ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

[Speech of Sarah Grand [Mrs. M'Fall] at the annual ladies' banquet of the Whitefriars Club, London, May 4, 1900. Max O'Rell [Paul Blouet] acted as chairman. L. F. Austin, who spoke earlier than Madame Grand, said, turning to Max O'Rell: "It used to be said of certain politicians by way of odium that they mumbled the dry bones of political economy; but you, sir, who sit trembling in that chair [laughter]—you are trying not to look it, but you are trembling with apprehension of the delicately anointed barb with which Madame Sarah. Grand will presently transfix you [laughter]; you must feel that we shall not very long be permitted even to mumble the barren epigrams of a vanished ascendancy."]

Mr. Chairman:—I have the honor to propose the toast of "Mere Man" [laughter], but why "Mere Man," I want to know? After all that has been said this evening so truthfully on the subject of "Sovran Woman," it is impossible for me to use such an epithet without feeling myself in an invidious position, in the position of the dog that bites the hand which has just caressed it—or rather I should feel myself in that position if I were in any way responsible for the use of the ungracious word. I beg most emphatically to state that I am not in any way responsible for it. I decline to be identified with such an expression: I decline to be accused of calling man any names [laughter], any names that I have not already called him. [Laughter.] I do not decline out of consideration for mere man altogether, but in self-defence. To use such an expression deprives me of any dignity which I might myself derive from the dignity of my subject. Besides, the words in my mouth, were I to be identified with them, would be used against me as a bomb by a whole section of the press, to blow me up. [Laughter.] I object to be blown up for nothing by a whole section of the press. [Laughter.] That is the sort of thing whichalmost ruffles my equanimity. My comfort is, that no one can accuse me of having originated such an expression, because it is well known no woman ever originated anything. [Laughter.] I assure you I have seen it so stated in print; and in one article I read on the subject the perturbation of the writer, lest there should be any mistake about it, so agitated his grammar that it was impossible to parse it. I should like to know who was responsible in the first place for the expression which has been imposed upon me. It seems to me there is strong presumptive evidence that it was by man himself that man was dubbed mere man. If the lords of creation choose to masquerade sometimes as mere man by all means let them.

The saying is, "In small things, liberty; in great things, unity; in all things, charity," but when you meet a man who describes himself as a mere man, you would always do well to ask what he wants, because, since man first swung himself from his bough in the forest primeval and stood upright on two legs, he has never assumed that position for nothing. [Laughter.] My own private opinion, which I confide to you, knowing it will go no further, is that he assumes that tone, as a rule, to draw sovran woman. [Laughter.] Mere man is a paradoxical creature—it is not always possible to distinguish between his sober earnest and his leg-pulling exercises. [Laughter.] One has to be on one's guard, and woe be to the woman who in these days displays that absence of the sense of humor which is such a prominent characteristic of our comic papers. [Laughter.] I do not mean to say for a moment that man assumes his "mere man" tone for unpleasant purposes. On the contrary, he assumes it for party purposes as a rule—for dinner party purposes. [Laughter.] When man is in his mere man mood sovran woman would do well to ask for anything that she wants—for it is then that he holds the sceptre out to her. [Laughter.] Unfortunately, the mood does not last; if it did he would have given us the suffrage ages ago. Sovran woman is the Uitlander of civilization—and man is her Boer. [Laughter.] It seems to me that sovran woman is very much in the position of Queen Esther; she has her crown, and her kingdom, and her royal robes, but she is liable to have her head snapped off at any moment.[Laughter.] On the other hand, there are hundreds of men who have their heads snapped off every day. [Laughter.] Mere man has his faults, no doubt, but sovran woman also can be a rasping sort of creature, especially if she does not cultivate sympathy with cigarettes as she gets older. [Laughter.] Let us be fair to mere man. Mere man has always treated me with exemplary fairness, and I certainly have never maintained that the blockhead majority is entirely composed of men; neither have I ever insinuated that it is man that makes all the misery.

Personally, and speaking as a woman whose guiding principle through life has been never to do anything for herself that she can get a nice man to do for her [laughter], a principle which I have found entirely successful, and which I strongly recommend to every other woman—personally I have always found mere man an excellent comrade. [Applause.] He has stood by me loyally, and held out an honest hand to me, and lent me his strength when mine was failing, and helped me gallantly over many an awkward bit of the way, and that, too, at times when sovran woman, whom I had so respected and admired and championed, had nothing for me but bonnet-pins. [Laughter.] It does upset one's ideas and unsettle one's principles when sovran woman has nothing for one but bonnet-pins. [Laughter.] The sharp points of those pins have made me a little doubtful about sovran woman at times—a little apt to suspect that in private life her name is Mrs. Harris [laughter], but I must be careful about what I say in this connection lest it should be supposed that I have been perverted.

In the great republic of letters to which I have the honor to belong—in the distinguished position of the letter "Z"—my experience is that woman suffers no indignity at the hands of man on account of her sex. That is the sort of experience which creates a prejudice. It is apt to color the whole of one's subsequent opinions. It gives one a sort of idea that there are men in the world who would stand by a woman on occasion; and I must confess that I began life with a very strong prejudice of that kind. For a woman to have had a good father is to have been born an heiress. If you had asked me as a child who ran to help me when I fell, I should have answered, "My daddy." When a womanbegins life with a prejudice of this kind she never gets over it. The prejudice of a man for his mother is feeble in comparison with the prejudice of a woman for her father, when she has had a man for her father and not one of what Shelley called, those—

"Things whose trade is over ladiesTo lean and flirt and stare and simper,Till all that is divine in womanGrows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper."'

Whatever that woman has to suffer she never loses her faith in man. Remembering what her father was, she always believes there are good men and true in the world somewhere. The recollection of her father becomes a buffer between that woman and the shocks and jars of her after life; because of him, there is nothing distorted in her point of view, and she remains sane. It rather spoils a woman in some ways to have a good husband as well as a good father, because then she is so sure that

"God's in His heaven,All's well with the world,"

that she becomes utterly selfish, and cares for nothing that is outside her own little circle. But the thing to guard against is loss of faith. Men and women who have lost faith in each other never rise above the world again—one wing is broken, and they cannot soar. It has been said that the best way to manage man is to feed the brute [laughter], but sovran woman never made that discovery for herself—I believe it was a man in his mere man mood who first confided the secret to some young wife in distress—somebody else's young wife. [Laughter.] Feed him and flatter him. Why not? Is there anything more delightful in this world than to be flattered and fed? Let us do as we would be done by. It seems to me sometimes that it is impossible in reviewing our social relations ever to be wholly in earnest. One's opinions do wobble so. [Laughter.] If one would earn a reputation for consistency one must be like that greatjudge who declined to hear more than one side of the case because he found that hearing the other side only confused him. [Laughter.]

The thing about mere man which impresses me most, which fills me with the greatest respect, is not his courage in the face of death, but the courage with which he faces life. The way in which we face death is not necessarily more heroic than the way in which we face life. The probability is that you never think less about yourself than you do at the moment when you and eternity are face to face. When you are sick unto death you are too sick to care whether you live or die. In some great convulsion of nature, a great typhoon, for instance, when the wind in its fury lashes the walls of the house till they writhe, and there are the shrieks of people in dire distress, and fire, and the crash of giant waves, and all that makes for horror, the shock of these brute irresponsible forces of nature is too tremendous for fear to obtrude. Thought is suspended—you are in an ecstasy of awful emotion, emotion made perfect by the very strength of it.

But when it comes to facing life day after day, and day after day, as so many men have to face it, the workingmen, in all classes of society, upon whom the home depends, men whose days are only too often a weary effort, and whose nights are an ache of anxiety, lest the strength should give out which means bread, when one thinks of the lives these men live, and the way in which they live them, the brave, uncomplaining way in which they fight to the death for those dear to them, when one considers mere man from this point of view, one is moved to enthusiasm, and one is fain to confess that "sovran woman" on a pedestal is a poor sort of creature compared with this kind of mere man in that so often she not only fails to help and cheer him in his heroic efforts, but to appreciate that he is making any effort at all. I positively refuse to subscribe to the assertion, "How poor a thing is man!" [Laughter.] It takes more genius to be a man than manhood to be a genius. [Applause.] As to the differences between men and women, I believe that when finally their accounts have been properly balanced it will be found that it has been a case of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, both in the matter ofsovereignty and of mereness [laughter], and, therefore, without prejudice, I propose that the sixes to which I belong shall rise and cordially drink to the health of the other half dozens, our kind and generous hosts of to-night. [Applause.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Chamber Of Commerce and Guests:—I am very much obliged to your President for calling upon me first, because the agony will soon be over and I shall enjoy the misery of the rest of you. [Laughter.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Great applause.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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