MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LOTOS CLUB: One might start a great many principles and ideas which would require to be illustrated and drawn out in order to present a picture of my feelings at the present moment. I am conscious that in my immediate vicinity there are people who were great when I was little. I remember very well when I was unknown to anybody, how I was sent to report a lecture by my friend right opposite, Mr. George Alfred Townsend, and I remember the manner in which he said: "Galileo said: 'The world moves round,' and the world does move round," upon the platform of the Mercantile Hall in St. Louis—one of the grandest things out. [Laughter and applause.] The next great occasion that I had to come before the public was Mark Twain's lecture on the Sandwich Islands, which I was sent to report. And when I look to my left here I see Colonel Anderson, whose very face gives me an idea that Bennett has got some telegraphic despatch and is just about to send me to some terrible region for some desperate commission. [Laughter.]

And, of course, you are aware that it was owing to the proprietor and editor of a newspaper that I dropped the pacific garb of a journalist and donned the costume of an African traveller. It was not for me, one of the least in the newspaper corps, to question the newspaper proprietor's motives. He was an able editor, very rich, desperately despotic. [Laughter.] He commanded a great army of roving writers, people of fame in the news-gathering world; men who had been everywhere and had seen everything from the bottom of the Atlantic to the top of the very highest mountain; men who were as ready to give their advice to National Cabinets [laughter] as they were ready to give it to the smallest police courts in the United States. [Laughter.] I belonged to this class of roving writers, and I can truly say that I did my best to be conspicuously great in it, by an untiring devotion to my duties, an untiring indefatigability, as though the ordinary rotation of the universe depended upon my single endeavors. [Laughter.] If, as some of you suspect, the enterprise of the able editor was only inspired with a view to obtain the largest circulation, my unyielding and guiding motive, if I remember rightly, was to win his favor by doing with all my might that duty to which according to the English State Church Catechism, "it had pleased God to call me." [Laughter and applause.]

He first despatched me to Abyssinia—straight from Missouri to Abyssinia! What a stride, gentlemen! [Laughter.] People who lived west of the Missouri River have scarcely, I think, much knowledge of Abyssinia, and there are gentlemen here who can vouch for me in that, but it seemed to Mr. Bennett a very ordinary thing, and it seemed to his agent in London a very ordinary thing indeed, so I of course followed suit. I took it as a very ordinary thing, and I went to Abyssinia, and somehow or other good-luck followed me and my telegrams reporting the fall of Magdala happened to be a week ahead of the British Government's. The people said I had done right well, though the London papers said I was an impostor. [Laughter.]

The second thing I was aware of was that I was ordered to Crete to run the blockade, describe the Cretan rebellion from the Cretan side, and from the Turkish side; and then I was sent to Spain to report from the Republican side and from the Carlist side, perfectly dispassionately. [Laughter.] And then, all of a sudden, I was sent for to come to Paris. Then Mr. Bennett, in that despotic way of his, said: "I want you to go and find Livingstone." As I tell you, I was a mere newspaper reporter. I dared not confess my soul as my own. Mr. Bennett merely said: "Go," and I went. He gave me a glass of champagne and I think that was superb. [Laughter.] I confessed my duty to him, and I went. And as good-luck would have it, I found Livingstone. [Loud and continued cheering.] I returned as a good citizen ought and as a good reporter ought and as a good correspondent ought, to tell the tale, and arriving at Aden, I telegraphed a request that I might be permitted to visit civilization before I went to China. [Laughter.] I came to civilization, and what do you think was the result? Why, only to find that all the world disbelieved my story. [Laughter.] Dear me! If I were proud of anything, it was that what I said was a fact ["Good!"]; that whatever I said I would do, I would endeavor to do with all my might, or, as many a good man had done before, as my predecessors had done, to lay my bones behind. That's all. [Loud cheering.] I was requested in an off-hand manner—just as any member of the Lotos Club here present would say—"Would you mind giving us a little resume of your geographical work?" I said: "Not in the least, my dear sir; I have not the slightest objection." And do you know that to make it perfectly geographical and not in the least sensational, I took particular pains and I wrote a paper out, and when it was printed, it was just about so long [indicating an inch]. It contained about a hundred polysyllabic African words. [Laughter.] And yet "for a' that and a' that" the pundits of the Geographical Society—Brighton Association—said that they hadn't come to listen to any sensational stories, but that they had come to listen to facts. [Laughter.] Well now, a little gentleman, very reverend, full of years and honors, learned in Cufic inscriptions and cuneiform characters, wrote to "The Times" stating that it was not Stanley who had discovered Livingstone but that it was Livingstone who had discovered Stanley. [Laughter.]

If it had not been for that unbelief, I don't believe I should ever have visited Africa again; I should have become, or I should have endeavored to become, with Mr. Reid's permission, a conservative member of the Lotos Club. [Laughter.] I should have settled down and become as steady and as stolid as some of these patriots that you have around here, I should have said nothing offensive. I should have done some "treating." I should have offered a few cigars and on Saturday night, perhaps, I would have opened a bottle of champagne and distributed it among my friends. But that was not to be. I left New York for Spain and then the Ashantee War broke out and once more my good-luck followed me and I got the treaty of peace ahead of everybody else, and as I was coming to England from the Ashantee War a telegraphic despatch was put into my hands at the Island of St. Vincent, saying that Livingstone was dead. I said: "What does that mean to me? New Yorkers don't believe in me. How was I to prove that what I have said is true? By George! I will go and complete Livingstone's work. I will prove that the discovery of Livingstone was a mere fleabite. I will prove to them that I am a good man and true." That is all that I wanted. [Loud cheers.]

I accompanied Livingstone's remains to Westminster Abbey. I saw those remains buried which I had left sixteen months before enjoying full life and abundant hope. The "Daily Telegraph's" proprietor cabled over to Bennett: "Will you join us in sending Stanley over to complete Livingstone's explorations?" Bennett received the telegram in New York, read it, pondered a moment, snatched a blank and wrote: "Yes. Bennett." That was my commission, and I set out to Africa intending to complete Livingstone's explorations, also to settle the Nile problem, as to where the head-waters of the Nile were, as to whether Lake Victoria consisted of one lake, one body of water, or a number of shallow lakes; to throw some light on Sir Samuel Baker's Albert Nyanza, and also to discover the outlet of Lake Tanganyika, and then to find out what strange, mysterious river this was which had lured Livingstone on to his death—whether it was the Nile, the Niger, or the Congo. Edwin Arnold, the author of "The Light of Asia," said: "Do you think you can do all this?" "Don't ask me such a conundrum as that. Put down the funds and tell me to go. That is all." ["Hear! Hear!"] And he induced Lawson, the proprietor, to consent. The funds were put down, and I went.

First of all, we settled the problem of the Victoria that it was one body of water, that instead of being a cluster of shallow lakes or marshes, it was one body of water, 21,500 square miles in extent. While endeavoring to throw light upon Sir Samuel Baker's Albert Nyanza, we discovered a new lake, a much superior lake to Albert Nyanza—the dead Locust Lake—and at the same time Gordon Pasha sent his lieutenant to discover and circumnavigate the Albert Nyanza and he found it to be only a miserable 140 miles, because Baker, in a fit of enthusiasm had stood on the brow of a high plateau and looking down on the dark blue waters of Albert Nyanza, cried romantically: "I see it extending indefinitely toward the southwest!" Indefinitely is not a geographical expression, gentlemen. [Laughter.] We found that there was no outlet to the Tanganyika, although it was a sweet-water lake; we, settling that problem, day after day as we glided down the strange river that had lured Livingstone to his death, we were in as much doubt as Livingstone had been, when he wrote his last letter and said: "I will never be made black man's meat for anything less than the classic Nile."

After travelling 400 miles we came to the Stanley Falls, and beyond them, we saw the river deflect from its Nileward course toward the Northwest. Then it turned west, and then visions of towers and towns and strange tribes and strange nations broke upon our imagination, and we wondered what we were going to see, when the river suddenly took a decided turn toward the southwest and our dreams were put an end to. We saw then that it was aiming directly for the Congo, and when we had propitiated some natives whom we encountered, by showing them crimson beads and polished wire, that had been polished for the occasion, we said: "This is for your answer. What river is this?" "Why, it is the river, of course." That was not an answer, and it required some persuasion before the chief, bit by bit digging into his brain, managed to roll out sonorously that, "It is the Ko-to-yah Congo." "It is the river of Congo-land." Alas for our classic dreams! Alas for Crophi and Mophi, the fabled fountains of Herodotus! Alas for the banks of the river where Moses was found by the daughter of Pharaoh! This is the parvenu Congo! Then we glided on and on past strange nations and cannibals—not past those nations which have their heads under their arms—for 1,100 miles, until we arrived at the circular extension of the river and my last remaining companion called it the Stanley Pool, and then five months after that our journey ended.

After that I had a very good mind to come back to America, and say, like the Queen of Uganda: "There, what did I tell you?" But you know, the fates would not permit me to come over in 1878. The very day I landed in Europe the King of Italy gave me an express train to convey me to France, and the very moment I descended from it at Marseilles there were three ambassadors from the King of the Belgians asked me to go back to Africa. "What! go back to Africa? Never! [Laughter.] I have come for civilization; I have come for enjoyment. I have come for love, for life, for pleasure. Not I. Go and ask some of those people you know who have never been to Africa before. I have had enough of it." "Well, perhaps, by and by?" "Ah, I don't know what will happen by and by, but, just now, never! never! Not for Rothschild's wealth!" [Laughter and applause.]

I was received by the Paris Geographical Society, and it was then I began to feel "Well, after all, I have done something, haven't I?" I felt superb [laughter], but you know I have always considered myself a Republican. I have those bullet-riddled flags, and those arrow-torn flags, the Stars and Stripes that I carried in Africa, for the discovery of Livingstone, and that crossed Africa, and I venerate those old flags. I have them in London now, jealously guarded in the secret recesses of my cabinet. I only allow my very best friends to look at them, and if any of you gentlemen ever happen in at my quarters, I will show them to you. [Applause.]

After I had written my book, "Through the Dark Continent," I began to lecture, using these words: "I have passed through a land watered by the largest river of the African continent, and that land knows no owner. A word to the wise is sufficient. You have cloths and hardware and glassware and gunpowder and these millions of natives have ivory and gums and rubber and dye-stuffs, and in barter there is good profit." [Laughter.]

The King of the Belgians commissioned me to go to that country. My expedition when we started from the coast numbered 300 colored people and fourteen Europeans. We returned with 3,000 trained black men and 300 Europeans. The first sum allowed me was $50,000 a year, but it has ended at something like $700,000 a year. Thus, you see, the progress of civilization. We found the Congo, having only canoes. To-day there are eight steamers. It was said at first that King Leopold was a dreamer. He dreamed he could unite the barbarians of Africa into a confederacy and called it the Free State, but on February 25, 1885, the Powers of Europe and America also ratified an act, recognizing the territories acquired by us to be the free and independent State of the Congo. Perhaps when the members of the Lotos Club have reflected a little more upon the value of what Livingstone and Leopold have been doing, they will also agree that these men have done their duty in this world and in the age that they lived, and that their labor has not been in vain on account of the great sacrifices they have made to the benighted millions of dark Africa. [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

TRIBUTE TO RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

[Speech of Edmund Clarence Stedman as chairman of the dinner given by the Authors' Club to Richard Henry Stoddard, New York City, March 26, 1897.]

GENTLEMEN:—The members of the Authors' Club are closely associated to-night with many other citizens in a sentiment felt by one and all—that of love and reverence for the chief guest of the evening. He has our common pride in his fame. He has what is, I think, of even more value to him, our entire affection. We have heard something of late concerning the "banquet habit," and there are banquets which make it seem to the point. But there are also occasions which transfigure even custom, and make it honored "in the observance." Nor is this a feast of the habitual kind, as concerns its givers, its recipient, and the city in which it is given. The Authors' Club, with many festivals counted in its private annals, now, for the first time, offers a public tribute to one of its own number; in this case, one upon whom it long since conferred a promotion to honorary membership. As for New York, warder of the gates of the ocean, and by instinct and tradition first to welcome the nation's visitors, it constantly offers bread and salt—yes, and speeches—to authors, as to other guests, from older lands, and many of us often have joined in this function. But we do not remember that it has been a habit for New York to tender either the oratorical bane or the gustatory antidote to her own writers. Except within the shade of their own coverts they have escaped these offerings, unless there has been something other than literary service to bring them public recognition. In the latter case, as when men who are or have been members of our club become Ambassadors, because they are undeniably fitted for the missions to Great Britain and France, even authors are made to sit in state. To-night's gathering, then, is, indeed, exceptional, being in public honor of an American author here resident—of "one of our own"—who is not booked for a foreign mission, nor leaving the country, nor returning, nor doing anything more unusual than to perform his stint of work, and to sing any song that comes to him—as he tells us,

"Not because he woos it long, But because it suits its will, Tired at last of being still."

Our homage is rendered, with love and enthusiasm, for his service to "mere literature"—for his indomitable devotion throughout half a century to the joy and toil of his profession, in which he has so fought the fight and kept the faith of a working man of letters. It is rendered to the most distinguished poet, of his country and generation, still remaining with us and still in full voice. It is rendered to the comrade—to the man who, with his modesty and fortitude and the absence of self-seeking—with the quips and quirks that cover his gravest moods, with his attachment for the city which has given him that which Lamb so loved, "the sweet security of streets"—it is rendered, I say, to the man who best preserves for us, in his living presence, the traditions of all that an English-speaking poet and book-fellow should be to constitute a satisfying type.

There is, perhaps, a special fitness in our gathering at this time. I sometimes have thought upon the possible career of our poet if his life had been passed in the suburbs of the down-east Athens, among serenities and mutualities so auspicious to the genius and repute of that shining group lately gathered to the past. One thing is certain, he would not have weathered his seventieth birthday, at any season, without receiving such a tribute as this, nor would a public dinner have reminded him of days when a poet was glad to get any dinner at all. Through his birth, Massachusetts claims her share in his distinction. But, having been brought to New York in childhood, he seems to have reasoned out for himself the corollary to a certain famous epigram, and to have thought it just as well to stay in the city which resident Bostonians keep as the best place to go to while still in the flesh. Probably he had not then realized the truth, since expressed in his own lines:—

"Yes, there's a luck in most things, and in none More than in being born at the right time!"

His birthday, in fact, comes in midsummer, when New York is more inert than an analytic novel. This dinner, then, is one of those gifts of love which are all the more unstinted because by chance deferred.

It was in the order of things, and no cause for blame, that, after this town passed from the provincial stage, there was so long a period when it had to be, as De Quincey said of Oxford Street, a stony-hearted mother to her bookmen and poets; that she had few posts for them and little of a market. Even her colleges had not the means, if they had the will, to utilize their talents and acquirements. We do owe to her newspapers and magazines, and now and then to the traditional liking of Uncle Sam for his bookish offspring, that some of them did not fall by the way, even in that arid time succeeding the Civil War, when we learned that letters were foregone, not only inter arma, but for a long while afterward. Those were the days when English went untaught, and when publishers were more afraid of poetry than they now are of verse. Yet here is one who was able to live through it all, and now sees a changed condition, to the evolution of which he contributed his full share. But he is no more a child of the past than of the present, nor need he repine like Cato, as one who has to account for himself to a new generation. He is with us and of us, and in the working ranks, as ever.

For all this he began long enough ago to have his early poetry refused by Poe, because it was too good to be the work of an obscure stripling, and to have had Hawthorne for his sponsor and friend. His youth showed again how much more inborn tendency has to do with one's life than any external forces—such as guardianship, means, and what we call education. The thrush takes to the bough, wheresoever hatched and fledged. Many waters cannot quench genius, neither can the floods drown it. The story of Dickens's boyhood, as told by himself, is not more pathetic—nor is its outcome more beautiful—than what we know of our guest's experiences—his orphanage, his few years' meagre schooling, his work as a boy in all sorts of shifting occupations, the attempt to make a learned blacksmith of him, his final apprenticeship to iron-moulding, at which he worked on the East Side from his eighteenth to his twenty-first year. As Dr. Griswold put it, he began to mould his thoughts into the symmetry of verse while he moulded the molten metal into shapes of grace. Mr. Stoddard, however, says that a knowledge of foundries was not one of the learned Doctor's strong points. Yet the young artisan somehow got hold of books, and not only made poetry, but succeeded in showing it to such magnates as Park Benjamin and Willis. The kindly Willis said that he had brains enough to make a reputation, but that "writing was hard work to do, and ill paid when done." But the youth was bound to take the road to Arcady. He asked for nothing better than this ill-paid craft. His passion for it, doubtless was strengthened by his physical toil and uncongenial surroundings. For one I am not surprised that much of his early verse, which is still retained in his works, breathes the spirit of Keats, though where and how this strayed singer came to study that most perfect and delicate of masters none but himself can tell. The fact remains that he somehow, also, left his moulding and trusted to his pen. To use his own words, he "set resolutely to work to learn the only trade for which he seemed fitted—that of literature." From that time to this, a half century, he has clung to it. Never in his worst seasons did he stop to think how the world treated him, or that he was entitled to special providences. He accepted poverty or good-luck with an equal mind, content with the reward of being a reader, a writer, and, above all, a poet. He managed not to loaf, and yet to invite his soul—and his songs are evidence that the invitation was accepted. If to labor is to pray, his industry has been a religion, for I doubt if there has been a day in all these fifty years when, unless disabled bodily, he has not worked at his trade.

We all know with what results. He has earned a manly living from the first, and therewithal has steadily contributed a vital portion to the current, and to the enduring, literature of his land and language. There was one thing that characterized the somewhat isolated New York group of young writers in his early prime—especially himself and his nearest associates, such as Taylor and Boker, and, later, Aldrich and Winter. They called themselves squires of poesy, in their romantic way, but they had neither the arrogance nor the chances for a self-heralding, more common in these chipper modern days. They seem to have followed their art because they adored it, quite as much as for what it could do for them.

Of Mr. Stoddard it may be said that there have been few important literary names and enterprises, North or South, but he has "been of the company." If he found friends in youth, he has abundantly repaid his debt in helpful counsel to his juniors—among whom I am one of the eldest and most grateful. But I cannot realize that thirty-seven years of our close friendship have passed since I showed my first early work to him, and he took me to a publisher. Just as I found him then, I find him any evening now, in the same chair, in the same corner of the study, "under the evening lamp." We still talk of the same themes; his jests are as frequent as ever, but the black hair is silvered and the active movements are less alert. I then had never known a mind so stored with bookish lore, so intimate with the lives of rare poets gone by, yet to what it then possessed he, with his wonderful memory, has been adding ever since.

If his early verse was like Keats, how soon he came to that unmistakable style of his own—to the utterance of those pure lyrics, "most musical, most melancholy"—"to the perfection of his matchless songs," and again, to the mastery of blank verse, that noblest measure, in "The Fisher and Charon"—to the grace and limpid narrative verse of "The King's Bell," to the feeling, wisdom—above all, to the imagination—of his loftier odes, among which that on Lincoln remains unsurpassed. This is not the place to eulogize such work. But one thing may be noted in the progress of what in Berkeley's phrase may be called the planting of arts and letters in America. Mr. Stoddard and his group were the first after Poe to make poetry—whatever else it might be—the rhythmical creation of beauty. As an outcome of this, and in distinction from the poetry of conviction to which the New England group were so addicted, look at the "Songs of Summer" which our own poet brought out in 1857. For beauty pure and simple it still seems to me fresher and more significant than any single volume produced up to that date by any Eastern poet save Emerson. It was "poetry or nothing," and though it came out of time in that stormy period, it had to do with the making of new poets thereafter.

In conclusion, I am moved to say, very much as I wrote on his seventieth birthday, that our poet's laborious and nobly independent life, with all its lights and shadows, has been one to be envied. There is much in completeness—its rainbow has not been dissevered—it is a perfect arc. As I know him, it has been the absolute realization of his young desire, the unhasting, unresting life of a poet and student, beyond that of any other writer among us. Its compensations have been greater than those of ease and wealth. Even now he would not change it, though at an age when one might well have others stay his hands. He had the happiness to win in youth the one woman he loved, with the power of whose singular and forceful genius his own is inseparably allied. These wedded poets have been blessed in their children, in the exquisite memory of the dead, in the success and loyalty of the living. His comrades have been such as he pictured to his hope in youth—poets, scholars, artists of the beautiful, with whom he has "warmed both hands before the fire of life." None of them has been a more patient worker or more loved his work. To it he has given his years, whether waxing or waning; he has surrendered for it the strength of his right hand, he has yielded the light of his eyes, and complains not, nor need he, "for so were Milton and Maeonides." What tears this final devotion may have caused to flow, come from other eyes than his own. And so, with gratulation void of all regrets, let us drink to the continued years, service, happiness of our strong and tender-hearted elder comrade, our white-haired minstrel, Richard Henry Stoddard.



LESLIE STEPHEN

THE CRITIC

[Speech of Leslie Stephen at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, April 29, 1893, in response to the toast, "Literature." Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, spoke of Literature as "that in which is garnered up the heat that feeds the spiritual life of men." In the vein of personal compliment he said: "For literature I turn to a distinguished writer whose acute and fearless mind finds a fit vehicle in clear and vigorous English and to me seems winged by that vivid air which plays about the Alpine peaks his feet have in the past so dearly loved to tread—I mean my friend, Mr. Leslie Stephen."]

MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:—When a poet or a great imaginative writer has to speak in this assembly he speaks as to brethren-in-arms, to persons with congenial tastes and with mutual sympathies, but when, instead of the creative writer, the Academy asks a critic to speak to them, then nothing but your proverbial courtesy can conceal the fact that they must really think they are appealing to a natural enemy. I have the misfortune to be a critic [laughter], but in this assembly I must say I am not an art critic. Friends have made a presumptuous attempt to fathom the depth of my ignorance upon artistic subjects, and they have thought that in some respects I must be admirably qualified for art criticism. [Laughter.]

As a literary critic I have felt, and I could not say I was surprised to find how unanimously critics have been condemned by poets and artists of all generations. I need only quote the words of the greatest authority, Shakespeare, who in one of his most pathetic sonnets reckons up the causes of the weariness of life and speaks of the spectacle of—

"Art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly (doctor-like), controlling skill."

The great poet probably wrote these words after the much misrepresented interview with Lord Bacon in which the Chancellor explained to the poet how "Hamlet" should have been written, and from which it has been inferred that he took credit for having written it himself. [Laughter.] Shakespeare naturally said what every artist must feel; for what is an artist? That is hardly a question to be asked in such an assembly, where I have only to look round to find plenty of people who realize the ideal artist, persons who are simple, unconventional, spontaneous, sweet-natured [laughter], who go through the world influenced by impressions of everything that is beautiful, sublime, and pathetic. Sometimes they seem to take up impressions of a different kind [laughter]; but still this is their main purpose—to receive impressions of images, the reproduction of which may make this world a little better for us all. For such people a very essential condition is that they should be spontaneous; that they should look to nothing but telling us what they feel and how they feel it; that they should obey no external rules, and only embody those laws which have become a part of their natural instinct, and that they should think nothing, as of course they do nothing, for money; though they would not be so hard-hearted as to refuse to receive the spontaneous homage of the world, even when it came in that comparatively vulgar form. [Laughter.]

But what is a critic? He is a person who enforces rules upon the artist, like a gardener who snips a tree in order to make it grow into a preconceived form, or grafts upon it until it develops into a monstrosity which he considers beautiful. We have made some advance upon the old savage. The man who went about saying, "This will never do," has become a thing of the past. The modern critic if he has a fault has become too genial; he seems not to distinguish between the functions of a critic and the founder of a new religious sect. [Laughter.] He erects shrines to his ideals, and he burns upon them good, strong, stupefying incense. This may be less painful to the artist than the old-fashioned style; but it may be doubted whether it is not equally corrupting, and whether it does not stimulate a selfishness equally fatal to spontaneous production; whether it does not in the attempt to encourage originality favor a spurious type which consists merely in setting at defiance real common sense, and sometimes common decency.

I hope that critics are becoming better, that they have learned what impostors they have been, and that their philosophy has been merely the skilful manipulation of sonorous words, and that on the whole, they must lay aside their magisterial role and cease to suppose they are persons enforcing judicial decisions or experts who can speak with authority about chemical analysis. I hope that critics will learn to lay aside all pretension and to see only things that a critic really can see, and express genuine sympathy with human nature; and when they have succeeded in doing that they will be received as friends in such gatherings as the banquet of the Royal Academy. [Cheers.]



RICHARD SALTER STORRS

THE VICTORY AT YORKTOWN

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs at a banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, given November 5, 1881, in New York City, in honor of the guests of the nation, the French diplomatic representatives in America, and members of the families descended from our foreign sympathizers and helpers, General Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Count de Grasse, Baron von Steuben and others, who had been present at the centennial celebration of the victory at Yorktown. The chairman, James M. Brown, vice President of the Chamber of Commerce, proposed the toast to which Dr. Storrs responded, "The Victory at Yorktown: it has rare distinction among victories, that the power which seemed humbled by it looks back to it now without regret, while the peoples who combined to secure it, after the lapse of a century of years, are more devoted than ever to the furtherance of the freedom to which it contributed."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE:—It is always pleasant to respond to your invitations and to join with you on these festival occasions. You remember the reply of the English lady [Lady Dufferin] perhaps, when the poet Rogers sent her a note saying: "Will you do me the favor to breakfast with me to-morrow?" To which she returned the still more laconic autograph, "Won't I?" [Laughter.]

Perhaps one might as well have that lithographed as his reply to your cordial and not infrequent invitations. [Laughter.] I do not know whether you are aware of it, on this side of the East River—perhaps you don't read the newspapers much—but in that better part of the great metropolis in which it is my privilege to live, we think of showing our appreciation of this Chamber of Commerce by electing for Mayor next week, one of your younger members, the son of one of your older and most distinguished members, my honored friend, Mr. Low. [Applause.]

It is certainly especially pleasant to be here this evening, Mr. President and gentlemen, when we meet together, men of commerce, men of finance, lawyers, journalists, physicians, clergymen, of whatever occupation, all of us, I am sure, patriotic citizens, to congratulate each other upon what occurred at Yorktown a hundred years ago, on the 19th of October, 1781, and to express our hearty honor and esteem for these distinguished descendants or representatives of the gallant men who then stood with our fathers as their associates and helpers. [Applause.]

It has always seemed to me one of the most significant and memorable things connected with our Revolutionary struggle, that it attracted the attention, elicited the sympathy, inspired the enthusiasm, and drew out the self-sacrificing co-operation of so many noble spirits, loving freedom, in different parts of Western and Central Europe. [Applause.] You remember that Lord Camden testified from his own observation in 1775, about the time of the battle of Concord Bridge, that the merchants, tradesmen, and common people of England were on the side of the Colonists, and that only the landed interest really sustained the Government. So the more distant Poland sent to us Count Pulaski of noble family, who had been a brilliant leader for liberty at home, who fought gallantly in our battles, and who poured out his life in our behalf in the assault upon Savannah. [Cheers.] And it sent another, whose name has been one to conjure with for freedom from that day to this; who planned the works on Bemis Heights, against which Burgoyne in vain hurled his assault; who superintended the works at West Point; who, returning to his own country, fought for Poland as long as there was a Poland to fight for; whom the very Empire against which he had so long and so fiercely contended on behalf of his country, honored and eulogized after his death—Thaddeus Kosciusko. [Cheers.]

Germany sent us Von Steuben; one, but a host, whose services in our war were of immense and continual aid to our troops; who fought gallantly at Yorktown; and who, chose afterwards, to finish his life in the country for which he had fearlessly drawn his sword. [Applause.] France sent us Lafayette [loud cheers], young, brilliant, with everything to detain him at home, who had heard of our struggle, at Metz, you remember, in a conversation with the Duke of Gloucester, in whom the purpose was there formed, in a flash, to identify himself with the fortunes of the remote, poor, unfriended, and almost unknown colonists; who came, against every opposition, in a ship which he had bought and fitted for the purpose, and whose name, as has well been said in the sentiment in which we have already united, will be joined imperishably with that of Washington, as long as the history of our country continues. [Applause.]

With him came John DeKalb, the intrepid Alsatian, who, after fighting gallantly through the war, up to the point of his death, fell at Camden, pierced at last by many wounds. [Cheers.] With them, or after them, came others, Gouvion, Duportail—some of their names are hardly now familiar to us—Duplessis, Duponceau, afterward distinguished in literature and in law, in the country in which he made his residence. There came great supplies of military equipment, important, we may say indispensable, aids of money, clothing, and of all the apparatus of war; and, finally, came the organized naval and military force, with great captains at the head, Rochambeau [loud cheers], Chastellux, De Choisy, De Lauzun, St. Simon, De Grasse—all this force brilliantly representative, as we know, of our foreign allies, in the victory at Yorktown. [Applause.]

I suppose there has never been a stranger contrast on any field of victory, than that which was presented, between the worn clothing of the American troops, soiled with mud, rusted with storm, wet with blood, and the fresh white uniforms of the French troops, ornamented with colored trimmings; the poor, plain battle-flags of the Colonists, stained with smoke and rent with shot, compared with the shining and lofty standards of the French army, bearing on a ground of brilliant white silk emblazoned in gold embroidery the Bourbon lilies. [Applause.] Indeed such a contrast went into everything. The American troops were made up of men who had been, six years before, mechanics, farmers, merchants, fishermen, lawyers, teachers, with no more thought of any exploits to be accomplished by them on fields of battle than they had of being elected Czars of all the Russias. They had a few victories to look back to; Bennington, Stillwater, Cowpens, Kings Mountain, and the one great triumph of Saratoga. They had many defeats to remember; Brandywine, where somebody at the time said that the mixture of the two liquors was too much for the sober Americans [laughter], Camden, Guilford Court-house, and others, with one tragic and terrible defeat on the heights of Long Island. There were men who had been the subjects, and many of them officers of the very power against which they were fighting; and some of the older among them might have stood for that power at Louisbourg or Quebec. On the other hand, the French troops were part of an army, the lustre of whose splendid history could be traced back for a thousand years, beyond the Crusaders, beyond Charlemagne. Their officers had been trained in the best military schools of the time. They were amply provided with the last and choicest equipments of war. They had gallantly achieved victory, or as gallantly sustained defeat on almost every principal battle-field in Europe. They were now confronting an enemy whom that army had faced in previous centuries on sea and land; and very likely something of special exhilaration and animation went into their spirit from thought of this, as they assailed the English breastworks, swarming into the trenches, capturing the redoubts, storming the lines with that strange battle-shout, in our republican American air: "Vive le Roi!" [Applause.]

A singular combination! Undoubtedly, to unfold the influences which had led to it would take months instead of minutes, and occupy volumes rather than sentences. I think however, that we reckon too much on national rivalry, or national animosity, when we seek to explain it, although these no doubt had their part in it. Doubtless the eager efforts of Silas Dean, our first diplomatic representative in Europe—efforts too eager for courtesy or wisdom—had a part in it; and the skilful diplomacy of Franklin had, as we know, a large and important influence upon it. The spirit of adventure, the desire for distinction upon fresh fields, had something to do with it. But the principal factor in that great effort was the spirit of freedom—the spirit that looked to the advancement and the maintenance of popular liberty among the peoples of the earth, wherever civilization had gone; that spirit which was notably expressed by Van der Capellen, the Dutch orator and statesman, when he vehemently said, in presence of the States-General of Holland, in reply to an autograph letter of George III soliciting their aid, that this was a business for hired janissaries rather than for soldiers of a free State; that it would be, in his judgment, "superlatively detestable" to aid in any way to overcome the Americans, whom he regarded as a brave people, righting in a manly, honorable, religious manner, not for the rights which had come to them, not from any British legislation but from God Almighty. [Applause.]

That spirit was native to Holland. But that spirit was also widely in France. The old temper and enthusiasm for liberty, both civil and religious, had not passed away. Sixty years and more since the accession of Louis XV had perhaps only intensified this spirit. It had entered the higher philosophical minds. They were meditating the questions of the true social order, with daring disregard of all existing institutions, and their spirit and instructions found an echo even in our Declaration of Independence. They made it more theoretical than English state papers have usually been. Palpably, the same spirit which afterward broke into fierce exhibition, when the Bastille was stormed in 1789, or when the First Republic was declared in 1792, was already at work in France, at work there far more vitally and energetically than was yet recognized by those in authority; while it wrought perhaps in the field offered by this country, more eagerly and largely because it was repressed at home. So it was that so many brilliant Frenchmen came as glad volunteers. It was because of this electric and vital spirit looking toward freedom. Travelling was slow. Communication between continents was tardy and difficult. A sailing ship, dependent upon the wind, hugged the breeze or was driven before the blast across the stormy North Atlantic. The steamship was unknown. The telegraph wire was no more imagined than it was imagined that the Rhine might flow a river of flame or that the Jungfrau or the Weisshorn might go out on a journey.

But there was this distributed spirit of freedom, propagating itself by means which we cannot wholly trace, and to an extent which was scarcely recognized, which brought volunteers in such numbers to our shores, that Washington, you know, at one time, expressed himself as embarrassed to know what to do with them; and there were fervent and high aspirations going up from multitudes of households and of hearts in Central and in Western Europe, which found realization in what we claim as the greatest and most fruitful of American victories. [Applause.] The impulse given by that victory to the same spirit is one on which we can never look back without gratitude and gladness. It was an impulse not confined to one nation but common to all which had had part in the struggle. We know what an impulse it gave to everything greatest and best in our own country. The spirit of popular exhilaration, rising from that victory at Yorktown, was a force which really established and moulded our national Government. The nation rose to one of those exalted points, those supreme levels, in its public experience, where it found a grander wisdom, where it had nobler forecast than perhaps it otherwise could have reached. In consequence of it, our Government came, which has stood the storm and stress of a hundred years. We may have to amend its Constitution in time to come, as it has been amended in the past; but we have become a nation by means of it. It commands the attention—to some extent, the admiration—of other people of the earth; at all events, it is bound to endure upon this continent as long as there remains a continent here for it to rest upon. [Cheers.]

Then came the incessant movement westward: the vast foreign immigration, the occupation of the immense grainfields, which might almost feed the hungry world; the multiplication of manufacturers, supplying everything, nearly, that we need; the uncovering of mines, bringing out the wealth which has actually disturbed the money standards of the world; the transforming of territories into States by a process as swift and magical almost as that by which the turbid mixture of the chemist is crystallized into its delicate and translucent spars; the building of an empire on the Western coast, looking out toward the older continent of Asia. [Cheers.]

We know, too, what an impulse was given to popular rights and hopes in England. We rejoice in all the progress of England. That salute fired at the British flag the other day at Yorktown [cheers] was a stroke of the hammer on the horologe of time, which marks the coming of a new era, when national animosities shall be forgotten, and only national sympathies and good-will shall remain. It might seem, perhaps, to have in it a tone of the old "diapason of the cannonade"; but on the thoughtful ear, falls from the thundering voice of those guns, a note of that supreme music which fell on the ear of Longfellow, when "like a bell with solemn sweet vibration" he heard "once more the voice of Christ say: 'Peace!'" [Loud applause.]

We rejoice in the progress of English manufactures, which extracts every force from each ounce of coal, and pounds or weaves the English iron into nearly everything for human use except boots and brown-bread [laughter]; in the commerce which spreads its sails on all seas; in the wealth and splendor that are assembled in her cities; but we rejoice more than all in the constant progress of those liberal ideas to which such an impulse was given by this victory of Yorktown. [Cheers.] You remember that Fox is said to have heard of it "with a wild delight"; and even he may not have anticipated its full future outcome. You remember the hissing hate with which he was often assailed, as when the tradesman of Westminster whose vote he had solicited, flung back at him the answer: "I have nothing for you, sir, but a halter," to which Fox, by the way, with instant wit and imperturbable good-nature, smilingly responded: "I could not think, my dear sir, of depriving you of such an interesting family relic." [Laughter.] Look back to that time and then see the prodigious advance of liberal ideas in England, the changed political condition of the workingman. Look at the position of that great Commoner, who now regulates the English policy, who equals Fox in his liberal principles and surpasses him in his eloquence—Mr. Gladstone. [Cheers.] The English troops marched out of Yorktown, after their surrender, to that singularly appropriate tune, as they thought it, "The World Turned Upside Down." [Laughter.] But that vast disturbance of the old equilibrium which had balanced a King against a Nation, has given to England the treasures of statesmanship, the treasures of eloquence, a vast part of the splendor and the power which are now collected under the reign of that one royal woman in the world, to whom every American heart pays its eager and unforced fealty—Queen Victoria. [Loud applause.]

We know what an impulse was given to the same spirit in Germany. Mr. Schurz will tell us of it in eloquent words. But no discourse that he can utter, however brilliant in rhetoric; no analysis, however lucid; no clear and comprehensive sweep of his thought, though expressed in words which ring in our ears and live in our memories, can so fully and fittingly illustrate it to us as does the man himself, in his character and career—an Old World citizen of the American Republic whose marvellous mastery of our tough English tongue is still surpassed by his more marvellous mastery over the judgments and the hearts of those who hear him use it. [Cheers.]

What an impulse was given to the same spirit in France we know. At first, it fell upon a people not altogether prepared to receive it. There was, therefore, a passionate effervescence, a fierce ebullition into popular violence and popular outrage which darkened for the time the world's annals. But we know that the spirit never died; and through all the winding and bloody paths in which it has marched, it has brought France the fair consummation of its present power and wealth and renown. [Cheers.] We rejoice in its multiform manufactures, which weave the woollen or silken fibre into every form and tissue of fabric; in the delicate, dainty skill which keeps the time of all creation with its watchwork and clockwork; which ornaments beauty with its jewelry, and furnishes science with its finest instruments; we rejoice in the 14,000 miles of railway there constructed, almost all of it within forty years; we rejoice in the riches there accumulated; we rejoice in the expansion of the population from the twenty-three millions of the day of Yorktown to the thirty-eight millions of the present; but we rejoice more than all in the liberal spirit evermore there advancing, which has built the fifteen universities, and gathered the 41,000 students into them; which builds libraries and higher seminaries, and multiplies common schools: which gives liberty if not license to the press. [Cheers.]

We rejoice in the universal suffrage which puts the 532 deputies into the Chamber and which combines the Chamber of Deputies with the Senate into a National Assembly to elect the President of the Republic. We rejoice in the rapid political education now and always going on in France, and that she is to be hereafter a noble leader in Europe, in illustrating the security and commending the benefits of Republican institutions. [Applause.]

France has been foremost in many things; she was foremost in chivalry, and the most magnificent spectacles and examples which that institution ever furnished were on her fields. She was foremost in the Crusades and the volcanic country around Auvergne was not more full of latent fire than was the spirit of her people at the Council of Clermont or before the appeal of Peter the Hermit and St. Bernard. She led the march of philosophical discussion in the Middle Ages. She has been foremost in many achievements of science and art. She is foremost to-day in piercing with tunnels the mountain-chains, that the wheels of trade may roll unobstructed through rocky barriers, and cutting canals through the great isthmuses that the keels of commerce may sweep unhindered across the seas. But she has never yet had an office so illustrious as that which falls to her now—to show Europe how Republican institutions stimulate industry, guarantee order, promote all progress in enterprise and in thought, and are the best and surest security for a nation's grandest advancement.

That enthusiasm which has led her always to champion ideas, which led her soldiers to say in the first Revolution: "With bread and iron we will march to China," entering now into fulfilment of this great office, will carry her influence to China and beyond it; her peaceful influence on behalf of the liberty for which she fought with us at Yorktown, and for which she has bled and struggled with a pathetic and lofty stubbornness ever since. [Cheers.]

I do not look back merely then from this evening; I see illustrated at Yorktown the lesson of that hour; that colonies maturing into great commonwealths, and peoples combining for common liberties are the best pledges of the world's future, but I look forward as well and see France in Europe, a Republic, the United States on this continent, a Republic, standing again in the future as before, shoulder to shoulder, expecting with tranquil and exultant spirit the grander victory yet to come, the outcome of which shall be liberty to all the peoples of the world, and that benign and divine peace which is the sure and sovereign fruit of such a liberty. [Applause.]



WILLIAM SCUDDER STRYKER

DUTCH HEROES OF THE NEW WORLD

[Speech of William S. Stryker at the fifth annual dinner of the Holland Society of New York, January 10, 1890. The vice-President, Robert B. Roosevelt, presided, and called upon General Stryker to respond to the toast, "The Dutch Soldier in America."]

MR. PRESIDENT:—As well-born Dutchmen, full, of course, to-night of the spirit which creates Dutch courage, it is pleasant for us to look across the seas, to recall the martial life of our progenitors and to speak of their great deeds for liberty. It is conducive to our family pride to trace back the source of the blessings we enjoy to-day through all the brilliant pages of Netherland history to the time when the soldiers of freedom—the "Beggars"—chose rather to let in the merciless ocean waves than to surrender to the ruthless invader. [Applause.]

We love to say that we can see in the glory of free institutions in this century the steady outgrowth of that germ of human liberty which was planted by the sturdy labor, which was watered by the tears and blood, and fructified by the precious lives of those who fought by land and sea in the battles of the sixteenth century. [Applause.]

Although we make our boast of the indomitable courage, the many self-denials, the homely virtues of our forefathers, think you that we in America are degenerate sons of noble sires? I trow not! [Renewed applause.]

That irascible old Governor who stamped his wooden leg on the streets of New Amsterdam, who ruled with his iron will and his cane the thrifty burghers of this young city, did he not, when called upon to show a soldier's courage, wage a successful contest with savage foes, with the testy Puritans of Connecticut and with the obdurate Swedes on Christiana Creek?

Before the old Dutch church in Millstone on the Raritan River, in the summer of 1775, a hundred of the young men of the village were drilled every night. They had on their long smock-frocks, broad-brimmed black hats, and leggings. Their own firelocks were on their shoulders, twenty-three cartridges in their cartouches, the worm, the priming-wire, and twelve flints in their pockets. These were the bold minute-men of New Jersey, and Frederick Frelinghuysen was their gallant Dutch captain, who stood ready to march, in case an alarm bonfire burned on Sourland Mountain, to fight any enemy. [Applause.]

When fighting under Bradstreet on the Oswego River in the old French war, when laboring against great odds at Fort Edward, when retarding the British advance after the evacuation of Ticonderoga, when urging on a force to the relief of Fort Stanwix, when planning the campaign which ended in the capture of Burgoyne, and placing laurels, now faded, on the head of Gates, the character of our own Knickerbocker General, Philip Schuyler, the pure patriot, the noble soldier, is lustrous with evidences of his sagacious counsels, his wonderful energy, and his military skill. [Renewed applause.]

The good blood of the patroons never flowed purer or brighter than when, as soldiers, they battled for a nation's rights. In the fight at Saratoga, Colonel Henry Kiliaen Van Rensselaer greatly distinguished himself and carried from the field an ounce of British lead, which remained in his body thirty-five years. Captain Solomon Van Rensselaer fought most courageously by the side of Mad Anthony Wayne in the Miami campaign. Being seriously wounded in a brilliant charge, he refused to be carried off the field on a litter, but insisted that, as a dragoon, he should be allowed to ride his horse from the battle and, if he dropped, to die where he fell. [Applause.]

Worn and bleeding were the feet, scant the clothing of our ragged Continentals, as, turning upon their foe, they recrossed the icy Delaware on Christmas night, surprised Rall and his revellers in Trenton's village, punished the left of Cornwallis's column at Princeton, and then, on their way to the mountains of Morris County, fell by the wayside with hunger and wretchedness, perishing with the intense cold. But, in the darkness of the night, a partisan trooper, with twenty horsemen, surrounded the baggage-wagons of the British force, fired into the two hundred soldiers guarding them, and, shouting like a host of demons, captured the train, and the doughty captain with my own ancestral name woke up the weary soldiers of Washington's army with the rumbling of wagons heavily laden with woollen clothing and supplies, bravely stolen from the enemy. [Applause.]

The poisoned arrows whistled in the Newtown fight as the New York contingent pressed forward toward Seneca Castle, the great capitol-house of the Six Nations. The redskins and their Tory allies, under Brant, tried hard to resist the progress of that awful human wedge that was driven with relentless fury among the wigwams of those who had burned the homes in beautiful Wyoming, who had despoiled with the bloody tomahawk the settlement at German Flats, and had closed the horrid campaign with the cruel massacre at Cherry Valley. Bold and daring in this revengeful expedition was Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, a name honored in all Dutch civil and military history. [Continued applause.]

As a leader of three thousand cavalrymen the youthful General Bayard [great cheers], proud of his Dutch descent, fell on the heights of bloody Fredericksburg. Like the good knight, he was "without fear and without reproach." Full of zeal for the cause, the bravest of the brave, his sword flashed always where dangers were the thickest. When a bursting shell left him dead on the field of honor, his brave men mourned him and the foe missed him. [Cheers.]

In the leaden tempest which rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering on his men, and the young life of my college friend, Abram Zabriskie, of Jersey City, as chivalric a Dutch colonel as ever drew a blade in battle, was breathed out in the mighty throes of civil war. [Applause.]

As we picture to ourselves the appearance of that grand figure of William of Orange, as he led his heroic people through and out of scenes of darkness and hunger and death into the sweet light of freedom; as we turn the pages of history that recount the deeds of glory of Vander Werf, the burgomaster of Leyden; of Count Egmont and Count Horn, of de Ruyter and Van Tromp, let us not forget that the same sturdy stock has developed in the New World the same zeal for human rights, the same high resolves of duty, the same devotion to liberty. If ever again this nation needs brave defenders, your sons and mine will, I trust, be able to show to the world that the patriotism of Dutchmen, that true Dutch valor, still fills the breasts of the soldiers of America! [Prolonged cheering.]



SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN

MUSIC

[Speech of Sir Arthur Sullivan at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, May 2, 1891. Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, occupied the chair. "In response for Music," said the President, "I shall call on a man whose brilliant and many-sided gifts are not honored in his own country alone, and who has gathered laurels with full hands in every field of musical achievement—my old friend, Sir Arthur Sullivan."]

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN: It is gratifying to find that at the great representative art-gathering of the year the sister arts are now receiving at the hands of the painters and sculptors of the United Kingdom that compliment to which their members are justly entitled. Art is a commonwealth in which all the component estates hold an equal position, and it has been reserved for you, sir, under your distinguished presidency, to give full and honorable recognition to this important fact. You have done so in those terms of delicate, subtle compliment, which whilst displaying the touch of the master, also bear the impress of genuine sympathy, by calling upon my friend Mr. Irving, and myself, as representatives of the drama and of music, to return thanks for those branches of art to which our lives' efforts have been devoted.

I may add, speaking for my own art, that there is a singular appropriateness that this compliment to Music should be paid by the artist whose brain has conceived and whose hand depicted a most enchanting "Music Lesson." You, sir, have touched with eloquence and feeling upon some of the tenderer attributes of music; I would with your permission, call attention to another—namely, its power and influence on popular sentiment; for of all the arts I think Music has the most mighty, universal, and immediate effect. ["Hear! hear!"] I know there are many educated and intelligent people who, absorbed in commerce, politics, and other pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted somewhat from the proper recognition of the higher and graver attributes of music. But that music is a power and has influenced humanity with dynamic force in politics, religion, peace, and war, no one can gainsay. Who can deny the effect in great crises of the world's history of the Lutheran Chorale, "Ein' feste Burg," which roused the enthusiasm of whole towns and cities and caused them to embrace the reformed faith en masse—of the "Ca ira," with its ghastly association of tumbril and guillotine, and of the still more powerful "Marseillaise?" These three tunes alone have been largely instrumental in varying the course of history. [Cheers.]

Amongst our own people, no one who has visited the Greater Britain beyond the seas but must be alive to the depth of feeling stirred by the first bar of "God Save the Queen." It is not too much to say that this air has done more than any other single agency to consolidate the national sentiment which forms the basis of our world-wide Empire. [Cheers.] But, sir, my duty is not to deliver a dissertation on music, my duty is to thank you for the offering and the acceptation of this toast, which I do most sincerely.

With regard to the more than generous terms in which you, sir, have alluded to my humble individuality, I need not say how deeply I feel the spirit in which they were spoken. This much I would add—that highly as I value your kindly utterances, I count still more highly the fact that I should have been selected by you to respond for Music, whose dignity and whose progress in England are so near and dear to me at heart. [Cheers.]



CHARLES SUMNER

INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA

[Speech of Charles Sumner at the banquet given by the City of Boston, August 21, 1868, to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China, and his associates, Chih Ta-jin and Sun Ta-jin, of the Chinese Embassy to the United States and the powers of Europe.]

MR. MAYOR:—I cannot speak on this interesting occasion without first declaring the happiness I enjoy at meeting my friend of many years in the exalted position which he now holds. Besides being my personal friend, he was also an honored associate in representing the good people of this community, and in advancing a great cause, which he championed with memorable eloquence and fidelity. Such are no common ties. Permit me to say that this splendid welcome, now offered by the municipal authorities of Boston, is only a natural expression of the sentiments which must prevail in this community. Here his labors and triumphs began. Here, in your early applause and approving voices, he first tasted of that honor which is now his in such ample measure. He is one of us, who, going forth into a strange country, has come back with its highest trusts and dignities. Once the representative of a single Congressional district, he now represents the most populous nation of the globe. Once the representative of little more than a third of Boston, he is now the representative of more than a third part of the human race. The population of the globe is estimated at twelve hundred millions; that of China at more than four hundred millions, and sometimes even at five hundred millions.

If, in this position, there be much to excite wonder, there is still more for gratitude in the unparalleled opportunity which it affords. What we all ask is opportunity. Here is opportunity on a surpassing scale—to be employed, I am sure, so as to advance the best interests of the Human Family; and, if these are advanced, no nation can suffer. Each is contained in all. With justice and generosity as the reciprocal rule, and nothing else can be the aim of this great Embassy, there can be no limits to the immeasurable consequences. For myself, I am less solicitous with regard to concessions or privileges, than with regard to that spirit of friendship and good neighborhood, which embraces alike the distant and the near, and, when once established, renders all else easy.

The necessary result of the present experiment in diplomacy will be to make the countries which it visits better known to the Chinese, and also to make the Chinese better known to them. Each will know the other better and will better comprehend that condition of mutual dependence which is the law of humanity. In the relations among nations, as in common life, this is of infinite value. Thus far, I fear that the Chinese are poorly informed with regard to us. I am sure that we are poorly informed with regard to them. We know them through the porcelain on our tables with its lawless perspective, and the tea-chest with its unintelligible hieroglyphics. There are two pictures of them in the literature of our language, which cannot fail to leave an impression. The first is in "Paradise Lost," where Milton, always learned even in his poetry, represents Satan as descending in his flight,

... on the barren plains Of Sericana, where Chineses drive, With sails and wind their cany wagons light.

The other is that admirable address on the study of the law of nature and nations, where Sir James Mackintosh, in words of singular felicity, alludes to "the tame but ancient and immovable civilization of China." It will be for us now to enlarge these pictures and to fill the canvas with life.

I do not know if it has occurred to our honored guest, that he is not the first stranger who, after sojourning in this distant unknown land, has come back loaded with its honors, and with messages to the Christian powers. He is not without a predecessor in his mission. There is another career as marvellous as his own. I refer to the Venetian, Marco Polo, whose reports, once discredited as the fables of a traveller, are now recognized among the sources of history, and especially of geographical knowledge. Nobody can read them without feeling their verity. It was in the latter part of the far-away thirteenth century, that this enterprising Venetian, in company with his father and uncle, all of them merchants, journeyed from Venice, by the way of Constantinople, Trebizond, on the Black Sea, and Central Asia, until they reached first the land of Prester John, and then that golden country, known as Cathay, where the great ruler, Kubla Khan, treated them with gracious consideration, and employed young Polo as his ambassador. This was none other than China, and the great ruler, called the Grand Khan, was none other than the first of its Mongolian dynasty, having his imperial residence in the immense city of Kambalu, or Peking. After many years of illustrious service, the Venetian, with his companions, was dismissed with splendor and riches, charged with letters for European sovereigns, as our Bostonian is charged with similar letters now. There were letters for the Pope, the King of France, the King of Spain, and other Christian princes. It does not appear that England was expressly designated. Her name, so great now, was not at that time on the visiting list of the distant Emperor. Such are the contrasts in national life. Marco Polo, with his companions, reached Venice on his return in 1295, at the very time when Dante, in Florence, was meditating his divine poem, and when Roger Bacon, in England, was astonishing the age with his knowledge. These were two of his greatest contemporaries.

The return of the Venetian to his native city was attended by incidents which have not occurred among us. Bronzed by long residence under the sun of the East—wearing the dress of a Tartar—and speaking his native language with difficulty, it was some time before he could persuade his friends of his identity. Happily there is no question on the identity of our returned fellow-citizen; and surely it cannot be said that he speaks his native language with difficulty. There was a dinner given at Venice, as now at Boston, and the Venetian dinner, after the lapse of nearly five hundred years, still lives in glowing description. On this occasion Marco Polo, with his companions, appeared first in long robes of crimson satin reaching to the floor, which, after the guests had washed their hands, were changed for other robes of crimson damask, and then again, after the first course of the dinner, for other robes of crimson velvet, and at the conclusion of the banquet, for the ordinary dress worn by the rest of the company. Meanwhile the other costly garments were distributed in succession among the attendants at the table. In all your magnificence to-night, Mr. Mayor, I have seen no such largess. Then was brought forward the coarse threadbare clothes in which they had travelled, when, on ripping the lining and patches with a knife, costly jewels, in sparkling showers, leaped forth before the eyes of the company, who for a time were motionless with wonder. Then at last, says the Italian chronicler, every doubt was banished, and all were satisfied that these were the valiant and honorable gentlemen of the house of Polo. I do not relate this history in order to suggest any such operation on the dress of our returned fellow-citizen. No such evidence is needed to assure us of his identity.

The success of Marco Polo is amply attested. From his habit of speaking of millions of people and millions of money, he was known as millioni, or the millionnaire, being the earliest instance in history of a designation so common in our prosperous age. But better than "millions" was the knowledge he imparted, and the impulse that he gave to that science, which teaches the configuration of the globe, and the place of nations on its surface. His travels, as dictated by him, were reproduced in various languages, and, after the invention of printing, the book was multiplied in more than fifty editions. Unquestionably it prepared the way for the two greatest geographical discoveries of modern times, that of the Cape of Good Hope, by Vasco de Gama, and the New World, by Christopher Columbus. One of his admirers, a learned German, does not hesitate to say that, when, in the long series of ages, we seek the three men, who, by the influence of their discoveries, have most contributed to the progress of geography and the knowledge of the globe, the modest name of the Venetian finds a place in the same line with Alexander the Great and Christopher Columbus. It is well known that the imagination of the Genoese navigator was fired by the revelations of the Venetian, and that, in his mind, all the countries embraced by his transcendent discovery were none other than the famed Cathay, with its various dependencies. In his report to the Spanish Sovereigns, Cuba was nothing else than Xipangu, or Japan, as described by the Venetian, and he thought himself near a grand Khan, meaning, as he says, a king of kings. Columbus was mistaken. He had not reached Cathay or the Grand Khan; but he had discovered a new world, destined in the history of civilization to be more than Cathay, and, in the lapse of time, to welcome the ambassador of the grand Khan.

The Venetian on his return home, journeyed out of the East, westward. Our Marco Polo on his return home, journeyed out of the west, eastward; and yet they both came from the same region. Their common starting-point was Peking. This change is typical of that transcendent revolution under whose influence the Orient will become the Occident. Journeying westward, the first welcome is from the nations of Europe. Journeying eastward, the first welcome is from our Republic. It only remains that this welcome should be extended until it opens a pathway for the mightiest commerce of the world, and embraces within the sphere of American activity that ancient ancestral empire, where population, industry and education, on an unprecedented scale, create resources and necessities on an unprecedented scale also. See to it, merchants of the United States, and you, merchants of Boston, that this opportunity is not lost.

And this brings me, Mr. Mayor, to the treaty, which you invited me to discuss. But I will not now enter upon this topic. If you did not call me to order for speaking too long, I fear I should be called to order in another place for undertaking to speak of a treaty which has not yet been proclaimed by the President. One remark I will make and take the consequences. The treaty does not propose much; but it is an excellent beginning, and, I trust, through the good offices of our fellow-citizen, the honored plenipotentiary, will unlock those great Chinese gates which have been bolted and barred for long centuries. The embassy is more than the treaty, because it will prepare the way for further intercourse and will help that new order of things which is among the promises of the future.

* * * * *

THE QUALITIES THAT WIN

[Speech of Charles Sumner at the sixty-eighth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1873. The President, Isaac H. Bailey, in proposing the toast, "The Senate of the United States," said: "We are happy to greet on this occasion the senior in consecutive service, and the most eminent member of the Senate, whose early, varied, and distinguished services in the cause of freedom have made his name a household word throughout the world—the Honorable Charles Sumner." On rising to respond, Mr. Sumner was received with loud applause. The members of the Society rose to their feet, applauded and waved handkerchiefs.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND BROTHERS OF NEW ENGLAND:—For the first time in my life I have the good fortune to enjoy this famous anniversary festival. Though often honored by your most tempting invitation, and longing to celebrate the day in this goodly company of which all have heard so much, I could never excuse myself from duties in another place. If now I yield to well-known attractions, and journey from Washington for my first holiday during a protracted public service, it is because all was enhanced by the appeal of your excellent president, to whom I am bound by the friendship of many years in Boston, in New York, and in a foreign land. [Applause.] It is much to be a brother of New England, but it is more to be a friend [applause], and this tie I have pleasure in confessing to-night.

It is with much doubt and humility that I venture to answer for the Senate of the United States, and I believe the least I say on this head will be the most prudent. [Laughter.] But I shall be entirely safe in expressing my doubt if there is a single Senator who would not be glad of a seat at this generous banquet. What is the Senate? It is a component part of the National Government. But we celebrate to-day more than any component part of any government. We celebrate an epoch in the history of mankind—not only never to be forgotten, but to grow in grandeur as the world appreciates the elements of true greatness. Of mankind I say—for the landing on Plymouth Rock, on December 22, 1620, marks the origin of a new order of ages, by which the whole human family will be elevated. Then and there was the great beginning.

Throughout all time, from the dawn of history, men have swarmed to found new homes in distant lands. The Tyrians, skirting Northern Africa, stopped at Carthage; Carthaginians dotted Spain and even the distant coasts of Britain and Ireland; Greeks gemmed Italy and Sicily with art-loving settlements; Rome carried multitudinous colonies with her conquering eagles. Saxons, Danes, and Normans violently mingled with the original Britons. And in more modern times, Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Spain, France, and England, all sent forth emigrants to people foreign shores. But in these various expeditions, trade or war was the impelling motive. Too often commerce and conquest moved hand in hand, and the colony was incarnadined with blood.

On the day we celebrate, the sun for the first time in his course looked down upon a different scene, begun and continued under a different inspiration. A few conscientious Englishmen, in obedience to the monitor within, and that they might be free to worship God according to their own sense of duty, set sail for the unknown wilds of the North American continent. After a voyage of sixty-four days in the ship Mayflower, with Liberty at the prow and Conscience at the helm [applause], they sighted the white sandbanks of Cape Cod, and soon thereafter in the small cabin framed that brief compact, forever memorable, which is the first written constitution of government in human history, and the very corner-stone of the American Republic; and then these Pilgrims landed.

This compact was not only foremost in time, it was also august in character, and worthy of perpetual example. Never before had the object of the "civil body public" been announced as "to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony." How lofty! how true! Undoubtedly, these were the grandest words of government with the largest promise of any at that time uttered.

If more were needed to illustrate the new epoch, it would be found in the parting words of the venerable pastor, John Robinson, addressed to the Pilgrims, as they were about to sail from Delfshaven—words often quoted, yet never enough. How sweetly and beautifully he says: "And if God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; but I am confident that the Lord hath more light and truth yet to break forth out of his holy word." And then how justly the good preacher rebukes those who close their souls to truth! "The Lutherans, for example, cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, and whatever part of God's will he hath further imparted to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace, and so the Calvinists stick where he left them. This is a misery much to be lamented, for though they were precious, shining lights in their times, God hath not revealed his whole will to them." Beyond the merited rebuke, here is a plain recognition of the law of human progress little discerned at the time, which teaches the sure advance of the human family, and opens the vista of the ever-broadening, never-ending future on earth.

Our Pilgrims were few and poor. The whole outfit of this historic voyage, including L1,700 of trading stock, was only L2,400, and how little was required for their succor appears in the experience of the soldier Captain Miles Standish, who, being sent to England for assistance—not military, but financial—(God save the mark!) succeeded in borrowing—how much do you suppose?—L150 sterling. [Laughter.] Something in the way of help; and the historian adds, "though at fifty per cent. interest." So much for a valiant soldier on a financial expedition. [Laughter, in which General Sherman and the company joined.] A later agent, Allerton, was able to borrow for the colony L200 at a reduced interest of thirty per cent. Plainly, the money-sharks of our day may trace an undoubted pedigree to these London merchants. [Laughter.] But I know not if any son of New England, oppressed by exorbitant interest, will be consoled by the thought that the Pilgrims paid the same.

And yet this small people—so obscure and outcast in condition—so slender in numbers and in means—so entirely unknown to the proud and great—so absolutely without name in contemporary records—whose departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their bodies—are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the Mayflower is immortal beyond the Grecian Argo, or the stately ship of any victorious admiral. Though this was little foreseen in their day, it is plain now how it has come to pass. The highest greatness surviving time and storm is that which proceeds from the soul of man. [Applause.] Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the circumstance of war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth [great applause], such harbingers can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads coextensive with the cause they served.

I know not if any whom I now have the honor of addressing have thought to recall the great in rank and power filling the gaze of the world as the Mayflower with her company fared forth on their adventurous voyage. The foolish James was yet on the English throne, glorying that he had "peppered the Puritans." The morose Louis XIII, through whom Richelieu ruled, was King of France. The imbecile Philip III swayed Spain and the Indies. The persecuting Ferdinand the Second, tormentor of Protestants, was Emperor of Germany. Paul V, of the House of Borghese, was Pope of Rome. In the same princely company and all contemporaries were Christian IV, King of Denmark, and his son Christian, Prince of Norway; Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden; Sigismund the Third, King of Poland; Frederick, King of Bohemia, with his wife, the unhappy Elizabeth of England, progenitor of the house of Hanover; George William, Margrave of Brandenburg, and ancestor of the Prussian house that has given an emperor to Germany; Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria; Maurice, landgrave of Hesse; Christian, Duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg; John Frederick, Duke of Wuertemberg and Teck; John, Count of Nassau; Henry, Duke of Lorraine; Isabella, Infanta of Spain and ruler of the Low Countries; Maurice, fourth Prince of Orange; Charles Emanuel, Duke of Savoy and ancestor of the King of United Italy; Cosmo de' Medici, third Grand Duke of Florence; Antonio Priuli, ninety-third Doge of Venice, just after the terrible tragedy commemorated on the English stage as "Venice Preserved"; Bethlehem Gabor, Prince of Unitarian Transylvania, and elected King of Hungary, with the countenance of an African; and the Sultan Mustapha, of Constantinople, twentieth ruler of the Turks.

Such at that time were the crowned sovereigns of Europe, whose names were mentioned always with awe, and whose countenances are handed down by art, so that at this day they are visible to the curious as if they walked these streets. Mark now the contrast. There was no artist for our forefathers, nor are their countenances now known to men; but more than any powerful contemporaries at whose tread the earth trembled is their memory sacred. [Applause.] Pope, emperor, king, sultan, grand-duke, duke, doge, margrave, landgrave, count—what are they all by the side of the humble company that landed on Plymouth Rock? Theirs, indeed, were the ensigns of worldly power, but our Pilgrims had in themselves that inborn virtue which was more than all else besides, and their landing was an epoch.

Who in the imposing troop of worldly grandeur is now remembered but with indifference or contempt? If I except Gustavus Adolphus, it is because he revealed a superior character. Confront the Mayflower and the Pilgrims with the potentates who occupied such space in the world. The former are ascending into the firmament, there to shine forever, while the latter have been long dropping into the darkness of oblivion, to be brought forth only to point a moral or illustrate the fame of contemporaries whom they regarded not. [Applause.] Do I err in supposing this an illustration of the supremacy which belongs to the triumphs of the moral nature? At first impeded or postponed, they at last prevail. Theirs is a brightness which, breaking through all clouds, will shine forth with ever-increasing splendor.

I have often thought that if I were a preacher, if I had the honor to occupy the pulpit so grandly filled by my friend near me [gracefully inclining toward Mr. Beecher], one of my sermons should be from the text, "A little leaven shall leaven the whole lump." Nor do I know a better illustration of these words than the influence exerted by our Pilgrims. That small band, with the lesson of self-sacrifice, of just and equal laws, of the government of a majority, of unshrinking loyalty to principle, is now leavening this whole continent, and in the fulness of time will leaven the world. [Great applause.] By their example, republican institutions have been commended, and in proportion as we imitate them will these institutions be assured. [Applause.]

Liberty, which we so much covet, is not a solitary plant. Always by its side is Justice. [Applause.] But Justice is nothing but right applied to human affairs. Do not forget, I entreat you, that with the highest morality is the highest liberty. A great poet, in one of his inspired sonnets, speaking of this priceless possession, has said, "But who loves that must first be wise and good." Therefore do the Pilgrims in their beautiful example teach liberty, teach republican institutions, as at an earlier day, Socrates and Plato, in their lessons of wisdom, taught liberty and helped the idea of the republic. If republican government has thus far failed in any experiment, as, perhaps, somewhere in Spanish America, it is because these lessons have been wanting. There have been no Pilgrims to teach the moral law.

Mr. President, with these thoughts, which I imperfectly express, I confess my obligations to the forefathers of New England, and offer to them the homage of a grateful heart. But not in thanksgiving only would I celebrate their memory. I would if I could make their example a universal lesson, and stamp it upon the land. [Applause.] The conscience which directed them should be the guide for our public councils. The just and equal laws which they required should be ordained by us, and the hospitality to truth which was their rule should be ours. Nor would I forget their courage and steadfastness. Had they turned back or wavered, I know not what would have been the record of this continent, but I see clearly that a great example would have been lost. [Applause.] Had Columbus yielded to his mutinous crew and returned to Spain without his great discovery; had Washington shrunk away disheartened by British power and the snows of New Jersey, these great instances would have been wanting for the encouragement of men. But our Pilgrims belong to the same heroic company, and their example is not less precious. [Applause.]

Only a short time after the landing on Plymouth Rock, the great republican poet, John Milton, wrote his "Comus," so wonderful for beauty and truth. His nature was more refined than that of the Pilgrims, and yet it requires little effort of imagination to catch from one of them, or at least from their beloved pastor, the exquisite, almost angelic words at the close—

"Mortals, who would follow me, Love Virtue; she alone is free; She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime. Or if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her."

[At the conclusion of Senator Sumner's speech the audience arose and gave cheer upon cheer.]



THOMAS DEWITT TALMAGE

BEHOLD THE AMERICAN!

[Speech of Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage at the eighty-first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1886. The President of the Society, Judge Horace Russell, introduced Dr. Talmage to speak to the toast, "Forefathers' Day."]

MR. PRESIDENT, AND ALL YOU GOOD NEW ENGLANDERS: If we leave to the evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to prophesy where we are going to, we still have left for consideration the fact that we are here; and we are here at an interesting time. Of all the centuries this is the best century, and of all the decades of the century this is the best decade, and of all the years of the decade this is the best year, and of all the months of the year this is the best month, and of all the nights of the month this is the best night. [Applause and laughter.] Many of these advantages we trace straight back to Forefathers' Day, about which I am to speak.