Part 6

Let me tell you one thing more, and I am done. The only way to have brave, honest, intelligent, conscientious public men, men without superstition, is to do what we can to make the average citizen brave, conscientious and intelligent. If you wish to see courage in the presidential chair, conscience upon the bench, intelligence of the highest order in Congress; if you expect public men to be great enough to reflect honor upon the Republic, private citizens must have the courage and the intelligence to elect, and to sustain, such men. I have said, and I say it again, that never while I live will I vote for any man to be President of the United States, no matter if he does belong to my party, who has not won his spurs on some field of intellectual conflict. We have had enough mediocrity, enough policy, enough superstition, enough prejudice, enough provincialism, and the time has come for the American citizen to say: "Hereafter I will be represented by men who are worthy, not only of the great Republic, but of the Nineteenth Century."

ROBSON AND CRANE DINNER.

New York, November 21, 1887.

* The theatre party and supper given by Charles P. Palmer, brother of Courtlandt Palmer, on Monday evening were unusually attractive in many ways. Mr Palmer has recently returned from Europe, and took this opportunity to gather around him his old club associates and friends, and to show his admiration of the acting of Messrs. Robson and Crane. The appearance of Mr. Palmer's fifty guests in the theatre excited much interest in all parts of the house. It is not often that theatre-goers have the opportunity of seeing in a single row, Channcey M. Depew, Gen. William T. Sherman, Gen. Horace Porter and Robert G. Ingersoll, with Leonard Jerome and his brother Lawrence, Murat Halstead and other well- known men in close proximity

The supper table at Delmonico's was decorated with a lavish profusion of flowers rarely approached even at that famous restaurant.

Mr. Palmer was a charming host, full of humor, jollity and attention to every guest. He opened the speaking with a few apt words. Then Stuart Rodson made some witty remarks, and called upon William H. Crane, whose well-rounded speech was heartily applauded General Sherman, Chauncey M. Depew, General Porter, Lawrence Jerome and Colonel Ingersoll were all in their best moods, and the sallies of wit and the abundance of genuine humor in their informal addresses kept their hearers in almost continuous laughter. Lawrence Jerome was in especially fine form. He sang songs, told stories and said: "Depew and Ingersoll know so much that intelligence has become a drag in the market, and it's no use to tell you what a good speech I would have made." J. Seaver Page made an uncommonly witty and effective speech. Murat Halstead related some reminiscences of his last European tour and of his experiences in London with Lawrence and Leonard Jerome, which were received with shouts of laughter. Altogether the supper was one to be long remembered by all present.--The Tribune, New York, November 23, 1887;

TOAST: COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.

I BELIEVE in the medicine of mirth, and in what I might call the longevity of laughter. Every man who has caused real, true, honest mirth, has been a benefactor of the human race. In a world like this, where there is so much trouble--a world gotten up on such a poor plan--where sometimes one is almost inclined to think that the Deity, if there be one, played a practical joke--to find, I say, in such a world, something that for the moment allows laughter to triumph over sorrow, is a great piece of good fortune. I like the stage, not only because General Sherman likes it--and I do not think I was ever at the theatre in my life but I saw him--I not only like it because General Washington liked it, but because the greatest man that ever touched this grain of sand and tear we call the world, wrote for the stage, and poured out a very Mississippi of philosophy and pathos and humor, and everything calculated to raise and ennoble mankind.

I like to see the stage honored, because actors are the ministers, the apostles, of the greatest man who ever lived, and because they put flesh upon and blood and passion within the greatest characters that the greatest man drew. This is the reason I like the stage. It makes us human. A rascal never gained applause on the stage. A hypocrite never commanded admiration, not even when he was acting a clergyman--except for the naturalness of the acting. No one has ever yet seen any play in which, in his heart, he did not applaud honesty, heroism, sincerity, fidelity, courage, and self-denial. Never. No man ever heard a great play who did not get up a better, wiser, and more humane man; and no man ever went to the theatre and heard Robson and Crane, who did not go home better-natured, and treat his family that night a little better than on a night when he had not heard these actors.

I enjoy the stage; I always did enjoy it. I love the humanity of it. I hate solemnity; it is the brother of stupidity--always. You never knew a solemn man who was not stupid, and you never will. There never was a man of true genius who had not the simplicity of a child, and over whose lips had not rippled the river of laughter--never, and there never will be. I like, I say, the stage for its wit and for its humor. I do not like sarcasm; I do not like mean humor. There is as much difference between humor and malicious wit as there is between a bee's honey and a bee's sting, and the reason I like Robson and Crane is that they have the honey without the sting.

Another thing that makes me glad is, that I live in an age and generation and day that has sense enough to appreciate the stage; sense enough to appreciate music; sense enough to appreciate everything that lightens the burdens of this life. Only a few years ago our dear ancestors looked upon the theatre as the vestibule of hell; and every actor was going "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." In those good old days, our fathers, for the sake of relaxation, talked about death and graves and epitaphs and worms and shrouds and dust and hell. In those days, too, they despised music, cared nothing for art; and yet I have lived long enough to hear the world--that is, the civilized world--say that Shakespeare wrote the greatest book that man has ever read. I have lived long enough to see men like Beethoven and Wagner put side by side with the world's greatest men--great in imagination--and we must remember that imagination makes the great difference between men. I have lived long enough to see actors placed with the grandest and noblest, side by side with the greatest benefactors of the human race.

There is one thing in which I cannot quite agree with what has been said. I like tragedy, because tragedy is only the other side of the shield and I like both sides. I love to spend an evening on the twilight boundary line between tears and smiles. There is nothing that pleases me better than some scene, some act, where the smile catches the tears in the eyes; where the eyes are almost surprised by the smile, and the smile touched and softened by the tears. I like that. And the greatest comedians and the greatest tragedians have that power; and, in conclusion, let me say, that it gives me more than pleasure to acknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe, not only to the stage, but to the actors whose health we drink to-night.

THE POLICE CAPTAINS' DINNER.

New York, January 24, 1888.

TOAST: DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PRESS.

ONLY a little while ago, the nations of the world were ignorant and provincial. Between these nations there were the walls and barriers of language, of prejudice, of custom, of race and of religion. Each little nation had the only perfect form of government--the only genuine religion--all others being adulterations or counterfeits.

These nations met only as enemies. They had nothing to exchange but blows--nothing to give and take but wounds.

Movable type was invented, and "civilization was thrust into the brain of Europe on the point of a Moorish lance." The Moors gave to our ancestors paper, and nearly all valuable inventions that were made for a thousand years.

In a little while, books began to be printed--the nations began to exchange thoughts instead of blows. The classics were translated. These were read, and those who read them began to imitate them--began to write themselves; and in this way there was produced in each nation a local literature. There came to be an exchange of facts, of theories, of ideas.

For many years this was accomplished by books, but after a time the newspaper was invented, and the exchange increased.

Before this, every peasant thought his king the greatest being in the world. He compared this king--his splendor, his palace--with the peasant neighbor, with his rags and with his hut. All his thoughts were provincial, all his knowledge confined to his own neighborhood--the great world was to him an unknown land.

Long after papers were published, the circulation was small, the means of intercommunication slow, painful, few and costly.

The same was true in our own country, and here, too, was in a great degree, the provincialism of the Old World.

Finally, the means of intercommunication increased, and they became plentiful and cheap.

Then the peasant found that he must compare his king with the kings of other nations--the statesmen of his country with the statesmen of others--and these comparisons were not always favorable to the men of his own country.

This enlarged his knowledge and his vision, and the tendency of this was to make him a citizen of the world.

Here in our own country, a little while ago, the citizen of each State regarded his State as the best of all. To love that State more than all others, was considered the highest evidence of patriotism.

The Press finally informed him of the condition of other States. He found that other States were superior to his in many ways--in climate, in production, in men, in invention, in commerce and in influence. Slowly he transferred the love of State, the prejudice of locality--what I call mud patriotism--to the Nation, and he became an American in the best and highest sense.

This, then, is one of the greatest things to be accomplished by the Press in America--namely, the unification of the country--the destruction of provincialism, and the creation of a patriotism broad as the territory covered by our flag.

The same ideas, the same events, the same news, are carried to millions of homes every day. The result of this is to fix the attention of all upon the same things, the same thoughts and theories, the same facts--and the result is to get the best judgment of a nation.

This is a great and splendid object, but not the greatest.

In Europe the same thing is taking place. The nations are becoming acquainted with each other. The old prejudices are dying out. The people cf each nation are beginning to find that they are not the enemies of any other. They are also beginning to suspect that where they have no cause of quarrel, they should neither be called upon to fight, nor to pay the expenses of war.

Another thing: The kings and statesmen no longer act as they formerly did. Once they were responsible only to their poor and wretched-subjects, whose obedience they compelled at the point of the bayonet. Now a king knows, and his minister knows, that they must give account for what they do to the civilized world. They know that kings and rulers must be tried before the great bar of public opinion--a public opinion that has been formed by the facts given to them in the Press of the world. They do not wish to be condemned at that great bar. They seek not only not to be condemned--not only to be acquitted--but they seek to be crowned. They seek the applause, not simply of their own nation, but of the civilized world.

There was for uncounted centuries a conflict between civilization and barbarism. Barbarism was almost universal, civilization local. The torch of progress was then held by feeble hands, and barbarism extinguished it in the blood of its founders. But civilizations arose, and kept rising, one after another, until now the great Republic holds and is able to hold that torch against a hostile world.

By its invention, by its weapons of war, by its intelligence, civilization became capable of protecting itself, and there came a time when in the struggle between civilization and barbarism the world passed midnight.

Then came another struggle,--the struggle between the people and their rulers.

Most peoples sacrificed their liberty through gratitude to some great soldier who rescued them from the arms of the barbarian. But there came a time when the people said: "We have a right to govern ourselves." And that conflict has been waged for centuries.

And I say, protected and corroborated by the flag of the greatest of all Republics, that in that conflict the world has passed midnight.

Despotisms were softened by parliaments, by congresses--but at last the world is beginning to say: "The right to govern rests upon the consent of the governed. The power comes from the people--not from kings. It belongs to man, and should be exercised by man."

In this conflict we have passed midnight. The world is destined to be republican. Those who obey the laws will make the laws.

Our country--the United States--the great Republic--owns the fairest portion of half the world. We have now sixty millions of free people. Look upon the map of our country. Look upon the great valley of the Mississippi--stretching from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. See the great basin drained by that mighty river. There you will see a territory large enough to feed and clothe and educate five hundred millions of human beings.

This country is destined to remain as one. The Mississippi River is Nature's protest against secession and against division.

We call that nation civilized when its subjects submit their differences of opinion, in accordance with the forms of law, to fellow-citizens who are disinterested and who accept the decision as final.

The nations, however, sustain no such relation to each other. Each nation concludes for itself. Each nation defines its rights and its obligations; and nations will not be civilized in respect of their relations to each other, until there shall have been established a National Court to decide differences between nations, to the judgment of which all shall bow.

It is for the Press--the Press that photographs the human activities of every day--the Press that gives the news of the world to each individual--to bend its mighty energies to the unification and the civilization of mankind; to the destruction of provincialism, of prejudice--to the extirpation of ignorance and to the creation of a great and splendid patriotism that embraces the human race.

The Press presents the daily thoughts of men. It marks the progress of each hour, and renders a relapse into ignorance and barbarism impossible. No catastrophe can be great enough, no ruin wide-spread enough, to engulf or blot out the wisdom of the world.

Feeling that it is called to this high destiny, the Press should appeal only to the highest and to the noblest in the human heart.

It should not be the bat of suspicion, a raven, hoarse with croaking disaster, a chattering jay of gossip, or a vampire fattening on the reputations of men.

It should remain the eagle, rising and soaring high in the cloudless blue, above all mean and sordid things, and grasping only the bolts and arrows of justice.

Let the Press have the courage always to defend the right, always to defend the people--and let it always have the power to clutch and strangle any combination of men, however intellectual or cunning or rich, that feeds and fattens on the flesh and blood of honest men.

In a little while, under our flag there will be five hundred millions of people. The great Republic will then dictate to the world--that is to say, it will succor the oppressed--it will see that justice is done--it will say to the great nations that wish to trample upon the weak: "You must not--you shall not--strike." It will be obeyed.

All I ask is--all I hope is--that the Press will always be worthy of the great Republic.

GENERAL GRANT'S BIRTHDAY DINNER

New York, April 27, 1888.

* The tribute at Delmonico's last night was to the man Grant as a supreme type of the confidence of the American Republic in its own strength and destiny. Soldiers over whose lost cause the wheels of a thousand cannons rolled, and whose doctrines were ground to dust under the heels of conquering legions, poured out their souls at the feet of the great commander. Magnanimity, mercy, faith--these were the themes of every orator. Christian and Infidel, blue and gray, Republican and Democrat talked of Grant almost as men have come to talk of Washington.

And, alas! In the midst of it all, with its soft glow of lights, its sweet breath of flowers, its throb of music and bewildering radiance of banners, there was a vacant chair. Upon it hung a wreath of green, tied with a knot of white ribbon. Soldier and statesman and orator walked past that chair and seemed to reverence it. It was the seat intended for the trumpet tongued advocate of Grant in war, Grant in victory, Grant in peace, Grant in adversity--the seat of Roscoe Conkling. A little later and a clergyman jostled into the vacant chair and brushed the green circlet to the floor.

Gray and grim old General Sherman presided. About the nine round, flower heaped tables were grouped the long list of distinguisned men from every walk or life and from every section of the country.

Among the speakers was Ex-Minister Edwards Pierrepont who was one of Grant's cabinet and who made a long speech, part of which was devoted to explaining the court etiquette of dukes and earls and ministers in England, and how an ex- President of the United States ranks in Europe when an American Minister helps him out. The rest of the speech seemed to be an attempt to get up a presidential boom for the Prince of Wales.

When Mr. Pierrepont sat down, General Sherman explained that Col. Robert Ingersoll did not want to speak, but a group of gentlemen lifted the orator up and carried him forward by main force.--New York Herald, April 28,1888.

TOAST: GENERAL GRANT

GEN. SHERMAN and Gentlemen: I firmly believe that any nation great enough to produce and appreciate a great and splendid man is great enough to keep his memory green. No man admires more than I do men who have struggled and fought for what they believed to be right. I admire General Grant, as well as every soldier who fought in the ranks of the Union,--not simply because they were fighters, not simply because they were willing to march to the mouth of the guns, but because they fought for the greatest cause that can be expressed in human language--the liberty of man. And to-night while General Mahone was speaking, I could not but think that the North was just as responsible for the war as the South. The South upheld and maintained what is known as human slavery, and the North did the same; and do you know, I have always found in my heart a greater excuse for the man who held the slave, and lived on his labor, and profited by the rascality, than I did for a Northern man that went into partnership with him with a distinct understanding that he was to have none of the profits and half of the disgrace. So I say, that, in a larger sense--that is, when we view the question from a philosophic height--the North was as responsible as the South; and when I remember that in this very city, _in this very city_, men were mobbed simply for advocating the abolition of slavery, I cannot find it in my heart to lay a greater blame upon the South than upon the North. If this had been a war of conquest, a war simply for national aggrandizement, then I should not place General Grant side by side with or in advance of the greatest commanders of the world. But when I remember that every blow was to break a chain, when I remember that the white man was to be civilized at the same time the black man was made free, when I remember that this country was to be made absolutely free, and the flag left without a stain, then I say that the great General who commanded the greatest army ever marshaled in the defence of human rights, stands at the head of the commanders of this world.

There is one other idea,--and it was touched upon and beautifully illustrated by Mr. Depew. I do not believe that a more merciful general than Grant ever drew his sword. All greatness is merciful. All greatness longs to forgive. All true grandeur and nobility is capable of shedding the divine tear of pity.

Let me say one more word in that direction. The man in the wrong defeated, and who sees the justice of his defeat, is a victor; and in this view--and I say it understanding my words fully--the South was as victorious as the North.

No man, in my judgment, is more willing to do justice to all parts of this country than I; but, after all, I have a little sentiment--a little. I admire great and splendid deeds, the dramatic effect of great victories; but even more than that I admire that "touch of nature which makes the whole world kin." I know the names of Grant's victories. I know that they shine like stars in the heaven of his fame. I know them all. But there is one thing in the history of that great soldier that touched me nearer and more deeply than any victory he ever won, and that is this: When about to die, he insisted that his dust should be laid in no spot where his wife, when she sleeps in death, could not lie by his side. That tribute to the great and splendid institution that rises above all others, the institution of the family, touched me even more than the glories won upon the fields of war.

And now let me say, General Sherman, as the years go by, in America, as long as her people are great, as long as her people are free, as long as they admire patriotism and courage, as long as they admire deeds of self-denial, as long as they can remember the sacred blood shed for the good of the whole nation, the birthday of General Grant will be celebrated. And allow me to say, gentlemen, that there is another with us to-night whose birthday will be celebrated. Americans of the future, when they read the history of General Sherman, will feel the throb and thrill that all men feel in the presence of the patriotic and heroic.

One word more--when General Grant went to England, when he sat down at the table with the Ministers of her Britannic Majesty, he conferred honor upon them. There is one change I wish to see in the diplomatic service--and I want the example to be set by the great Republic--I want precedence given here in Washington to the representatives of Republics. Let us have some backbone ourselves. Let the representatives of Republics come first and the ambassadors of despots come in next day. In other words, let America be proud of American institutions, proud of a Government by the people. We at last have a history, we at last are a civilized people, and on the pages of our annals are found as glorious names as have been written in any language.

LOTOS CLUB DINNER, TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY.

New York, March 22, 1890.

YOU have talked so much of old age and gray hairs and thin locks, so much about the past, that I feel sad. Now, I want to destroy the impression that baldness is a sign of age. The very youngest people I ever saw were bald.