And can you not help the world abroad as well as at home? I believe that merchants engaged in commerce with foreign nations, have it within the scope and purview of their business relations to do as much for the propagation of Christian truth as the Church itself. If your ventures are intrusted to the direction of men of character; if your agents are men who recognize in practice the morals of the religion they profess, you will not only not negative as now, alas! but too often the efforts of the Church's envoys, by the frequent violations of Christian law, on the part of those who propose to be governed by it; but through the illustrations you can send out of Christian consistency—by the living representatives of our higher civilization, which you can furnish to remote nations, to say nothing of the voluntary agency in scattering the printed powers of our faith in all quarters of the globe, how much may not be accomplished in this and in other ways by your men and your ships—Trade thus travelling round the world with Truth by her side, helping each other and healing the nations. [Applause.]



WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY

THE NAVY IN PEACE AND IN WAR

[Speech of Winfield S. Schley at the eighteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1898. The President, Stephen W. Dana, presented Admiral Schley in these words: "Admiral Schley needs no introduction from me—he speaks for himself."]

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:—I am very much in the condition of the gentleman who, being about to be married and having had his wedding suit brought home a day before the event, returned it to the tailor with instructions to increase the girth just two inches. His explanation was that not enough room had been left to accommodate the wedding breakfast he had to eat or for the emotion that was to follow the event.

I am always glad to meet my countrymen anywhere and everywhere. They stand for all that is representative; they stand for all that is progressive; they stand for all that represents humanity, and they stand for all that is fair-minded, high-minded, and honorable. As to those of us who by the circumstances of our service are obliged to pass the greater part of our lives away from home, away from kindred, and away from the flag, it may be difficult to understand how to keep the altar of one's patriotism burning when we are separated from the sweetest and kindest influences of life and performing a service and a duty that are outside of the public observation. But there is a large-heartedness at home that never forgets us. We are bound to our country by ties that are not only sweet in their nature, but the circumstances of service generate a love of home and a patriotism that are the surest guarantees of the welfare and the safety of our people.

The Navy is that arm of the public defence the nature of whose duties is dual in that they relate to both peace and war. In times of peace the Navy blazes the way across the trackless deep, maps out and marks the dangers which lie in the routes of commerce, in order that the peaceful argosies of trade may pursue safe routes to the distant markets of the world, there to exchange the varied commodities of commerce. It penetrates the jungle and the tangle of the inter-tropical regions. It stands ready to starve to death or to die from exposure. It pushes its way into the icy fastnesses of the North or of the South, in order that it may discover new channels of trade. It carries the influence of your power and the beneficent advantages of your civilization to the secluded and hermit empires of the Eastern world, and brings them into touch with our Western civilization and its love of law for the sake of the law rather than for fear of the law's punishments. It stands guard upon the outer frontiers of civilization, in pestilential climates, often exposed to noisome disease, performing duties that are beyond the public observation but yet which have their happy influence in maintaining the reputation and character of our country and extending the civilizing agency of its commerce.

The bones of the officers and men of the Navy lie in every country in the world, or along the highways of commerce; they mark the resting-places of martyrs to a sense of duty that is stronger than any fear of death. The Navy works and strives and serves, without any misgivings and without any complaints, only that it may be considered the chief and best guardian of the interests of this people, of the prestige of this nation, and of the glory and renown of its flag.

These are some of the duties of peace, which has its triumphs "no less renowned than war." But it is the martial side of the Navy that is the more attractive one to us. It is that side of its duty which presents to us its characters who have written their names and their fames in fire. No matter what may be our ideas of civilization or how high our notions of peace, there is no one of us who has not felt his heart beat a little bit faster and his blood course a little bit more rapidly when reading of the daring and thrilling deeds of such men as John Paul Jones or of Decatur or of Stewart or of Hull or of Perry or of MacDonald or of Tatnall or of Ingram or of Cushing or of Porter or of Farragut.

The war so happily ended has added new names to the galaxy of naval worthies. New stars are in the firmament. The records indicate that your naval representatives have been faithful to the lesson of their traditions, that they have been true to their history, whilst the men of our Navy have shown that they have lost none of the skill and none of the tact that they have inherited. But they have proven again that a generation of men who are able to defend their title to the spurs they inherited are proper successors to their progenitors. [Applause.]



HEINRICH SCHLIEMANN

THE BEGINNINGS OF ART

[Speech of Heinrich Schliemann at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 5, 1877. Sir Gilbert Scott, the eminent architect, took the chair in the absence of Sir Frederick Grant, the President of the Academy. In introducing Dr. Schliemann, Sir Gilbert Scott spoke as follows: "There is one gentleman present among us this evening who has special claims upon an expression of our thanks. Antiquarian investigation is emphatically a subject of our own day. More has been discovered of the substantial vestiges of history in our own than probably in any previous age; and it only needs the mention of the names of Champollion, Layard, Rawlinson, and Lipsius to prove that we have in this age obtained a genuine knowledge of the history of art as practised in all previous ages. Not only have we obtained a correct understanding of the arts of our own race as exemplified in our own mediaeval antiquities, but lost buildings of antiquity such as the Egyptian labyrinth, the palace of Nineveh, the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the temple and statues of Olympia, and the temple of Diana at Ephesus have been re-discovered and disinterred. ["Hear! Hear!"] There remained, however, one great hiatus. We knew something of the more archaic periods of Greek art, and we knew that on the gate of Mycenae there were evidences of an art far more archaic and apparently not allied with true Hellenic art, but we knew no more nor had an idea how the great gulf in art history was to be bridged over. It still remains a great gulf, but Dr. Schliemann by his excavations, first on the site of Troy and then of Mycenae, has brought to open daylight what, without prejudging questions as yet sub judice, seem to be the veritable works of the heroes of the Iliad; and if he has not yet actually solved the mysteries which shroud that age, he has brought before us a perfect wealth of fact at the least calculated to sharpen our antiquarian appetite for more certain knowledge. Knowing that Dr. Schliemann is like one in old times, who, while longing to tell of the Atrides and of Cadmus, yet allowed the chords of his heart to vibrate to softer influences, I will, while proposing his health, conjoin with his name that of his energetic fellow-explorer, Madame Schliemann."]

MR. PRESIDENT, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:—You have been pleased to confer upon me two of the greatest honors which this country can possibly bestow upon a foreigner—first, by your kind invitation to this hospitable banquet to meet the most illustrious statesmen, the most eminent scholars, and the most distinguished artists; and secondly, by your toast to my health. In warmly thanking you, I feel the greatest satisfaction to think that for these signal honors, I am solely indebted to my labors in Troy and Mycenae. ["Hear! Hear!"]

In Troy art was only in its first dawn; color was still completely unknown, and instead of painting, the vases were decorated with incised patterns filled with white clay. The productions of sculpture were limited to carving of small flat idols of Minerva [Greek: glaukopis][6] of marble, almost in the forms of two discs, which adhered to each other, and upon which the owl's face is rudely scratched. The Trojan treasure certainly shows more art, but it is characterized by an absence of ornamentation. In Mycenae, on the contrary, the monuments which I have brought to light show a high state of civilization, and the skill with which the gold ornaments are made leads us to pre-suppose a school of domestic artists which had flourished for ages before it reached such perfection.

The very great symmetry we see also in the vase-paintings and in the carvings of spirals and rosettes on stone, whereas representations of men or animals are exceedingly rude and appear to be the primitive Mycenean sculptor's first essay. But rude as they are, and childish as they look, these primitive productions of Greek art are of paramount interest to science, because we see in them the great-grandfathers of the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles; they prove to us in the most certain manner that the artistic genius of the epoch of Pericles did not come suddenly down from heaven like Minerva from the head of Jove, but that it was the result of a school of artists, which had gradually developed in the course of ages.

Once more, I tender my thanks for the patience with which you have listened to a stranger. ["Hear! Hear!"]



CARL SCHURZ

THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

[Speech of Carl Schurz at a banquet given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, New York City, November 5, 1881, in honor of the guests of the Nation, the French diplomatic representatives in America, and members of the families descended from our foreign sympathizers and helpers, General Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Count de Grasse, Baron von Steuben, and others, who were present at the centennial celebration of the victory at Yorktown. The chairman, James M. Brown, Vice-President of the Chamber of Commerce, proposed the toast, "The Old World and the New," to which Carl Schurz was called upon for a response.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE:—If you had been called upon to respond to the toast: "The Old World and the New" as frequently as I have, you would certainly find as much difficulty as I find in saying anything of the Old World that is new or of the New World that is not old. [Applause.]

And the embarrassment grows upon me as I grow older, as it would upon all of you, except perhaps my good friend, Mr. Evarts, who has determined never to grow old, and whose witty sayings are always as good as new. [Laughter.] Still, gentlemen, the scenes which we have been beholding during the last few weeks have had something of a fresh inspiration in them. We have been celebrating a great warlike event—not great in the number of men that were killed in it, but very great in the number of people it has made happy. It has made happy not only the people of this country who now count over fifty millions, but it has made happier than they were before the nations of the Old World, too; who, combined, count a great many more. [Applause.]

American Independence was declared at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, by those who were born upon this soil, but American Independence was virtually accomplished by that very warlike event I speak of, on the field of Yorktown, where the Old World lent a helping hand to the New. [Applause.] To be sure, there was a part of the Old World consisting of the British, and I am sorry to say, some German soldiers, who strove to keep down the aspirations of the New, but they were there in obedience to the command of a power which they were not able to resist, while that part of the Old World which fought upon the American side was here of its own free will as volunteers. [Cheers.]

It might be said that most of the regular soldiers of France were here also by the command of power, but it will not be forgotten that there was not only Lafayette, led here by his youthful enthusiasm for the American cause, but there was France herself, the great power of the Old World appearing as a volunteer on a great scale. [Cheers.] So were there as volunteers those who brought their individual swords to the service of the New World. There was the gallant Steuben, the great organizer who trained the American army to victory, a representative of that great nation whose monuments stand not only upon hundreds of battle-fields of arms, but whose prouder monuments stand upon many more battle-fields of thought. [Cheers.] There was Pulaski, the Pole, and DeKalb who died for American Independence before it was achieved. And there were many more Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes, Hollanders, Englishmen even, who did not obey the behests of power. [Cheers.] And so it may be said that the cause of the New World was the cause of the volunteers of the Old. And it has remained the cause of volunteers in peace as well as in war, for since then we have received millions of them, and they are arriving now in a steady stream, thousands of them every week; I have the honor to say, gentlemen, that I am one of them. [Cheers.]

Nor is it probable that this volunteering in mass will ever stop, for it is in fact drawn over here by the excitement of war as much as by the victories of peace. It was, therefore, natural that the great celebration of that warlike event should have been turned or rather that it should have turned itself into a festival of peace on the old field of Yorktown—peace illustrated by the happy faces of a vast multitude, and by all the evidence of thrift and prosperity and well-being; peace illustrated by the very citizen-soldiery who appeared there to ornament as a pageant, with their brilliant bayonets that peaceful festival; peace illustrated by the warmth of a grand popular welcome offered to the honored representatives of the Old World; peace illustrated, still more, by their friendly meeting upon American soil whatever their contentions at home may have been; peace glorified by what has already been so eloquently referred to by Dr. Storrs and Mr. Evarts; that solemn salute offered to the British flag, to the very emblem of the old antagonism of a hundred years ago; and that salute, echoing in every patriotic American heart, to be followed as the telegraph tells us now, by the carrying of the American flag in honor in the Lord Mayor's procession in London—all this a cosmopolitan peace festival, in which the Old World sent its representatives to join in rejoicing over the prosperity and progress of the New. [Cheers.]

There could hardly have been a happier expression of this spirit of harmony than was presented in the serenade offered to these gentlemen—representatives of the honored name of Steuben on the evening of their arrival in New York, the band playing first "The Watch on the Rhine," followed by the "Marseillaise" and "God Save the Queen," and then the martial airs of the Old World resolving themselves into the peaceful strains of the crowning glory of "Hail, Columbia!" and "Yankee Doodle." [Cheers.]

The cordiality of feeling which binds the Old and the New World together, and which found so touching, so tender, so wonderful an expression in the universal heartfelt sorrow of all civilized mankind at the great national bereavement, which recently has befallen us [the assassination of President Garfield], can hardly fail to be strengthened by this visit of the Old World guests whom we delight to honor. [Cheers.]

They have seen now something of our country, and our people; most of them, probably, for the first time, and I have no doubt they have arrived at the conclusion that the country for which Lafayette and Steuben and Rochambeau fought is a good country, inhabited by a good people [cheers]; a good country and a good people, worthy of being fought for by the noblest men of the earth; and I trust also when these gentlemen return to their own homes they will go back with the assurance that the names of their ancestors who drew their swords for American liberty stand in the heart of every true American side by side with the greatest American names, and that, although a century has elapsed since the surrender of Yorktown, still the gratitude of American hearts is as young and fresh and warm to-day as it was at the moment when Cornwallis hauled down his flag. [Applause.]

It seems to me also, gentlemen, that we have already given some practical evidence of that gratitude. The independence they helped to achieve has made the American nation so strong and active and prosperous that when the Old World runs short of provisions, the New stands always ready and eager even, to fill the gap, and by and by we may even send over some products of other industries for their accommodation. [Applause.]

In fact, we have been so very liberal and generous in that respect, that some of our friends on the other side of the sea are beginning to think that there may be a little too much of a good thing, and are talking of shutting it off by tricks of taxation. [Laughter.] However, we are not easily baffled. Not content with the contribution of our material products, we even send them from time to time, some of our wisdom, as, for instance, a few months ago, our friend, Mr. Evarts, went over there to tell them about the double standard—all that we knew and a good deal more. [Laughter.] We might even be willing to send them all the accumulated stock of our silver, if they will give us their gold for it. [Cheers.] It is to be apprehended that this kind of generosity will not be fittingly appreciated and in that respect they may prefer the wisdom of the Old World to that of the New. [Laughter.]

However, we shall not quarrel about that, for seriously speaking, the New and the Old World must and will, in the commercial point of view, be of infinite use one to another as mutual customers, and our commercial relations will grow more fruitful to both sides from year to year, and from day to day, as we remain true to the good old maxim: "Live and let live." [Cheers.] Nor is there the least speck of danger in the horizon threatening to disturb the friendliness of an international understanding between the Old World and the New. That cordial international understanding rests upon a very simple, natural, and solid basis. We rejoice with the nations of the Old World in all their successes, all their prosperity, and all their happiness, and we profoundly and earnestly sympathize with them whenever a misfortune overtakes them. But one thing we shall never think of doing, and that is, interfering in their affairs. [Cheers.]

On the other hand they will give us always their sympathy in good and evil as they have done heretofore, and we expect that they will never think of interfering with our affairs on this side of the ocean. [Loud cheers.] Our limits are very distinctly drawn, and certainly no just or prudent power will ever think of upsetting them. The Old World and the New will ever live in harmonious accord as long as we do not try to jump over their fences and they do not try to jump over ours. [Cheers.]

This being our understanding, nothing will be more natural than friendship and good-will between the nations of the two sides of the Atlantic. The only danger ahead of us might be that arising from altogether too sentimental a fondness for one another which may lead us into lovers' jealousies and quarrels. Already some of our honored guests may feel like complaining that we have come very near to killing them with kindness; at any rate, we are permitted to hope that a hundred years hence our descendants may assemble again to celebrate the memory of the feast of cordial friendship which we now enjoy, and when they do so, they will come to an American Republic of three hundred millions of people, a city of New York of ten million inhabitants, and to a Delmonico's ten stories high with a station for airships running between Europe and America on the top of it [cheers], and then our guests may even expect to find comfortable hotels and decent accommodations at the deserted village of Yorktown. [Laughter and cheers.]

But, in the meantime, I am sure our Old World guests who to-night delight us with their presence, will never cease to be proud of it that the great names of which they are the honored representatives are inscribed upon some of the most splendid pages of the New World's history, and will live forever in the grateful affection of the New World's heart. [Loud applause.]



WILLIAM H. SEWARD

A PIOUS PILGRIMAGE

[Speech of William H. Seward at a banquet held at Plymouth, Mass., December 21, 1855. Preceding this banquet Mr. Seward delivered an oration on "The Pilgrims and Liberty." The speech here given is his response to the toast proposed at the banquet, "The Orator of the Day, eloquent in his tribute to the virtues of the Pilgrims; faithful, in his life, to the lessons they taught."]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—The Puritans were Protestants, but they were not protestants against everybody and everything, right or wrong. They did not protest indiscriminately against everything they found in England. On the other hand, we have abundant indications in the works of genius and art which they left behind them that they had a reverence for all that is good and true; while they protested against everything that was false and vicious. They had a reverence for the good taste and the literature, science, eloquence, and poetry of England, and so I trust it is with their successors in this once bleak and inhospitable, but now rich and prosperous land. They could appreciate poetry, as well as good sense and good taste, and so I call to your recollection the language of a poet who had not loomed up at the time of the Puritans as he has since. It was addressed to his steed, after an ill-starred journey to Islingtontown. The poet said:—

"'Twas for your pleasure you came here, You shall go back for mine."

Being a candid and frank man, as one ought to be who addresses the descendants of the Puritans, I may say that it was not at all for your pleasure that I came here. Though I may go back to gratify you, yet I came here for my own purposes. The time has passed away when I could make a distant journey from a mild climate to a cold though fair region, without inconvenience; but there was one wish, I might almost say there was only one wish of my heart that I was anxious should be gratified. I had been favored with many occasions to see the seats of empire in this western world, and had never omitted occasions to see where the seats of empire were planted, and how they prospered. I had visited the capital of my own and of many other American States. I had regarded with admiration the capital of this great Republic, in whose destinies, in common with you all, I feel an interest which can never die. I had seen the capitals of the British Empire, and of many foreign empires, and had endeavored to study for myself the principles which have prevailed in the foundation of states and empires. With that view I had beheld a city standing where a migration from the Netherlands planted an empire on the bay of New York, at Manhattan, or perhaps more properly at Fort Orange. They sought to plant a commercial empire, and they did not fail; but in New York now, although they celebrate the memories and virtues of fatherland, there is no day dedicated to the colonization of New York by the original settlers, the immigrants from Holland. I have visited Wilmington, on Christina Creek, in Delaware, where a colony was planted by the Swedes, about the time of the settlement of Plymouth, and though the old church built by the colonists still stands there, I learned that there did not remain in the whole State a family capable of speaking the language, or conscious of bearing the name of one of the thirty-one original colonists.

I have stood on the spot where a treaty was made by William Penn with the aborigines of Pennsylvania, where a seat of empire was established by him, and, although the statue of the good man stands in public places, and his memory remains in the minds of men, yet there is no day set apart for the recollection of the time and occasion when civil and religious liberty were planted in that State. I went still farther south, and descending the James River, sought the first colony of Virginia at Jamestown. There remains nothing but the broken, ruined tower of a poor church built of brick, in which Pocahontas was married, and over the ruins of which the ivy now creeps. Not a human being, bond or free, is to be seen within a mile from the spot, nor a town or city as numerously populated as Plymouth, on the whole shores of the broad, beautiful, majestic river, between Richmond at the head, and Norfolk, where arms and the government have established fortifications. Nowhere else in America, then, was there left a remembrance by the descendants of the founders of colonies, of the virtues, the sufferings, the bravery, the fidelity to truth and freedom of their ancestors; and more painful still, nowhere in Europe can be found an acknowledgment or even a memory of these colonists. In Holland, in Spain, in Great Britain, in France, nowhere is there to be found any remembrance of the men they sent out to plant liberty on this continent. So on the way to the Mississippi, I saw where De Soto planted the standard of Spain, and, in imagination at least, I followed the march of Cortez in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru; but their memory has gone out. Civil liberty perishes, and religious liberty was never known in South America; nor does Spain, any more than other lands, retain the memory of the apostles she sent out to convert the new world to a purer faith, and raise the hopes of mankind for the well-being of the future.

There was one only place, where a company of outcasts, men despised, contemned, reproached as malcontents and fanatics, had planted a colony, and that colony had grown and flourished; and there had never been a day since it was planted that the very town, and shore, and coast, where it was planted had not grown and spread in population, wealth, prosperity, and happiness, richer and stronger continually. It had not only grown and flourished like a vigorous tree, rejoicing in its own strength, but had sent out offshoots in all directions. Everywhere the descendants of these colonists were found engaged in the struggles for civil and religious liberty, and the rights of man. I had found them by my side, the champions of humanity, upon whose stalwart arms I might safely rely.

I came here, then, because the occasion offered, and if I pretermitted this, it might be the last, and I was unwilling that any friend or any child, who might lean upon me, who reckoned upon my counsel or advice, should know that I had been such a truant to the cause of religious liberty and humanity, as never to have seen the Rock of Plymouth.

My mission being now accomplished, having shed tears in the first church of the Puritans, when the heartfelt benediction was pronounced over my unworthy head by that venerable pastor, I have only to ask that I be dismissed from further service with your kind wishes. I will hold the occasion ever dear to my remembrance, for it is here I have found the solution of the great political problem. Like Archimedes, I have found the fulcrum by whose aid I may move the world—the moral world—and that fulcrum is Plymouth Rock.



WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

THE ARMY AND NAVY

[Speech of General William T. Sherman at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, on announcing the toast, "The Army and Navy—Great and imperishable names and deeds have illustrated their history," said: "In response to this toast, I have the privilege of calling on the great Captain who commands the armies of the Republic; of whom it has been said, that he combines the skill and valor of the soldier, with the wisdom of the statesman, and whose name will ever live in the history of the nation. We shall have the great satisfaction of listening to General Sherman."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—While in Washington I was somewhat embarrassed by receiving invitations from two different New England societies to dine with them on different days in commemoration of the same event. I hoped, under cover of that mistake, to escape one or the other, but I find that each claims its day to be the genuine anniversary of the landing of their Fathers on Plymouth Rock. I must leave some of you to settle this controversy, for I don't know whether it was the 21st or 22d; you here in Brooklyn say the 21st; they in New York say it was the 22d. Laboring under this serious doubt, when I came on the stand and found my name enrolled among the orators and statesmen present, and saw that I was booked to make a speech, I appealed to a learned and most eloquent attorney to represent me on this occasion. I even tried to bribe him with an office which I could not give; but he said that he belonged to that army sometimes described as "invincible in peace, invisible in war." [Laughter.] He would not respond for me. Therefore I find myself upon the stand at this moment compelled to respond, after wars have been abolished by the Honorable Secretary of State, and men are said to have risen to that level where they are never to do harm to each other again—with the millennium come, in fact, God grant it may be so? [Applause.]

I doubt it. I heard Henry Clay announce the same doctrine long before our Civil War. I heard also assertions of the same kind uttered on the floor of our Senate by learned and good men twenty years ago when we were on the very threshold of one of the most bloody wars which ever devastated this or any other land. Therefore I have some doubt whether mankind has attained that eminence where it can look backward upon wars and rumors of war, and forward to a state of perpetual peace.

No, my friends, I think man remains the same to-day, as he was in the beginning. He is not alone a being of reason; he has passions and feelings which require sometimes to be curbed by force; and all prudent people ought to be ready and willing to meet strife when it comes. To be prepared is the best answer to that question. [Applause.]

Now my friends, the toast you have given me to-night to respond to is somewhat obscure to me. We have heard to-night enumerated the principles of your society—which are called "New England ideas." They are as perfect as the catechism. [Applause and laughter.] I have heard them supplemented by a sort of codicil, to the effect that a large part of our country—probably one-half—is still disturbed, and that the Northern man is not welcome there. I know of my own knowledge that two-thirds of the territory of the United States are not yet settled. I believe that when our Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, they began the war of civilization against barbarism, which is not yet ended in America. The Nation then, as Mr. Beecher has well said, in the strife begun by our fathers, aimed to reach a higher manhood—a manhood of virtue, a manhood of courage, a manhood of faith, a manhood that aspires to approach the attributes of God Himself.

Whilst granting to every man the highest liberty known on earth, every Yankee believes that the citizen must be the architect of his own fortune; must carry the same civilization wherever he goes, building school-houses and churches for all alike, and wherever the Yankee has gone thus far he has carried his principles and has enlarged New England so that it now embraces probably a third or a half of the settled part of America. That has been a great achievement, but it is not yet completed. Your work is not all finished.

You who sit here in New York, just as your London cousins did two hundred and fifty years ago, know not the struggle that is beyond. At this very moment of time there are Miles Standishes, under the cover of the snow of the Rocky Mountains, doing just what your forefathers did two hundred and fifty years ago. They have the same hard struggle before them that your fathers had. You remember they commenced in New England by building log cabins and fences and tilling the sterile, stony, soil, which Mr. Beecher describes, and I believe these have been largely instrumental in the development of the New England character. Had your ancestors been cast on the fertile shores of the lower Mississippi, you might not be the same vigorous men you are to-day. Your fathers had to toil and labor. That was a good thing for you, and it will be good for your children if you can only keep them in the same tracks. But here in New York and in Brooklyn, I do not think you now are exactly like your forefathers, but I can take you where you will see real live Yankees, very much the same as your fathers were. In New York with wealth and station, and everything that makes life pleasant, you are not the same persons physically, though you profess the same principles, yet as prudent men, you employ more policemen in New York—a larger proportion to the inhabitants of your city than the whole army of the United States bears to the people of the United States. You have no Indians here, though you have "scalpers." [Applause and laughter.] You have no "road-agents" here, and yet you keep your police; and so does our Government keep a police force where there are real Indians and real road-agents, and you, gentlemen, who sit here at this table to-night who have contributed of your means whereby railroads have been built across the continent, know well that this little army, which I represent here to-night, is at this moment guarding these great roadways against incursions of desperate men who would stop the cars and interfere with the mails and travel, which would paralyze the trade and commerce of the whole civilized world, that now passes safely over the great Pacific road, leading to San Francisco. Others are building roads north and south, over which we soldiers pass almost yearly, and there also you will find the blue-coats to-day, guarding the road, not for their advantage, or their safety, but for your safety, for the safety of your capital.

So long as there is such a thing as money, there will be people trying to get that money; they will struggle for it, and they will die for it sometimes. We are a good-enough people, a better people it may be than those of England, or France, though some doubt it. Still we believe ourselves a higher race of people than have ever been produced by any concatenation of events before. [Laughter.] We claim to be, and whether it be due to the ministers of New England, or to the higher type of manhood, of which Mr. Beecher speaks—which latter doctrine I prefer to submit to—I don't care which, there is in human nature a spark of mischief, a spark of danger, which in the aggregate will make force as necessary for the government of mankind as the Almighty finds the electric fluid necessary to clear the atmosphere. [Applause.]

You speak in your toast of "honored names"; you are more familiar with the history of your country than I am, and know that the brightest pages have been written on the battle-field. Is there a New Englander here who would wipe "Bunker Hill" from his list for any price in Wall Street? Not one of you! Yet you can go out into Pennsylvania and find a thousand of bigger hills which you can buy for ten dollars an acre. It is not because of its money value, but because Warren died there in defence of your government which makes it so dear to you. Turn to the West. What man would part with the fame of Harrison and of Perry? They made the settlement of the great Northwest by your Yankees possible. They opened that highway to you, and shall no honor be given to them? Had it not been for the battles on the Thames by Harrison, and by Perry on Lake Erie, the settlement of the great West would not have occurred by New England industry and thrift. Therefore I say that there is an eloquence of thought in those names as great as ever was heard on the floor of Congress, or in the courts of New York. [Applause.]

So I might go on, and take New Orleans, for example, where General Jackson fought a battle with the assistance of pirates, many of them black men and slaves, who became free by that act. There the black man first fought for his freedom, and I believe black men must fight for their freedom if they expect to get it and hold it secure. Every white soldier in this land will help him fight for his freedom, but he must first strike for it himself. "Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." [Cheers.] That truth is ripening, and will manifest itself in due time. I have as much faith in it as I have that the manhood, and faith, and firmness, and courage of New England has contributed so much to the wealth, the civilization, the fame, and glory of our country. There is no danger of this country going backward. The Civil War settled facts that remain recorded and never will be obliterated. Taken in that connection I say that these battles were fought after many good and wise men had declared all war to be a barbarism—a thing of the past. The fields stained with patriotic blood will be revered by our children and our children's children, long after we, the actors, may be forgotten. The world will not stop; it is moving on; and the day will come when all nations will be equal "brothers all," when the Scotchman and the Englishman will be as the son of America. We want the universal humanity and manhood that Mr. Beecher has spoken of so eloquently. You Yankees don't want to monopolize all the virtues; if you do, you won't get them. [Laughter.]

The Germans have an industry and a type of manhood which we may well imitate. We find them settling now in South America, and in fact they are heading you Yankees off in the South American trade. It won't do to sit down here and brag. You must go forth and settle up new lands for you and your children, as your fathers did. That is what has been going on since Plymouth Rock, and will to the end. The end is not yet, but that it will come and that this highest type of manhood will prevail in the end I believe as firmly as any man who stands on this floor. It will be done not by us alone, but by all people uniting, each acting his own part; the merchant, the lawyer, the mechanic, the farmer, and the soldier. But I contend that so long as man is man there is a necessity for organized force, to enable us to reach the highest type of manhood aimed at by our New England ancestors. [Loud applause.]

* * * * *

A REMINISCENCE OF THE WAR

[Speech of General William T. Sherman at the eighty-first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1886. Judge Horace Russell presided and introduced General Sherman as a son of New England whom the Society delighted to honor. The toast proposed was, "Health and Long Life to General Sherman." The General was visibly affected by the enthusiastic greeting he received when he rose to respond.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK:—Were I to do the proper thing, I would turn to my friend on the left [T. DeWitt Talmage] and say, Amen; for he has drawn a glorious picture of war in language stronger than even I or my friend, General Schofield, could dare to use. But looking over the Society to-night—so many young faces here, so many old and loved ones gone—I feel almost as one of your Forefathers. [Laughter and applause.] Many and many a time have I been welcomed among you. I came from a bloody Civil War to New York twenty or twenty-one years ago, when a committee came to me in my room and dragged me unwillingly before the then New England Society of New York. They received me with such hearty applause and such kindly greetings that my heart goes out to you now to-night as their representatives. [Applause.] God knows I wish you, one and all, the blessings of life and enjoyment of the good things you now possess, and others yet in store for you.

I hope not to occupy more than a few minutes of your time, for last night I celebrated the same event in Brooklyn, and at about two or three o'clock this morning I saw this hall filled with lovely ladies waltzing [laughter], and here again I am to-night. [Renewed laughter. A voice, "You're a rounder, General."] But I shall ever, ever recur to the early meetings of the New England Society, in which I shared, with a pride and satisfaction which words will not express; and I hope the few I now say will be received in the kindly spirit they are made in, be they what they may, for the call upon me is sudden and somewhat unexpected.

I have no toast. I am a rover. [Laughter.] I can choose to say what I may—not tied by any text or formula. I know when you look upon old General Sherman, as you seem to call him [Oh, oh!]—pretty young yet, my friends, not all the devil out of me yet, and I hope still to share with you many a festive occasion—whenever you may assemble, wherever the sons of New England may assemble, be it here under this Delmonico roof, or in Brooklyn, or even in Boston, I will try to be there. [Applause.]

My friends, I have had many, many experiences, and it always seems to me easier to recur to some of them when I am on my feet, for they come back to me like the memory of a dream, pleasant to think of. And now, to-night, I know the Civil War is uppermost in your minds, although I would banish it as a thing of trade, something too common to my calling; yet I know it pleases the audience to refer to little incidents here and there of the great Civil War, in which I took a humble part. [Applause.] I remember, one day away down in Georgia, somewhere between, I think, Milledgeville and Millen, I was riding on a good horse and had some friends along with me to keep good-fellowship. [Laughter.] A pretty numerous party, all clever good fellows. [Renewed laughter.] Riding along, I spied a plantation. I was thirsty, rode up to the gate and dismounted. One of these men with sabres by their side, called orderlies, stood by my horse. I walked up on the porch, where there was an old gentleman, probably sixty years of age, white-haired and very gentle in his manners—evidently a planter of the higher class. I asked him if he would be kind enough to give me some water. He called a boy, and soon he had a bucket of water with a dipper. I then asked for a chair, and called one or two of my officers. Among them was, I think, Dr. John Moore, who recently has been made Surgeon-General of the Army, for which I am very glad—indebted to Mr. Cleveland. [Laughter and applause.] We sat on the porch, and the old man held the bucket, and I took a long drink of water, and maybe lighted a cigar [laughter], and it is possible I may have had a little flask of whiskey along. [Renewed laughter.]

At all events, I got into a conversation; and the troops drifted along, passing down the roadway closely by fours, and every regiment had its banner, regimental or national, sometimes furled and sometimes afloat. The old gentleman says:—

"General, what troops are these passing now?"

As the color-bearer came by, I said: "Throw out your colors. That is the 39th Iowa."

"The 39th Iowa! 39th Iowa! Iowa! 39th! What do you mean by 39th?"

"Well," said I, "habitually, a regiment, when organized, amounts to 1,000 men."

"Do you pretend to say Iowa has sent 39,000 men into this cruel Civil War?" [Laughter.]

"Why, my friend, I think that may be inferred."

"Well," says he, "where's Iowa?" [Laughter.]

"Iowa is a State bounded on the east by the Mississippi, on the south by Missouri, on the west by unknown country, and on the north by the North Pole."

"Well," says he, "39,000 men from Iowa! You must have a million men."

Says I: "I think about that."

Presently another regiment came along.

"What may that be?"

I called to the color-bearer: "Throw out your colors and let us see," and it was the 21st or 22d Wisconsin—I have forgotten which.

"Wisconsin! Northwest Territory! Wisconsin! Is it spelled with an O or a W?"

"Why, we spell it now with a W. It used to be spelled Ouis."

"The 22d! that makes 22,000 men?"

"Yes, I think there are a good many more than that. Wisconsin has sent about 30,000 men into the war."

Then again came along another regiment from Minnesota.

"Minnesota! My God! where is Minnesota?" [Laughter.] "Minnesota!"

"Minnesota is away up on the sources of the Mississippi River, a beautiful Territory, too, by the way—a beautiful State."

"A State?"

"Yes; has Senators in Congress; good ones, too. They're very fine men—very fine troops."

"How many men has she sent to this cruel war?"

"Well, I don't exactly know; somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 men, probably. Don't make any difference—all we want." [Laughter.]

"Well," says he, "now we must have been a set of fools to throw down the gage of battle to a country we didn't know the geography of!" [Laughter and applause.] "When I went to school that was the Northwest Territory, and the Northwest Territory—well," says he, "we looked upon that as away off, and didn't know anything about it. Fact is, we didn't know anything at all about it."

Said I: "My friend, think of it a moment. Down here in Georgia, one of the original thirteen States which formed the great Union of this country, you have stood fast. You have stood fast while the great Northwest has been growing with a giant's growth. Iowa to-day, my friend, contains more railroads, more turnpikes, more acres of cultivated land, more people, more intelligence, more schools, more colleges—more of everything which constitutes a refined and enlightened State—than the whole State of Georgia."

"My God," says the man, "it's awful. I didn't dream of that."

"Well," says I, "look here, my friend; I was once a banker, and have some knowledge of notes, indorsements, and so forth. Did you ever have anything to do with indorsements?"

Says he: "Yes, I have had my share. I have a factor in Savannah, and I give my note and he indorses it, and I get the money somehow or other. I have to pay it in the end out of the crop."

"Well," says I, "now look here. In 1861 the Southern States had 4,000,000 slaves as property, for which the States of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and so forth, were indorsers. We were on the bond. Your slaves were protected by the same law which protects land and other property. Now, you got mad at them because they didn't think exactly as you did about religion, and about this thing and t'other thing; and like a set of fools you first took your bond and drew your pen through the indorser's names. Do you know what the effect will be? You will never get paid for those niggers at all." [Laughter.] "They are gone. They're free men now."

"Well," says he, "we were the greatest set of fools that ever were in the world." [Laughter.]

And so I saw one reconstructed man in the good State of Georgia before I left it. [Laughter and applause.]

Yes, my friends, in those days things looked gloomy to us, but the decree came from a higher power. No pen, no statesman, in fact, no divine could have solved the riddle which bound us at that time; nothing but the great God of War. And you and your fathers, your ancestors, if you please, of whom I profess to be one [applause], had to resort to the great arbiter of battles, and call upon Jove himself. And now all men in America, North and South, East and West, stand free before the tribunal of the Almighty, each man to work out his own destiny according to his ability, and according to his virtue, and according to his manhood. [Applause.] I assure you that we who took part in that war were kindly men. We did not wish to kill. We did not wish to strike a blow. I know that I grieved as much as any man when I saw pain and sorrow and affliction among the innocent and distressed, and when I saw burning and desolation. But these were incidents of war, and were forced upon us—forced upon us by men influenced by a bad ambition; not by the men who owned those slaves, but by politicians who used that as a pretext, and forced you and your fathers and me and others who sit near me, to take up arms and settle the controversy once and forever. [Cries of "good," and loud applause.]

Now, my friends of New England, we all know what your ancestors are recorded to have been; mine were of the same stock. Both my parents were from Norwalk, Connecticut. I think and feel like you. I, too, was taught the alphabet with blows, and all the knowledge I possessed before I went to West Point was spanked into me by the ferule of those old schoolmasters. [Laughter.] I learned my lesson well, and I hope that you, sons of New England, will ever stand by your country and its flag, glory in the achievements of your ancestors, and forever—and to a day beyond forever, if necessary, giving you time to make the journey to your last resting-place—honor your blood, honor your Forefathers, honor yourselves, and treasure the memories of those who have gone before you. [Enthusiastic applause.]



BALLARD SMITH

THE PRESS OF THE SOUTH

[Speech of Ballard Smith at the annual banquet given by the Southern Society of New York, February 22, 1888. John C. Calhoun, one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society, presided. Mr. Smith spoke to the toast, "The Press of the South."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—The newspaper has always been a potent factor in the South—for many years almost exclusively political, but since the war occupying its more proper sphere and assisting more largely in the material development of the country. I think every Southern man will agree with me that the change of procession has been to the very great advantage of our section. The columns of the ante-bellum newspaper were too often the opportunity for the indulgence of excited passions, political and social, and I doubt if our people could not have better spared the newspaper altogether than to have permitted the license of accusation, political incitement, and personal rancor which characterized so largely the journals of thirty years ago. [Applause.] But they were virile hands which held editorial pens in those days and the faults were doubtless faults of the period rather than of the men themselves. It was a splendid galaxy—that company which included George D. Prentiss, Rhett, Forsythe, Hughes, Henry D. Wise, John Mitchell, and Thomas Ritchie.

But it is of Southern journalism during these last twenty years of which I would speak. I have known something of it because my own apprenticeship was served in one of the most brilliant journals of this or any other time and of this or any other country. The services of Henry Watterson to the South and to the country are a part of the history of our time. [Applause.] His loyalty toward his section could never have been doubted, and his firmness and broad patriotism served it at a time of need to a degree which perhaps the firmness and patriotism of no other man in the South could have equalled. He had for the vehicle of his eloquent fervor a newspaper which commanded the affection of his own people and the respect of the North. [Applause.] With the restoration of order great newspapers—fair rivals to their great contemporaries in the Eastern and Northern States—have grown to prosperity in the various centres of the South, and they have acted out a mission which is in some respects peculiar to themselves.

More important than politics to the South, more important than the advocacy of good morals—for of that our people took good care themselves in city as in country—has been the material development of our resources. The War left us very poor. The carpet-bag governments stole a very large part of the little that was left. Injudicious speculations in cotton during a few years of madness almost completed our bankruptcy. With fertile fields, cheap labor, extraordinary mineral resources, our almost undisputed control of one of the great staples of the world, the year 1876 found us a prostrate people almost beyond precedent. To this breach came several thoughtful, public-spirited, eloquent men of the newspaper guild. It was our good fortune that in Dawson of the "Charleston News and Courier," in Major Burke, Page M. Baker, and Colonel Nicholson of New Orleans; in Major Belo of Galveston; in the editors of "The Nashville Banner," "The American," "The Memphis Appeal," "The Richmond Dispatch and State," and above all, in Henry W. Grady, of "The Atlanta Constitution" [applause], we had spokesmen who, day in and day out, in season and out, year after year devoted their thoughts, their study, and their abilities to showing the world, first, the sturdy intention of our people to recuperate their lost fortunes; and second, the extraordinary resources of their section. [Applause.] Certainly not in the history of my profession and perhaps not in any history of such endeavor, have men, sinking mere personal interests and ignoring the allurements of ambition, through a more dramatic exercise of their talents so devoted themselves to the practical interests of their people. [Applause.] We saw the results in the awakened curiosity of the world, and in the speedy influx of capital to aid us in our recuperation. [Applause.]



CHARLES EMORY SMITH

IRELAND'S STRUGGLES

[Speech of Charles Emory Smith at the banquet given by the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia, St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1887. Mr. Smith was introduced by the Society's President, John Field, and called upon to speak to the toast, "The Press."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—These annual dinners of the Hibernian Society, several of which I have had the honor of attending, are distinguished by a peculiar association and spirit. The sons of other nationalities, Englishmen, Welshmen, Scotchmen, Germans, and those among whom I count myself—the sons of New England—are accustomed to meet annually on the anniversary of a patron saint or on some great historic occasion as you do. And those of us who have the opportunity of going from one to the other will, I am sure, agree with me that nowhere else do we find the patriotic fire and the deep moving spirit which we find here. Something of this, Mr. President, is due to the buoyant quality of blood which flows in every Irishman's veins—a quality which makes the Irishman, wherever he may be and under all circumstances, absolutely irrepressible. Something, I say, is due to this buoyant quality of the Irish blood. Still, some of it is due to the fact that he is moved by a deep sense of the woes and the wrongs, of the sadness and the sorrows of his native land. Oppression and injustice only inflame the spirit of nationality. The heel of the oppressor may crush and tear the form or reduce the strength, but nothing crushes the inward resolve of the heart. The Americans were never so American as when they revolted against England and threw the tea overboard into Boston harbor, and punished the Red-Coats at Bunker Hill. The heavy yoke of Austria rested grievously upon Hungary, but they raised themselves in revolt and fought fearlessly for their home rule, for their freedom and their rights. And they were defeated by treason in their camps and by the combined forces of Austria and Russia. Yet, sir, they persevered until they achieved home rule—as will Ireland at no distant day.

The long history of oppression and injustice in Ireland has not only not extinguished the flame of Irish patriotism and feeling, but has served to kindle it, to make it more glowing to-day than ever before. For seven centuries Ireland has wrestled with and been subjected to misrule—to England's misrule: a rule great and noble in many things, as her priceless statesman says, but with this one dark, terrible stain upon an otherwise noble history. Only a day or two ago there reached our shores the last number of an English periodical, containing an article from the pen of that great statesman, to whom not only all Ireland, but all the civilized world is looking to-day to battle for freedom in England. The article presents, in the most striking form that I have ever seen, statements of what is properly called Ireland's demands. And I was struck there with the most extraordinary statement coming from this great statesman of England, of the character of England's rule, or rather England's misrule, of Ireland during those seven centuries. For all those centuries, he says, were centuries not only of subjection, but of extreme oppression. The fifth century was the century of confiscation; the sixth was a century of penal laws—penal laws, which, he says, "we cannot defend and which we must condemn and wash our hands of the whole proceedings"—a century of penal laws, except from 1778 to 1795, which he calls the golden age of Ireland. And as I stop for a moment to recollect what had distinguished that period, and as you stop here to-night and recollect for a single moment what had distinguished that short period of that century and made it the golden age of Ireland, you will understand why it was so called. It was the period when Henry Grattan, the great leader of the first battle for home rule, poured forth his learned and masterly eloquence; when Curran made his powerful plea for religious emancipation. The period when Robert Emmet—to whom such glorious tribute has been paid here to-night—was learning, in the bright early morn of that career which promised to be so great and to do so much, those lessons of patriotism which enabled him, when cut down in the flower of youth, to meet even his ignominious death with marvellous nerve and firm confidence, with courage and patriotism.

And, Gentlemen, I believe that it is one glorious trait of the American press that during this struggle which has gone on now for years, this struggle for justice in Ireland, that the press of America has been true to the best inspirations of liberty; and I unhesitatingly say to England and to the English ministers, that if they would conform to the judgment of the civilized world they must abandon their course of intoleration and oppression, and must do justice to long oppressed Ireland. The press, the united press of Philadelphia, and of other great cities of the country, have done their part in promoting that work which has been going on among our people for the last few years to attain this end.

The press of Philadelphia aided in raising that magnificent fund of $50,000 which went from this side; and if it need be, it will put its hand to the plough and renew work. It was the remark of Mr. Gladstone, that looking at past events, they [England] could not cite a single witness in behalf of the cause which they represented. The American people began their contributions in 1847, to prevent the starvation of many of those people, and they continued their contributions to stop evictions, and to pay the landlords; they continued their contributions to promote that work of freedom and justice and home rule, for which we stand united, inflexible and immovable until it shall be finally accomplished. [Applause.]

* * * * *

THE PRESIDENT'S PRELUDE

[Speech of Charles Emory Smith at the thirteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893. Mr. Smith, then President of the Society, delivered the usual introductory address of the presiding officer, immediately after ex-President Benjamin F. Harrison had spoken.]

HONORED GUESTS AND FELLOW-MEMBERS:—I am sure that you have greatly enjoyed the brilliant and witty speech to which you have just listened—a speech which shows that our distinguished guest is as felicitous at the dinner-table as he is signally successful in other fields of oratory. But if you have deluded yourself with the idea that because of this change in the programme you are to escape the infliction of the usual address by the President of the Society, it is now my duty to undeceive you. [Laughter.] Even the keen reflections of General Harrison respecting the prepared impromptu speeches shall not deter us. The rest of us who are not as gifted as he is have expended too much midnight oil and sacrificed too much of the gray matter of the brain to lose our opportunity. You will see that we have anticipated his impromptu observations by carefully premeditating our impromptu reply. [Laughter.] Lord Beaconsfield said that Carlyle had reasons to speak civilly of Cromwell, for Cromwell would have hanged him. [Laughter.] General Harrison has been hanging the rest of us—yes, hanging and quartering us—though this is far from being the only reason for speaking civilly of him, and yet we must go on with the exhibition.

You have observed that on the programme, as arranged by the Committee, the first number is a prelude by the President and the last a hymn by the Society. The Committee evidently intended to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you have already had a part of the music and you will have the rest when I am done. For my part is only that of the leader in the old Puritan choir—to take up the tuning fork and pitch the key; and I do this when I say that we are assembled for the two hundred and seventy-third time [laughter] to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. If any one doubts the correctness of that chronology, let him consult Brothers Shortridge and Lewis and Clark and Cornish, who have been with us from the beginning. [Laughter.] We have met to celebrate these fourfathers [laughter], as well as some others, and to glorify ourselves. If we had any doubts about the duty we owe our ancestors, we have no scruples about the satisfaction we take in their posterity. "My idea of first-rate poetry," said Josh Billings, "is the kind of poetry that I would have writ." So our idea of first-rate posterity is the kind of posterity we are. [Laughter.]

But while not forgetting the posterity, it is not forbidden at these dinners to make an occasional and casual allusion to the Pilgrim Fathers. Thackeray tells us of an ardent young lady who had a devotion of the same sort to "Nicholas Nickleby." When she wanted instruction, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she wanted amusement, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she had leisure, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she was busy, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she was sick, she read "Nicholas Nickleby," and when she got well, she read "Nicholas Nickleby" over again. [Laughter.] We return with the same infrequent, inconstant and uncertain fidelity to the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers. If we seek the light persiflage and airy humor of the after-dinner spirit, we find an inexhaustible fountain in the quaint customs and odd conceits of the Pilgrim Fathers. If we seek the enkindling fire and the moral elevation of high principle and profound conviction and resolute courage, we find a never-ceasing inspiration in the unfaltering earnestness and imperishable deeds of the Pilgrim Fathers. [Applause.] After praying for all the rest of mankind, the good colored preacher closed up with the invocation "And, finally, O Lord! bless the people of the uninhabited portions of the globe." [Laughter.] We are sometimes as comprehensive in our good-will as the colored brother; but to-night we fix our thoughts upon that more limited portion of mankind which belongs in nativity or ancestry to that more restricted part of the globe known as New England.

We are here to sing the praises of these sturdy people. They, too, sang—and sang with a fervor that was celebrated in the memorable inscription on one of the pews of old Salem Church:—

"Could poor King David but for once To Salem Church repair, And hear his Psalms thus warbled out, Good Lord! how he would swear."

And it was not in Salem Church, either, that the Psalms were sung with the peculiar variations of which we have record. An enterprising establishment proposed to furnish all the hymn-books to a congregation not abundantly blessed with this world's goods, provided it might insert a little advertisement. The thrifty congregation in turn thought there would be no harm in binding up any proper announcement with Watt and Doddridge; but when they assembled on Christmas morning, they started back aghast as they found themselves singing—

"Hark! The herald angels sing, Beecham's Pills are just the thing; Peace on earth and mercy mild, Two for man and one for child."

But if the Pilgrim Fathers were not the sweetest warblers, they at least never wobbled. They always went direct to their mark. As Emerson said of Napoleon, they would shorten a straight line to get at a point. They faced the terrors of the New England northeast blast and starved in the wilderness in order that we might live in freedom. We have literally turned the tables on them and patiently endure the trying hardships of this festive board in order that their memories may not die in forgetfulness.

We can never forget the hardships which they were forced to endure, but at the same time we must recognize that they had some advantages over us. They escaped some of the inflictions to which we have been compelled to submit. They braved the wintry blast of Plymouth, but they never knew the everlasting wind of the United States Senate. [Laughter.] They slumbered under the long sermons of Cotton Mather, but they never dreamed of the fourteen consecutive hours of Nebraska Allen or Nevada Stewart. They battled with Armenian dogmas and Antinomian heresies, but they never experienced the exhilarating delights of the Silver debate or throbbed under the rapturous and tumultuous emotions of a Tariff Schedule. [Laughter.]

They had their days of festivity. They observed the annual day of Thanksgiving with a reverent, and not infrequently with a jocund, spirit; but advanced as they were in many respects, they never reached that sublime moral elevation and that high state of civilization which enable us in our day to see that the only true way to observe Thanksgiving is to shut up the churches and revel in the spiritual glories of the flying wedge and the triumphant touchdown. [Laughter.] Their calendar had three great red-letter days of celebration: Commencement day, which expressed and emphasized the foremost place they gave to education in their civil and religious polity; Training or Muster day, which illustrated the spirit and the skill that gave them victory over the Indians and made them stand undaunted on Bunker Hill under Warren and Putnam until above the gleaming column of red-coats they could look into the whites of the enemies' eyes; and Election day, upon which, with its election sermon and its solemn choice of rulers, they acted out their high sense of patriotic duty to the Commonwealth. We are deeply concerned in these days about the debasement of the ballot-box. Perhaps we could find a panacea in the practice of our Pilgrim Fathers. They enacted a law that the right of suffrage should be limited to church members in good standing. Suppose we had such a law now, what a mighty revolution it would work either in exterminating fraud or in promoting piety! "Men and Brethren!" said the colored parson, "two ways are open before you, the broad and narrow way which leads to perdition, and the straight and crooked way which leads to damnation." [Laughter.] We have before us now the two ways of stuffed ballot-boxes and empty pews, and our problem is to change the stuffing from the ballot-boxes to the pews. I am not altogether sure which result would be accomplished; but it is quite clear that if the law of our Fathers did not destroy corruption in politics, it would at least kindle a fresh interest in the church. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, it is with honest pride and fresh inspiration that we gather once a year to revive our enkindling story. The Santa Maria, with its antique form and its flying pennant, contrasting the past with the present, amid the dazzling and now vanishing splendors of the wondrous White City, has this year recalled the discovery of America. But the jewel is more precious than the casket. The speaking picture appeals to us more than its stately setting. And heroic as was the voyage of the Santa Maria across a trackless sea to an unknown continent, it was the nobler mission of the Mayflower to bring the priceless seeds of principle and liberty which have blossomed in the resplendent development and progress of our great free Republic. Conscience incarnate in Brewster and Bradford, in Winthrop and Winslow, smote Plymouth Rock; and from that hour there has poured forth from its rich fountain a perennial stream of intellectual and moral force which has flooded and fertilized a broad continent. The Puritan spirit was duty; the Puritan creed was conscience; the Puritan principle was individual freedom; the Puritan demand was organized liberty, guaranteed and regulated by law. [Applause.] That spirit is for to-day as much as for two centuries ago. It fired at Lexington the shot heard round the world, and it thundered down the ages in the Emancipation Proclamation. It lives for no narrow section and it is limited to no single class. The soul that accepts God and conscience and equal manhood has the Puritan spirit, whether he comes from Massachusetts or Virginia, from Vermont or Indiana; whether you call him Quaker or Catholic, disciple of Saint Nicholas or follower of Saint George. [Applause.] The Puritan did not pass away with his early struggles. He has changed his garb and his speech; he has advanced with the progress of the age; but in his fidelity to principle and his devotion to duty he lives to-day as truly as he lived in the days of the Puritan Revolution and the Puritan Pilgrimage. His spirit shines in the lofty teachings of Channing and in the unbending principles of Sumner, in the ripened wisdom of Emerson and in the rhythmical lessons of Longfellow. The courageous John Pym was not more resolute and penetrating in leading the great struggle in the Long Parliament than was George F. Edmunds in the Senate of the United States. And the intrepid and sagacious John Hampden, heroic in battle and supreme in council, wise, steadfast, and true, was but a prototype of Benjamin Harrison.



HERBERT SPENCER

THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION

[Speech of Herbert Spencer at a dinner given in his honor in New York City, November 9, 1882. William M. Evarts presided.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—Along with your kindness there comes to me a great unkindness from Fate; for now, that above all times in my life I need the full command of what powers of speech I possess, disturbed health so threatens to interfere with them, that I fear I shall often inadequately express myself. Any failure in my response you must please ascribe, in part at least, to a greatly disordered nervous system. Regarding you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin with the time, some two and twenty years ago, when my highly valued friend, Professor Youmans, making efforts to diffuse my books here, interested on their behalf Messrs. Appleton, who have ever treated me so honorably and so handsomely; and I ought to detail from that time onward the various marks and acts of sympathy by which I have been encouraged in a struggle which was for many years disheartening.

But intimating thus briefly my general indebtedness to my numerous friends most of them unknown on this side of the Atlantic, I must name more especially the many attentions and proffered hospitalities met with during my late tour as well as, lastly and chiefly, this marked expression of the sympathies and good wishes which many of you have travelled so far to give at great cost of that time which is so precious to an American. I believe I may truly say that the better health which you have so cordially wished me will be in a measure furthered by the wish; since all pleasurable emotion is conducive to health, and as you will fully believe, the remembrance of this evening will ever continue to be a source of pleasurable emotion exceeded by few if any of my remembrances.

And now that I have thanked you sincerely though too briefly, I am going to find fault with you. Already in some remarks drawn from me respecting American affairs and American character, I have passed criticisms which have been accepted far more good-naturedly than I could reasonably have expected; and it seems strange that I should now again propose to transgress. However, the fault I have to comment upon is one which most will scarcely regard as a fault. It seems to me that in one respect Americans have diverged too widely from savages. I do not mean to say that they are in general unduly civilized. Throughout large parts of the population even in long-settled regions there is no excess of those virtues needed for the maintenance of social harmony. Especially out in the West men's dealings do not yet betray too much of the "sweetness and light" which we are told distinguish the cultured man from the barbarian; nevertheless there is a sense in which my assertion is true.

You know that the primitive man lacks power of application. Spurred by hunger, by danger or revenge he can exert himself energetically for a time, but his energy is spasmodic. Monotonous daily toil is impossible to him. It is otherwise with the more developed man. The stern discipline of social life has gradually increased the aptitude for persistent industry; until among us, and still more among you, work has become with many a passion. This contrast of nature is another aspect. The savage thinks only of present satisfactions and leaves future satisfactions uncared for. Contrariwise the American, eagerly pursuing a future good almost ignores what good the passing day offers him; and when the future good is gained, he neglects that while striving for some still remoter good.

What I have seen and heard during my stay among you has forced on me the belief that this slow change from habitual inertness to persistent activity has reached an extreme from which there must begin a counter-change—a reaction. Everywhere I have been struck with the number of faces which told in strong lines of the burdens that had to be borne. I have been struck, too, with the large proportion of gray-haired men; and inquiries have brought out the fact that with you the hair commonly begins to turn some ten years earlier than with us. Moreover, in every circle I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse due to the stress of business, or named friends who had either killed themselves by overwork or had been permanently incapacitated or had wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health. I do but echo the opinion of all the observant persons I have spoken to that immense injury is being done by this high-pressure life—the physique is being undermined. That subtle thinker and poet whom you have lately had to mourn—Emerson,—says in his "Essay on the Gentleman," that the first requisite is that he shall be a good animal. The requisite is a general one—it extends to man, the father, the citizen. We hear a great deal about the "vile body"; and many are encouraged by the phrase to transgress the laws of health. But Nature quietly suppresses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products and leaves the world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so foolish.

Beyond these immediate mischiefs, there are remoter mischiefs. Exclusive devotion to work has the result that amusements cease to please; and when relaxation becomes imperative, life becomes dreary from lack of its sole interest—the interest in business. The remark current in England that when the American travels, his aim is to do the greatest amount of sight-seeing in the shortest time, I find current here also; it is recognized that the satisfaction of getting on devours nearly all other satisfactions. When recently at Niagara, which gave us a whole week's pleasure, I learned from the landlord of the hotel that most Americans come one day and go away the next. Old Froissart, who said of the English of his day that "they take their pleasures sadly after their fashion," would doubtless, if he lived now, say of the Americans that "they take their pleasures hurriedly after their fashion." In large measure with us, and still more with you, there is not that abandonment to the moment which is requisite for full enjoyment; and this abandonment is prevented by the ever-present sense of multitudinous responsibilities. So that beyond the serious physical mischief caused by overwork, there is the further mischief that it destroys what value there would otherwise be in the leisure part of life. Nor do the evils end here. There is the injury to posterity. Damaged constitutions re-appear in their children and entail on them far more of ill than great fortunes yield them of good. When life has been duly rationalized by science, it will be seen that among a man's duties the care of the body is imperative not only out of regard for personal welfare, but also out of regard for descendants. His constitution will be considered as an entailed estate which he ought to pass on uninjured if not improved to those who follow; and it will be held that millions bequeathed by him will not compensate for feeble health and decreased ability to enjoy life.

Once more, there is the injury to fellow-citizens taking the shape of undue regard of competitors. I hear that a great trader among you deliberately endeavored to crush out everyone whose business competed with his own; and manifestly the man who, making himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder for all others engaged in it and excludes from it many who might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic motive, there are two altruistic motives which should deter from this excess in work.

The truth is there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven, the time was to be passed in daily battles with magical healing of wounds, we see how deeply rooted may become the conception that fighting is man's proper business and that industry is fit only for slaves and people of low degree. That is to say, when the chronic struggles of races necessitate perpetual wars there is evolved an ideal of life adapted to the requirements. We have changed all that in modern civilized societies, especially in England and still more in America. With the decline of militant activity and the growth of industrial activity the occupations once disgraceful have become honorable. The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to fight; and in the one case as in the other the ideal of life has become so well established that scarcely anybody dreams of questioning it. Practical business has been substituted for war as the purpose of existence.

Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future? I think not. While all other things undergo continuous change, it is impossible that ideals should remain fixed. The ancient ideal was appropriate to the ages of conquest by man over man and spread of the strongest races. The modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of the earth and subjection of the powers of Nature to human use is the predominant need. But hereafter, when both these ends have in the main been achieved, the ideal formed will probably differ considerably from the present one. May we not foresee the nature of the difference? I think we may.

Some twenty years ago, a good friend of mine and a good friend of yours, too, though you never saw him, John Stuart Mill, delivered at St. Andrew's an inaugural address on the occasion of his appointment to the Lord Rectorship. It contained much to be admired, as did all he wrote; there ran through it, however, the tacit assumption that life is for learning and working. I felt at the time that I should have liked to take up the opposite thesis. I should have liked to contend that life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life. The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete—all other uses of knowledge are secondary. It scarcely needs saying that the primary use of work is that of supplying the materials and aids to living completely; and that any other uses of work are secondary. But in men's conceptions the secondary has in great measure usurped the place of the primary.

The apostle of culture, as culture is commonly conceived, Mr. Matthew Arnold, makes little or no reference to the fact that the first use of knowledge is the right ordering of all actions; and Mr. Carlyle, who is a good exponent of current ideas about work, insists on its virtues for quite other reasons than that it achieves sustentation. We may trace everywhere in human affairs a tendency to transform the means into the end. All see that the miser does this when making the accumulation of money his sole satisfaction; he forgets that money is of value only to purchase satisfactions. But it is less commonly seen that the like is true of the work by which the money is accumulated—that industry, too, bodily or mental, is but a means, and that it is as irrational to pursue it to the exclusion of that complete living it subserves as it is for the miser to accumulate money and make no use of it. Hereafter when this age of active material progress has yielded mankind its benefits there will, I think, come a better adjustment of labor and enjoyment. Among reasons for thinking this there is the reason that the processes of evolution throughout the world at large bring an increasing surplus of energies that are not absorbed in fulfilling material needs and point to a still larger surplus for humanity of the future. And there are other reasons which I must pass over. In brief, I may say that we have had somewhat too much of the "gospel of work." It is time to preach the gospel of relaxation.

This is a very unconventional after-dinner speech. Especially it will be thought strange that in returning thanks I should deliver something very much like a homily. But I have thought I could not better convey my thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues in a fear. If, as I gather, this intemperance in work affects more especially the Anglo-American part of the population, if there results an undermining of the physique not only in adults, but also in the young, who as I learn from your daily journals are also being injured by overwork—if the ultimate consequence should be a dwindling away of those among you who are the inheritors of free institutions and best adapted to them, then there will come a further difficulty in the working out of that great future which lies before the American nation. To my anxiety on this account you must please ascribe the unusual character of my remarks.

And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the Germanic on Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my intercourse with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of health has prevented me from seeing a larger number.



ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY

AMERICA VISITED

[Speech of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, at the breakfast given by the Century Club, New York City, November 2, 1878.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—The hospitality shown to me has been no exception to that with which every Englishman meets in this country, in the endless repetition of kind words and the overwhelming pressure of genial entertainment which has been thrust upon me. That famous Englishman, Dr. Johnson, when he went from England to Scotland, which, at that time, was a more formidable undertaking than is a voyage from England to America at the present time, met at a reception at St. Andrew's a young professor who said, breaking the gloomy silence of the occasion: "I trust you have not been disappointed!" And the famous Englishman replied: "No; I was told that I should find men of rude manners and savage tastes, and I have not been disappointed." So, too, when I set out for your shores I was told that I should meet a kindly welcome and the most friendly hospitality. I can only say, with Dr. Johnson, I have not been disappointed.

But in my vivid though short experience of American life and manners, I have experienced not only hospitality, but considerate and thoughtful kindness, for which I must ever be grateful. I can find it in my heart even to forgive the reporters who have left little of what I have said or done unnoted, and when they have failed in this, have invented fabulous histories of things which I never did and sayings which I never uttered. Sometimes when I have been questioned as to my impressions and views of America, I have been tempted to say with an Englishman who was hard pressed by his constituents with absurd solicitations: "Gentlemen, this is the humblest moment of my life, that you should take me for such a fool as to answer all your questions." But I know their good intentions and I forgive them freely.

The two months which I have spent on these shores seem to me two years in actual work, or two centuries rather, for in them I have lived through all American history. In Virginia I saw the era of the earliest settlers, and I met John Smith and Pocahontas on the shores of the James River. In Philadelphia I lived with William Penn, but in a splendor which I fear would have shocked his simple soul. At Salem I encountered the stern founders of Massachusetts; at Plymouth I watched the Mayflower threading its way round the shoals and promontories of that intricate bay. On Lake George and at Quebec I followed the struggle between the English and the French for the possession of this great continent. At Boston and Concord I followed the progress of the War of Independence. At Mount Vernon I enjoyed the felicity of companionship with Washington and his associates. I pause at this great name, and carry my recollections no further. But you will understand how long and fruitful an experience has thus been added to my life, during the few weeks in which I have moved amongst the scenes of your eventful history.

And then, leaving the past for the present, a new field opens before me. There are two impressions which are fixed upon my mind as to the leading characteristics of the people among whom I have passed, as the almanac informs me, but two short months. On the one hand I see that everything seems to be fermenting and growing, changing, perplexing, bewildering. In that memorable hour—memorable in the life of every man, memorable as when he sees the first view of the Pyramids, or of the snow-clad range of the Alps—in the hour when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, silent, majestic, immovable. In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American destiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the distractions of the present—a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which characterize you both as individuals and as a nation.

You may remember Wordsworth's fine lines on "Yarrow Unvisited," "Yarrow Visited," and "Yarrow Revisited." "America Unvisited"—that is now for me a vision of the past; that fabulous America, in which, before they come to your shores, Englishmen believe Pennsylvania to be the capital of Massachusetts, and Chicago to be a few miles from New York—that has now passed away from my mind forever. "America Visited"; this, with its historic scenes and its endless suggestions of thought, has taken the place of that fictitious region. Whether there will ever be an "America Revisited" I cannot say; but if there should be, it will then be to me not the land of the Pilgrim Fathers and Washington, so much as the land of kindly homes, and enduring friendships, and happy recollections, which have now endeared it to me. One feature of this visit I fear I cannot hope to see repeated, yet one without which it could never have been accomplished. My two friends, to whom such a pleasing reference has been made by Dr. Adams, who have made the task easy for me which else would have been impossible; who have lightened every anxiety; who have watched over me with such vigilant care that I have not been allowed to touch more than two dollars in the whole course of my journey—they, perchance, may not share in "America Revisited." But if ever such should be my own good fortune, I shall remember it as the land which I visited with them; where, if at first they were welcomed to your homes for my sake, I have often felt as the days rolled on that I was welcomed for their sake. And you will remember them. When in after years you read at the end of some elaborate essay on the history of music or on Biblical geography the name of George Grove, you will recall with pleasure the incessant questionings, the eager desire for knowledge, the wide and varied capacity for all manner of instruction, which you experienced in your conversations with him here. And when also hereafter there shall reach to your shores the fame of the distinguished physician, Dr. Harper, whether in England or in New Zealand, you will be the more rejoiced because it will bring before you the memory of the youthful and blooming student who inspected your hospitals with such keen appreciation, so impartially sifting the good from the evil.

I part from you with the conviction that such bonds of kindly intercourse will cement the union between the two countries even more than the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in England that my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field, passes his mysterious existence appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in London and in New York. Of that unbroken union there seemed to me a likeness, when on the beautiful shores of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of America, I saw a maple and an oak-tree growing together from the same stem, perhaps from the same root—the brilliant fiery maple, the emblem of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may the two nations always rise together, so different each from each, and representing so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful sap, and the same vigorous growth.



HENRY MORTON STANLEY

THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT

[Speech of Henry M. Stanley at a dinner given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 27, 1886. Whitelaw Reid, President of the Lotos Club, in welcoming Mr. Stanley, said: "Well, gentlemen, your alarm of yesterday and last night was needless. The Atlantic Ocean would not break even a dinner engagement for the man whom the terrors of the Congo and the Nile could not turn back, and your guest is here. [Applause.] It is fourteen years since you last gave him welcome. Then he came to you fresh from the discovery of Livingstone. The credulity which even doubted the records of that adventurous march or the reality of his brilliant result had hardly died out. Our young correspondent, after seeing the war end here without his having a fair chance to win his spurs, had suddenly made a wonderful hit out of the expedition which nobody had really believed in and most people had laughed at. We were proud of him, and right glad to see him, and a little bit uneasy, but vastly amused over his peppery dealings with the Royal Geographers. [Laughter.] In spite of our admiration for his pluck and his luck we did not take him quite seriously. [Laughter.] In fact we did not take anything very seriously in those days. The Lotos Club at first was younger in that hearty enthusiastic reception to Stanley fourteen years ago in that gay little clubhouse next to the Academy of Music; we were thinking far more of a hearty greeting to the comrade of the quill who had been having a hard time but had scored 'a big beat' [laughter] than of adequate recognition to the man already well launched on a career that ranks him among the foremost explorers of the century. [Loud cheers.] It is the character in which you must welcome him now. The Royal Geographical Society has no further doubt as to the credit to which he is entitled. He brings its diploma of honorary membership ["Hear! Hear!"], he bears the gold medal of Victor Emmanuel, the decorations of the Khedive, the commission of the King of the Belgians. More than any of them he cherishes another distinction—what American would not prize it?—the vote of thanks of the Legislature and the recognition of his work by our Government. The young war-correspondent has led expeditions of his own—the man who set out merely to find Livingstone, has himself done a work greater than Livingstone's. [Applause.] He has explored Equatorial Africa, penetrated the Dark Continent from side to side, mapped the Nile, and founded the Free State on the Congo.' [Applause.] All honor to our returning guest! The years have left their marks upon his frame and their honors upon his name. Let us make him forget the fevers that have parched him, the wild beasts and the more savage men that have pursued him. ["Hear! Hear!"] He is once more among the friends of his youth, in the land of his adoption. Let us make him feel at home. [Applause.] I give you the health of our friend and comrade."]