this toast, was received with great enthusiasm.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND GUESTS:—I am very much obliged to your President for calling upon me first, because the agony will soon be over and I shall enjoy the misery of the rest of you. [Laughter.]

The first part of this toast—The United States—would be a voluminous one to respond to on a single occasion. Bancroft commenced to publish his notes on the History of the United States, starting even before President Lane established this Chamber, which I think was something over one hundred years ago. [Laughter.] Bancroft, I say, commenced earlier, and I am not prepared to dispute his word if he should say that he had kept an accurate journal from the time he commenced to write about the country to the present, because there has been no period of time when I have been alive that I have not heard of Bancroft, and I should be equally credulous if President Lane should tell me that he was here at the founding of this Institution. [Laughter.] But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the prelude to what I am going to say. [Laughter.]

I think Bancroft has finished up to a little after the time that President Lane established this Chamber of Commerce, and I will let you take the records of what he [Lane] has written and what he has said in their monthly meetings and publish them as the second chapter of my speech. And, gentlemen, those two chapters you will find the longest; they will not amount to much more than what I have to say taking up the subject at the present time. [Laughter.]

But in speaking of the United States, we who are native-born have a country of which we may well be proud. Those of us who have been abroad are better able, perhaps, to make the comparison of our enjoyments and our comforts than those who have always stayed at home. [Applause.] It has been the fortune, I presume, of the majority here to compare the life and the circumstances of the average people abroad with ours here. We have here a country that affords room for all and room for every enterprise. We have institutions which encourage every man who has industry and ability to rise from the position in which he may find himself to any position in the land. [Applause.] It is hardly worth my while to dwell upon the subject, but there is one point which I notice in the toast, that I would like to say a word about—"May those who seek the blessings of its free institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose." I think there is a text that my friend Mr. Beecher,[4] on the left, or my friend Dr. Newman,[5] on the right, might well preach a long sermon upon. I shall say only a few words.

We offer an asylum to every man of foreign birth who chooses to come here and settle upon our soil; we make of him, after a few years' residence only, a citizen endowed with all the rights that any of us have, except perhaps the single one of being elected to the Presidency of the United States. There is no other privilege that a native, no matter what he has done for the country, has that the adopted citizen of five years' standing has not got. [Applause.] I contend that that places upon him an obligation which, I am sorry to say, many of them do not seem to feel. [Applause,]

We have witnessed on many occasions here the foreign, the adopted, citizen claiming many rights and privileges because he was an adopted citizen. That is all wrong. Let him come here and enjoy all the privileges that we enjoy, but let him fulfil all the obligations that we are expected to fulfil. [Loud applause.] After he has adopted it, let this be his country—a country that he will fight for, and die for, if necessary. I am glad to say that the great majority of them do it, but some of them who mingle in politics seem to bank largely on the fact that they are adopted citizens; and that class I am opposed to as much as I am opposed to many other things that I see are popular now. [Applause.]

I know that other speakers will come forward, and when Mr. Beecher and Dr. Newman speak, I hope they will say a few words on the text which I read. [Applause.]



JOHN WILLIAM GRIGGS

SOCIAL DISCONTENT

[Speech of John William Griggs, ex-Governor of New Jersey, at the 128th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 17, 1896. Alexander E. Orr, President of the Chamber, presided. In 1897 ex-Governor Griggs succeeded Joseph McKenna as Attorney-General in the Cabinet of President McKinley.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:—I did not know this was Thanksgiving day. [Laughter.] I did not know that there were any discontents till I got over here to-night. When I arrive at this period on an occasion like this, and see you sitting in comfortable expectation, with your cigars lighted, and your intellects also lighted by the contact of such a flame as we have received from the distinguished Postmaster-General [William L. Wilson], I always think that the composition of the boy on Sir Walter Raleigh is applicable. He wrote a composition, and it was like this: "Sir Walter Raleigh was a very great man; he took a voyage and discovered America, and then he took another voyage and discovered Virginia, and when he had discovered Virginia he discovered the potato; and when he had discovered the potato, he discovered tobacco. And when he had done so, he called his associates about him, and said: 'My friends, be of good cheer; for we have this day lighted in England a flame which, by God's grace, shall never be quenched.'" [Laughter.]

New Jersey greets to-night the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. [Applause.] We are your friends and your neighbors. We have furnished you a candidate in this election, who represents in the person of Garret A. Hobart [applause] the sympathies and the sentiments of such men as I see gathered here. We take much of our inspiration from New York; not all of it. [Laughter.] We have some kinds of inspiration peculiar to ourselves, of which we are always glad to invite our New York friends to partake in moderation and properly diluted. [Laughter.]

Our citizens mingle with yours in all the daily walks of life. We read the same newspapers. We dress as you do, only not so well; and we vote the same ticket, by a large majority. [Applause.] This similarity is not always apparent. The impressions of the traveller through New Jersey are generally of salt marsh and sand banks and long monotonous stretches of landscape, and, where the railroad pierces some shabby neighborhood, the weather-boards bear shining invitations to take various brands of liver pills [laughter], to chew "Virgin leaf," or to "give the baby Castoria;" but we have green meadows bright with shining brooks; we have high mountains and pleasant valleys as well as marsh and sand dunes; and, instead of liver-pills and Castoria, by a large majority, we are for the gold cure. [Great applause.]

I cannot let this opportunity pass without referring to the great work which this Chamber has wrought for the state and city whose name it bears and for the country at large. It is a long interval since these dinners were held at Fraunce's tavern, but during all that period, this institution has stood as the pilot, the guide, the director, and pioneer in all wise policies of commerce and trade and patriotism. [Applause.] You have bestowed not only wisdom and enlightenment and courage on the world of commerce, but millions of dollars upon the unfortunate victims of fire and flood and fever. You have been the promoters of good fortune and the comforters of misfortune. I wish that the people of this land could understand how much true and loyal patriotism, how much disinterested devotion to the highest interests of the country are found among just such men as compose the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York. [Applause.]

During your corporate life you have seen a great country grow into independence; you have seen it advance and extend along all the lines of progress and prosperity until the seven wonders of the world, of which we learned in our youth, have been lost sight of and forgotten in the thousand greater wonders of this industrial age. You have seen education become the common provision of every State for every child of the Republic. You have seen intelligence increase; you have seen reason and reasonableness, the ability to take right views of things, become more universal among this people than among the people of any other land. [Applause.] You have seen the average of comfort and prosperity higher among all classes in this country than could be found at any other age of the world and any other land upon the surface of the earth. [Applause.]

And yet there are complainings, there are discontents, and there are dissatisfactions, and gloomy minds think they see, in these, evidences and signs that there is coming a social revolution, an overturning of our system of popular government, and the substitution for it of some plan whereby, by legal enactments, all the citizens of the Republic can be made comfortable and rich without regard to fortune or ability or frugality or merit.

In one sense discontent is a good thing. It is the opposite of self-satisfaction. [Laughter.] It is a good thing to appreciate that we have not done our best, and then try to do it. It is a good thing to understand that we have not made the most of our opportunities. In this sense, discontent is the spur of ambition, the incentive to better work, the mountain of progress up which, from height to height, civilization has climbed to where now with shining face she stands still pointing upward to heights unknown. [Applause.]

But there is another kind of discontent, born of ignorant and jealous envy, that seeks not to repair its mistakes nor to profit by its failures, not to build up, but to tear down. There is in many a sense of hopelessness over hopeless misfortune; and with these it is more to pity than to blame. But, withal, in these discontents there is a menace to the Republic. They afford the opportunity for the demagogue and the cheap candidate for public office. [Laughter and applause.] Glory to the American people! They cannot be fooled all the time, nor some of the time. They are too level-headed, too intelligent, too patriotic to be caught by appeals of the demagogue and the social revolutionist, to the dictates and sentiments of envy, hatred and malice.

May I venture to suggest that there are some ways by which it is possible for us to minimize the danger we find in these discontents? The American people, as I have said, have not up to date been fooled. They are the nation's court; they deserve a better certificate of character than a certain colored man who, when he was about to leave his master's employ because of the mysterious disappearance of certain small articles about the house, asked for a certificate of character to take to his next employer, and his employer said: "Well, 'Rastus, I can give you a good certificate for energy and ability, but I cannot say much about your honesty." "Tell you what, boss," says 'Rastus, after a moment's reflection: "can't you put it in that I am just as honest as my instincts will let me be?" [Laughter.]

The first remedy I would suggest, and it is one that is to be ever applied, is education. Reduce the percentage of illiteracy. Let the public schools teach not only reading and writing, but let public schools teach all the principles of American popular government. [Applause.] Let us go back to the days in which I was taught to write, when the copybook bore a text taken from Poor Richard—"Industry and frugality lead to wealth," or "Who by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive,"—there was not anything said in those days about legislating a boy into wealth or comfort or ease, especially at the expense of anybody else. [Applause.]

The next remedy I would speak of is to cast out the demagogue. They are the fellows that are the curse of both and of all political parties. We have had them from the days of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony down to date. [Laughter.] These smooth, sleek, mellifluous-tongued fellows that always have the same blood-stained garment to hold up before the populace, and some forged will to read, whereby the people were to get great legacies which they never could collect, let us cast them out. Let us frown upon them in both parties, so that they never have a standing on any political platform. [Applause.] Why, it makes the blood of an honest, straightforward, intelligent, American citizen boil to see the impudence, the hypocrisy, of men of this kind,—and they belong to both parties. I heard a story of one who used, when Long Branch was more popular than it is now, to go down there for a summer outing. One day he went out in the surf to bathe. He was strong and vigorous and bold, and he swam out beyond the breakers; he was heading strongly and fearlessly for the European shore. All at once, a shark, a man-eater, was coming the other way, and swam up squarely in front of him. They eyed each other for a moment, and then the shark blushed and swam out. [Laughter and applause.]

Then, let us have more mutual sympathy and confidence between all classes and conditions of men. The man who works for wages, day by day, is our equal in right and our equal at the ballot-box. Very often he has, generally he has, as high instincts, as loyal and true a heart, as his employer. [Applause.] There is no reason why his employer or the candidate for office or anybody else should make friends with him only about election-time. Be his friend all the year round. Show him that you sympathize with him as a fellow-citizen. This is not condescension. It is his right. It is not altruism. You understand what that is. The teacher told her class in Sunday-school: "Now, my children, you know an altruist is one who sacrifices his own interests to the interests of his fellows." "Oh! yes," says one boy, "I know; a fellow who makes his sacrifice hit." [Laughter.]

But let there be confidence between the men that earn wages and the men that pay wages. Let them meet together on a plane of political equality, and they will learn to respect the employer, and the employer, take my word for it, will learn to respect them. [Applause.]

And then, let us stop making citizens out of unworthy material. [Applause.] We welcome all those that come from over the sea, men of merit and worth and proper instincts who want to build and work among us. We do not want those who only come here to tear down and destroy. We have had the gates wide open. They have been coming—all sorts and all conditions and all beliefs. Let us shut those gates, and open them hereafter only to men of merit with right instincts. [Applause.] The law of the land declares that no subject of any foreign government shall be naturalized unless he can prove to the satisfaction of the court that he has been well attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States. How that provision has been mocked! Why, we have taken into citizenship with us thousands of men who not only were not attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, who not only did not know what those principles are, but who held principles diametrically opposed to it. Now, let us see that America suffers no longer from indigestion [laughter], from a surfeited feast of foreign anarchists and socialists and revolutionists; give us good men and true, who will not impede our digestion, and keep out those that tend to indigestion. [Applause.]

And then, let every citizen go into politics. [Laughter.] Oh, not for what is in it, but for the good of his country, to speak, write, organize, lead processions and keep it up. Rally round the flag, and keep on rallying! [Applause.] Do not let your enthusiasm and your patriotism evaporate and die away in the shouts that follow one triumphant campaign. Keep them up the whole year round—the four years round. You have heard from two sources, to-night, how important it is that we should always be vigilant and alert to defend, to educate and scatter knowledge and the spirit of intelligence among all the people. It is a very old saying but can never be too often repeated, that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

"O freedom! thou art not, as poets dream, A fair young girl with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses gushing from the cap With which the Roman master crowned his slave, When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, Arm'd to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarr'd With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs Are strong with struggling.... Oh! not yet, Mayst thou unbrace thy corselet nor lay by Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom! close thy lids In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps, And thou must watch and combat till the day Of the new earth and heaven."

[Great applause.]



EDWARD EVERETT HALE

THE MISSION OF CULTURE

[Speech of Edward Everett Hale, D.D., at the seventy-first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1876. The President, William Borden, gave the fifth regular toast, to which Dr. Hale responded, as follows: "New England Culture—the open secret of her greatness."

"Yet on her rocks, and on her sands, And wintry hills the school-house stands, And what her rugged soil denies, The harvest of the mind supplies. The riches of the Commonwealth Are free strong minds and hearts of health And, more to her than gold or grain The cunning hand and cultured brain."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—You seem to have a very frank way of talking about each other among yourselves here. I observe that I am the first stranger who has crossed the river which, I recollect Edward Winslow says, divides the Continent of New England from the Continent of America [laughter], and, as a stranger, it is my pleasure and duty at once to express the thanks and congratulations of the invited guest here for the distinguished care which has been taken on this occasion outdoors to make us feel entirely at home. [Laughter.] As I came down in the snow-storm, I could not help feeling that Elder Brewster, and William Bradford, and Carver, and Winslow could not have done better than this in Plymouth; and indeed, as I ate my pork and beans just now, I felt that the Gospel of New England is extending beyond the Connecticut to other nations, and that what is good to eat and drink in Boston is good to eat and drink even here on this benighted point at Delmonico's. [Laughter.]

When you talk to us about "culture," that is rather a dangerous word. I am always a little afraid of the word "culture." I recollect the very brightest squib that I read in the late election campaign—and as the President says, gentlemen, I am going to respect the proprieties of the occasion. It was sent to one of the journals from the Western Reserve; and the writer, who, if I have rightly guessed his name, is one of the most brilliant of our younger poets, was descanting on the Chinook vocabulary, in which a Chinook calls an Englishman a Chinchog to this day, in memory of King George. And this writer says that when they have a young chief whose war-paint is very perfect, whose blanket is thoroughly embroidered, whose leggins are tied up with exactly the right colors, and who has the right kind of star upon his forehead and cheeks, but who never took a scalp, never fired an arrow, and never smelled powder, but was always found at home in the lodges whenever there was anything that scented of war—he says the Chinooks called that man by the name of "Boston Cultus." [Applause and laughter.] Well, now, gentlemen, what are you laughing at? Why do you laugh? Some of you had Boston fathers, and more of you had Boston mothers. Why do you laugh? Ah! you have seen these people, as I have seen them, as everybody has seen them—people who sat in Parker's and discussed every movement of the campaign in the late war, and told us that it was all wrong, that we were going to the bad, but who never shouldered a musket. They are people who tell us that the emigration, that the Pope of Rome, or the German element, or the Irish element, is going to play the dogs with our social system, and yet they never met an emigrant on the wharf or had a word of comfort to say to a foreigner. We have those people in Boston. You may not have them in New York, and I am very glad if you have not; but if you are so fortunate, it is the only place on God's earth where I have not found such people. [Laughter and applause.] But there is another kind of culture which began even before there was any Boston—for there was such a day as that. [Laughter.] There were ten years in the history of this worlds ten long years, too, before Boston existed, and those are the years between Plymouth Rock and the day when some unfortunate men, not able to get to Plymouth Rock, stopped and founded that city. [Laughter.] This earlier culture is a culture not of the schoolhouse, or of the tract, but a culture as well of the church, of history, of the town-meeting, as John Adams says; that nobler culture to which my friend on the right has alluded when he says that it is born of the Spirit of God—the culture which has made New England, which is born of God, and which it is our mission to carry over the world. [Applause.]

In the very heart of that culture—representing it, as I think, in a very striking way, half-way back to the day we celebrate—Ezra Styles, one of the old Connecticut men, published a semi-centennial address. It seems strange that they should have centennials then, but they had. He published a semi-centennial address in the middle of the last century, on the condition of New England, and the prospects before her. He prophesied what New England was to be in the year 1852. He calculated the population descending from the twenty thousand men who emigrated in the beginning, and he calculated it with great accuracy. He said, "There will be seven million men, women, and children, descended from the men who came over with Winslow and with Winthrop," and it proved that he was perfectly right. He went on to sketch the future of New England when these seven million should crowd her hillsides, her valleys, her farms, and her shops all over the four States of New England. For it didn't occur to him, as he looked forward, that one man of them all would ever go west of Connecticut, or west of Massachusetts. [Applause.] He cast his horoscope for a population of seven million people living in the old New England States, in the midst of this century. He did not read, as my friend here does, the missionary spirit of New England. He did not know that they would be willing to go across the arm of the ocean which separated the Continent of New England from the Continent of America. [Laughter.] All the same, gentlemen, seven million people are somewhere, and they have not forgotten the true lessons which make New England what she is. They tell me there are more men of New England descent in San Francisco than in Boston to-day. All those carried with them their mothers' lessons, and they mean their mothers' lessons shall bear fruit away out in Oregon, in California, in South Carolina, in Louisiana. [Applause.] They have those mothers' lessons to teach them to do something of what we are trying to do at home in this matter. [Applause.] We have been so fortunate in New England in this Centennial year that we are able to dedicate a noble monument of the past to the eternal memory of the Pilgrim principle. We have been so fortunate that we are able to consecrate the old South Meeting-House in Boston to the cause of fostering this Pilgrim principle [applause], that it may be from this time forward a monument, not of one branch of the Christian religion, not of one sect or another, but of that universal religion, that universal patriotism, which has made America, and which shall maintain America. [Applause.] For myself, I count it providential that in this Centennial year of years this venerable monument, that monument whose bricks and rafters are all eloquent of religion and liberty, that that monument has passed from the possession of one sect and one State to belong to the whole nation, to be consecrated to American liberty, and to nothing but American liberty. [Applause.] I need not say—for it is taken for granted when such things are spoken of—that when it was necessary for New England to act at once for the security of this great monument, we had the active aid and hearty assistance of the people of New York, who came to us and helped us and carried that thing right through. [Applause.] I am surrounded here with the people who had to do with the preservation of that great monument for the benefit of the history of this country for ever.

Let me say, in one word, what purposes it is proposed this great monument shall serve, for I think they are entirely in line with what we are to consider to-night. We propose to establish here what I might fairly call a university for the study of the true history of this country. And we propose, in the first place, to make that monument of the past a great Santa Croce, containing the statues and portraits of the men who have made this country what it is. Then we propose to establish an institute for the people of America from Maine to San Francisco, the people of every nationality and every name; and we hope that such societies as this, and all others interested in the progress and preservation of the interest of our country, will aid us in the work. [Applause.] For we believe that the great necessity of this hour is that higher education in which this people shall know God's work with man. We hope that the Forefathers' societies, the Sam Adams clubs, the Centennial clubs over the land, shall make the State more proud of its fathers, and more sure of the lessons which they lived. We mean by the spoken voice and by the most popular printed word, circulated everywhere, to instil into this land that old lesson of New England culture. We stand by the side of those of you who believe in compulsory education. We desire, in looking to the future, that the determination shall be made here by us, as it has been in England, that every child born on American soil shall learn to read and write. [Applause.]

But there is a great deal more to be taught than that. There is a great deal which the common school does not teach and cannot teach, when it teaches men to read. We not only want to teach them to read, but we want to teach them what is worth reading. And we want to instil the principles by which the nation lives. We have got to create in those who came from the other side of the water the same loyalty to the whole of American principles that each man feels to his native country.

What is this Constitution for which we have been fighting, and which must be preserved? It is a most delicate mutual adjustment of the powers and rights of a nation, among and because of the powers and rights of thirty or forty States. It exists because they exist. That it may stand, you need all their mutual rivalries, you need every sentiment of local pride, you need every symbol and laurel of their old victories and honors. You need just this homestead feeling which to-night we are cherishing.

But that balance is lost, that whole system is thrown out of gear, if the seven million people of foreign parentage here are indifferent to the record of New York as they are to that of Illinois, to that of Illinois as to that of Louisiana, to that of Louisiana as to that of Maine; if they have no local pride; if to them the names of Montgomery, of John Hancock, of Samuel Adams, have no meaning, no association with the past. [Applause.] Unless they also acquire this local feeling, unless they share the pride and reverence of the native American for the State in which he is born, for the history which is his glory, all these delicate balances and combinations are worthless, all your revolving planets fall into your sun! It is the national education in the patriotism of the Fathers, an education addressing itself to every man, woman, and child from Katahdin to the Golden Gate—it is this, and only this, which will insure the perpetuity of your republic. [Applause.]

Now, gentlemen, if you would like to try an experiment in this matter, go into one of your public schools, next week, and ask what Saratoga was, and you will be told it is a great watering-place where people go to spend money. You will find there is not one in ten who will be able to tell you that there the Hessian was crushed, and foreign bayonets forever driven from the soil of New York. [Applause.] Ask about Brandywine, the place where Lafayette shed his young blood, where a little handful of American troops were defeated, yet, although they were defeated, broke the force of the English army for one critical year. Put the word Brandywine in one of your public schools, and you will see that the pupils laugh at the funny conjunction of the words "brandy" and "wine," but they can tell you nothing about the history which made the name famous. It seems to me it is dangerous to have your children growing up in such ignorance of the past. [Applause.] How much did they know here about the day when, a short time since, you celebrated the battle of Haarlem Heights, where the British were shown that to land on American soil was not everything? Is it quite safe for your children to grow up in ignorance of your past, while you are looking down upon the century of the future? The great institution we are hoping for in the future is to carry this New England culture above the mere mathematics of life, and to incorporate into all education that nobler culture which made the men who made the Revolution, which made the men who have sustained this country. [Applause.] We shall ask for the solid assistance of all the Forefathers' stock in the country to carry out this great work of national education, and I am quite sure, from what I have seen here to-night, that we shall not ask in vain. [Applause.]

I ought to apologize for speaking so long. I am conscious of the fact that I am a fraud, and I am nothing but a fraud. [Laughter.] The truth is, gentlemen (I say this as I am sitting down), I have no business to be here at all. I am not a Pilgrim, nor the son of a Pilgrim, nor the grandson of a Pilgrim; there is not one drop of Pilgrim blood in my veins. I am a "forefather" myself (for I have six children), but I am not the son of a forefather. I had one father; most men have [laughter]; I have two grandfathers, I have four great-grandfathers, but I have not four-fathers. [Laughter.] I want to explain, now, how all this happened, because something is due to me before you put me out of the room. Like most men, I had eight great-great-grandfathers—so have you; so have you. If you run it up, I have got sixty-four great-grandfathers of the grandfathers of my grandfathers, and I have sixty-four great-grandmothers of the grandmothers of my grandmothers. There were one hundred and twenty-eight of these people the day the "Mayflower" sailed. There were one hundred and twenty-eight of them in England eager to come over here, looking forward to this moment, gentlemen, when we meet here at Delmonico's, and they were hoping and praying, every man of them and every woman of them, that I might be here at this table to-night [laughter], and they meant me to be; and every one of them would have come here in the "Mayflower" but for Miles Standish, as I will explain. The "Mayflower," you know, started from Holland. They had to go to Holland first to learn the Dutch language. [Laughter.] They started from Holland, and they came along the English Channel and stopped at Plymouth in England. They stopped there to get the last edition of the London "Times" for that day, in order that they might bring over early copies to the New York "Tribune" and New York "World". These ancestors of mine, the legend says, were all on the dock at Plymouth waiting for them. It was a bad night, a very bad night. It fogged as it can only fog in England. [Laughter.] They waited on the wharf there two hours, as you wait at the Brooklyn and Jersey ferries, for the "Mayflower" to come along. Methinks I see her now, the "Mayflower" of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospect of a fertile State and bound across an unknown sea. Her dark and weather-beaten form looms wearily from the deep, when the pilot brings her up at the Plymouth dock, and a hundred and twenty-eight of my ancestors press forward. They were handsome men and fair women. When they all pressed forward, Miles Standish was on hand and met them. He was on board and looked at them. He went back to the governor, and said, "Here are one hundred and twenty-eight of as fine emigrants as I ever saw." "Well," Governor Carver said, "the capacity of the vessel, as prescribed in the emigrant act, is already exceeded." Miles Standish said, "I think we could let them in." The Governor said, "No, they cannot come in." Miles Standish went back to the gangway, and said, "You are handsome men, but you can't come in;" and they had to stand there, every man and every woman of them. [Laughter.]

That is the unfortunate reason why I had no ancestors at the landing of the Pilgrims. [Laughter.] But my ancestors looked westward still. They stayed in England, praying that they might come, and when Winthrop, ten years afterwards, sailed, he took them all on board, and if the little State of Massachusetts has done anything to carry out the principles of the men who landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620, why, some little part of the credit is due to my humble ancestry. [Laughter and applause.]

* * * * *

BOSTON

[Speech of Edward Everett Hale, D.D., at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, in proposing the toast, "Boston," said: "We are favored with the company of a typical and eloquent Bostonian, identified with all that is learned and benevolent in that ancient home of the Puritans, and familiar with all its notions. In response to the toast, we call on the Rev. Edward Everett Hale."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:—I am sure that there is not a Boston boy who hears me to-night who does not recollect that when he went out to his first Pilgrim dinner, or to see Fanny Kemble or to any other evening dissipation of fifty years ago, the last admonition of his mother was, "We will leave the candle burning for you, John, but you must be sure and be home before twelve o'clock!" I am sure that the memory of this admonition is lingering among our friends now, that we are entering on the small hours, and that I must only acknowledge your courtesy and sit down. I feel, indeed, all along in your talk of hoar antiquity, that I owe my place here only to your extreme hospitality. In these aged cities you may well say to me, "You Bostonians are children. You are of yesterday," as the Egyptians said to the Greek traveller. For we are still stumbling along like little children, in the anniversaries of our quarter-millennium; but we understand perfectly well that the foundations of this city were laid in dim antiquity. I know that nobody knows when Brooklyn was founded. Your commerce began so long ago that nobody can remember it, but I know that there was a beaver trap on every brook in Kings County, while Boston was still a howling wilderness. These noble ancestors of yours had made themselves at home on Plymouth Rock before we had built a flat-boat on any river in Massachusetts Bay. [Applause.]

It is only as the youngest daughter, quite as a Cinderella, that we of Boston have any claim on your matchless hospitality. But, as Cinderella should, we have done our best at home to make ready our sisters when they should go to the ball. When my brother Beecher, just now, closed his speech with a Latin quotation, I took some satisfaction in remembering that we taught him his Latin at the Boston Latin school. And I could not but remember when I listened with such delight to the address of Mr. Secretary Evarts, which you have just now been cheering, that the first time I heard this persuasive and convincing orator, was when he took the prize for elocution, a boy of thirteen, on the platform in the great hall in our old schoolhouse in School Street. Nay, I confess also, to a little feeling of local as well as national pride, when the President of the United States [Rutherford B. Hayes] was speaking. Just as he closes this remarkable administration, which is going to stand out in history, distinguished indeed among all administrations from the beginning, so pure has it been, so honorable and so successful—just as he closes this administration he makes here this statement of the principles on which are based the success of an American statesman, in a few fit words so epigrammatic that they will be cited as proverbs by our children and our children's children. I heard that masterly definition of the laws which have governed the New Englander, I took pride in remembering that the President also was a graduate of our law school. These three are the little contributions which Cinderella has been preparing in the last half-century, for the first dinner-party of the Brooklyn Pilgrim Society. [Applause.]

I read in a New York newspaper in Washington the other day that something done in Boston lately was done with the "usual Boston intensity." I believe the remark was not intended to be a compliment, but we shall take it as one, and are quite willing to accept the phrase. I think it is true in the past, I hope it will be true in the future, that we go at the things which we have to do with a certain intensity, which I suppose we owe to these Puritan Fathers whom to-night we are celebrating. Certainly we have gone at this business of emigration with that intensity. It is perfectly true that there are in Brooklyn to-day more people than there are in Boston, who were born in Boston from the old New England blood. Not that Brooklyn has been any special favorite. When I met last year in Kansas, a mass meeting of twenty-five thousand of the old settlers and their children, my daughter said to me: "Papa, I am glad to see so many of our own countrymen." She certainly had never seen so many before, without intermixture of people of foreign races. Now it is certainly our wish to carry that intensity into everything. If the thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing thoroughly. What we do we mean to do it for everybody. You have seen the result. We try, for instance, if we open a Latin school at all, to have it the best Latin school in the world. And then we throw it open to everybody, to native and heathen, to Jew and to Greek, to white and black and red, and we advise you to go and do likewise. [Applause.]

You recollect the old joke, I think it began with Preston of South Carolina, that Boston exported no articles of native growth but granite and ice. That was true then, but we have improved since, and to these exports we have added roses and cabbages. Mr. President, they are good roses, and good cabbages, and I assure you that the granite is excellent hard granite, and the ice is very cold ice. [Laughter and applause.]



WILLIAM F. HALL

YARN OF THE MANAGER BOLD

[Speech of William P. Hall (popularly known by his pen name, "Biff" Hall) at the fortieth dinner of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., January 7, 1892. The Secretary, Joseph B. Mann, acted as Chairman. The general subject of the evening's discussion was, "The Modern Stage; its Mission and Influence."]

GENTLEMEN.:—I must confess that I have never regarded the drama in a very serious light. As to its purpose and mission, if I was trying to find out, I should consult the pleasant-faced young man who sits in the box-office. He knows how these things stand with the public. Perhaps the reason I do so regard the matter may be found in my early experiences. The first theatrical performance I ever saw was in this city twenty-five years ago, and one of the prominent features was our old friend, Billy Rice.[6] Billy Rice never gives rise to a serious thought on any occasion. Why, the other night I went to hear Billy Rice, and I heard him tell that same old story that he told in the same old way twenty-five years ago. It really gave me the idea that the drama is not progressive. [Laughter.]

I consider that the theatre and the newspaper are brother and sister; they are always together. Wherever two or three are gathered together in the wilderness some venturesome individual starts a newspaper, and then immediately through its columns induces some other equally venturesome individual to build an opera-house. The people who act there are called turkey actors, for the reason that they hibernate during most of the year and only appear when the turkey is ripe for plucking in holiday time. They then go out and depredate the country. They have a wonderful repertoire, from Howard's "Shenandoah" to Hood's "Sarsaparilla." They play everywhere; it is called the kerosene circuit. If there is nothing else available they let the water out of the water-tank at the station and play in that. [Laughter.] Gentlemen, these are the pioneers of the drama. They convey to the rural mind what knowledge it has of real fire-engines and the triumphs of the scenic artist, and I think we should give to them the credit of spreading through this land those beautiful dramas, "Jim the Westerner," and "The Scout of the Rockies." I do not know what their influence may be; I don't care to touch upon that part of the subject; but I think I cannot better illustrate the straits they are in sometimes than by reciting a little parody on W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballad, the "Yarn of the Nancy Bell." It is entitled:—

THE YARN OF THE MANAGER BOLD

It was near the town they call Detroit, In the State of Mich-i-gan, That I met on the rocks, with a property-box, A gloomy theatrical man. His o. p. heel was quite worn off, And weary and sad was he, And I saw this "fake" give himself a shake, As he croaked in a guttural key: "Oh, I am the star and the manager bold, And the leading and juvenile man, And the comedy pet, and the pert soubrette, And the boss of the box-sheet plan."

He wiped his eye on a three-sheet bill, 'Twas lettered in blue and red, He cursed the fates and the open dates, And I spoke to him, and said: "'Tis little I know of the mimic show, But if you will explain to me— I'll eat my vest if I can digest How you can possibly be, At once a star, and a manager bold, And a leading and juvenile man, And a comedy pet, and a pert soubrette, And a boss of a box-sheet plan."

He ran his hand through his dusty hair, And pulled down a brunette cuff, And on the rocks, with his property-box, He told me his story tough: "It was in the year of eighty-three, When a party of six and me Went on the road with a show that's knowed As a 'musical com-i-dee.' I writ it myself—it knocked 'em cold— It made 'em shriek and roar; But we struck a reef and came to grief, On the west of the Michigan shore. Each night it rained, or snowed or blowed, And when the weather was clear They'd say: 'It's sad your house is bad. But wait till you come next year.' We travelled along from town to town A-tryin' to change our luck— With nothin' to taste but bill-board paste An' the 'property' canvas duck. At last we got to Kankakee, All travel-stained and sore, When the star got mad and shook us bad For a job in a dry-goods store— And then the leading heavy man Informed me with a frown He was going away the very next day With a circus then in town; And the comedy pet and the pert soubrette Engaged as cook and waiter— They are still doing well in a small hotel Near the Kankakee the-ay-ter. Then only the 'comic' and me remained, For to leave he hadn't the heart; Each laugh was a drop of blood to him, And he loved that comedy part. We played one night to a right good house, Eight dollars and a half; But to my ill-luck in my lines I stuck And I queered the comedian's laugh. He fell down dead of a broken heart— The coroner, old and sage, Said his brain was cracked with a bad attackt Of the centre of the stage. I played that part all by myself For a week in Kankakee; O'er rails and rocks with this property-box I've walked to where I be. I never say an actor's good, I always damn a play; I always croak, and a single joke I have, which is to say: That I am the star, and the manager bold, And the leading and juvenile man And the comedy pet, and the pert soubrette, And the boss of the box-sheet plan."

[Laughter and applause.]



MURAT HALSTEAD

OUR NEW COUNTRY

[Speech of Murat Halstead at the 126th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1894. Alexander B. Orr, President of the Chamber, in proposing this toast, said: "I now have the honor of introducing to you that eminent journalist, the Hon. Murat Halstead, who will respond to the toast, 'Our New Country.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT:—In the Orkney Islands there is a cathedral described by the guide as of two parts—the old and the new. The story is glibly told that when it had stood for five hundred years a storm beat down the tower and did other damage, making reconstruction necessary; and that tempest was six hundred years ago. On the road from Geneva to Chamouni there is a point of which Baedeker says: "The rocks on the left are seven thousand feet high." In the Orkneys a tower six hundred years old is new, and in the Alps a precipice seven thousand feet high is a moderate bit of scenery. The standards of the measurement of time and space may be exact, and yet are comparative, affected by the atmosphere of history and the scale of landscapes.

In that portion of this country which was the West a generation ago, a farm was old when the stumps had rotted in the fields, and the land was improved when the trees were cut. New ground was that which had not been ploughed. Once a man of varied experiences accounted to a pious woman for an unhappy bit of profanity by saying that when a boy he had ploughed new ground, and the plough caught in the roots, and the horses balked, and his feet were torn with splinters and thorns, and the handles of the plough kicked and hurt him, until depravity was developed. The lady said she would pray for his forgiveness, if he never would do so any more, and he promised, and I am told he did not keep that promise.

Daniel Boone's new country, when he lived on the Yadkin, in North Carolina, was Kentucky, and afterward it was Missouri. Washington's new country was first Ohio, and then Indiana. Lincoln's new country, when he was a child, was Indiana, and then Illinois. Beyond the Alleghany Mountains was the land of promise of the original States; beyond the Mississippi was the new world of those who moved west in wagons, before the Mexican war and the railroads broadened our dominions, and we were bounded east and west by the oceans. It was for the new country of their ages that Columbus and the Puritans and Captain John Smith set sail. In the new country there is always, at least, the dream of liberty and the hope that the earth we inherit may be generous in the bounties it yields to toil.

The march of manhood westward has reached the shores of the seas that look out on ancient Asia. We have realized the vision of the Genoese—finding in the sunset the footsteps of Marco Polo. We have crossed the mountain ranges and followed the majestic rivers, have traced the borders of the great lakes, whitened by the sails and darkened by the smoke of a commerce that competes in magnitude with that of the salted sea; and Texas, our France, confronts the Mediterranean of our hemisphere.

We have crushed the rocks and sifted the sand that yielded silver and gold, and the soil is ours that is richer than gold mines, whether we offer in evidence South Carolina, whose Sea-Island cotton surpasses the long staple of Egypt; or the Dakotas, matchless for wheat; or the lands of the cornstalk in the Mississippi Valley, that could feed all the tribes of Asia; or Nebraska, whose beets are sweeter with sugar than those that were the gift of Napoleon to Germany.

We have found the springs that yield immortal youth, not in bubbling waters in a flowery wilderness, but in the harvests of the fields and the stored energies of inexhaustible mines, not for the passing person who perishes when his work is done, but for the imperishable race.

All this in our country, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," but with the clothing of life on the ribs, and new in the evolution of conditions by the works of man that make the nations of the earth a family—achievements wonderful in scope, splendid in promise, marvellous in the renown that is of peace; in the fame of the genius that is labor, the spell-binder that gathers and builds, creates and glorifies.

Within the historic record of this Chamber of Commerce of New York, the waters of Lake Erie have been carried through our canals and rivers to the Atlantic, making the Hudson River what Henry Hudson thought it was when he sailed through the beautiful gate of the incomparable continent—the road from the east to the west around the world; and the statue of Thomas Benton points westward from the great cross of the rivers in the heart of the continent—the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi—and the inscription reads: "There is the road to India."

How familiar is the construction of the Pacific railroad; of the telegraph lines across the continent and through the oceans; the record of steamers of ten thousand tons, five hundred knots a day; the miraculous telephone; the trolley, that is with us to stay and to conquer, introducing all the villages to the magic of rapid transit, promoting, with the incessant application of a new force, the American homogeneity of our vast and various population—blending them for one destiny. One is not venturing upon disputed ground—there is no prohibited politics in it to say that slavery is gone—for all classes and sections of our common country will agree it is well. The earth has grown both small and great for us. Its gigantic mysteries are no more. Its circumnavigation is commonplace. The kinetoscope comes to aid the phonograph to make pictures of action and lasting records of music and of speech. The people of coming generations are to hear the voices that have charmed or awed, persuaded, bewitched or commanded, in departed centuries. There will be libraries of rolls, storing for all time these treasures; rolls not unlike those cylinders preserved in the Babylonish deserts. Photography is bringing to us, as on parchment leaves painted with sunlight, the secrets of the depths of the seas and the skies; it is finding new stars, and with the telescopic camera likenesses may be snatched across spaces impenetrable by the naked eye. The aristocracy of intelligence becomes a democracy for the diffusion of the knowledge of the history of the day, which is the most important chapter that has been written, impartial, instantaneous, and is becoming universal.

This is more than a new country; it is a new world. Our own farmers are in competition with those of Egypt, India, Russia and Argentina. Australia with her wool and beef and mutton, Egypt and India with cotton and wheat, South America, Africa and Asia, made fruitful with resources, seek the same markets with our producers; and the mills of Old England are within a few cents and hours, in cost of transportation and time, as cheap and nigh as those of New England to New York. Once, a war between Japan and China would have been so remote that, as they say in the newspapers, there could have been no news in it; but it means matter of business for us now. With the novel conditions, there come upon us new and enormous problems for solution, and responsibilities that cannot be evaded. Once, we were an isolated nation. There was no trouble about becoming involved in the "entangling alliances" that were the cause of alarm to the Father of his Country. Now, the ends of the earth are in our neighborhood, and we touch elbows with all the races of mankind, and all the continents and the islands are a federation. The newspapers are, to continue the poetic prophecy, "the parliament of man."

The drift of human experience is to increased aggregations, to concentration and to centralization. This mighty city, in her material grandeur, and, we may trust, her moral redemption, stands for forty-six indestructible States and one indivisible nation. Her lofty structures far surpass already the palaces of the merchant princes of Tyre and Venice and Liverpool, and we behold, in these imperial towers, the types of the magnificence of the coming time. There never was so fair and superb, ample and opulent a bride as she, in the wholesome arms of the ocean that embrace these islands, adorned with the trophies of the wealth of the world, and whose rulers, the slavery of crime abolished, are the sovereign millions. These are new developments of authority, new growths of responsibility.

The Congress, forty years ago, was a body insignificant in its relations with the masses of the people, in comparison with what it is to-day. It grapples, of necessity, with the new conditions, and the character of the public service is of enlarged consequence, for it is to all the communities and commonwealths far more comprehensive and penetrating in its influence than in other days; and it is well the citizens of the Republic are aroused to appreciation of their added requirements in the care that public life must give the general welfare.

During the recent popular experience of Christian science applied to practical politics, that resulted, among other things, in the intimacy of representative men of the Bowery and the Fifth Avenue, that allows the citizens of each locality to walk into the other locality at bedtime and select their sleeping-rooms, without asking whether the folks are at home, and to depart with or without leaving their P. P. C. cards, one of the speakers, noting in his audience evidences of dissent, said: "If I am speaking in a way that is prerogatory, while I want to go on, I am willing to quit." He honored his nativity by his modesty, and was allowed to go on; but he preferred to sit down, though his theme seemed to him to expand under treatment, and with his new word he retired. I quote him as a precedent and example for immediate imitation. It is more than a joke, though, that Fifth Avenue and the Bowery have got together, and we may hope they will work well for the good of this new country. [Prolonged applause.]



BENJAMIN HARRISON

THE UNION OF STATES

[Speech of Benjamin Harrison at the thirteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893. In proposing the first toast, "The President of the United States," the Chairman, Charles Emory Smith, said: "Gentlemen, my first duty is to give a welcome to our honored guests and a greeting to our worthy members. My second duty is to make an immediate change of the programme. Among the distinguished guests who honor us by their presence to-night is the illustrious patriot and statesman who has filled—yes, filled, not rattled around in—the great dignity of the Presidency of the United States. [Applause.] In his career he has won the admiration of the country not merely by his transcendent abilities as a statesman, but by his noble qualities as a man. Among other characteristics, his love of children has touched the heart of the country. He has promised the little children who are gathered in his distant home that he will join them in preparing and sharing the joys of Christmas. It is imperative not that he shall leave us at this moment but that he shall terminate the three days of cordial and perhaps somewhat burdensome hospitality which he has enjoyed in Philadelphia, at a later stage of this evening. In order that he may be entirely free, and because the first word should be spoken by the first man at the table, I ask you to join me, at this time, in drinking a toast to the health of the illustrious patriot, who is as greatly respected and honored in private life as he was in the Presidency—General Benjamin Harrison, whom I now have the pleasure of presenting to you."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA:—When my good friend and your good neighbor and President, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, invited me to be present to-night, I felt a special demand upon me to yield to his request. I thought I owed him some reparation for appointing him to an office the emoluments of which did not pay his expenses. [Merriment.] Your cordial welcome to-night crowns three days of most pleasurable stay in this good City of Philadelphia. The days have been a little crowded; I think there have been what our friends of The Four Hundred would probably call "eight distinct functions;" but your cordiality and the kind words of your presiding officer quite relieve my fatigue and suggest to me that I shall rightly repay your kindness by making a very short speech. ["No, no!"] It is my opinion that these members of the New England Society are very creditable descendants of the Forefathers. I'm not quite sure that the Forefathers would share this opinion if they were here; but that would be by reason of the fact that, notwithstanding the load of substantial virtues, which they carried through life, their taste had not been highly cultivated. [Laughter.]

I dread this function which I am now attempting to discharge more than any other that confronts me in life. The after-dinner speaker, unlike the poet, is not born,—he is made. I am frequently compelled to meet in disastrous competition about some dinner-table gentlemen who have already had their speeches set up in the newspaper offices. They are given to you as if they were fresh from the lip; you are served with what they would have you believe to be "impromptu boned turkey;" and yet, if you could see into the recesses of their intellectual kitchen, you would see the days of careful preparation which have been given to these spontaneous utterances. The after-dinner speaker needs to find somewhere some unworked joker's quarry, where some jokes have been left without a label on them; he needs to acquire the art of seeming to pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech, as by the wayside, some flower of rhetoric. He seems to have passed it and to have plucked it casually,—but it is a boutonniere with tin foil round it. [Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness that has kept me from competing in the field I have described.

It occurred to me to-day to inquire why you had to associate six States in order to get up a respectable Society. My friend Halstead [Murat Halstead] and I have no such trouble. We are Ohio-born, and we do not need to associate any other State in order to get up a good Society, wherever there is a civil list of the Government. If you would adopt the liberal charter method of the Ohio Society, I have no doubt you could subdivide yourselves into six good societies. The Ohio Society admits to membership everybody who has lived voluntarily six months in Ohio. No involuntary resident is permitted to come in. [Laughter.]

But the association of these States and the name "New England" is a part of an old classification of the States which we used to find in the geography, and all of that classification has gone except New England and the South. "The West" has disappeared and "the Middle States" cannot be identified. Where is "the West"? Why, just now it is at the point of that long chain of islands that puts off from the Alaska coast; and, if I am to credit what I read (for I have no sources of information now except the not absolutely reliable newspaper press), there are some who believe there are wicked men who want to hitch the end of that chain into an island farther out in the sea. [Applause.] If that is to be done, the West would become the East, for I think the Orient has generally been counted to be the East.

I would not, however, suggest a division of the New England Society. It is well enough to keep up an association that is one, not only of neighborhood and of historical association, but of sentiment. Let the New England Society live, and I fancy it will not be long until you enjoy the distinction of being the only great subdivision of the States; for, my fellow-citizens, whatever barriers prejudice may raise, whatever obstruction the interests of men may interpose, whatever may be the outrages of cruelty to stay the march of men, that which made the subdivision called "the Southern States," and all that separated them from the States of the West and of the North, will be obliterated. [Cheering.]

I am not sure, though the story runs so, that I have a New England strain. The fact is that I have recently come to the conclusion that my family was a little overweighted with ancestry, and I have been looking after posterity. [Merriment.]

One serious word, gentlemen. The New England character and the influence of New England men and women have made their impress upon the whole country; for, even in the South, during the time of slavery, educated men and women from New England were the tutors and instructors of the youth of the South in the plantation home. The love of education, the resolve that it should be general, the love of home with all the pure and sacred influences that cluster about it, are elements in the New England character that have a saving force which is incalculable in this great nation in which we live. Your civil institutions have been free, high and clean. From the old town-meeting days till now, New England has believed in and practised the Free Election and the Fair Count. But, gentlemen, I cannot enumerate all of your virtues—time is brief, the catalogue long. Will you permit me to thank you and your honored President for your gracious reception of me to-night? [Long-continued cheering.]



JOSEPH ROSWELL HAWLEY

THE PRESS

[Speech of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley at the seventieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1875. The President, Isaac H. Bailey, said by way of introduction: "Gentlemen, I will now give you the tenth regular toast: 'The Press.' This toast, gentlemen, will be responded to by a member of the press who has always adorned his profession—General Hawley, of Connecticut."]

GENTLEMEN:—Our distinguished President paid the very highest compliment to the Press to-night; for, while he has given at least a fortnight's notice to every other gentleman, he only told me to-night that I had to respond to the toast of "The Press." But as I have attended a good many dinners of the New England Society, and never knew "The Press" to be called upon before midnight, I felt entirely safe. [Laughter.] Now, sir, I have spent an evening—some six hours—here, enjoying all the festivities and hospitalities of this occasion to the utmost, and at last I am called upon, at an hour when we are all full of jollity and mirth, to respond to a toast that in reality calls upon me for my most serious effort. [Applause.] I assure you that, had I known that I was to speak upon this subject to-night, I would, contrary to my usual custom, have been deliberately prepared [laughter]; for I, in reality, have a great deal to say upon that matter; and permit me to add that I have a somewhat peculiar qualification, for I have been a man within the press, "a chiel amang ye takin' notes, an' prentin' them;" and I have been again a man altogether outside of the press, not writing for months to his own people, and subject to receive all the gibes and criticisms and attacks of the press. [Applause.] "I know how it is myself." [Laughter.]

"The Press of the Republic" is a text worthy of the noblest oration. It has a great, a high, and a holy duty. It is at once the leader and educator, and, on the other hand, the representative of the people. I can only touch on some points that I have in my mind, upon this occasion. It seems to me that we are passing through a period of peculiar importance regarding the value and influence of the press of the American Republic. There are times when I join with them in the most indignant denunciation, in the warmest appeal. There are times when I feel the cutting, cruel, stinging injustice of the American press. [Applause.] It is the duty of an editor, sitting, as he does, as a judge—and I mean all that the word implies—upon all that goes on about him in public life—it is his duty to hear both sides, and all sides, as deliberately and calmly as he may, and to pronounce a judgment that, so far as he knows, may be the judgment of posterity. [Applause.] It is true that he has two duties. We know that it is his duty to condemn the bad. When it is made perfectly clear that the bad man is really a bad man, a corrupter of youth, make him drink the hemlock, expel him, punish him, crush him. [Applause.]

But there is another duty imposed upon the American press, quite as great. If there be a man who loves the Republic, who would work for it, who would talk for it, who would fight for it, who would die for it—there are millions of them, thank God!—it is the duty of the American press to uphold him, and to praise him when the time comes, in the proper place, on the proper occasion. [Applause.] The press is to deal not alone in censure of the bad, but in praise of the good. I like the phrase, "The independent press." [Applause.] I am an editor myself. I love my calling. I think it is growing to be one of the great professions of the day. I claim, as an editor (and that is my chief pursuit in life), to be a gentleman also. [Applause, and cries of "Good! Good!"] If I see or know anything to be wrong in the land, high or low, I will say so. If it be in my own party, I will take special pains to say so [applause]; for I suppose it to be true of both parties that we have a very high, a very glorious, a very beautiful, a very lovable idea of the future American Republic. [Applause.]

So I will condemn, I say, whatever may be wrong. I hold myself to be an independent journalist. [Cries of "Good!"]

But, my friends, I hope you will excuse the phrase—I am going to follow it by another—at the same time I do freely avow that I am a partisan; for I never knew anything good, from Moses down to John Brown, that was not carried through by partisanship. [Applause.] If you believe in anything, say so; work for it, fight for it. There are always two sides in the world. The good fight is always going on. The bad men are always working; the devil is always busy. And again, on the other side you have your high idea of whatever is beautiful and good and true in the world; and God is always working also. The man who stands between them—who says: "This is somewhat good, and that is somewhat good; I stand between them"—permit me to say, is a man for whom I have very little respect. [Applause.] Some men say there is a God; some men say there is no God. Some of the independents say that the truth lies between them. [Laughter.] I cannot find it between them. Every man has a God. If you believe in your God,—he may be another God from mine—if you are a man, I want you to fight for him, and I may have to fight against you, but do you fight for the God that you believe in. [Applause.]

I do sincerely think (and I wish that this was a congregation of my fellow-editors of the whole land, for my heart is in reality full of this thing)—I do sincerely think that there is something of a danger that our eloquent, ready, powerful, versatile, indefatigable, vigorous, omnipresent, omniscient men of the press may drive out of public life—and they will ridicule that phrase—may drive out of public life, not all, but a very considerable class of sensitive, high-minded, honorable, ambitious gentlemen. [Applause.] Now, I do not say anything about the future for myself. I have got a "free lance," I have got a newspaper, and I can fight with the rest of them; but I will give you a bit of my experience in public life. I tell you, my friends of the New England Society, that one of the sorest things that a man in public life has to bear is the reckless, unreasonable censure of members of the press whom individually he respects. [Applause.] That large-hearted man, whom personally I love, with whom I could shake hands, with whom I did shake hands, with whom I sat at the social board time and again, grossly misinterprets my public actions; intimates all manner of dishonorable things, which I would fight at two paces rather than be guilty of; and it would be useless for me to write a public letter to explain or contradict. [Applause.]

Now, I am only one of hundreds. I can stand still and wait the result, in the confidence that, if not all, yet some, men believe me to be honorable and true; if they do not, God and I know it, and I would "fight it out on that line." [Applause.]

Gentlemen, it is rather my habit to talk in earnest. Next to the evil of having all public men in this land corrupt; next to the evil of having all our governmental affairs in the hands of men venal and weak and narrow, debauching public life and carrying it down to destruction, is the calamity of having all the young men believe it is so, whether it be so or not. [Applause.] Teach all the boys to believe that every man who goes into public life has his price; teach all the boys to believe that there is no man who enters public life anywhere that does not look out for his own, and is not always scheming to do something for himself or his friends, and seeking to prolong his power; teach every young man who has a desire to go into political life, to think—because you have told him so—that the way to succeed is to follow such arts, and by that kind of talk you may ruin your country. [Applause.]

Now, gentlemen, as I have said, this is a matter for an evening oration. I have barely touched some of the points. I have said the press has a twofold duty and fortune: it is the leader, the educator, the director of the people. It is, at the same time, the reflector of the people. I could spend an hour upon the theme.

I cannot cease, however, without thanking the President of the St. Patrick's Society [Denis MacMahon], the only gentleman who has mentioned the word "centennial." When I was leaving Philadelphia, my wife warned me not to use that word, knowing to what it might lead me [laughter]; and so I shall simply ask you all to come to Philadelphia next year, and join in the great national exhibition, where you will have an opportunity of seeing the progress which this nation has made under the ideas of liberty, government, industry, and thrift which were instilled by the Pilgrim Fathers. [Applause.]



JOHN HAY

OMAR KHAYYAM

[Speech of John Hay, American Ambassador to Great Britain, at a dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, London, December 8, 1897. Henry Norman, President of the Club, took the chair and in introducing Colonel Hay, as the guest of the evening, spoke of him as soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet and Omarian.]

GENTLEMEN:—I cannot sufficiently thank you for the high and unmerited honor you have done me to-night. I feel keenly that on such an occasion, with such company, my place is below the salt, but as you kindly invited me it was not in human nature for me to refuse. Although in knowledge and comprehension of the two great poets whom you are met to commemorate I am the least among them, there is no one who regards them with greater admiration, or reads them with more enjoyment than myself. I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's translation of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's Homer, has described the sensation once for all:—

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken."

The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those amazing stanzas, were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and of death.

Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet or his translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction of a new song, or a mystification of a great modern, careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in the eleventh century, so far away as Khorassan, so accomplished a man of letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such calm disillusion, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this Weltschmerz, which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in 1100? My doubt lasted only till I came upon a literal translation of the Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of Fitzgerald's was its fidelity to the original. In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald before the latter, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of Omar. It is not to the disadvantage of the later poet that he followed so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius had appeared in the world; had sung a song of incomparable beauty and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sung it anew with all its original melody and force, and all the accumulated refinement of ages of art. [Cheers.]

It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master; each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of precious workmanship and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the two poets there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half barbarous province; Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read, the Rubaiyat have taken their place as a classic. There is not a hill-post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union. In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in every Club Library. I heard Omar quoted once in one of the most lovely and desolate spots of the High Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of the world," where in the space of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its water to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib summer. One morning at sunrise as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these words of sombre majesty:—

"'Tis but a tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of death addressed. The Sultan rises and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another guest."

I thought that sublime setting of primeval forest and pouring canon was worthy of the lines; I am sure the dewless, crystalline air never vibrated to strains of more solemn music.

Certainly our poet can never be numbered among the great popular writers of all times. He has told no story; he has never unpacked his heart in public; he has never thrown the reins on the neck of the winged horse, and let his imagination carry him where it listed. "Ah! the crowd must have emphatic warrant." Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose eye no glitter can ever dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot but resent that air of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will hold a place forever among that limited number who, like Lucretius and Epicurus—without rage or defiance, even without unbecoming mirth—look deep into the tangled mysteries of things; refuse credence to the absurd, and allegiance to the arrogant authority, sufficiently conscious of fallibility to be tolerant of all opinions; with a faith too wide for doctrine and a benevolence untrammelled by creed, too wise to be wholly poets, and yet too surely poets to be implacably wise. [Loud cheers.]



RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

NATIONAL SENTIMENTS

[Speech of Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States, at the first annual banquet of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The President of the Society, Benjamin D. Silliman, in introducing him, said: "Gentlemen, we are honored this evening by the presence of an illustrious descendant of New England, the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. [Cheers.] He is about retiring from his high position, with the respect, admiration and the gratitude of the people for the great wisdom, the pure purpose, the steady will and the unwavering firmness with which he has administered the government, preserved its honor and secured its property. [Loud cheers.] I propose to you, as our first toast, 'The President of the United States.'"]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:—We have often heard, we often hear, the phrase "New England ideas." It is said, and I think said truly, that these ideas have a large and growing influence in shaping the affairs of the people of the United States. It is not meant, I suppose, that the principles referred to in this phrase, are peculiar to New England, but merely that in New England they are generally accepted, and that perhaps there they had their first practical illustration. These ideas, these principles generally termed New England ideas, and New England principles, it seems to me, have had much to do with that prosperity which we are now enjoying, and about which we are perhaps apt to be too boastful, but for which it is certain we cannot be too grateful. [Applause.]

The subject, New England ideas, is altogether too large a one for me, or anybody, to discuss this evening. If it were to be done at length, in protracted speaking, we have our friends here, able and with a reputation for capacity in that way. Our friend, Mr. Evarts, for example [applause], Mr. Beecher [applause], and I am confident that I shall be excused for naming in this connection, above all, our friend General Grant. [Loud applause.]

Leaving then to them the discussion of the larger topic, I must content myself with the humbler duty of merely naming the New England ideas to which I refer.

New England believes that every man and woman, under the law ought to have an equal chance and an equal hope with every other man and woman [applause], and believes that in a country where that is secured individuals and society will have their highest development and the largest allotment of human happiness. [Applause.] New England believes that equal rights can be best secured in a country where every child is provided freely with the means of education. [Applause.] New England believes that the road—the only road, the sure road—to unquestioned credit and a sound financial condition is the exact and punctual fulfilment of every pecuniary obligation, public and private [applause], according to its letter and spirit. [Applause.] New England believes in the home, and in the virtues that make home happy [cries of "Good!"], and New England will tolerate, so far as depends on her, no institutions and no practices in any state or territory which are inconsistent with the sacredness of the family relation. [Cries of "Good!"] New England cherishes the sentiment of nationality and believes in a general government strong enough to maintain its authority, to enforce the laws and to preserve and to perpetuate the Union. [Applause.]

Now, with these New England ideas everywhere accepted and prevailing—to repeat, with just and equal laws, administered under the watchful eyes of educated voters; with honesty in all moneyed transactions; with the New England home and the New England family as the foundation of society; with national sentiments prevailing everywhere in the country; we shall not lack that remaining crowning merit of New England life which lends to every peopled landscape its chief interest and glory, the spires pointing heavenward that tell to every man who sees them that the descendants of the Pilgrims still hold to and cherish, and love that which brought their fathers to this continent, which they here sought and here found—freedom to worship God. [Long-continued applause.]



JOSEPH C. HENDRIX

THE WAMPUM OF THE INDIANS

[Speech of Joseph C. Hendrix at the fifteenth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1894. The President, Robert D. Benedict, introducing the speaker, said: "I do not remember ever to have heard at any of the New England festivals which I have attended any discussion of the currency questions which plagued the Pilgrims. We cannot doubt that they had such questions for such questions must arise where there are different currencies. But the attention of our committee this year has naturally been drawn in that direction, and they have selected as the next subject one of the currencies with which the Pilgrims had to deal: 'The Wampum of the Indians.' Upon this subject they have invited the Hon. Joseph C. Hendrix to speak. Doubtless he may draw from that subject lessons that will be of interest and of use for the present day."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—While your poetic souls are attuned to the sweet music of the last speech, I must chide the Fates which compel me to so suddenly precipitate upon you a discussion of a practical nature, especially when at the very outset I must begin to talk about clams. [Laughter.] For when we begin to consider wampum we have to begin to consider the familiar hard-shell clam of daily use, which was the basis of wampum. At this stage of the feast, after the confections contained in that eulogium passed upon you by the Governor of Massachusetts [Frederick T. Greenhalge], and after that private parlor-car, canvas-back-duck, cold-champagne view of consolidation taken by the great trunk-line president [Chauncey M. Depew] [laughter], can you endure anything savoring of the clam? Would you not prefer to go home and sleep upon what you already have? Yet every loyal son of Long Island ought to be partial to clams. The Mayor [Charles A. Schieren], who typifies what a German head can do in a contest with an Irish appetite, should love them because they reside within the city limits, and have ceased to vote in Gravesend. You, Mr. Chairman, as a lawyer, ought to tolerate the clam, for there are two sides to the case, and there's meat inside. Our friend the preacher [Rev. Samuel A. Eliot] knows that they are as good every day in the week as they are on Sunday. Dr. Johnson [Dr. J. G. Johnson] there favors them as part of his internal revenue system. The Mugwumps cannot object to them, because they change from side to side so easily. The Democrats ought to like anything that is always digging a hole for itself, and the Republicans cannot but be patient with what comes on top at the change of the tide. [Laughter.] So, gentlemen, I present to you the clam. Professor Hooper [Franklin W. Hooper] tells me to call it the Venus Mercenaria, but we shall have to wait for our free public library before venturing so far.

You remember, when you were children, looking over the old story-book handed down to you by the Puritan fathers, that one of the conundrums with which the gayety of their times was illustrated was, "Who was the shortest man in the Bible?" The answer was, "Bildad, the Shuhite;" but now, in the revised text it is Peter, because Peter said: "Silver and gold have I none," and no one could be shorter than that. The North American Indian was no better off than Peter in his gold reserve or silver supply; but he managed to get along with the quahog clam. That was the money substance out of which he made the wampum, and the shell-heaps scattered over the island are mute monuments to an industry which was blasted by the demonetization of the hard-shell clam. Wampum was a good money in the Indian civilization. It was the product of human labor as difficult and tedious as the labor of the gold-miner of to-day. It had intrinsic value, for it was redeemable in anything the Indian had to give, from his skill in the chase to his squaw. It took time, patience, endurance and skill to make a thing of beauty out of a clam, even in the eyes of an Indian, but when the squaws and the old men had ground down the tough end of the shell to the size of a wheat straw, and had bored it with a sliver of flint, and strung it upon a thew of deerskin, and tested its smoothness on the noses, they had an article which had as much power over an Indian mind as a grain of gold to-day has over us. There were two kinds of wampum, the blue and the white. The Montauks to this day know that there is a difference between the two. The blue came from our clam. The white, which was the product of the periwinkle, did not need so much labor to fit it for use as wampum, and it was cheaper. The blue was the gold; the white was the silver. One blue bead was worth two white ones. The Indians did not try to keep up any parity of the beads. They let each kind go for just what it was worth. The Puritans used to restring the beads and keep the blue ones. Then the Indians strung their scalps.