HENRY WATTERSON

[Speech of Charles Dudley Warner at the "Whittier Dinner" in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday and the twentieth birthday of "The Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., at Boston, Mass., December 17, 1877.]

Mr. Chairman:—It is impossible to express my gratitude to you for calling on me. There is but one pleasure in life equal to that of being called on to make an after-dinner speech, and that is not being called on. It is such an enjoyment to sit through the courses with this prospect like a ten-pound weight on your digestive organs! If it were ever possible to refuse anything in this world, except by the concurrence of the three branches of government—the executive, the obstructive, and the destructive, I believe they are called—I should hope that we might some time have our speeches first, so that we could eat our dinner without fear or favor.

I suppose, however, that I am called up not to grumble, but to say that the establishment of "The Atlantic Monthly" was an era in literature. I say it cheerfully. I believe, nevertheless, it was not the first era of the sort. The sanguine generations have been indulging in them all along, and as "eras" they are apt to flat out, or, as the editor of the "Atlantic" would say, they "peter out." But the establishment of the "Atlantic" was the expression of a genuine literary movement. That movement is the most interesting because it was the most fruitful in our history. It was nicknamed transcendentalism. It was, in fact, a recurrence to realism. They who were sitting in Boston saw a great light. The beauty of this new realism was that itrequired imagination, as it always does, to see truth. That was the charm of the Teufelsdröckh philosophy; it was also poetry. Mr. Emerson puts it in a phrase—the poet is the Seer. Most of you recall the intellectual stir of that time. Mr. Carlyle had spread the German world to us. Mr. Emerson lighted his torch. The horizon of English literature was broken, and it was not necessary any longer to imitate English models. Criticism began to assert itself. Mr. Lowell launched that audacious "Fable for Critics"—a lusty colt, rejoicing in his young energy, had broken into the old-fashioned garden, and unceremoniously trampled about among the rows of box, the beds of pinks and sweet-williams, and mullen seed. I remember how all this excited the imagination of the college where I was. It was what that great navigator who made the "swellings from the Atlantic" called "a fresh-water college." Everybody read "Sartor Resartus." The best writer in college wrote exactly like Carlyle—why, it was the universal opinion—without Carlyle's obscurity! The rest of them wrote like Jean Paul Richter and like Emerson, and like Longfellow, and like Ossian. The poems of our genius you couldn't tell from Ossian. I believe it turned out that they were Ossian's. [Laughter.] Something was evidently about to happen. When this tumult had a little settled the "Atlantic" arose serenely out of Boston Bay—a consummation and a star of promise as well.

The promise has been abundantly fulfilled. The magazine has had its fair share in the total revolution of the character of American literature—I mean the revolution out of the sentimental period; for the truth of this I might appeal to the present audience, but for the well-known fact that writers of books never read any except those they make themselves. [Laughter.] I distinctly remember the page in that first "Atlantic" that began with—"If the red slayer thinks he slays—" a famous poem, that immediately became the target of all the small wits of the country, and went in with the "Opinions," paragraphs of that Autocratic talk, which speedily broke the bounds of the "Atlantic," and the Pacific as well, and went round the world. [Applause.]

Yes, the "Atlantic" has had its triumphs of all sorts.The Government even was jealous of its power. It repeatedly tried to banish one of its editors, and finally did send him off to the court of Madrid [James Russell Lowell]. And I am told that the present editor [William Dean Howells] might have been snatched away from it, but for his good fortune in being legally connected with a person who is distantly related to a very high personage who was at that time reforming the civil service.

Mr. Chairman, there is no reason why I should not ramble on in this way all night; but then, there is no reason why I should. There is only one thing more that I desire to note, and that is, that during the existence of the "Atlantic," American authors have become very nearly emancipated from fear or dependence on English criticisms. In comparison with former days they care now very little what London says. This is an acknowledged fact. Whether it is the result of a sturdy growth at home or of a visible deterioration of the quality of the criticism—a want of the discriminating faculty—the Contributors' Club can, no doubt, point out.

[In conclusion, Mr. Warner paid a brief but eloquent tribute to the Quaker poet.]

HENRY WATTERSON

Photogravure after a photograph from life

[Speech of Henry Watterson at the dinner held on the anniversary of General W. T. Sherman's birthday, Washington, D. C., February 8, 1883. Colonel George B. Corkhill presided, and introduced Mr. Watterson to speak to the toast, "Our Wives."]

Gentlemen:—When one undertakes to respond to such a sentiment as you do me the honor to assign me, he knows in advance that he is put, as it were, upon his good behavior. I recognize the justice of this and accepted the responsibility with the charge; though I may say that if General Sherman's wife resembles mine—and I very much suspect she does—he has a sympathy for me at the present moment. Once upon a festal occasion, a little late, quite after the hour when Cinderella was bidden by her godmother to go to bed, I happened to extol the graces and virtues of the newly wedded wife of a friend of mine, and finally, as a knockdown argument, I compared her to my own wife. "In this case," said he, dryly, "you'll catch it when you get home." It is a peculiarity they all have: not a ray of humor where the husband is concerned; to the best of them and to the last he must be and must continue to be—a hero!

Now, I do not wish you to believe, nor to think that I myself believe, that all women make heroes of their husbands. Women are logical in nothing. They naturally hate mathematics. So, they would have their husbands be heroes only to the rest of the world. There is a charming picture by John Leech, the English satirist, which depicts Jones, who never looked askance at a woman in his life, sitting demurely at table, stuck with his nose on his plate, and Mrs. Jones opposite, redundant to a degree, observing with gratified severity, "Now, Mr. Jones, don't let me see you ogling those Smith girls again!" She, too, was like the rest—the good ones, I mean—seeing the world through her husband; no happiness but his comfort; no vanity but his glory; sacrificing herself to his wants, and where he proves inadequate putting her imagination out to service and bringing home a basket of flowers to deck his brow. Of our sweethearts the humorist hath it:—

"Where are the Marys and Anns and Elizas,Lovely and loving of yore?Look in the columns of old 'Advertisers,'Married and dead by the score."

But "our wives." We don't have far to look to find them; sometimes, I am told, you army gentlemen have been known to find them turning unexpectedly up along the ranges of the Rocky Mountains, and making their presence felt even as far as the halls of the Montezumas. Yet how should we get on without them? Rob mankind of his wife and time could never become a grandfather. Strange as you may think it our wives are, in a sense, responsible for our children; and I ask you seriously how could the world get on if it had no children? It might get on for a while, I do admit; but I challenge the boldest among you to say how long it could get on without "our wives." It would not only give out of children; in a little—a very little—while it would have no mother-in-law, nor sister-in-law, nor brother-in-law, nor any of those acquired relatives whom it has learned to love, and who have contributed so largely to its stock of harmless pleasure.

But, as this is not exactly a tariff discussion, though a duty, I drop statistics; let me ask you what would become of the revenues of man if it were not for "our wives?" We should have no milliners but for "our wives." But for "our wives" those makers of happiness and furbelows, those fabricators of smiles and frills, those gentle beings who bias and scollop and do their sacking at both ends of the bill, and sometimes in the middle, would be compelled to shut up shop, retire from business, and return to the good old city of Mantua, whence they came. The world would grow too rich; albeit, on this promise I do not propose to construct an argument in favor of more wives. One wife is enough, two is too many, and more than two are an abomination everywhere, except in Utah and the halls of our national legislature.

I beg you will forgive me. I do but speak in banter. It has been said that a good woman, fitly mated, grows doubly good; but how often have we seen a bad man mated to a good woman turned into a good man? Why, I myself was not wholly good till I married my wife; and, if the eminent soldier and gentleman in whose honor we are here—and may he be among us many and many another anniversary, yet always sixty-three—if he should tell the story of his life, I am sure he would say that its darkest hours were cherished, its brightest illuminated by the fair lady of a noble race, who stepped from the highest social eminence to place her hand in that of an obscure young subaltern of the line. The world had not become acquainted with him, but with the prophetic instinct of a true woman she discovered, as she has since developed, the mine. So it is with all "our wives." Whatever there is good in us they bring it out; wherefor may they be forever honored in the myriad of hearts they come to lighten and to bless. [Loud applause.]

[Speech of Henry Watterson at the eighty-ninth anniversary banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1894. Elihu Root, President of the Society, introduced Mr. Watterson in the following words: "Gentlemen, we are forced to recognize the truth of the observation that all the people of New England are not Puritans; we must admit an occasional exception. It is equally true, I am told, that all the people of the South are not cavaliers; but there is one cavalier without fear and without reproach [applause], the splendid courage of whose convictions shows how close together the highest examples of different types can be among godlike men—a cavalier of the South, of southern blood and southern life, who carries in thought and in deed all the serious purpose and disinterested action that characterized the Pilgrim Fathers whom we commemorate. He comes from an impressionist State where the grass is blue [laughter], where the men are either all white or all black, and where, we are told, quite often the settlements are painted red. [Laughter.] He is a soldier, a statesman, a scholar, and, above all, a lover; and among allthe world which loves a lover the descendants of those who, generation after generation, with tears and laughter, have sympathized with John Alden and Priscilla, cannot fail to open their hearts in sympathy to Henry Watterson and his star-eyed goddess. [Applause.] I have the honor and great pleasure of introducing him to respond to the toast of 'The Puritan and the Cavalier.'"]

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—Eight years ago, to-night, there stood where I am standing now a young Georgian, who, not without reason, recognized the "significance" of his presence here—"the first southerner to speak at this board"—a circumstance, let me add, not very creditable to any of us—and in words whose eloquence I cannot hope to recall, appealed from the New South to New England for a united country.

He was my disciple, my protege, my friend. He came to me from the southern schools, where he had perused the arts of oratory and letters, to get a few hints in journalism, as he said; needing so few, indeed, that, but a little later, I sent him to one of the foremost journalists of this foremost city, bearing a letter of introduction, which described him as "the greatest boy ever born in Dixie, or anywhere else."

He is gone now. But, short as his life was, its heaven-born mission was fulfilled; the dream of his childhood was realized; for he had been appointed by God to carry a message of peace on earth, good-will to men, and, this done, he vanished from the sight of mortal eyes, even as the dove from the ark.

I mean to take up the word where Grady left it off, but I shall continue the sentence with a somewhat larger confidence, and, perhaps, with a somewhat fuller meaning; because, notwithstanding the Puritan trappings, traditions, and associations which surround me—visible illustrations of the self-denying fortitude of the Puritan character and the sombre simplicity of the Puritan taste and habit—I never felt less out of place in all my life.

To tell you the truth, I am afraid that I have gained access here on false pretences; for I am no Cavalier at all; just plain Scotch-Irish; one of those Scotch-Irish southerners who ate no fire in the green leaf and has eaten no dirt in the brown, and who, accepting, for the moment, the terms Puritan and Cavalier in the sense an effete sectionalism once sought to ascribe to them—descriptive labels at once classifying and separating North and South—verbal redoubts along that mythical line called Mason and Dixon, over which there were supposed by the extremists of other days to be no bridges—I am much disposed to say, "A plague o' both your houses!"

Each was good enough and bad enough in its way, whilst they lasted; each in its turn filled the English-speaking world with mourning; and each, if either could have resisted the infection of the soil and climate they found here, would be to-day striving at the sword's point to square life by the iron rule of Theocracy, or to round it by the dizzy whirl of a petticoat! It is very pretty to read about the Maypole in Virginia and very edifying and inspiring to celebrate the deeds of the Pilgrim Fathers. But there is not Cavalier blood enough left in the Old Dominion to produce a single crop of first families, whilst out in Nebraska and Iowa they claim that they have so stripped New England of her Puritan stock as to spare her hardly enough for farm hands. This I do know, from personal experience, that it is impossible for the stranger-guest, sitting beneath a bower of roses in the Palmetto Club at Charleston, or by a mimic log-heap in the Algonquin Club at Boston, to tell the assembled company apart, particularly after ten o'clock in the evening! Why, in that great, final struggle between the Puritans and the Cavaliers—which we still hear sometimes casually mentioned—although it ended nearly thirty years ago, there had been such a mixing up of Puritan babies and Cavalier babies during the two or three generations preceding it, that the surviving grandmothers of the combatants could not, except for their uniforms, have picked out their own on any field of battle!

Turning to the Cyclopædia of American Biography, I find that Webster had all the vices that are supposed to have signalized the Cavalier, and Calhoun all the virtues that are claimed for the Puritan. During twenty years three statesmen of Puritan origin were the chosen party leaders of Cavalier Mississippi: Robert J. Walker, born and reared in Pennsylvania; John A. Quitman, born and reared in New York, and Sargent S. Prentiss, born and reared in the good old State of Maine. That sturdy Puritan, John Slidell,never saw Louisiana until he was old enough to vote and to fight; native here—an alumnus of Columbia College—but sprung from New England ancestors. Albert Sidney Johnston, the most resplendent of modern Cavaliers—from tip to toe a type of the species—the very rose and expectancy of the young Confederacy—did not have a drop of Southern blood in his veins; Yankee on both sides of the house, though born in Kentucky a little while after his father and mother arrived there from Connecticut. The Ambassador who serves our Government near the French Republic was a gallant Confederate soldier and is a representative southern statesman; but he owns the estate in Massachusetts where his father was born, and where his father's fathers lived through many generations.

And the Cavaliers, who missed their stirrups, somehow, and got into Yankee saddles? The woods were full of them. If Custer was not a Cavalier, Rupert was a Puritan. And Sherwood and Wadsworth and Kearny, and McPherson and their dashing companions and followers! The one typical Puritan soldier of the war—mark you!—was a Southern, and not a Northern, soldier; Stonewall Jackson, of the Virginia line. And, if we should care to pursue the subject farther back, what about Ethan Allen and John Stark and Mad Anthony Wayne—Cavaliers each and every one? Indeed, from Israel Putnam to "Buffalo Bill," it seems to me the Puritans have had rather the best of it in turning out Cavaliers. So the least said about the Puritan and the Cavalier—except as blessed memories or horrid examples—the better for historic accuracy.

If you wish to get at the bottom facts, I don't mind telling you—in confidence—that it was we Scotch-Irish who vanquished both of you—some of us in peace—others of us in war—supplying the missing link of adaptability—the needed ingredient of common sense—the conservative principle of creed and action, to which this generation of Americans owes its intellectual and moral emancipation from frivolity and pharisaism—its rescue from the Scarlet Woman and the mailed hand—and its crystallization into a national character and polity, ruling by force of brains and not by force of arms.

Gentlemen—Sir—I, too, have been to Boston. Strangeas the admission may seem, it is true; and I live to tell the tale. I have been to Boston; and when I declare that I found there many things that suggested the Cavalier and did not suggest the Puritan, I shall not say I was sorry. But among other things, I found there a civilization perfect in its union of the art of living with the grace of life; an Americanism ideal in its simple strength. Grady told us, and told us truly, of that typical American who, in Dr. Talmage's mind's eye, was coming, but who, in Abraham Lincoln's actuality, had already come. In some recent studies into the career of that great man, I have encountered many startling confirmations of this judgment; and from that rugged trunk, drawing its sustenance from gnarled roots, interlocked with Cavalier sprays and Puritan branches deep beneath the soil, shall spring, is springing, a shapely tree—symmetric in all its parts—under whose sheltering boughs this nation shall have the new birth of freedom Lincoln promised it, and mankind the refuge which was sought by the forefathers when they fled from oppression. Thank God, the axe, the gibbet, and the stake have had their day. They have gone, let us hope, to keep company with the lost arts. It has been demonstrated that great wrongs may be redressed and great reforms be achieved without the shedding of one drop of human blood; that vengeance does not purify, but brutalizes; and that tolerance, which in private transactions is reckoned a virtue, becomes in public affairs a dogma of the most far-seeing statesmanship. Else how could this noble city have been redeemed from bondage? It was held like a castle of the Middle Ages by robber barons, who levied tribute right and left. Yet have the mounds and dykes of corruption been carried—from buttress to bell-tower the walls of crime have fallen—without a shot out of a gun, and still no fires of Smithfield to light the pathway of the victor, no bloody assizes to vindicate the justice of the cause; nor need of any.

So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made by slaves—and called it freedom—from the men in bell-crowned hats, who led Hester Prynne to her shame—and called it religion—to that Americanism which reaches forth its arms to smite wrong with reason and truth, secure in the power of both. I appeal from the patriarchs of NewEngland to the poets of New England; from Endicott to Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the name and by the rights of that common citizenship—of that common origin—back both of the Puritan and the Cavalier—to which all of us owe our being. Let the dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by its savage hatreds—darkened alike by kingcraft and priestcraft—let the dead past bury its dead. Let the present and the future ring with the song of the singers. Blessed be the lessons they teach, the laws they make. Blessed be the eye to see, the light to reveal. Blessed be Tolerance, sitting ever on the right hand of God to guide the way with loving word, as blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true religion, true Republicanism and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords and labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and ourselves. It was not Cotton Mather, but John Greenleaf Whittier, who cried:

"Dear God and Father of us all,Forgive our faith in cruel lies,Forgive the blindness that denies."Cast down our idols—overturnOur bloody altars—make us seeThyself in Thy humanity!"

[Applause and cheers.]

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Heman L. Wayland at the fourth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1884. Dr. Wayland, as President of the Society, occupied the chair, and delivered the following address in welcoming the guests.]

Fellow New Englanders—Or, in view of our habitual modesty and self-depreciation, I ought, perhaps, rather to say, Fellow Pharisees [laughter]—I congratulate you that we are able to show our guests a little real New England weather—weather that recalls the sleigh-rides, and crossing the bridges, and the singing-school. You are reminded of the observation of the British tar, who, after a long cruise in the Mediterranean, as he came into the eternal fog which surrounds the "tight little island," exclaimed, "This is weather as is weather; none of your blasted blue sky for me!" [Laughter.]

Let me also apologize to our guests for the extreme plainness and frugality of the entertainment. They will kindly make allowance, when they remember that this is washing-day. [Laughter.]

I am aware that the occasion is so large as to dwarf all merely personal considerations; but I cannot omit to return you my thanks for the unmerited kindness which has placed me in the position I occupy. I must add that the position is at once the more honorable and the more onerous, because I am called to follow a gentleman whose administration of the office has been so superlatively successful.

In making this allusion to my honored predecessor, I am reminded of an event in which we all feel a common pride. On the 25th of last June, amid the hills which overshadowDartmouth College, our then president laid the corner-stone of "Rollins Chapel" for Christian worship, while on the same day, at the same place, on the grounds traversed in earlier years by Webster and Choate, another son of New England laid the corner-stone of the "Wilson Library Building." Thus does intelligent industry, large-hearted benevolence, and filial piety, plant upon the granite hills of New England the olive-groves of Academus and the palms of Judea. [Applause.]

But perhaps there may be here some intelligent stranger who asks me to define an expression which is now and then heard on these occasions: "What is this New England of which you speak so seldom and so reluctantly? Is it a place?" Yes, it is a place; not indeed only a place, but it is a place; and he cannot know New England who has not traversed it from Watch Hill to Mount Washington, from Champlain to Passamaquoddy. In no other wise can one realize how the sterile soil and the bleak winds and the short summer have been the rugged parents of that thrift, that industry, that economy, that regard for the small savings, which have made New England the banker of America. As the population grew beyond the capacity of the soil, her sons from her myriad harbors swarmed out upon the sea, an army of occupation, and annexed the Grand Banks, making them national banks before the days of Secretary Chase. [Laughter.] When the limits of agriculture were reached, they enslaved the streams, and clothed the continent. They gathered hides from Iowa and Texas, and sold them, in the shape of boots, in Dubuque and Galveston. Sterile New England underlaid the imperial Northwest with mortgages, and overlaid it with insurance. I chanced to be in Chicago two or three days after the great fire of 1871. As I walked among the smoking ruins, if I saw a man with a cheerful air, I knew that he was a resident of Chicago; if I saw a man with a long face, I knew that he represented a Hartford insurance company. [Laughter.] Really, the cheerful resignation with which the Chicago people endured the losses of New England did honor to human nature. [Laughter.]

Perhaps it is well that New England is not yet more sterile, for it would have owned the whole of the country,and would have monopolized all the wealth, as it has confessedly got a corner on all the virtues.

And while the narrow limit of the season, called by courtesy "summer," has enforced promptness and rapidity of action, the long winters have given pause for reflection, have fostered the red school-house, have engendered reading and discussion, have made her sons and her daughters thoughtful beings.

The other day, in reading the life of a New England woman,[8]I met with a letter written when she was seventeen years old: "I have begun reading Dugald Stewart. How are my sources of enjoyment multiplied. By bringing into view the various systems of philosophers concerning the origin of our knowledge, he enlarges the mind, and extends the range of our ideas, ... while clearly distinguishing between proper objects of inquiry and those that must forever remain inexplicable to man in the present state of his faculties. Reasonings from induction are delightful." [Laughter.]

I think you will agree with me that only where there was a long winter, and long winter evenings, would such a letter be written by a girl in her teens.

The question has often been asked why there are so many poets in New England. A traveller passing through Concord inquired, "How do all these people support themselves?" The answer was, "They all live by writing poems for 'The Atlantic Monthly.'" [Laughter.]

Now, any one who thinks of it must see that it is the weather which makes all these poets, or rather the weathers, for there are so many. As Mr. Choate said: "Cold to-day, hot to-morrow; mercury at eighty in the morning, with wind at southeast; and in three hours more a sea-turn, wind at east, a thick fog from the bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees; now, so dry as to kill all the beans in New Hampshire; then, a flood, carrying off the bridges on the Penobscot; snow in Portsmouth in July, and the next day a man and a yoke of oxen killed by lightning down in Rhode Island." [Laughter.]

The commonplace question: "How is the weather going to be?" gives a boundless play to the imagination, andmakes a man a poet before he knows it. And then a poet must have grand subjects in nature. And what does a poet want that he does not find in New England? Wooded glens, mysterious ravines, inaccessible summits, hurrying rivers; the White Hills, keeping up, as Starr King said, "a perpetual peak against the sky"; the Old Man of the Mountains looking down the valley of the Pemigewasset, and hearing from afar the Ammonoosuc as it breaks into a hundred cataracts; Katahdin, Kearsarge, setting its back up higher than ever since that little affair off Cherbourg; the everlasting ocean inviting to adventure, inspiring to its own wild freedom, and making a harbor in every front yard, so that the hardy mariner can have his smack at his own doorstep. [Laughter.] (Need I say I mean his fishing-smack?) What more can a poet desire?

And then life in New England, especially New England of the olden time, has been an epic poem. It was a struggle against obstacles and enemies, and a triumph over nature in behalf of human welfare.

What would a poet sing about, I wonder, who lived on the Kankakee Flats? Of course, the epic poet must have a hero, and an enemy, and a war. The great enemy in those parts is shakes; so, as Virgil began, "I sing of arms and the man," the Kankakee poet would open:

"I sing the glories of cinchona and the manWho first invented calomel."

Yes, if the Pilgrims had landed upon the far Western prairies or the Southern savannas, they would never have made America; they would never have won a glory beyond that of Columbus, who only discovered America, whereas these men created it. [Applause.]

But not a place alone. New England is also a race; the race that plants colonies and makes nations; the race that carries everywhere a free press, a free pulpit, an open Bible, and that has almost learned to spell and parse its own language; the race which began the battle for civil and religious liberty in the time of Elizabeth, which fought the good fight at Edgehill, which, beside Concord Bridge, "fired the shot heard round the world," which made a continent secure for liberty at Appomattox. [Applause.]

And New England is not alone a place and a race; it is as well an idea, or a congeries of ideas, so closely joined as properly to be called but one; and this idea is not the idea of force, but the force of ideas.

But, gentlemen, I am in danger of forgetting that a marked characteristic of New Englanders is an unwillingness to talk, and especially to talk about themselves. And I know that you are eager to listen to the illustrious men whom we have the honor to gather about our humble board this evening.

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Heman L. Wayland at the eighty-fourth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1889. The President, Cornelius N. Bliss, proposed the query for Dr. Wayland, "Why are New Englanders Unpopular?" enforcing it with the following quotations: "Do you question me as an honest man should do for my simple true judgment?" [Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Sc. I], and "Merit less solid less despite has bred: the man that makes a character makes foes" [Edward Young]. Turning to Dr. Wayland, Mr. Bliss said: "Our sister, the New England Society of Philadelphia, to-night sends us greeting in the person of her honored President, whom I have the pleasure of presenting to you." The eloquence of Dr. Wayland was loudly applauded; and Chauncey M. Depew declared that he had heard one of the best speeches to which he had ever listened at a New England dinner.]

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—That I am here this evening is as complete a mystery to me as to you. I do not know why your Society, at whose annual meetings orators are as the sand upon the seashore for multitude, should call upon Philadelphia, a city in which the acme of eloquence is attained by a Friends' Yearly Meeting, "sitting under the canopy of silence." I can only suppose that you designed to relieve the insufferable brilliancy of your annual festival, that you wished to dilute the highly-flavored, richly-colored, full-bodied streams of the Croton with the pure, limpid, colorless (or, at any rate, only drab-colored) waters of the Schuylkill. [Laughter.]

My first and wiser impulse was to decline the invitation with which you honored me, or rather the Society of whichI am the humblest member. But I considered the great debt we have been under to you for the loan of many of your most accomplished speakers: of Curtis, whose diction is chaste as the snows of his own New England, while his zeal for justice is as fervid as her July sun; of Depew, who, as I listen to him, makes me believe that the doctrine of transmigration is true, and that in a former day his soul occupied the body of one of the Puritan fathers, and that for some lapse he was compelled to spend a period of time in the body of a Hollander [laughter]; of Beaman,[9]one of the lights of your bar; of Evarts, who, whether as statesman or as orator, delights in making historic periods. And this year you have favored us with General Porter,[10]whom we have been trying to capture for our annual dinner, it seems to me, ever since the Mayflower entered Plymouth Bay.

We have condoled with these honored guests as they with tears have told us of their pitiful lot, have narrated to us how, when they might have been tilling the soil (or what passes for soil) of the New Hampshire hills, shearing their lambs, manipulating their shares (with the aid of plough-handles), and watering their stock at the nearest brook, and might have been on speaking acquaintance with the Ten Commandments and have indulged a hope of some day going to heaven, and possibly to Boston [laughter]—on the other hand, a hard fate has compelled them to be millionaires, living in palaces on Murray Hill, to confine their agricultural operations to the Swamp, and to eke out a precarious livelihood by buying what they do not want and selling what they have not got. [Laughter and applause.] Remembering this debt, I thought that it was at least due to you that, in recognition of your courtesy, I should come over and confess judgment, and put you out of suspense by telling you at once that the assets will not pay for the expenses of distribution. The best I can do is to make you a preferred creditor. [Laughter.] I have heard that an Israelite without guile, doing business down in Chatham Street, called his creditors together, and offered them in settlement his note for ten per cent, on their claims, payable in four months. His brother, one of the largest creditors, rather "kicked"; but the debtor took him aside and said, "Do not make anyobjections, and I will make you a preferred creditor." [Laughter and applause.] So the proposal was accepted by all. Presently, the preferred brother said, "Well, I should like what is coming to me." "Oh," was the reply, "you won't get anything; they won't any of them get anything." "But I thought I was a preferred creditor." "So you are. These notes will not be paid when they come due; but it will take them four months to find out that they are not going to get anything. But you know it now; you see you are preferred." [Renewed laughter.]

In casting about for a subject (in case I should unhappily be called on to occupy your attention for a moment), I had thought on offering a few observations upon Plymouth Rock; but I was deterred by a weird and lurid announcement which I saw in your papers, appearing in connection with the name of an eminent clothing dealer, which led me to apprehend that Plymouth Rock was getting tired. [Laughter.] The announcement read, "Plymouth Rock pants!" I presumed that Plymouth Rock was tired in advance, at the prospect of being trotted out once more, from the Old Colony down to New Orleans, thence to San Francisco, thence to the cities of the unsalted seas, and so on back to the point of departure. [Great laughter.] Upon fuller examination, I found that the legend read, "Plymouth Rock pants for $3." It seemed to me that, without solicitation on my part, there ought to be public spirit enough in this audience to make up this evening the modest sum which would put Plymouth Rock at ease. [Great laughter.]

As I look along this board, Mr. President, and gaze upon these faces radiant with honesty, with industry, with wisdom, with benevolence, with frugality, and, above all, with a contented and cheerful poverty, I am led to ask the question, suggested by the topic assigned me in the programme, "Why are we New Englanders so unpopular?" Why those phrases, always kept in stock by provincial orators and editors, "the mean Yankees," "the stingy Yankees," "the close-fisted Yankees," "the tin-peddling Yankees," and, above all, the terse and condensed collocation, "those d——d—those blessed Yankees," the blessing being comprised between two d's, as though conferred by a benevolent doctor of divinity. [Laughter.] I remember in the oldentime, in the years beyond the flood, when the Presidential office was vacant and James Buchanan was drawing the salary, at a period before the recollection of any one present except myself, although possibly my esteemed friend, your secretary, Mr. Hubbard, may have heard his grandparents speak of it as a reminiscence of his youth, there was a poem going about, descriptive of the feelings of our brethren living between us and the Equator, running somewhat thus:

"'Neath the shade of the gum-tree the Southerner sat,A-twisting the brim of his palmetto hat,And trying to lighten his mind of a'loadBy humming the words of the following ode:'Oh! for a nigger, and oh! for a whip;Oh! for a cocktail, and oh! for a nip;Oh! for a shot at old Greeley and Beecher;Oh! for a crack at a Yankee school-teacher.'And so he kept oh-ing for all he had not,Not contented with owing for all that he'd got."

Why does the world minify our intelligence by depreciating our favorite article of diet, and express the ultimate extreme of mental pauperism by saying of him on whose intellect they would heap contempt, "He doesn't know beans"? [Laughter.] And it is within my recollection that there was a time when it was proposed to reconstruct the Union of the States, with New England left out. Why, I repeat it, the intense unpopularity of New England?

For one thing, it seems to me, we are hated because of our virtues; we are ostracized because men are tired of hearing about "New England, the good." The virtues of New England seem to italicize the moral poverty of mankind at large. The fact that the very first act of our foremothers, even before the landing was made, two hundred and sixty-nine years ago, was to go on shore and do up the household linen, which had suffered from the voyage of ninety days, is a perpetual reproof to those nations among whom there is a great opening for soap, who have a great many saints' days, but no washing day. [Laughter and applause.] When men nowadays are disposed to steal a million acres from the Indians, it detracts from their enjoyment to read what Governor Josiah Winslow wrote in1676: "Ithink I can clearly say that, before the present troubles broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors." When our fellow-citizens of other States look at their public buildings, every stone in which tells of unpaid loans; when they remember how they have scaled and scaled the unfortunate people who were guilty of the crime of having money to lend, until the creditors might be considered obnoxious to the Mosaic law, which looked with disfavor upon scaleless fish, it is naturally aggravating to them to remember that, at the close of King Philip's war, Plymouth Colony was owing a debt more than equal to the personal property of the colony, and that the debt was paid to the last cent [applause]; to remember the time, not very far gone by, when the Bay State paid the interest on her bonds in gold, though it cost her two hundred and seventy-six cents on every dollar to do it, and when it was proposed to commend the bonds of the United States to the bankers of the world by placing upon them the indorsement of Massachusetts [applause]; to remember that never has New England learned to articulate the letters that spell the word "Repudiation." [Great applause.]

To those members of the human family who are disposed to entertain too high an estimate of themselves there is something aggravating in the extreme humility and sensitive self-depreciation of the real New Englander.

And the virtues of New England are all the more offensive because they are exhibited in such a way as to take from her enemies the comfort that grows out of a grievance. Said a Chicago wife, "It is real mean for Charlie to be so good to me; I want to get a divorce and go on the stage; but he is so kind I cannot help loving him, and that is what makes me hate him so." When there comes the news that some far-off region is desolated by fire, or flood, or tempest, or pestilence, the first thing is a meeting in the metropolis of New England, and the dispatching of food and funds and physicians and nurses; and the relieved sufferers are compelled to murmur, "Oh, dear, it is too bad! We want to hate them, and they won't let us." [Applause.]

One can manage to put up with goodness, however, if it is not too obtrusive. The honored daughter of Connecticut,the author of "Uncle Tom" and "Dred," now in the peaceful evening of her days,[11]has said, "What is called goodness is often only want of force." A good man, according to the popular idea, is a man who doesn't get in anybody's way. But the restless New Englanders not only have virtues, but they have convictions which are perpetually asserting themselves in the most embarrassing manner. [Applause.] I pass over the time, two centuries ago, when Cromwell and Hampden, those New Englanders who have never seen New England, made themselves exceedingly offensive to Charles I, and gave him at last a practical lesson touching the continuity of the spinal column.

Later, when our fellow-citizens desired to "wallop their own niggers," and to carry the patriarchal institution wherever the American flag went, they were naturally irritated at hearing that there was a handful of meddling fanatics down in Essex County who, in their misguided and malevolent ingenuity, had invented what they called liberty and human rights. [Applause.] Presently, when it was proposed (under the inspiration of a man recently deceased, who will stand in history as a monument to the clemency and magnanimity of a great and free people) to break up the Union in order to insure the perpetuity of slavery, then a man, plain of speech, rude of garb[12]descended from the Lincolns of Hingham, in Plymouth County, sounded a rally for Union and freedom [tremendous applause]; and, hark! there is the tramp, tramp of the fishermen from Marblehead; there are the Connecticut boys from old Litchfield; and there is the First Rhode Island; and there are the sailors from Casco Bay; and the farmers' sons from old Coos, and from along the Onion River, their hearts beating with the enthusiasm of liberty, while their steps keep pace with the drum-beat that salutes the national flag. [Applause.] And, see! is that a thunder-cloud in the North? No, it is the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, made up of American citizens of African descent, officered by the best blood of Suffolk, and at their head Robert G. Shaw, going down to die in the trenches before Fort Wagner. And there is the man whom a kindly Providence yet spares to us, descended from theShermans of Connecticut, preparing for the march that is to cleave the Confederacy in twain. [Cheers for General Sherman.] And there is the silent man, eight generations removed from Matthew Grant (who landed at Dorchester in 1630), destined to make the continent secure for liberty and to inaugurate the New South, dating from Appomattox, with traditions of freedom, teeming with a prosperity rivalling that of New England, a prosperity begotten of the marriage of labor and intelligence. [Continued applause.]

In times somewhat more recent, when a political campaign was under full headway, and when politicians were husbanding truth with their wonted frugality and dispensing fiction with their habitual lavishness, there sprung up a man removed by only two generations from the Lows of Salem, who, in the resources of a mind capable of such things, devised what he was pleased to call "Sunday-school politics"; who has had the further hardihood to be made president of the college which is the glory of your metropolis, designing, no doubt, to infuse into the mind of the tender youth of the New Amsterdam his baleful idea, which, so far as I can make out, has as its essence the conduct of political affairs on the basis of the Decalogue.

The campaign over, when the victors are rolling up their sleeves and are preparing to dispense the spoils according to the hunger and thirst of their retainers, to their amazed horror there is heard the voice of a native of Rhode Island, who has conceived a scheme almost too monstrous for mention, which he designates "Civil Service Reform," and who with characteristic effrontery has got up a society, of which he is president, for the purpose of diffusing his blood-curdling sentiments. Do we need to look further for a reply to the question, "Why are the New Englanders unpopular?" Almost any man is unpopular who goes around with his pockets full of moral dynamite. [Applause.]

But perhaps I have not yet reached the most essential cause of the odium. Men will forgive a man almost anything if he only fails; but we, alas! have committed the crime of success. [Laughter and applause.] It makes people angry when they see New England prospering, influential, the banker of the country, leading public sentiment, shaping legislation. Men would not mind so much if thissuccess were attained by a happy accident, or were the result of a favoring fortune; but it is aggravating to see the New Englanders, to whom Providence has given nothing but rocks and ice and weather—a great deal of it—and a thermometer [laughter], yet mining gold in Colorado, chasing the walrus off the Aleutian Islands, building railroads in Dakota, and covering half the continent with insurance, and underlying it with a mortgage. Success is the one unpardonable crime. [Renewed laughter and applause.]

It is true, when a man has so far acknowledged his participation in the common frailty as to die, then men begin to condone his faults; and by the time he is dead one or two hundred years they find him quite tolerable. An eminent ecclesiastic in the Anglican Church recently pronounced the greatest of the Puritans, Oliver Cromwell, "the most righteous ruler England ever had." A man who is dead is out of the way. We live in the home which he built, and are not disturbed by the chips and sawdust and noise, and perhaps the casualties and mistakes, which attended its building. I will offer a definition (without charge) to the editors of the magnificent "Century Dictionary": "Saint—a man with convictions, who has been dead a hundred years; canonized now, cannonaded then." [Laughter and applause.]

We are building monuments now to the Abolitionists. It is quite possible that when a hundred winters shall have shed their snows upon the lonely grave at North Elba, the Old Dominion will take pride in the fact that she for a little while gave a home to the latest—I trust not the last—of the Puritans; and the traveller, in 1959, as he goes through Harper's Ferry, may see upon the site of the old engine-house, looking out upon the regenerate Commonwealth, cunningly graven in bronze, copied perhaps from the bust in your own Union League, the undaunted features of John Brown. [Applause.] And the South that is to be, standing uncovered beside the grave of the Union soldier, will say: "It was for us, too, that he died," and will render beside the tomb in the capital city of Illinois a reverence akin to that which she pays amid the shades of Mount Vernon. [Great applause.]

The Czar of to-day honors the memory of John Howard(who died a hundred years ago next January), and offers 15,000 roubles for an essay on his life; but when George Kennan, following in the steps of Howard, draws back the curtain and shows the shuddering horrors in the prisons of Siberia, the Czar would willingly offer much more than 15,000 roubles for a successful essay upon his life. John Howard sleeps in innocuous silence at Kherson; George Kennan speaks through the everywhere-present press to the court of last appeal, the civilized world. [Applause.]

There was not much money, there was not much popularity then, in being a Puritan, in being a Pilgrim; there is not much profit, there is not much applause, in being to-day a son of the Puritans, in standing as they did for great ideas and convictions, for liberty and righteousness, in holding the same relation to our age that they held to theirs. But let us be satisfied if, through unpopularity and loneliness and obloquy, we shall have done our duty as they did theirs, and let us hope that when another hundred years have passed, and when the ideal of to-day has become the commonplace of to-morrow, another generation may write over your grave and mine, "A Son of the Puritans."

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