Why was wampum good money in its time? The supply was limited. It took a day to make four or five beads. It was in itself a thing of value to the Indian for ornament. It was easily carried about from place to place. It was practically indestructible. It was always alike. It was divisible. The value attached to it did not vary. It was not easily counterfeited. So it was that it became the money of the colonists; a legal tender in Massachusetts and the tool of the primitive commerce of this continent. The Puritan took it for firewater and gave it back for furs. Long Island was the great mint for this pastoral coinage. It was called the "Mine of the New Netherlands." The Indian walked the beach at Rockaway, dug his toes in the sand, turned up a clam, and after swallowing the contents carried the shells to the mint. Gold and silver at the mouth of a mine obtain their chief value from the labor it takes to get the metals; wampum was the refinement by labor of a money substance free to all. The redemption of wampum was perfect. To the Indians it was a seal to treaties, an amulet in danger, an affidavit, small change, a savings' bank, a wedding ring and a dress suit. To this day the belt of wampum is the storehouse of Indian treasure. In the Six Nations, when a big chief made an assertion in council, he laid down a belt of wampum, as though to say, "Money talks." The Iroquois sent a belt of it to the King of England when they asked his protection. William Penn got a strip when he made his treaty. The Indians braided rude pictures into it, which recorded great events. They talked their ideas into it, as we do into a phonograph. They sent messages in it. White beads between a row of dark ones represented a path of peace, as though to say: "Big chief no longer got Congress on his hands." A string of dark beads was a message of war or of the death of a chief, and a string of white beads rolled in mud was equivalent to saying that there was crape on the door of Tammany Hall. So you see that it was a combined post-office, telegraph, telephone, phonograph and newspaper.

The Iroquois had a keeper of wampum—a sort of secretary of the treasury without the task of keeping nine different kinds of money on a parity. This old Indian financier had simple and correct principles. No one could persuade him to issue birch-bark promises to pay and delude himself with the belief that he could thus create money. He certainly would have called them a debt, and would have paid them off as fast as he could. Nor can we imagine him trying to sustain the value of the white wampum after the Puritans started in to make it out of oyster shells by machinery. Nor would he have bought it, not needing it, and have issued against it his promises to pay in good wampum as fast and as often as they were presented.

It was said that wampum was so cunningly made that neither Jew nor Devil could counterfeit it. Nevertheless a Connecticut Yankee rigged up a machine that so disturbed the market value of the beads that in a short time the Long Island mints were closed to the free coinage of clams. Wampum was demonetized through counterfeit, overproduction and imitation; but when this occurred the gentle Puritan didn't have enough of it left to supply the museums. The Indian had parted with his lands and his furs, had redeemed all the outstanding wampum with his labor, and when he went to market to get firewater, he was taught that he must have gold and silver to get it. Then he wanted to ride in blood up to his horse's bridles. Commerce had found a better tool than wampum had become. The buccaneers and the pirates had brought in silver and that defied the Connecticut man's machinery or the Dutchman's imitations. The years pass by and commerce finds that silver, because of overproduction, becomes uncertain and erratic in value, and with the same instinct it chooses gold as a standard of value. A coin of unsteady value is like a knife of uncertain sharpness. It is thrown aside for one that can do all that is expected of it. Gold is such a tool. It is the standard of all first-class nations. It is to-day, and it will remain, the standard of this Republic.

The value of the gold dollar is not in the pictures on it. It is in the grains of gold in it. Smash it and melt it, and it buys one hundred cents' worth the world over. Deface a silver dollar and fifty cents of its value goes off yonder among the silent stars. Free coinage means that the silver miner may make fifty cents' worth of silver cancel a dollar's worth of debts. This is a greenback doctrine in a silver capsule. Bimetallism is a diplomatic term for international use. Monometallism with silver as the metal is the dream of the Populist and of the poor deluded Democratic grasshoppers who dance by the moonshine until they get frost-bitten.

The free-silver heresy is about dead. It has cost this country, at to-day's price for silver, $170,000,000. The few saddened priests of this unhappy fetich who remain active find their disciples all rallying round the standard of currency reform. The report of the Secretary of the Treasury is a confession of national financial sins, and a profession of faith in sound money doctrines. Every business man will watch with keen interest the progress of a plan for the reform in our currency. You all know that the straight road is the retirement of the greenback and the Treasury note, and the withdrawal of the Government from the banking business, and you will naturally distrust any makeshift measures. The greenback is a war debt, and a debt that is now troublesome. We are funding and refunding it in gold daily, and are still paying it out as currency to come back after gold. Any scheme to sequestrate, to hide it under a bushel, or to put it under lock and key, is a shallow device. The way to retire it is to retire it. It has served its full purpose, and there never was a better time than now to call it in.

In twelve years all our Government debt matures. The national banking system based upon it must expire with it, unless existing laws are changed. This system has served the nation well. No one has ever lost a dollar by a national bank note. The system is worth preserving, and with a little more liberal treatment it can be made to serve until a currency based upon commercial credits and linked to a safety fund, a system which works so admirably in Canada, can be engrafted upon it. There is a great hurry to create such a system now on a basis of the partial sequestration of the greenback and the Treasury note, but the bottom principle is wrong. The Government should discourage a commercial credit currency based upon a public credit currency, which, in turn, rests upon a slender gold deposit, exposed to every holder of a Government demand note. A credit currency is a double-edged tool, and needs to be handled with great care. We have had so much crazy-quilt finance that I am sure that we want no more of it. We have been sorely punished for our financial sins in the past, and now that we are repentant, we want to get everything right before we go ahead with our full native energy. We have suffered from the distrust of the world, and then from our own distrust. In retracing our steps let us be sure that we are on solid ground, and make our "wampum" as good as the best there is in the world. [Applause.]



LORD HERSCHELL

GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES

[Speech of Lord Farrer Herschell at the 130th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 15, 1898. Lord Herschell was present in this country as President of the Joint High Commission appointed to arbitrate the dispute between Canada and the United States relative to the Bering Sea seal fisheries. Alexander E. Orr, President of the Chamber, proposed the toast to which Lord Herschell spoke: "The Future Relations between Great Britain and the United States—a determined union of heart and purpose will carry the forces of justice and humanity the world over."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE:—I assure you that I am most deeply sensible of the warm welcome that you have extended to me, and grateful for the manner in which you have received the words which were uttered introducing me to you. But I can assure you that I rejoiced to hear the cheers with which this toast was greeted, not merely because they were a compliment to myself, but because I was satisfied that you were regarding me rather in the character of a representative of my country, and that there rang in those cheers sentiments of good will to the country that I have the honor to represent to-night. [Applause.] And I heard in them something more than that—they indicated to me a conviction that in the continuance of good relations between your country and mine, there were involved blessings, priceless blessings, to the countries we love so well. [Applause.]

I can assure you that all my countrymen reciprocate the feeling which has been expressed; that they desire, as you do, that the cordial relationship should continue, and that they have toward the United States of America nothing but feelings of good will and a desire for its welfare and progress. [Applause.] I have said—all my countrymen. I ought, perhaps, not to have been so bold. There are some fools in all lands. [Laughter.] They are the product of every soil. No nation has a monopoly of them. [Laughter.] But with these exceptions, I can speak, I think, for all my countrymen. The echoes of those now distant events of a century and a quarter ago, which left much soreness behind them, have died away in England. [Applause.] We can rejoice as much as you rejoice to-day, in the fact that you are one of the leading nations of the world. [Applause.] And there is to me a peculiar interest in the fact that I, who have had the honor to fill the office of Lord Chancellor, should be here as the representative of my country engaged in negotiations between Great Britain and the United States. A century and a quarter ago or more, a predecessor of mine in that high office made a most unfortunately foolish prediction. He said, with reference to these (at that time) colonies: "If they withdraw their allegiance, we shall withdraw our protection; and then they will soon be overrun by the little States of Genoa and San Marino." [Laughter.] I am happy to say—I must say it for the credit of the office—that there was even then a distinguished lawyer who was to succeed the Lord Chancellor to whom I have referred, who made a speech at which to-day neither I nor any one else need blush. But I could not help thinking of those words when I reflected that I was here negotiating with the representatives of a mighty nation of seventy millions of people, who have not been overrun by the little Republics of Genoa and San Marino [laughter], although undoubtedly, in a sense very different from that which the speaker intended, you may have been overrun by the natives of some of the Italian towns. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, there is to-day in my country, as in yours, a pride in the United States. We cannot forget that if you won your independence, if you achieved your liberties, if you laid the foundations of your constitution, if you prepared for such a nation as exists here to-day, you were at that time colonists of Great Britain. The men who laid the foundation stones of the United States, in which you to-day glory, were those who had gone out from amongst us, who had in the country of my birth imbibed for the most part their traditions of liberty, and their desire and determination to achieve it; and, therefore, with no misgiving, with nothing but a feeling of pride, we may rejoice in your success and in your progress. We long ago admitted the follies and the wrong-doings of those times, as freely as you could insist upon them yourselves. [Applause.]

I am not going to dwell upon that aspect of the case to-night, because I am quite aware that sometimes the ready admission of wrong-doing is rather irritating than soothing. [Laughter.] I remember once hearing a learned counsel, who was conducting the trial of a case before a judge of great ability but not of the best of tempers, put a question of a character such as to shock any one accustomed to be guided by the rigid rules of evidence. Strictly in confidence, I don't think he had the least idea that it was a wrong question, but the learned judge interposed and said: "That was an improper question, Mr. so and so." "Yes, my Lord, it was very improper." "Yes," said the judge, "you ought not to have put the question,—a most improper question." "Yes, sir; I ought not to have put it, a more improper question never was." And the more the judge reproached him the more submissive he became, until he drove the judge nearly mad. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, there has been a great deal of discussion lately as to the exact nature of the bond which united Great Britain and the United States. Some one says blood is thicker than water, whereupon another with perverse ingenuity begins at once to analyze the blood and discovers that the elements are not, when resolved, precisely the same. That, it is said, is the bond of the Anglo-Saxon race; whereupon a Scotchman insists, or a Welshman insists, that it is not all Anglo-Saxon, that there is something Celtic in its constitution, and that to speak of it as the Anglo-Saxon race, either in my country or in yours, is not in strictness historically accurate. Another finds that they are the great English-speaking peoples, whereupon an ingenious man points out that there are people in Great Britain and its dependencies to whom the English language is not the most natural means of communication, and that not every inhabitant of the United States is a perfect master of the English tongue. [Laughter.]

Well, then, I saw an ingenious argument the other day to prove that it is a gross impropriety to speak of England as the mother country; that the two countries were really in the relation of sisters, and that we ought to call them sister countries, and not speak of them as mother and daughter. I am not going to enter into any of this controversy to-night. The probability is that none of these suggested explanations is a completely adequate explanation of the bond that binds the two nations together, but that in each of them is to be found some element of truth. I am not going to dwell on them to-night; I prefer a practical rather than a theoretical view of any subject, and they all agree in this: a tacit assertion of the fact that there is a bond which unites Great Britain and the United States such as unites no two other nations [applause and cheers]; and they express a realization of the fact that there is a very close relationship between the two countries. Now, undoubtedly we have at times said nasty things of one another [laughter]; but then that is not proof that we are not near relations. [Laughter.] Indeed, it might, perhaps, be cited by some as evidence the other way. We have sometimes seemed to be very near serious—what shall I say?—attacks upon one another. But, again, that is no proof that a close relationship does not exist between us. It is not impossible that at some future time, when we are either of us menaced by the intervention of some third party which seriously threatens our existence or our prosperity, we may find that, whatever differences arise amongst ourselves from time to time, we shall be ready to unite in defence of each other against a stranger. [Applause and cheers.] A friend of mine who is a great champion of woman's rights, and a man of the most chivalrous disposition, when walking home one night, found a man and a woman, husband and wife, in serious controversy, and the man was just about to strike his wife. With his usual chivalry he intervened between them. In a moment they were both upon him [laughter], and he had much ado to withdraw himself from their clutches. May not that, perhaps, be an indication of the kind of action which relations may show who are not always perfectly peaceably disposed toward one another?

Gentlemen, I rejoice to think that I am here to take part in an endeavor to compose such differences as exist at present between the two nations. There is another bond of union beyond the natural one to which I have alluded, and that is the commercial interests of the two countries. I know there are some who think that no country can gain in commercial prosperity or make real progress in commerce except at the expense of some other. I believe that to be a profound mistake. I do not, of course, deny that a particular interest here or there—perhaps many interests—may suffer from the stress of international competition, but I think we take too narrow a view when in gazing on the industrial world we fix our eyes upon this local spot or that, and consider how this or that particular place may be affected. Our interests are more widespread, strike deeper roots, roots in more different directions than we are at all times ready to admit or to conceive. And of this I am perfectly certain, that where two nations are so closely bound up in commercial intercourse as we are, neither of those nations can possibly progress in commercial prosperity, without a reflection of that commercial prosperity upon the other nation with which it deals. [Applause.]

Gentlemen, many of the events which to-day bulk largely in our eyes will look strangely insignificant when seen through the vista of time; but of this I feel satisfied, that if the men of to-day by their actions can do anything to put upon a permanent basis cordial, friendly relations and co-operation between your Republic and the British Empire, these actions will grow in men's estimation larger rather than smaller, and generations to come will rise to call those blessed who put the relations of the two countries upon a sound and satisfactory footing. [Applause.]

Gentlemen, however successful we may be, as I trust we shall be successful, in composing such differences as now exist—in the nature of things it is impossible but that difficulties from time to time will arise—in the future, how are we going to treat them? In what spirit shall we meet them as they arise? It sometimes seems to me strange that nations which, after all, are but collections of individuals should deal with their differences in a manner in which sensible men as individuals never would dream of treating them. [Applause.] We seem, somehow, when once we have taken up a position, to feel as if it were impossible to withdraw from it. We must adhere to it, whether originally we took it up wisely or unwisely, whether it was sound or unsound. We lash ourselves into a white heat over the differences that arise, although the relations that they bear to our national life and our national interests may be of comparative insignificance. If an individual were to deal in that way, always to stand out in every case for his strict rights, always to be prepared to contest everything, to adhere always to what he claims as his right, to get into a rage with his neighbor because he would not see as he saw himself—well, we should call that man an intolerably quarrelsome fellow who was not fit for civilized human society [cheers]; and yet, as nations, apparently there seems nothing strange in our doing that which, as individuals, we should be the last to dream of doing.

A friend, a former colleague of mine—now, alas! no more,—told me that he was, many years ago, travelling up to London with an owner of race horses who was accompanied by his trainer. When they arrived at the station near the metropolis where the tickets are collected, the ticket-collector came, and my friend said, "My servant has my ticket in the next carriage." The ticket-collector retired and presently came back rather angry and said, "I cannot find him." My friend said, "he is in the next carriage—or the next carriage but one; he is there." As soon as the ticket-collector retired for the second time the trainer leaned forward and said, "Stick to it, my Lord, you will tire him out." [Laughter and cheers.] Is not that sometimes a little indicative of the spirit in which we are inclined to act nationally when we have taken up any position, even though it be a false one?

Gentlemen, it seems to me that these questions of our future relations with one another are questions of special moment just now. You are at a parting of the ways. It would be presumptuous, as it would be unwise, in me to forecast or to attempt to forecast the decision at which you will arrive on questions that have yet to be solved. But, putting these questions that remain for solution aside, and dealing only with the events as they are now known and fixed, it is impossible not to feel that this year marks an epoch in the history of the United States, and the relation which the United States is to bear to Great Britain, and the relation which Great Britain is to bear to the United States; and the spirit which is to animate those two peoples becomes of more importance than it ever has been before. I rejoice to see those flags joined as they are around this room to-night. [Applause.] God grant that they may never be flaunted in defiance of one another. [Applause.] I rejoice to see them united in concord, not in any spirit of arrogance toward other peoples, not as desiring to infringe the rights of any other power, but because I see in that union a real safeguard for the maintenance of peace in the world [applause], and because I see more than that—I see the surest guaranty of an extended reign of liberty and justice. [Prolonged applause.]



GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD

THE INFLUENCE OF MEN OF GENIUS

[Speech of George S. Hillard at the banquet given to Charles Dickens by the "Young Men of Boston," February 1, 1842. The company consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George Bancroft, Washington Allston and Oliver Wendell Holmes.]

MR. PRESIDENT:—Our meeting together this evening is one of the agreeable results of the sympathy established between two great and distant nations by a common language and a common literature. We are paying our cheerful tribute of gratitude and admiration to one who, though heretofore a stranger to us in person, has made his image a familiar presence in innumerable hearts, who has brightened the sunshine of many a happy, and cheered the gloom of many a desponding breast, whose works have been companions to the solitary and a cordial in the sick man's chamber, and whose natural pathos and thoughtful humor, flowing from a genius as healthy as it is inventive, have drawn more closely the ties which bind man to his brother man, and have given us a new sense of the wickedness of injustice, the deformity of selfishness, the beauty of self-sacrifice, the dignity of humble virtue, and the strength of that love which is found in "huts where poor men lie."

The new harvest of applause which is gathered by the gifted minds of England, in a country separated from their own by three thousand miles of ocean, is a privilege peculiar to them, and one to which no author, however rich in golden opinion won at home, can feel himself indifferent. No brow can be so thickly shaded with indigenous laurels, as not to wear, with emotion, those which are the growth of a foreign soil. There is no homage so true and unquestionable as that which the stranger offers. At home the popularity of an author may, during his own life at least, be greatly increased by circumstances not at all affecting the intrinsic value of his writings. The caprice of fashion, the accident of high rank or distinguished social position, the zeal of a literary faction or a political party, may invest some "Cynthia of the minute" with a brief notoriety, which resembles true fame only as the meteor resembles the star. But popularity of this kind is of too flimsy and delicate a texture to bear transportation. It is only merit of a solid and durable fabric which can survive a voyage across the Atlantic. It has been said, with as much truth as point, that a foreign nation is a sort of contemporaneous posterity. Its judgment resembles the calm, unbiased voice of future ages. It has no infusion of personal feeling; it is a serene and unimpassioned verdict, neither won by favor, nor withheld from prejudice. The admiration which comes from afar off is valuable in the direct ratio of its distance, as there is the same degree of assurance that it springs from no secondary cause, but is a spontaneous and unbought tribute. An English author might see with comparative unconcern his book upon a drawing-room table in London, but should he chance to meet a well-thumbed copy of it in a log-house beyond our western mountains, would not his heart swell with just pride at the thought of the wide space through which his name was diffused and his influence felt, and would not his lips almost unconsciously utter the expression of the wandering Trojan:—

"Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?"

It is also probably true that, in our country, English authors find their warmest and most impassioned admirers. It is as true of the mind as of the eye, that distance lends enchantment to the view. There are no hues so soft and delicate as those with which the imagination invests that which is unseen or faintly discerned. Remoteness in space has the same idealizing effect as remoteness of time. The voice that comes to us from the dim distance is like that which comes to us from the dim past. We know, but we do not feel, the interval which separates Shakespeare from Scott, Milton from Wordsworth, Hume from Hallam. We know them only by those airy creations of the brain which speak to us through the printed page. Solitude, and silence too, are the nurses of deep and strong feeling. That imaginative element which exalts the love of Dante for Beatrice, and of Burns for his "Mary in Heaven," deepens the fervor of admiration with which the pale, enthusiastic scholar, in some lonely farmhouse in New England, hangs over a favorite author, who, though perhaps a living contemporary, is recognized only as an absolute essence of genius, wisdom or truth. The minds of men whom we see face to face appear to shine upon us darkly through the infirmities of a mortal frame. Their faculties are touched by weariness or pain, or some humiliating weakness or unhandsome passion thrusts its eclipsing shadow between us and the light of their genius. Not so with those to whom they speak only through the medium of books. In these we see the products of those golden hours, when all that was low is elevated, when all that was dark is illumined, and all that was earthly is transfigured. Books have no touch of personal infirmity—theirs is undying bloom, immortal youth, perennial fragrance. Age cannot wrinkle, disease cannot blight, death cannot pierce them. The personal image of the author is quite as likely to be a hindrance as a help to his book. The actor who played with Shakespeare in his own "Hamlet" probably did but imperfect justice to that wonderful play, and the next-door neighbor of a popular author will be very likely to read his books with a carping, censorious spirit, unknown to him who has seen his vision only in his mind.

Mr. President, I dwell with pleasure on the considerations to which an occasion like this gives birth. It is good for us to be here. Whatever has a tendency to make two great nations forget those things in which they differ, and remember those only in which they have a common interest, is a benefit to them both. Whatever makes the hearts of two countries beat in unison, makes them more enamored of harmony, more sensitive to discord. Honor to the men of genius who made two hemispheres thrill to the same electric touch, who at the same time, and with the same potent spell, are ruling the hearts of men in the mountains of Scotland, the forests of Canada, the hillsides of New England, the prairies of Illinois, and the burning plains of India. Their influence, so far as it extends, is a peaceful and a humanizing one. When you have instructed two men with the same wisdom, and charmed them with the same wit, you have established between them a bond of sympathy, however slight, and made it so much the more difficult to set them at variance. When I remember the history of England, how much she has done for law, liberty, virtue and religion—for all that beautifies and dignifies life—when I realize how much that is most valuable and characteristic in our own institutions is borrowed from her—when I recall our obligations to her matchless literature, I feel a throb of gratitude that "Chatham's language is my mother-tongue," and my heart warms to the land of my fathers. I embrace with peculiar satisfaction every consideration that tends to give us an unity of spirit in the bond of peace—to make us blind to each other's faults, and kind to each other's virtues. I feel all the force of the fine lines of one whom we have the honor to receive as a guest this evening:—

"Though ages long have passed Since our fathers left their home, Their pilot in the blast, O'er untravelled seas to roam, Yet lives the blood of England in our veins. And shall we not proclaim That blood of honest fame, Which no tyranny can tame By its chains?

"While the manners, while the arts That mould a nation's soul, Still cling around our hearts,— Between, let ocean roll, Our joint communion breaking with the sun. Yet still from either beach The voice of blood shall reach, More audible than speech— We are one."

It is now more than sixty-seven years since the rapid growth of our country was sketched by Mr. Burke, in the course of his speech on conciliation with America, in a passage whose picturesque beauty has made it one of the commonplaces of literature, in which he represents the angel of Lord Bathurst drawing up the curtain of futurity, unfolding the rising glories of England, and pointing out to him America, a little speck scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, yet which was destined before he tasted of death to show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which then attracted the admiration of the world. There are many now living whose lives extend over the whole of this period—and during that space, what memorable changes have taken place in the relations of the two countries! Let us imagine the angel of that illustrious author and statesman, when the last words of that profound and beautiful speech were dying upon the air, withdrawing him from the congratulations of his friends, and unfolding to him the future progress of that country, whose growth up to that period he had so felicitously sketched:—"There is that America, whose interests you have so well understood and so eloquently maintained, which, at this moment, is taking measures to withdraw from the protection and defy the power of the mother country. But mourn not that this bright jewel is destined to fall from your country's crown. It is an obedience to the same law of Providence which sends the full-fledged bird from the nest, and the man from his father's house. Man shall not be able to sever what the immutable laws of Providence have joined together. The chafing chains of colonial dependence shall be exchanged for ties light as air, yet strong as steel. The peaceful and profitable interchange of commerce—the same language—a common literature—similar laws, and kindred institutions shall bind you together with cords which neither cold-blooded policy, nor grasping selfishness, nor fratricidal war, shall be able to snap. Discoveries in science and improvements in art shall be constantly contracting the ocean which separates you, and the genius of steam shall link your shores together with a chain of iron and flame. A new heritage of glory shall await your men of genius in those now unpeopled solitudes. The grand and lovely creations of your myriad-minded Shakespeare—the majestic line of Milton—the stately energy of Dryden, and the compact elegance of Pope, shall form and train the minds of uncounted multitudes yet slumbering in the womb of the future. Her gifted and educated sons shall come over to your shores with a feeling akin to that which sends the Mussulman to Mecca. Your St. Paul's shall kindle their devotion; your Westminster Abbey shall warm their patriotism; your Stratford-on-Avon and Abbotsford shall awaken in their bosoms a depth of emotion in which your own countrymen shall hardly be able to sympathize. Extraordinary physical advantages and the influence of genial institutions shall there give to the human race a rate of increase hitherto unparalleled; but the stream, however much it be widened and prolonged, shall retain the character of the fountain from which it first flowed. Every wave of population that gains upon that vast green wilderness shall bear with it the blood, the speech, and the books of England, and aid in transmitting to the generations that come after it, her arts, her literature, and her laws." If this had been revealed to him, would it not have required all the glow of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar the benevolent purposes of God.



SAMUEL REYNOLDS HOLE

WITH BRAINS, SIR!

[Speech of Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester Cathedral, at a banquet given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York City, October 27, 1894. Frank R. Lawrence, the President of the Club, in introducing Dean Hole recalled the fact that the Club had had the honor of receiving Dean Stanley and Charles Kingsley.]

GENTLEMEN:—I can assure you that when I received your invitation, having heard so much of the literary, artistic and social amenities of your famous Club, I resembled in feelings, not in feature, the beautiful bride of Burleigh, when—

"A trouble weighed upon her, And perplexed her, night and morn, With the burthen of an honor Unto which she was not born."

I could have quoted the words of the mate in Hood's "Up the Rhine," when during a storm at sea a titled lady sent for him, and asked him if he could swim. "Yes, my lady," says he, "like a duck." "That being the case," says she, "I shall condescend to lay hold of your arm all night." "Too great an honor for the likes of me," says the mate. [Laughter.]

Even when I came into this building—though I am not a shy man, having been educated at Brazenose College, and preposterously flattered throughout my life, most probably on account of my size,—I had not lost this sense of unworthiness; but your gracious reception has not only reassured me, but has induced the delicious hallucination that, at some period forgotten, in some unconscious condition, I have said something or done something, or written something, which really deserved your approbation. [Applause.] To be serious, I am, of course, aware why this great privilege has been conferred upon me. It is because you have associated me with those great men with whom I was in happy intercourse, that you have made my heart glad to-night.

It has ever been my ambition to blend my life, as the great painter does his colors, "with brains, sir;" and I venture to think that such a yearning is a magnificent proof that we are not wholly destitute of this article, as when the poor wounded soldier exclaimed, on hearing the doctor say that he could see his brains: "Oh, please write home and tell father, for he has always said I never had any." [Laughter.] Be that as it may, my appreciation of my superiors has evoked from them a marvellous sympathy, has led to the formation of very precious friendships, and has been my elevator unto the higher abodes of brightness and freshness, as it is to-night.

Yes, my brothers, it is delightful to dwell "with brains, sir," condensed in books in that glorious world, a library—a world which we can traverse without being sick at sea or footsore on land; in which we can reach heights of science without leaving our easy-chair, hear the nightingales, the poets, with no risk of catarrh, survey the great battle-fields of the world unscathed; a world in which we are surrounded by those who, whatever their temporal rank may have been, are its true kings and real nobility, and which places within our reach a wealth more precious than rubies, "for all things thou canst desire are not to be compared with it." In this happy world I met Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Hawthorne, Willis, Longfellow, Whittier and all your great American authors, historical, poetical, pathetic, humorous; and ever since I have rejoiced to hold converse with them. Nevertheless, it is with our living companions, with our fellow-men who love books as we do, that this fruition is complete, and so it comes to pass in the words of one whose name I speak with a full heart, Oliver Wendell Holmes, that "a dinner-table made up of such material as this is the last triumph of civilization over barbarism." [Applause.]

We feel as our witty Bishop (afterward Archbishop) Magee described himself, when he said: "I am just now in such a sweet, genial disposition, that even a curate might play with me." [Great laughter.] We are bold to state with Artemus Ward, of his regiment composed exclusively of major-generals, that "we will rest muskets with anybody."

"Linger, I cried, O radiant Time, thy pow'r Hath nothing else to give; life is complete, Let but the happy present, hour by hour. Itself remember and itself repeat."

And yet one more quotation we are glad to make, wherewith to make some amends for the stupidity of him who quotes lines most appropriate, by Tennyson, from the "Lotos-Eaters," and repeated by one who has just crossed the Atlantic:—

"We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething free Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind."

Now, gentlemen, let me give, "evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor." [Long applause.]



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES Photogravure after a photograph from life



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

WELCOME TO THE ALUMNI

[Speech of Oliver Wendell Holmes as President of the day, at the annual dinner of the Harvard Alumni Association, in Cambridge, July 19, 1860, inaugurating the practice of public speaking at the "Harvard Dinners." That year also took place the inauguration of President C. Felton, an event to which the speaker alludes in his graceful reference to the "goodly armful of scholarship, experience and fidelity" once more filling the "old chair of office."]

BROTHERS, BY THE SIDE OF HER WHO IS MOTHER OF US ALL, AND FRIENDS, WHOM SHE WELCOMES AS HER OWN CHILDREN:—The older sons of our common parent who should have greeted you from this chair of office, being for different reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place of these honored, but truant, children to the best of my ability—a most grateful office, so far as the expression of kind feeling is concerned; an undesired duty, if I look to the comparisons you must draw between the government of the association existing de jure, and its government de facto. Your President [Robert C. Winthrop] so graces every assembly which he visits, by his presence, his dignity, his suavity, his art of ruling, whether it be the council of a nation, the legislature of a State, or the lively democracy of a dinner-table, that when he enters a meeting like this, it seems as if the chairs stood back of their own will to let him pass to the head of the board, and the table itself, that most intelligent of quadrupeds, the half reasoning mahogany, tipped him a spontaneous welcome to its highest seat, and of itself rapped the assembly to order. [Applause.]

Your first Vice-President [Charles Francis Adams], whose name and growing fame you know so much better than his bodily presentment, has not been able to gratify your eyes and ears by showing you the lineaments and stirring you with the tones inherited from men who made their country or shaped its destinies. [Applause.] You and I have no choice therefore, and I must submit to stand in this place of eminence as a speaker, instead of sitting a happy listener with my friends and classmates on the broader platform beneath. Through my lips must flow the gracious welcome of this auspicious day, which brings us all together in this family temple under the benignant smile of our household divinities, around the ancient altar fragrant with the incense of our grateful memories.

This festival is always a joyous occasion. It resembles a scattered family without making any distinction except that which age establishes, an aristocracy of silver hairs which all inherit in their turn, and none is too eager to anticipate. In the great world outside there are and must be differences of lot and position; one has been fortunate, another, toiling as nobly perhaps, has fallen in with adverse currents; one has become famous, his name stares in great letters from the hand-bills of the drama of his generation; another lurks in small type among the supernumeraries. But here we stand in one unbroken row of brotherhood. No symbol establishes a hierarchy that divides one from another; every name which has passed into our golden book, the triennial catalogue, is illuminated and emblazoned in our remembrance and affection with the purple and sunshine of our common Mother's hallowed past and hopeful future.

We have at this time a twofold reason for welcoming the return of our day of festive meeting. The old chair of office, against whose uneasy knobs have rested so many well-compacted spines, whose uncushioned arms have embraced so many stately forms, over whose inheritance of cares and toils have ached so many ample brows, is filled once more with a goodly armful of scholarship, experience and fidelity. The President never dies. Our precious Mother must not be left too long a widow, for the most urgent of reasons. We talk so much about her maternity that we are apt to overlook the fact that a responsible Father is as necessary to the good name of a well-ordered college as to that of a well-regulated household. As children of the College, our thoughts naturally centre on the fact that she has this day put off the weeds of her nominal widowhood, and stands before us radiant in the adornment of her new espousals. You will not murmur, that, without debating questions of precedence, we turn our eyes upon the new head of the family, to whom our younger brothers are to look as their guide and counsellor as we hope and trust through many long and prosperous years.

Brothers of the Association of the Alumini! Our own existence as a society is so bound up with that of the College whose seal is upon our foreheads, that every blessing we invoke on our parent's head returns like the dew from Heaven upon our own. So closely is the welfare of our beloved Mother knitted to that of her chief counsellor and official consort, that in honoring him we honor her under whose roof we are gathered, at whose breast we have been nurtured, whose fair fame is our glory, whose prosperity is our success, whose lease of long life is the charter of our own perpetuity.

I propose the health of the President of Harvard University: We greet our brother as the happy father of a long line of future alumni.

* * * * *

DOROTHY Q.

[Speech of Oliver Wendell Holmes at the banquet of the Boston Merchants' Association at Boston, Mass., May 23, 1884, in honor of the Hon. John Lowell.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:—It was my intention, when I accepted the public invitation to be with you this evening, to excuse myself from saying a word. I am a professor emeritus, which means pretty nearly the same thing as a tired-out or a worn-out instructor. And I do seriously desire that, having during the last fifty years done my share of work at public entertainments, I may hereafter be permitted, as a post-prandial emeritus, to look on and listen in silence at the festivals to which I may have the honor of being invited—unless, indeed, I may happen to wish to be heard. [Applause.] In that case I trust I may be indulged, as an unspoken speech and an unread poem are apt to "strike in," as some complaints are said to, and cause inward commotions. [Applause.] Judge Lowell's eulogy will be on every one's lips this evening. His soundness, his fairness, his learning, his devotion to duty, his urbanity,—these are the qualities which have commended him to universal esteem and honor. [Applause.] I will not say more of the living; I wish to speak of the dead.

In respectfully proposing the memory of his great-great-grandmother [laughter], I am speaking of one whom few if any of you can remember. [Laughter.] Yet her face is as familiar to me as that of any member of my household. She looks upon me as I sit at my writing-table; she does not smile, she does not speak; even the green parrot on her hand has never opened his beak; but there she is, calm, unchanging, in her immortal youth, as when the untutored artist fixed her features on the canvas. To think that one little word from the lips of Dorothy Quincy, your great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, decided the question whether you and I should be here to-night [laughter], in fact whether we should be anywhere [laughter] at all, or remain two bodiless dreams of nature! But it was Dorothy Quincy's "Yes" or "No" to Edward Jackson which was to settle that important matter—important to both of us, certainly—yes, Your Honor; and I can say truly, as I look at you and remember your career, important to this and the whole American community. [Applause.]

The picture I referred to is but a rude one, and yet I was not ashamed of it when I wrote a copy of verses about it, three or four of which this audience will listen to for the sake of Dorothy's great-grandson. I must alter the pronouns a little, for this occasion only:—

Look not on her with eyes of scorn— Dorothy Q. was a lady born; Ay! since the galloping Normans came England's annals have known her name; And still to the three-hilled rebel town Dear is that ancient name's renown, For many a civic wreath they won, The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift (we) owe to you! Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring— All (our) tenure of heart and hand, All (our) title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered "No!" When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill— Should (we) be (we), or could it be One-tenth (two others) and nine-tenths (we)?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

O lady and lover, now faint and far Your images hover—and here we are, Solid and stirring in flesh and bone— Edwards and Dorothys—all their own— A goodly record for time to show Of a syllable whispered so long ago.

[Applause prolonged.]

I give you: "The memory of Dorothy Jackson, born Dorothy Quincy, to whose choice of the right monosyllable we owe the presence of our honored guest and all that his life has achieved for the welfare of the community." [Great applause and cheers.]



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.

SONS OF HARVARD WHO FELL IN BATTLE

[Speech of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, son of the "Autocrat," at the Harvard Alumni Dinner, at Cambridge, June 25, 1884.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ALUMNI:—Another day than this has been consecrated to the memories of the war. On that day we think not of the children of the university or the city, hardly, even, of the children whom the State has lost, but of a mighty brotherhood whose parent was our common country. To-day the college is the centre of all our feeling, and if we refer to the war it is in connection with the college, and not for its own sake that we do so. What then did the college do to justify our speaking of the war now? She sent a few gentlemen into the field, who died there becomingly. I know of nothing more. The great forces which ensured the North success would have been at work even if those men had been absent. Our means of raising money and troops would not have been less, I dare say. The great qualities of the race, too, would still have been there. The greatest qualities, after all, are those of a man, not those of a gentleman, and neither North nor South needed colleges to learn them.

And yet—and yet I think we all feel that, to us, at least, the war would seem less beautiful and inspiring, if those few gentlemen had not died as they did. Look at yonder portrait[7] and yonder bust[8] and tell me if stories such as they commemorate do not add a glory to the bare fact that the strongest legions prevailed. So it has been since wars began. After history has done its best to fix men's thoughts upon strategy and finance, their eyes have turned and rested on some single romantic figure—some Sidney, some Falkland, some Wolfe, some Montcalm, some Shaw. This is that little touch of the superfluous which is necessary. Necessary as art is necessary, and knowledge which serves no mechanical end. Superfluous only as glory is superfluous, or a bit of red ribbon that a man would die to win.

It has been one merit of Harvard College that it has never quite sunk to believing that its only function was to carry a body of specialists through the first stage of their preparation. About these halls there has always been an aroma of high feeling not to be found or lost in science or Greek—not to be fixed, yet all-pervading. And the warrant of Harvard College for writing the names of its dead graduates upon its tablets is not in the mathematics, the chemistry, the political economy which it taught them, but that, in ways not to be discovered, by traditions not to be written down, it helped men of lofty natures to make good their faculties. I hope and I believe that it will long give such help to its children. I hope and I believe that long after our tears for the dead have been forgotten, this monument to their memory will still give such help to generations to whom it is only a symbol—a symbol of man's destiny and power for duty, but a symbol also of that something more by which duty is swallowed up in generosity, that something more which led men like Shaw to toss life and hope like a flower before the feet of their country and their cause. [Cheers.]

* * * * *

THE JOY OF LIFE

[Speech of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, at a banquet in his honor given by the Suffolk Bar Association, Boston, March 7, 1900, upon his elevation to the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Justice Holmes, upon rising to the toast of the presiding officer, was received with cheers, the entire company rising.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE SUFFOLK BAR:—The kindness of this reception almost unmans me, and it shakes me the more when taken with a kind of seriousness which the moment has for me. As with a drowning man, the past is telescoped into a minute, and the stages are all here at once in my mind. The day before yesterday I was at the law school, fresh from the army, arguing cases in a little club with Goulding and Beaman and Peter Olney, and laying the dust of pleading by certain sprinklings which Huntington Jackson, another ex-soldier, and I managed to contrive together. A little later in the day, in Bob Morse's, I saw a real writ, acquired a practical conviction of the difference between assumpsit and trover, and marvelled open-mouthed at the swift certainty with which a master of his business turned it off.

Yesterday I was at the law school again, in the chair instead of on the benches, when my dear partner, Shattuck, came out and told me that in one hour the Governor would submit my name to the council for a judgeship, if notified of my assent. It was a stroke of lightning which changed the whole course of my life.

And the day before yesterday, gentlemen, was thirty-five years, and yesterday was more than eighteen years, ago. I have gone on feeling young, but I have noticed that I have met fewer of the old to whom to show my deference, and recently I was startled by being told that ours is an old bench. Well, I accept the fact, although I find it hard to realize, and I ask myself, what is there to show for this half lifetime that has passed? I look into my book in which I keep a docket of the decisions of the full court which fall to me to write, and find about a thousand cases. A thousand cases, many of them upon trifling or transitory matters, to represent nearly half a lifetime! A thousand cases, when one would have liked to study to the bottom and to say his say on every question which the law ever has presented, and then to go on and invent new problems which should be the test of doctrine, and then to generalize it all and write it in continuous, logical, philosophic exposition, setting forth the whole corpus with its roots in history and its justifications of expedience, real or supposed!

Alas, gentlemen, that is life. I often imagine Shakespeare or Napoleon summing himself up and thinking: "Yes, I have written five thousand lines of solid gold, and a good deal of padding—I, who have covered the milky way with words which outshine the stars!" "Yes, I beat the Austrians in Italy and elsewhere; I made a few brilliant campaigns, and I ended in middle life in a cul-de-sac—I who had dreamed of a world monarchy and of Asiatic power!" We cannot live in our dreams. We are lucky enough if we can give a sample of our best, and if in our hearts we can feel that it has been nobly done.

Some changes come about in the process: changes not necessarily so much in the nature as in the emphasis of our interest. I do not mean in our wish to make a living and to succeed—of course, we all want those things—but I mean in our ulterior intellectual or spiritual interests, in the ideal part, without which we are but snails or tigers.

One begins with a search for a general point of view. After a time he finds one, and then for a while he is absorbed in testing it, in trying to satisfy himself whether it is true. But after many experiments or investigations, all have come out one way, and his theory is confirmed and settled in his mind; he knows in advance that the next case will be but another verification, and the stimulus of anxious curiosity is gone. He realizes that his branch of knowledge only presents more illustrations of the universal principle; he sees it all as another case of the same old ennui, or the same sublime mystery—for it does not matter what epithets you apply to the whole of things, they are merely judgments of yourself. At this stage the pleasure is no less, perhaps, but it is the pure pleasure of doing the work, irrespective of further aims, and when you reach that stage you reach, as it seems to me, the triune formula of the joy, the duty and the end of life.

It was of this that Malebranche was thinking when he said that, if God held in one hand truth and in the other the pursuit of truth, he would say: "Lord, the truth is for thee alone; give me the pursuit." The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this. The hell of the old world's literature is to be taxed beyond one's powers. This country has expressed in story—I suppose because it has experienced it in life—a deeper abyss of intellectual asphyxia or vital ennui, when powers conscious of themselves are denied their chance.

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one. I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think "Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in a focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and, equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor; you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.

The joy, the duty, and, I venture to add, the end of life. I speak only of this world, of course, and of the teachings of this world. I do not seek to trench upon the province of spiritual guides. But from the point of view of the world the end of life is life. Life is action, the use of one's powers. As to use them to their height is our joy and duty, so it is the one end that justifies itself. Until lately the best thing that I was able to think of in favor of civilization, apart from blind acceptance of the order of the universe, was that it made possible the artist, the poet, the philosopher, and the man of science. But I think that is not the greatest thing. Now I believe that the greatest thing is a matter that comes directly home to us all. When it is said that we are too much occupied with the means of living to live, I answer that the chief work of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved from place to place. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. They mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.

I will add but a word. We are all very near despair. The sheathing that floats us over its waves is compounded of hope, faith in the unexplainable worth and sure issue of effort, and the deep, sub-conscious content which comes from the exercise of our powers. In the words of a touching negro song: "sometimes I's up, sometimes I's down, sometimes I's almost to the groun'," but these thoughts have carried me, as I hope they will carry the young men who hear me, through long years of doubt, self-distrust and solitude. They do now, for, although it might seem that the day of trial was over, in fact it is renewed each day. The kindness which you have shown me makes me bold in happy moments to believe that the long and passionate struggle has not been quite in vain. [Applause.]



LORD HOUGHTON

(RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES)

YOUR SPEECH AND OURS

[Speech of Lord Houghton, in response to William Cullen Bryant, at a breakfast given in his honor at the Century Club, New York, October 17, 1875. William Cullen Bryant, President of the Club, presided, and said in part: "Our guest, Lord Houghton, was not born a lord, but he was born a poet, which I take to be something better. Some forty years ago, I think it was, he wandered in Switzerland, Italy and Greece, and the impressions made upon his mind are woven into his beautiful series of poems published under the title of 'Memorials of Many Scenes.' At a later period, perhaps ten years afterward, he traveled in Egypt and the western coast of Asia, and returned, bringing with him a sheaf of 'Palm-Leaves,' a series of charming poems, inspired by the remarkable places which he visited, and by the incidents of his journey. These 'palm-leaves,' let me say, have a perennial verdure, they are yet as green as when they were gathered and still breathe Sabaean odors—the spicy perfume of the Orient—what the old poet Donne calls 'the almighty balm of the early East.' He is now a traveler in our territory, a region almost without antiquities, but of sufficient interest to attract his steps hither. He will doubtless see faults in our social and political condition—the eyes of a stranger are quicker to discern them than our own can be—but let us hope that he will carry back to his native land the recollections of a cordial reception among our people, such as I hope we are ever ready to accord to personal worth, to genius, and to services rendered to the human race. The only time I ever saw Dr. Bowring, which was some thirty years since, when he was a member of Parliament, of the party called Radical, is memorable with me on account of the eulogy of our guest, which he uttered with much warmth and enthusiasm. He praised the generosity of his sentiments and the largeness of his sympathies. 'At his table,' he added, 'you meet with men of various differing opinions; the only title to his hospitality and esteem is personal merit.' The same rule of preference which he applied to the individuals whom he admitted to his friendship, had governed him throughout a long public life in the measures which he had supported. His co-operation and efficient aid have been given to proceedings and measures which contemplate the well-being of the people—to useful and beneficial reforms. In their favor he steadily gave his vote and raised his voice. In honoring him we, therefore, honor not only the poet, but the philanthropist and the statesman. I propose, therefore, the health of Lord Houghton."]

MR. BRYANT AND GENTLEMEN:—In finding myself here now for the first time, I am agitated by conflicting emotions, by my pleasure in being among you, and by my regret at not having been here before.

In alluding to my poetic experience, Mr. Bryant mentioned that I had passed many years of my early life in Italy, and while he was so doing there arose in my memory a little incident not inapplicable to my present position. I passed some time at Venice; and one summer evening, on the Piazza di San Marco, my attention was attracted by an old man, who walked up and down with a mingled air of wonder and delight, and who, after I had observed him for some moments, came and asked me in the Venetian dialect what streets he was to take toward a certain remote portion of the city. I said I was a foreigner, and that he, being a native of the place, must know its geography better than I could. He then told me that he was there for the first time. He had passed all his life in his own distinct world, there earning his daily bread, and occupied by its little local interests. At last a friend had told him that he must see the Place and Church of San Marco before he died, and put him in a boat and landed him there, and now he wanted to find his way home, charmed and contented.

Gentlemen, I am in the position of that Venetian veteran, and shall return to my country, happy that I have at last found my way to this great place and habitation—the civitas of English-speaking people. Not that I have ever failed to regard this country in many senses as my own, from the time when I took moral comfort from the flight of Mr. Bryant's "Wild Fowl" across the ocean, and took the best lesson of life from the Psalm of Longfellow. Since then I have ever been with you in all your intellectual progress, and in the necessarily checkered course of your constitutional history, and never more than in the late solemn years, in all the national difficulties which you have so energetically, so persistently, and so humanely surmounted.

In looking back to my impressions of those times, I sometimes think that my sympathy with you was not wholly unselfish, but that I felt that, if I had ever written anything which has a chance of a prolonged existence, I should wish it to be read, not by any distracted and impotent communities of British race, but by America, one and indivisible. And, gentlemen, this is not unnatural, for amid all the divisions or distractions of your history, your literature has ever been patriotic and national. Literature, in truth, has been to you a good and faithful emigrant, reproductive not only of all intellectual growth, but of the sympathies—the largest sympathies—which bind together man to man. It has settled among you every classic writer of British origin, and from the Continent it has brought to you Goethe, Schiller, and Heinrich Heine. It is also noticeable that by the side of these great colonizations of thought you have not refused to receive and to pass to your furthest Territories the humblest addition, the single volume of verse, the chance felicitous expression of combined thought and feeling, even some accidental refrain of song that had pleasantly caught the ear and gone to the heart of man.

And this brings me to say to you one professional word respecting that art and the nature of poetry that you have been kind enough to connect with my name. The greater part of the verses I have written were that product of the lyrical period of youth which is by no means uncommon in modern civilization. It exhibits itself sometimes in the strangest manner, without connection with other culture, or even the most common intellectual opportunities. Of this I happen to have given to the world a signal instance in the volume I published of the poems of David Gray, a Scotch weaver-boy, who, without one advantage beyond the common education of his class, described all the nature within his ken in the highest poetic perfection, and passed away, leaving a most pathetic record of a short life of imaginative sensibility. You can contrast this simple and wayside flower of a faculty with such rich and complete cultivation as it can assume in the efflorescence of Tennyson or Swinburne; but in whatever form you find it, do not the less value the faculty itself. Permit me to say that in no condition of society can it be encouraged and fertilized more usefully than among yourselves. For not only will it bring with it calm and comfort amid all the superabundant activities, ambitions, and confusions of daily life, but it has also the regulative powers teaching men to divide the sphere of the imagination from that of practical life, and thus obviating the dangers that so often arise from the want of this distinction.

There is no better preservative than the exercise of the poetic faculty from religious hallucinations, from political delusions, and I would say even from financial extravagances. Therefore, through the whole vast range of this new world, be on the watch to look out for and to encourage this great gift to man. Do not be too hard with any imperfections or absence of refinement which may accompany its exhibition. Do not treat it too critically or with too much scholastic censure. Recognize also its value on another ground—the extension and the perpetuation of our great common language—an interest not less dear to every one of us here present than to the future welfare of mankind:—

"Beyond the vague Atlantic deep, Far as the farthest prairies sweep, Where mountain wastes the sense appall Where burns the radiant Western Fall, One duty lies on old and young— With filial piety to guard, As on its greenest native sward, The glory of the English tongue!

"That ample speech, that subtle speech, Apt for the needs of all in each, Strong to endure, yet prompt to bend Wherever human feelings tend, Preserve its force, expand its powers, And through the maze of civil life, In letters, commerce, e'en in strife, Remember, it is yours and ours!"

* * * * *

BONDS OF NATIONAL SYMPATHY

[Response of Lord Houghton to the address of Joseph H. Choate at the farewell reception given in honor of Lord Houghton by the Union League Club, New York City, November 23, 1875.]

MR. CHOATE AND GENTLEMEN:—Before you spoke I had much difficulty to interpret to myself the meaning of my reception here. So unimportant as I know myself to have been before, in political and social life, I have been surprised at the manner in which I have been received in the United States of America. You, sir, have given an explanation of that problem which I am very thankful to receive. The habit of Americans to welcome Englishmen, whatever may be their position, in itself proves to me that you regard us as something above individuals, and that, somehow or other, you connect us in every way by imagination, if no other, as present with that great country over the Atlantic which was your mother, and which it has been the habit of many of your ancestors to call their home. [Applause.] Mr. Choate has alluded to certain events in my political life, which he says fully justify your kindness and remarkable sympathy of to-day, and on that matter, if there are to be any relations between myself and the Americans, upon that point I can say that I deserve credit. I do not say this with any affectation, because I understand fully your feelings upon that matter. I fully recognize, I completely comprehend, as man to man, that in that day of your greatest trouble, even the small voice that came over the great Atlantic was listened to with extreme pleasure and unexaggerated sympathy.

But when I look to myself, I am bound to say I find extremely little merit in the matter. There was one ground of sympathy between you and the English people, which you had the holiest right to believe would have been absolute and overpowering. The English nation had put itself forward as the great opponent of slavery in the world. [Applause.] It had stated at the Congress of Vienna that the one point which England required as the sine qua non was the abolition of the slave trade. For that purpose England not only asserted itself, but interfered up to the utmost limit, perhaps beyond the limits of the law of nations, with all the powers of the world. Therefore, you had a perfect right to believe, to suppose, that in a question, in a matter in which we were not only internationally but morally interested, the questions would be fully considered.

Well, gentlemen, I cannot say that it was so. As an individual I have not the right to reproach my country upon that point. That was not my first feeling in the matter. I felt, I knew, slavery was doomed from the civilized world. My heart, my instincts, my sense of the well-being of every civilized state was against the continuance of that institution. [Applause.] I knew, though it was possible—aye, I would fain say probable—that the condition of the slave, under many conditions, under many circumstances, might be better than that of the free laborer of the world, that the condition of the slave owner was incompatible with the highest form of moral culture and highest ambition. I always think that question had political as well as moral and religious considerations, and that, through the unhappy condition of this continent, the question of slavery got so intermixed with the question of property that, however humane, however wise men were, yet nevertheless it would bring with it an incidental condition of cruelty abhorrent to mankind, and that, therefore, that institution could not continue to the end. [Applause.]

But, making a clean breast of it, that was not the bottom of my sympathy. My sympathy with you comes, as Mr. Choate has said, by "an instinct unawares," and this was confirmed by any reasoning and any deductions I might have had. From the imagination of my earliest youth, from the sympathy of the most vivid time, and from the most logical look at the situation in my mature life, I came to the conclusion that the destiny of the present and the future world rests with great and undivided empires. [Applause.] I had lived to see Italy, out of its confusion of States, growing up into a great integrity, renewing the promises of the wonderful classic times and the glory of Rome renovated into a new and prosperous nation. I have lived to see, we have all lived to see, the same process taking place in Germany. In Germany, notwithstanding the greatest division, the most peculiar separation of religion and even of races, yet nevertheless that great German empire is coming forward as a monument of the civilization of the future world, and as the centre of all Europe against any form of Oriental barbarism. And I knew from the history of my own country that that was no new principle, but one we had always maintained. England never at any moment thought of giving up the principle of the integrity of its empire. You yourselves are the evidences of the energy with which we sustained it. [Prolonged applause.] And we had at our doors, we had within us, another nation, in many points alien to ourselves; of a different race largely, of a different religion almost generally; a nation which we had treated sometimes with kindness, sometimes with harshness, sometimes with justice, and many other times with injustice; but always on the principle of the integrity of the empire. [Applause.] And I could not see how an intelligent man could see what Italy was growing to, prophesy what Germany would become, and, knowing the difficulties of the present Ireland, how that man could wish to destroy the integrity of the United States. Fact and history were against him, and in addition to that I felt that—in favoring or in sustaining your separation, in allowing special and local sympathy to act upon me, instead of the great logic of historical truths—if I could have allowed myself to act in that line of sympathy which would have bound me to my countrymen, I should have felt I had belied the truth of history as well as, I believe, the foundation of general morality. [Great applause.]

Therefore, gentlemen, I have little individual merit for whatever I may have said upon that matter. I tell you that that was the calculation, the best calculation of my own mind, that it was the simple result of the deduction of my own reasoning [applause], and if you have shown me gratitude on this matter I will not say that I have not felt in a certain sense it was not deserved, from the motives I have alluded to. And if, as some cynic has said, gratitude is nothing whatever but the means of securing favors to come, I can assure you that you have accomplished your object [laughter and applause], and if you have desired that, in any means which Providence has placed in my power, in any influence direct or indirect which I may exert, I shall speak as I have spoken and think as I have thought of the United States of America, you may be well sure that I will do so. [Applause.]

On another occasion when I have been kindly received, I have spoken of my literary sympathy with this country. Every Englishman rightly looks to this country as he would with a sense of appeal to posterity. He feels that if he has said anything, if he has written anything, if he has touched any chord, if he has struck even any verbal assurance that pleases mankind, if you take it up you pass it on; it does not go from tongue to tongue in the little distant Anglia of Europe.

I recognize that I have met in this country men whom I shall be glad to meet anywhere and with whose familiarity I have been honored. And I might say this, that if I were to compare the best men that I have met here with the best men that I have known in Europe, I should say simply this, that the men that I have found here seem to me as equal to the circumstances in which they have been placed, as intelligent in all their relations of life, as noble in their innermost impulses, as just in their expressions, as any I have ever met with in my intercourse with people in Europe. [Applause.] I have been honored with the familiarity of many distinguished men, I have been received with great kindness by your intelligent and able President. I had the fortune, the other day, to sit by the deathbed of that amiable, honest man, your Vice-President [Henry Wilson], in the Capitol at Washington, dying under the portrait of Jefferson. I have seen some of your able men with whom I have been intimate in Europe, and one whom you will allow me to mention above all others, a man whose career I witnessed during the great and stormy times of your troubles in England—Charles Francis Adams [long applause]—whose maintenance of your dignity was concurrent with a sense of the importance of good relations between England and America.

Gentlemen, next year you will celebrate your Centennial, and I have been kindly asked by every person who wished me good-bye to come back to this Centennial. [Laughter.] As for the Centennial itself, I have no particular inclination to come back. I think it is quite right you should have your Centennial, but I do not quite see what an Englishman has to do with it. [Long laughter and applause.] It is a thing which a philosopher might almost make the foundation of a theory, that you who are going to have this magnificent celebration of the one hundredth year of your liberation from the horrible rule of England, at the same time accompany it with the warmest feelings toward the British nation. [Laughter and applause.] Now, if you will clearly understand that this Centennial is to be your last celebration of this kind, and that from that moment you become part of the great community of Europe, then I say it will be a very useful celebration and one which all the world will be ready to honor. Celebrating your independence, you call it. A very noble act at a very noble time! Your repulsion was fully justified by the folly and the stupidity and the ignorance of England.

The causes of England and America are not different, but common to both. You have your own local difficulties, just as we have. You have your own religious difficulties, just as we have. Take a single instance. The question of local taxation—a very serious question with you, a question agitated in the great States. That question is one of the greatest importance that we are at this moment discussing in politics. It is a matter of great interest to us whether local taxation should be entrusted and commissioned to a body of persons specially appointed for that purpose by the Crown, or whether it should be entrusted to certain persons selected by the people. That will be one of the most important questions we shall have to consider in the next session or two of Parliament. It is said that there is great profusion, great waste, in our present arrangement of those matters, and that if our local expenditure were conducted by persons specially appointed for that purpose, it would be cheaper. I don't say more honestly, but more economically managed. This is a question that you are agitating at the present moment, and one that affects the politics of your great cities.

Take again railroads. It is a question whether the railroad should be in the hands of the State or of private companies. We are talking about it every day. Our interest in rapid transit has been very much the same as yours. Our rapid transit has not only gone over certain unfortunate persons who stood in the way, but it has gone over ruined hopes and prostrated energies. There is hardly a question that I see agitated in American newspapers that, in one form or another, is not agitated with us. The act of Parliament which restored to England specie payments was met with exactly the same argument, exactly the same controversy, exactly the same speciousness as meet you in this country. We have followed you on the matter of popular education. You have been our teachers in that branch. We are at present following in your footsteps. [Applause.]



JULIA WARD HOWE

TRIBUTE TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

[Speech of Julia Ward Howe at the breakfast in celebration of the seventieth birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, given by the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly," Boston, Mass., December 3, 1879. Mrs. Howe sat at the right of Mr. Howells, then the editor of the "Atlantic," who presided at one end of the tables, with Mr. Emerson on his left. Dr. Holmes sat on the right of Mr. Houghton, who presided at the other end of the table, with Mrs. Stowe on his left. Mrs. Howe was called up by the toast, "The girls we have not left behind us."]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—One word in courtesy I must say in replying to so kind a mention as that which is made, not only of me, but of those of my sex who are so happy as to be present here to-day. I think, in looking on this scene, of a certain congress which took place in Paris more than a year ago, and it was called a congress of literary people, gens de lettres. When I heard that this was to take place I immediately bestirred myself to attend its sittings and went at once to the headquarters to find how I might do so. I then learned to my great astonishment that no women were to be included among these gens de lettres, that is, literary people. [Laughter.] Now, we have thought it a very modest phrase sometimes to plead that, whatever women may not be, they are people. [Laughter and applause.] And it would seem to-day that they are recognized as literary people, and I am very glad that you gentlemen have found room for the sisterhood to-day, and have found room to place them so numerously here, and I must say that to my eyes the banquet looks very much more cheerful than it would without them. [Applause.] It looks to me as though it had all blossomed out under a new social influence, and beside each dark stem I see a rose. [Laughter and applause.] But I must say at once that I came here entirely unprovided with a speech, and, not dreaming of one, yet I came provided with something. I considered myself invited as a sort of grandmother—indeed, I am, and I know a grandmother is usually expected to have something in her pocket. [Laughter and applause.] And I have a very modest tribute to the illustrious person whom we are met to-day to honor. With your leave I will read it. [Applause.]

Thou metamorphic god! Who mak'st the straight Olympus thy abode, Hermes to subtle laughter moving, Apollo with serener loving, Thou demi-god also! Who dost all the powers of healing know; Thou hero who dost wield The golden sword and shield,— Shield of a comprehensive mind, And sword to wound the foes of human kind;

Thou man of noble mould! Whose metal grows not cold Beneath the hammer of the hurrying years; A fiery breath doth blow Across its fervid glow, And still its resonance delights our ears;

Loved of thy brilliant mates, Relinquished to the fates, Whose spirit music used to chime with thine, Transfigured in our sight, Not quenched in death's dark night, They hold thee in companionship divine.

O autocratic muse! Soul-rainbow of all hues, Packed full of service are thy bygone years; Thy winged steed doth fly Across the starry sky, Bearing the lowly burthens of thy tears.

I try this little leap, Wishing that from the deep, I might some pearl of song adventurous bring. Despairing, here I stop, And my poor offering drop,— Why stammer I when thou art here to sing?



CLARK HOWELL

OUR REUNITED COUNTRY

[Speech of Clark Howell at the Peace Jubilee Banquet in Chicago, October 19, 1898, in response to the toast, "Our Reunited Country: North and South."]

MR. TOASTMASTER, AND MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN:—In the mountains of my State, in a county remote from the quickening touch of commerce, and railroads and telegraphs—so far removed that the sincerity of its rugged people flows unpolluted from the spring of nature—two vine-covered mounds, nestling in the solemn silence of a country churchyard, suggest the text of my response to the sentiment to which I am to speak to-night. A serious text, Mr. Toastmaster, for an occasion like this, and yet out of it there is life and peace and hope and prosperity, for in the solemn sacrifice of the voiceless grave can the chiefest lesson of the Republic be learned, and the destiny of its real mission be unfolded. So bear with me while I lead you to the rust-stained slab, which for a third of a century—since Chickamauga—has been kissed by the sun as it peeped over the Blue Ridge, melting the tears with which the mourning night had bedewed the inscription:—

"Here lies a Confederate soldier. He died for his country."

The September day which brought the body of this mountain hero to that home among the hills which had smiled upon his infancy, been gladdened by his youth, and strengthened by his manhood, was an ever memorable one with the sorrowing concourse of friends and neighbors who followed his shot-riddled body to the grave. And of that number no man gainsaid the honor of his death, lacked full loyalty to the flag for which he fought, or doubted the justice of the cause for which he gave his life.

Thirty-five years have passed; another war has called its roll of martyrs; again the old bell tolls from the crude latticed tower of the settlement church; another great pouring of sympathetic humanity, and this time the body of a son, wrapped in the stars and stripes, is lowered to its everlasting rest beside that of the father who sleeps in the stars and bars.

There were those there who stood by the grave of the Confederate hero years before, and the children of those were there, and of those present no one gainsaid the honor of the death of this hero of El Caney, and none were there but loved, as patriots alone can love, the glorious flag that enshrines the people of a common country as it enshrouds the form that will sleep forever in its blessed folds. And on this tomb will be written:—

"Here lies the son of a Confederate soldier. He died for his country."

And so it is that between the making of these two graves human hands and human hearts have reached a solution of the vexed problem that has baffled human will and human thought for three decades. Sturdy sons of the South have said to their brothers of the North that the people of the South had long since accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which they had appealed. And likewise the oft-repeated message has come back from the North that peace and good will reigned, and that the wounds of civil dissension were but as sacred memories. Good fellowship was wafted on the wings of commerce and development from those who had worn the blue to those who had worn the gray. Nor were these messages delivered in vain, for they served to pave the way for the complete and absolute elimination of the line of sectional differences by the only process by which such a result was possible. The sentiment of the great majority of the people of the South was rightly spoken in the message of the immortal Hill, and in the burning eloquence of Henry Grady—both Georgians—the record of whose blessed work for the restoration of peace between the sections becomes a national heritage, and whose names are stamped in enduring impress upon the affection of the people of the Republic.

And yet there were still those among us who believed your course was polite, but insincere, and those among you who assumed that our professed attitude was sentimental and unreal. Bitterness had departed, and sectional hate was no more, but there were those who feared, even if they did not believe, that between the great sections of our greater government there was not the perfect faith and trust and love that both professed; that there was want of the faith that made the American Revolution a successful possibility; that there was want of the trust that crystallized our States into the original Union; that there was lack of the love that bound in unassailable strength the united sisterhood of States that withstood the shock of Civil War. It is true this doubt existed to a greater degree abroad than at home. But to-day the mist of uncertainty has been swept away by the sunlight of events, and there, where doubt obscured before stands in bold relief, commanding the admiration of the whole world, the most glorious type of united strength and sentiment and loyalty known to the history of nations.

Out of the chaos of that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable—a new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. No one questioned that commercial and geographic union had been effected. So had Rome re-united its faltering provinces, maintaining the limit of its imperial jurisdiction by the power of commercial bonds and the majesty of the sword, until in its very vastness it collapsed. The heart of its people did not beat in unison. Nations may be made by the joining of hands, but the measure of their real strength and vitality, like that of the human body, is in the heart. Show me the country whose people are not at heart in sympathy with its institutions, and the fervor of whose patriotism is not bespoken in its flag, and I will show you a ship of state which is sailing in shallow waters, toward unseen eddies of uncertainty, if not to the open rocks of dismemberment.

Whence was the proof to come, to ourselves as well as to the world, that we were being moved once again by a common impulse, and by the same heart that inspired and gave strength to the hands that smote the British in the days of the Revolution, and again at New Orleans; that made our ships the masters of the seas; that placed our flag on Chapultepec, and widened our domain from ocean to ocean? How was the world to know that the burning fires of patriotism, so essential to national glory and achievement, had not been quenched by the blood spilled by the heroes of both sides of the most desperate struggle known in the history of civil wars? How was the doubt that stood, all unwilling, between outstretched hands and sympathetic hearts, to be, in fact, dispelled?

If from out the caldron of conflict there arose this doubt, only from the crucible of war could come the answer. And, thank God, that answer has been made in the record of the war, the peaceful termination of which we celebrate to-night. Read it in every page of its history; read it in the obliteration of party and sectional lines in the congressional action which called the nation to arms in the defence of prostrate liberty, and for the extension of the sphere of human freedom; read it in the conduct of the distinguished Federal soldier who, as the chief executive of this great Republic,[9] honors this occasion by his presence to-night, and whose appointments in the first commissions issued after war had been declared made manifest the sincerity of his often repeated utterances of complete sectional reconciliation and the elimination of sectional lines in the affairs of government. Differing with him, as I do, on party issues, utterly at variance with the views of his party on economic problems, I sanction with all my heart the obligation that rests on every patriotic citizen to make party second to country, and in the measure that he has been actuated by this broad and patriotic policy he will receive the plaudits of the whole people: "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Portentous indeed have been the developments of the past six months; the national domain has been extended far into the Caribbean Sea on the south, and to the west it is so near the mainland of Asia that we can hear grating of the process which is grinding the ancient celestial empire into pulp for the machinery of civilization and of progress.

In a very short while the last page of this war will have been written, except for the effect it will have on the future. Our flag now floats over Porto Rico, a part of Cuba, and Manila. It must soon bespeak our sovereignty over the island of Luzon, or possibly over the whole Philippine group. It will, ere long, from the staff on Havana's Morro, cast its shadow on the sunken and twisted frame of the Maine—a grim reminder of the vengeance that awaits any nation that lays unholy hands on an American citizen or violates any sacred American right. It has drawn from an admiring world unstinted applause for the invincible army, that under tropic suns, despite privations and disease, untrained but undismayed, has swept out of their own trenches and routed from their own battlements, like chaff before the wind, the trained forces of a formidable power. It has bodily stripped the past of lustre and defiantly challenged the possibilities of the future in the accomplishment of a matchless navy, whose deeds have struck the universe with consternation and with wonder.