Chapter 4

that makes a character makes foes" [Edward Young]. Turning to Dr. Wayland, Mr. Bliss said: "Our sister, the New England Society of Philadelphia, to-night sends us greeting in the person of her honored President, whom I have the pleasure of presenting to you." The eloquence of Dr. Wayland was loudly applauded; and Chauncey M. Depew declared that he had heard one of the best speeches to which he had ever listened at a New England dinner.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For one thing, it seems to me, we are hated because of our virtues; we are ostracized because men are tired of hearing about "New England, the good." The virtues of New England seem to italicize the moral poverty of mankind at large. The fact that the very first act of our foremothers, even before the landing was made, two hundred and sixty-nine years ago, was to go on shore and do up the household linen, which had suffered from the voyage of ninety days, is a perpetual reproof to those nations among whom there is a great opening for soap, who have a great many saints' days, but no washing day. [Laughter and applause.] When men nowadays are disposed to steal a million acres from the Indians, it detracts from their enjoyment to read what Governor Josiah Winslow wrote in _1676_: "I think I can clearly say that, before the present troubles broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors." When our fellow-citizens of other States look at their public buildings, every stone in which tells of unpaid loans; when they remember how they have scaled and scaled the unfortunate people who were guilty of the crime of having money to lend, until the creditors might be considered obnoxious to the Mosaic law, which looked with disfavor upon scaleless fish, it is naturally aggravating to them to remember that, at the close of King Philip's war, Plymouth Colony was owing a debt more than equal to the personal property of the colony, and that the debt was paid to the last cent [applause]; to remember the time, not very far gone by, when the Bay State paid the interest on her bonds in gold, though it cost her two hundred and seventy-six cents on every dollar to do it, and when it was proposed to commend the bonds of the United States to the bankers of the world by placing upon them the indorsement of Massachusetts [applause]; to remember that never has New England learned to articulate the letters that spell the word "Repudiation." [Great applause.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DANIEL WEBSTER

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION

[Speech of Daniel Webster at the dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1850. The early published form of this address is very rare. It bears the following title-page: "Speech of Mr. Webster at the Celebration of the New York New England Society, December 23, 1850. Washington: printed by Gideon & Co., 1851." The presiding officer of the celebration, Moses H. Grinnell, asked attention of the company to a toast not on the catalogue. He gave, "The Constitution and the Union, and their Chief Defender." This sentiment was received with great applause, which became most tumultuous when Mr. Webster rose to respond.]

MR. PRESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW YORK NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--Ye sons of New England! Ye brethren of the kindred tie! I have come hither to-night, not without some inconvenience, that I might behold a congregation whose faces bear lineaments of a New England origin, and whose hearts beat with full New England pulsations. [Cheers.] I willingly make the sacrifice. I am here, to meet this assembly of the great off-shoot of the Pilgrim Society of Massachusetts, the Pilgrim Society of New York. And, gentlemen, I shall begin what I have to say, which is but little, by tendering to you my thanks for the invitation extended to me, and by wishing you, one and all, every kind of happiness and prosperity.

Gentlemen, this has been a stormy, a cold, a boisterous and inclement day. The winds have been harsh, the skies have been severe; and if we had no houses over our heads; if we had no shelter against this howling and freezing tempest; if we were wan and worn out; if half of us were sick and tired, and ready to descend into the grave; if we were on the bleak coast of Plymouth, houseless, homeless, with nothing over our heads but the Heavens, and that God who sits above the Heavens; if we had distressed wives on our arms, and hungry and shivering children clinging to our skirts, we should see something, and feel something, of that scene, which, in the providence of God, was enacted at Plymouth on December 22, 1620.

Thanks to Almighty God, who from that distressed, early condition of our fathers, has raised us to a height of prosperity and of happiness, which they neither enjoyed, nor could have anticipated! We have learned much of them; they could have foreseen little of us. Would to God, my friends, would to God, that when we carry our affections and our recollections back to that period, we could arm ourselves with something of the stern virtues which supported them, in that hour of peril, and exposure, and suffering. Would to God that we possessed that unconquerable resolution, stronger than bars of brass or iron, which nerved their hearts; that patience, "sovereign o'er transmuted ill," and, above all, that faith, that religious faith, which, with eyes fast fixed upon Heaven, tramples all things earthly beneath her triumphant feet! [Applause.]

Gentlemen, the scenes of this world change. What our ancestors saw and felt, we shall not see nor feel. What they achieved, it is denied to us even to attempt. The severer duties of life, requiring the exercise of the stern and unbending virtues, were theirs. They were called upon for the exhibition of those austere qualities, which, before they came to the Western wilderness, had made them what they were. Things have changed. In the progress of society, the fashions, the habits of life, and all its conditions, have changed. Their rigid sentiments, and their tenets, apparently harsh and exclusive, we are not called on, in every respect, to imitate or commend; or rather to imitate, for we should commend them always, when we consider that state of society in which they had been adopted, and in which they seemed necessary. Our fathers had that religious sentiment, that trust in Providence, that determination to do right, and to seek, through every degree of toil and suffering, the honor of God, and the preservation of their liberties, which we shall do well to cherish, to imitate, and to equal, so far as God may enable us. It may be true, and it is true, that in the progress of society the milder virtues have come to belong more especially to our day and our condition. The Pilgrims had been great sufferers from intolerance; it was not unnatural that their own faith and practice, as a consequence, should become somewhat intolerant. This is the common infirmity of human nature. Man retaliates on man. It is to be hoped, however, that the greater spread of the benignant principles of religion, and of the divine charity of Christianity, has, to some extent, improved the sentiments which prevailed in the world at that time. No doubt the "first comers," as they were called, were attached to their own forms of public worship and to their own particular and strongly cherished religious sentiments. No doubt they esteemed those sentiments, and the observances which they practised, to be absolutely binding on all, by the authority of the word of God. It is true, I think, in the general advancement of human intelligence, that we find what they do not seem to have found, that a greater toleration of religious opinion, a more friendly feeling toward all who profess reverence for God, and obedience to His commands, is not inconsistent with the great and fundamental principles of religion--I might rather say is, itself, one of those fundamental principles. So we see in our day, I think, without any departure from the essential principles of our fathers, a more enlarged and comprehensive Christian philanthropy. It seems to be the American destiny, the mission which God has intrusted to us here on this shore of the Atlantic, the great conception and the great duty to which we are born, to show that all sects, and all denominations, professing reverence for the authority of the Author of our being, and belief in His Revelations, may be safely tolerated without prejudice either to our religion or to our liberties. [Cheers.]

We are Protestants, generally speaking; but you all know that there presides at the head of the Supreme Judicature of the United States a Roman Catholic; and no man, I suppose, through the whole United States, imagines that the judicature of the country is less safe, that the administration of public justice is less respectable or less secure, because the Chief Justice of the United States has been, and is, an ardent adherent to that religion. And so it is in every department of society amongst us. In both Houses of Congress, in all public offices, and all public affairs, we proceed on the idea that a man's religious belief is a matter above human law; that it is a question to be settled between him and his Maker, because he is responsible to none but his Maker for adopting or rejecting revealed truth. And here is the great distinction which is sometimes overlooked, and which I am afraid is now too often overlooked, in this land, the glorious inheritance of the sons of the Pilgrims. Men, for their religious sentiments, are accountable to God, and to God only. Religion is both a communication and a tie between man and his Maker; and to his own master every man standeth or falleth. But when men come together in society, establish social relations, and form governments for the protection of the rights of all, then it is indispensable that this right of private judgment should in some measure be relinquished and made subservient to the judgment of the whole. Religion may exist while every man is left responsible only to God. Society, civil rule, the civil state, cannot exist, while every man is responsible to nobody and to nothing but to his own opinion. And our New England ancestors understood all this quite well. Gentlemen, there is the "Constitution" which was adopted on board the Mayflower in November, 1620, while that bark of immortal memory was riding at anchor in the harbor of Cape Cod. What is it? Its authors honored God; they professed to obey all His commandments, and to live ever and in all things in His obedience. But they say, nevertheless, that for the establishment of a civil polity, for the greater security and preservation of their civil rights and liberties, they agree that the laws and ordinances, and I am glad they put in the word "constitutions," invoking the name of the Deity on their resolution; they say, that these laws and ordinances, and constitutions, which may be established by those they should appoint to enact them, they, in all due submission and obedience, will support.

This constitution is not long. I will read it. It invokes a religious sanction and the authority of God on their civil obligations; for it was no doctrine of theirs that civil obedience was a mere matter of expediency. Here it is:

"In the name of God, Amen: We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, and Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the heathen parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid, and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."

The right of private judgment in matters between the Creator and himself, and submission and obedience to the will of the whole, upon whatsoever respects civil polity and the administration of such affairs as concerned the colony about to be established, they regarded as entirely consistent; and the common sense of mankind, lettered and unlettered, everywhere establishes and confirms this sentiment. Indeed, all must see, that it is the very ligament, the very tie, which connects man to man, in the social system; and these sentiments are embodied in that constitution. Gentlemen, discourse on this topic might be enlarged, but I pass from it.

Gentlemen, we are now two hundred and thirty years from that great event. There is the Mayflower [pointing to a small figure of a ship, in the form of confectionery, that stood before him]. There is a little resemblance, but a correct one, of the Mayflower. Sons of New England! there was in ancient times a ship that carried Jason to the acquisition of the Golden Fleece. There was a flag-ship at the battle of Actium which made Augustus Cæsar master of the world. In modern times, there have been flag-ships which have carried Hawkes, and Howe, and Nelson on the other continent, and Hull, and Decatur, and Stewart, on this, to triumph. What are they all; what are they all, in the chance of remembrance among men, to that little bark, the Mayflower, which reached these shores on December 22, 1620. Yes, brethren of New England, yes! that Mayflower was a flower destined to be of perpetual bloom! [Cheers.] Its verdure will stand the sultry blasts of summer, and the chilling winds of autumn. It will defy winter; it will defy all climate, and all time, and will continue to spread its petals to the world, and to exhale an ever-living odor and fragrance to the last syllable of recorded time. [Cheers.]

Gentlemen, brethren, ye of New England! whom I have come some hundreds of miles to meet this night, let me present to you one of the most distinguished of those personages who came hither on the deck of the Mayflower. Let me fancy that I now see Elder William Brewster entering the door at the further end of this hall. A tall and erect figure, of plain dress, of no elegance of manner beyond a respectful bow, mild and cheerful, but of no merriment that reaches beyond a smile. Let me suppose that his image stood now before us, or that it was looking in upon this assembly.

"Are ye, are ye," he would say, with a voice of exultation, and yet softened with melancholy, "Are ye our children? Does this scene of refinement, of elegance, of riches, of luxury, does all this come from our labors? Is this magnificent city, the like of which we never saw nor heard of on either continent, is this but an offshoot from Plymouth Rock?

"'... Quis jam locus ... Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?'

"Is this one part of the great reward, for which my brethren and myself endured lives of toil and of hardship? We had faith and hope. God granted us the spirit to look forward, and we did look forward. But this scene we never anticipated. Our hopes were on another life. Of earthly gratifications we tasted little; for human honors we had little expectation. Our bones lie on the hill in Plymouth churchyard, obscure, unmarked, secreted to preserve our graves from the knowledge of savage foes. No stone tells where we lie. And yet, let me say to you, who are our descendants, who possess this glorious country, and all it contains, who enjoy this hour of prosperity, and the thousand blessings showered upon it by the God of your fathers, we envy you not; we reproach you not. Be rich, be prosperous, be enlightened. Live in pleasure, if such be your allotment on earth; but live, also, always to God and to duty. Spread yourselves and your children over the continent; accomplish the whole of your great destiny; and if so be, that through the whole you carry Puritan hearts with you; if you still cherish an undying love of civil and religious liberty, and mean to enjoy them yourselves, and are willing to shed your heart's blood to transmit them to your posterity, then are you worthy descendants of Carver and Allerton and Bradford, and the rest of those who landed from stormy seas on the rock of Plymouth." [Loud and prolonged cheers.]

Gentlemen, that little vessel, on December 22, 1620, made her safe landing on the shore of Plymouth. She had been tossed on a tempestuous ocean; she approached the New England coast under circumstances of great distress and trouble; yet amidst all the disasters of her voyage, she accomplished her end, and she placed the feet of a hundred precious souls on the shore of the New World.

Gentlemen, let her be considered this night as an emblem of New England, as New England now is. New England is a ship, stanch, strong, well-built, and particularly well-manned. She may be occasionally thrown into the trough of the sea, by the violence of winds and waves, and may wallow there for a time; but, depend upon it, she will right herself. She will, ere long, come round to the wind, and will obey her helm. [Cheers and applause.]

We have hardly begun, my brethren, to realize the vast importance, on human society, and on the history and happiness of the world, of the voyage of that little vessel which brought the love of civil and religious liberty hither, and the Bible, the Word of God, for the instruction of the future generations of men. We have hardly begun to realize the consequences of that voyage. Heretofore the extension of our race, following our New England ancestry, has crept along the shore. But now the race has extended. It has crossed the continent. It has not only transcended the Alleghany, but has capped the Rocky Mountains. It is now upon the shores of the Pacific; and on this day, or if not on this day, then this day twelvemonth, descendants of New England will there celebrate the landing--[A Voice: "To-day; they celebrate to-day."]

God bless them! Here's to the health and success of the California Society of Pilgrims assembled on the shores of the Pacific. [Prolonged applause.] And it shall yet go hard, if the three hundred millions of people of China--if they are intelligent enough to understand anything--shall not one day hear and know something of the Rock of Plymouth too! [Laughter and cheers.]

But, gentlemen, I am trespassing too long on your time. [Cries of "No, no! Go on!"] I am taking too much of what belongs to others. My voice is neither a new voice, nor is it the voice of a young man. It has been heard before in this place, and the most that I have thought or felt concerning New England history and New England principles, has been before, in the course of my life, said here or elsewhere.

Your sentiment, Mr. President, which called me up before this meeting, is of a larger and more comprehensive nature. It speaks of the Constitution under which we live; of the Union, which for sixty years has been over us, and made us associates, fellow-citizens of those who settled at Yorktown and the mouth of the Mississippi and their descendants, and now, at last, of those who have come from all corners of the earth and assembled in California. I confess I have had my doubts whether the republican system under which we live could be so vastly extended without danger of dissolution. Thus far, I willingly admit, my apprehensions have not been realized. The distance is immense; the intervening country is vast. But the principle on which our Government is established, the representative system, seems to be indefinitely expansive; and wherever it does extend, it seems to create a strong attachment to the Union and the Constitution that protects it. I believe California and New Mexico have had new life inspired into all their people. They consider themselves subjects of a new being, a new creation, a new existence. They are not the men they thought themselves to be, now that they find they are members of this great Government, and hailed as citizens of the United States of America. I hope, in the providence of God, as this system of States and representative governments shall extend, that it will be strengthened. In some respects the tendency is to strengthen it. Local agitations will disturb it less. If there has been on the Atlantic coast, somewhere south of the Potomac--and I will not define further where it is--if there has been dissatisfaction, that dissatisfaction has not been felt in California; it has not been felt that side the Rocky Mountains. It is a localism, and I am one of those who believe that our system of government is not to be destroyed by localisms, North or South! [Cheers.] No; we have our private opinions, State prejudices, local ideas; but over all, submerging all, drowning all, is that great sentiment, that always, and nevertheless, we are all Americans. It is as Americans that we are known, the whole world over. Who asks what State you are from, in Europe, or in Africa, or in Asia? Is he an American--is he of us? Does he belong to the flag of the country? Does that flag protect him? Does he rest under the eagle and the Stars and Stripes? If he does, if he is, all else is subordinate and worthy of little concern. [Cheers.]

Now it is our duty, while we live on the earth, to cherish this sentiment, to make it prevail over the whole country, even if that country should spread over the whole continent. It is our duty to carry English principles--I mean, sir [said Mr. Webster turning to Sir Henry Bulwer], Anglo-Saxon American principles, over the whole continent--the great principles of Magna Charta, of the English revolution, and especially of the American Revolution, and of the English language. Our children will hear Shakespeare and Milton recited on the shores of the Pacific. Nay, before that, American ideas, which are essentially and originally English ideas, will penetrate the Mexican--the Spanish mind; and Mexicans and Spaniards will thank God that they have been brought to know something of civil liberty, of the trial by jury, and of security for personal rights.

As for the rest, let us take courage. The day-spring from on high has visited us; the country has been called back, to conscience and to duty. There is no longer imminent danger of dissolution in these United States. [Loud and repeated cheers.] We shall live, and not die. We shall live as united Americans; and those who have supposed that they could sever us, that they could rend one American heart from another, and that speculation and hypothesis, that secession and metaphysics, could tear us asunder, will find themselves dreadfully mistaken. [Cheers.]

Let the mind of the sober American people remain sober. Let it not inflame itself. Let it do justice to all. And the truest course, and the surest course, to disappoint those who meditate disunion, is just to leave them to themselves, and see what they can make of it. No, gentlemen; the time for meditated secession is past. Americans, North and South, will be hereafter more and more united. There is a sternness and severity in the public mind lately aroused. I believe that, North and South, there has been, in the last year, a renovation of public sentiment, an animated revival of the spirit of Union, and, more than all, of attachment to the Constitution, regarding it as indispensably necessary; and if we would preserve our nationality, it is indispensable that the spirit of devotion should be still more largely increased. And who doubts it? If we give up that Constitution, what are we? You are a Manhattan man; I am a Boston man. Another is a Connecticut, and another a Rhode Island man. Is it not a great deal better, standing hand to hand, and clasping hands, that we should remain as we have been for sixty years--citizens of the same country, members of the same Government, united all--united now and united forever? That we shall be, gentlemen. There have been difficulties, contentions, controversies--angry controversies; but I tell you that, in my judgment,--

"those opposed eyes, Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, All of one nature, of one substance bred, Did lately meet in th' intestine shock, Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, March all one way."

[Mr. Webster, on closing, was greeted with the most hearty, prolonged, and tumultuous applause.]

JOSEPH WHEELER

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER

[Speech of Joseph Wheeler prepared for the tenth annual banquet of the Confederate Veteran Camp of New York, New York City, January 19, 1898. Edward Owen, Commander of the Camp, presided. As General Wheeler was ill and unable to attend the banquet, his speech was read by J. E. Graybill.]

History has many heroes whose martial renown has fired the world, whose daring and wonderful exploits have altered the boundaries of nations and changed the very face of the earth. To say nothing of the warriors of biblical history and Homeric verse, as the ages march along every great nation leaves us the glorious memory of some unique character, such as Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar. Even the wild hordes of northern Europe and the barbaric nations of the East had their grand military leaders whose names will ever live on history's pages, to be eclipsed only by that of Napoleon, the man of destiny, who, as a military genius, stands alone and unrivalled: "Grand, gloomy, peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his awful originality."

The mediæval ages gave us noble examples of devotedness and chivalry; but it belonged to the American Republic, founded and defended by Freedom's sons, to give to the world the noblest type of warrior; men in whom martial renown went hand in hand with the noblest of virtues, men who united in their own characters the highest military genius with the loftiest patriotism, the most daring courage with the gentlest courtesy, the most obstinate endurance with the utmost self-sacrifice, the genius of a Cæsar with the courage and purity of a Bayard.

Patriotism and love of liberty, the most ennobling motives that can fire the heart of man, expanding and thriving in the atmosphere of free America, added a refining touch to the martial enthusiasm of our forefathers and elevated the character of the American soldier to a standard never attained by fighting men of any other age or nation.

To recall their names and recount their deeds would lead me far beyond the time and space allotted. Volumes would never do justice to the valorous achievements of George Washington and his compeers, the boys of '76--of the heroes of 1812 and of 1848; of the men in blue who fought under Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, and Farragut; of the men in gray who followed the lead of Johnston, Jackson, and Lee from 1861 to 1865; of the intrepid band that sailed with Dewey into Manila Bay, or of the small but heroic army of 1898 that fought at Las Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan, and left the Stars and Stripes floating in triumph over the last stronghold of Spain in the New World.

But above the grand heroic names immortalized by historian and poet shines with an undimmed lustre, all its own, the immortal name of Robert Edmund Lee.--

"Ah, Muse! You dare not claim A nobler man than he-- Nor nobler man hath less of blame, Nor blameless man hath purer name, Nor purer name hath grander fame, Nor fame--another Lee."

The late Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, in an address delivered at the time of General Lee's death, thus beautifully describes his character: "He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbor without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Cæsar without his ambition; Frederick without his tyranny; Napoleon without his selfishness, and Washington without his reward. He was as obedient to authority as a servant, and royal in authority as a true king. He was gentle as a woman in life, and modest and pure as a virgin in thought; watchful as a Roman vestal in duty; submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles!"

Forty-four years ago last June, I found myself in the presence of Colonel Lee, who was then Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point. I have never in all my life seen another form or face which so impressed me, as embodying dignity, modesty, kindness, and all the characteristics which indicate purity and nobility. While he was then only a captain and brevet-colonel, he was so highly regarded by the Army that it was generally conceded that he was the proper officer to succeed General Scott.

His wonderful career as leader of the Army of Northern Virginia, as its commander, is so familiar to all of you that any comment would seem to be unnecessary. But to give some of the younger generation an idea of the magnitude of the struggle in which General Lee was the central and leading figure, I will call attention to the fact that in the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania (which really should be called one battle), the killed and wounded in General Grant's army by the army under General Lee, was far greater than the aggregate killed and wounded in all the battles of all the wars fought by the English-speaking people on this continent since the discovery of America by Columbus.

To be more explicit: take the killed and wounded in all the battles of the French and Indian War, take the aggregate killed and wounded in the Revolutionary War, take the aggregate killed and wounded in the War of 1812, take the aggregate killed and wounded in the Mexican War, take the aggregate killed and wounded in all our wars with the Indians, and they amount to less than the killed and wounded in Grant's army in the struggle from the Wilderness to Spottsylvania.

In order further to appreciate the magnitude of the struggle, let us make a comparison between the losses in some of the great battles of our Civil War, and those of some of the most famous battles of modern Europe. The official reports give the following as the losses in killed and wounded of the Federal Army in seven, out of nearly a thousand severely contested struggles during the four years' of war: Seven Days fight, 9,291; Antietam, 11,426; Murfreesboro, 8,778; Gettysburg, 16,426; Chickamauga, 10,906; Wilderness and Spottsylvania, 24,481.

In the Battle of Marengo, the French lost in killed and wounded, 4,700, the Austrians, 6,475. In the Battle of Hohenlinden, the French loss in killed and wounded was 2,200, the Austrian loss was 5,000; at Austerlitz the French loss was 9,000; at Waterloo, Wellington lost 9,061 in killed and wounded, Blucher lost 5,613, making the total loss of the Allies, 14,674.

I mention these facts because such sanguinary conflicts as those of our Civil War could only have occurred when the soldiers of both contending armies were men of superb determination and courage. Such unquestioned prowess as this should be gratifying to all Americans, showing to the world as they did that the intrepid fortitude and courage of Americans have excelled that of any other people upon the earth. And as the world will extol the exhibition of these qualities by the soldiers that fought under Grant, the historian will find words inadequate to express his admiration of the superb heroism of the soldiers led by the intrepid Lee. Meeting a thoroughly organized, and trebly equipped and appointed army, they successfully grappled in deadly conflict with these tremendous odds, while civilization viewed with amazement this climax of unparalleled and unequal chivalry, surpassing in grandeur of action anything heretofore portrayed either in story or in song. Whence came these qualities? They were the product of Southern chivalry, which two centuries had finally perfected. A chivalry which esteemed stainless honor as a priceless gem, and a knighthood which sought combat for honor's sake, generously yielding to an antagonist all possible advantage; the chivalry which taught Southern youth to esteem life as nothing when honor was at stake, a chivalry which taught that the highest, noblest, and most exalted privilege of man was the defence of woman, family, and country. It was this Southern chivalry that formed such men as Lee and Stonewall Jackson; they were the central leading figures, but they were only prototypes of the soldiers whom they led.

It is this character of men who meet in banquet to-night to honor the name they revere and the noble life they seek to emulate. I say, God bless you all, the whole world breathes blessings upon you. Among the foremost in these sentiments are the brave soldiers against whom you were once arrayed in battle, and they, together with seventy million Americans know that in future perils to our country, you and your children will be foremost in the battle-line of duty, proud of the privilege of defending the glory, honor, and prestige of our country, presenting under the folds of our national ensign an unbroken phalanx of united hearts--an impregnable bulwark of defence against any power that may arise against us.

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

CHINA EMERGING FROM HER ISOLATION

[Speech of Edwin P. Whipple at the banquet given by the City of Boston, August 21, 1868, to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from China, and his associates, Chih Ta-jin and Sun Ta-jin, of the Chinese Embassy to the United States and the European powers. Mr. Whipple responded to the toast, "The Press."]

MR. MAYOR:--One cannot attempt to respond here for the Press, without being reminded that the Press and the Chinese Embassy have been on singularly good terms from the start. To record the progress, applaud the object, extend the influence, and cordially eulogize the members of that Embassy, have been for months no inconsiderable part of the business of all newspapers; and if China anticipated us, by some five hundred years, in the invention of printing, our Chinese guests will still admit that, in the minute account we have given both of what they have, and of what they have not, said and done, since they arrived in the country, we have carried the invention to a perfection of which they never dreamed--having not only invented printing, but invented a great deal of what we print.

But, apart from the rich material they have furnished the press in the way of news, there is something strangely alluring and inspiring to the editorial imagination in the comprehensive purpose which has prompted their mission to the civilized nations of the West. That purpose is doubly peaceful, for it includes a two-fold commerce of material products and of immaterial ideas. Probably the vastest conception which ever entered into the mind of a conqueror was that which was profoundly meditated, and, in its initial steps, practically carried out, by Alexander the Great. He was engaged in a clearly defined project of assimilating the populations of Europe and Asia, when, at the early age of thirty-three, he was killed--I tremble to state it here--by a too eager indulgence in an altogether too munificent public dinner! Alexander's weapon was force, but it was at least the force of genius, and it was exerted in the service of a magnificent idea. His successors in modern times have but too often availed themselves of force divested of all ideas, except the idea of bullying or outwitting the Asiatics in a trade.

As to China, this conduct aroused an insurrection of Chinese conceit against European conceit. The Chinese were guilty of the offence of calling the representatives of the proudest and most supercilious of all civilizations, "outside barbarians"; illustrating in this that too common conservative weakness of human nature, of holding fixedly to an opinion long after the facts which justified it have changed or passed away. It certainly cannot be questioned that at a period which, when compared with the long date of Chinese annals, may be called recent, we were outside barbarians as contrasted with that highly civilized and ingenious people. At the time when our European ancestors were squalid, swinish, wolfish savages, digging with their hands into the earth for roots to allay the pangs of hunger, without arts, letters, or written speech, China rejoiced in an old, refined, complicated civilization; was rich, populous, enlightened, cultivated, humane; was fertile in savants, poets, moralists, metaphysicians, saints; had invented printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, the Sage's Rule of Life; had, in one of her three State religions--that of Confucius--presented a code of morals never become obsolete; and had, in another of her State religions--that of Buddha--solemnly professed her allegiance to that equality of men, which Buddha taught twenty-four hundred years before our Jefferson was born, and had at the same time vigorously grappled with that problem of existence which our Emerson finds as insolvable now as it was then.

Well, sir, after all this had relatively changed, after the Western nations had made their marvellous advances in civilization, they were too apt to exhibit to China only their barbaric side--that is, their ravenous cupidity backed by their insolent strength. We judge, for example, of England by the poetry of Shakespeare, the science of Newton, the ethics of Butler, the religion of Taylor, the philanthropy of Wilberforce; but what poetry, science, ethics, religion, or philanthropy was she accustomed to show in her intercourse with China? Did not John Bull, in his rough methods with the Celestial Empire, sometimes literally act "like a bull in a China shop"? You remember, sir, that "intelligent contraband" who, when asked his opinion of an offending white brother, delicately hinted his distrust by replying: "Sar, if I was a chicken, and that man was about, I should take care to roost high." Well, all that we can say of China is, that for a long time she "roosted high"--withdrew suspiciously into her own civilization to escape the rough contact with the harsher side of ours.

But, by a sudden inspiration of almost miraculous confidence, springing from a faith in the nobler qualities of our Caucasian civilization, she has changed her policy. She has learned that in the language, and on the lips, and in the hearts of most members of the English race, there is such a word as equity, and at the magic of that word she has nearly emerged from her isolation. And, sir, what we see here to-day reminds me that, some thirty years ago, Boston confined one of her citizens in a lunatic asylum, for the offence of being possessed by a too intensified Boston "notion." He had discovered a new and expeditious way of getting to China. "All agree," he said, "that the earth revolves daily on its own axis. If you desire," he therefore contended, "to go to China, all you have to do is to go up in a balloon, wait till China comes round, then let off the gas, and drop softly down." Now I will put it to you, Mr. Mayor, if you are not bound to release that philosopher from confinement, for has not his conception been realized?--has not China, to-day, unmistakably come round to us?

And now, sir, a word as to the distinguished gentleman at the head of the Embassy--a gentleman specially dear to the Press. Judging from the eagerness with which the position is sought, I am led to believe that the loftiest compliment which can be paid to a human being is, that he has once represented Boston in the National House of Representatives. After such a distinction as that, all other distinctions, however great, must still show a sensible decline from political grace. But I trust that you will all admit, that next to the honor of representing Boston in the House of Representatives comes the honor of representing the vast Empire of China in "The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World." Having enjoyed both distinctions, Mr. Burlingame may be better qualified than we are to discriminate between the exultant feelings which each is calculated to excite in the human breast. But we must remember that the population, all brought up on a system of universal education, of the Empire he represents, is greater than the combined population of all the nations to which he is accredited. Most Bostonians have, or think they have, a "mission"; but certainly no other Bostonian ever had such a "mission" as he; for it extends all round the planet, makes him the most universal Ambassador and Minister Plenipotentiary the world ever saw; is, in fact, a "mission" from everybody to everybody, and one by which it is proposed that everybody shall be benefited. To doubt its success would be to doubt the moral soundness of Christian civilization. It implies that Christian doctrines will find no opponents provided that Christian nations set a decent example of Christianity. Its virtues herald the peaceful triumph of reason over prejudice, of justice over force, of humanity over the hatreds of class and race, of the good of all over the selfish blindness of each, of the "fraternity" of the great Commonwealth of Nations over the insolent "liberty" of any of them to despise, oppress, and rob the rest.

* * * * *

THE SPHERE OF WOMAN

[Speech of Edwin P. Whipple at the "Ladies' Night" banquet of the Papyrus Club, Boston, February 15, 1879, in response to a toast in his honor as "one whose gentle mind, delicate fancy, keen wit, and profound judgment have made for him a high and secure place among American authors."]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--I suppose that one of the most characteristic follies of young men, unmarried, or in the opinion of prudent mammas, unmarriageable, is, when they arrive at the age of indiscretion, to dogmatize on what they call the appropriate sphere of woman. You remember the thundering retort which came, like a box on the ears, to one of these philosophers, when he was wisely discoursing vaguely on his favorite theme. "And pray, my young sir," asked a stern matron of forty, "will you please to tell us what is the appropriate sphere of woman?" Thus confronted, he only babbled in reply, "A celestial sphere, madam!" But the force of this compliment is now abated; for the persons who above all others are dignified with the title of "Celestials" are the Chinese; and these the Congress of the United States seems determined to banish from our soil as unworthy--not only of the right of citizenship and the right of suffrage, but the right of residing in our democratic republic. Accordingly, we must find some more appropriate sphere for women than the Celestial. Nobody, I take it, however bitterly he may be opposed to what are called the rights of women, objects to their residing in this country, or to their coming here in vast numbers. [Applause.]

Do you remember to what circumstance Chicago owed its fame? When the spot where a great city now looks out on Lake Michigan was the habitation of a small number of men only, a steamboat was seen in the distance, and the report was that it contained a cargo of women, who were coming to the desolate place for the purpose of being married to the forlorn men. Every bachelor hastened to the pier, with a telescope in one hand and a speaking-trumpet in the other. By the aid of the telescope each lover selected his mate, and by the aid of the speaking-trumpet each lover made his proposals. In honor of the women who made the venturesome voyage, the infant city was named "She-Cargo." [Laughter and applause.]

Therefore, there is no possibility of a doubt that there is no objection to women as residents of this country. The only thing to be considered is, whether or not they shall have the right of voting. I think nobody present here this evening has conceit enough to suppose that he is more competent to give an intelligent vote on any public question than the intelligent ladies who have done the Club the honor to be present on this occasion. The privilege of voting is simply an opportunity, by which certain persons legally qualified are allowed to exercise power. The formal power is so subdivided that each legally qualified person exercises but little. But where meanwhile is the substance of power? Certainly in the woman of the household as well as in the man. Indeed, I recollect that when an objection was raised that to give the right of suffrage to women would create endless quarrels between husband and wife, a married woman curtly replied that the wives would see to it that no such disturbance should really take place. [Applause.] And, as the question now stands, I pity the man who is so fortunate to be married to a noble woman, coming home to meet her reproachful glance, when he has deposited in the ballot-box a vote for a measure which is base and for a candidate who is equally base. Then, in his humiliation before that rebuking eye, he must feel that in her is the substance of power, and in him only the formal expression of power. [Applause.]

But we have the good fortune to-night to have at the table many women of letters, who have in an eminent degree exercised the substance of power, inasmuch as they have domesticated themselves at thousands of firesides where their faces have never been seen. Their brain-children have been welcomed and adopted by fathers and mothers, by brothers and sisters, as members of the family; and their sayings and doings are quoted as though they were "blood" relations. Two instances recur to my memory. In lecturing in various portions of the country, I have often been a guest in private houses. On one occasion I happened to mention Mrs. Whitney as a lady I had often met; and, instantly, old and young crowded round, pouring in a storm of questions, demanding to know where the author of "Faith Gartney" lived, how she looked, and was she so delightful in society as she was in her books. On another occasion, my importance in a large family was raised immensely when a chance remark indicated that I numbered Miss Alcott among my friends. All the little men and all the little women of the household, all the old men and all the old ladies, rallied round me, in order that I might tell them all I knew of the author of "Little Women" and "Little Men." [Applause.]

Now these are only two examples of the substance of power which cultivated women already possess. That such women, and all women, can obtain the formal power of voting at elections is, in the end, sure, if they really wish to exercise that power; and that the power is withheld from them is not due to the opposition of men, but is due to the fact that they are not, by an overwhelming majority, in favor of it themselves. When the champions of woman's rights get this majority on their side, I have a profound pity for the men who venture to oppose it. [Applause.]

ANDREW DICKSON WHITE

COMMERCE AND DIPLOMACY

[Speech of Andrew D. White at the 111th annual dinner of the New York Chamber of Commerce, May 13, 1879. The President of the Chamber, Samuel D. Babcock, introduced Mr. White as follows: "The next toast is 'Commerce and Diplomacy--twin guardians of the world--Peace and Prosperity.' [Applause.] The gentleman who is to respond to the toast is one who is about to represent our country at the Court of Berlin. I am quite sure there is not a man present who does not feel that a more creditable representative of the people of the United States could not be sent abroad. [Applause.] I hope, gentlemen, you will receive him with all the honors."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--Speaking in this place and at this time I am seriously embarrassed; for when charges have been made upon the American people on account of municipal mismanagement in this city, now happily past, we have constantly heard the statement made that American institutions are not responsible for it; that New York is not an American city. [Applause.] I must confess that when very hard pressed I have myself taken refuge in this statement.

But now it comes back to plague me, for on looking over the general instructions furnished me by the State Department I find it laid down that American Ministers on the way to their posts are strictly forbidden to make speeches in any foreign city, save in the country to which they are accredited. You will pardon me, then, if I proceed very slowly and cautiously in discussing the sentiment allotted to me.

No one, I think, will dispute the statement that commerce has become a leading agency among men in the maintenance of peace. [Applause.] Commercial interests have become so vast that they embrace all the world, and so minute that they permeate every hamlet of every nation. War interferes with these interests and thwarts them. Hence commerce more and more tends to make war difficult. [Applause.] As to the fact then, involved in your toast, it needs no argument in its support. We all concede it. Were we to erect a statue of Commerce in the midst of this great commercial metropolis, we should doubtless place in her hand, as an emblem, a ship-like shuttle and represent her as weaving a web between the great nations of the earth tending every day to fasten them more securely and more permanently in lasting peace. [Applause.]

Nor, I think, will the other part of the sentiment be disputed by any thoughtful person. Of course much may be said upon the solemn nothings which have occupied diplomatists; much historic truth may be adduced to show that diplomats have often proved to be what Carlyle calls "solemnly constituted impostors." But after all, I think no one can look over the history of mankind without feeling that it was a vast step when four centuries ago the great modern powers began to maintain resident representatives at the centres of government; and from that day to this these men have proved themselves, with all their weaknesses, worth far more than all their cost in warding off or mitigating the horrors of war, and in increasing the facilities of commerce. Not long since I made a pilgrimage to that quaint town hall in that old German city of Munster, where was signed the Treaty of Westphalia. There I saw the same long table, the same old seats, where once sat the representatives of the various powers who in 1648 made the treaty which not only ended the Thirty Years' War, the most dreadful struggle of modern times--but which has forever put an end to wars of religion.

I have stood in the midst of grand cathedrals and solemn services, but never have I sat in any room or in any presence with a greater feeling of awe than in that old hall where the diplomatists of Europe signed that world-renowned treaty so fruitful in blessing not only to Germany, but to all mankind. [Applause.]

We shall all doubtless concede then that on the whole it is best to have a diplomatic body, that if it only once in ten, or twenty, or one hundred years, prevents serious misunderstanding between nations, it will far more than repay its cost. [Applause.]

But the point to which I wish to call your attention, in what little I have to say this evening, is this: That this idea of the value of commerce and diplomacy in maintaining peace has by no means always been held as fully as now, nor are commerce and diplomacy and all they represent at this moment out of danger. Two hundred years ago a really great practical statesman in France [Colbert], by crude legislation in behalf, as he thought, of manufactures and commerce, brought his country into wars which at last led her to ruin. The history of the colonial policy of England also is fruitful in mistaken legislation on commercial, political, and social questions, which have produced the most terrible evils. Indeed, in all nations we have constantly to lament the short-sighted policies, ill-considered constitutions, crude legislation, which have dealt fearful blows to the interests of commerce, of diplomacy, of political and social life, and of peace.

Nor has our own country been free from these; in our general government and in all our forty legislatures, there are measures frequently proposed striking at commercial interests, at financial interests, at vested rights, to say nothing of great political and social interests, which, though often thwarted by the common sense of the people, are sometimes too successful. At this very moment the news comes to us that a slight majority, led by arrant demagogues, have fastened upon the great Empire State of the Pacific a crude, ill-digested constitution, which while it doubtless contains some good features, embodies some of the most primitive and pernicious notions regarding commerce and manufactures and the whole political and social fabric of that Commonwealth. [Applause.]

So, too, in regard to diplomacy, there is constant danger and loss from this same crudeness in political thinking. A year or two since, in the Congress of the United States, efforts were put forth virtually to cripple the diplomatic service; but what was far worse, to cripple the whole Consular system of the United States. Although the Consular service of our country more than pays for itself directly, and pays for itself a thousand times over indirectly; although its labors are constantly directed to increasing commerce, to finding new markets, to sending home valuable information regarding foreign industries, to enlarging the foreign field for our own manufactures, and, although the question involved not only financial questions of the highest importance, but the honor of the country, the matter was argued by many of our legislators in a way which would have done discredit to a class of college sophomores. I am glad to say that the best men of both parties at Washington at last rallied against this monstrous legislation and that among them were some representing both parties of the State and City of New York. [Applause.]

The injury wrought upon this country in its national Legislature and in its multitude of State Legislatures by want of knowledge is simply enormous. No one who knows anything of the history of the legislation of any State will dispute this for a moment. The question now arises, is such a state of things necessarily connected with a Republican government? To this I answer decidedly, no. The next question is, is there any practical means of improving this state of things? To this I answer decidedly, yes. [Applause.]

Here comes the practical matter to which I would call your attention. Recently, in the presence of some of you, I spoke at length on the necessity of training men in the institutions of higher learning in this country for the highest duties of citizenship, and especially for practical leadership. I cannot here go into details as I was able to do in that paper, but I can at least say that if there is anything to which a portion of the surplus wealth of men who have been enriched in commerce and trade may well be devoted, it is to making provision in our institutions of learning for meeting this lack of young men trained in history, political and social science, and general jurisprudence--in those studies which fit men to discuss properly and to lead their fellow-citizens rightly in the discussion of the main questions relating to commerce, to diplomacy, and to various political and social subjects. [Applause.]

I fully believe that one million dollars distributed between four or five of our great institutions of learning for this purpose would eventually produce almost a revolution for good in this country, and that in a very few years the effect of such endowments would be seen to be most powerful and most salutary. Provision on the largest scale should be made for the training of young men in political and social science, in such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Columbia, Princeton, Union, Johns Hopkins University, the State Universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, Minnesota, and California, and I trust that you will permit me to add, Cornell. [Applause.]

I do not pretend, of course, that this would supersede practical training--no theoretical training can do this--but it would give young men, at any rate, a knowledge of the best thoughts of the best thinkers, on such subjects as taxation, representation, pauperism, crime, insanity, and a multitude of similar questions; it would remove the spectacle which so often afflicts us in our National and State legislatures, of really strong men stumbling under loads of absurdity and fallacy, long ago exploded by the best and most earnest thought of the world, and it would teach young men to reason wisely and well on such subjects, and then, with some practical experience, we should have in every State a large number of well-trained men ready to reason powerfully and justly, ready to meet at a moment's warning pernicious heresies threatening commerce and trade and our best political and social interests. Had there been scattered through California during the recent canvass for their new constitution, twenty men really fitted to show in the press and in the forum the absurdities of that Constitution, it would never have been established. [Loud applause.]

Ten thousand dollars to any one of these colleges or universities would endow a scholarship or fellowship which would enable some talented graduate to pursue advanced studies in this direction. Ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars would endow a lectureship which would enable such a college or university to call some acknowledged authority on political subjects to deliver a valuable course of lectures. Thirty to fifty thousand dollars would endow a full professorship--though I must confess that in subjects like this, I prefer lectureships for brief terms to life-long professorships--and at any of these institutions the sum of two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand dollars, under the management of such men as may be found in any one of them, would equip nobly a department in which all these subjects may be fully treated and fitly presented to young men. Such a department would send out into our journalism, into our various professions, and into our public affairs, a large number of young men who could not fail to improve the political condition of the country, and would do much to ward off such dealings with commerce, with currency, with taxation, and with the diplomatic and consular service as have cost the world and our own nation so dear hitherto. [Applause.]

I can think of no more noble monument which any man of wealth could rear to himself than a lectureship or professorship or a department of this kind, at one of our greater institutions of learning, where large numbers of vigorous and ambitious youths are collected from all parts of the country; I do not, of course, say that all of these men would be elected to public office; in the larger cities, they perhaps would not, at least, at first; in the country, they would be very frequently chosen, and they could hardly fail to render excellent service. [Applause.]

Any man worthy of the name, leaving his country for a long residence outside its borders, feels more and more impressed with what is needed to improve it. If I were called upon solemnly at this hour to declare my conviction as to what can best be done by men blessed with wealth in this Republic of ours, I would name this very thing to which I have now called your attention. [Applause.] It has been too long deferred; our colleges and universities have as a rule only had the means to give a general literary and scientific education, with very little instruction fitting men directly for public affairs. But the events of the last few years show conclusively that we must now begin to prepare the natural leaders of the people for the work before them, and by something more than a little primary instruction in political economy and the elements of history in the last terms of a four years' course. [Applause.]

The complexity of public affairs is daily becoming greater; more and more it is necessary that men be trained for them. Not that practical men, trained practically in public affairs will not always be wanted--practical men will always be in demand--but we want more and more a judicious admixture of men trained in the best thought which has been developed through the ages on all the great questions of government and of society. [Applause.]

No country presents a more striking example of the value of this training than does that great nation with which my duties are shortly to connect me. [Applause.] Several years since she began to provide in all her universities for the training of men in political and social questions, for political life at home and for diplomatic life abroad. This at first was thought to be another example of German pedantry, but the events of the last fifteen years have changed that view. We can now see that it was a part of that great and comprehensive scheme begun by such men as Stein and Hardenbergh and carried out by such as Bismarck and his compeers. [Applause.]

Other nations are beginning to see this. In France, within a few years, very thoroughly equipped institutions have been established to train men in the main studies required in public life and in diplomacy; the same thing is true in England and in Italy. Can there be again, I ask, a more fitting object for some of the surplus wealth of our merchant princes than in rendering this great service to our country, in furnishing the means by which young men can have afforded them a full, thorough, and systematic instruction in all those matters so valuable to those who are able to take the lead in public affairs. [Applause.]

Mr. President, in concluding, allow me to say that in so far as any efforts of mine may be useful I shall make every endeavor that whatever diplomatic service I may render may inure to the benefit of commerce, knowing full well that, in the language of the sentiment, "Commerce and Diplomacy are the twin guardians of Peace and Prosperity." [Applause.]

In spite of the present depression of business in Germany and the United States, there are evidences of returning confidence. The great, sturdy, vigorous German nation and our own energetic people cannot long be held back in their career, and in this restoration of business, which is certain, unless gross mismanagement occurs, I believe that these two nations, America and Germany, will become more and more friendly; more and more Commerce will weave her web uniting the two countries, and more and more let us hope that Diplomacy may go hand in hand with Commerce in bringing in an era of Peace which shall be lasting, and of Prosperity which shall be substantial. [Loud applause.]

HARVEY WASHINGTON WILEY

THE IDEAL WOMAN

[Speech of Dr. Harvey W. Wiley at the banquet of the American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C, December, 1898. Dr. Wiley responded to the toast, "Woman."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY:--I propose to introduce an innovation to after-dinner speaking and stick to my text. In my opinion, it is too late in the day to question the Creator's purpose in making Woman. She is an accomplished fact! She is here! She has come to stay, and we might as well accept her. She has broken into our Society, which, until within a year or two, has remained entirely masculine. She has not yet appeared at our annual dinners, but I am a false prophet if she be not here to speak for herself ere long. And why not? Chemistry is well suited to engage the attention of the feminine mind. The jewels woman wears, the paints she uses, the hydrogen peroxide with which she blondines her hair are all children of chemistry. The prejudice against female chemists is purely selfish and unworthy of a great mind. There is only enough work in the world to keep half of humanity busy. Every time a woman gets employment a man must go idle. But if the woman will only marry the man, all will be forgiven.

I think I know why you have called on an old bachelor to respond to this toast. A married man could not. He would be afraid to give his fancies full rein. Someone might tell his wife. A young man could see only one side of the subject--the side his sweetheart is on. But the old bachelor fears no Caudle lecture, and is free from any romantic bias. He sees things just as they are. If he be also a true chemist, lovely woman appeals to him in a truly scientific way. Her charms appear to him in the crucible and the beaker:

I know a maiden, charming and true, With beautiful eyes like the cobalt blue Of the borax bead, and I guess she'll do If she hasn't another reaction.

Her form is no bundle of toilet shams, Her beauty no boon of arsenical balms, And she weighs just sixty-two kilograms To a deci-decimal fraction.

Her hair is a crown, I can truthfully state 'Tis a metre long, nor curly nor straight, And it is as yellow as plumbic chromate In a slightly acid solution.

And when she speaks from parlor or stump, The words which gracefully gambol and jump Sound sweet like the water in Sprengel's pump In magnesic phosphate ablution.

I have bought me a lot, about a hectare, And have built me a house ten metres square, And soon, I think, I shall take her there, My tart little acid radicle.

Perhaps little sailors on life's deep sea Will be the salts of this chemistry, And the lisp of the infantile A, B, C Be the refrain of this madrigal.

No one but a scientific man can have any idea of the real nature of love. The poet may dream, the novelist describe the familiar feeling, but only the chemist knows just how it is:

A biochemist loved a maid In pure actinic ways; The enzymes of affection made A ferment of his days.

The waves emergent from her eyes Set symphonies afloat, These undulations simply struck His fundamental note.

No longer could he hide his love, Nor cultures could he make, And so he screwed his courage up, And thus to her he spake:

"Oh, maid of undulations sweet, Inoculate my veins, And fill my thirsty arteries up With amorous ptomaines.

"In vain I try to break this thrall, In vain my reason fights, My inner self tempestuous teems With microcosmic mites.

"I cannot offer you a crown Of gold--I cannot tell Of terrapin or wine for us, But rations balanced well.

"A little fat just now and then, Some carbohydrates sweet, And gluten in the bakers' bread, Are what we'll have to eat.

"The days will pass in rapture by, With antitoxine frills, And on our Guinea-pigs we'll try The cures for all our ills.

"O! maiden fair, wilt thou be mine? Come, give me but one kiss, And dwell forever blessed with me. In symbiotic bliss."

This maiden, modest, up-to-date, Eschewed domestic strife; In mocking accents she replied, "Wat t'ell--not on your life."

The philosopher and the theologian pretend to understand the origin of things and the foundation of ethics, but what one of them ever had the least idea of how love first started? What one of them can tell you a thing concerning the original osculation--that primary amatory congress which was the beginning of the beginning?--

Bathed in Bathybian bliss And sunk in the slush of the sea, Thrilled the first molecular kiss, The beginning of you and of me.

The Atom of Oxygen blushed When it felt fair Hydrogen's breath, The Atom of Nitrogen rushed Eager to Life out of Death.

Through Ocean's murmuring dell Ran a whisper of rapture Elysian; Across that Bathybian jell Ran a crack that whispered of fission.

Alas! that such things should be, That cruel unkind separation, Adown in the depths of the sea Should follow the first osculation.

O tender lover and miss, You cannot remember too well That the first molecular kiss Was the first Bathybian sell.

Not only are women rapidly invading the domain of chemistry, but they are also the yellow peril of her sister science, pharmacy. A drug-store without a dimpled damsel is now a fit subject for the sheriff's hammer.--

There in the corner pharmacy, This lithesome lady lingers, And potent pills and philters true Are fashioned by her fingers.

Her phiz behind the soda fount May oft be seen in summer; How sweetly foams the soda fizz, When you receive it from her.

While mixing belladonna drops With tincture of lobelia, And putting up prescriptions, she Is fairer than Ophelia.

Each poison has its proper place, Each potion in its chalice; Her dædal fingers are so deft, They call her digit-Alice.

Love has been the theme of every age and of every tongue. It is the test of youth and of the capability of progress. So long as a man can and does love, he is young and there is hope for him. Whoever saw a satisfactory definition of love? No one, simply because the science of physical chemistry is yet young, and it is only when moulded by the principles of that science that the definition is complete and intelligible. Love is the synchronous vibration of two cardiac cells, both of which, were it not for the ethics of etymology, should begin with an S. Love is the source of eternal youth, of senile recrudescence. It is the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the fountain of flowers. So love changes not--the particular object is not of much importance. One should never be a bigot in anything and a wise man changes often.

The grade of civilization which a nation has reached may be safely measured by three things. If you want me to tell you where to place a nation in the scale, don't tell me the name of it, nor the country it inhabits, nor the religion it professes, nor its form of government. Let me know how much sugar it uses per head, what the consumption of soap is, and whether its women have the same rights as its men. That nation which eats the most sugar, uses the most soap, and regards its women as having the same rights as its men, will always be at the top. And nowhere else in the world is more sugar eaten, more soap used, and women more fully admitted to all the rights of men than in our own United States and in the American Chemical Society.

To the chemist, as well as to other scientific men, woman is not only real but also ideal. From the fragments of the real the ideal is reconstructed. This ideal is a trinity, a trinity innominate and incorporeal. She is Pallas, Aphrodite, Artemis, three in one. She is an incognita and an amorph. I know full well I shall not meet her; neither in the crowded street of the metropolis nor in the quiet lane of the country. I know well I shall not find her in the salon of fashion, nor as a shepherdess with her crook upon the mountain-side. I know full well that I need not seek her in the bustling tide of travel, nor wandering by the shady banks of a brook. She is indeed near to my imagination, but far, infinitely far, beyond my reach. Nevertheless, I may attempt to describe her as she appears to me. Let me begin with that part of my ideal which has been inherited from Diana. My ideal woman has a sound body. She has bone, not brittle sticks of phosphate of lime. She has muscles, not flabby, slender ribbons of empty sarcolemma. She has blood, not a thin leucocytic ichor. I have no sympathy with that pseudo-civilization which apparently has for its object the destruction of the human race by the production of a race of bodiless women. If I am to be a pessimist, I will be one out and out, and seek to destroy the race in a high-handed and manly way. Indoor life, inactivity, lack of oxygen in the lungs, these are things which in time produce a white skin, but do it by sacrificing every other attribute of beauty.

In the second place, my ideal woman is beautiful. I will confess that I do not know what I mean by this; for what is beauty? It is both subjective and objective. It depends on taste and education. It has something to do with habit and experience. I know I shall not be able to describe this trait, yet when I look up into her eyes--eyes, remember, which are mere fictions of my imagination--when I look into her face, when I see her move so statelily into my presence, I recognize there that portion of her which she has inherited from the Aphrodite of other days; and this I know is beauty. It is not the beauty of an hallucination, the halo which a heart diseased casts about the head of its idol. It is the beauty which is seen by a sober second thought, a beauty which does not so much dazzle as it delights; a beauty which does not fade with the passing hour, but stays through the heat and burden of the day and until the day is done.

The beauty which my ideal woman inherited from Aphrodite is not a fading one. It is not simply a youthful freshness which the first decade of womanhood will wither. It is a beauty which abides; it is a beauty in which the charm of seventeen becomes a real essence of seventy; it is a beauty which is not produced by any artificial pose of the head or by any possible banging of the hair; it is a beauty which the art of dressing may adorn but can never create; it is a beauty which does not overwhelm the heart like an avalanche, but which eats it slowly but surely away as a trickling stream cuts and grooves the solid granite.

I regard true beauty as the divinest gift which woman has received; and was not Pandora, the first of mythical women, endowed with every gift? And was not Eve, the first of orthodox women, the type of every feminine perfection? Only Protogyna, the first of scientific women, was poorly and meanly endowed. If I were a woman I would value health and wealth; I would think kindly of honor and reputation; I would greatly prize knowledge and truth; but above all I would be beautiful--possessed of that strange and mighty charm which would lead a crowd of slaves behind my triumphal car and compel a haughty world to bow in humble submission at my feet.

In the third place my ideal woman has inherited the intellect of Pallas. And this inheritance is necessary in order to secure for her a true possession of the gifts of Aphrodite. For a woman can never be truly beautiful who does not possess intelligence. It is a matter of the utmost indifference to me what studies my ideal has pursued. She may be a panglot or she may scarcely know her vernacular. If she speak French and German and read Latin and Greek, it is well. If she know conics and curves it is well; if she be able to integrate the vanishing function of a quivering infinitesimal, it is well; if from a disintegrating track which hardening cosmic mud has fixed and fastened on the present, she be able to build a majestic, long extinct mammal, it is well. All these things are marks of learning, but not necessarily of intelligence. A person may know them all and hundreds of things besides, and yet be the veriest fool. My ideal, I should prefer to have a good education in science and letters, but she must have a sound mind. She must have a mind above petty prejudice and giant bigotry. She must see something in life beyond a ball or a ribbon. She must have wit and judgment. She must have the higher wisdom which can see the fitness of things and grasp the logic of events. It will be seen readily, therefore, that my ideal is wise rather than learned. But she is not devoid of culture. Without culture a broad liberality is impossible. But what is culture? True culture is that knowledge of men and affairs which places every problem in sociology and politics in its true light. It is that drill and exercise which place all the faculties at their best and make one capable of dealing with the real labors of life. Such a culture is not incompatible with a broad knowledge of books, with a deep insight into art, with a clear outlook over the field of letters. Indeed it includes all these and is still something more than they are.

My ideal then, so regally endowed, is the equal of any man--even if he be the "ideal man" of the American Chemical Society.

My ideal stands before me endowed with all the majesty of this long ancestral line. Proud is she in the consciousness of her own equality. Her haughty eye looks out upon this teeming sphere and acknowledges only as her peer the "ideal man," and no one as her superior. Stand forth, O perfect maiden, sentient with the brain of Pallas, radiant with the beauty of Venus, quivering with the eager vivacity of Diana! Make, if possible, thy home on earth. At thy coming the world will rise in an enthusiasm of delight and crown thee queen. [Long and enthusiastic applause.]

WOODROW WILSON

OUR ANCESTRAL RESPONSIBILITIES

[Speech of Woodrow Wilson at the seventeenth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1896. Stewart L. Woodford, the President of the Society, said, in introducing the speaker: "The next toast is entitled 'The Responsibility of having Ancestors,' and will be responded to by Professor Woodrow Wilson,[13] of Princeton. I know you will give him such a welcome as will indicate that, while we are mostly Yale men here, we are not jealous of Princeton."]

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:--I am not of your blood; I am not a Virginia Cavalier, as Dr. Hill [David J. Hill. See Vol. II.] has suggested. Sometimes I wish I were; I would have more fun. I come, however, of as good blood as yours; in some respects a better. Because the Scotch-Irish, though they are just as much in earnest as you are, have a little bit more gayety and more elasticity than you have. Moreover they are now forming a Scotch-Irish society, which will, as fast as human affairs will allow, do exactly what the New England Societies are doing, viz.: annex the universe. [Laughter.] We believe with a sincere belief, we believe as sincerely as you do the like, that we really made this country. Not only that, but we believe that we can now, in some sort of way, demonstrate the manufacture, because the country has obviously departed in many respects from the model which you claim to have set. Not only that, but it seems to me that you yourselves are becoming a little recreant to the traditions you yearly celebrate.

It seems to me that you are very much in the position, with reference to your forefathers, that the little boy was with reference to his immediate father. The father was a very busy man; he was away at his work before the children were up in the morning and did not come home till after they had gone to bed at night. One day this little boy was greatly incensed, as he said, "to be whipped by that gentleman that stays here on Sundays." I do not observe that you think about your ancestors the rest of the week; I do not observe that they are very much present in your thoughts at any other time save on Sunday, and that then they are most irritating to you. I have known a great many men descended from New England ancestors and I do not feel half so hardly toward my ancestors as they do toward theirs. There is a distant respect about the relationship which is touching. There is a feeling that these men are well and safely at a distance, and that they would be indulged under no other circumstances whatever; and that the beauty of it is to have descended from them and come so far away.

Now, there are serious aspects to this subject. I believe that one of the responsibilities of having ancestors is the necessity of not being ashamed of them. I believe if you have had persons of this sort as your forefathers you must really try to represent them in some sort of way. And you must set yourselves off against the other elements of population in this country. You know that we have received very many elements which have nothing of the Puritan about them, which have nothing of New England about them; and that the chief characteristic of these people is that they have broken all their traditions. The reason that most foreigners come to this country is in order to break their traditions, to drop them. They come to this country because these traditions bind them to an order of society which they will no longer endure, and they come to be quit of them. You yourselves will bear me witness that these men, some of them, stood us in good stead upon a very recent occasion: in last November. [Applause. "Hear! Hear!"] We should not at all minimize the vote of the foreign-born population as against the vote of some of the native-born population on the question of silver and gold. But you will observe that there are some things that it would be supposed would belong to any tradition. One would suppose it would belong to any tradition that it was better to earn a dollar that did not depreciate, and these men have simply shown that there are some common-sense elements which are international and not national.

One of the particulars in which we are drawn away from our traditions is in respect to the make-up and government of society, and it is in that respect we should retrace our steps and preserve our traditions; because we are suffering ourselves to drift away from the old standards, and we say, with a shrug of the shoulders, that we are not responsible for it; that we have not changed the age, though the age has changed us. We feel very much as the Scotchman did who entered the fish market. His dog, being inquisitive, investigated a basket of lobsters, and while he was nosing about incautiously one of the lobsters got hold of his tail, whereupon he went down the street with the lobster as a pendant. Says the man, "Whustle to your dog, mon." "Nay, nay, mon," quoth the Scotchman, "You whustle for your lobster." We are very much in the same position with reference to the age; we say, whistle to the age; we cannot make it let go; we have got to run. We feel very much like the little boy in the asylum, standing by the window, forbidden to go out. He became contemplative, and said, "If God were dead and there were not any rain, what fun orphan boys would have." We feel very much that way about these New England traditions. If God were only dead; if it didn't rain; if the times were only good, what times we would have.

The present world is not recognizable when put side by side with the world into which the Puritan came. I am not here to urge a return to the Puritan life; but have you forgotten that the Puritans came into a new world? The conditions under which they came were unprecedented conditions to them. But did they forget the principles on which they acted because the conditions were unprecedented? Did they not discover new applications for old principles? Are we to be daunted, therefore, because the conditions are new? Will not old principles be adaptable to new conditions, and is it not our business to adapt them to new conditions? Have we lost the old principle and the old spirit? Are we a degenerate people? We certainly must admit ourselves to be so if we do not follow the old principles in the new world, for that is what the Puritans did.

Let me say a very practical word. What is the matter now? The matter is, conceal it as we may, gloss it over as we please, that the currency is in a sad state of unsuitability to the condition of the country. That is the fact of the matter; nobody can deny that; but what are we going to do? We are going to have a new tariff. I have nothing to say with regard to the policy of the tariff, one way or the other. We have had tariffs, have we not, every few years, ever since we were born; and has not the farmer become discontented under these conditions? It was the effort to remedy them that produced the silver movement. A new tariff may produce certain economic conditions; I do not care a peppercorn whether it does or not, but this is a thing which we have been tinkering and dickering with time out of mind, and in spite of the tinkering and dickering this situation has arisen. Are we going to cure it by more tinkering? We are not going to touch it in this way. Now, what are we going to do? It is neither here nor there whether I am a protectionist, or for a tariff for revenue, or whatever you choose to call me. The amount you collect in currency for imports is not going to make any difference. The right thing to do is to apply old principles to a new condition and get out of that new condition something that will effect a practical remedy. I do not pretend to be a doctor with a nostrum. I have no pill against an earthquake. I do not know how this thing is going to be done, but it is not going to be done by having stomachs easily turned by the truth; it is not going to be done by merely blinking the situation. If we blink the situation I hope we shall have no more celebrations in which we talk about our Puritan ancestors, because they did not blink the situation, and it is easy to eat and be happy and proud. A large number of persons may have square meals by having a properly adjusted currency.

We are very much in the condition described by the reporter who was describing the murder of a certain gentleman. He said that the murderer entered the house, and gave a graphic description of the whole thing. He said that fortunately the gentleman had put his valuables in the safe deposit and lost only his life. We are in danger of being equally wise. We are in danger of managing our policy so that our property will be put in safe deposit and we will lose only our lives. We will make all the immediate conditions of the nation perfectly safe and lose only the life of the nation. This is not a joke, this is a very serious situation. I should feel ashamed to stand here and not say that this is a subject which deserves your serious consideration and ought to keep some of you awake to-night. This is not a simple gratulatory occasion, this is a place where public duty should be realized and public purposes formed, because public purpose is a thing for which our Puritan ancestors stood, yours and mine. If this race should ever lose that capacity, if it should ever lose the sense of dignity in this regard, we should lose the great traditions of which we pretend to be proud. [Applause.]

JOHN WINSLOW

THE FIRST THANKSGIVING DAY

[Speech of John Winslow, in the capacity of presiding officer, at the eighth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1887.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF BROOKLYN, GUESTS AND FRIENDS:--This is the eighth anniversary of our Society and the two hundred and sixty-seventh of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. It will please you all to learn of the continued growth and prosperity of our Society. There is in our treasury the sum of $14,506.21, and we have no debts. [Applause.] This shows an increase of $1,266.26 over last year. As occasion requires this money is used for charitable purposes and in other useful ways, as provided by our by-laws. Such a gathering as we have here to-night is an inspiration. It must be especially so to the distinguished gentlemen, our guests, who will address you. So it comes to pass that you are to have to-night the advantage of listening to inspired men--an advantage not uncommon in the days of the prophets, but rare in our times. [Laughter and applause.] It is proper and agreeable to us all just here and now to recognize as with us our friend and benefactor and president emeritus, the Hon. Benjamin D. Silliman. [A voice: "Three cheers for that grand old man." The company rising gave rousing cheers.] He is with us with a young heart and a cheerful mind, and continues to be what he has been from the beginning--a loyal and devoted friend of our Society. [Applause.]

We are here this evening enjoying the sufferings of our Pilgrim Fathers. [Merriment.] Their heroic work takes in Plymouth Rock, ours takes in the Saddle Rock. They enjoyed game of their own shooting, we enjoy game of other's shooting; they drank cold water, because they could no longer get Holland beer. The fact that they must give up Dutch beer was one of the considerations (so we are told by one of their Governors) that made them loath to leave Leyden. [Laughter.] We drink cold water because we want it and like it. The Pilgrim Fathers went to church armed with muskets; we go to church with our minds stuffed and demoralized by the contents of Sunday morning newspapers. [Laughter.] The Pilgrim mothers went to church dressed in simple attire, because they could afford nothing elaborate and because they thought they could better catch and hold the devotional spirit. The Pilgrim mothers of our day go to church with costly toilets, because they can afford it, and are quite willing to take the chances as to catching and holding the aforesaid spirit. [Laughter.] The Pilgrim Fathers, when they made the compact on the Mayflower, planted the seeds of constitutional freedom; we, their worthy sons, commemorate their work; try to perpetuate it and enjoy the fruits thereof.

It is sometimes said the Pilgrims were a solemn people; that they were not cheerful. Well, in their severe experience in England and Holland and at Plymouth, there was much to make a born optimist grave and thoughtful. But it is a mistake to suppose that they could not rejoice with those who rejoiced as well as weep with those who wept. Take, for instance, the first Thanksgiving festival held by the Pilgrims. The quaint account of this by one of their Governors is always interesting. This first American Thanksgiving took place at Plymouth in 1621, only about ten months after the landing. It was like a Jewish festival, continuing out of doors for a week. The Pilgrim writer, Governor Winslow, describes it thus: "Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor (meaning Governor Bradford) sent four men out fowling, so that we might, after a special manner (meaning doubtless a gay and festive manner) rejoice together after (not counting chickens before they were hatched) we had gathered the fruit of our labors." Now, listen to this: "They killed in one day so much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week." What this "little help beside" was, is not stated. In our day it would mean that the hunter and the fisherman made heavy drafts upon Fulton Market for meat, fowl, and fish, to supply what was short. "At which time," says the writer, "among other recreations, we exercised our arms"--this probably means they shot at a mark [laughter]--"many of the Indians coming among us"--they were not the mark, at least this time--"and among the rest, their greatest king, Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted." Think of that; feasting ninety Indians three days, and the whole colony besides. What New England Society has ever made so good a showing of hospitality and good cheer? [Laughter.] "And they" (the ninety Indians), "went out and killed five deer."

Now, I submit, we have here a clear case of the application of the great principle of honest, even-handed co-operation, no modern device in that line could surpass it. It is true the Indians were not an incorporated society, and so there was no receiver appointed to wind them up. [Laughter.] "Which they brought," says the writer, "to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor" (meaning Governor Bradford), "our captain, and others." Governor Bradford, in speaking of this, tells us that among the fowl brought in "was a great store of turkeys." Thus begins the sad history in this country of the rise and annual fall on Thanksgiving days of that exalted biped--the American turkey. After this description of a Pilgrim festival day who shall ever again say the Pilgrims could not be merry if they had half a chance to be so. Why, if the Harvard and Yale football teams had been on hand with their great national game of banging each others' eyes and breaking bones promiscuously, they could not have added to the spirit of the day though they might to its variety of pastime. [Laughter.]

It is interesting to remember in this connection that in the earlier years of the colonies, Thanksgiving day did not come every year. It came at various periods of the year from May to December, and the intervals between them sometimes four or five years, gradually shortened and then finally settled into an annual festival on the last Thursday of November. A few years ago two Governors of Maine ventured to appoint a day in December for Thanksgiving. Neither of them was re-elected. [Laughter.] The crowning step in this development, which is now national, was when the fortunes of our late war were in favor of the Union, and a proclamation for a national Thanksgiving was issued by our then President, dear old Abraham Lincoln. [Applause.] That the festival shall hereafter and forever be national is a part of our unwritten law. [Applause.] It will thus be seen that we, the sons of the Pilgrims, may fairly and modestly claim that this feature of our national life, like most of the others that are valuable, proceeded directly from Plymouth Rock. The New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, will ever honor the work and the memory of the fathers. As in the sweet lines of Bryant:

"Till where the sun, with softer fires, Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep, The children of the Pilgrim sires This hallowed day, like us, shall keep."

[General applause.]

WILLIAM WINTER

TRIBUTE TO JOHN GILBERT

[Speech of William Winter at a dinner given by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 30, 1878, to John Gilbert, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance on the stage. Whitelaw Reid presided. William Winter responded to the toast "The Dramatic Critic."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I thank you very gratefully for this kind welcome, and I think it a privilege to be allowed to take part in a festival so delightful as this, and join with you in paying respect to a name so justly renowned and honored as that of John Gilbert. I cannot hope adequately to respond to the personal sentiments which have been so graciously expressed nor adequately celebrate the deeds and the virtues of your distinguished guest. "I am ill at these numbers ... but such answer as I can make you shall command." For since first I became familiar with the stage--in far-away days in old Boston, John Gilbert has been to me the fulfilment of one of my highest ideals of excellence in the dramatic art; and it would be hard if I could not now say this, if not with eloquence at least with fervor.

I am aware of a certain strangeness, however, in the thought that words in his presence and to his honor should be spoken by me. The freaks of time and fortune are indeed strange. I cannot but remember that when John Gilbert was yet in the full flush of his young manhood and already crowned with the laurels of success the friend who is now speaking was a boy at his sports--playing around the old Federal Street Theatre, and beneath the walls of the Franklin Street Cathedral, and hearing upon the broad causeways of Pearl Street the rustle and patter of the autumn leaves as they fell from the chestnuts around the Perkins Institution and the elms that darkened the sombre, deserted castle of Harris's Folly. With this sense of strangeness though, comes a sense still more striking and impressive of the turbulent, active, and brilliant period through which John Gilbert has lived. Byron had been dead but four years [1828] and Scott and Wordsworth were still writing when he began to act. Goethe was still living. The works of Thackeray and Dickens were yet to be created. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Halleck, and Percival were the literary lords of that period. The star of Willis was ascending while those of Hawthorne and Poe were yet to rise; and the dramas of Talfourd, Knowles, and Bulwer were yet to be seen by him as fresh contributions to the literature of the stage. All these great names are written in the book of death. All that part of old Boston to which I have referred--the scene equally of Gilbert's birth and youth and first successes and of his tender retrospection--has been swept away or entirely changed. Gone is the old Federal Street Theatre. Gone that quaint English alley with the cosey tobacconist's shop which he used to frequent. Gone the hospitable Stackpole where many a time at the "latter end of a sea-coal fire" he heard the bell strike midnight from the spire of the Old South Church! But, though "the spot where many times he triumphed is forgot"--his calm and gentle genius and his hale physique have endured in unabated vigor, so that he has charmed two generations of play-goers, still happily lives to charm men and women of to-day. Webster, Choate, Felton, Everett, Rantoul, Shaw, Bartlett, Lunt, Halleck, Starr King, Bartol, Kirk--these and many more, the old worthies of the bar, bench, and the pulpit in Boston's better days of intellect and taste:--all saw him as we see him in the silver-gray elegance and exquisite perfection with which he illustrates the comedies of England.

His career has impinged upon the five great cities of Boston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, London, and New York. It touches at one extreme the ripe fame of Munden (who died in '32) and--freighted with all the rich traditions of the stage--it must needs at its other extreme transmit even into the next century the high mood, the scholar-like wit, and the pure style of the finest strain of acting that Time has bestowed upon civilized man. By what qualities it has been distinguished this brilliant assemblage is full well aware. The dignity which is its grandeur; the sincerity which is its truth; the thoroughness which is its massive substance; the sterling principle which is its force; the virtue which is its purity; the scholarship, mind, humor, taste, versatile aptitude of simulation, and beautiful grace of method, which are its so powerful and so delightful faculties and attributes, have all been brought home to your minds and hearts by the wealth and clear genius of the man himself!

I have often lingered in fancy upon the idea of that strange, diversified, wonderful procession--here the dazzling visage of Garrick, there the woful face of Mossop; here the glorious eyes of Kean; there the sparkling loveliness of an Abington or a Jordan--which moves through the chambers of the memory across almost any old and storied stage. The thought is endless in its suggestion, and fascinating in its charm. How often in the chimney-corner of life shall we--whose privilege it has been to rejoice in the works of this great comedian, and whose happiness it is to cluster around him to-night in love and admiration--conjure up and muse upon his stately figure as we have seen it in the group of Sir Peter and Sir Robert, of Jaques and Wolsey, and Elmore! The ruddy countenance, the twinkling gray eyes, the silver hair, the kind smile, the hearty voice, the old-time courtesy of manner--how tenderly will they be remembered! How dearly are they prized! Scholar!--Actor!--Gentleman! long may he be spared to dignify and adorn the stage--a soother of our cares, and comfort to our hearts--exemplar for our lives!--the Edelweiss of his age and of our affections! [Great applause.]

* * * * *

TRIBUTE TO LESTER WALLACK

[Speech of William Winter at a banquet of the Lotos Club, given to Lester Wallack, December 17, 1887. Whitelaw Reid, the President of the Club, occupied the chair. Mr. Winter was called upon to speak in behalf of the critics.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--You have done me great honor in asking me to be present on this occasion, and you have conferred upon me a great privilege in permitting me to participate with you in this tribute of affection and admiration for John Lester Wallack, your distinguished and most deservedly honored guest and my personal friend these many, many years. [Cheers.]

I thank you for your thoughtful courtesy and for this distinguished mark of your favor. Being well aware of my defects both as a thinker and a speaker, I shrink from such emergencies as this, but having known him so long and having been in a professional way associated with so many of his labors and his triumphs, I should fail in duty if I were not at least to try to add my word of love, feeble and inadequate as it may be, to the noble volume of your sympathy and homage. [Cheers.]

The presence of this brilliant assemblage, the eloquent words which have fallen from the lips of your honored president and the speeches of your orators, they signify some change--I will not say in regard to the advancement of the stage--but they signify a wonderful advancement in our times in sympathetic and thoughtful and just appreciation of the theatre. This was not always so. It is not very long since so wise and gentle a man as Charles Lamb expressed his mild astonishment that a person capable of committing to memory and reciting the language of Shakespeare could for that reason be supposed to possess a mind congenial with that of the poet. The scorn of Carlyle and the scarcely less injurious pity of Emerson for the actor are indications that in a time not remote, thought and philosophy have made but little account of the stage.

Something might be said about this by a voice more competent than mine, for in our time there has been a change in the intelligent spirit of the age, and I am sure that thought and philosophy now are of the opinion that the actor is an intellectual and spiritual force; that he is connected most intimately with the cause of public education; that he brings something of his own, and that, although the part provides the soul, it is the actor who must provide the body, and without the soul and the body, you could not have dramatic representations for the benefit of them. [Applause.]

I am not one of those writers who believe that it is the business of the newspaper to manage the theatres. The question of what to do to please the public taste, to provide mankind with what they like, or what they want, or, which is the same thing, with what they think they want, opens a very complex inquiry. Our dear friend has been puzzled by it himself more than a little. I should not undertake to instruct him, but as the observer of his course I have been struck by wonder and admiration of the way he has carried his theatre through seasons of great competition and great peril.

I call to mind one season, now seventeen years ago, I think, when in the course of a very few months, he produced and presented upward of thirty-two plays, showing the best points of these plays and showing his great company to every possible advantage; so have I seen a juggler toss fifty knives in the air and catch them without cutting his fingers.

[At the close of his speech Mr. Winter read the following poem.]--

LESTER WALLACK

With a glimmer of plumes and a sparkle of lances, With blare of the trumpets and neigh of the steed, At morning they rode where the bright river glances, And the sweet summer wind ripples over the mead; The green sod beneath them was ermined with daisies, Smiling up to green boughs tossing wild in their glee, While a thousand glad hearts sang their honors and praises, While the Knights of the Mountain rode down to the sea.

One rode 'neath the banner whose face was the fairest, Made royal with deeds that his manhood had done, And the halo of blessing fell richest and rarest On his armor that splintered the shafts of the sun;

So moves o'er the waters the cygnet sedately, So waits the strong eagle to mount on the wing, Serene and puissant and simple and stately, So shines among princes the form of the King.

With a gay bugle-note when the daylight's last glimmer Smites crimson and gold on the snow of his crest, At evening he rides through the shades growing dimmer, While the banners of sunset stream red in the West; His comrades of morning are scattered and parted, The clouds hanging low and the winds making moan, But smiling and dauntless and brave and true-hearted, All proudly he rides down the valley alone.

Sweet gales of the woodland embrace and caress him, White wings of renown be his comfort and light, Pale dews of the starbeam encompass and bless him, With the peace and the balm and the glory of night; And, Oh! while he wends to the verge of that ocean, Where the years like a garland shall fall from his brow, May his glad heart exult in the tender devotion, The love that encircles and hallows him now.

[Enthusiastic applause.]

ROBERT C. WINTHROP

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

[Speech of Robert C. Winthrop made at the public dinner given to Amin Bey by the merchants of Boston, Mass., November 4, 1850.]

MR. PRESIDENT:--I am greatly honored by the sentiment just proposed, and I beg my good friend, the Vice-President [Hon. Benjamin Seaver], to accept my hearty thanks for the kind and complimentary terms in which he has presented my name to the company. I am most grateful for the opportunity of meeting with so large a number of the intelligent and enterprising merchants of Boston, and of uniting with them in a tender of deserved hospitality, and in a tribute of just respect, to the Commissioner of his Imperial Majesty, the Sultan of Turkey.

And yet, I cannot but reflect, even as I pronounce these words, how strangely they would have sounded in the ears of our fathers not many generations back, or even in our own ears not many years ago. A deserved tender of hospitality, a just tribute of respect, to the Representative of the Grand Turk! Sir, the country from which your amiable and distinguished guest has come, was not altogether unknown to some of the early American discoverers and settlers. John Smith--do not smile too soon, Mr. President, for though the name has become proverbially generic in these latter days, it was once identified and individualized as the name of one of the most gallant navigators and captains which the world has ever known--that John Smith who first gave the cherished name of New England to what the Pilgrims of the Mayflower called "these Northern parts of Virginia"--he, I say, was well acquainted with Turkey; and two centuries and a half ago, he gave the name of a Turkish lady to one of the capes of our own Massachusetts Bay. But he knew Turkey as a prison and a dungeon, and he called what is now Cape Ann, Cape Tragabigzanda, only to commemorate his affection for one who had soothed the rigors of a long and loathsome captivity.

Nor was Turkey an unknown land to at least one of those Winthrops of the olden time, with whom the Vice-President has so kindly connected me. In turning over some old family papers since my return home, I have stumbled on the original autograph of a note from John Winthrop, the younger, dated "December 26th, 1628, at the Castles of the Hellespont," whither he had gone, as is supposed, as the Secretary of Sir Peter Wich, the British Ambassador at Constantinople. The associations of that day, however, with those remote regions, were by no means agreeable, and I should hardly dare to dwell longer upon them on this occasion and in this presence. I rejoice that events have occurred to break the spell of that hereditary prejudice, which has so long prevailed in the minds of not a few of us, toward the Ottoman Empire. I rejoice that our associations with Turkey are no longer those only of the plague and the bowstring; that we are encouraged and authorized to look to her hereafter for something better than a little coarse wool for our blankets, or a few figs for our dessert, or even a little opium or rhubarb for our medicine-chests; that, in a word, we are encouraged and warranted to look to her, under the auspices and administration of her young, gallant, and generous Sultan, for examples of reform, of toleration, of liberality, of a magnanimous and chivalrous humanity, which are worthy of the admiration and imitation of all mankind. I rejoice, especially, that an occasion has been afforded for testifying the deep sense which is entertained throughout our country, of the noble conduct of the Sublime Porte in regard to the unfortunate exiles of Hungary.

The influence which the Ottoman Empire seems destined to exert over the relations of Eastern and Western Europe, is of the most interesting and important character; and, while we all hold steadfastly to the great principle of neutrality which Washington established and enforced, we yet cannot suppress our satisfaction that this influence is now in the hands of one who seems determined to wield it fearlessly for the best interests of civilization and humanity.

And now, sir, let us hope that our distinguished friend, Amin Bey, may return home with some not less favorable impressions of our own land. Of our enterprise, of our industry, of our immense material production, of our rapid progress in arts and improvements of every kind, of our vast territorial extent, he cannot fail to testify. Let us hope that he may be able to speak also of internal order, of domestic tranquillity, of wise and just laws, faithfully administered and promptly obeyed, of a happy, contented, and united people, commending by their practice and example, as well as by their principles and precepts, the institutions under which they live.

The distinguished gentleman who preceded me [Mr. Webster], and whom I have been under the disadvantage of following in other scenes as well as here, has spoken of the Union of these States. There is no language so strong or so emphatic, which even he can use, as to the importance of preserving that Union, which does not meet with a prompt and cordial echo in my own bosom. To the eyes of Amin Bey, and to the eyes of all foreign nations, we are indeed but one country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To them there is no Boston or New York, no Carolina or Louisiana. Our commerce goes forth under one and the same flag, whether from the Bay of Massachusetts or from the "Golden Gate" of California. Under that flag, it has been protected, prospered, and extended beyond example. Under that flag, new fields are opening to it, and new triumphs are before it. May our distinguished guest take home with him an assurance, founded upon all that he has seen and all that he has heard, of the resolution of us all, that the flag of our Union shall still and always remain one and the same, from ocean to ocean, untorn and untarnished, proof alike against everything of foreign assault and everything of domestic dissension! [Great applause.]

JOHN SERGEANT WISE

CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

[Speech of John S. Wise at the eleventh annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 20, 1890. The President, Willard Bartlett, occupied the chair. He called upon Mr. Wise to speak to the toast, "Captain John Smith, the Ruler of Virginia, and Admiral of New England," saying: "It was not without a purpose that your committee arranged the order of speaking this evening. I am sure that the gentlemen who have already addressed you will take it in good part, if I say we knew that, by putting one name at the end of the programme, we should be sure to hold the audience here till the doxology. Now a speaker who bears the name of the first ruler of Virginia I ever knew anything about, will address you upon Virginia's still earlier ruler, Captain John Smith."]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--It is one of the peculiarities of Americans, that they attempt to solve the unsolvable problem of successfully mixing gastronomy and oratory. In chemistry there are things known as incompatibles, which it is impossible to blend and at the same time preserve their original characteristics. It is impossible to have as good a dinner as we have had served to-night, and preserve the intellectual faculties of your guests so that they may be seen at their best. I am not unmindful that in the menu the courses grew shorter until they culminated in the pungent and brief episode of cheese, and so I take it that as to the oratory here on tap, you desire it to become gradually more brief and more pungent.

Now, the task of condensing into a five-minute speech two hundred and seventy years of the history of America, is something that has been assigned to me, and I propose to address myself to it without further delay. [Laughter]

John Smith was at one time President of Virginia, and afterward Admiral of New England, and ever since then, until lately, New England and Virginia have been trying to pull loose from each other, so as not to be under the same ruler. [Laughter and applause.] John Smith was a godsend to the American settlers, because he was a plain man in a company of titled nonentities, and after they had tried and failed in every effort to make or perpetuate an American colony, plain John Smith, a democrat, without a title, took the helm and made it a success. [Laughter.]

Then and there, and ever since, we laid aside the Reginald-Trebizond-Percys of nobility, and stuck to the plain John Smiths, honest citizens, of capacity and character. By his example we learned that "Kind hearts are more than coronets," and simple men of worth are infinitely better than titled vagabonds of Norman blood. [Applause.] It is almost three centuries since a tiny vessel, not larger than a modern fishing-smack, turned her head to the sunset across an unknown sea, for the land of conjecture. The ship's company, composed of passengers from England, that wonderful nest of human wanderers, that splendid source of the best civilization of the world, cast anchor by chance in a noble bay for which they had not sailed, and settled a colony; not with any particularly high or noble object, but really in pursuit of gold, and searching for a South Sea which they never found. The voyage had been projected without any other object than the accumulation of wealth, which wealth was to be carried back to the old country and enjoyed in that England which they loved, and to which their eyes ever turned backward with affection, reverence, and the hope of return. This band of younger sons and penniless nobility, attempted to make a settlement under the charter known as the London charter of Virginia; and while we find to-day men sneering at John Smith, the fact remains that he alone was enabled by his strong personality, by his sterling, individual worth, to resist the savages, to make the lazy work, to furnish food for the weak and sickly, to re-inspire those who had lost hope, and to firmly establish a settlement in Virginia. His reward was what? Sedition in his own camp, ingratitude among his own followers, misrepresentation to his patrons, disappointment, disease, and poverty to himself; a return to England and posthumous fame. But his bulldog fangs, the fangs of that English blood which once sunk in the throat of a savage land remain forever, were placed upon America, to mark it as another conquest and another triumph of Anglo-Saxon colonization. Three years of peace and quiet in England were not to his taste. His mother's spirit craved new adventures, and he sought them in sea voyages to the north. Although his task was a much less difficult one, and not quite so prominent as the task he had accomplished in Virginia, he prepared the way for the settlement at Plymouth Rock. To his title of President of Virginia was added the title of Admiral of New England, because this John Smith, without a pedigree, except such as was blazoned on his shield by his slaughter of three Turks, turned his attention from the land to the sea, sailed the colder waters of the north, located the colonies of New England, named your own Boston, and the result of his voyages and reports were the Plymouth charter and settlement. So it is that we have a common founder of the settlements of this country. Of all the gallants who embarked in the first adventure, all disappeared save John Smith, who bore the plainest and commonest name that human imagination can devise. He became the patron saint of American civilization, as much yours as ours, and as much ours as yours. [Laughter and applause.]

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: We had one founder; we came from one master-mind; one great spirit was the source of both our settlements; and this initial fact in our histories has seemed to inspire the American people through all the centuries with the sentiment that our union should be eternal in spite of all disturbing circumstances. [Applause.] When I said, in a light way, that old Virginia and Massachusetts had sought to rend themselves asunder, it was scarcely true. They have too much that is glorious in common to be aught but loving sisters. The men who are before me will not forget that the settlers of the London colony of Virginia, and settlers of the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts, have been at the front of every great movement which has agitated this nation from its birth. When it came to the question of whether we should dissolve the political ties that bound us to the British King, Massachusetts Bay and the colony of Virginia were the first to form their Committees of Safety, exchange their messages of mutual support, and strengthen the weak among their sister colonies. [Applause.] When it came to the time that tried men's souls in the Revolution, it was the men of Virginia and the men of Massachusetts Bay that furnished the largest quotas of revolutionary soldiers who achieved the independence of the American colonies.

When it came to the formation of a federal union, Virginia, with her Washington, gave the first President, and Massachusetts, with her Adams, stepped proudly to the front with the first Vice-President and second President. [Applause.] In later years, when differences came--which differences need not be discussed--every man here knows what part Virginia and Massachusetts bore. It was a part which, however much we may differ with each other, bespoke the origin of the two colonies, and told that true manhood was there to do and die for what it believed was right. When that struggle was ended, the first to clasp hands in mutual friendship and affection were Virginia and Massachusetts. If we were to blot from the history or geography of the Nation the deeds or territory of the ancient dominions of John Smith, President of Virginia and Admiral of New England, a beggarly record of area would be left, in spite of the glorious records of other sections in recent years.

The history of America is to me not only of deep and absorbing interest in its every detail, but it is a romance; it is a fascinating detail of wonderful development, the like of which cannot be found in the annals of civilization from the remotest time. We may go back to the time when the curtain rises on the most ancient civilization of the East, and there is nothing to compare with it. We may take up not only the real, but the romantic history of modern European progress, and there is nothing like American history for myself. Taking up the story of the Quaker invasion of Massachusetts as early as 1659, I find Lydia Wardell, daughter of Isaac Perkins, a freeman of the colony, whipped in Boston, because she had ceased to be a Puritan and had become a Quakeress. Turning then to the history of Virginia in 1663, I find Colonel Edmund Scarburgh riding at the head of the King's troops into the boundaries of Maryland, placing the broad arrows of the King on the houses of the Quakers, and punishing them soundly for non-conformity. Upon the question of who was right and who was wrong in these old feuds, there are doubtless men who, even to this day, have deep prejudices. Fancy how conflicting are the sentiments of a man in 1890, as to their merits, when he reflects, as I do, that Lydia Wardell was his grandmother, and Colonel Scarburgh his grandfather. [Applause and laughter.]

How absurd seems any comparison between the Puritan and Cavalier settlers of America. There they are, with all their faults, and all their virtues. Others may desire to contrast them. I do not. I stand ready to do battle against anybody who abuses either. Their conjoint blood has produced a Nation, the like of which no man living before our day had ever fancied. Nearly three centuries of intermingling and intermarrying, has made the traditions and the hopes of either the heritage and aspiration of us all. Common sufferings, common triumphs, common pride, make the whole glorious history the property of every American citizen, and it is provincial folly to glorify either faction at the expense of the other.

We stand to-night on the pinnacle of the third Century of American development. Look back to the very beginning. There stands the grizzled figure of John Smith, the Pioneer--President of Virginia, and Admiral of New England. Still united, we look about us and behold a nation blessed with peace and plenty, crowned with honor, and with boundless opportunity of future aggrandizement. The seed planted by John Smith still grows. The voice of John Smith still lives. That voice has been swelled into the mighty chorus of 60,000,000 Americans singing the song of United States. We look forward to a future whose possibilities stagger all conjecture, to a common ruler of John Smith's ancient dominions; to a common destiny, such as he mapped out for us. And with devout and heartfelt gratitude to him, a reunited land proclaims, "Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." [Great applause.]

* * * * *

THE LEGAL PROFESSION

[Speech of John S. Wise at the annual dinner of the New York State Bar Association, Albany, N. Y., January 20, 1891. Matthew Hale, the President, introduced Mr. Wise as follows; "The next sentiment in order was, by mistake, omitted from the printed list of sentiments which is before you. The next sentiment is 'The Legal Profession,' and I call upon a gentleman to respond to that toast who, I venture to say, has practised law in more States of this Union than any other gentleman present. I allude to the orator of the day, the Hon. John S. Wise [applause], formerly of Virginia, but now a member of the Bar Association of the State of New York."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BAR:--It may not be true that I have practised law in more States of this Union than any one present, but it is certainly true that I never did as much speaking in the same length of time, without charging a fee for it, as I have done within the last twenty-four hours. [Laughter.] At two o'clock this morning I was in attendance, in the city of New York, upon a ghost dance of the Confederate veterans; at two o'clock this evening I resolved myself into a deep, careful, and circumspect lawyer, and now I am with the boys, and propose to have a good time. [Laughter.] Now, you know, this scene strikes me as ridiculous--our getting here together and glorifying ourselves and nobody to pay for it. My opinion is, that the part of wisdom is to bottle this oratory and keep it on tap at $5 a minute. [Laughter.] The Legal Profession--why, of course, we are the best fellows in the world. Who is here to deny it? It reminds me of an anecdote told by an old politician in Virginia, who said that one day, with his man, he was riding to Chesterfield court, and they got discussing the merits of a neighbor, Mr. Beasley, and he says, "Isaac, what do you think of Mr. Beasley?" "Well," he says, "Marse Frank, I reckon he is a pretty good man." "Well, there is one thing about Mr. Beasley, he is always humbling himself." He says, "Marse Frank, you are right; I don't know how you is, but I always mistrusts a man that runs hisself down." [Laughter.] He says, "I don't know how you is, Marse Frank, but I tell you how it is with me: this nigger scarcely ever says no harm against hisself." So I say it of the legal profession--this here nigger don't never scarcely say no harm against himself. [Great laughter.]

Of course we are the best profession in the world, but if any of our clients are standing at that door and listening to this oratory, I know what their reflection is. They are laughing in their sleeves and saying: "Watch him, watch him; did you ever hear lawyers talk as much for nothing? Watch them; it is the funniest scene I ever saw. There are a lot of lawyers with their hands in their own pockets." [Laughter.]

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, another thing. We are not fooling with any judges now. I know who I am talking to and how long I have been doing it. Sometimes you can fool a judge into letting you have more time than the rule allows; but with lawyers, enough is enough. We know exactly when to put on the brakes with each other. We are not now earning fees by the yard or charging by the minute, and when a man is through with what he has to say, it is time to sit down, and all I have to say in conclusion is, that the more I watch the legal profession and observe it, the more I am convinced that with the great responsibility, with the great trusts confided to it, with the great issues committed to its keeping, with the great power it has to direct public feeling and public sentiment, with the great responsibilities resulting, take it as a mass--and there are plenty of rascals in it--but take it as a mass, and measure it up, and God never made a nobler body in these United States. [Applause.]

EDWARD OLIVER WOLCOTT

THE BRIGHT LAND TO WESTWARD

[Speech of Edward O. Wolcott at the eighty-second annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1887. The President, ex-Judge Horace Russell, introduced the speaker as follows: "It was an English lawyer who said that the farther he went West the more he was convinced that the wise men came from the East. We may not be so thoroughly convinced of this after we have heard the response to the next regular toast, 'The Pilgrim in the West.' I beg to introduce Mr. Edward O. Wolcott, of Colorado."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--It was with great diffidence that I accepted the invitation of your President to respond to a toast to-night. I realized my incapacity to do justice to the occasion, while at the same time I recognized the high compliment conveyed. I felt somewhat as the man did respecting the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy; he said he didn't know whether Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works or not, but if he didn't, he missed the greatest opportunity of his life. [Laughter.]

The West is only a larger, and in some respects a better, New England. I speak not of those rose gardens of culture, Missouri and Arkansas, but otherwise, generally of the States and Territories west of the Mississippi, and more particularly, because more advisedly, of Colorado, the youngest and most rugged of the-thirty-eight; almost as large in area as all New England and New York combined; "with room about her hearth for all mankind"; with fertile valleys, and with mines so rich and so plentiful that we occasionally, though reluctantly, dispose of one to our New York friends. [Laughter.] We have no very rich, no very poor, and no almshouses; and in the few localities where we are not good enough, New England Home Missionary Societies are rapidly bringing us up to the Plymouth Rock standard and making us face the Heavenly music. [Laughter.] We take annually from our granite hills wealth enough to pay for the fertilizers your Eastern and Southern soils require to save them from impoverishment. We have added three hundred millions to the coinage of the world; and, although you call only for gold, we generously give you silver, too. [Laughter.] You are not always inclined to appreciate our efforts to swell the circulation, but none the less are we one with you in patriotic desire to see the revenues reformed, provided always that our own peculiar industries are not affected. Our mountains slope toward either sea, and in their shadowy depths we find not only hidden wealth, but inspiration and incentive to high thought and noble living, for Freedom has ever sought the recesses of the mountains for her stronghold, and her spirit hovers there; their snowy summits and the long, rolling plains are lightened all day long by the sunshine, and we are not only Colorado, but Colorado Claro! [Applause.]

Practically, as little is known of the great West by you of the East as was known a century ago of New England by our British cousins. Your interest in us is, unfortunately, largely the interest on our mortgages, your attitude toward us is somewhat critical, and the New England heart is rarely aroused respecting the West except when some noble Indian, after painting himself and everything else within his reach red, is sent to his happy hunting grounds. [Laughter.] Yet, toward the savage, as in all things, do not blame us if we follow the Christian example set us by our forefathers. We read that the Court at Plymouth, more than fifty years after the colony was founded, ordered "That whosoever shall shoot off any gun on any unnecessary occasion, or at any game whatsoever, except an Indian or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings for every such shot"; and our pious ancestors popped over many an Indian on their way to Divine worship. [Laughter.] But when in Colorado, settled less than a generation ago, the old New England heredity works itself out and an occasional Indian is peppered, the East raises its hands in horror, and our offending cowboys could not find admittance even to an Andover Probation Society. [Laughter.]

Where we have a chance to work without precedent, we can point with pride of a certain sort to methods at least peaceful. When Mexico was conquered, we found ourselves with many thousand Mexicans on hand. I don't know how they managed it elsewhere, but in Colorado we not only took them by the hand and taught them our ways, but both political parties inaugurated a beautiful and generous custom, since more honored in the breach than in the observance, which gave these vanquished people an insight into and an interest in the workings of republican institutions which was marvellous: a custom of presenting to each head of a household, being a voter, on election day, from one to five dollars in our native silver. [Great laughter.]

If Virginia was the mother of Presidents, New England is the mother of States. Of the population of the Western States born in the United States, some five per cent, are of New England birth, and of the native population more than half can trace a New England ancestry. Often one generation sought a resting-place in Ohio, and its successor in Illinois or in Iowa, but you will find that the ancestor, less than a century ago, was a God-fearing Yankee. New England influences everywhere predominate. I do not mean to say that many men from the South have not, especially since the war, found homes and citizenship in the West, for they have; and most of them are now holding Federal offices. [Laughter.] It is nevertheless true that from New England has come the great, the overwhelming influence in moulding and controlling Western thought. [Applause.]

New England thrift, though a hardy plant, becomes considerably modified when transplanted to the loam of the prairies; the penny becomes the dime before it reaches the other ocean; Ruth would find rich gleanings among our Western sheaves, and the palm of forehandedness opens sometimes too freely under the wasteful example which Nature sets all over our broad plains; but because the New England ancestor was acquisitive, his Western descendant secures first of all his own home. [Applause.] The austere and serious views of life which our forefathers cherished have given way to a kindlier charity, and we put more hope and more interrogation points into our theology than our fathers did; but the old Puritan teachings, softened by the years and by brighter and freer skies, still keep our homes Christian and our home life pure. And more, far more than all else, the blood which flows in our veins, the blood of the sturdy New Englanders who fought and conquered for an idea, quickened and kindled by the Civil War, has imbued and impregnated Western men with a patriotism that overrides and transcends all other emotions. Pioneers in a new land, laying deep the foundations of the young commonwealths, they turn the furrows in a virgin soil, and from the seed which they plant there grows, renewed and strengthened with each succeeding year, an undying devotion to republican institutions, which shall nourish their children and their children's children forever. [Prolonged applause.]

An earnest people and a generous! The Civil strife made nothing right that was wrong before, and nothing wrong that was right before; it simply settled the question of where the greater strength lay. We know that

"Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe,"

and that if more remains to be done, it must come because the hearts of men are changed. The war is over; the very subject is hackneyed; it is a tale that is told, and commerce and enlightened self-interest have obliterated all lines. And yet you must forgive us if, before the account is finally closed, and the dead and the woe and the tears are balanced by all the blessings of a reunited country, some of us still listen for a voice we have not yet heard; if we wait for some Southern leader to tell us that renewed participation in the management of the affairs of this nation carries with it the admission that the question of the right of secession is settled, not because the South was vanquished, but because the doctrine was and is wrong, forever wrong. [Great applause.]

We are a plain people, too, and live far away. We find all the excitement we need in the two great political parties, and rather look upon the talk of anybody in either party being better than his party, as a sort of cant. The hypercritical faculty has not reached us yet, and we leave to you of the East the exclusive occupancy of the raised dais upon which it seems necessary for the independent voter to stand while he is counted. [Applause and laughter.]

We are provincial; we have no distinctive literature and no great poets; our leading personage abroad of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill" [laughter], and we use our adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork, and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city cousins; about as New to Old England, only we don't feel half so badly about it, and on the whole are rather pleased with ourselves. [Laughter.] There is not in the whole broad West a ranch so lonely or so remote that a public school is not within reach of it. With generous help from the East, Western colleges are elevating and directing Western thought, and men busy making States yet find time to live manly lives and to lend a hand. All this may not be æsthetic, but it is virile, and it leads up and not down. Great poets, and those who so touch the hearts of men that the vibration goes down the ages, must often find their inspiration when wealth brings leisure to a class, or must have "learned in suffering what they teach in song." We can wait for our inspired ones; when they come, the work of this generation, obscure and commonplace, will have paved the way for them; the general intelligence diffused in this half century will, unknown or forgotten, yet live in their numbers, and the vivid imaginations of our New England ancestors, wasted in depicting the joys and torments of the world to come, will, modified by the years, beautify and ennoble the cares of this. [Applause.]

There are some things even more important than the highest culture. The West is the Almighty's reserve ground, and as the world is filling up. He is turning even the old arid plains and deserts into fertile acres, and is sending there the rain as well as the sunshine. A high and glorious destiny awaits us; soon the balance of population will lie the other side of the Mississippi, and the millions that are coming must find waiting for them schools and churches, good government, and a happy people:

"Who love the land because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why; Would shake hands with a King upon his throne, And think it kindness to his Majesty."

We are beginning to realize, however, that the invitation we have been extending to all the world has been rather too general. So far we have been able to make American citizens in fact as well as name out of the foreign-born immigrants. The task was light while we had the honest and industrious to deal with, but the character of some of the present immigration has brought a conviction which we hope you share, that the sacred rights of citizenship should be withheld from a certain class of aliens in race and language, who seek the protection of this Government, until they shall have at least learned that the red in our flag is commingled with the white and blue and the stars. [Great applause.]

In everything which pertains to progress in the West, the Yankee reinforcements step rapidly to the front. Every year she needs more of them, and as the country grows the annual demand becomes greater. Genuine New Englanders are to be had on tap only in six small States, and remembering this we feel that we have the right to demand that in the future even more than in the past, the heads of the New England households weary not in the good work. [Laughter and applause.]

In these later days of "booms" and New Souths and Great Wests; when everybody up North who fired a gun is made to feel that he ought to apologize for it, and good fellowship everywhere abounds, there is a sort of tendency to fuse; only big and conspicuous things are much considered; and New England being small in area and most of her distinguished people being dead, she is just now somewhat under an eclipse. But in her past she has undying fame. You of New England and her borders live always in the atmosphere of her glories; the scenes which tell of her achievements are ever near at hand, and familiarity and contact may rob them of their charms, and dim to your eyes their sacredness. The sons of New England in the West revisit her as men who make pilgrimage to some holy shrine, and her hills and valleys are still instinct with noble traditions. In her glories and her history we claim a common heritage, and we never wander so far away from her that with each recurring anniversary of this day, our hearts do not turn to her with renewed love and devotion for our beloved New England; yet--

"Not by Eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But Westward, look, the land is bright!"

[Hearty applause.]

LORD WOLSELEY

(GARNET JOSEPH WOLSELEY)

THE ARMY IN THE TRANSVAAL

[Speech of Field-Marshal Viscount Wolseley, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, at a dinner given by the Authors' Club, London, November 6, 1899. Dr. Conan Doyle presided.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I think that all people who know anything about the Army should rejoice extremely that our first experiment in mobilization has been as successful as it has been. [Cheers.]

Your Chairman has mentioned the name of one, a most intimate friend of mine, the present Military Secretary. [Lord Lansdowne.] I think the nation is very much indebted to him not only for the manner in which this mobilization has been carried out, but still more so for having laid the foundation on which our mobilization system is based, and for making those preparations which led to its complete success. [Cheers.] There are many other names I might mention, others who have also devoted themselves for many years past in a very quiet manner, and with all the ability which now, I am glad to say, so largely permeates the Army, to making these preparations and to try to bring this curious army of ours up to the level of the modern armies of the world. [Cheers.]

Although I say it myself, I think I may claim for myself and for those who have worked with me a certain meed of praise, for we have worked under extreme difficulties. Not only under the ordinary difficulties in dealing with a very complicated arrangement, but we have had to work in the face of the most dire opposition on the part of a great number of people who ought to have been the first to help us. ["Hear! Hear!"] The Chairman has referred to the opposition of the Press; but that has been nothing to the opposition we have met with in our own profession--the profession of ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, when great reforms were begun in the Army by the ablest War Secretary who has ever been in office--I mean Lord Cardwell. His name is now almost forgotten by the present generation, and also the names of many other distinguished officers in their day, whose names were associated with many of the brightest moments of English victory and English conquest, and who set their faces honestly against alteration, and firmly believed that the young men of those days were a set of madmen and a set of Radicals who were anxious to overturn not only the British Army, but the whole British Constitution with it. [Laughter.] This prejudice spread into high places, until at last we were looked upon as a party of faddists who ought to be banished to the farthest part of our dominions. [Renewed laughter.] But I am glad to say that the tree we planted then took root, and there gradually grew up around us a body of young officers, men highly instructed in their profession, who supported us, carried us through, and enabled us to arrive at the perfection which, I think, we have now attained. ["Hear! Hear!"]

There has been abroad in the Army for a great many years an earnest desire on the part of a large section, certainly, to make themselves worthy of the Army and worthy of the nation by whom they were paid, and for whose good they existed. That feeling has become more intensified every year, and at the present moment, if you examine the Army List, you will find that almost all the Staff Officers recently gone out to South Africa have been educated at the Staff College, established to teach the higher science of our profession and to educate a body of men who will be able to conduct the military affairs of the country when it comes to their turn to do so. Those men are now arriving at the top of the tree, thank God! while many of those magnificent old soldiers under whom I was brought up have disappeared from the face of the earth, and others who are to be seen at the clubs have come round--they have been converted in their last moments [laughter]; they have the frankness to tell you they made a mistake. They recognize that they were wrong and that we were right. [Cheers.]

I quite endorse what the Chairman says about the success of the mobilization, and I will slightly glance at the state of affairs as they at present exist in South Africa. I have the advantage of having spent some time in South Africa, and of having been--not only General Commanding, but Governor and High Commissioner, with high-sounding titles given me by her Majesty. I know, consequently, not only a little of South Africa, but a good deal of Boer character. During my stay as Governor of the Transvaal, I had many opportunities of knowing people whom you have recently seen mentioned as the principal leaders in this war against us. There are many traits in their character for which I have the greatest possible admiration. They are a very strongly conservative people--I do not mean in a political sense at all, but they were, I found, anxious to preserve and conserve all that was best in the institutions handed down to them from their forefathers. But of all the ignorant people in that world that I have ever been brought into contact with, I will back the Boers of South Africa as the most ignorant. At the same time they are an honest people. When the last President of the Transvaal handed over the government to us--and I may say, within parentheses, that the last thing an Englishman would do under the circumstances would be to look in the till--there was only 4_s._ 6_d._ to the credit of the Republic. [Laughter.] Within a few weeks or days of the hoisting of the British flag in the Transvaal a bill for £4 10_s._ 4_d._ came in against the Boer Government, and was dishonored. [Renewed laughter.] The Boers at that time--perhaps we did not manage them properly--certainly set their face against us, and things have gone on from bad to worse, until the aspiration now moving them is that they should rule not only the Transvaal, but that they should rule the whole of South Africa. That is the point which I think English people must keep before them. There's no question about ruling the Transvaal or the Orange Free State--the one great question that has to be fought out between the Dutch in South Africa and the English race is, which is to be the predominant Power--whether it is to be the Boer Republic or the English Monarchy. [Cheers.] Well, if I at all understand and know the people of this nation, I can see but one end to it, and it will be the end that we hope for and have looked for. [Cheers.]

But I would warn every man who takes an interest in this subject not to imagine that war can be carried on like a game of chess or some other game in which the most powerful intellect wins from the first. War is a game of ups and downs, and you may rest assured that it is impossible to read in history of any campaign that it has been a march of triumph from beginning to end. Therefore, if at the present moment we are suffering from disappointments, believe me, those disappointments are in many ways useful to us. We have found that the enemy who declared war against us--for they are the aggressors--are much more powerful and numerous than we anticipated. But at the same time, believe me, that anything that may have taken place lately to dishearten the English people has had a good effect--it has brought us as a nation closer together. The English-speaking people of the world have put their foot down, and intend to carry this thing through, no matter what may be the consequence. [Cheers.]

I have the greatest possible confidence in British soldiers. I have lived in their midst many years of my life, and I am quite certain of this, that wherever their officers lead they will follow. If you look over the list of our casualties lately, you will find that the British officer has led them well. Certainly he has not spared himself; he has not been in the background. [Cheers.] He has suffered unfortunately, and expects to suffer, and ought to suffer; and I hope most sincerely and truly, whatever may be in store for us, whatever battles there may be in this war, that when we read the list of casualties there will be a very large proportion of officers sufferers as well as men. It would be most unworthy of our Army and of our nation if our officers did not lead, and if they lead they must suffer as well as those who follow. I am extremely obliged to you for the compliment that has been paid to me. It has been a very great pleasure for me to come here. I had no idea I was to listen to such an admirable speech from your Chairman. I thank you sincerely for having listened to me, and hope you will make every allowance for any defect in a speech which certainly had not been prepared. [Loud cheers.]

WU TING-FANG

CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES

[Speech of Wu Ting-Fang, Chinese Minister to the United States, at the annual dinner of the New York Southern Society, New York City, February 22, 1899. William M. Polk, the President of the Society, occupied the chair. Minister Wu responded to the sentiment, "To our newest and nearest neighbor on our Western border, the most ancient of Empires, which until now has always been in the Far East, and to her distinguished diplomatic representative--_persona grata_ to our Government and to this Society."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--It is never too late to learn, and since I have been here I have learned that my ancient country, which has always been known as an Eastern country, has now turned to be a Western country. I do not regret to hear this, because Western countries have always been looked on as very powerful nations. [Applause.] In that sense I would not be sorry to see my own country assume the position that your Western countries have always taken. I do not know whether you would wish to have your great Nation become an Eastern country in the sense in which Eastern countries are popularly known.

When the invitation to dine with you on this occasion was conveyed to me I gladly accepted it because the occasion occurred on the anniversary of the birth of George Washington, who is widely and popularly known as the Father of your country. Long before I came to the United States as the representative of my country, even when I was a boy, I had heard of George Washington, and from what I could learn about him I formed a profound respect for his name and memory. At this banquet you appropriately recall to mind the noble character of your Washington, his great deeds, and his unselfish devotion to his country.

It is interesting to know that time changes not only the opinions of individuals and parties, but also the traditional policy of a nation. I understood when I was a boy that the policy of George Washington was to confine his attention and his ambition to the country in which he governed. That policy has been followed by all of his successors up to very recently. [Laughter and applause.] But the recent momentous events have necessitated a new departure. You have been driven to a position that you never dreamed of before. You have entered the path of Expansion, or, as some call it, Imperialism.

If I understand your chairman correctly, Imperialism practically means the power and wisdom to govern. This is not the first time that I have heard such a definition of imperialism. I once heard an eminent American divine say that imperialism meant civilization--in an American sense. [Laughter.] He also added the word liberty, and with your permission I would like to make a still further addition: that is, fairness, and just treatment of all classes of persons without distinction of race or color. [Cheers.] Well, you have the Philippines ceded to you, and you are hesitating whether to keep them or not. I see in that very fact of your hesitation an indication of your noble character. Suppose a precious gift entailing obligations is tendered to a man; he would accept it without any thought or hesitation if he were wholly lacking in principle; but you hesitate because of your high moral character, and your sense of responsibility. I express no opinion as to whether or not you should keep the Philippines. That is for you to decide. I am confident that when this question has been thoroughly threshed out, you will come to the right decision. I will say this: China must have a neighbor; and it is my humble opinion that it is better to have a good neighbor than an indifferent one.

Should your country decide to keep the Philippines, what would be the consequences? A large trade has been carried on for centuries between those islands and China. Your trade would be greatly increased and to your benefit. Aside from this the American trade in China has been increasing largely in the last few years. I have often been asked whether we Chinamen are friendly to America. To show you how friendly we are, I will tell you that we call your nation a "flowery flag" and that we call your people "handsome." Such phrases clearly show that we are favorably disposed toward you. If we did not like you, we would not have given you such nice names. The officials of China, as well as the people, like Americans, and our relations, officially and commercially, are cordial.

There is, however, one disturbing element--one unsatisfactory feature--I refer to your Chinese Immigration law. Your people do not know and do not understand my people. You have judged all of my people from the Chinese in California. Your Chinese exclusion law has now been in operation for fifteen or sixteen years, but it cannot be said to have been satisfactory even to yourselves. Those laws were intended to keep the Chinese cheap labor out of your country, but they have also kept out the better class of my countrymen whom I am satisfied the laws did not intend to exclude. I desire to throw no blame on any of your officials for their zeal in enforcing the laws. They simply do their duty. But I want to point out to you that those laws do not bring about the results intended by your legislators. Besides, their existence gives the impression in our country that your people do not like our people. I personally know that is not so, but I would like to see this disturbing element removed by a modification of the laws. Once remove that disturbing element and our people would welcome your Americans to China with open arms.

As to the character of our people I can refer you only to those who have been in China. I will refer you to the opinion of a man who for a great many years was in China at the head of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank. After twenty-five years' service, he resigned, and on the eve of his departure he was given a banquet by foreigners, not by Chinese, mind; and in the course of his speech he went out of his way to speak of his relations with Chinese merchants. As I remember, the substance of his speech was that during all those years in China, he had had dealings with Chinese merchants aggregating hundreds of millions of dollars, and he said that, large as were those dealings, he had never lost a cent through any Chinese merchant. That testimony was given unsolicited by a man long resident in China, and shows indisputably the character of our merchants.

Now that you have become our neighbor, and if you want to deal with China, here is the class of people you have to deal with; and if you see your way clear to modify the only obstacle that now stands in the way of respectable Chinese coming here, and doing away with the false impression in the minds of our people, I have no doubt that such a step would redound to the benefit of both parties. If you look at the returns furnished by your consuls or by our customs returns, you will find that your trade in China has increased to a remarkable degree. China is constructing a railway from north to south, and she is practically an open door for your trade purposes. There is a great field for you there; and with all our people favorably disposed toward you, I am sure you will receive further benefits through the means of still further increased trade. [Loud applause.]

WALTER WYMAN

SONS OF THE REVOLUTION

[Speech of Surgeon-General Walter Wyman at the banquet given in Washington, D. C., February 22, 1900, by the Society of the Sons of the Revolution in the District of Columbia.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--In behalf of the Society of the Sons of the Revolution in the District of Columbia it becomes my pleasant duty to bid you welcome on this occasion, the anniversary of the birthday of George Washington, the Father of his country.

The Society of the Sons of the Revolution was founded in 1883, in New York, its purpose, as expressed by the Constitution, being "to perpetuate the memory of the men, who, in the military, naval, and civic service of the Colonies and of the Continental Congress, by their acts and counsel achieved the independence of the Country." The New York Society, to be historically correct, was instituted February 22, 1876, but was reorganized in 1883, when the General Society was formed. State Societies were subsequently formed in Alabama, California, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, State of Washington, and West Virginia, there being, therefore, thirty-one State Societies, with a total membership of 6,031. The District of Columbia Society was formed in 1889, and now numbers over two hundred and fifty members.

The object of these Societies is not, as some may imagine, to indulge a pride of ancestry, or to establish exclusive organizations with a membership dependent upon the deeds of forefathers for its own distinction, but rather to encourage and stimulate a desire for knowledge of the problems which were presented to, and the circumstances which confronted our revolutionary forefathers; to study their courage and wisdom in council and their valor in war, which resulted in the establishment of a Republic, the most potent in the history of the world.

The illumination of the past is useless unless its rays are made to penetrate into the present, bestowing guidance and confidence. The records of our forefathers, therefore, are brought forth and published to the world, chiefly to stimulate ourselves to like courage and devotion should occasion arise.

The patriotism displayed by both the North and the South during the War of the Rebellion, and the patriotism displayed during the recent Spanish-American War, are evidences that true American spirit is as strong to-day as it was in the days which gave birth to our Republic. The associations now in existence, having their origin in the War of the Rebellion and the Spanish-American War, are similar in their aim and objects to the Society of the Sons of the Revolution. This Society seeks to preserve the records of the founders of the Republic, to cause these records to be published and preserved in permanent form--not only those which are to be found in the archives of the Nation and of the States, but fragmentary facts of vast interest, in the hands of private individuals, which would otherwise become lost or forgotten. It erects monuments to commemorate the lives of distinguished men, and mural tablets to signalize important events; it establishes prize essays for competition among school children on subjects relating to the American Revolution, and seeks to inspire respect and affection for the flag of the Union.

The numerous celebrations and excursions to points of historical interest, of the District of Columbia Society, within the past ten years, must still be fresh in the minds of many among this audience. Each Fourth of July, each Washington's Birthday, as well as on other occasions within the past ten years, has this Society indulged in patriotic celebration. The celebration of to-day is of peculiar significance. Questions, second only in importance to those which confronted Washington, are before us. The Nation is entering upon a career of influence and beneficence which even Washington never dreamed of. Questions of government, involving the rights of men, the responsibilities of the strong in their relations to the weak, the promulgation of freedom without license, are problems facing the American Congress and the people to-day. The force of events has extended the responsibility of these United States to Cuba, Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and Samoa.

During the events of the past two years every thinking man and woman must have been impressed by the gravity of the problems with which our present Chief Executive has been forced to grapple: problems that have demanded of him many of the great qualities which distinguished our first President. These problems involved a steady adherence to what is right, a lofty patriotism sinking the individual in the consideration of the public good. Firmness before the enemy, buoyancy and strength before friends, and humility before the Creator who disposes of all things. These are elements of character which not only distinguished George Washington, but which I am only echoing public sentiment in saying likewise have distinguished our present Chief Executive, and inspired an affection for and a confidence in the name of William McKinley.

It is peculiarly befitting at this time, therefore, to study those characteristics of great men which enable them to meet great emergencies and at the same time preserve their own simplicity and nobility of character untainted by selfishness. Of the living we may not speak too freely, but every act and sentiment of him "who by his unwearied exertions in the cabinet and in the field achieved for us the glorious revolution," is ours for contemplation and comment. Both time and place are singularly appropriate. In this city bearing his name, facing the noble shaft erected to his memory, within the territory which he most frequented, and almost in sight of his stately home on the Potomac, it is befitting that we here celebrate his natal day. [Prolonged applause.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Robert G. Ingersoll.

[2] Jay Gould.

[3] TRANSLATION.--Will you kindly allow me to make my speech in French? If I address you in a tongue that I do not speak, and that no one here understands, I must lay the entire blame on that unfortunate example of Mr. Coudert. What I desire to say is--

[4] TRANSLATION.--When the heart is full it overflows, and this evening my heart is full of France, but--

[5] Henry W. Grady.

[6] Glaucopis.

[7] Allusion to John T. Hoffman, who occupied the post of Recorder previous to his election as Mayor.

[8] Mrs. Ripley.

[9] Charles Cotesworth Beaman.

[10] Horace Porter.

[11] Harriet Beecher Stowe, died July 1, 1896.

[12] Abraham Lincoln.

[13] Professor Woodrow Wilson was, at the suggestion of the retiring president (Francis Landey Patton) of Princeton University, unanimously elected to fill his place as president, June 9, 1902.