SLASON THOMPSON

[Speech of Bayard Taylor at a reception given in his honor by the Goethe Club, New York City, March 20, 1878. The reception was held in recognition of Mr. Taylor's appointment as United States Minister to Germany. Dr. A. Ruppaner, President of the Club, presided.]

It is difficult for me to respond fitly to what you have done, fellow-members of the Goethe Club, and what my old friend Parke Godwin has said. I may take gratefully whatever applies to an already accomplished work, but I cannot accept any reference to any work yet to be done without a feeling of doubt and uncertainty. No man can count on future success without seeming to invoke the evil fates.

I am somewhat relieved in knowing that this reception, by which I am so greatly honored, is not wholly owing to the official distinction which has been conferred upon me by the President. I am informed that it had been already intended by the Goethe Club as a large and liberal recognition of my former literary labors, and I will only refer a moment to the diplomatic post in order that there may be no misconception of my position in accepting it.

The fact that for years past I have designed writing a new biography of the great German master, is generally known; there was no necessity for keeping it secret; it has been specially mentioned by the press since my appointment, and I need not hesitate to say that the favor of our government will give me important facilities in the prosecution of the work. [Applause.]

But the question has also been asked, here and there—and very naturally—is a Minister to a foreign Court to be appointed for such a purpose? I answer, No! The Minister's duty to the government and to the interests of his fellow-citizens is always paramount. I shall go to Berlin with the full understanding of the character of the services I may be expected to render, and the honest determination to fulfil them to the best of my ability.

But, as my friends know, I have the power and the habit of doing a great deal of work; and I think no one will complain if, instead of the recreation which others allow themselves, I should find my own recreation in another form of labor.

I hope to secure at least two hours out of each twenty-four for my own work, without detriment to my official duties—and if two hours are not practicable, one must suffice. I shall be in the midst of the material I most need—I shall be able to make the acquaintance of the men and women who can give me the best assistance—and without looking forward positively to the completion of the task, I may safely say that this opportunity gives me a cheerful hope of being able to complete it.

I was first led to the study of Goethe's life by the necessity of making the full meaning of his greatest poem clear to the readers of our language. I found that he himself was a better guide for me than all his critics and commentators. I learned to understand the grand individuality of his nature, and his increasing importance as an intellectual force in our century. I owe as much to him in the way of stimulus as to any other poet whatever. Except Shakespeare, no other poet has ever so thoroughly inculcated the value of breadth, the advantage of various knowledge, as the chief element of the highest human culture. Through the form of his creative activity, Shakespeare could only teach this lesson indirectly. Goethe taught it always in the most direct and emphatic manner, for it was the governing principle of his nature. It is not yet fifty years since he died, but he has already become a permanent elemental power, the operation of which will continue through many generations to come. The fact that an association bearing his name exists and flourishes here in New York is a good omen for our own development.

We grow, not by questioning or denying great minds—which is a very prevalent fashion of the day—but by reverently accepting whatever they can give us. The "heir of all the ages" is unworthy of his ancestors if he throws their legacy away. It is enough for me if this honor to-night reaches through and far beyond me, to Goethe. It is his name not mine, which has brought us together. Let me lay upon him—he is able to bear even that much—whatever of the honor I am not truly worthy to receive, and to thank you gratefully for what remains. [Applause.]

[Speech of Slason Thompson at the seventy-fourth dinner and fourth "Ladies' Night" of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., April 26, 1894. The Secretary, Alexander A. McCormick, presided. Mr. Thompson spoke on the general topic of the evening's discussion, "The Ethics of the Press."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—It would be interesting, I think, for the gentlemen of the press who are here to-night if they could find out from what newspaper in Chicago the last speaker [Howard L. Smith] derives his idea of the press of Chicago. I stand here to say that there is no such paper printed in this city. There may be one that, perhaps, comes close down to his ideas of the press of Chicago, but there is only one—a weekly—and I believe it is printed in New York. The reverend gentleman who began the discussion to-night started into this subject very much like a coon, and as we listened, as he went on, we perceived he came out a porcupine. He was scientific in everything he said in favor of the press; unscientific in everything against it. He spoke to you in favor of the suppression of news, which means, I take it, the dissemination of crime. He spoke to you in favor of the suppression of sewer-gas. Chicago to-day owes its good health to the fact that we do discuss sewer-gas. A reverend gentleman once discussing the province of the press, spoke of its province as the suppression of news. If some gentlemen knew the facts that come to us, they would wonder at our lenience to their faults. The question of an anonymous press has been brought up. If you will glance over the files of the newspapers throughout the world, you will find in that countrywhere the articles are signed the press is most corrupt, weakest, most venal, and has the least influence of any press in the world. To tell me that a reporter who writes an article is of more consequence than the editor, is to tell me a thing I believe you do not believe.

When Charles A. Dana was asked what was the first essential in publishing a newspaper, he is said to have replied, "Raise Cain and sell papers." Whether the story is true or not, his answer comes as near a general definition of the governing principle in newspaper offices as you are likely to get.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as ethics of the press. Each newspaper editor, publisher, or proprietor—whoever is the controlling spirit behind the types, the man who pockets the profits, or empties his pockets to make good the losses—his will, his judgment, his conscience, his hopes, necessities, or ambitions, constitute the ethics of one newspaper—no more! There is no association of editors, no understanding or agreement to formulate ethics for the press. And if there were, not one of the parties to it would live up to it any more than the managers of railways live up to the agreements over which they spend so much time.

The general press prints what the public wants; the specific newspaper prints what its editor thinks the class of readers to which it caters wants. If he gauges his public right, he succeeds; if he does not, he fails. You can no more make the people read a newspaper they do not want than you can make a horse drink when he is not thirsty. In this respect the pulpit has the better of the press. It can thrash over old straw and thunder forth distasteful tenets to its congregations year after year, and at least be sure of the continued attention of the sexton and the deacon who circulates the contribution-box.

What are the ethics of the press of Chicago? They are those of Joseph Medill, Victor F. Lawson, H. H. Kohlsaat, John R. Walsh, Carter Harrison, Jr., Washington Hesing, individually, not collectively. As these gentlemen are personally able, conscientious, fearless for the right, patriotic, incorruptible, and devoted to the public good, so are their respective newspapers. If they are otherwise, so are their respective newspapers.

As I have said before this club on another occasion, the citizens of Chicago are fortunate above those of any other great city in the United States in the average high character of their newspapers. They may have their faults, but who has not? Let him or her who is without fault throw stones.

If the newspaper press is as bad as some people always pretend to think, how comes it that every good cause instinctively seeks its aid with almost absolute confidence of obtaining it? And how comes it that the workers of evil just as instinctively aim to fraudulently use it or silence it, and with such poor success?

To expose and oppose wrong is an almost involuntary rule among newspaper workers—from chief to printer's devil. They make mistakes like others, they are tempted and fall like others, but I testify to a well-recognized intention of our profession, the rule is to learn the facts, and print them, too—to know the truth and not hide it under a bushel. Nine-tenths of the criticisms of the press one hears is the braying of the galled jades or the crackling of thorns under a pot.

The press stands for light, not darkness. It is the greatest power in our modern civilization. Thieves and rascals of high and low degree hate and malign it, but no honest man has reasonable cause to fear the abuse of its power. It is a beacon, and not a false light. It casts its blessed beams into dark places, and while it brings countless crimes to light, it also reveals to the beneficence of the world the wrongs and needs of the necessitous. It is the embodiment of energy in the pursuit of news, for its name is Light, and its aim is Knowledge. Ignorance and crime flee from before it like mist before the God of Light. It stands to-day

"For the truth that lacks assistance,For the wrong that needs resistance,For the future in the distance,And the good that it can do."

It has no license to do wrong; it has boundless liberty and opportunity to do good.

[Speech of Theodore Tilton at the sixtieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1865. The Chairman, Joseph H. Choate, gave the following toast, "Woman—the strong staff and beautiful rod which sustained and comforted our forefathers during every step of the pilgrims' progress." Theodore Tilton was called upon to respond.]

Gentlemen:—It is somewhat to a modest man's embarrassment, on rising to this toast, to know that it has already been twice partially spoken to this evening—first by my friend, Senator Lane from Indiana, and just now, most eloquently, by the mayor-elect of New York [John T. Hoffman], who could not utter a better word in his own praise than to tell us that he married a Massachusetts wife. [Applause.] In choosing the most proper spot on this platform as my standpoint for such remarks as are appropriate to such a toast, my first impulse was to go to the other end of the table; for hereafter, Mr. Chairman, when you are in want of a man to speak for Woman, remember what Hamlet said, "Bring me the recorder!"[7][Laughter.] But, on the other hand, here, at this end, a prior claim was put in from the State of Indiana, whose venerable Senator [Henry S. Lane] has expressed himself disappointed at finding no women present. So, as my toast introduces that sex, I feel bound to stand at the Senator's end of the room—not, however, too near the Senator's chair, for it may be dangerous to take Woman too near that "good-looking man." [Laughter and applause.] Therefore, gentlemen, Istand between these two chairs—the Army on my right [General Hancock], the Navy on my left [Admiral Farragut]—to hold over their heads a name that conquers both—Woman! [Applause.] The Chairman has pictured a vice-admiral tied for a little while to a mast; but it is the spirit of my sentiment to give you a vice-admiral tied life-long to a master. [Applause.] In the absence of woman, therefore, from this gilded feast, I summon her to your golden remembrance. There is an old English song—older, sir, than the Pilgrims:—

"By absence, this good means I gain,That I can catch herWhere none can watch her,In some close corner of my brain:There I embrace and kiss her:And so I both enjoy and miss her!"

You must not forget, Mr. President, in eulogizing the early men of New England, who are your clients to-night, that it was only through the help of the early women of New England, who are mine, that your boasted heroes could ever have earned their title of the Pilgrim Fathers. [Great laughter.] A health, therefore, to the women in the cabin of the Mayflower! A cluster of May-flowers themselves, transplanted from summer in the old world to winter in the new! Counting over those matrons and maidens, they numbered, all told, just eighteen. Their names are now written among the heroines of history! For as over the ashes of Cornelia stood the epitaph "The Mother of the Gracchi," so over these women of the Pilgrimage we write as proudly "The Mothers of the Republic." [Applause.] There was good Mistress Bradford, whose feet were not allowed of God to kiss Plymouth Rock, and who, like Moses, came only near enough to see but not to enter the Promised Land. She was washed overboard from the deck—and to this day the sea is her grave and Cape Cod her monument! [Applause.] There was Mistress Carver, wife of the first governor, and who, when her husband fell under the stroke of sudden death, followed him first with heroic grief to the grave, and then, a fortnight after, followed him with heroic joy up into Heaven! [Applause.] There was MistressWhite—the mother of the first child born to the New England Pilgrims on this continent. And it was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her passengers—a kind of amphibious prophecy that the new-born nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. [Great applause.] There, also, was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds. And there, too, was Mrs. Winslow, whose name is even more than a fragrance; it is a taste; for, as the advertisements say, "children cry for it"; it is a soothing syrup. [Great laughter.]

Then, after the first vessel with these women, there came other women—loving hearts drawn from the olden land by those silken threads which afterwards harden into golden chains. For instance, Governor Bradford, a lonesome widower, went down to the sea-beach, and, facing the waves, tossed a love-letter over the wide ocean into the lap of Alice Southworth in old England, who caught it up, and read it, and said, "Yes, I will go." And she went! And it is said that the governor, at his second wedding, married his first love! Which, according to the New Theology, furnishes the providential reason why the first Mrs. Bradford fell overboard! [Great laughter.]

Now, gentlemen, as you sit to-night in this elegant hall, think of the houses in which the Mayflower men and women lived in that first winter! Think of a cabin in the wilderness—where winds whistled—where wolves howled—where Indians yelled! And yet, within that log-house, burning like a lamp was the pure flame of Christian faith, love, patience, fortitude, heroism! As the Star of the East rested over the rude manger where Christ lay, so—speaking not irreverently—there rested over the roofs of the Pilgrims a Star of the West—the Star of Empire; and to-day that empire is the proudest in the world! [Applause.] And if we could summon up from their graves, and bring hither to-night, that olden company of long-mouldered men, and they could sit with us at this feast—in their mortal flesh—and with their stately presence—the whole world would make a pilgrimage to see those pilgrims! [Applause.] How quainttheir attire! How grotesque their names! How we treasure every relic of their day and generation! And of all the heirlooms of the earlier times in Yankeeland, what household memorial is clustered round about with more sacred and touching associations than the spinning-wheel! The industrious mother sat by it doing her work while she instructed her children! The blushing daughter plied it diligently, while her sweetheart had a chair very close by. And you remember, too, another person who used it more than all the rest—that peculiar kind of maiden, well along in life, who, while she spun her yarn into one "blue stocking," spun herself into another. [Laughter.] But perhaps my toast forbids me to touch upon this well-known class of Yankee women—restricting me, rather, to such women as "comforted" the Pilgrims. [Laughter.]

But, my friends, such of the Pilgrim Fathers as found good women to "comfort" them had, I am sure, their full share of matrimonial thorns in the flesh. For instance, I know of an early New England epitaph on a tombstone, in these words: "Obadiah and Sarah Wilkenson—their warfare is accomplished." [Uproarious laughter.] And among the early statutes of Connecticut—a State that began with blue laws, and ends with black [laughter]—there was one which said: "No Gospel minister shall unite people in marriage; the civil magistrates shall unite people in marriage; as they may do it with less scandal to the church." [Loud laughter.] Now, gentlemen, since Yankee clergymen fared so hard for wedding-fees in those days, is it to be wondered at that so many Yankee clergymen have escaped out of New England, and are here to-night? [Laughter.] Dropping their frailties in the graves which cover their ashes, I hold up anew to your love and respect the Forefathers of New England! And as the sons of the Pilgrims are worthy of their sires, so the daughters of the Pilgrims are worthy of their mothers. I hold that in true womanly worth, in housewifely thrift, in domestic skill, in every lovable and endearing quality, the present race of Yankee women are the women of the earth! [Applause.] And I trust that we shall yet have a Republic which, instead of disfranchising one-half its citizens, and that too by common consent its "better half," shall ordain the political equality, not onlyof both colors, but of both sexes! I believe in a reconstructed Union wherein every good woman shall have a wedding-ring on her finger, and a ballot in her hand! [Sensation.]

And now, to close, let me give you just a bit of good advice. The cottages of our forefathers had few pictures on the walls, but many families had a print of "King Charles's Twelve Good Rules," the eleventh of which was, "Make no long meals." Now King Charles lost his head, and you will have leave to make a long meal. But when, after your long meal, you go home in the wee small hours, what do you expect to find? You will find my toast—"Woman, a beautiful rod!" [Laughter.] Now my advice is, "Kiss the rod!" [Great laughter, during which Mr. Tilton took his seat.]

[Speech of Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, of Hartford, Conn., at the eighty-second annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1887. The President, Horace Russell, occupied the chair. Mr. Twichell responded to the first toast, "Forefathers' Day."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—I have heard of an Irishman who, on being asked by a kind-hearted person if he would have a drink of whiskey, made no reply at first, but struck an attitude and stood gazing up into the sky. "What are you looking at, Mike?" inquired his friend. "Bedad, sir," said Mike, "I thought an angel spoke to me." [Much laughter.]

Somewhat so did I feel, Mr. President, when I got your invitation to be here this evening and speak. I own I was uncommonly pleased by it. I considered it the biggest compliment of the kind I had ever received in my life. For that matter it was too big, as I had to acknowledge. That, however, sir, was your affair; and so, without stopping much to think, and before I could muster the cowardice to decline, I accepted it. [Laughter.] But as soon as I began to reflect, especially when I came to ask myself what in the world I had or could have to say in this august presence, I was scared to think of what I had done. I was like the man who while breaking a yoke of steers that he held by a rope, having occasion to use both his hands in letting down a pair of bars, fetched the rope a turn around one of his legs. That instant something frightened the steers, and that unfortunate farmer was tripped up and snaked off feet first on a wild, erratic excursion, a mile or so, over roughground, as long as the rope lasted, and left in a very lamentable condition, indeed. His neighbors ran to him and gathered him up and laid him together, and waited around for him to come to; which, when he did, one of them inquired of him how he came to do such a thing as hitch a rope around his leg under such circumstances. "Well," said he, "we hadn't gone five rods 'fore I see my mistake." [Hearty laughter.]

But here I am, and the President has passed the tremendous subject of Forefathers' Day, like a Rugby ball, into my hands—after making elegant play with it himself—and, frightful as the responsibility is, I realize that I've got to do something with it—and do it mighty quick. [Laughter.] This is a festive hour, and even a preacher mustn't be any more edifying in his remarks, I suppose, than he can help. And I promise accordingly to use my conscientious endeavors to-night to leave this worshipful company no better than I found it. [Laughter.]

But, gentlemen, well intending as one may be to that effect, and lightly as he may approach the theme of the Forefathers, the minute he sets foot within its threshold he stops his fooling and gets his hat off at once. [Applause.]

Those unconscious, pathetic heroes, pulling their shallop ashore on the Cape yonder in 1620—what reverence can exceed their just merit! What praise can compass the virtue of that sublime, unconquerable manhood, by which in the calamitous, woful days that followed, not accepting deliverance, letting the Mayflower go back empty, they stayed perishing by the graves of their fallen; rather, stayed fast by the flickering flame of their living truth, and so invoked and got on their side forever the force of that great law of the universe, "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." How richly and how speedily fruitful that seed was, we know. It did not wait for any large unfolding of events on these shores to prove the might of its quickening. "Westward the star of empire takes its way." Yes, but the first pulse of vital power from the new State moved eastward. For behold it still in its young infancy—if it can be said to have had an infancy—stretching a strong hand of help across the sea to reinforce the cause of that Commonwealth, the rise of which marks the epoch of England's new birth in liberty. [Applause.]

The pen of New England, fertilized by freedom and marvellously prolific ere a single generation passed, was indeed the Commonwealth's true nursing mother. Cromwell, Hampden, Sidney, Milton, Owen, were disciples of teachers mostly from this side the Atlantic. Professor Masson, of Edinburgh University, in his admirable "Life of Milton," enumerates seventeen New England men whom he describes as "potent" in England in that period. Numbers went to England in person, twelve of the first twenty graduates of Harvard College prior to 1646, among them; and others, not a few representing the leading families of the colonies, who going over with their breasts full of New England milk, nourished the heart of the great enterprise; "performed," so Palfrey tells us, "parts of consequence in the Parliamentary service, and afterward in the service of the Protectorate." It is not too much to say that on the fields of Marston Moor and Naseby New England appeared; and that those names may fairly be written on her banners. [Applause.]

That, I would observe—and Mr. Grady would freely concede it—was before there was much mingling anywhere of the Puritan and the Cavalier blood, save as it ran together between Cromwell's Ironsides and Rupert's troopers. I would observe also that the propagation eastward inaugurated in that early day has never ceased. The immigration of populations hither from Europe, great a factor as it has been in shaping the history of this continent, has not been so great a factor as the emigration of ideas the other way has been, and continues to be, in shaping the history of Europe, and of the mother country most of all. But that carries me where I did not intend to go.

An inebriated man who had set out to row a boat across a pond was observed to pursue a very devious course. On being hailed and asked what the matter was, he replied that it was the rotundity of the earth that bothered him; he kept sliding off. So it is the rotundity of my subject that bothers me. But I do mean to stay on one hemisphere of it if possible. [Laughter.]

The Forefathers were a power on earth from the start—and that by the masterful quality of their mind and spirit. They had endless pluck, intellectual and moral. They believed that the kingdom in this world was with ideas. It was, you might say, one of their original Yankee notions that it was the property of a man to have opinions and to stand by them to the death. Judged from the standpoint of their times, as any one who will take the pains to look will discover, they were tolerant men; but they were fell debaters, and they were no compromisers. They split hairs, if you will, but they wouldn't split the difference. [Laughter.]

A German professor of theology is reported to have said in lecturing to his students on the Existence of God, that while the doctrine, no doubt, was an important one, it was so difficult and perplexed that it was not advisable to take too certain a position upon it, as many were disposed to do. There were those, he remarked, who were wont in the most unqualified way to affirm that there was a God. There were others who, with equal immoderation, committed themselves to the opposite proposition—that there was no God. The philosophical mind, he added, will look for the truth somewhere between these extremes. The Forefathers had none of that in theirs. [Laughter and applause.]

They were men who employed the great and responsible gift of speech honestly and straightforwardly. There was a sublime sincerity in their tongues. They spoke their minds.

Their sons, I fear, have declined somewhat from their veracity at that precise point. At times we certainly have, and have had to be brought back to it by severest pains—as, for example, twenty-six years ago by the voice of Beauregard's and Sumter's cannon, which was a terrible voice indeed, but had this vast merit that it told the truth, and set a whole people free to say what they thought once more. [Great applause.]

Our fathers of the early day were not literary; but they were apt, when they spoke, to make themselves understood.

There was in my regiment during the war—I was a chaplain—a certain corporal, a gay-hearted fellow and a good soldier, of whom I was very fond—with whom on occasion of his recovery from a dangerous sickness I felt it my dutyto have a serious pastoral talk; and while he convalesced I watched for an opportunity for it. As I sat one day on the side of his bed in the hospital tent chatting with him, he asked me what the campaign, when by and by spring opened, was going to be. I told him that I didn't know. "Well," said he, "I suppose that General McClellan knows all about it." (This was away back in 1861, not long after we went to the field.) I answered: "General McClellan has his plans, of course, but he doesn't know. Things may not turn out as he expects." "But," said the corporal, "President Lincoln knows, doesn't he?" "No," I said, "he doesn't know, either. He has his ideas, but he can't see ahead any more than General McClellan can." "Dear me," said the corporal, "it would be a great comfort if there was somebody that did know about things"—and I saw my chance. "True, corporal," I observed, "that's a very natural feeling; and the blessed fact is there is One who does know everything, both past and future, about you and me, and about this army; who knows when we are going to move, and where to, and what's going to happen; knows the whole thing." "Oh," says the corporal, "you mean old Scott!" [Laughter.]

The Forefathers generally spared people the trouble of guessing what they were driving at. [Applause.]

That for which they valued education was that it gave men power to think and reason and form judgments and communicate and expound the same, and so capacitated them for valid membership of the Church and of the State. And that was still another original Yankee notion.

Not often has the nature and the praise of it been more worthily expressed, that I am aware of, than in these sentences, which I lately happened upon, the name of whose author I will, by your leave, reserve till I have repeated them: "Next to religion they prized education. If their lot had been cast in some pleasant place of the valley of the Mississippi, they would have sown wheat and educated their children; but as it was, they educated their children and planted whatever might grow and ripen on that scanty soil with which capricious nature had tricked off and disguised the granite beds beneath. Other colonies would have brought up some of the people to the school; they, if I maybe allowed so to express it, let down the school to all the people, not doubting but by doing so the people and the school would rise of themselves."

I do not know if Cardinal Gibbons is present; I do not recognize him. If he is, I am pleased to have had the honor to recite in his hearing and to commend to his attention these words, so true, so just, so appreciative, of a distinguished ecclesiastic of his communion; for they were spoken by the late Archbishop Hughes in a public lecture in this city in 1852. [Applause.]

I would, however, much rather have recited them in the ears of those Protestant Americans—alas, that there should be born New Englanders among them, that is, such according to the flesh, not according to the spirit—who are wont to betray a strange relish for disparaging both the principles and the conduct of our great sires in that early day when they were sowing in weakness what has ever since been rising with power.

There have always, indeed, been those who were fond of spying the blemishes of New England, of illustrating human depravity by instances her sinners contributed. With the open spectacle of armies of beggars—God's beggars they are; I do not object to them—continually swarming in across her borders, as bees to their meadows, and returning not empty, they keep on calling her close-fisted. They even blaspheme her weather—her warm-hearted summers and her magnificent winters. There is, to be sure, a time along in March—but let that pass. [Laughter.]

I refer to this without the least irritation. I do not complain of it. On the contrary, I glory in it. I love her for the enemies she has made. [Laughter.]

She is the church member among the communities, and must catch it accordingly. It is the saints who are always in the wrong. [Laughter.]

Elijah troubled Israel. Daniel was a nuisance in Babylon. And long may New England be such as to make it an object to find fault with her. [Hearty applause.]

Such she will be so long as she is true to herself—true to her great traditions; true to the principles of which her life was begotten; so long as her public spirit has supreme regard to the higher ranges of the public interest; so longas in her ancient glorious way she leaves the power of the keys in the hands of the people; so long as her patriotism springs, as in the beginning it sprang, from the consciousness of rights wedded to the consciousness of duties; so long as by her manifold institutions of learning, humanity, religion, thickly sown, multitudinous, universal, she keeps the law of the Forefathers' faith, that "Man lives not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." [Prolonged applause.]

[Speech of Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, of Hartford, Conn., at the eighty-sixth annual dinner of the New England Society in the city of New York, December 22, 1891. J. Pierpont Morgan, the President, occupied the chair. Mr. Twichell responded to the toast, "Forefathers' Day."]

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New England Society:—The posture of my mind the last fortnight relative to the duty of the present hour—which, indeed, I was proud to be assigned to, as I ought to have been, but which has been a black care to me ever since I undertook it—has a not inapt illustration in the case of the old New England parson who, when asked why he was going to do a certain thing that had been laid upon him, yet the thought of which affected him with extreme timidity, answered: "I wouldn't if I didn't suppose it had been foreordained from all eternity—and I'm a good mind to not as it is." [Laughter.] However, I have the undisguised good-will of my audience to begin with, and that's half the battle. The forefathers, in whose honor we meet, were men of good-will, profoundly so; but they were, in their day, more afraid of showing it, in some forms, than their descendants happily are.

The first time I ever stood in the pulpit to preach was in the meeting-house of the ancient Connecticut town where I was brought up. That was a great day for our folks and all my old neighbors, you may depend. After benediction, when I passed out into the vestibule, I was the recipientthere of many congratulatory expressions. Among my friends in the crowd was an aged deacon, a man in whom survived, to a rather remarkable degree, the original New England Puritan type, who had known me from the cradle, and to whom the elevation I had reached was as gratifying as it could possibly be to anybody. But when he saw the smile of favor focussed on me there, and me, I dare say, appearing to bask somewhat in it, the dear old man took alarm. He was apprehensive of the consequences to that youngster. And so, taking me by the hand and wrestling down his natural feelings—he was ready to cry for joy—he said: "Well, Joseph, I hope you'll live to preach a great deal better than that!" [Laughter.] It was an exceedingly appropriate remark, and a very tender one if you were at the bottom of it.

That severe, undemonstrative New England habit, that emotional reserve and self-suppression, though it lingers here and there, has mostly passed away and is not to be regretted. As much as could be has been made of it to our forefathers' discredit, as has been made of everything capable of being construed unfavorably to them. They to whom what they call the cant of the Puritan is an offence, themselves have established and practise a distinct anti-Puritan cant with which we are all familiar. The very people who find it abhorrent and intolerable that they were such censors of the private life of their contemporaries, do not scruple to bring to bear on their private life a search-light that leaves no accessible nook of it unexplored, and regarding any unpretty trait espied by that unsparing inquest the rule of judgment persistently employed—as one is obliged to perceive—tends to be: "No explanation wanted or admitted but the worst." [Applause.]

Accordingly, the infestive deportment characteristic of the New England colonist has been extensively interpreted as the indisputable index of his sour and morose spirit, begotten of his religion. I often wonder that, in computing the cause of his rigorous manners, so inadequate account is wont to be made of his situation, as in a principal and long-continuing aspect substantially military—which it was. The truth is, his physiognomy was primarily the soldier stamp on him.

If you had been at Gettysburg on the morning of July 2, 1863, as I was, and had perused the countenance of the First and Eleventh Corps, exhausted and bleeding with the previous day's losing battle, and the countenance of the Second, Third, and Twelfth Corps, getting into position to meet the next onset, which everybody knew was immediately impending, you would have said that it was a sombre community—that Army of the Potomac—with a good deal of grimness in the face of it; with a notable lack of the playful element, and no fiddling or other fine arts to speak of.

As sure as you live, gentlemen, that is no unfair representation of how it was with the founders of the New England commonwealths in their planting period.

The Puritan of the seventeenth century lived, moved, and had his being on the field of an undecided struggle for existence—the New England Puritan most emphatically so. He was under arms in body much of the time—in mind all the time. Nothing can be truer than to say that. And yet people everlastingly pick and poke at him for being stern-featured and deficient in the softer graces of life.

It was his beauty that he was so, for it grew out of and was befitting his circumstances. And I, for one, love to see that austere demeanor so far as it is yet hereditary on the old soil—and some of it is left—thinking of its origin. It is the signature of a fighting far more than of an ascetic ancestry—memorial of a new Pass of Thermopylæ held by the latest race of Spartans on the shores of a new world. [Applause.]

It may be doubted if ever in the history of mankind was displayed a quality of public courage—of pure, indomitable pluck—surpassing that of the New England plantations in their infant day. No condition of its extremest proof was lacking. While the Bay Colony, for example, was in the pinch of its first wrestle with Nature for a living, much as ever able to furnish its table with a piece of bread—with the hunger-wolf never far away from the door, and behind that wolf the Narragansett and the Pequot, at what moment to burst into savagery none could tell—in the season when mere existence was the purchase of physical toil, universal and intense, and of watching night and day—there came from the old country, from the high places of authority, theperemptory mandate: Send us back that charter! Under the clause of it granting you the rule of your own affairs, you are claiming more than was intended or can be allowed. Send it back! And what was the answer? Mind, there were less than 5,000 souls of them, all told: less than 1,000 grown men. On the one hand the power of England—on the other that scrap of a new-born State, sore pressed with difficulties already.

What was the answer? Why, they got out some old cannon they had and mounted them, and moulded a stock of bullets, and distributed powder, and took of every male citizen above the age of sixteen an oath of allegiance to Massachusetts—and then set their teeth and waited to see what would happen. And that was their answer. It meant distinctly: Our charter, which we had of the King's majesty (and therefore came we hither), is our lawful possession—fair title to the territory we occupy and the rights we here exercise. And whoever wants it has got to come and take it. Surrender it we never will! [Applause.]

Nor was that the only time. Again and again during the Colony's initial stage, when it was exceedingly little of stature and had enough to do to keep the breath of life in it, that demand was renewed with rising anger and with menaces; yet never could those Puritans of the Bay be scared into making a solitary move of any kind toward compliance with it. David with his sling daring Goliath in armor is an insufficient figure of that nerve, that transcendent grit, that superb gallantry. Where will you look for its parallel? I certainly do not know. [Applause.]

They used to tell during the war of a colonel who was ordered to assault a position which his regiment, when they had advanced far enough to get a good look at it, saw to be so impossible that they fell back and became immovable. Whereupon (so the story ran) the colonel, who took the same sense of the situation that his command did, yet must do his duty, called out in an ostensibly pleading and fervid voice: "Oh, don't give it up so! Forward again! Forward! Charge! Great heavens, men, do you want to live forever?" [Laughter.]

How those first New England Puritans we are speaking of were to come off from their defiance of the crown alivecould scarcely be conjectured. The only ally they had was distance. The thing they ventured on was the chance that the Royal Government, which had troubles nearer home, would have its hands too full to execute its orders 3,000 miles away across the sea by force. But they accepted all hazards whatsoever of refusing always to obey those orders. They held on to their charter like grim death, and they kept it in their time. More than once or twice it seemed as good as gone; but delay helped them; turns of events helped them; God's providence delivered them, they thought; anyhow, they kept it; that intrepid handful against immeasurable odds, mainly because it lay not in the power of mortal man to intimidate them. And I contend that, all things considered, no more splendid exhibition of the essential stuff of manhood stands on human record. They were no hot-heads. All that while, rash as they appeared, their pulse was calm. The justifying reasons of their course were ever plain before their eyes. They were of the kind of men who understood their objects.

The representative of an English newspaper, sent some time since to Ireland to move about and learn by personal observation the real political mind of the people there, reported on his return that he had been everywhere and talked with all sorts, and that as nearly as he could make out, the attitude of the Irish might be stated about thus: "They don't know what they want—and they are bound to have it." [Laughter.]

But those unbending Forefathers well knew what they wanted that charter for. It was their legal guarantee of the privilege of a spacious freedom, civil and religious, and all that they did and risked for its sake is witness of the price at which they held that privilege. It was not that they had any special objection to the interference in the province of their domestic administration of the king as a king; for you find them presently crying "Hands Off!" to the Puritan Parliament as strenuously as ever they said it to the agents of Charles I. It was simply and positively the value they set on the self-governing independence that had been pledged them at the beginning of the enterprise.

And who that has a man's heart in him but must own that their inspiration to such a degree, with such an ideaand sentiment in the time, place, and circumstances in which they stood, was magnificent? Was the inexorable unrelaxing determination with which they, being so few and so poor, maintained their point somewhat wrought into their faces? Very probably. Strange if it had not been. Of course, it was. But if they were stern-visaged in their day, it was that we in our day, which in vision they foresaw, might of all communities beneath the sun have reason for a cheerful countenance. [Applause.]

They achieved immense great things for us, those Puritan men who were not smiling enough to suit the critics. The real foundation on which the structure of American national liberty subsequently rose was laid by them in those first heroic years.

And what a marvel it was, when you stop to think, that in conditions so hard, so utterly prosaic, calculated to clip the wings of generous thought, they maintained themselves in that elevation of sentiment, that supreme estimate of the unmaterial, the ideal factors of life that distinguished them—in such largeness of mind and of spirit altogether. While confronting at deadly close quarters their own necessities and perils, their sympathies were wide as the world. To their brethren in old England, contending with tyranny, every ship that crossed the Atlantic carried their benediction. Look at the days of thanksgiving and of fast with which they followed the shifting fortunes of the wars of Protestantism—which were wars for humanity—on the continent! Look at the vital consequence they attached to the interest of education; at the taxes that in their penury, and while for the most part they still lived in huts, they imposed on themselves to found and to sustain the institution of the school! [Applause.]

"Child," said a matron of primitive New England to her young son, "if God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, thou hast all that ever thy mother asked for thee." And so saying she spoke like a true daughter of the Puritans.

They were poets—those brave, stanch, aspiring souls, whose will was adamant and who feared none but God. Only, as Charles Kingsley has said, they did not sing their poetry like birds, but acted it like men. [Applause.] Itwas their high calling to stand by the divine cause of human progress at a momentous crisis of its evolution, and they were worthy to be put on duty at that post. Evolution! I hardly dare speak the word, knowing so little about the thing. It represents a very great matter, which I am humbly conscious of being about as far from surrounding as was a simple-minded Irish priest I have been told of, who, having heard that we were descended from monkeys, yet not quite grasping the chronology of the business, the next time he visited a menagerie, gave particular and patient attention to a large cage of our alleged poor relations on exhibition there. He stood for a long time intently scrutinizing their human-like motions, gestures, and expressions. By and by he fancied that the largest of them, an individual of a singularly grave demeanor, seated at the front of the cage, gave him a glance of intelligence. The glance was returned. A palpable wink followed, which also was returned, as were other like signals; and so it went on until his Reverence, having cast an eye around to see that nobody was observing him, leaned forward and said, in a low, confidential tone: "Av ye'll spake one w-u-r-r-d, I'll baptize ye, begorra!" [Laughter.]

But, deficient as one's knowledge of evolution, scientifically and in detail, may be, he may have attained to a not unintelligent perception of the all-embracing creative process called by that name as that in which, in the whole range of the advancing universal movement of life, what is ascends from what was, and fulfils it.

And what I wish to say for my last word is, that whoever of us in tracing back along the line of its potent and fruitful sources that which is his noblest heritage as an American and a member of the English race, leaves out that hard-featured forefather of ours on the shore of Massachusetts Bay in the seventeenth century, and makes not large account of the tremendous fight he fought which was reflected in the face he wore, misses a chief explanation of the fortune to which we and our children are born. [Loud applause.]

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