Chapter XIV: Part 14

Honorable Abram S. Hewitt in his speech before this Society one year ago, said: "If by some inscrutable providence this list of gentlemen [meaning members of the Southern Society] were suddenly returned to the homes which I suppose will know them no longer, there would be in this city what the quack medicine men call 'a sense of goneness,' and I think we should have to send to the wise men of the East, Dr. Atkinson, for example, to tell us how to supply the vacuum." Taking my cue from that generous compliment, I venture to suggest that if the South should suddenly withdraw from Wall Street, it would occasion such a contraction of the currency in that district as would demand even a more liberal policy than Secretary Fairchild has practised in purchasing Government bonds. [Applause and laughter.] The aggregate wealth of Southerners in Wall Street to-day is over $100,000,000 and the great bulk of that vast amount has been accumulated within the last twenty years. That is to say, "The South in Wall Street," has made at least $4,000,000 annually since the war. Under all the circumstances, who will dispute the magnificence of that showing? It must be remembered that the great majority of Southern men on entering Wall Street were poor; so poor, indeed, that they might almost have afforded to begin their career on the terms that I once heard of a man in South Carolina proposing to some little negroes. He told them if they would pick wild blackberries from morning till night he would give them half they gathered. [Laughter.] The Southerners of Wall Street, with but very few exceptions, entered that great field of finance with but one consolation, and that was the calm consciousness of being thoroughly protected against loss from the simple fact that they had nothing to lose. [Applause and laughter.] A hundred millions of dollars is no small pile when stacked up beside--nothing. Of course we are not called upon to analyze this fortune, nor do I mean to imply that it is evenly divided. Some of us it must be admitted spoil the average dreadfully, but we all may get the same satisfaction out of it that the childless man derived, who said that he and his brother together had three boys and two girls. [Laughter.]

The South is a power in Wall Street. She is identified with the management of many leading financial institutions, and has also founded private banking-houses and built up other prosperous business establishments on her own account. It would be in bad taste to mention names unless I had the roll of honor at hand and could read it off without exception. The President of the Cotton Exchange and nearly forty per cent. of its members are Southerners. One of the oldest and strongest firms on the Produce Exchange is essentially Southern. That private banking-house in Wall Street, which has stood longest without any change in the personnel of its partnership, and which ranks to-day with the most reputable and successful establishments of its kind, is Southern in every branch of its membership. Seven of the National Banks have Southern men for Presidents, and the list of Southern cashiers and tellers is long and honorable. It was a Southern boy who, ten years ago, counted himself lucky on getting the humble place of mail carrier in one of the greatest banking houses of America. That very boy, when not long since he resigned to enter business on his own account, was filling one of the most responsible positions and drawing the third largest salary in that same great establishment.

Another instance of signal success is told in this short story: Less than six years ago a young Georgian tacked up a cheap little sign on the door of a sky-lit room in the "Evening Post" building. To-day his is the leading name of one of the most conspicuous houses in the Street, and the rent of his present quarters is more per month than the first office he occupied cost for a whole year. One of the most famous Southern leaders in Wall Street to-day [John H. Inman] was so little known when he first attracted attention there that many people assumed he must in some way be connected with a certain great ocean steamship line, simply because he bore the same name. To-day it is just as often supposed that the steamship line is an offshoot from him, because it bears his name. A great Italian painter once vitalized a canvas with the expression of his poetic thought and called it "Aurora." In looking at that masterpiece of art I have sometimes been reminded of this distinguished Southerner. Immediately after the war the South was enveloped in darkness. Out of that gloom this man emerged and came here to the East, where the sun shines first in the morning. Judging him to-day by the record he has made, we are warranted in saying that on coming here he adopted Usefulness as his chariot, and that thereto he harnessed the spirited steeds of Enterprise, Progress, and Development. To-day we see him driving that triumphal car through the land of his birth, and making the sunlight of prosperity to shine there. [Tremendous applause.] Sharing with him the honors of their firm name is another Southerner, whose career of usefulness and record of splendid success suffer nothing by comparison. Two other Southern representatives, because of admirable achievements and brilliant strokes of fortune, have recently gained great distinction and won much applause in Wall Street. If I called their names it would awake an echo in the temple of history, where an illustrious ancestor is enshrined in immortal renown. [Applause and cries of "Calhoun! Calhoun!"]

It is not only as financiers and railroad magnates that the South ranks high in Wall Street, but Southern lawyers likewise have established themselves in this dollar district, and to-day challenge attention and deserve tribute. Under the brilliant leadership of two commanding generals, the younger barristers are steadily winning wider reputation and pressing forward in professional triumph.

One question, with its answer, and I shall have done: Are these Southerners in Wall Street divorced in spirit and sympathy from their old homes? [Cries of "No! No!"] You say "No." Let the record of their deeds also make reply. One of them had done a thing so unique and beautiful that I cannot refrain from alluding to it. It touches the chord of humanity in every true heart and makes it vibrate with sacred memories. In the cemetery of the little town of Hopkinsville, Ky., there stands a splendid monument dedicated to "The Unknown Confederate Dead." There is no inscription that even hints at who erected it. The builder subordinated his personality to the glory of his purpose, and only the consummate beauty of the memorial stands forth. The inspiration of his impulse was only equalled by the modesty of his method. Truth, touched by the tenderness and beauty of the tribute to those heroes who died "for conscience sake," has revealed the author, and in him we recognize a generous surviving comrade. [Applause, and cries of "Latham! Latham! John Latham!"]

Turning from this epitome of sentiment, we are confronted by abundant evidence of the substantial interest taken by Wall Street Southerners in the material affairs of the South. What they have done to reclaim the waste places and develop the resources of their native States is beyond estimate. They have not only contributed liberally by personal investment, but they have used every honorable endeavor to influence other men to do likewise. Loyalty has stimulated their efforts. Their hearts are in the present and prospective glory of the New South. They are untiring in their furtherance of legitimate enterprises, and the fruit of their labor is seen to-day in every Southern State where new railroads are building, various manufacturing enterprises springing up, and vast mining interests being developed. The steady flow of capital into all those channels is greatly due to their influence. There is more money drifting that way to-day than ever before, and the time will soon come, if it is not already here, when the sentiment to which I have responded will admit of transposition, and we can with as much propriety toast "Wall Street in the South," as to-night we toast "The South in Wall Street." [Great and long-continued applause.]

KING EDWARD VII.

THE COLONIES

[Speech of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales [Edward VII, crowned King
of England January 23, 1901], at the banquet given at the Mansion
House, London, July 16, 1881, by the Lord Mayor of London [Sir
William McArthur], to the Prince of Wales, as President of the
Colonial Institute, and to a large company of representatives of
the colonies--governors, premiers, and administrators. This speech
was delivered in response to the toast proposed by the Lord Mayor,
"The Health of the Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales, and the
other members of the Royal Family."]

MY LORD MAYOR, YOUR MAJESTY, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:--For the kind and remarkably flattering way in which you, my Lord Mayor, have been good enough to propose this toast, and you, my lords and gentlemen, for the kind and hearty way in which you have received it, I beg to offer you my most sincere thanks. It is a peculiar pleasure to me to come to the City, because I have the honor of being one of its freemen. But this is, indeed, a very special dinner, one of a kind that I do not suppose has ever been given before; for we have here this evening representatives of probably every Colony in the Empire. We have not only the Secretary of the Colonies, but Governors past and present, ministers, administrators, and agents, are all I think, to be found here this evening. I regret that it has not been possible for me to see half or one-third of the Colonies which it has been the good fortune of my brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, to visit. In his voyages round the world he has had opportunities more than once of seeing all our great Colonies. Though I have not been able personally to see them, or have seen only a small portion of them, you may rest assured it does not diminish in any way the interest I take in them.

It is, I am sorry to say, now going on for twenty-one years since I visited our large North American Colonies. Still, though I was very young at the time, the remembrance of that visit is as deeply imprinted upon my memory now as it was at that time. I shall never forget the public receptions which were accorded to me in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and if it were possible for me at any time to repeat that visit, I need not tell you gentlemen, who now represent here those great North American Colonies, of the great pleasure it would give me to do so. It affords me great gratification to see an old friend, Sir John Macdonald, the Premier of Canada, here this evening.

It was a most pressing invitation, certainly, that I received two years ago to visit the great Australasian Colonies, and though at the time I was unable to give an answer in the affirmative or in the negative, still it soon became apparent that my many duties here in England, would prevent my accomplishing what would have been a long, though a most interesting voyage. I regret that such has been the case, and that I was not able to accept the kind invitation I received to visit the Exhibitions at Sydney and at Melbourne. I am glad, however, to know that they have proved a great success, as has been testified to me only this evening by the noble Duke [Manchester] by my side, who has so lately returned. Though, my lords and gentlemen, I have, as I said before, not had the opportunity of seeing these great Australasian Colonies, which every day and every year are making such immense development, still, at the International Exhibitions of London, Paris, and Vienna, I had not only an opportunity of seeing their various products there exhibited, but I had the pleasure of making the personal acquaintance of many colonists--a fact which has been a matter of great importance and great benefit to myself.

It is now thirty years since the first International Exhibition took place in London, and then for the first time Colonial exhibits were shown to the world. Since that time, from the Exhibitions which have followed our first great gathering in 1851, the improvements that have been made are manifest. That in itself is a clear proof of the way in which the Colonies have been exerting themselves to make their vast territories of the great importance that they are at the present moment. But though, my Lord Mayor, I have not been to Australasia, as you have mentioned, I have sent my two sons on a visit there; and it has been a matter of great gratification, not only to myself, but to the Queen, to hear of the kindly reception they have met with everywhere. They are but young, but I feel confident that their visit to the Antipodes will do them an incalculable amount of good. On their way out they visited a Colony in which, unfortunately, the condition of affairs was not quite as satisfactory as we could wish, and as a consequence they did not extend their visits in that part of South Africa quite so far inland as might otherwise have been the case.

I must thank you once more, my Lord Mayor, for the kind way in which you have proposed this toast. I thank you in the name of the Princess and the other members of the Royal Family, for the kind reception their names have met with from all here to-night, and I beg again to assure you most cordially and heartily of the great pleasure it has given me to be present here among so many distinguished Colonists and gentlemen connected with the Colonies, and to have had an opportunity of meeting your distinguished guest, the King of the Sandwich Islands. If your lordship's visit to his dominions remains impressed on your mind, I think your lordship's kindly reception of his Majesty here to-night is not likely soon to be forgotten by him.

HUGH C. WALLACE

THE SOUTHERNER IN THE WEST

[Speech of Hugh C. Wallace at the fifth annual banquet of the New
York Southern Society, February 21, 1891. The President, Hugh R.
Garden, occupied the chair. In introducing Mr. Wallace, he said:
"It was said of old that the Southerner was wanting in that energy
and fixedness of purpose which make a successful American. No
broader field has existed for the exercise of those qualities than
the great region west of the Rocky Mountains. We are fortunate in
the presence of a gentleman whose young life is already a
successful refutation of that opinion, and I turn with confidence
to 'The Southerner of the Pacific Slope,' and invite Mr. Hugh C.
Wallace, of the State of Washington, to respond."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--For more than one hundred years upon this continent a silent army has been marching from the East toward the West. No silken banners have waved above it, and no blare of trumpet or beat of drum has heralded its progress. And yet its conquests have been grander than those of Peru or Mexico, its victories more glorious than those of Marengo, of Friedland, or of Austerlitz. It has subdued an empire richer than the Indies without inflicting the cruelties of Clive, or the exactions of Hastings, and that empire is to-day, Mr. President, a part of your heritage and mine. [Applause.] For more than thirty years past the region in which most of those I see around me first saw the light has lain prostrate, borne down by a Titanic struggle whose blighting force fell wholly upon her. For more than a generation her enterprise has seemed exhausted, her strength wasted, and her glory departed. And yet she has not failed to furnish her full quota to the grand army of conquest to carry to completion the great work which Boone, Crockett, and Houston, all her sons--began, and which her genius alone made possible. [Applause.]

Turn back with me the pages of time to the beginning of this imposing march and glance for a moment at its resplendent progress. Its beginning was in Virginia. Virginians led by that first of Southerners whose natal day we celebrate to-night and whose fame grows brighter in the lengthening perspective of the years, conquered the savage and his little less than savage European ally, and saved for the Nation then unborn the whole Northwest. The Pinckneys, the Rutledges, and the Gwinetts forced the hand of Spain from the throat of the Mississippi, and left the current of trade free to flow to the Gulf unvexed by foreign influence.

Another Virginian, illustrious through all time as the great vindicator of humanity, doubled the area of the national possession of his time by the Louisiana purchase, and Lewis and Clarke, both sons of the Old Dominion, in 1804 first trod the vast uninhabited wilds of the far Northwest to find a land richer in all the precious products of the East than mortal eyes had yet beheld. So were our borders extended from the Gulf and the Rio Grande to the 49th parallel and from the Atlantic to the Pacific--but for Southern enterprise they might have stopped at Ohio, the Monongahela, and the Niagara. [Applause.]

The empire thus secured remained to be subdued. From the States in which you and I, gentlemen, were born has come a noble wing of the grand army of subjugation, all of whose battles have been victories and all of whose victories have been victories of civilization. Moving first from the old States of the South it took possession of territory along the Gulf and of Tennessee and of Kentucky's "dark and bloody ground." Fame crowned the heroes of these campaigns with the patriot's name, and glorified them as pioneers. As their advance guards swept across the Mississippi and took possession of Missouri, Arkansas, and territory farther north, envy called it invasion, and when their scouts appeared in Nebraska and Kansas they were repelled amid the passion of the hour. Meanwhile, a new element, whose quickening power is scarcely yet appreciated, had joined the grand movement. Early in the forties a South Carolinian captain of engineers, the Pathfinder, John C. Fremont, had marked the way to the far West coast, and added a new realm to the National domain. [Applause.] It was the domain soon famed for its delightful climate, its wealth of resources, and its combination of every natural advantage that human life desires. The gleaming gold soon after found in the sands of Sutter's Fort spread its fame afar and attracted to it the superb band of men who came from every State to lay firm and sure the foundation of the new commonwealth.

There were only fourteen Southerners in the Constitutional Convention at Monterey, but their genius for government made them a fair working majority in the body of forty-eight members. Not content with building a grand State like this, the united army gathered from the North and South alike turned its face toward the desert and fastnesses of the eternal hills and "continuous woods where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound save his own dashings," and pitched their tents, rolled back the awful silence that through ages had reigned there; and learned the secrets that desolation guarded, alluring to them from their fastnesses a renewed stream of treasure which has resulted in making us the envy of all other nations.

In conspicuous contrast to the attitude and sentiment of the South, the East has never followed to encourage nor sympathize with the West. Whether it be in legislation or politics or finance, the Western idea has ever failed to command the earnest attention to which it is entitled. There is a sentiment which is growing more general and vigorous every day in the far West, that the time is near at hand when it will decline to adhere to the fortunes of any leader or body which recklessly ignores its claims or persistently refuses to it recognition. It is a very significant fact, Mr. President, that this great region, containing one-fourth of the National area, one-seventeenth of the population, and constituting one-seventh of the whole number of States has had up to this time, but one member of the Cabinet. In the present Cabinet, fourteen States (east of the Mississippi and North of the old Mason and Dixon's Line) have seven members and the remaining thirty States have but one. Those thirty States will see to it in the future that the party which succeeds through their support has its representation their efforts have deserved.

I cannot close, Mr. President, without giving expression to a sentiment to which Southerners in the West are peculiarly alive--the sentiment of sympathy and fraternity which exists between the South and the West. [Applause.] The course of historical development which I have outlined of the Western man has wrought a bond of friendship between them, and that bond is not a reminiscence, but a living, vital, and efficient fact. Only but yesterday, politicians, thank God not the people, sought for selfish ends to cast back the South into Stygian gloom from which she had slowly and laboriously but gloriously emerged, to forge upon her again hope-killing shackles of a barbarous rule. In that hour of trial which you and I, sir, know to have been a menace and a reality to whom did she turn for succor? To this man of the West, and quick and glorious was the response.

SAMUEL BALDWIN WARD

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

[Speech of Dr. Samuel B. Ward at the annual banquet of the New York
State Bar Association, in the City of Albany, January 18, 1887.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--That a medical man should be asked to be in attendance at a banquet such as this was natural, and when I looked over the list of toasts and found that the clergymen had been omitted, I took it as an intended though perhaps rather dubious compliment to my profession, the supposition being that the services of the clergy would not of course be required. When I was asked to respond to this toast, in an unguarded moment of good nature, which is remarkable even in me, I was beguiled into consenting by the persuasive eloquence of your worthy President and Secretary, and a day or two after I visited the Executive chamber with the view of endeavoring to make "a little bargain" with his Excellency. Being myself neither a lawyer, a politician, nor the editor of a Brooklyn newspaper [laughter], I was totally unacquainted with such things, but still I am the reader of a weekly Republican newspaper (that is spelled with two e's and not an a, and has no reference to the "Albany Evening Journal"), and have ascertained that among a certain class of men, these "bargains" were exceedingly common. Respecting the exact nature of the proposition I shall not reveal? but suffice it to say I failed most ignominiously.

After leaving the executive chamber I spent a good part of the morning in reflection as to the cause of the failure. Among other things it occurred to me that perhaps the newspaper statement, that "bargains" were so common among officials was untrue, but when I reflected that my newspaper was a republican organ and that the Executive was a democratic official I knew that every word that organ would say about a political opponent must be absolutely true. It occurred to me that perhaps inasmuch as I was not a politician, his Excellency might have feared to trust me, but I recollected to have read of the dire misfortune that befalls certain politicians in New York from trusting each other. As the Governor's shrewdness was well-known, I knew that he felt that if he could trust any one, it would be one of my profession, and therefore that excuse would not answer. It also occurred to me, that perhaps I was somewhat green and unwise in consenting to make this bargain in the presence of witnesses, but when I thought of all the sagacity and shrewdness and reticence that was concealed behind Colonel Rice's outspoken countenance, and of the numerous "arrangements" of which he was cognizant, and in relation to which he had never said a word, I felt assured that that was not the reason. I finally came to the conclusion that the Governor was a man to be trusted; that if there still be cynics who believe that "every man has his price," they would find the Governor's price far too high for them ever to reach. [Applause.]

In the play of King Henry VI occurs an expression by Dick, the butcher, which is so short and so pointed that I may be pardoned for reproducing it in its completeness. It runs thus: "The first thing we do, let's kill the lawyers." This is not at all the attitude of our profession toward yours. On the contrary the most stupid charge that is ever laid to the door of the medical man is that he intentionally, or ever either by luck or intention, kills his patients. Ere the coffin-lid closes the doctor's harvest is reaped, but how different it is with you gentlemen. [Laughter.] Not more than a few days after the debt of nature has been paid by the unfortunate patient, your harvest--and especially if he has had the unusual fortune to make a will--begins, and oh! how we are sometimes tempted to envy you. Through how many seasons this harvest will be prolonged no one can foretell. That it will be carefully garnered to the last we can fully rely upon.

There is perhaps only one state of circumstances under which the medical man is likely to re-echo the sentiment, and that is when he steps down from the witness-stand, having served as an "expert." You lawyers have a duty to discharge to your clients which necessitates your "taking a part." Even though a man be guilty, there may be "extenuating circumstances," and it is your right, as it is your duty, "to do all that lies within your power in his behalf." The "medical expert" should go upon the stand in a purely judicial frame of mind, and as a rule I believe he does. But by the manner in which questions are propounded to him, and by the exercise of every little persuasive art incident to your calling, he is inevitably led into taking "sides." He is surrounded by circumstances that are to him entirely strange. He is more or less annoyed and flurried by his surroundings, and then comes the necessity of making a categorical answer to questions that are put to him more especially upon the cross-examination, which cannot be correctly answered categorically. Unfortunately in a profession like ours, in a science of art like ours, it often is absolutely impossible to answer a question categorically without conveying an erroneous impression to the jury.

In addition to this, we are subjected at the close of the examination to what you are pleased to term a "hypothetical question." The theory of this "hypothetical question" is that it embraces or expresses in a few words, and not always so very few either [laughter], the main features of the case under consideration. In nine cases out of ten if the expert makes a direct and unqualified answer to the question he leaves an absolutely erroneous idea upon the minds of the jury, and this is the explanation of why so many experts have made answers to questions which have elicited adverse criticism.

In my judgment, after a not very long experience I must admit, but a sorry one, in some instances, there is but one way in which this matter of expert evidence should be conducted. The judge should appoint three experts, one of them at the suggestion of the counsel upon either side, and the third one at his own discretion. These three appointees should present their report in writing to the court, and the compensation for the service should be equally divided between the parties interested. In that way can expert evidence escape the disrepute now attaching to it, and the ends of justice be furthered. Now, gentlemen, the hour is getting late, and I have but one wish to express to you. The medical profession of the State of New York has an organization very similar to your own, which has now reached very nearly its ninetieth year, with a membership of almost 1,000, and with an annual attendance something double that of your own. I can only hope that your Association may live on and develop until it reaches as vigorous and flourishing an old age as that of the medical profession. [Applause.]

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

THE RISE OF "THE ATLANTIC"

[Speech of Charles Dudley Warner at the "Whittier Dinner" in
celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday and the twentieth
birthday of "The Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers,
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., at Boston, Mass., December 17,
1877.]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--It is impossible to express my gratitude to you for calling on me. There is but one pleasure in life equal to that of being called on to make an after-dinner speech, and that is not being called on. It is such an enjoyment to sit through the courses with this prospect like a ten-pound weight on your digestive organs! If it were ever possible to refuse anything in this world, except by the concurrence of the three branches of government--the executive, the obstructive, and the destructive, I believe they are called--I should hope that we might some time have our speeches first, so that we could eat our dinner without fear or favor.

I suppose, however, that I am called up not to grumble, but to say that the establishment of "The Atlantic Monthly" was an era in literature. I say it cheerfully. I believe, nevertheless, it was not the first era of the sort. The sanguine generations have been indulging in them all along, and as "eras" they are apt to flat out, or, as the editor of the "Atlantic" would say, they "peter out." But the establishment of the "Atlantic" was the expression of a genuine literary movement. That movement is the most interesting because it was the most fruitful in our history. It was nicknamed transcendentalism. It was, in fact, a recurrence to realism. They who were sitting in Boston saw a great light. The beauty of this new realism was that it required imagination, as it always does, to see truth. That was the charm of the Teufelsdröckh philosophy; it was also poetry. Mr. Emerson puts it in a phrase--the poet is the Seer. Most of you recall the intellectual stir of that time. Mr. Carlyle had spread the German world to us. Mr. Emerson lighted his torch. The horizon of English literature was broken, and it was not necessary any longer to imitate English models. Criticism began to assert itself. Mr. Lowell launched that audacious "Fable for Critics"--a lusty colt, rejoicing in his young energy, had broken into the old-fashioned garden, and unceremoniously trampled about among the rows of box, the beds of pinks and sweet-williams, and mullen seed. I remember how all this excited the imagination of the college where I was. It was what that great navigator who made the "swellings from the Atlantic" called "a fresh-water college." Everybody read "Sartor Resartus." The best writer in college wrote exactly like Carlyle--why, it was the universal opinion--without Carlyle's obscurity! The rest of them wrote like Jean Paul Richter and like Emerson, and like Longfellow, and like Ossian. The poems of our genius you couldn't tell from Ossian. I believe it turned out that they were Ossian's. [Laughter.] Something was evidently about to happen. When this tumult had a little settled the "Atlantic" arose serenely out of Boston Bay--a consummation and a star of promise as well.

The promise has been abundantly fulfilled. The magazine has had its fair share in the total revolution of the character of American literature--I mean the revolution out of the sentimental period; for the truth of this I might appeal to the present audience, but for the well-known fact that writers of books never read any except those they make themselves. [Laughter.] I distinctly remember the page in that first "Atlantic" that began with--"If the red slayer thinks he slays--" a famous poem, that immediately became the target of all the small wits of the country, and went in with the "Opinions," paragraphs of that Autocratic talk, which speedily broke the bounds of the "Atlantic," and the Pacific as well, and went round the world. [Applause.]

Yes, the "Atlantic" has had its triumphs of all sorts. The Government even was jealous of its power. It repeatedly tried to banish one of its editors, and finally did send him off to the court of Madrid [James Russell Lowell]. And I am told that the present editor [William Dean Howells] might have been snatched away from it, but for his good fortune in being legally connected with a person who is distantly related to a very high personage who was at that time reforming the civil service.

Mr. Chairman, there is no reason why I should not ramble on in this way all night; but then, there is no reason why I should. There is only one thing more that I desire to note, and that is, that during the existence of the "Atlantic," American authors have become very nearly emancipated from fear or dependence on English criticisms. In comparison with former days they care now very little what London says. This is an acknowledged fact. Whether it is the result of a sturdy growth at home or of a visible deterioration of the quality of the criticism--a want of the discriminating faculty--the Contributors' Club can, no doubt, point out.

[In conclusion, Mr. Warner paid a brief but eloquent tribute to the Quaker poet.]

_Photogravure after a photograph from life_]

HENRY WATTERSON

OUR WIVES

[Speech of Henry Watterson at the dinner held on the anniversary of
General W. T. Sherman's birthday, Washington, D. C., February 8,
1883. Colonel George B. Corkhill presided, and introduced Mr.
Watterson to speak to the toast, "Our Wives."]

GENTLEMEN:--When one undertakes to respond to such a sentiment as you do me the honor to assign me, he knows in advance that he is put, as it were, upon his good behavior. I recognize the justice of this and accepted the responsibility with the charge; though I may say that if General Sherman's wife resembles mine--and I very much suspect she does--he has a sympathy for me at the present moment. Once upon a festal occasion, a little late, quite after the hour when Cinderella was bidden by her godmother to go to bed, I happened to extol the graces and virtues of the newly wedded wife of a friend of mine, and finally, as a knockdown argument, I compared her to my own wife. "In this case," said he, dryly, "you'll catch it when you get home." It is a peculiarity they all have: not a ray of humor where the husband is concerned; to the best of them and to the last he must be and must continue to be--a hero!

Now, I do not wish you to believe, nor to think that I myself believe, that all women make heroes of their husbands. Women are logical in nothing. They naturally hate mathematics. So, they would have their husbands be heroes only to the rest of the world. There is a charming picture by John Leech, the English satirist, which depicts Jones, who never looked askance at a woman in his life, sitting demurely at table, stuck with his nose on his plate, and Mrs. Jones opposite, redundant to a degree, observing with gratified severity, "Now, Mr. Jones, don't let me see you ogling those Smith girls again!" She, too, was like the rest--the good ones, I mean--seeing the world through her husband; no happiness but his comfort; no vanity but his glory; sacrificing herself to his wants, and where he proves inadequate putting her imagination out to service and bringing home a basket of flowers to deck his brow. Of our sweethearts the humorist hath it:--

"Where are the Marys and Anns and Elizas,
Lovely and loving of yore?
Look in the columns of old 'Advertisers,'
Married and dead by the score."

But "our wives." We don't have far to look to find them; sometimes, I am told, you army gentlemen have been known to find them turning unexpectedly up along the ranges of the Rocky Mountains, and making their presence felt even as far as the halls of the Montezumas. Yet how should we get on without them? Rob mankind of his wife and time could never become a grandfather. Strange as you may think it our wives are, in a sense, responsible for our children; and I ask you seriously how could the world get on if it had no children? It might get on for a while, I do admit; but I challenge the boldest among you to say how long it could get on without "our wives." It would not only give out of children; in a little--a very little--while it would have no mother-in-law, nor sister-in-law, nor brother-in-law, nor any of those acquired relatives whom it has learned to love, and who have contributed so largely to its stock of harmless pleasure.

But, as this is not exactly a tariff discussion, though a duty, I drop statistics; let me ask you what would become of the revenues of man if it were not for "our wives?" We should have no milliners but for "our wives." But for "our wives" those makers of happiness and furbelows, those fabricators of smiles and frills, those gentle beings who bias and scollop and do their sacking at both ends of the bill, and sometimes in the middle, would be compelled to shut up shop, retire from business, and return to the good old city of Mantua, whence they came. The world would grow too rich; albeit, on this promise I do not propose to construct an argument in favor of more wives. One wife is enough, two is too many, and more than two are an abomination everywhere, except in Utah and the halls of our national legislature.

I beg you will forgive me. I do but speak in banter. It has been said that a good woman, fitly mated, grows doubly good; but how often have we seen a bad man mated to a good woman turned into a good man? Why, I myself was not wholly good till I married my wife; and, if the eminent soldier and gentleman in whose honor we are here--and may he be among us many and many another anniversary, yet always sixty-three--if he should tell the story of his life, I am sure he would say that its darkest hours were cherished, its brightest illuminated by the fair lady of a noble race, who stepped from the highest social eminence to place her hand in that of an obscure young subaltern of the line. The world had not become acquainted with him, but with the prophetic instinct of a true woman she discovered, as she has since developed, the mine. So it is with all "our wives." Whatever there is good in us they bring it out; wherefor may they be forever honored in the myriad of hearts they come to lighten and to bless. [Loud applause.]

* * * * *

THE PURITAN AND THE CAVALIER

[Speech of Henry Watterson at the eighty-ninth anniversary banquet
of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22,
1894. Elihu Root, President of the Society, introduced Mr.
Watterson in the following words: "Gentlemen, we are forced to
recognize the truth of the observation that all the people of New
England are not Puritans; we must admit an occasional exception. It
is equally true, I am told, that all the people of the South are
not cavaliers; but there is one cavalier without fear and without
reproach [applause], the splendid courage of whose convictions
shows how close together the highest examples of different types
can be among godlike men--a cavalier of the South, of southern
blood and southern life, who carries in thought and in deed all the
serious purpose and disinterested action that characterized the
Pilgrim Fathers whom we commemorate. He comes from an impressionist
State where the grass is blue [laughter], where the men are either
all white or all black, and where, we are told, quite often the
settlements are painted red. [Laughter.] He is a soldier, a
statesman, a scholar, and, above all, a lover; and among all the
world which loves a lover the descendants of those who, generation
after generation, with tears and laughter, have sympathized with
John Alden and Priscilla, cannot fail to open their hearts in
sympathy to Henry Watterson and his star-eyed goddess. [Applause.]
I have the honor and great pleasure of introducing him to respond
to the toast of 'The Puritan and the Cavalier.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--Eight years ago, to-night, there stood where I am standing now a young Georgian, who, not without reason, recognized the "significance" of his presence here--"the first southerner to speak at this board"--a circumstance, let me add, not very creditable to any of us--and in words whose eloquence I cannot hope to recall, appealed from the New South to New England for a united country.

He was my disciple, my protege, my friend. He came to me from the southern schools, where he had perused the arts of oratory and letters, to get a few hints in journalism, as he said; needing so few, indeed, that, but a little later, I sent him to one of the foremost journalists of this foremost city, bearing a letter of introduction, which described him as "the greatest boy ever born in Dixie, or anywhere else."

He is gone now. But, short as his life was, its heaven-born mission was fulfilled; the dream of his childhood was realized; for he had been appointed by God to carry a message of peace on earth, good-will to men, and, this done, he vanished from the sight of mortal eyes, even as the dove from the ark.

I mean to take up the word where Grady left it off, but I shall continue the sentence with a somewhat larger confidence, and, perhaps, with a somewhat fuller meaning; because, notwithstanding the Puritan trappings, traditions, and associations which surround me--visible illustrations of the self-denying fortitude of the Puritan character and the sombre simplicity of the Puritan taste and habit--I never felt less out of place in all my life.

To tell you the truth, I am afraid that I have gained access here on false pretences; for I am no Cavalier at all; just plain Scotch-Irish; one of those Scotch-Irish southerners who ate no fire in the green leaf and has eaten no dirt in the brown, and who, accepting, for the moment, the terms Puritan and Cavalier in the sense an effete sectionalism once sought to ascribe to them--descriptive labels at once classifying and separating North and South--verbal redoubts along that mythical line called Mason and Dixon, over which there were supposed by the extremists of other days to be no bridges--I am much disposed to say, "A plague o' both your houses!"

Each was good enough and bad enough in its way, whilst they lasted; each in its turn filled the English-speaking world with mourning; and each, if either could have resisted the infection of the soil and climate they found here, would be to-day striving at the sword's point to square life by the iron rule of Theocracy, or to round it by the dizzy whirl of a petticoat! It is very pretty to read about the Maypole in Virginia and very edifying and inspiring to celebrate the deeds of the Pilgrim Fathers. But there is not Cavalier blood enough left in the Old Dominion to produce a single crop of first families, whilst out in Nebraska and Iowa they claim that they have so stripped New England of her Puritan stock as to spare her hardly enough for farm hands. This I do know, from personal experience, that it is impossible for the stranger-guest, sitting beneath a bower of roses in the Palmetto Club at Charleston, or by a mimic log-heap in the Algonquin Club at Boston, to tell the assembled company apart, particularly after ten o'clock in the evening! Why, in that great, final struggle between the Puritans and the Cavaliers--which we still hear sometimes casually mentioned--although it ended nearly thirty years ago, there had been such a mixing up of Puritan babies and Cavalier babies during the two or three generations preceding it, that the surviving grandmothers of the combatants could not, except for their uniforms, have picked out their own on any field of battle!

Turning to the Cyclopædia of American Biography, I find that Webster had all the vices that are supposed to have signalized the Cavalier, and Calhoun all the virtues that are claimed for the Puritan. During twenty years three statesmen of Puritan origin were the chosen party leaders of Cavalier Mississippi: Robert J. Walker, born and reared in Pennsylvania; John A. Quitman, born and reared in New York, and Sargent S. Prentiss, born and reared in the good old State of Maine. That sturdy Puritan, John Slidell, never saw Louisiana until he was old enough to vote and to fight; native here--an alumnus of Columbia College--but sprung from New England ancestors. Albert Sidney Johnston, the most resplendent of modern Cavaliers--from tip to toe a type of the species--the very rose and expectancy of the young Confederacy--did not have a drop of Southern blood in his veins; Yankee on both sides of the house, though born in Kentucky a little while after his father and mother arrived there from Connecticut. The Ambassador who serves our Government near the French Republic was a gallant Confederate soldier and is a representative southern statesman; but he owns the estate in Massachusetts where his father was born, and where his father's fathers lived through many generations.

And the Cavaliers, who missed their stirrups, somehow, and got into Yankee saddles? The woods were full of them. If Custer was not a Cavalier, Rupert was a Puritan. And Sherwood and Wadsworth and Kearny, and McPherson and their dashing companions and followers! The one typical Puritan soldier of the war--mark you!--was a Southern, and not a Northern, soldier; Stonewall Jackson, of the Virginia line. And, if we should care to pursue the subject farther back, what about Ethan Allen and John Stark and Mad Anthony Wayne--Cavaliers each and every one? Indeed, from Israel Putnam to "Buffalo Bill," it seems to me the Puritans have had rather the best of it in turning out Cavaliers. So the least said about the Puritan and the Cavalier--except as blessed memories or horrid examples--the better for historic accuracy.

If you wish to get at the bottom facts, I don't mind telling you--in confidence--that it was we Scotch-Irish who vanquished both of you--some of us in peace--others of us in war--supplying the missing link of adaptability--the needed ingredient of common sense--the conservative principle of creed and action, to which this generation of Americans owes its intellectual and moral emancipation from frivolity and pharisaism--its rescue from the Scarlet Woman and the mailed hand--and its crystallization into a national character and polity, ruling by force of brains and not by force of arms.

Gentlemen--Sir--I, too, have been to Boston. Strange as the admission may seem, it is true; and I live to tell the tale. I have been to Boston; and when I declare that I found there many things that suggested the Cavalier and did not suggest the Puritan, I shall not say I was sorry. But among other things, I found there a civilization perfect in its union of the art of living with the grace of life; an Americanism ideal in its simple strength. Grady told us, and told us truly, of that typical American who, in Dr. Talmage's mind's eye, was coming, but who, in Abraham Lincoln's actuality, had already come. In some recent studies into the career of that great man, I have encountered many startling confirmations of this judgment; and from that rugged trunk, drawing its sustenance from gnarled roots, interlocked with Cavalier sprays and Puritan branches deep beneath the soil, shall spring, is springing, a shapely tree--symmetric in all its parts--under whose sheltering boughs this nation shall have the new birth of freedom Lincoln promised it, and mankind the refuge which was sought by the forefathers when they fled from oppression. Thank God, the axe, the gibbet, and the stake have had their day. They have gone, let us hope, to keep company with the lost arts. It has been demonstrated that great wrongs may be redressed and great reforms be achieved without the shedding of one drop of human blood; that vengeance does not purify, but brutalizes; and that tolerance, which in private transactions is reckoned a virtue, becomes in public affairs a dogma of the most far-seeing statesmanship. Else how could this noble city have been redeemed from bondage? It was held like a castle of the Middle Ages by robber barons, who levied tribute right and left. Yet have the mounds and dykes of corruption been carried--from buttress to bell-tower the walls of crime have fallen--without a shot out of a gun, and still no fires of Smithfield to light the pathway of the victor, no bloody assizes to vindicate the justice of the cause; nor need of any.

So I appeal from the men in silken hose who danced to music made by slaves--and called it freedom--from the men in bell-crowned hats, who led Hester Prynne to her shame--and called it religion--to that Americanism which reaches forth its arms to smite wrong with reason and truth, secure in the power of both. I appeal from the patriarchs of New England to the poets of New England; from Endicott to Lowell; from Winthrop to Longfellow; from Norton to Holmes; and I appeal in the name and by the rights of that common citizenship--of that common origin--back both of the Puritan and the Cavalier--to which all of us owe our being. Let the dead past, consecrated by the blood of its martyrs, not by its savage hatreds--darkened alike by kingcraft and priestcraft--let the dead past bury its dead. Let the present and the future ring with the song of the singers. Blessed be the lessons they teach, the laws they make. Blessed be the eye to see, the light to reveal. Blessed be Tolerance, sitting ever on the right hand of God to guide the way with loving word, as blessed be all that brings us nearer the goal of true religion, true Republicanism and true patriotism, distrust of watchwords and labels, shams and heroes, belief in our country and ourselves. It was not Cotton Mather, but John Greenleaf Whittier, who cried:

"Dear God and Father of us all,
Forgive our faith in cruel lies,
Forgive the blindness that denies.

"Cast down our idols--overturn
Our bloody altars--make us see
Thyself in Thy humanity!"

[Applause and cheers.]

HEMAN LINCOLN WAYLAND

THE FORCE OF IDEAS

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Heman L. Wayland at the fourth annual dinner of
the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22,
1884. Dr. Wayland, as President of the Society, occupied the chair,
and delivered the following address in welcoming the guests.]

FELLOW NEW ENGLANDERS--Or, in view of our habitual modesty and self-depreciation, I ought, perhaps, rather to say, Fellow Pharisees [laughter]--I congratulate you that we are able to show our guests a little real New England weather--weather that recalls the sleigh-rides, and crossing the bridges, and the singing-school. You are reminded of the observation of the British tar, who, after a long cruise in the Mediterranean, as he came into the eternal fog which surrounds the "tight little island," exclaimed, "This is weather as is weather; none of your blasted blue sky for me!" [Laughter.]

Let me also apologize to our guests for the extreme plainness and frugality of the entertainment. They will kindly make allowance, when they remember that this is washing-day. [Laughter.]

I am aware that the occasion is so large as to dwarf all merely personal considerations; but I cannot omit to return you my thanks for the unmerited kindness which has placed me in the position I occupy. I must add that the position is at once the more honorable and the more onerous, because I am called to follow a gentleman whose administration of the office has been so superlatively successful.