[Speech of Clark Howell at the Peace Jubilee Banquet in Chicago, October 19, 1898, in response to the toast, "Our Reunited Country: North and South."]
[Speech of Clark Howell at the Peace Jubilee Banquet in Chicago, October 19, 1898, in response to the toast, "Our Reunited Country: North and South."]
Mr. Toastmaster, and My Fellow Countrymen:—In the mountains of my State, in a county remote from the quickening touch of commerce, and railroads and telegraphs—so far removed that the sincerity of its rugged people flows unpolluted from the spring of nature—two vine-covered mounds, nestling in the solemn silence of a country churchyard, suggest the text of my response to the sentiment to which I am to speak to-night. A serious text, Mr. Toastmaster, for an occasion like this, and yet out of it there is life and peace and hope and prosperity, for in the solemn sacrifice of the voiceless grave can the chiefest lesson of the Republic be learned, and the destiny of its real mission be unfolded. So bear with me while I lead you to the rust-stained slab, which for a third of a century—since Chickamauga—has been kissed by the sun as it peeped over the Blue Ridge, melting the tears with which the mourning night had bedewed the inscription:—
"Here lies a Confederate soldier.He died for his country."
The September day which brought the body of this mountain hero to that home among the hills which had smiled upon his infancy, been gladdened by his youth, and strengthened by his manhood, was an ever memorable one with the sorrowing concourse of friends and neighbors whofollowed his shot-riddled body to the grave. And of that number no man gainsaid the honor of his death, lacked full loyalty to the flag for which he fought, or doubted the justice of the cause for which he gave his life.
Thirty-five years have passed; another war has called its roll of martyrs; again the old bell tolls from the crude latticed tower of the settlement church; another great pouring of sympathetic humanity, and this time the body of a son, wrapped in the stars and stripes, is lowered to its everlasting rest beside that of the father who sleeps in the stars and bars.
There were those there who stood by the grave of the Confederate hero years before, and the children of those were there, and of those present no one gainsaid the honor of the death of this hero of El Caney, and none were there but loved, as patriots alone can love, the glorious flag that enshrines the people of a common country as it enshrouds the form that will sleep forever in its blessed folds. And on this tomb will be written:—
"Here lies the son of a Confederate soldier.He died for his country."
And so it is that between the making of these two graves human hands and human hearts have reached a solution of the vexed problem that has baffled human will and human thought for three decades. Sturdy sons of the South have said to their brothers of the North that the people of the South had long since accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which they had appealed. And likewise the oft-repeated message has come back from the North that peace and good will reigned, and that the wounds of civil dissension were but as sacred memories. Good fellowship was wafted on the wings of commerce and development from those who had worn the blue to those who had worn the gray. Nor were these messages delivered in vain, for they served to pave the way for the complete and absolute elimination of the line of sectional differences by the only process by which such a result was possible. The sentiment of the great majority of the people of the South was rightly spoken in the message of the immortal Hill, and in the burningeloquence of Henry Grady—both Georgians—the record of whose blessed work for the restoration of peace between the sections becomes a national heritage, and whose names are stamped in enduring impress upon the affection of the people of the Republic.
And yet there were still those among us who believed your course was polite, but insincere, and those among you who assumed that our professed attitude was sentimental and unreal. Bitterness had departed, and sectional hate was no more, but there were those who feared, even if they did not believe, that between the great sections of our greater government there was not the perfect faith and trust and love that both professed; that there was want of the faith that made the American Revolution a successful possibility; that there was want of the trust that crystallized our States into the original Union; that there was lack of the love that bound in unassailable strength the united sisterhood of States that withstood the shock of Civil War. It is true this doubt existed to a greater degree abroad than at home. But to-day the mist of uncertainty has been swept away by the sunlight of events, and there, where doubt obscured before stands in bold relief, commanding the admiration of the whole world, the most glorious type of united strength and sentiment and loyalty known to the history of nations.
Out of the chaos of that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable—a new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. No one questioned that commercial and geographic union had been effected. So had Rome re-united its faltering provinces, maintaining the limit of its imperial jurisdiction by the power of commercial bonds and the majesty of the sword, until in its very vastness it collapsed. The heart of its people did not beat in unison. Nations may be made by the joining of hands, but the measure of their real strength and vitality, like that of the human body, is in the heart. Show me the country whose people are not at heart in sympathy with its institutions, and the fervor of whose patriotism is not bespoken in its flag, and I will show you a ship of state which is sailing inshallow waters, toward unseen eddies of uncertainty, if not to the open rocks of dismemberment.
Whence was the proof to come, to ourselves as well as to the world, that we were being moved once again by a common impulse, and by the same heart that inspired and gave strength to the hands that smote the British in the days of the Revolution, and again at New Orleans; that made our ships the masters of the seas; that placed our flag on Chapultepec, and widened our domain from ocean to ocean? How was the world to know that the burning fires of patriotism, so essential to national glory and achievement, had not been quenched by the blood spilled by the heroes of both sides of the most desperate struggle known in the history of civil wars? How was the doubt that stood, all unwilling, between outstretched hands and sympathetic hearts, to be, in fact, dispelled?
If from out the caldron of conflict there arose this doubt, only from the crucible of war could come the answer. And, thank God, that answer has been made in the record of the war, the peaceful termination of which we celebrate to-night. Read it in every page of its history; read it in the obliteration of party and sectional lines in the congressional action which called the nation to arms in the defence of prostrate liberty, and for the extension of the sphere of human freedom; read it in the conduct of the distinguished Federal soldier who, as the chief executive of this great Republic,[9]honors this occasion by his presence to-night, and whose appointments in the first commissions issued after war had been declared made manifest the sincerity of his often repeated utterances of complete sectional reconciliation and the elimination of sectional lines in the affairs of government. Differing with him, as I do, on party issues, utterly at variance with the views of his party on economic problems, I sanction with all my heart the obligation that rests on every patriotic citizen to make party second to country, and in the measure that he has been actuated by this broad and patriotic policy he will receive the plaudits of the whole people: "Well done, good and faithful servant."
Portentous indeed have been the developments of the past six months; the national domain has been extendedfar into the Caribbean Sea on the south, and to the west it is so near the mainland of Asia that we can hear grating of the process which is grinding the ancient celestial empire into pulp for the machinery of civilization and of progress.
In a very short while the last page of this war will have been written, except for the effect it will have on the future. Our flag now floats over Porto Rico, a part of Cuba, and Manila. It must soon bespeak our sovereignty over the island of Luzon, or possibly over the whole Philippine group. It will, ere long, from the staff on Havana's Morro, cast its shadow on the sunken and twisted frame of the Maine—a grim reminder of the vengeance that awaits any nation that lays unholy hands on an American citizen or violates any sacred American right. It has drawn from an admiring world unstinted applause for the invincible army, that under tropic suns, despite privations and disease, untrained but undismayed, has swept out of their own trenches and routed from their own battlements, like chaff before the wind, the trained forces of a formidable power. It has bodily stripped the past of lustre and defiantly challenged the possibilities of the future in the accomplishment of a matchless navy, whose deeds have struck the universe with consternation and with wonder.
But speaking as a Southerner and an American, I say that this has been as naught compared to the greatest good this war has accomplished. Drawing alike from all sections of the Union for her heroes and her martyrs, depending alike upon north, south, east and west for her glorious victories, and weeping with sympathy with the widows and the stricken mothers wherever they may be, America, incarnated spirit of liberty, stands again to-day the holy emblem of a household in which the children abide in unity, equality, love and peace. The iron sledge of war that rent asunder the links of loyalty and love has welded them together again. Ears that were deaf to loving appeals for the burial of sectional strife have listened and believed when the muster guns have spoken. Hearts that were cold to calls for trust and sympathy have awakened to loving confidence in the baptism of their blood.
Drawing inspiration from the flag of our country, the South has shared not only the dangers, but the glories ofthe war. In the death of brave young Bagley at Cardenas, North Carolina furnished the first blood in the tragedy. It was Victor Blue of South Carolina, who, like the Swamp Fox of the Revolution, crossed the fiery path of the enemy at his pleasure, and brought the first official tidings of the situation as it existed in Cuba. It was Brumby, a Georgia boy, the flag lieutenant of Dewey, who first raised the stars and stripes over Manila. It was Alabama that furnished Hobson—glorious Hobson—who accomplished two things the Spanish navy never yet has done—sunk an American ship, and made a Spanish man-of-war securely float.
The South answered the call to arms with its heart, and its heart goes out with that of the North in rejoicing at the result. The demonstration lacking to give the touch of life to the picture has been made. The open sesame that was needed to give insight into the true and loyal hearts both North and South has been spoken. Divided by war, we are united as never before by the same agency, and the union is of hearts as well as hands.
The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy from Narragansett to its last, long rest at Richmond.
When that great and generous soldier, U. S. Grant, gave back to Lee, crushed, but ever glorious, the sword he had surrendered at Appomattox, that magnanimous deed said to the people of the South: "You are our brothers." But when the present ruler of our grand republic on awakening to the condition of war that confronted him, with his first commission placed the leader's sword in the hands of those gallant confederate commanders, Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, he wrote between the lines in living letters of everlasting light the words: "There is but one people of this Union, one flag alone for all."
The South, Mr. Toastmaster, will feel that her sons have been well given, that her blood has been well spilled, if that sentiment is to be indeed the true inspiration of our nation's future. God grant it may be as I believe it will.
[Speech of William Dean Howells, as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," at the dinner given to John Greenleaf Whittier, at Boston, Mass., December 17, 1877, in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday, and in celebration also of the twentieth year of the magazine.]
[Speech of William Dean Howells, as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," at the dinner given to John Greenleaf Whittier, at Boston, Mass., December 17, 1877, in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday, and in celebration also of the twentieth year of the magazine.]
Gentlemen, Contributors and Friends of The "Atlantic Monthly":—The serious moment has approached which sooner or later arrives at most banquets of the dinner-giving Anglo-Saxon race—a moment when each commensal, like the pampered sacrifice of the Aztecs, suddenly feels that the joys which have flattered him into forgetfulness of his fate are at an end, and that he must now gird himself for expiation. It is ordinarily a moment when the unprepared guest abandons himself to despair, and when even the more prophetic spirit finds memory forsaking it, or the treacherous ideas committed to paper withering away till the manuscript in the breast-pocket rustles sere and sad as the leaves of autumn. But let no one at this table be under a fearful apprehension. This were to little purpose an image of the great republic of letters, if the mind of any citizen might be invaded, and his right to hold his peace denied. Any gentleman being called upon and having nothing to say, can make his silent bow and sit down again without disfavor; he may even do so with a reasonable hope of applause. Reluctant orators, therefore, who are chafing under the dread of being summoned to stand and deliver an extorted eloquence, and who have already begun to meditate reprisals upon the person or the literature of the present speaker, may safely suspend theirpreparations; it shall not be his odious duty to molest them.
We are met, gentlemen, upon the seventieth birthday of a man and poet whose fame is dear to us all, but whose modesty at first feared too much the ordeal by praise, to consent to his meeting with us. But he must soon have felt the futility of trying to stay away, of endeavoring to class himself with the absent, who are always wrong. There are renowns to which absence is impossible, and whether he would or no, Whittier must still have been in every heart. Therefore he is here in person, to the unbounded pleasure of those assembled to celebrate this day. I will leave him to the greetings of others, and for my own part will invite the goldenest silence of his sect to muse a fitting tribute to the verse in which a brave and beautiful and lofty life is enshrined.
As to the periodical which unites us all, without rivalry, without jealousy, the publisher has already spoken, and where there is so much for the editor to say he cannot, perhaps, say too little. For twenty years it has represented, and may almost be said to have embodied, American letters. With scarcely an exception, every name known in our literature has won fame from its pages, or has added lustre to them; and an intellectual movement, full of a generous life and of a high ideal, finds its record there in vastly greater measure than in any or all other places. Its career is not only distinguished among American periodicals, but upon the whole is unique. It would not be possible, I think, to point to any other publication of its sort, which so long retained the allegiance of its great founders, and has added so constantly so many names of growing repute to its list of writers. Those who made its renown, as well as those whose renown it has made or is making, are still its frequent contributors, and even in its latest years have done some of their best work in it. If from time to time a valued "Atlantic" writer ceases to appear, he is sure, finally, to reappear; he cannot even die without leaving it a rich legacy of manuscript. All young writers are eager to ally their names with the great memories and presences on its roll of fame; its stamp gives a new contributor immediate currency; it introduces him immediately into the best public,the best company, the company of those Boston authors who first inspired it with the life so vigorous yet. It was not given us all to be born in Boston, but when we find ourselves in the "Atlantic" we all seem to suffer a sea-change, an æsthetic renaissance; a livelier literary conscience stirs in us; we have its fame at heart; we must do our best for Maga's name as well as for our own hope; we are naturalized Bostonians in the finest and highest sense. With greater reverence and affection than we can express, we younger and youngest writers for the Atlantic regard the early contributors whom we are so proud and glad to meet here, and it is with a peculiar sense of my own unworthiness that I salute them, and join the publishers in welcoming them to this board.
I know very well the difference between an author whom the "Atlantic" has floated and an author who has floated the "Atlantic," and confronted with this disparity I have only an official courage in turning to invoke the poet, the wit, the savant whose invention gave the "Atlantic" its name, and whose genius has prospered an adventurous enterprise. If I did not name him I am sure the common consciousness would summon Dr. Holmes to his feet. I have felt authorized to hail the perpetual autocrat of all the "Breakfast Tables" as the chief author of the "Atlantic's" success, by often hearing the first editor of the magazine assert the fact. This generous praise of his friend—when in a good cause was his praise ever stinted?—might be spoken without fear that his own part would be forgotten. His catholic taste, his subtle sense of beauty, his hearty sympathy and sterling weight of character gave the magazine an impress which it has been the highest care to his successors to keep clear and bright. He imparted to it above all that purpose which I hope is forever inseparable from it, when in his cordial love of good literature he stretched a welcoming grasp of recognition to every young writer, East, West, North, or South, who gave promise of good work. Remembering his kindness in those days to one young writer, very obscure, very remote (whose promise still waits fulfilment), I must not attempt to praise him, lest grateful memories lead me into forbidden paths of autobiography; but when I name Mr. Lowell I am sure you will all look forsome response to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, a contributor whose work gave peculiar quality and worth to the numbers of the magazine, and whose presence here is a grateful reminder of one with whom he has been so long bound in close ties of amity.
[Speech of Henry E. Howland at a banquet given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, April 28, 1893, to the Officers of foreign and United States vessels escorting the Spanish caravels to the harbor of New York City. The President of the Chamber of Commerce, Alexander E. Orr, in introducing Judge Howland, said: "Gentlemen, our next toast is 'Russia' and will be responded to by the Hon. Henry E. Howland."]
[Speech of Henry E. Howland at a banquet given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, April 28, 1893, to the Officers of foreign and United States vessels escorting the Spanish caravels to the harbor of New York City. The President of the Chamber of Commerce, Alexander E. Orr, in introducing Judge Howland, said: "Gentlemen, our next toast is 'Russia' and will be responded to by the Hon. Henry E. Howland."]
Mr. President and Gentlemen:—The pleasing duty is assigned me of recognizing the largest and one of the famous powers of Europe, accompanied by the suggestion that my time is limited. The situation is like that of the clergyman who was sent for in great haste by a man who was very ill, and thought the end was approaching. He said to the minister, when he arrived: "I have been a great sinner, I am pretty sick, and I am afraid my time is short, and I want you to pray with me. You must be brief but fervent." [Laughter.]
Most of us who sit at this table, judging from the opportunities I have had of hearing them discourse, fulfil the requirement of Mr. Disraeli's great traveller in that they have seen more than they have remembered and remembered more than they have seen. [Laughter.] But I doubt if in all their experiences they ever sat in a more genial and attractive company than this. We have here in this year of peace the chosen representatives of ten nations, with all the romance of the sea, the splendid histories and traditions of their countries, and their own personal distinction and fame to make them welcome and interesting.
Already have you conquered the land, and from the time you effected a lodgment at Fortress Monroe until you arehull down on the horizon, on your homeward voyages, your progress will prove to have been a triumphant march into the hearts and homes of the people. [Applause.] You have stores of wisdom and most agreeable experiences to accumulate. Judging from press reports you may have thought you met a fair type of the girls of America at Hampton Roads. [Laughter.] Wait till the wonderful resources of this country in this its richest and unparalleled product are spread before you. [Laughter.] Then you will not wonder at the mysterious power of Helen of Troy, who set nations by the ears, or the fascination of the Queen of the Nile, who made heroes forget their duty and their homes. If you should take any for themselves, alone, we should commend your choice, and though parting with them reluctantly, should wish you God-speed. But if their money should be your object we are just now objecting to the exportation of gold and trying to maintain our reserves. [Laughter.]
Whatever your nationality, you will find a large and prosperous contingent of it in this city, the majority of whose municipal officers, however, belong to that race which looks to Mr. Gladstone as its saviour, and believes that when an Irishman dies it's because there is an angel short. [Great laughter.] You will find here a wonderful power of brag which develops as you seek the setting sun. Some inquiring spirits will be moved to ask you what you think of this country, and, if you visit the World's Fair some adventurous person may ask your opinion of Chicago. It is needless to say that a favorable opinion cannot be too highly colored, and if tinted with vermilion, will conduce to the pleasure of your stay. [Laughter.] You will have little opportunity to admire the wonders of our natural scenery save at Niagara. You will be able to appreciate the reply of an American Naval officer to an English friend in Italy when each had been maintaining the superiority of his own country. Finally the grand spectacle of Mount Vesuvius in eruption, throwing its brilliant rays across the Bay of Naples, burst upon their astonished gaze.
"Now, look at that," said the Englishman. "You haven't got anything in America that comes anywhere near that."
"No," replied the Yankee, "we haven't got Vesuvius, butwe have got a waterfall that could put that thing out in less than five minutes." [Laughter.]
At Chicago your professional instinct will lead you to admire the magnificent turreted battleship which, in consequence of a convention with England that neither shall maintain a fleet upon the Great Lakes, is built upon piles, and of such substantial material that there are fears it cannot withstand the atmospheric concussion from the fire of the big Krupp gun. But I need not rehearse the experiences to come. You would weary in their telling. We shall keep you as long as possible and be loath to part with you. And if we have our way, your experience will be like that of the old lady, who was travelling on the underground railroad in London. Just as they were approaching a station, she said to a gentleman, in the compartment with her: "Will you assist me to alight at this station, sir? I am, as you see, rather stout, and I have a physical infirmity which makes it necessary for me to step out backwards, and every time I try to get out the guard bundles me back into the car, shouts 'All aboard,' shuts the door, and I have gone around this line three times already." [Great laughter.]
At this gate of the continent we begin the pageant of the Columbian Exposition. By the cruel irony of fate the promoters and sponsor of this great display cannot have any hand in the Fair. The Spaniards have a proverb that you can't at the same time ring the bell and be in the procession [laughter]; and although you can make Chicago a seaport by Act of Congress, you cannot get a fleet of six thousand ton ironclads over 1,000 miles of land, even on the Chicago Limited, or the Empire Express. [Laughter.] And so we New Yorkers appropriate this as our private, peculiar, particular Exhibition; as Touchstone says, "A poor thing, sir, but our own."
It is not given to many men in their experience to see such a sight as is now spread before us on the waters of the harbor of New York. The might and majesty of the great nations of the earth are here represented in their fleets which typify the country afloat, as the valor, the ability and the distinction of their officers represent that of their peoples. Former antagonists here float side by side; peace broods over the armored sides of battleships and the feverish lipsof their guns speak only salutes of friendship and courtesy. It is a pity that it is not always so.
Among the flags that float from the mastheads of the fleet in yonder harbor there is one—the blue St. Andrew's Cross—that represents an empire of over 8,000,000 square miles, of more diversified races than any other in Europe; that reaches from the Baltic to the Pacific—from the Arctic to the Black Sea; that receives the allegiance of 103,000,000 of people, and from its great white throne on the shores of the Gulf of Finland directs the destinies of its subjects and shapes the policy of Europe. [Applause.]
That flag is not unfamiliar in these waters. In the battle summer of 1863—thirty years ago—while we were engaged in a life-and-death struggle for national existence and the preservation of the Union, it floated over the fleet of Admiral Lissoffski in this harbor—a signal of friendship, encouragement and protection against foreign interference, pending the settlement of the issues of our Civil War. No diplomatic declaration was made, no threat was uttered, no sign was given; we only knew the flag was there, and if it meant anything, that the power of one of the mightiest nations of Europe was behind it. We now know from what it saved us:—
"When darkness hid the starry skies,In war's long winter night,One ray still cheered our straining eyes,The far-off Northern Light."
No American who loves his country can forget that incident in our hour of agony, nor the friendly significance of that flag. It was an American captain who used the expression which has become historic, when he went to the relief of his English brother-in-arms at the storming of the Pei-Ho forts, that "blood is thicker than water," and while it courses in the veins of a loyal American, he will remember with grateful appreciation the sympathy and the moral support, more powerful than armed battalions or cruisers, of Alexander II, who, like our Lincoln, freed his serfs, and like him, while serving his people, fell by the hand of an assassin.
Gentlemen, who serve His Imperial Majesty the Czar, we salute you and your flag under whatever skies or on whatever sea it floats. We remind you that we are not ungrateful. The best we have is yours; the Nation presents arms as you pass in review, and as our borders approach each other in the frozen zone so when we meet you here:—
"Though our hearts were dry as the shell on the sand,They would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand.""Bleak are our shores in the blast of December,Fettered and chill is the rivulet's flow,Throbbing and warm are the hearts that rememberWho was our friend when the world was our foe."Fires of the North, in eternal communionBlend your broad flashes with evening's bright star,God bless the Empire that loves our great Union!Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar!"
[Speech of Henry E. Howland, President of the New England Society in the City of New York, at their ninety-fourth annual dinner, New York, December 22, 1899.]
[Speech of Henry E. Howland, President of the New England Society in the City of New York, at their ninety-fourth annual dinner, New York, December 22, 1899.]
Fellow-members of the New England Society:—It is my agreeable duty to receive this weary, way-worn band of Pilgrims upon the occasion of their 279th landing upon these bleak and arid shores, and, like Samoset on the occasion of your first arrival, to welcome you to the scanty fare and the privations and sufferings that are incident to this ledge of the old Plymouth Rock. [Applause.]
The traditions of the early entertainment of Massasoit and his warriors at Plymouth, lasting several days, to cement a friendship which was never broken, when heavy drafts were made upon the little stock of New England rum, imported Hollands, bear's meat and Indian corn, have here been renewed to such an extent that, like them, we doubtless feel that the "earth is ours and the fulness thereof." [Laughter.] Though, if Plymouth Rock and the Waldorf-Astoria are synonymous terms for fulness, we should think that the latter was the more synonymous of the two. [Laughter.] The surroundings of the two occasions maydiffer—velvet carpets, groaning tables, genial temperature and electric lights are an excellent substitute for log floors, a restricted larder, the icy chill and the winter stars. The grim, stern Pilgrim with the austere face and peaked hat, and the lean, wild, loping Indian are here supplanted by a company whose well-rounded figures and genial faces reflect the assurance of the possession of sky-scraping buildings, pipe lines, through lines, warehouses, well-stuffed deposit vaults and comfortable bank accounts [laughter], upon whom smile from the boxes the blessings which, like those of Providence, come from above [applause] and cause us to echo the sentiment unconsciously expressed by the lady who was distributing tracts in the streets of London. She handed one to a cabman; he glanced at it, handed it back, touched his hat and politely said: "Thank you, lady, I am a married man." [Laughter.] She looked nervously at the title, which was, "Abide with me" [laughter], and hurriedly departed. Under this inspiration we agree with the proverb of the Eastern sage: "To be constant in love to one is good; to be constant to many is great." [Laughter.] But we must remember, while the critical eyes of our households are upon us, that our halos will never be too small for our heads. [Laughter.]
Under these favoring conditions we celebrate the glories of our ancestors, the unparalleled results of their achievements, and ourselves. I hope you will find that the only defect in my perfunctory remarks as the presiding officer will be their brevity.
Remembering some past occurrences on occasions like this, we agree with the pupil who was asked by his teacher, "What is the meaning of elocution?" and he answered: "It is the way people are put to death in some States." [Laughter.] But with this array of speakers before you, full of unwonted possibilities, you will not wonder if I feel like the undertaker in Sixth Avenue who displayed a sign in his window: "It is a pleasure to show goods." [Laughter.]
The Society has shared in the all-pervading prosperity which illumines the land with a prospect of its indefinite continuance. It numbers 1,504 members, and its invested funds aggregate the sum of $108,750. It has been liberal in its charitable contributions; it has resisted all attemptslike those made against some of our large life insurance companies to compel it to distribute its surplus [laughter], and, refuting the statement of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, who said that the "chief duty of trustees was to commit judicious breaches of trust," it has imitated the stern integrity of that bank cashier who upon a warm day sat down on the neighborly side of a sheet of postage stamps, and had to go home and make a change of clothing before he could get his books to balance. [Laughter.] And, taking warning from the slogan of the Bryanized Democracy, which caused a quotation from a message of one of our modern statesmen that "a public office is a public trust," to be met with the cry "Down with the trusts," our treasurer carefully avoids handling United States nickels, for they bear the motto "In God We Trust," and the Society might be met with the same attack and come into disrepute on that account. [Laughter.]
In these days, when the Populist, fusionist, and demagogue is endeavoring, like Mrs. Partington, to sweep back the ocean tide of prosperity with a broom, clogging the wheels of industry and seeking by legislative enactment to reverse the laws of nature and of political economy, which are immutable by Divine decree, we can commend to them the answer of an examiner of a young man who applied for admission to the bar. He failed utterly in questions upon contracts, partnership, corporation law, commercial paper and real estate, and was told so. "Well," he said, "won't you try me on the statutes? I am pretty strong on them." "Well, what's the use," the examiner replied, "when some d—n fool Legislature may repeal all you know." [Laughter and applause.]
Forty-seven members have died during the year. The list is entirely made up of men distinguished in all the pursuits of life—who wrote their names in bright characters upon the history of the City and State, and whose memory will always remain as a precious legacy and an example to those who succeed them. Fourteen had passed the Psalmist's limit of life, and nine had passed their eightieth year. In it are enrolled the names of William H. Appleton, the honored head of the great publishing firm known wherever the English language is spoken, to whose reputation he contributedso much by his clear intelligence, breadth of views and spotless character.
Isaac H. Bailey, for several years the President of this Society, an honorable merchant and a trusted public officer.
William Dowd, the treasurer of the Society for fifteen years; distinguished in finance and the management of large corporate interests, and endeared to a host of friends by the charm of his genial nature.
Gen. George S. Greene, the oldest living graduate of the West Point Military Academy, who rendered valiant and distinguished service on many battle-fields of the Civil War, who was the faithful and efficient head of the Croton Aqueduct Board for many years; was represented in the military service of his country by several distinguished sons and, until his death, in his ninety-eighth year, retained all his faculties undimmed—a soldier and a citizen of whom his country was justly proud. [Applause.]
Roswell P. Flower, an honored Governor of this State, eminent as a philanthropist and financier, a leader among strong men.
William H. Webb, a pioneer shipbuilder, with a name famous wherever American commerce extended, a rugged, iron man who stood four square to all the winds of heaven, generous and tender-hearted as a child, who for forty-five years never failed in his attendance at the dinners of this Society, and who left a reputation for philanthropy and public spirit unsurpassed in this city of generous giving.
John G. Moore, John Brooks, Edward H. R. Lyman, Edward A. Quintard, Dr. Charles Inslee Pardee, and all the others to whom the limit of time will not allow a tribute worthy of their honorable lives and work.
We do well to recall upon such occasions as this, as an inspiration, the story of the emigration of our Pilgrim ancestors to America, involving, as it does, the whole modern development, diffusion and organization of English liberty, which lives and breathes and burns in legend and in song. It is unparalleled in the annals of the world, in the majesty of its purpose and the poverty of its means, the weakness of the beginning and the grandeur of the result. It is unparalleled in classic or modern history, in its exhibition of courage, patience, persistence, steadfastness in devotion toprinciple. Beginning with the hasty flight from Lincolnshire to Holland, the peaceful life in exile, the perilous ocean voyage in a crazy craft in mid-winter, the frail settlement at Plymouth—a shred of the most tenacious life in Europe—floating over the waste of waters and clinging on the bleakest edge of America, beset by Indians, wild beasts and disease, starving, frozen and dying, remote from succor and beyond the knowledge of their kin, like a seed from the Old World floated to the New by ocean currents, containing the elements which, like the mustard seed, should yield a hundred fold and overspread and dominate a continent, until the prophecy familiar to the Pilgrims should be fulfilled: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great nation." [Applause.]
The Archbishop and Ministers of King James, who drove these men and the 26,000 who followed them, the flower of the English Puritans, from England, like Louis XIV, when he sent the Huguenots into exile by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, furnished an example to that master of the school where the Eton system of flogging prevailed. On a Saturday morning the delinquents were called up to be flogged. One of the boys inquired, "What am I to be punished for, sir?" "I don't know, but your name is down on the list, and I shall have to go through with it," and the flogging was administered. The boy made such a fuss that the master looked over the list on his return to his rooms, to see whether he had made a mistake, and found that he had whipped the confirmation class. [Laughter.]
They brought the foundation of a free people, they converted the wilderness of a continent, they established the New England home, rich only in piety, education, liberty, industry and character, from which has gone out the best inspiration of the Republic they forecast.
There have been times in the later history of the country when the Puritan was not altogether popular, and the feeling entertained toward him and his descendants was expressed like that at a Liberal meeting in Scotland, where the proceedings were being opened by prayer, and the reverend gentleman prayed fervently that "the Liberals mighthang a' thegither." He was interrupted by a loud and irreverent "Amen" from the back of the hall. "Not, O Lord," went on the clergyman, "in the sense which that profane scoffer would have ye to understand, but that they may hang thegither in accord and concord." "I dinna care so much what kind of a cord it is," struck in the voice, "sae lang as it is a strong cord." [Laughter.]
Fortunately for them, and perhaps for the world, opinions differed enough to give them a chance. "You can't always tell," said a man, at the end of a discussion, "what one's neighbors think of him." "I came mighty near knowing once," said a citizen, with a reminiscent look, "but the jury disagreed." [Laughter.] But with the Puritans, when discussion ceased and other arguments began, the result was like that when the lady said to her clergyman, who was paying her an afternoon call, of her little boy, who bore the marks of a struggle: "Johnny has been a bad little boy to-day; he has been fighting and has got a black eye." "So I see," said the clergyman. "Come into the next room with me, Johnny, and I will pray with you." "You had better go home and pray with your own little boy, he has got two black eyes." [Laughter.]
The forty-one families who came in the "Mayflower," and the thousand of English Puritans who came in the next decade, are not entitled to all the credit for the development of the country, for there were others of their kind in Virginia, and, unlike the Boers of the Transvaal, they gave later comers a show. [Laughter and applause.] The process of appropriation by one people of a country, even if they are the first settlers, can be carried too far even for advantage to them or to inspire credulity in its possibility. A returned traveller, relating his adventures, said: "The most remarkable experience I ever had occurred a short time ago in Russia. I was sleighing on the Steppes, miles from my destination, when, to my horror, I found I was pursued by a pack of wolves; I fired blindly into the pack, killing one of them, and, to my relief, saw the others stop to devour him; after doing this, however, they still came on. I repeated the shot, with the same result, and each shot gave me an opportunity to whip up my horses. Finally there was only one wolf left, yet on it came with its fierce eyes glaring inanticipation of a good hot supper." "Hold on, there," said a man who had been listening, "by your way of reckoning, that last wolf must have had the rest of the pack inside of him." [Laughter.] "Well," said the traveller, "now I remember it, he did wobble a bit." [Laughter.]
It was wise in our forefathers to welcome those who, like them, were pioneers in the wilderness, to give them equal rights and to assimilate them into American citizenship. The qualities of which we boast in our Pilgrim ancestors still linger with their descendants, though among 75,000,000 of people there may not be enough to go around. The expectation of it would be what Dr. Johnson said of a man who had married his third wife, as the "triumph of hope over experience." [Laughter.] But we must, on occasions like this, make some assumptions, like the lady of whom a friend said: "She puts on a good deal of style now she has a box at the opera." "Good gracious," said the other lady, "the woman must put on something when she goes to the opera." [Laughter.]
Too many, it is true, deserve to be under the suspicion expressed by the market-man who was exhibiting hisarrayof "newly-laid eggs, fresh eggs, and plain eggs," to a young housekeeper, who finally asked, as to the latter: "Are these eggs really fresh?" "Well, madam," he replied, "we call them Saturday night eggs; they've tried all the week to be good." [Laughter.] And we are so compromising and tender in dealing with doubtful subjects that we follow the advice given to a man who asked how to tell a bad egg: Well, if you have anything to tell to a bad egg you had better break it gently. [Laughter.] Some have that kind of a conscience which was described by a small boy as the thing that makes you feel sorry when you get found out, and their idea of commercial integrity was expressed by the man who said, proudly, "At last I can look the world in the face as an honest man. I owe no one anything; the last claim against me is outlawed." Some aim high, but from the result they must have shut their eyes when they fired, and although as a Nation we pride ourselves upon our common sense, so that we can truly say not every man is made a fool of, the observer of men and things might say every man has the raw material in him. [Laughter.]
But seriously speaking, we abate in no degree the claim that the best traditions of our forefathers have not degenerated in these modern days. Our hearts beat with a quicker throb at the recollection of the achievements of these last pregnant years; the eye lights with enthusiasm at the sight of the flag whose fluttering folds have witnessed such scenes of danger and inspired such daring deeds, and our voices shout in unison of acclaim the achievements of what a wondering African called "the angry Saxon race." [Applause.]
The people have stood for humanity, honesty, order and progress. Its representatives in civil life have obeyed their behests. The American Regular has shown in his stern resolve, his self-control, his obedience to orders, his contempt of danger, that while he leads a forlorn hope in war, he is the advance guard of liberty and justice, law and order, peace and happiness. [Applause.]
"No State'll call him noble son,He ain't no lady's pet;But let a row start anyhow,They'll send for him, you bet.He packs his little knapsack upAnd starts off in the van,To start the fight, and start it right,The Regular Army man."
[Applause.]
The gallant officers who, true to the spirit of the service, stood up on the firing line in Cuba and the Philippines, charging heights, wading rivers and storming the trenches at the head of their men, have shed new glory upon the American Army, and none more illustriously than that splendid soldier, Major-General Henry W. Lawton [prolonged applause], who, after a distinguished and brilliant service of nearly forty years in two wars, and continuous Indian fighting, has received the soldier's summons on the field of battle, and given with his life his last pledge of devotion to his country. The flag that covers him never shrouded a finer soldier or a more typical American. [Applause.]
"Close his eyes; his work is done!What to him is friend or foeman,Rise of moon or set of sun,Hand of man or kiss of woman?"As man may he fought his fight,Proved his truth by his endeavor—Let him sleep in solemn night,Sleep forever and forever."
Such men have their counterparts in the very pink and flower of the chivalry of England, who face their foe standing, and are now charging full front and fearlessly into the storm of shot and shell that awaits them, deeming it, in the language of young Hubert Hervey, "a grand thing to die for the expansion of the Empire." [Applause.]
The pride of England in its navy, is justly matched by that of every American in his own. [Applause.] Its record, from the days of John Paul Jones to those of Dewey and Sampson [applause and cheers], is unsurpassed in the history of the world. During these hundred glorious years, its whole personnel, from Admiral to blue-jacket, has left upon the pages of history a shining story, stainless, brilliant and undying, of honor, skill, devotion and daring that stirs the heart because inspiring and ennobling. The English poet might justly say:—
"The spirit of our fathersShall start from every wave;For the deck it was their field of fame,And ocean was their grave."
And the American can as justly reply:—
"Know that thy highest dwells at home, there artAnd loyal inspiration spring;If thou would'st touch the universal heart,Of thine own country sing."
Remembering its glorious past, its happy, peaceful, prosperous present—for it is the happiest land the sun shines upon—and the auspicious omens for the bright opening future, I ask you to pledge with me its representative head, the Commander-in-Chief of its Army and Navy, the President of the United States. [Toast drunk standing.]