Part 4

“But you have not given me a toast. In the absence of a toast, it seems to me that there is nothing to speak of but this club and myself, which reminds me of a talk that took place between Johnson and Boswell. At the end of a long conversation between these two men, Johnson remarked: ‘You seem to have nothing to talk about except yourself and me, and I am sick of both.’ (Laughter.) You will probably have observed that I have a cold in my throat. But it is not a campaign cold. It is like one that a man had whom I met in Arkansas, who had a sore throat, and who, when his wife asked him how he got it, said it was due to a sudden change. He had been eating flannel cakes, and suddenly changed to buckwheat. Probably the easiest thing for me to have given you to-night was one of my campaign speeches, a little altered, so as to bring it up to date. That would have reminded you of the story of the Scotchman who was riding on the railroad from Perth to Inverness, and who was chewing his ticket in his mouth. A friend who was with him said: ‘You are very extravagant to be chewing up a ticket that cost twelve shillings and sixpence.’

“‘Nay, mon,’ he replied, ‘it is a limited ticket, and I am only sucking off the date.’ (Laughter.)

“What I like about the Lotus Club is the good fellowship that pervades here. Here the moose-hunter of the North meets the alligator-hunter of the South, and the man who goes tobogganing in the North meets the man who goes coon-hunting in the South. We have dined here great statesmen, authors, soldiers, divines, scientists, and men of art, recognizing equally all branches of art, knowing that all those branches are children of the same God. Men of learned professions, great leaders in business affairs, have been dined here, and many sojourners of other countries have been sent on their way rejoicing. The welcome you have given to me in this club and the fellowship extended to me have touched my heart to its innermost depths.

“And I want to express my deepest sense of gratitude and appreciation. But, alas! my lips can coin no phrases which can repay to you the debt of gratitude I owe to every one here. I shall carry the recollection of this club as one of the pleasantest of my remembrances as long as life shall last, and when life is approaching its end I know I shall, for one, indulge in those reveries which are the glorious twilight of the soul. And, sitting by the hearth fire, I shall watch the droppings of the grains of sand in the great hour-glass and count the beads of memory. And I shall see reflected in the flames of the yule-log the faces passing in review before me of all whom I have met in this club. It will recall to mind all those with whom I have communed here, heart to heart and soul to soul. Some of them may have been buried under distant sods, some may have found graves in the depths of the ocean, and there are others who may not yet have joined the vast army of the dead, but all their faces will pass, as I have said, in review before me, and I know I will find myself whispering: ‘Such faces were always the most precious to me.’” (Prolonged applause.)

Col. Robert G. Ingersoll was without doubt one of the greatest popular orators of the age. He never received the full credit due to his great success as an orator during his lifetime, as his vehement assaults on the Christian religion aroused so many and such powerful enmities. But without regarding his creed, judging him solely by his power as an orator, no nation can to-day produce his equal. There was poetry, wit, humor, sarcasm, and tenderest pathos in nearly every lecture he delivered, whether on religion or politics.

Colonel Ingersoll was not invited by the lyceums to lecture in their regular courses, but his fame was so great that he did not need their aid in getting audiences. Whenever he wanted to lecture he sent out an agent, “hired a hall,” and lectured at his own risk, and, almost always, when in large cities, to his own pecuniary benefit. In the smaller towns the church influence was always too much for him, and it did not pay him to lecture in such places.

While coming from New England one day with Mr. Beecher, Colonel Ingersoll was in the same car. After a pleasant salutation between the two, the Colonel went to his seat. In his mischievous way Mr. Beecher said, “I have written that man’s epitaph.” He showed me written on the margin of a newspaper, with his pencil, two words: “_Robert Burns_.”

Frederick Douglass for two or three decades was one of the favorites of the lyceum, which he abandoned only after the emancipation of his race. Douglass was beyond all comparison the ablest man whom the black race ever produced in our country, either among the pure black or the class of mixed blood. He himself was a mulatto. His father was pure white of a distinguished Maryland family. His mother was pure black and his father’s slave--that is, his mother was a pure black and his father a pure--I should say impure--white. He always gave his mother the credit of his talents. Douglass was born a slave. In early manhood he managed to escape on a ship, and landed in New Bedford, Mass. There he soon learned to read, and worked at such work as he could find. By and by he attended anti-slavery meetings, and soon became a popular speaker and the pet of the abolitionists. His graphic accounts of his life as a slave were very popular.

From giving the story of his life, he gradually branched out into discussions of the political questions of the day, and, next to Phillips, was probably the ablest orator of the anti-slavery movement. Eventually he went to Rochester and published, for many years, a weekly antislavery paper. Its title was _Frederick Douglass’s Paper_, which, next to Garrison’s _Liberator_ and _The Anti-Slavery Standard_, was recognized as the ablest anti-slavery paper in America. Then he became a lecturer, and his fame spread so rapidly that he took rank in the favor of the lecture-going public with Phillips and the other leading lights of the lyceum. When Lincoln came into power, Douglass moved to Washington, and was appointed to office in the District of Columbia as Marshal, a position he held during the entire period of Lincoln’s administration.

Douglass’s first wife was a plantation negress without any education. A few years ago he married again. His second wife was white, and a woman of education and ability. The black race has developed under freedom many effective speakers, but Douglass was the only man among them who deserved to be regarded as a real orator. Most of the negro speakers were really benefited in public esteem on account of their color--that is, they could not have had as good a reputation as they won if they had been white, for their audiences made excuses for them that they would not have made for a white man. But Douglass was retarded by his color, for he would have won a higher rank if he had been a white man.

After hearing Douglass and Anna Dickinson speak at the first Southern Loyalist Convention at Philadelphia, John Minor Botts, the famous Virginian political leader, said:

“To-day I have heard the greatest white woman and the greatest colored orator in America. I tell you, sir, if Douglass had been a white man he would have been regarded as one of the greatest men in America.”

“Well, sir,” was the reply of his Northern listener, “we regard him as one of the greatest men in our country, even though he is a colored man.”

In Janesville, Wis., Sol Hudson, proprietor of the American House, would not allow Douglass in the dining-room. The Water Witch Engine Co., under whose auspices Douglass had been engaged to lecture, got out a hose cart and engine and were going to wash out the place. Mr. Douglass came out on the porch and said:

“Go back. Don’t blame the man. He is not to blame.”

He made a plea there that put us all to shame.

After accepting office, Douglass virtually retired from the lecture field, and whenever he appeared in public made Republican speeches.

Mr. Douglass died in Washington, December 10, 1895.

Booker T. Washington is another great black man who has developed under freedom. He is principal and founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Ala., in the Black Belt, where the colored people outnumber the white three to one.

Mr. Washington, in his speech at the opening of the Atlanta Exposition, September 18, 1895, it is believed by many, solved the race problem. His address was one of the most notable speeches both as to character and the warmth of its reception ever delivered to a Southern audience, and was favorably commented on editorially by every newspaper in the South. Born a slave, he occupies a place among the foremost men of the age.

At the Home Missionary Meeting of the Presbyterians in Carnegie Hall, New York, March 3, 1896, where President Cleveland presided, and where many of the greatest preachers and pulpit orators took part, this modest, unassuming negro of the South was the lion of the evening, next to the President. He was a revelation to the people of the North. He has fire and magnetism and gifts of oratory which few of our Northern orators possess, whether they be black or white. He speaks with force and conviction and leaves an indelible impression on the minds of his hearers.

The President’s visit to Tuskegee on Friday, November 16, 1898, was as delightful an occasion as any of the numerous events in Atlanta. Its significance is perceived by all, but it was emphasized when Secretary Long, in an impromptu speech in the school chapel, called attention to the striking spectacle presented by “the trinity seated on the platform, the notable conjunction in that State, of its Governor, the President of the nation, and Booker T. Washington seated together.”

It is not too much to say that one of the chief objects of President McKinley’s tour in the South on that occasion was the visit which he made to the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institution.

The President made there the longest speech of the tour.

He and his party were met at the station by the mayor and town council of Tuskegee and the trustees of the school, and were driven through the town to the school.

A few minutes were spent in driving over the grounds, after which the party, from a grand stand, viewed a general exhibition of school work on floats, carried on wagons.

All the visitors to Tuskegee went away with the memory of a few hours wholly bright with simple, cordial welcome and the evidences that long strides in the right direction toward the solution of the negro problem have been taken here.

At the opening meeting in the chapel of the institution were crowded together the students of the school, the negroes of the vicinity, the white people of the town, and members of the Georgia legislature.

Mr. Washington, in a short speech which he made before asking Governor Johnston to introduce the President, said:

“In the presence of the chief magistrate of the nation, I am glad to testify that in our efforts to teach our people to put brains and skill and dignity into the common occupations of life, we have not only the active help of all classes of citizens in the little town of Tuskegee, but of the best people of the South. Said our present Governor, in his recent message to the legislature: ‘Every dollar given to the cause of education becomes invested capital that cannot be lost or destroyed, but will continue to pay dividends from one generation to another.’ These are the words, this is the spirit, that governs the actions of the present Governor of Alabama, and I am sure that no one can more fitly welcome our distinguished guest to the State than Governor Johnston.”

Mr. Washington is a star lyceum lecturer when he can afford the time, but he devotes nearly his entire time and gives all his earnings to the institute, and is able through his persuasive powers to secure from rich contributors far more money than the largest pay audiences would yield. Still, many of our first-class lecture courses are able to secure him, and invariably with handsome profit.

PREACHERS

Henry Ward Beecher was my nearest and dearest friend for eleven years. Excepting only Arizona and New Mexico, there was not a State or Territory in the Union in which we had not travelled together. In sunshine and in storm, by night, by day, by every conceivable mode of travel, in special Pullman cars, the regular passenger trains, mixed trains, freight trains, on steamboats and rowboats, by stage and on the backs of mules, I had journeyed at his side. I was near him in the days of 1875-77, at the time of his deepest sorrow, when he was reviled and spit upon; I saw the majestic courage with which he passed through gaping crowds at railroad stations, and at the entrances of hotels and public halls--a courage which I had not conceived mere humanity could possess. I have looked upon him when I felt that I would give my poor life a thousand times could that sacrifice alleviate the mental sufferings that I knew he was undergoing. There were times when it seemed as though he must give way; times when I was the only friend within his reach, and he sought refuge near and with me. It was thus that he came to love and trust me, and that my love and veneration for him became so strong that to lose him left me like a ship without a helm or a commander.

Especially during those three darkest years was he the subject of my sad admiration. Often have I seen him on our entering a strange town hooted at by a swarming crowd and greeted with indecent salutations. On such occasions he would pass on, seemingly unmoved, to his hotel, and remain there until the hour for his public appearance; then, confronted by great throngs, he would lift up his voice, always for humanity and godliness. He always saw and seized the opportunity to speak to the whole great people, and after he had spoken, the assemblages would linger to draw near, seemingly to touch the hem of his garments, to greet the man whom they had so lately despised. How changed I have often seen the public attitude toward him when he left a town to which he had come but the day before! Thus he went from city to city, making friends and advocates of all who heard or met him, and thus for eleven years was it my delight to accompany him in his work of re-establishing himself in that love and confidence of the people from which unprincipled enemies and an often merciless press had attempted to thrust him out forever.

I thank God that it was my privilege to attend his fortunes to the end, and to see and to hear, on both sides of the continent and on both sides of the ocean, demonstrations of love and confidence that came at length in so unsullied and vast a stream from the church, his friends, his country, and his race, toward him who had brought many thousands of them much nearer than they had been to the common Master of us all.

John Bright told me that Henry Ward Beecher was the greatest orator who spoke the English tongue. When Beecher came to Plymouth Church, in 1847, he was thirty-four years of age, strong and rugged in health, unconventional in manners, but never ungentlemanly. In his free, brusque address and direct approach he was different from more polished clergymen, and no man ever lived more directly under the public gaze than did Mr. Beecher for forty years; his life was seen and read by all men,--his public life,--but few have known of his domestic gentleness and invariable sweetness of nature. He was the centre of loving hearts. Strong and powerful as he knew he was, to those he loved he was as gentle as a mother. As to enmities, he had none, and he hardly knew he had enemies. He was the most joyous, radiantly happy man that ever lived.

I remember saying to him one day after I had seen him walking arm in arm with a man who had injured him, who had been abusing him: “I think you are carrying the doctrine of forgiveness too far.”

He said: “Pond, can we go further than to bless those who curse us, and pray for those who despitefully use us? Ah, there is so little known of the spirit of Christ in the world that when a man is trying feebly and afar off to follow Him, even Christians do not understand it.”

No answer could be made to such reasoning, and friends knew and learned from him what was meant by being a Christian. His theory was that as a son of God and in unison with his Father, he had a right to happiness, and this right he would allow no man or set of men to take from him.

He had, as I can bear witness, the power of abstraction, by which he could put away all thoughts of care and trouble, and rise to a higher atmosphere where the heavens were blue and unclouded, while his eyes and ears seemed closed to all lower considerations. To those nearest to him at these times this power seemed almost superhuman.

From my earliest recollection, in our log cabin on the frontier of Wisconsin, the name of Dr. Lyman Beecher was a household word. One day--I think it was in the summer of 1846--my mother was reading a paper that some friend had sent from the East containing a sermon by Henry Ward Beecher, a young son of Lyman Beecher, pastor of a new church in Indianapolis, in which the young man had dared to denounce slavery. Garrison, Thurlow Weed, Phillips, Beecher, Theodore Parker, Finney, were names as familiar to me in boyhood as those of my own relatives. Then came the Kansas conflict, Captain John Brown, and Sharp’s rifles (known as Beecher Bibles).

Educated, trained, and a participant in those early conflicts in Kansas, as I was, with the name of Beecher as a beacon light, one may perhaps be able to realize my feelings of reverence and awe for this great man when I met him for the first time in Brooklyn, in his own house, in April, 1875. I never had experienced such a feeling before. My lips trembled, my tongue seemed paralyzed, my throat clogged, my eyes flooded. I was helpless; I was joyous; so filled to overflowing with something that I must have made a fool of myself. Holding fast to my hand, Mr. Beecher walked over to the sofa in the parlor, set me down, and began questioning me about James Redpath, who had owned the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, in Boston, and for whom Mr. Beecher had lectured. I told him that Mr. Redpath had gone out of the business and had returned to journalism in New York, and that Mr. Hathaway and I had bought out the concern; that a number of engagements for him to lecture had been indefinitely postponed the season before, with a promise on his (Mr. Beecher’s) part that new dates should be given the management as soon as he himself could forecast his own time. Nearly a year had passed, and these people were waiting.

To make a long story short, the time was arranged for, and new dates for New England, to begin Monday, April 18, 1875, in New London, Conn. This was the first lecture given by Mr. Beecher under my auspices. From that time until February, 1887, three weeks before his death, Mr. Beecher and I travelled together nearly 300,000 miles. He lectured 1261 times for me.

On many of our lecture tours we were favored with Mrs. Beecher’s companionship. Mr. and Mrs. Beecher were both good travellers--never the slightest trouble. They carried their own hand baggage, and would allow no outsider to touch it. One little journey we made together, a sort of “vacation excursion.” Mr. Beecher delivered seventy-five lectures on that little circuit of the continent, preached sixteen sermons, many of them in Plymouth churches, and travelled 17,000 miles.

I cannot undertake to give a connected, chronological account of even a part of my wonderful experiences with Mr. Beecher. I have simply selected here and there an episode which will serve to illustrate some characteristic of the man I knew.

We had returned from Mr. Beecher’s first visit to Nashville and Memphis, in May, 1879. It had been a short tour of unusual interest to him; he had never before been south of Mason and Dixon’s line, except for a single night in Richmond, Va., in 1877. I accompanied him on the tour, and to his first Friday evening prayer-meeting in Plymouth Church after our return, for I was quite certain his people were to be treated to some interesting comments on our journey. I asked Mr. Ellingwood (Mr. Beecher’s stenographer) to take down the “talk” and write it out for me privately, which he did, and here it is--the first time it has ever seen the light of day:

* * * * *

NOTE.--This reproduction is from the last photograph Mr. Beecher ever had taken. It was made by Elliot & Fry in London, September, 1886. As he started to leave the gallery, he said to me: “Now, sir, I am ready to be led to the next block for slaughter.” He was looking me squarely in the eye as he spoke. The photographer said: “Stand right where you are, just a moment, Mr. Beecher.” He shifted his apparatus and caught this picture.

J. B. POND.

* * * * *

“After the war, for the first time in my life it seemed to me that it was possible for me to visit the Southern portion of my native land. There had always been a sting in the thought that I, a citizen of the United States, who if need be would lay down his life for his country, could not cross Mason and Dixon’s line with any certainty of coming back, and that my name was a name to conjure with and bring up evil spirits. It had always hurt my pride of patriotism that I, a loyal and freedom-loving man, could not go where I pleased on this continent, that I could not go into any of thirteen or fourteen of these United States. I had feared that I should die without the sight.

“I did not know how the change was to be brought about, but I believed that there would be emancipation; that the conscience of mankind would slowly unfold and work in secret ways toward liberty, and that in the remote future free labor, applied to the raising of cotton and sugar, would compete in the market with slave labor and lead to abolition. That was my theory; but the Lord cut it short in righteousness; He severed the Gordian knot with the sword; this country was made free from end to end; and ever since I have said within myself, ‘Before I die I hope to tread the soil of every State in this Union.’ And now I have actually been away down South.

“I went first to Nashville--a beautiful city. The Fisk University, one of the marvels of the world, is there. It is really a very remarkable building, and it is very nobly manned. The whole of it has been sung into existence by men and women that had been in slavery. And, do you know, they look upon you at this church as being the author of their success. For you will recollect that the ‘Jubilee Singers’ came here impoverished and discouraged, hoping that they might raise a little money by singing. They were hardly able to meet their expenses in getting here. In this lecture-room, on a Friday evening, they were asked to sing some of their songs; and you said, after hearing them, ‘Those songs must be heard in the great church’; and when Sunday came they sang there; the fire was kindled, and invitations came in to them to sing in other places. Dr. Cuyler opened his church for them, and other churches were opened. Then they began to have calls from New England; and finally they went abroad. The result was that they earned over $200,000 singing through America, England, Germany, and France; and they have built with their breath that great collegiate institution, where five hundred of their kind are being instructed.

“Talk about old Rome, her achievements and her cathedrals. They are grand; but I will point to the rearing of the Fisk University by ex-slaves and their singing, and say, ‘It is the most wonderful thing that has yet been done in architecture.’