[Speech of Edward Everett Hale, D.D., at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, in proposing the toast, "Boston," said: "We are favored with the company of a typical and eloquent Bostonian, identified with all that is learned and benevolent in that ancient home of the Puritans, and familiar with all its notions. In response to the toast, we call on the Rev. Edward Everett Hale."]
[Speech of Edward Everett Hale, D.D., at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, in proposing the toast, "Boston," said: "We are favored with the company of a typical and eloquent Bostonian, identified with all that is learned and benevolent in that ancient home of the Puritans, and familiar with all its notions. In response to the toast, we call on the Rev. Edward Everett Hale."]
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—I am sure that there is not a Boston boy who hears me to-night who does notrecollect that when he went out to his first Pilgrim dinner, or to see Fanny Kemble or to any other evening dissipation of fifty years ago, the last admonition of his mother was, "We will leave the candle burning for you, John, but you must be sure and be home before twelve o'clock!" I am sure that the memory of this admonition is lingering among our friends now, that we are entering on the small hours, and that I must only acknowledge your courtesy and sit down. I feel, indeed, all along in your talk of hoar antiquity, that I owe my place here only to your extreme hospitality. In these aged cities you may well say to me, "You Bostonians are children. You are of yesterday," as the Egyptians said to the Greek traveller. For we are still stumbling along like little children, in the anniversaries of our quarter-millennium; but we understand perfectly well that the foundations of this city were laid in dim antiquity. I know that nobody knows when Brooklyn was founded. Your commerce began so long ago that nobody can remember it, but I know that there was a beaver trap on every brook in Kings County, while Boston was still a howling wilderness. These noble ancestors of yours had made themselves at home on Plymouth Rock before we had built a flat-boat on any river in Massachusetts Bay. [Applause.]
It is only as the youngest daughter, quite as a Cinderella, that we of Boston have any claim on your matchless hospitality. But, as Cinderella should, we have done our best at home to make ready our sisters when they should go to the ball. When my brother Beecher, just now, closed his speech with a Latin quotation, I took some satisfaction in remembering that we taught him his Latin at the Boston Latin school. And I could not but remember when I listened with such delight to the address of Mr. Secretary Evarts, which you have just now been cheering, that the first time I heard this persuasive and convincing orator, was when he took the prize for elocution, a boy of thirteen, on the platform in the great hall in our old schoolhouse in School Street. Nay, I confess also, to a little feeling of local as well as national pride, when the President of the United States [Rutherford B. Hayes] was speaking. Just as he closes this remarkable administration, which is going to stand out in history, distinguished indeed among all administrations from the beginning, so pure has it been, so honorable and so successful—just as he closes this administration he makes here this statement of the principles on which are based the success of an American statesman, in a few fit words so epigrammatic that they will be cited as proverbs by our children and our children's children. I heard that masterly definition of the laws which have governed the New Englander, I took pride in remembering that the President also was a graduate of our law school. These three are the little contributions which Cinderella has been preparing in the last half-century, for the first dinner-party of the Brooklyn Pilgrim Society. [Applause.]
I read in a New York newspaper in Washington the other day that something done in Boston lately was done with the "usual Boston intensity." I believe the remark was not intended to be a compliment, but we shall take it as one, and are quite willing to accept the phrase. I think it is true in the past, I hope it will be true in the future, that we go at the things which we have to do with a certain intensity, which I suppose we owe to these Puritan Fathers whom to-night we are celebrating. Certainly we have gone at this business of emigration with that intensity. It is perfectly true that there are in Brooklyn to-day more people than there are in Boston, who were born in Boston from the old New England blood. Not that Brooklyn has been any special favorite. When I met last year in Kansas, a mass meeting of twenty-five thousand of the old settlers and their children, my daughter said to me: "Papa, I am glad to see so many of our own countrymen." She certainly had never seen so many before, without intermixture of people of foreign races. Now it is certainly our wish to carry that intensity into everything. If the thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing thoroughly. What we do we mean to do it for everybody. You have seen the result. We try, for instance, if we open a Latin school at all, to have it the best Latin school in the world. And then we throw it open to everybody, to native and heathen, to Jew and to Greek, to white and black and red, and we advise you to go and do likewise. [Applause.]
You recollect the old joke, I think it began with Preston of South Carolina, that Boston exported no articles of nativegrowth but granite and ice. That was true then, but we have improved since, and to these exports we have added roses and cabbages. Mr. President, they are good roses, and good cabbages, and I assure you that the granite is excellent hard granite, and the ice is very cold ice. [Laughter and applause.]
[Speech of William P. Hall (popularly known by his pen name, "Biff" Hall) at the fortieth dinner of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., January 7, 1892. The Secretary, Joseph B. Mann, acted as Chairman. The general subject of the evening's discussion was, "The Modern Stage; its Mission and Influence."]
[Speech of William P. Hall (popularly known by his pen name, "Biff" Hall) at the fortieth dinner of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., January 7, 1892. The Secretary, Joseph B. Mann, acted as Chairman. The general subject of the evening's discussion was, "The Modern Stage; its Mission and Influence."]
Gentlemen.:—I must confess that I have never regarded the drama in a very serious light. As to its purpose and mission, if I was trying to find out, I should consult the pleasant-faced young man who sits in the box-office. He knows how these things stand with the public. Perhaps the reason I do so regard the matter may be found in my early experiences. The first theatrical performance I ever saw was in this city twenty-five years ago, and one of the prominent features was our old friend, Billy Rice.[6]Billy Rice never gives rise to a serious thought on any occasion. Why, the other night I went to hear Billy Rice, and I heard him tell that same old story that he told in the same old way twenty-five years ago. It really gave me the idea that the drama is not progressive. [Laughter.]
I consider that the theatre and the newspaper are brother and sister; they are always together. Wherever two or three are gathered together in the wilderness some venturesome individual starts a newspaper, and then immediately through its columns induces some other equally venturesome individual to build an opera-house. The people who act there are called turkey actors, for the reason that they hibernate during most of the year and only appear when the turkey is ripe for plucking in holiday time. They then go out and depredate the country. They have a wonderful repertoire, from Howard's "Shenandoah" to Hood's "Sarsaparilla."They play everywhere; it is called the kerosene circuit. If there is nothing else available they let the water out of the water-tank at the station and play in that. [Laughter.] Gentlemen, these are the pioneers of the drama. They convey to the rural mind what knowledge it has of real fire-engines and the triumphs of the scenic artist, and I think we should give to them the credit of spreading through this land those beautiful dramas, "Jim the Westerner," and "The Scout of the Rockies." I do not know what their influence may be; I don't care to touch upon that part of the subject; but I think I cannot better illustrate the straits they are in sometimes than by reciting a little parody on W. S. Gilbert's Bab Ballad, the "Yarn of the Nancy Bell." It is entitled:—
THE YARN OF THE MANAGER BOLD
It was near the town they call Detroit,In the State of Mich-i-gan,That I met on the rocks, with a property-box,A gloomy theatrical man.His o. p. heel was quite worn off,And weary and sad was he,And I saw this "fake" give himself a shake,As he croaked in a guttural key:"Oh, I am the star and the manager bold,And the leading and juvenile man,And the comedy pet, and the pert soubrette,And the boss of the box-sheet plan."He wiped his eye on a three-sheet bill,'Twas lettered in blue and red,He cursed the fates and the open dates,And I spoke to him, and said:"'Tis little I know of the mimic show,But if you will explain to me—I'll eat my vest if I can digestHow you can possibly be,At once a star, and a manager bold,And a leading and juvenile man,And a comedy pet, and a pert soubrette,And a boss of a box-sheet plan."He ran his hand through his dusty hair,And pulled down a brunette cuff,And on the rocks, with his property-box,He told me his story tough:"It was in the year of eighty-three,When a party of six and meWent on the road with a show that's knowedAs a 'musical com-i-dee.'I writ it myself—it knocked 'em cold—It made 'em shriek and roar;But we struck a reef and came to grief,On the west of the Michigan shore.Each night it rained, or snowed or blowed,And when the weather was clearThey'd say: 'It's sad your house is bad.But wait till you come next year.'We travelled along from town to townA-tryin' to change our luck—With nothin' to taste but bill-board pasteAn' the 'property' canvas duck.At last we got to Kankakee,All travel-stained and sore,When the star got mad and shook us badFor a job in a dry-goods store—And then the leading heavy manInformed me with a frownHe was going away the very next dayWith a circus then in town;And the comedy pet and the pert soubretteEngaged as cook and waiter—They are still doing well in a small hotelNear the Kankakee the-ay-ter.Then only the 'comic' and me remained,For to leave he hadn't the heart;Each laugh was a drop of blood to him,And he loved that comedy part.We played one night to a right good house,Eight dollars and a half;But to my ill-luck in my lines I stuckAnd I queered the comedian's laugh.He fell down dead of a broken heart—The coroner, old and sage,Said his brain was cracked with a bad attacktOf the centre of the stage.I played that part all by myselfFor a week in Kankakee;O'er rails and rocks with this property-boxI've walked to where I be.I never say an actor's good,I always damn a play;I always croak, and a single jokeI have, which is to say:That I am the star, and the manager bold,And the leading and juvenile manAnd the comedy pet, and the pert soubrette.And the boss of the box-sheet plan."
[Laughter and applause.]
[Speech of Murat Halstead at the 126th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1894. Alexander B. Orr, President of the Chamber, in proposing this toast, said: "I now have the honor of introducing to you that eminent journalist, the Hon. Murat Halstead, who will respond to the toast, 'Our New Country.'"]
[Speech of Murat Halstead at the 126th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1894. Alexander B. Orr, President of the Chamber, in proposing this toast, said: "I now have the honor of introducing to you that eminent journalist, the Hon. Murat Halstead, who will respond to the toast, 'Our New Country.'"]
Mr. President:—In the Orkney Islands there is a cathedral described by the guide as of two parts—the old and the new. The story is glibly told that when it had stood for five hundred years a storm beat down the tower and did other damage, making reconstruction necessary; and that tempest was six hundred years ago. On the road from Geneva to Chamouni there is a point of which Bædeker says: "The rocks on the left are seven thousand feet high." In the Orkneys a tower six hundred years old is new, and in the Alps a precipice seven thousand feet high is a moderate bit of scenery. The standards of the measurement of time and space may be exact, and yet are comparative, affected by the atmosphere of history and the scale of landscapes.
In that portion of this country which was the West a generation ago, a farm was old when the stumps had rotted in the fields, and the land was improved when the trees were cut. New ground was that which had not been ploughed. Once a man of varied experiences accounted to a pious woman for an unhappy bit of profanity by saying that when a boy he had ploughed new ground, and the plough caught in the roots, and the horses balked, and his feet were torn with splinters and thorns, and the handles of the plough kicked and hurt him, until depravity was developed. The lady said she would pray for his forgiveness, if he neverwould do so any more, and he promised, and I am told he did not keep that promise.
Daniel Boone's new country, when he lived on the Yadkin, in North Carolina, was Kentucky, and afterward it was Missouri. Washington's new country was first Ohio, and then Indiana. Lincoln's new country, when he was a child, was Indiana, and then Illinois. Beyond the Alleghany Mountains was the land of promise of the original States; beyond the Mississippi was the new world of those who moved west in wagons, before the Mexican war and the railroads broadened our dominions, and we were bounded east and west by the oceans. It was for the new country of their ages that Columbus and the Puritans and Captain John Smith set sail. In the new country there is always, at least, the dream of liberty and the hope that the earth we inherit may be generous in the bounties it yields to toil.
The march of manhood westward has reached the shores of the seas that look out on ancient Asia. We have realized the vision of the Genoese—finding in the sunset the footsteps of Marco Polo. We have crossed the mountain ranges and followed the majestic rivers, have traced the borders of the great lakes, whitened by the sails and darkened by the smoke of a commerce that competes in magnitude with that of the salted sea; and Texas, our France, confronts the Mediterranean of our hemisphere.
We have crushed the rocks and sifted the sand that yielded silver and gold, and the soil is ours that is richer than gold mines, whether we offer in evidence South Carolina, whose Sea-Island cotton surpasses the long staple of Egypt; or the Dakotas, matchless for wheat; or the lands of the cornstalk in the Mississippi Valley, that could feed all the tribes of Asia; or Nebraska, whose beets are sweeter with sugar than those that were the gift of Napoleon to Germany.
We have found the springs that yield immortal youth, not in bubbling waters in a flowery wilderness, but in the harvests of the fields and the stored energies of inexhaustible mines, not for the passing person who perishes when his work is done, but for the imperishable race.
All this in our country, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," but with the clothing of life on the ribs, and new inthe evolution of conditions by the works of man that make the nations of the earth a family—achievements wonderful in scope, splendid in promise, marvellous in the renown that is of peace; in the fame of the genius that is labor, the spell-binder that gathers and builds, creates and glorifies.
Within the historic record of this Chamber of Commerce of New York, the waters of Lake Erie have been carried through our canals and rivers to the Atlantic, making the Hudson River what Henry Hudson thought it was when he sailed through the beautiful gate of the incomparable continent—the road from the east to the west around the world; and the statue of Thomas Benton points westward from the great cross of the rivers in the heart of the continent—the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi—and the inscription reads: "There is the road to India."
How familiar is the construction of the Pacific railroad; of the telegraph lines across the continent and through the oceans; the record of steamers of ten thousand tons, five hundred knots a day; the miraculous telephone; the trolley, that is with us to stay and to conquer, introducing all the villages to the magic of rapid transit, promoting, with the incessant application of a new force, the American homogeneity of our vast and various population—blending them for one destiny. One is not venturing upon disputed ground—there is no prohibited politics in it to say that slavery is gone—for all classes and sections of our common country will agree it is well. The earth has grown both small and great for us. Its gigantic mysteries are no more. Its circumnavigation is commonplace. The kinetoscope comes to aid the phonograph to make pictures of action and lasting records of music and of speech. The people of coming generations are to hear the voices that have charmed or awed, persuaded, bewitched or commanded, in departed centuries. There will be libraries of rolls, storing for all time these treasures; rolls not unlike those cylinders preserved in the Babylonish deserts. Photography is bringing to us, as on parchment leaves painted with sunlight, the secrets of the depths of the seas and the skies; it is finding new stars, and with the telescopic camera likenesses may be snatched across spaces impenetrable by the naked eye. The aristocracy of intelligence becomes a democracy for thediffusion of the knowledge of the history of the day, which is the most important chapter that has been written, impartial, instantaneous, and is becoming universal.
This is more than a new country; it is a new world. Our own farmers are in competition with those of Egypt, India, Russia and Argentina. Australia with her wool and beef and mutton, Egypt and India with cotton and wheat, South America, Africa and Asia, made fruitful with resources, seek the same markets with our producers; and the mills of Old England are within a few cents and hours, in cost of transportation and time, as cheap and nigh as those of New England to New York. Once, a war between Japan and China would have been so remote that, as they say in the newspapers, there could have been no news in it; but it means matter of business for us now. With the novel conditions, there come upon us new and enormous problems for solution, and responsibilities that cannot be evaded. Once, we were an isolated nation. There was no trouble about becoming involved in the "entangling alliances" that were the cause of alarm to the Father of his Country. Now, the ends of the earth are in our neighborhood, and we touch elbows with all the races of mankind, and all the continents and the islands are a federation. The newspapers are, to continue the poetic prophecy, "the parliament of man."
The drift of human experience is to increased aggregations, to concentration and to centralization. This mighty city, in her material grandeur, and, we may trust, her moral redemption, stands for forty-six indestructible States and one indivisible nation. Her lofty structures far surpass already the palaces of the merchant princes of Tyre and Venice and Liverpool, and we behold, in these imperial towers, the types of the magnificence of the coming time. There never was so fair and superb, ample and opulent a bride as she, in the wholesome arms of the ocean that embrace these islands, adorned with the trophies of the wealth of the world, and whose rulers, the slavery of crime abolished, are the sovereign millions. These are new developments of authority, new growths of responsibility.
The Congress, forty years ago, was a body insignificant in its relations with the masses of the people, in comparison with what it is to-day. It grapples, of necessity, with thenew conditions, and the character of the public service is of enlarged consequence, for it is to all the communities and commonwealths far more comprehensive and penetrating in its influence than in other days; and it is well the citizens of the Republic are aroused to appreciation of their added requirements in the care that public life must give the general welfare.
During the recent popular experience of Christian science applied to practical politics, that resulted, among other things, in the intimacy of representative men of the Bowery and the Fifth Avenue, that allows the citizens of each locality to walk into the other locality at bedtime and select their sleeping-rooms, without asking whether the folks are at home, and to depart with or without leaving their P. P. C. cards, one of the speakers, noting in his audience evidences of dissent, said: "If I am speaking in a way that is prerogatory, while I want to go on, I am willing to quit." He honored his nativity by his modesty, and was allowed to go on; but he preferred to sit down, though his theme seemed to him to expand under treatment, and with his new word he retired. I quote him as a precedent and example for immediate imitation. It is more than a joke, though, that Fifth Avenue and the Bowery have got together, and we may hope they will work well for the good of this new country. [Prolonged applause.]
[Speech of Benjamin Harrison at the thirteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893. In proposing the first toast, "The President of the United States," the Chairman, Charles Emory Smith, said: "Gentlemen, my first duty is to give a welcome to our honored guests and a greeting to our worthy members. My second duty is to make an immediate change of the programme. Among the distinguished guests who honor us by their presence to-night is the illustrious patriot and statesman who has filled—yes, filled, not rattled around in—the great dignity of the Presidency of the United States. [Applause.] In his career he has won the admiration of the country not merely by his transcendent abilities as a statesman, but by his noble qualities as a man. Among other characteristics, his love of children has touched the heart of the country. He has promised the little children who are gathered in his distant home that he will join them in preparing and sharing the joys of Christmas. It is imperative not that he shall leave us at this moment but that he shall terminate the three days of cordial and perhaps somewhat burdensome hospitality which he has enjoyed in Philadelphia, at a later stage of this evening. In order that he may be entirely free, and because the first word should be spoken by the first man at the table, I ask you to join me, at this time, in drinking a toast to the health of the illustrious patriot, who is as greatly respected and honored in private life as he was in the Presidency—General Benjamin Harrison, whom I now have the pleasure of presenting to you."]
[Speech of Benjamin Harrison at the thirteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893. In proposing the first toast, "The President of the United States," the Chairman, Charles Emory Smith, said: "Gentlemen, my first duty is to give a welcome to our honored guests and a greeting to our worthy members. My second duty is to make an immediate change of the programme. Among the distinguished guests who honor us by their presence to-night is the illustrious patriot and statesman who has filled—yes, filled, not rattled around in—the great dignity of the Presidency of the United States. [Applause.] In his career he has won the admiration of the country not merely by his transcendent abilities as a statesman, but by his noble qualities as a man. Among other characteristics, his love of children has touched the heart of the country. He has promised the little children who are gathered in his distant home that he will join them in preparing and sharing the joys of Christmas. It is imperative not that he shall leave us at this moment but that he shall terminate the three days of cordial and perhaps somewhat burdensome hospitality which he has enjoyed in Philadelphia, at a later stage of this evening. In order that he may be entirely free, and because the first word should be spoken by the first man at the table, I ask you to join me, at this time, in drinking a toast to the health of the illustrious patriot, who is as greatly respected and honored in private life as he was in the Presidency—General Benjamin Harrison, whom I now have the pleasure of presenting to you."]
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England Society of Pennsylvania:—When my good friend and your good neighbor and President, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, invited me to be present to-night, I felt a special demand upon me to yield to his request. I thought I owed him some reparation for appointing him to an office the emoluments of which did not pay his expenses. [Merriment.] Your cordial welcome to-night crowns three days of most pleasurable stay in this good City of Philadelphia. The days have been a little crowded; I think there have been what ourfriends of The Four Hundred would probably call "eight distinct functions;" but your cordiality and the kind words of your presiding officer quite relieve my fatigue and suggest to me that I shall rightly repay your kindness by making a very short speech. ["No, no!"] It is my opinion that these members of the New England Society are very creditable descendants of the Forefathers. I'm not quite sure that the Forefathers would share this opinion if they were here; but that would be by reason of the fact that, notwithstanding the load of substantial virtues, which they carried through life, their taste had not been highly cultivated. [Laughter.]
I dread this function which I am now attempting to discharge more than any other that confronts me in life. The after-dinner speaker, unlike the poet, is not born,—he is made. I am frequently compelled to meet in disastrous competition about some dinner-table gentlemen who have already had their speeches set up in the newspaper offices. They are given to you as if they were fresh from the lip; you are served with what they would have you believe to be "impromptu boned turkey;" and yet, if you could see into the recesses of their intellectual kitchen, you would see the days of careful preparation which have been given to these spontaneous utterances. The after-dinner speaker needs to find somewhere some unworked joker's quarry, where some jokes have been left without a label on them; he needs to acquire the art of seeming to pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech, as by the wayside, some flower of rhetoric. He seems to have passed it and to have plucked it casually,—but it is a boutonniere with tin foil round it. [Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness that has kept me from competing in the field I have described.
It occurred to me to-day to inquire why you had to associate six States in order to get up a respectable Society. My friend Halstead [Murat Halstead] and I have no such trouble. We are Ohio-born, and we do not need to associate any other State in order to get up a good Society, wherever there is a civil list of the Government. If you would adopt the liberal charter method of the Ohio Society, I have no doubt you could subdivide yourselves into six good societies. The Ohio Society admits to membership everybody who has lived voluntarily six months in Ohio. No involuntary resident is permitted to come in. [Laughter.]
But the association of these States and the name "New England" is a part of an old classification of the States which we used to find in the geography, and all of that classification has gone except New England and the South. "The West" has disappeared and "the Middle States" cannot be identified. Where is "the West"? Why, just now it is at the point of that long chain of islands that puts off from the Alaska coast; and, if I am to credit what I read (for I have no sources of information now except the not absolutely reliable newspaper press), there are some who believe there are wicked men who want to hitch the end of that chain into an island farther out in the sea. [Applause.] If that is to be done, the West would become the East, for I think the Orient has generally been counted to be the East.
I would not, however, suggest a division of the New England Society. It is well enough to keep up an association that is one, not only of neighborhood and of historical association, but of sentiment. Let the New England Society live, and I fancy it will not be long until you enjoy the distinction of being the only great subdivision of the States; for, my fellow-citizens, whatever barriers prejudice may raise, whatever obstruction the interests of men may interpose, whatever may be the outrages of cruelty to stay the march of men, that which made the subdivision called "the Southern States," and all that separated them from the States of the West and of the North, will be obliterated. [Cheering.]
I am not sure, though the story runs so, that I have a New England strain. The fact is that I have recently come to the conclusion that my family was a little overweighted with ancestry, and I have been looking after posterity. [Merriment.]
One serious word, gentlemen. The New England character and the influence of New England men and women have made their impress upon the whole country; for, even in the South, during the time of slavery, educated men and women from New England were the tutors and instructors of the youth of the South in the plantation home. The love of education, the resolve that it should be general, the love of home with all the pure and sacred influences that cluster about it, are elements in the New England character that have a saving force which is incalculable in this great nation in which we live. Your civil institutions have been free, high and clean. From the old town-meeting days till now, New England has believed in and practised the Free Election and the Fair Count. But, gentlemen, I cannot enumerate all of your virtues—time is brief, the catalogue long. Will you permit me to thank you and your honored President for your gracious reception of me to-night? [Long-continued cheering.]
[Speech of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley at the seventieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1875. The President, Isaac H. Bailey, said by way of introduction: "Gentlemen, I will now give you the tenth regular toast: 'The Press.' This toast, gentlemen, will be responded to by a member of the press who has always adorned his profession—General Hawley, of Connecticut."]
[Speech of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley at the seventieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1875. The President, Isaac H. Bailey, said by way of introduction: "Gentlemen, I will now give you the tenth regular toast: 'The Press.' This toast, gentlemen, will be responded to by a member of the press who has always adorned his profession—General Hawley, of Connecticut."]
Gentlemen:—Our distinguished President paid the very highest compliment to the Press to-night; for, while he has given at least a fortnight's notice to every other gentleman, he only told me to-night that I had to respond to the toast of "The Press." But as I have attended a good many dinners of the New England Society, and never knew "The Press" to be called upon before midnight, I felt entirely safe. [Laughter.] Now, sir, I have spent an evening—some six hours—here, enjoying all the festivities and hospitalities of this occasion to the utmost, and at last I am called upon, at an hour when we are all full of jollity and mirth, to respond to a toast that in reality calls upon me for my most serious effort. [Applause.] I assure you that, had I known that I was to speak upon this subject to-night, I would, contrary to my usual custom, have been deliberately prepared [laughter]; for I, in reality, have a great deal to say upon that matter; and permit me to add that I have a somewhat peculiar qualification, for I have been a man within the press, "a chiel amang ye takin' notes, an' prentin' them;" and I have been again a man altogether outside of the press, not writing for months to his own people, and subject to receive all the gibes andcriticisms and attacks of the press. [Applause.] "I know how it is myself." [Laughter.]
"The Press of the Republic" is a text worthy of the noblest oration. It has a great, a high, and a holy duty. It is at once the leader and educator, and, on the other hand, the representative of the people. I can only touch on some points that I have in my mind, upon this occasion. It seems to me that we are passing through a period of peculiar importance regarding the value and influence of the press of the American Republic. There are times when I join with them in the most indignant denunciation, in the warmest appeal. There are times when I feel the cutting, cruel, stinging injustice of the American press. [Applause.] It is the duty of an editor, sitting, as he does, as a judge—and I mean all that the word implies—upon all that goes on about him in public life—it is his duty to hear both sides, and all sides, as deliberately and calmly as he may, and to pronounce a judgment that, so far as he knows, may be the judgment of posterity. [Applause.] It is true that he has two duties. We know that it is his duty to condemn the bad. When it is made perfectly clear that the bad man is really a bad man, a corrupter of youth, make him drink the hemlock, expel him, punish him, crush him. [Applause.]
But there is another duty imposed upon the American press, quite as great. If there be a man who loves the Republic, who would work for it, who would talk for it, who would fight for it, who would die for it—there are millions of them, thank God!—it is the duty of the American press to uphold him, and to praise him when the time comes, in the proper place, on the proper occasion. [Applause.] The press is to deal not alone in censure of the bad, but in praise of the good. I like the phrase, "The independent press." [Applause.] I am an editor myself. I love my calling. I think it is growing to be one of the great professions of the day. I claim, as an editor (and that is my chief pursuit in life), to be a gentleman also. [Applause, and cries of "Good! Good!"] If I see or know anything to be wrong in the land, high or low, I will say so. If it be in my own party, I will take special pains to say so [applause]; for I suppose it to be true of both parties thatwe have a very high, a very glorious, a very beautiful, a very lovable idea of the future American Republic. [Applause.]
So I will condemn, I say, whatever may be wrong. I hold myself to be an independent journalist. [Cries of "Good!"]
But, my friends, I hope you will excuse the phrase—I am going to follow it by another—at the same time I do freely avow that I am apartisan; for I never knew anything good, from Moses down to John Brown, that was not carried through by partisanship. [Applause.] If you believe in anything, say so; work for it, fight for it. There are always two sides in the world. The good fight is always going on. The bad men are always working; the devil is always busy. And again, on the other side you have your high idea of whatever is beautiful and good and true in the world; and God is always working also. The man who stands between them—who says: "This is somewhat good, and that is somewhat good; I stand between them"—permit me to say, is a man for whom I have very little respect. [Applause.] Some men say there is a God; some men say there is no God. Some of the independents say that the truth lies between them. [Laughter.] I cannot find it between them. Every man has a God. If you believe in your God,—he may be another God from mine—if you are a man, I want you to fight for him, and I may have to fight against you, but do you fight for the God that you believe in. [Applause.]
I do sincerely think (and I wish that this was a congregation of my fellow-editors of the whole land, for my heart is in reality full of this thing)—I do sincerely think that there is something of a danger that our eloquent, ready, powerful, versatile, indefatigable, vigorous, omnipresent, omniscient men of the press may drive out of public life—and they will ridicule that phrase—may drive out of public life, not all, but a very considerable class of sensitive, high-minded, honorable, ambitious gentlemen. [Applause.] Now, I do not say anything about the future for myself. I have got a "free lance," I have got a newspaper, and I can fight with the rest of them; but I will give you a bit of my experience in public life. I tell you, my friends ofthe New England Society, that one of the sorest things that a man in public life has to bear is the reckless, unreasonable censure of members of the press whom individually he respects. [Applause.] That large-hearted man, whom personally I love, with whom I could shake hands, with whom I did shake hands, with whom I sat at the social board time and again, grossly misinterprets my public actions; intimates all manner of dishonorable things, which I would fight at two paces rather than be guilty of; and it would be useless for me to write a public letter to explain or contradict. [Applause.]
Now, I am only one of hundreds. I can stand still and wait the result, in the confidence that, if not all, yet some, men believe me to be honorable and true; if they do not, God and I know it, and I would "fight it out on that line." [Applause.]
Gentlemen, it is rather my habit to talk in earnest. Next to the evil of having all public men in this land corrupt; next to the evil of having all our governmental affairs in the hands of men venal and weak and narrow, debauching public life and carrying it down to destruction, is the calamity of having all the young men believe it is so, whether it be so or not. [Applause.] Teach all the boys to believe that every man who goes into public life has his price; teach all the boys to believe that there is no man who enters public life anywhere that does not look out for his own, and is not always scheming to do something for himself or his friends, and seeking to prolong his power; teach every young man who has a desire to go into political life, to think—because you have told him so—that the way to succeed is to follow such arts, and by that kind of talk you may ruin your country. [Applause.]
Now, gentlemen, as I have said, this is a matter for an evening oration. I have barely touched some of the points. I have said the press has a twofold duty and fortune: it is the leader, the educator, the director of the people. It is, at the same time, the reflector of the people. I could spend an hour upon the theme.
I cannot cease, however, without thanking the President of the St. Patrick's Society [Denis MacMahon], the only gentleman who has mentioned the word "centennial."When I was leaving Philadelphia, my wife warned me not to use that word, knowing to what it might lead me [laughter]; and so I shall simply ask you all to come to Philadelphia next year, and join in the great national exhibition, where you will have an opportunity of seeing the progress which this nation has made under the ideas of liberty, government, industry, and thrift which were instilled by the Pilgrim Fathers. [Applause.]
[Speech of John Hay, American Ambassador to Great Britain, at a dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, London, December 8, 1897. Henry Norman, President of the Club, took the chair and in introducing Colonel Hay, as the guest of the evening, spoke of him as soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet and Omarian.]
[Speech of John Hay, American Ambassador to Great Britain, at a dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, London, December 8, 1897. Henry Norman, President of the Club, took the chair and in introducing Colonel Hay, as the guest of the evening, spoke of him as soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet and Omarian.]
Gentlemen:—I cannot sufficiently thank you for the high and unmerited honor you have done me to-night. I feel keenly that on such an occasion, with such company, my place is below the salt, but as you kindly invited me it was not in human nature for me to refuse. Although in knowledge and comprehension of the two great poets whom you are met to commemorate I am the least among them, there is no one who regards them with greater admiration, or reads them with more enjoyment than myself. I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's translation of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's Homer, has described the sensation once for all:—
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,When a new planet swims into his ken."
The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those amazing stanzas, were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and of death.
Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet or his translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction of anew song, or a mystification of a great modern, careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in the eleventh century, so far away as Khorassan, so accomplished a man of letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such calm disillusion, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this Weltschmerz, which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in 1100? My doubt lasted only till I came upon a literal translation of the Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of Fitzgerald's was its fidelity to the original. In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald before the latter, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of Omar. It is not to the disadvantage of the later poet that he followed so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius had appeared in the world; had sung a song of incomparable beauty and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sung it anew with all its original melody and force, and all the accumulated refinement of ages of art. [Cheers.]
It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master; each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of precious workmanship and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the two poets there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half barbarous province; Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read, the Rubaiyat have taken their place as a classic. There is not a hill-post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union. In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books inevery Club Library. I heard Omar quoted once in one of the most lovely and desolate spots of the High Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of the world," where in the space of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its water to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib summer. One morning at sunrise as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these words of sombre majesty:—
"'Tis but a tent where takes his one day's restA Sultan to the realm of death addressed.The Sultan rises and the dark FerrashStrikes, and prepares it for another guest."
I thought that sublime setting of primeval forest and pouring cañon was worthy of the lines; I am sure the dewless, crystalline air never vibrated to strains of more solemn music.
Certainly our poet can never be numbered among the great popular writers of all times. He has told no story; he has never unpacked his heart in public; he has never thrown the reins on the neck of the winged horse, and let his imagination carry him where it listed. "Ah! the crowd must have emphatic warrant." Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose eye no glitter can ever dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot but resent that air of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will hold a place forever among that limited number who, like Lucretius and Epicurus—without rage or defiance, even without unbecoming mirth—look deep into the tangled mysteries of things; refuse credence to the absurd, and allegiance to the arrogant authority, sufficiently conscious of fallibility to be tolerant of all opinions; with a faith too wide for doctrine and a benevolence untrammelled by creed, too wise to be wholly poets, and yet too surely poets to be implacably wise. [Loud cheers.]