Chapter V: Part 5

Now, I am perfectly willing to admit that there has been for the past year or two a revival of what might be called the "shilling shocker" in literature, but it seems to me Professor McClintock entirely overestimates and exaggerates the influence of the "yore and gore" fictionists; and even if it were true that they filled the magazines to the exclusion of Mr. Read [Opie P. Read] and myself--

[Mr. Read: Which they don't:]

Which they don't--and if it were true that the pendulum is swinging toward the "shilling shocker," it does not follow that it will be a century before there is a return to the thoughtful study of social life. This romance can die, and these books be as dead as Hugh Conway's "Called Back" in less than ten years. I am perfectly willing to admit all these mutations of taste, but there is something deeper than that. Do you know, I have a notion that the reign of cheap melodrama and farce-comedy on our stage and of the "shilling shocker" during the last two years is due largely to our financial condition. Many of you are business men, and I know how you talk. I ask you to go to see a serious play, and you say: "Well, I will tell you; I am pretty well worn out when business is done, and things are not going just as they should, and I would rather go to the theatre to laugh these days. I don't care to go to the theatre to think."

In precisely the same way, when you are called upon, after a hard day of business care and worry, to read a book, and I say to you: "Read Israel Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto'; it is one of the greatest studies of our day," you say: "The fact is, I should go to sleep over it. I must have something that has fighting in it. I want 'yore and gore' fiction this year. Later on, when I get over my business difficulties and get where things are easy with me, I'll try Zangwill's 'Children of the Ghetto.' I will sit down with my wife and have her read it aloud." There is great significance in this confession as it appears to me.

And what is this "yore and gore" fiction when you analyze it? It is simply a sublimated "dime novel" which, by reason of increased demand for easy reading, on the part of the tired brain, has been put into a little better cover, and published by Harpers. Hitherto it was published by Beadle or some other fellow of that sort. It is current now. The people are reading it. They will continue to do so for a year or two, and then it will disappear. I like what Zangwill said of it a while ago. I cannot quote it exactly, but it was like this: "I had a dream the other night, wherein I scrambled over the roofs of buildings pursued by detectives. I lowered myself by drain pipes. I did business in dark corridors. I retreated up narrow passages with my good broadsword flaming, and laid scores of men at my feet. I was sealed up in dungeons. I was snatched out of the deep by the hair of my head. I slew men in hecatombs; and then, when the morning came and I awoke, there was not a shred of intellectual wrack left behind on which my mind could take hold. I had dreamed it all with the cerebellum. It was all organic. Why didn't I dream a novel by Turgenef, or Bjornsen? It takes brains to write "Fathers and Sons" or the "Bankrupt," and it takes brains to read such masterpieces."

With all due respect to the very calm and fine position taken by Professor McClintock [Prof. W. D. McClintock had asserted his belief that the twentieth century would stand for a great revival of romantic literature], this novel of lust and war does not strike me as being very high-class art. It may seem good and fine and fresh and inspiring, this fiction which slays its millions, but I am a good deal of a Quaker. I would not slay anybody for anything. Therefore, such art does not appear beautiful to me. I do not believe it is good for our youth to read "yore and gore" fiction.

There _are_ romancers--Prof. McClintock named one--who have personal quality. I don't care what school of fiction a man belongs to if he has something to say to me which has not been said a thousand times by somebody else. Such a man is Robert Louis Stevenson. He slew men also, but he uttered something beside war cries. But this "shilling shocker," this searching after the dreadful and the unknown which is red with blood, does not strike me as literature at all. It is all the work of the cerebellum. It is not the work of the cerebrum. I should put it like this--If a man can tell us something that has not been told before; if he can add something to the literature of the world--a real creation--if he can, like the coral insect, build his own little cell upon the great underlying mass of English literature, I do not care what you call him, nor what he calls himself, he is worthy my support.

It is not safe to always reckon a man's merit by the sale of his books. The author of "Old Sleuth" measured in that way would be the greatest American writer, in fact, the greatest writer of any time. You can't reckon the sale of such books by numbers; you reckon them by tons. It is easy to make a book sell, but the thing is to produce an original work of art, to put something forth with the imprint of your own personality as a creative artist.

I believe old Walt Whitman stated the whole problem when he said: "All that the past was not, the future will be." I do not believe that the future of the world is to be a future of war. I believe it is to be a future of industrial peace as Professor Pearson [Charles W. Pearson] has indicated. And I believe that the literature and the art of that future will not be based upon war; it will be humanitarian, and at its best always an individual statement of life. In other words, the whole tendency of modern art is towards the celebration of the individual by the individual, and you cannot class writers in any hard and fast division. There is not an artist living who delineates "things as they are." There is not a writer living holding that for a theory, or who has that desire for a fundamental impulse. Art is selection, and upon the individual soul of the creative artist is laid the burden of choice. It is in the way he chooses his material and in the way he works it out that he is to be judged. He may be a story-teller like Stevenson, or he may be a novelist like Zangwill. All I ask of him is just simply this--he must be an individual creative artist; he must not repeat, must not imitate for the sake of gain.

JOHN GILBERT

PLAYING "OLD MEN" PARTS

[Speech of John Gilbert at a banquet given by the Lotos Club in
recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance on the
stage, New York City, November 30, 1878. The chairman of the dinner
was Whitelaw Reid, President of the Lotos.]

"CÆSAR, WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE SALUTE YOU." Such the gladiator's cry in the arena standing face to face with death. There is a certain appositeness in the words I have just uttered that probably may correspond to my position. Understand me, I do not mean to die theatrically at present. [Laughter.] But when a man has arrived at my age, he can scarcely look forward to very many years of professional exertion. When my old friend, John Brougham [Mr. Brougham:--"I am not going to die just yet."] [laughter], announced to me the honor that the Lotos Club proffered me, I was flattered and complimented. But I said: "John, you know I am no speechmaker." He replied, "Say anything." "Anything," I said, "anything won't do." "Then," said he, "repeat the first speech of Sir Peter Teazle, 'When an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?'" [Laughter.] Well, I think I can paraphrase that and say, "When a young man enters the theatrical profession, what is he to expect?" Well, he may expect a good many things that are never realized. However, suffice it to say that fifty years ago I made my debut as an actor in my native city of Boston. I commenced in the first-class character of Jaffier in Otway's charming tragedy of "Venice Preserved." The public said it was a success, and I thought it was. [Laughter.] The manager evidently thought it was, too, for he let me repeat the character. Well, I suppose it was a success for a young man with such aspirations as I had. There might have been some inspiration about it--at least there ought to have been--for the lady who personated Belvidera was Mrs. Duff, a lovely woman and the most exquisite tragic actress that I ever saw from that period to the present.

After this, I acted two or three parts, Mortimer, Shylock, and some of those little, trifling characters [laughter], with comparative success. But shortly after, and wisely, I went into the ranks to study my profession--not to commence at the top and go to the bottom [laughter]--but to begin at the bottom and go to the top, if possible. As a young man, I sought for pastures fresh and new. I went to the South and West, my ambition still being, as is that of all youthful aspirants for dramatic honors, for tragedy. At last I went to a theatre, and to my great disgust and indignation I was cast for an old man--at the age of nineteen. [Laughter.] However, I must do it. There was no alternative and I did it. I received applause. I played a few more old men [laughter]; I found at last that it was my point, my forte, and I followed it up and after this long lapse of years, I still continue in that department. I went to England and was received with kindness and cordiality and, returning to my own country in 1862, I was invited to join Wallack's Theatre by the father of my dear friend here [alluding to Mr. Lester Wallack], his father whom I am proud to acknowledge as a friend of mine nearly fifty years ago, and I am also proud to say my dramatic master. [Applause.] I need not tell you that since that time I have been under the direction of his son. What my career has been up to the present time you all know. It requires no comment from me. I am no longer a young man, but I do not think I am an old man. [Applause and laughter.] I owe this to a good constitution and moderately prudent life. [Shouts of laughter.] I may say with Shakespeare's Adam, that

"In my youth I never did apply
Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,
Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly."

Will you permit me, gentlemen, to thank you for the very high honor you have conferred upon me this evening and allow me to drink the health and prosperity and happiness of the Lotos Club? [Cheers.]

WILLIAM SCHWENK GILBERT

PINAFORE

[Speech of William S. Gilbert at a dinner given to him and to Sir Arthur
Sullivan by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 8, 1879. Whitelaw
Reid, the President, in introducing Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan,
said: "We do not welcome them as men of genius. It sometimes happens
that men of genius do not deserve welcome. But we do greet them as men
who have used their undoubted genius to increase the happiness of
their kind [applause]; men whose success has extended throughout the
nations and has added bright hours to the life of every man and woman
it has touched. [Applause.] That success has depended on no unworthy
means. Respecting themselves and their art, they have always respected
their audiences. They have so married wit and humor, and a most
delicate fancy, and the best light music of the time, to the public
temper, that we have seen here in New York, for example, their piece
so popular that we hadn't theatres enough in town to hold the people
who simultaneously and unanimously wanted to hear it. I propose first
the health of a gentleman who, not merely in the piece that has so
long been the rage of the town, but in a brilliant series of previous
successes, has always given us wit without dirt [applause]--a drama in
which the hero is not a rake, and the heroine is not perpetually
posing and poising between innocence and adultery."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--As my friend Sullivan and I were driving to this Club this evening, both of us being very nervous and very sensitive, and both of us men who are highly conscious of our oratorical defects and deficiencies, and having before us vividly the ordeal awaiting us, we cast about for a comparison of our then condition. We likened ourselves to two authors driving down to a theatre at which a play of theirs was to be played for the first time. The thought was somewhat harassing, but we dismissed it, because we remembered that there was always an even chance of success [laughter], whereas in the performance in which we were about to take part there was no prospect of aught but humiliating failure.

We were rather in the position of prisoners surrendering to their bail, and we beg of you to extend to us your most merciful consideration. But it is expected of me, perhaps, that in replying to this toast with which your chairman has so kindly coupled my name, I shall do so in a tone of the lightest possible comedy. [Laughter.] I had almost said that I am sorry to say that I cannot do so; but in truth I am not sorry. A man who has been welcomed as we have been here by the leaders in literature and art in this city, a man who could look upon that welcome as a string on which to hang a series of small jokes would show that he was responding to an honor to which he was not entitled. For it is no light thing to come to a country which you have been taught to regard as a foreign country, and to find ourselves in the best sense of the word "at home" [applause] among a people whom we are taught to regard as strangers, but whom we are astonished to find are our intimate friends [applause]; and that proffered friendship is so dear to us that I am disposed, in behalf of my collaborateur and myself, to stray somewhat from the beaten paths of after-dinner oratory, and to endeavor to justify ourselves in respect to a matter in which we have some reason to feel that we have been misrepresented.

I have seen in several London journals well-meant but injudicious paragraphs saying that we have a grievance against the New York managers because they have played our pieces and have offered us no share of the profits. [Laughter.] We have no grievance whatever. Our only complaint is that there is no international copyright act. [Applause.] The author of a play in which there is no copyright is very much in the position of an author or the descendants of an author whose copyright has expired. I am not aware that our London publishers are in the habit of seeking the descendants of Sir Walter Scott or Lord Byron, or Captain Marryat, and offering them a share of the profits on their publications. [Laughter.] I have yet to learn that our London managers seek out the living representatives of Oliver Goldsmith, or Richard Brinsley Sheridan or William Shakespeare, in order to pay them any share of the profits from the production of "She Stoops to Conquer," or "The Good-Natured Man," or "The Merchant of Venice." [Laughter.] If they do so, they do it on the principle that the right hand knows not what the left hand doeth [laughter], and as we have not heard of it, we presume, therefore, that they have not done so. And we believe that if those eminent men were to request a share of the profits, they would be met with the reply that the copyright on those works had expired.

And so if we should suggest it to the managers of this country, they would perhaps reply with at least equal justice: "Gentlemen, your copyright never existed." That it has never existed is due entirely to our own fault.

We consulted a New York lawyer, and were informed that, although an alien author has no right in his works, yet so long as they remain unpublished, we held the real title in them, and there was no process necessary to make them our own. We, therefore, thought we would keep it in unpublished form, and make more profit from the sale of the pianoforte score and the words of the songs at the theatres and at the music publishers.

We imagined that the allusions in the piece were so purely British in their character, so insular in fact, that they would be of no interest on this side; but events have shown that in that conclusion we were mistaken. At all events, we have also arrived at the conclusion that we have nobody to blame but ourselves. As it is, we have realized by the sale of the book and the piano score in London about $7,500 apiece, and under those circumstances I do not think we need to be pitied. [Laughter.] For myself, I certainly do not pose as an object of compassion. [Laughter.]

We propose to open here on the first of December at the Fifth Avenue Theatre with a performance of "Pinafore." I will not add the prefixing initials, because I have no desire to offend your republican sympathies. [Laughter.] I may say, however, that I have read in some journals that we have come over here to show you how that piece should be played, but that I disclaim, both for myself and my collaborateur. We came here to teach nothing--we have nothing to teach--and perhaps we should have no pupils if we did. [Laughter.] But apart from the fact that we have no copyright, and are not yet managers in the United States, we see no reason why we should be the only ones who are not to be permitted to play this piece here. [Laughter and applause.]

I think you will admit that we have a legitimate object in opening with it. We have no means of knowing how it has been played in this country, but we are informed that it has been played more broadly than in the old country--and you know that may be better or worse. [Laughter.]

Afterward we propose to produce another piece, and in the fulness of time the longer it is delayed perhaps the better for us [laughter], and we propose to present it to an audience [laughter] in the same spirit in which we presented "Pinafore"--in a most serious spirit--not to permit the audience to see by anything that occurs on the stage that the actors are conscious of the really absurd things they are doing. Whether right or not, that is the way in which it was presented in London. We open with "Pinafore," not to show how that ought to be played, but to show how the piece that succeeds is about to be played, and to prepare the audiences for the reception of our new and highly preposterous story. [Applause.]

The kindness with which we have been received this evening emboldens me to believe that perhaps you will not consider this explanation altogether indecent or ill-timed. I have nothing more, gentlemen, to say, except to thank you most heartily for the complimentary manner in which you proposed our health, and to assure you that it is a compliment which is to me personally as delightful as it is undeserved. [Applause.]

DANIEL COIT GILMAN

THE ERA OF UNIVERSITIES

[Speech of Daniel C. Gilman, President of Johns Hopkins University at
the Harvard Alumni dinner, at Cambridge, Mass., June 29, 1881.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--There are so many in this room to whom this scene is familiar and so many whose voices have been heard within these walls, that you can hardly understand how one feels who for the first time stands and endeavors to make his voice reach over this large assembly. It is not merely the sea of upturned faces, this noble company of noblemen, this regiment of brigadiers, as it might be called, it is not alone these pictures and busts, the devices and mottoes which adorn this edifice, nor is it alone the recollection of all the illustrious teachers who have been here brought together or the consciousness that we stand among museums and cabinets and laboratories unrivalled on this continent,--all this is noble and worthy of noble men. But there is one thing that seems to me more impressive than all this. It is the power which Harvard College has had throughout all the land and throughout all its history. [Applause.]

I have had the opportunity of seeing on the shores of the Pacific how every act of the corporation of Harvard College, every new measure adopted by the faculty, every additional gift to its treasury, was watched as men look toward the east and watch the rising sun, rejoicing in its boundless store and radiant energy. [Applause.] And I have stood on the shores of a Southern river and have seen the development of a young college on the banks of the Patapsco, and I can truly say that if there had not been a John Harvard, there never would have been a Johns Hopkins [applause]; if there had never been a university in Cambridge, there never would have been a university in Baltimore; and if there is any merit in the plans adopted in that distant city, if there is any hope to be derived from the experiment which is there in vogue, it is largely due--and I rejoice in an opportunity of saying so in this public way--it is largely due to the kindly sympathy, the wise counsel, the generous help and the noble example of Harvard College. [Applause.] To the President of this university, to his associates in the corporation and in the faculty, to many of its alumni the plans adopted in Baltimore owe a most generous and hearty acknowledgment.

The speaker who preceded me characterized Harvard College as the Alma Mater of Colleges, and well he did so. But, gentlemen, you can hardly fail to observe that in the progress of education in this country we are getting beyond the college period and we are entering the period of universities. What they are to be, none of us are wise enough to tell, but whatever they are will largely depend upon what you make of Harvard University. [Applause.] Many years ago I received a lesson from one whose name I can never mention without respect and honor, the late Benjamin Pierce. He said, in speaking of the formation of a university, "It will never succeed without eminent professors. They will tell you that great professors make poor teachers, but I will tell you it is only the eagle that is fit to teach the eaglets. Let the barn-door fowl take care of themselves." And so I say here, let there be a staff of professors the most eminent, the most earnest, the most free in their work that Harvard can bring together, and all the rest goes with it. [Applause.]

I trust, then, that as the years roll on, as the era of universities in this country is developed from the period of college instruction, we shall find that the same wisdom that has governed the councils of our learned bodies, the same adherence to right principles, the same love of truth, will ever be present, and that Harvard College and all its younger sisters as they go on will repeat the lesson which they have taught from the beginning, and which they still teach, whether we turn our eyes to the depths of the sea or the boundless regions of space, that beyond the things which are seen and temporal are the things which are unseen and eternal. [Applause.]

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

THE AGE OF RESEARCH

[Speech of William B. Gladstone at the annual banquet of the Royal
Academy, May 5, 1877. Sir Francis Grant, the President of the Academy,
being indisposed, Sir Gilbert Scott, the eminent architect, took the
chair at the special request of the President. In introducing Mr.
Gladstone, he said: "The next toast is, 'The Interests of Literature.'
I have been somewhat perplexed myself to think why the custom of the
Academy places Science before Literature. I see, however, that it is
quite right, for Literature is a member of our own family--our sister.
[Cheers.] I am old enough to recollect that when Sir Morton Archer
Shee, who united Art with Poetry, was elected President of the
Academy, this epigram appeared in the 'Times':

"'So Painting crowns her sister Poesie,
The world is all astonished, so is She (e).'

Many present will remember in more recent times how Charles Dickens,
when returning thanks for this toast, expressed the same sentiment of
relationship by altering some words of Rob Roy's and saying that when
at our Academy he felt so much at home, as to be inclined to exclaim:
'My foot is on my native heath, although my name is not Macgregor.'
Next to religion, literature in very many of its phases supplies the
noblest subjects for Art. History, Biography, and works of fiction all
contribute their share; while poetry enjoys the cumulative privilege
of uniting in itself the incentives to Art which are commanded by all
other branches of Literature as well as the ennobling sentiments
inspired by religion, patriotism and other affections of the human
heart. An elevating mission, indeed, be it only directed in a worthy
course. Frivolity and license are alike the bane of literature and
art. Earnestness of purpose and severity of moral tone are the stamina
of both. Shorn of these, both alike find their strength is gone from
them. It is consoling to reflect that notwithstanding the laborious
turmoil of politics we have had three, and I think successive, Prime
Ministers who have made Literature the solace of their scanty leisure
and delighted the world by their writings on subjects extraneous to
State politics. I give you the 'Interests of Literature,' and I have
the honor to connect the toast with the name of one of that
distinguished trio, the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone."]

MR. CHAIRMAN, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--I think no question can be raised as to the just claims of literature to stand upon the list of toasts at the Royal Academy, and the sentiment is one to which, upon any one of the numerous occasions of my attendance at your hospitable board, I have always listened with the greatest satisfaction until the present day arrived, when I am bound to say that that satisfaction is extremely qualified by the arrangement less felicitous, I think, than any which preceded it that refers to me the duty of returning thanks for Literature. [Cheers and laughter.] However, obedience is the principle upon which we must proceed, and I have at least the qualification for discharging the duty you have been pleased to place in my hands--that no one has a deeper or more profound sense of the vital importance of the active and constant cultivation of letters as an essential condition of real progress and of the happiness of mankind [cheers], and here every one at once perceives that that sisterhood of which the poet spoke, whom you have quoted, is a real sisterhood, for literature and art are alike the votaries of beauty. Of these votaries I may thankfully say that as regards art I trace around me no signs of decay, and none in that estimation in which the Academy is held, unless to be sure, in the circumstance of your poverty of choice of one to reply to this toast. [Cheers.]

During the present century the artists of this country have gallantly and nobly endeavored to maintain and to elevate their standard [cheers], and have not perhaps in that great task always received that assistance which could be desired from the public taste which prevails around them. But no one can examine even superficially the works which adorn these walls without perceiving that British art retains all its fertility of invention [cheers], and this year as much as in any year that I can remember, exhibits in the department of landscape, that fundamental condition of all excellence, intimate and profound sympathy with nature. [Cheers.]

As regards literature one who is now beginning at any rate to descend the hill of life naturally looks backwards as well as forwards, and we must be becoming conscious that the early part of this century has witnessed in this and other countries what will be remembered in future times as a splendid literary age. [Cheers.] The elder among us have lived in the lifetime of many great men who have passed to their rest--the younger have heard them familiarly spoken of and still have their works in their hands as I trust they will continue to be in the hands of all generations. [Cheers.] I am afraid we cannot hope for literature--it would be contrary to all the experience of former times were we to hope that it should be equally sustained at that extraordinarily high level which belongs, speaking roughly, to the first fifty years after the peace of 1815. That was a great period--a great period in England, a great period in Germany, a great period in France, and a great period, too, in Italy. [Cheers.]

As I have said, I think we can hardly hope that it should continue on a perfect level at so high an elevation. Undoubtedly the cultivation of literature will ever be dear to the people of this country; but we must remember what is literature, and what is not. In the first place, we should be all agreed that bookmaking is not literature. ["Hear!"] The business of bookmaking I have no doubt may thrive and will be continued upon a constantly extending scale from year to year. But that we may put aside. For my own part if I am to look a little forward, what I anticipate for the remainder of the century is an age not so much of literature proper--not so much of great, permanent and splendid additions to those works in which beauty is embodied as an essential condition of production, but I rather look forward to an age of research. [Cheers.] This is an age of great research--of great research in science, great research in history--an age of research in all the branches of inquiry that throw light upon the former condition whether of our race, or of the world which it inhabits [cheers]; and it may be hoped that, even if the remaining years of the century be not so brilliant as some of its former periods, in the production of works great in themselves, and immortal,--still they may add largely to the knowledge of mankind; and if they make such additions to the knowledge of mankind, they will be preparing the materials of a new tone and of new splendors in the realm of literature. There is a sunrise and sunset. There is a transition from the light of the sun to the gentler light of the moon. There is a rest in nature which seems necessary in all her great operations. And so with all the great operations of the human mind. But do not let us despond if we seem to see a diminished efficacy in the production of what is essentially and immortally great. Our sun if hidden is hidden only for a moment. He is like the day star of Milton:--

"Which anon repairs his drooping head
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."

[Cheers.]

I rejoice in an occasion like this which draws the attention of the world to topics which illustrate the union of art with literature and of literature with science, because you have a hard race to run, you have a severe competition against the attraction of external pursuits, whether those pursuits take the form of business or pleasure. It is given to you to teach lessons of the utmost importance to mankind, in maintaining the principle that no progress can be real which is not equable, which is not proportionate, which does not develop all the faculties belonging to our nature. [Cheers.] If a great increase of wealth in a country takes place, and with that increase of wealth a powerful stimulus to the invention of mere luxury, that, if it stands alone, is not, never can be, progress. It is only that one-sided development which is but one side of deformity. I hope we shall have no one-sided development. One mode of avoiding it is to teach the doctrine of that sisterhood you have asserted to-day, and confident I am that the good wishes you have expressed on behalf of literature will be re-echoed in behalf of art wherever men of letters are found. [Loud cheers.]

HENRY W. GRADY

THE RACE PROBLEM

[Speech of Henry W. Grady at the annual banquet of the Boston
Merchants' Association, at Boston, Mass., December 12, 1889. Mr. Grady
was introduced by the President of the Association, Jonathan A. Lane,
as the spokesman for the South on the subject he was to treat. His
speech electrified his hearers, and was the feature of the occasion.]

MR. PRESIDENT:--Bidden by your invitation to a discussion of the race problem--forbidden by occasion to make a political speech--I appreciate, in trying to reconcile orders with propriety, the perplexity of the little maid, who, bidden to learn to swim, was yet adjured, "Now go, my darling, hang your clothes on a hickory limb and don't go near the water."

The stoutest apostle of the Church, they say, is the missionary, and the missionary wherever he unfurls his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of unction and address than I, bidden to-night to plant the standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's banquet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races in the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. President, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast interests involved; if a consecrating sense of what disaster may follow further misunderstanding and estrangement; if these may be counted to steady undisciplined speech and to strengthen an untried arm--then, sir, I shall find the courage to proceed.

Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet at last to press New England's historic soil and my eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill--where Webster thundered and Longfellow sang, Emerson thought and Channing preached--here in the cradle of American letters and almost of American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that every American owes New England when first he stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange apparition! This stern and unique figure--carved from the ocean and the wilderness--its majesty kindling and growing amid the storms of winter and of wars--until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed in the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its base--while startled kings and emperors gazed and marvelled that from the rude touch of this handful cast on a bleak and unknown shore, should have come the embodied genius of human government and the perfected model of human liberty! God bless the memory of those immortal workers, and prosper the fortunes of their living sons--and perpetuate the inspiration of their handiwork.

Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New York that caught the attention of the North. As I stand here to reiterate, as I have done everywhere, every word I then uttered--to declare that the sentiments I then avowed were universally approved in the South--I realize that the confidence begotten by that speech is largely responsible for my presence here to-night. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by withholding one essential element of the truth. Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President, before the praise of New England has died on my lips, that I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and awake to read the record of 26,000 Republican majority. May the God of the helpless and the heroic help them, and may their sturdy tribe increase.

Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by a line--once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow--lies the fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and hospitable people. There is centred all that can please or prosper humankind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. There are mountains stored with exhaustless treasures; forests--vast and primeval; and rivers that, tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all industries--cotton, iron and wood--that region has easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly--in iron, proven supremacy--in timber, the reserve supply of the Republic. From this assured and permanent advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot much longer prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of supply, but resting in divine assurance, within touch of field and mine and forest--not set amid costly farms from which competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a limit--this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home--a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against that, sir, we have New England, recruiting the Republic from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land all over with its energy and its courage. And yet--while in the Eldorado of which I have told you but fifteen per cent. of its lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely touched, and its population so scant that, were it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice could not be heard from Virginia to Texas--while on the threshold of nearly every house in New England stands a son, seeking, with troubled eyes, some new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, the strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer northern-born citizens than she had in 1870--fewer in '70 than in '60. Why is this? Why is it, sir, though the sectional line be now but a mist that the breath may dispel, fewer men of the North have crossed it over to the South, than when it was crimson with the best blood of the Republic, or even when the slaveholder stood guard every inch of its way?

There can be but one answer. It is the very problem we are now to consider. The key that opens that problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands whose eyes are already kindling with its beauty. Better than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comradeship a million hands now withheld in doubt. Nothing, sir, but this problem and the suspicions it breeds, hinders a clear understanding and a perfect union. Nothing else stands between us and such love as bound Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and Yorktown, chastened by the sacrifices of Manassas and Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of better work and a nobler destiny than was ever wrought with the sword or sought at the cannon's mouth.

If this does not invite your patient hearing to-night--hear one thing more. My people, your brothers in the South--brothers in blood, in destiny, in all that is best in our past and future--are so beset with this problem that their very existence depends on its right solution. Nor are they wholly to blame for its presence. The slave-ships of the Republic sailed from your ports, the slaves worked in our fields. You will not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But I do here declare that in its wise and humane administration in lifting the slave to heights of which he had not dreamed in his savage home, and giving him a happiness he has not yet found in freedom, our fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone forever from American soil. But the free man remains. With him a problem without precedent or parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly dissimilar races on the same soil--with equal political and civil rights--almost equal in numbers, but terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility--each pledged against fusion--one for a century in servitude to the other, and freed at last by a desolating war, the experiment sought by neither but approached by both with doubt--these are the conditions. Under these, adverse at every point, we are required to carry these two races in peace and honor to the end.

Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal stewardship. Never before in this Republic has the white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The red man was cut down as a weed, because he hindered the way of the American citizen. The yellow man was shut out of this Republic because he is an alien, and inferior. The red man was owner of the land--the yellow man highly civilized and assimilable--but they hindered both sections, and are gone! But the black man, affecting but one section, is clothed with every privilege of government and pinned to the soil, and my people commanded to make good at any hazard, and at any cost, his full and equal heirship of American privilege and prosperity. It matters not that every other race has been routed or excluded without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wherever the whites and the blacks have touched, in any era or in any clime, there has been an irreconcilable violence. It matters not that no two races, however similar, have lived anywhere, at any time, on the same soil with equal rights in peace! In spite of these things we are commanded to make good this change of American policy which has not perhaps changed American prejudice--to make certain here what has elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks--and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, to this superhuman task with an impatience that brooks no delay--a rigor that accepts no excuse--and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sincerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so interwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot disentangle it if we would--so bound up in our honorable obligation to the world, that we would not if we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it into our hands, He alone can know. But this the weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solve it with less than your tolerant and patient sympathy--with less than the knowledge that the blood that runs in your veins is our blood--and that, when we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or won, we shall feel your strong arms about us and hear the beating of your approving hearts!

The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South--the men whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of American history--whose courage and fortitude you tested in five years of the fiercest war--whose energy has made bricks without straw and spread splendor amid the ashes of their war-wasted homes--these men wear this problem in their hearts and brains, by day and by night. They realize, as you cannot, what this problem means--what they owe to this kindly and dependent race--the measure of their debt to the world in whose despite they defended and maintained slavery. And though their feet are hindered in its undergrowth, and their march cumbered with its burdens, they have lost neither the patience from which comes clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is disclosed to them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray God they may never go, are they struck with more of apprehension than is needed to complete their consecration!

Such is the temper of my people. But what of the problem itself? Mr. President, we need not go one step further unless you concede right here that the people I speak for are as honest, as sensible and as just as your people, seeking as earnestly as you would in their place to rightly solve the problem that touches them at every vital point. If you insist that they are ruffians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun to plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But admit that they are men of common sense and common honesty, wisely modifying an environment they cannot wholly disregard--guiding and controlling as best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either race--compensating error with frankness, and retrieving in patience what they lose in passion--and conscious all the time that wrong means ruin--admit this, and we may reach an understanding to-night.

The President of the United States, in his late message to Congress, discussing the plea that the South should be left to solve this problem, asks: "Are they at work upon it? What solution do they offer? When will the black man cast a free ballot? When will he have the civil rights that are his?" I shall not here protest against a partisanry that, for the first time in our history, in time of peace, has stamped with the great seal of our government a stigma upon the people of a great and loyal section; though I gratefully remember that the great dead soldier, who held the helm of State for the eight stormiest years of reconstruction, never found need for such a step; and though there is no personal sacrifice I would not make to remove this cruel and unjust imputation on my people from the archives of my country! But, sir, backed by a record, on every page of which is progress, I venture to make earnest and respectful answer to the questions that are asked. We give to the world this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth, $450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses, and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and gossip rise above the hum of industry, and contentment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I present the tax books of Georgia which show that the negro, twenty-five years ago a slave, has in Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed property, worth twice that much. Does not that record honor him, and vindicate his neighbors?

What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, tilling their own land by day, and at night taking from the lips of their children the helpful message their State sends them from the schoolhouse door. And the schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia we added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a total of more than $1,000,000,--and this in the face of prejudice not yet conquered--of the fact that the whites are assessed for $368,000,000, the blacks for $10,000,000, and yet forty-nine per cent. of the beneficiaries are black children; and in the doubt of many wise men if education helps, or can help, our problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut half in two since 1860, pays more in proportion for public schools than Boston. Although it is easier to give much out of much than little out of little the South, with one-seventh of the taxable property of the country, with relatively larger debt, having received only one-twelfth as much of public lands, and having back of its tax books none of the $500,000,000 of bonds that enrich the North--and though it pays annually $26,000,000 to your section as pensions--yet gives nearly one-sixth to the public school fund. The South, since 1865, has spent $122,000,000 in education, and this year is pledged to $32,000,000 more for State and city schools, although the blacks, paying one-thirtieth of the taxes, get nearly one-half of the fund. Go into our fields and see whites and blacks working side by side. On our buildings in the same squad. In our shops at the same forge. Often the blacks crowd the whites from work, or lower wages by their greater need and simpler habits, and yet are permitted, because we want to bar them from no avenue in which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not there be elected orators of white universities, as they have been here, but they do enter there a hundred useful trades that are closed against them here. We hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the garden than to water the exotic in the window.

In the South there are negro lawyers, teachers, editors, dentists, doctors, preachers, multiplying with the increasing ability of their race to support them. In villages and towns they have their military companies equipped from the armories of the State, their churches and societies built and supported largely by their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigating punishment for crime, that we might save, as far as possible, this dependent race from its own weakness. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent. of the prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro criminal strikes the colored juror, that white men may judge his case.

In the North, one negro in every 185 is in jail--in the South only one in 446. In the North the percentage of negro prisoners is six times as great as that of native whites, in the South, only four times as great. If prejudice wrongs him in Southern courts, the record shows it to be deeper in Northern courts. I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as the bar of Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my assertion, that in the Southern courts, from highest to lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property, the negro has distinct advantage because he is a negro, apt to be over-reached, oppressed--and that this advantage reaches from the juror in making his verdict to the judge in measuring his sentence.

Now, Mr. President, can it be seriously maintained that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing hands comes every year $1,000,000,000 of farm crops? Or have robbed a people who, twenty-five years from unrewarded slavery, have amassed in one State $20,000,000 of property? Or that we intend to oppress the people we are arming every day? Or deceive them, when we are educating them to the utmost limit of our ability? Or outlaw them when we work side by side with them? Or re-enslave them under legal forms, when for their benefit we have even imprudently narrowed the limit of felonies and mitigated the severity of law? My fellow-countrymen, as you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give to my people to-night the fair and unanswerable conclusion of these incontestable facts.