Chapter VI: Part 6

That is perhaps his greatest virtue, and it all grows out of the fact that his spirit of antagonism is located in his backbone, leaving his heart free. He does not love strife and he does not hate the man with whom he fights, and so, in all his battles, he has never been vindictive, cruel, merciless. When he has had to fight he has fought like a man and a Christian, for righteousness' sake, and not like a demon to humiliate and to annihilate his foes. That makes the Dutchman a rare kind of enemy, and that, more than anything else, I think, has distinguished his enmity through all the years of his history. He has gone far toward obeying the precept, "Love your enemies, and bless them that curse you." If he has not been able to keep men from hating him, and cursing him, and persecuting him, he has been able to keep himself from hating and cursing and persecuting in return; and so, while he is one of the greatest of military heroes in history, he is also one of the greatest of moral heroes, and that is a greater honor, inasmuch as "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city."

I do not claim all glory for the Dutch. It is not given to any one nation to monopolize virtue. I only assert that the Dutchman's virtue is of a peculiarly exalted type. The Englishman's virtue is just as real, only another kind of virtue. If the Dutchman's spirit of hostility or of antagonism resides in his backbone, the Englishman's spirit of hostility or antagonism resides in his breastbone. That makes all the difference between them. The Englishman fights, but he fights aggressively. And as the heart lies back of the breastbone it never gets into his fighting. He neither loves his enemies nor hates them. He simply loves England. If it has been the mission of the Dutch to keep, it has been the mission of the English to get, and in the getting he has had to do a world of fighting.

It comes with ill grace from us, however, to condemn the Englishman when to-day Uncle Sam is standing on the Pacific Slope expanding his chest toward Hawaii. But if we cannot condemn with good grace, there is no need to praise English aggressiveness and acquisitiveness overmuch; what we do need to praise and cultivate is the Dutch virtue of holding fast our own. We have institutions and principles, rights and privileges, in this country which are constantly attacked, and the need of America is that the backbone which the Dutch have given to this country should assert itself. Hospitality loses its virtue when it means the destruction of the Lares and Penates of our own firesides. When a guest insists on sitting at the head of the table, then it is time for the host to become _hostis_. What America needs in this new year of grace is not less hospitality toward friends but more hostility toward intruders.

The spirit of this age is iconoclastic. It seeks to destroy sacred memorials, hallowed associations, holy shrines, everything that tells of the faith and the worship of a God-fearing past. The spirit of the age is irreverent, destructive, faithless. Against this and all despoiling forces we as patriots are called to arms. For what does America stand? What are the truths that have gone into her blood and made her strong and beautiful and dominant? The divineness of human rights, the claims of men superior to the claims of property; popular government--not an oligarchy; popular government--not a dictatorship; the sacredness of the home, the holiness of the sanctuary, faith in humanity, faith in God. These have made America, and without these there can be no America. And because they are attacked, gentlemen, the need of the hour is a patriotism that shall breathe forth the spirit of the people who above all others in history have known how to keep their land, their honor, and their faith. The mission of little Holland will never be ended so long as America needs the inspiration of her glorious example, and the devoted citizenship of her loving sons.

OPIE P. READ

MODERN FICTION

[Speech of Opie P. Read at the eighty-second dinner of the Sunset
Club, Chicago, Ill., January 31, 1895. The general subject of the
evening's discussion was "The Tendency and Influence of Modern
Fiction." The chairman of the evening, Arthur W. Underwood, said in
introducing Mr. Read, "It is very seldom that the Sunset Club
discharges its speakers in batteries of four, but something is due
to the speakers. Four barrels is a light load, I am told, for a
Kentucky colonel, and I have the pleasure of introducing the
original 'Kentucky Colonel,' Mr. Opie P. Read."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--The drift of latter-day fiction is largely shown by the department store. The selling of books by the ton proves a return to the extremes of romanticism. People do not jostle one another in their eagerness to secure even a semblance of the truth. The taste of to-day is a strong appetite for sadism; and a novel to be successful must bear the stamp of society rather than the approval of the critic. The reader has gone slumming, and must be shocked in order to be amused. Reviewers tell us of a revolt against realism, that we no longer fawn upon a dull truth, that we crave gauze rather than substance. In fact, realism was never a fad. Truth has never been fashionable; no society takes up philosophy as an amusement.

But after all, popular taste does not make a literature. Strength does not meet with immediate recognition; originality is more often condemned than praised. The intense book often dies with one reading, its story is a wild pigeon of the mind, and sails away to be soon forgotten; but the novel in which there is even one real character, one man of the soil, remains with us as a friend. In the minds of thinking people, realism cannot be supplanted. But by realism, I do not mean the commonplace details of an uninteresting household, nor the hired man with mud on his cowhide boots, nor the whining farmer who sits with his feet on the kitchen-stove, but the glory that we find in nature and the grandeur that we find in man, his bravery, his honor, his self-sacrifice, his virtue. Realism does not mean the unattractive. A rose is as real as a toad. And a realistic novel of the days of Cæsar would be worth more than Plutarch's Lives.

Every age sees a literary revolution, but out of that revolution there may come no great work of art. The best fiction is the unconscious grace of a cultivated mind, a catching of the quaint humor of men, a soft look of mercy, a sympathetic tear. And this sort of a book may be neglected for years, no busy critic may speak a word in its behalf, but there comes a time when by the merest accident a great mind finds it and flashes its genius back upon the cloud that has hidden it.

Yes, there is a return to romanticism, if indeed there was ever a turn from it. The well-told story has ever found admirers. To the world all the stories have not been told. The stars show no age, and the sun was as bright yesterday as it was the morning after creation. But a simple story without character is not the highest form of fiction. It is a story that may become a fad, if it be shocking enough, if it has in it the thrill of delicious wickedness, but it cannot live. The literary lion of to-day may be the literary ass of to-morrow, but the ass has his bin full of oats and cannot complain.

One very striking literary tendency of to-day is the worship of the English author in America and the hissing of the American author in London. And this proves that American literature is scarcely more popular in England than it is at home. But may not American publishers after awhile take up a London hissing and use it as an advertisement. Hissing is surely a recognition, and proves that an author has not been wholly neglected.

The novel, whether it be of classic form or of faddish type, makes a mark upon the mind of the public. Fiction is a necessary element of modern education. A man may be a successful physician or a noted lawyer without having read a novel; but he could not be regarded as a man of refined culture. A novel is an intellectual luxury, and in the luxuries of a country we find the refinements of the nation. It was not invention but fancy that made Greece great. A novel-reading nation is a progressive nation. At one time the most successful publication in this country was a weekly paper filled with graceless sensationalism, and it was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform that took hold of the public taste and lifted it above this trash--it was the publication in cheap form of the English classics. And when the mind of the masses had been thus improved, the magazine became a success.

One slow but unmistakable drift of fiction is toward the short story, and the carefully edited newspaper may hold the fiction of the future.

WHITELAW REID

THE PRESS--RIGHT OR WRONG

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at the 108th annual banquet of the Chamber
of Commerce of the State of New York, May 4, 1876. Samuel D.
Babcock, President of the Chamber, was in the chair, and proposed
the following toast, to which Mr. Reid was called upon for a
response: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right;
when wrong, to be set right."]

MR. PRESIDENT:--Lastly, Satan came also, the printer's, if not the public's devil, _in propria persona_! [Laughter.] The rest of you gentlemen have better provided for yourselves. Even the Chamber of Commerce took the benefit of clergy. The Presidential candidates and the representatives of the Administration and the leading statesmen who throng your hospitable board, all put forward as their counsel the Attorney-General [Alphonso Taft] of the United States. And, as one of his old clients at my left said a moment ago, "a precious dear old counsel he was." [Laughter.]

The Press is without clergymen or counsel; and you doubtless wish it were also without voice. At this hour none of you have the least desire to hear anything or to say anything about the press. There are a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that platform--I utterly refuse to say whether I refer to Presidential candidates or not--but there were a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that table, who are very much more anxious to know what the press to-morrow morning will have to say about them [laughter], and I know it because I saw the care with which they handed up to the reporters the manuscript copies of their entirely unprepared and extempore remarks. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, the press is a mild-spoken and truly modest institution which never chants its own praises. Unlike Walt Whitman, it never celebrates itself. Even if it did become me--one of the youngest of its conductors in New York--to undertake at this late hour to inflict upon you its eulogy, there are two circumstances which might well make me pause. It is an absurdity for me--an absurdity, indeed, for any of us--to assume to speak for the press of New York at a table where William Cullen Bryant sits silent. Besides, I have been reminded since I came here, by Dr. Chapin, that the pithiest eulogy ever pronounced upon the first editor of America, was pronounced in this very room and from that very platform by the man who at that time was the first of living editors in this country, when he said that he honored the memory of Benjamin Franklin because he was a journeyman printer who did not drink, a philosopher who wrote common sense, and an office-holder who did not steal. [Applause.]

One word only of any seriousness about your toast; it says: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right." Gentlemen, this is your affair. A stream will not rise higher than its fountain. The Hudson River will not flow backward over the Adirondacks. The press of New York is fed and sustained by the commerce of New York, and the press of New York to-day, bad as it is in many respects--and I take my full share of the blame it fairly deserves--is just what the merchants of New York choose to have it. If you want it better, you can make it better. So long as you are satisfied with it as it is, sustain it as it is, take it into your families and into your counting-rooms as it is, and encourage it as it is, it will remain what it is.

If, for instance, the venerable leader of your Bar, conspicuous through a long life for the practice of every virtue that adorns his profession and his race, is met on his return from the very jaws of the grave, as he re-enters the Court-room to undertake again the gratuitous championship of your cause against thieves who robbed you, with the slander that he is himself a thief of the meanest kind, a robber of defenceless women--I say if such a man is subject to persistent repetition of such a calumny in the very city he has honored and served, and at the very end and crown of his life, it is because you do not choose to object to it and make your objection felt. A score of similar instances will readily occur to anyone who runs over in his memory the course of our municipal history for the last dozen years, but there is no time to repeat or even to refer to them here.

And so, Mr. President, because this throng of gentlemen, gathered about the doors, pay me the too great compliment by remaining standing to listen when they have started to go home--let me come back to the text you gave me, and the sentiment with which we began: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right." [Applause.] The task in either case is to be performed by the merchants of New York, who have the power to do it and only need resolve that they will.

I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the continued attractions of the annual entertainment you offer us; above all, I congratulate you on having given us the great pleasure of meeting once more and seeing seated together at your table the first four citizens of the metropolis of the Empire State: Charles O'Conor, Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and John A. Dix. I thank you for the courtesy of your remembrance of the Press; and so to one and all, good-night. [Applause.]

* * * * *

GLADSTONE, ENGLAND'S GREATEST LEADER

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at a dinner given by the Irish-Americans
to Justin McCarthy, New York City, October 2, 1886. Judge Edward
Browne presided. Mr. Reid was called upon to speak to the toast,
"Gladstone, England's Greatest Leader."]

GENTLEMEN:--I am pleased to see that since this toast was sent me by your committee, it has been proof-read. As it came to me, it describes Mr. Gladstone as England's greatest Liberal leader. I thought you might well say that and more. It delights me to find that you have said more--that you have justly described him as England's greatest leader. ["Hear! Hear!"] I do not forget that other, always remembered when Gladstone is mentioned, who educated his party till it captured its opponents' place by first disguising and then adopting their measures. That was in its way as brilliant party leadership as the century has seen, and it placed an alien adventurer in the British peerage and enshrined his name in the grateful memory of a great party that vainly looks for Disraeli's successor. [Applause.] I do not forget a younger statesman, never to be forgotten henceforth by Irishmen, who revived an impoverished and exhausted people, stilled their dissensions, harmonized their conflicting plans, consolidated their chaotic forces, conducted a peaceful Parliamentary struggle in their behalf with incomparable pertinacity, coolness, and resources; and through storms and rough weather has held steadily on till even his enemies see now, in the very flush of their own temporary success, that in the end the victory of Parnell is sure. [Loud applause.] Great leaders both; great historic figures whom our grandchildren will study and analyze and admire.

But this man whom your toast honors, after a career that might have filled any man's ambition, became the head of the Empire whose mourning drum-beat heralds the rising sun on its journey round the world. That place he risked and lost, and risked again to give to an ill-treated powerless section of the Empire, not even friendly to his sway, Church Reform, Educational Reform, Land Reform, Liberty! [Cheers.] It was no sudden impulse and it is no short or recent record. It is more than seventeen years since Mr. Gladstone secured for Ireland the boon of disestablishment. It is nearly as long since he carried the first bill recognizing and seriously endeavoring to remedy the evils of Irish land tenure.

He has rarely been able to advance as rapidly or as far as he wished; and more than once he has gone by a way that few of us liked. But if he was not always right, he has been courageous enough to set himself right. If he made a mistake in our affairs when he said Jefferson Davis had founded a nation, he offered reparation when he secured the Geneva Arbitration, and loyally paid its award. If he made a mistake in Irish affairs in early attempts at an unwise coercion he more than made amends when he led that recent magnificent struggle in Parliament and before the English people, which ended in a defeat, it is true, but a defeat more brilliant than many victories and more hopeful for Ireland. [Applause.]

And over what a length of road has he led the English people! From rotten boroughs to household suffrage; from a government of classes to a government more truly popular than any other in the world outside of Switzerland and the United States. Then consider the advance on Irish questions. From the iniquitous burden of a gigantic and extravagant church establishment, imposed upon the people of whom seven-eighths were of hostile faith, to disestablishment; from the principle stated by Lord Palmerston with brutal frankness that "tenant-right is landlord's wrong," to judicial rents and the near prospect of tenant ownership on fair terms; from the arbitrary arrests of Irish leaders to the alliance of the Prime Minister and ruling party with the prisoner of Kilmainham Jail! [Loud cheers.] It has been no holiday parade, the leadership on a march like that. Long ago Mr. Disraeli flung at him the exultant taunt that the English people had had enough of his policy of confiscation; and so it proved for a time, for Mr. Disraeli turned him out. But Mr. Gladstone knew far better than his great rival did the deep and secret springs of English action, and he never judged from the temper of the House or a tour of the London drawing-rooms. Society, indeed, always disapproved of him, as it did of those kindred spirits, the anti-slavery leaders of American politics. But the frowns of Fifth Avenue and Beacon Street have not dimmed the fame of Sumner and Chase; of Seward and Lincoln [a voice: "And of Wendell Phillips." Cheers]; nor does Belgravia control the future of Mr. Gladstone's career any more than it has been able to hinder his past.

More than any other statesman of his epoch, he has combined practical skill in the conduct of politics with a steadfast appeal to the highest moral considerations. To a leader of that sort defeats are only stepping-stones, and the end is not in doubt. A phrase once famous among us has sometimes seemed to me fit for English use about Ireland. A great man, a very great man, whose name sheds lasting honor upon our city said in an impulsive moment--that he "never wanted to live in a country where the one-half was pinned to the other by bayonets." If Mr. Gladstone ever believed in thus fastening Ireland to England, he has learned a more excellent way. Like Greeley he would no doubt at the last fight, if need be, for the territorial integrity of his country. But he has learned the lesson Charles James Fox taught nearly a hundred years before: "The more Ireland is under Irish Government, the more she will be bound to English interests." That precept he has been trying to reduce to practice. God grant the old statesman life and light to see the sure end of the work he has begun! [Loud applause.]

I must not sit down without a word more to express the personal gratification I feel in seeing an old comrade here as your guest. Twelve or fourteen years ago he did me the honor to fill for a time an important place on the staff of my newspaper. With what skill and power he did his work; with what readiness and ample store of information you need not be told, for the anonymous editorial writer of those days is now known to the English-speaking world as the brilliant historian of "Our Own Times." Those of us who knew him then have seen his sacrifice of private interests and personal tastes for the stormy life of an Irish member of Parliament, and have followed with equal interest and admiration his bold yet prudent and high-minded Parliamentary career. He has done all that an Irishman ought for his country; he has done it with as little sympathy or encouragement for the policy of dynamite and assassination in England as we have had for bomb-throwing in Chicago. [Loud and prolonged applause.]

W. L. ROBBINS

THE PULPIT AND THE BAR

[Speech of Rev. W. L. Robbins at the annual dinner of the New York State Bar Association, given in the City of Albany, N. Y., January 20, 1891, in response to the sentiment, "The Relation of the Pulpit to the Bar." Matthew Hale presided.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I am so dazed at the temerity which has ventured to put so soporific a subject as "The Pulpit" at so late an hour in the evening, that I can only conceive of but one merit in any response to the present toast, and that is brevity. I had always supposed that the pulpit was "sleepy" enough in its effect upon men in the early hours of the day, at least that was my conclusion, in so far as it has been my privilege to see men present, at pulpit ministrations, leaving us as they do for the most part to preach to women and children. Shall I confess that the feeling came over me during the first part of the evening that I was rather out of place among so many laymen, alone as a representative of the clergy; but later, I found confidence through a sense of kinship in suffering, for is it not true that we represent two of the best abused professions in the world? I do not mean by that, abuse _ab extra_. I am told indeed, occasionally, that the pulpit is effete, that its place has been filled by the press and lecture platform, that there is no further use for it. But I do not know that I have heard abuse _ab extra_ of the Bar, unless some ill-natured person should read it into the broad Scotch pronunciation of an old friend of mine who used to say to me, "Ah, the lieyers, the lieyers."

But what we must needs guard against is abuse from within. In the first place we are a good deal given to self-congratulation. I use the first person plural and not the second person; I remember a friend of mine, a distinguished clergyman in Boston, an Englishman, who once ventured to preach upon political corruption in the municipal government, and the next day he had the audacity to drop into the office of one of the business men of his congregation and say, "What did you think of that sermon?"--a very dangerous question, by the way, always to ask--and the reply came promptly, "You had better go and be naturalized so that you can say 'we sinners,' instead of 'you sinners.'" [Laughter.] Since that time, from the pulpit or from any other place, I have hesitated to say, "You sinners," and I will promise to say "we sinners" to-night.

But truly the pulpit and the Bar, in their ideal, are, as it were, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," a witness to the eternal truth. Are they not? The pulpit is sent forth to herald the love of God, and the Bar is sent forth to herald the justice of God; but they don't always succeed. I can speak from experience for the pulpit, that the position of authority, the claim of a divine mission, is often turned into the excuse for the airing of a man's individual fads, and is naught but a cloak for pretentious ignorance. [Applause.] And for the Bar, I wonder if I might venture to quote the definition of legal practice which was given me the other night, apropos of this toast, by a distinguished representative of the New York Bar Association, that it was "a clever device for frustrating justice, and getting money into the lawyer's pocket." [Laughter.] But if it be true that we have a mission, it is equally true that we must join hands if we are going to accomplish that mission. I am tired of hearing about the Pulpit as the voice of the public conscience. I do not know why the Bar should not be the voice of the public conscience quite as much as the Pulpit. If there are laws on the statute book that are not obeyed, I don't know why the clergy should make public protest rather than the lawyers, who are representatives of the law. [Applause.] And if principles of our Constitution are being subtly invaded to-day under the mask, for instance, of State subsidies or national subsidies to sectarian institutions either of learning or of charity, I don't know why the first voice of warning should come from the Pulpit rather than from the Bar. Indeed, when the clergy initiate reforming movements it always seems to me as though there is need of rather more ballast in the boat, need of one of those great wheels which act as a check on the machinery in an engine; and the best fly-wheel is the layman. The tendency, you know, of the Pulpit is toward an unpractical sort of idealism. Its theories are all very good, but my professor in physics used to tell me that the best mathematical theory is put out of gear by friction when you come to illustrate it in practical physics, and so with even the best kind of theoretical philanthropy. The theoretical solution of the problems, social and economic, which confront us is put "out of gear" by facts, about which, alas, the clergy are not as careful as they are about their theory; and, therefore, I plead for a lay enthusiasm. But surely there is no better lay element than the legal to act as ballast for the clergy in pleading the cause of philanthropy and piety and righteousness.

Then I would suggest first of all, that the Pulpit needs to leave the A, B, C's of morality, about which it has been pottering so long, and begin to spell words and sometimes have a reading lesson in morals. That is, that it should apply its principles to practical living issues and questions of the day. And I plead to the lawyers to come out once in awhile from the technicalities of practice, and from their worship of cleverness and success, and look to the mission which is laid on them, namely, to bear witness to justice and righteousness. [Applause.] My toast would be "Common sense in the Pulpit and a love of righteousness at the Bar."

JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE

THE PRESS

[Speech of James Jeffrey Roche at the banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, New York City, March 17, 1894. John D. Crimmins presided. Mr. Roche, as editor of the "Boston Pilot," responded for "The Press."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FRIENDLY SONS OF ST. PATRICK:--I am deeply sensible of the honor you have done me in inviting me to respond to the toast which has just been read.

The virtues of the Press are so many and so self-evident that they scarcely need a eulogist. Even the newspapers recognize and admit them. If you had asked a New York journalist to sing the praises of his craft, his native and professional modesty would have embarrassed his voice. If you had asked a Chicagoan, the honorable chairman would have been compelled to resort to cloture before the orator got through. If you had asked a Philadelphian, he would have been in bed by this hour.

Therefore, you wisely went to the city which not only produces all the virtues--but puts them up in cans, for export to all the world. We do not claim to know everything, in Boston--but we do know where to find it. We have an excellent newspaper press, daily and weekly, and should either or both ever, by any chance, fail to know anything--past, present, or to come--we have a Monday Lectureship, beside which the Oracle of Delphi was a last year's almanac. [Applause.]

I met a man, on the train, yesterday--a New York man (he said he was)--of very agreeable manners. He told me what his business was, and when I told him my business in New York, he surprised me by asking: "What are you going to say to them in your speech that will be real sassy, and calculated to make all their pet corns ache?" I told him I did not know what he meant, that of course I should say nothing but the most pleasant things I could think of; that, in fact, I intended to read my speech, lest, in the agitation of the moment, I might overlook some complimentary impromptu little touch. Then he laughed and said: "Why, that isn't the way to do at all--in New York. It is easy to see you are a stranger, and don't read the papers. The correct thing nowadays is for the guest to criticise his entertainers. Mayor So-and-So always does it. And only last year--it was at an Irish banquet, too--the speaker of the evening, a Down-Easter like yourself, just spilled boiling vitriol over the whole company, and rubbed it in."

I told him I didn't believe that story, and asked him to tell me the gentleman's name. And he only answered me, evasively: "I didn't say he was a gentleman."

I trust I know better than to say anything uncomplimentary about the Press of New York, which compiles, or constructs, news for the whole Continent, not only before our slower communities have heard of the things chronicled, but often, with commendable enterprise, before they have happened.

I admire the Press of New York. There are a great many Boston men on it, and I have no mission to reform it. In New York, when you have a surplus of journalistic talent, you export it to London, where it is out of place--some of it. The feverish race for priority, which kills off so many American journalists, sometimes, it would seem, almost before their time (but that is a matter of opinion), is unknown in London. A man who reads the "London Times," regularly and conscientiously, is guaranteed forever against insomnia. London "Punch" is a paper which the severest ascetic may read, all through Lent, without danger to his sobriety of soul.

London gets even with you, too. You send her an Astor, and she retaliates with a Stead. We ought to deal gently with Mr. Stead; for he says that we are all children of the one "Anglo-Saxon" family--without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude. He avers that England looks upon America as a brother, and that may be so. It is not easy, at this distance of time, to know just how Romulus looked upon Remus, how Esau looked upon Jacob, how Cain looked upon Abel--but I have no doubt that it was in about the same light that England looks upon America--fraternally! But she ought not to afflict us with Mr. Stead. We have enough to bear without him.

We know that the Press has its faults and its weaknesses. We can see them every day, in our miserable contemporaries, and we do not shirk the painful duty of pointing them out. We know that it has also virtues, manifold, and we do not deny them, when an appreciative audience compliments us upon them. A conscientious journalist never shrinks from the truth, even when it does violence to his modesty. In fact, he tells the truth under all circumstances, or nearly all. If driven to the painful alternative of choosing between that which is new and that which is true, he wisely decides that "truth" is mighty, and will prevail, whereas news won't keep. Nevertheless, it is a safe rule not to believe everything that you see in the papers. Advertisers are human, and liable to err.

Lamartine predicted, long ago, that before the end of the present century the Press would be the whole literature of the world. His prediction is almost verified already. The multiplication and the magnitude of newspapers present, not a literary, but an economic problem. The Sunday paper alone has grown, within a decade, from a modest quarto to a volume of 48, 60, 96, 120 pages, with the stream steadily rising and threatening the levees on both banks. At a similar rate of expansion in the next ten years, it will be made up of not less than 1,000 pages, and the man who undertakes to read it will be liable to miss First Mass.

The thoughtful provision of giving away a "farm coupon" with every number may avert trouble for a time, but it will be only for a time. The reader will need a farm, on which to spread out and peruse his purchase; but the world is small, and land has not the self-inflating quality of paper.

But to speak more seriously: Is modern journalism, then, nothing but a reflection of the frivolity of the day, of the passing love of notoriety? I say no! I believe that the day of sensational journalism, of the blanket sheet and the fearful woodcut, is already passing away. Quantity cannot forever overcome quality, in that or any other field. When we think of the men who have done honor to the newspaper profession, we do not think so proudly of this or that one who "scooped" his contemporaries with the first, or "exclusive," report of a murder or a hanging, but of men like the late George W. Childs, whom all true journalists honor and lament.

We think of the heroes of the pen, who carried their lives in their hands as they went into strange, savage countries, pioneers of civilization. It would be invidious to mention names, where the roll is so long and glorious; but I think, at the moment, of O'Donovan, Forbes, Stanley, Burnaby, Collins, and our own Irish-American, MacGahan, the great-hearted correspondent, who changed the political map of Eastern Europe by exposing the Bulgarian atrocities. The instinct which impelled those men was the same which impelled Columbus.

I think, in another field, of the noblest man I have ever known, the truest, most chivalrous gentleman, a newspaper man, an editor--I am proud to say, an Irish-American editor--the memory of whose honored name, I well know, is the only excuse for my being here to-night--John Boyle O'Reilly! You have honored his name more than once here to-night, and in honoring him you honor the profession which he so adorned.

D. B. ST. JOHN ROOSA

THE SALT OF THE EARTH

[Speech of Dr. D. B. St. John Roosa, as President of the Holland
Society of New York, at the eleventh annual dinner of the Society,
New York City, January 15, 1896.]

GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY, AND OUR HONORED GUESTS:--My first duty is to welcome to our Board the representatives of the various societies who honor us by their presence: St. George's, St. Nicholas, New England, St. Andrew's, Colonial Order, and Colonial Wars, Southern Society, the Holland Society welcomes you most heartily. I ought to say that the Holland Society, as at present constituted, could run a Police Board [applause], furnish the Mayors for two cities, and judges to order, to decide on any kind of a case. As a matter of fact, when they get hard up down-town for a judge, they just send up to the man who happens to be President of the Holland Society and say "Now we want a judge," and we send Van Hoesen, Beekman, Truax, or Van Wyck. [Applause.] They are all right. They are Dutch, and they will do. [Laughter.] All the people say it does not make any difference about their politics, so long as the blood is right.

Now, gentlemen, seriously, I thank you very sincerely for the honor which you have conferred upon me--and which I was not able, on account of circumstances entirely beyond my control, to acknowledge at the annual meeting of the Society--in making me your President. I do not think there is any honor in the world that compares with it, and if you think over the names of the Presidents of this Society you may imagine that a doctor, especially knowing what the Dutch in South Africa think of doctors just now [laughter and applause], would have a mighty slim chance to come in against a Van Vorst, a Roosevelt, a Van Hoesen, a Beekman, a Van Wyck, or a Van Norden. But my name is not Jameson. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, there seems to be an impression that the Holland Society, because it does not have a Club-house--and it may have a Club-house, that remains for you to decide; and because it does not have a great many other things, has no reason for its existence. But, gentlemen, there is one sufficient reason for the existence of the Hollanders in a Society. We have eight hundred and forty members, and each one of us has a function--to teach our neighboring Yankees just exactly what we are, whence we came, and where we mean to go. [Laughter and applause.] The colossal ignorance of the ordinary New Englander [laughter and applause]--I mean in regard to the Dutch [laughter]--is something that I would delineate were it not for the presence of the President of the Mayflower Society. [Renewed laughter.] Why, it was only the other night that at one of these entertainments when I was representing you and doing the best I could with my medal and my ribbon, that a friend came up to me and said: "You belong to the Holland Society, don't you?" I said, "Yes." "Well," he said, "you Dutch did lick us on the Excise question, didn't you?" [Great laughter and applause.] Now what are you going to do with a people like that? We got the credit of that thing, anyhow. [Renewed laughter.] There is a Governor of Connecticut here to-night [P. C. Lounsbury], and I was going to say something about Governors of Connecticut of years and years ago. A man could not properly relate the history of New Amsterdam without remarking on the Governors of Connecticut, but out of respect to the distinguished gentleman, whom we all delight to honor, I shall draw it very mild. I shall only tell one or two things that those Governors of Connecticut used to do. There was one of them, I have forgotten his name and I am glad I have [laughter], who used to say in all his letters to his subordinates when they were pushing us to the wall and getting the English over to help them push: "Don't you say anything to those people, don't you talk to those people, but always keep crowding the Dutch." [Laughter.] That is what a Connecticut Governor gave as official advice years ago. And they did crowd us. But Governor Lounsbury told me that if they really had their rights Manhattan Island would belong to Connecticut. So you see they are crowding the Dutch still. [Laughter.]

Now, every once in a while, one of these New Englanders that owns the earth, especially that little stone portion called Plymouth Rock, which we never begrudged them, gets up at a great dinner and reads a fine speech and talks about civil and religious liberty which the Puritan came over to cause to flourish. Why, the poor Puritan did not know any more about religious liberty than an ordinary horse does about astronomy. What the Puritan came over here for, was to get a place to do what he liked, in his own way, without interference from anybody else, with power to keep everybody out that wanted to do anything the least bit different from his way. [Great laughter and applause. A voice--"I'm glad I voted for you."] I never can get elected from New England.

I want to tell you just a thing or two about this business. The Dutch tried very hard to teach them civil and religious liberty before they came over, and then they put the Yankees in a ship and sent them over from Leyden and Delfshaven, saying: "It is utterly useless; we cannot teach you." [Great laughter.] But we came over to New Amsterdam and we had free schools in New York until the English took the city by treachery when there was only Peter Stuyvesant to fire one gun against the invaders, and then they abolished free schools and had their church ones, and they are fighting over that question in England now. Free schools! New York established them when we were free again, years and years afterwards, but they are an invention of the Dutch.

Civil and religious liberty! it was born in Holland, it was nourished by the valor of the Beggars of the Sea, and finally it began to grow into the minds of the peoples of the earth, that it was not only right to enjoy your own religion, but it was also right to let your neighbor enjoy his. [Applause.]

Then there is another story, that the English conquered Manhattan Island, and that we are here by the grace of any people on earth except our own. That is another mistake. Just read Theodore Roosevelt's "Rise of New York." [Great laughter.] Now I am going to tell you this story because you must go up to Ulster County and up to Dutchess and Albany Counties, and you must tell every Yankee you meet the truth about this, and not let him talk any more about the English having subjugated the Dutch.

It is true the English captured Manhattan Island, but nine years afterwards Admiral Evertsen and another Admiral whose name escapes me, came up the harbor in two frigates with guns well shotted, got beyond Staten Island, and gave the military authorities of New York notice that they were going to take that town, and granted them thirty minutes to make up their minds whether they would give it up or not. When the thirty minutes elapsed, six hundred Dutch troops were landed just back of where Trinity Church now is, and New York became New Amsterdam again. Then how did we lose it? Because the Dutch States-General, which did not know enough, in deciding between New York and Surinam, to choose New York, took Surinam, and they have been wishing ever since they never had been born. Now talk about anybody conquering the Dutch! We generally get there. They sometimes say: "That is all very well, they were very brave people and all that, but they don't do anything now." Waterloo, Van Speyk, Majuba Hill, and the Boers of the Transvaal show what their courage has been in the later generations. What are the Dutch? Why, we are the salt of the earth! We do not pretend to be the bread and butter and the cheese, but we are the salt [laughter], and I think the Boers in South Africa very lately salted some people I know of. [Great laughter and applause.]

If you want to see a city that is well salted, look at New York. Go to the St. Nicholas Society dinner and see that grand assembly; if there is ever a society in New York that is well salted with Dutch, that is, and we are all proud of it. And so it is with every other society, New York society, but not on the paternal side! [Great laughter and applause.]

But if you want to see a place where the Yankee is salt, pepper, bread, butter, and everything, go to Boston. It is a great city. That is all right. But we prefer New York, and we prefer just what God has ordained us to be--the people not always getting the credit of it, but always accomplishing all the good that is ever accomplished on the face of the earth! [Laughter and applause.] Now you may think that I have not whooped it up enough for the Dutch [great laughter], so I will go on, just for a minute.

The State of North Carolina is always talking about having had a Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg County, about six months before they had one in Philadelphia. Why, the Dutch farmers up in the Mamacotting Valley of Ulster County signed a Declaration of Independence in April, 1775, and they would have signed it six months before if the New York Council of Safety had given it to them! [Laughter.] This same New England gentleman to whom I have alluded--I have it rather mixed up in my mind which gentleman said it--but some one said that the New Englanders were very unwilling to part from the English, who were patronizing them with tea and stamps. Why, the liberty boys of New York had made up their minds many months before the Declaration of Independence. The Dutch, and notably the Scotch-Irish, had made up their minds. As I say, up in Ulster County they circulated that Declaration of Independence a year and three months before it was really signed in Philadelphia. They knew what they meant. They said, "We shall never be slaves." If you will excuse the fact that I did have a great-grandfather--I am happy to say that my great-grandfather signed that paper and he had a commission in the Continental Army, which I possess, signed by John Hancock, and he was at Saratoga. He was in the 2d New York Line. The Dutch knew that what we wanted was to be a free and independent people, even if our friends over there had not made up their minds. The Dutch are satisfied with a very modest position in the world--so that they have the goods and control its destinies. [Great laughter.] Others may call it New York, if they like, or Manhattan, but we call it Dutch.

Now this Society, gentlemen, has a great work before it; our President, who is very much like the President of the French Republic, goes around with a big ribbon, but he has no authority of any kind whatever. He might have some at the Board of Trustees meeting, but that is such an orderly set that there is no use for authority there, and as for the dinner, Judge Van Hoesen and Mr. Van Schaick manage it very well. But the President does not wish any authority, and glories in the great honor, which it seems to him to be one that any one in this Society might be proud of. We have, however, work to do, and in that your President, by your grace, as a private member and as a trustee, hopes to co-operate with you.

It is a strange thing that this great city of New York has allowed the Puritans first to commemorate the virtues of their heroic race which we all admire, and all love to speak of in terms of praise in our serious moments. It is strange that Central Park is adorned by them with that beautiful statue, while the Dutch have no monument. I well remember the day that that silver-tongued orator, George William Curtis, made the dedication address. But why is it that on this Hudson, which was first ploughed by a Dutch keel, over which first of all a Dutch flag floated, along this Hudson which was first discovered and explored and made habitable by Dutch industry and Dutch thrift, there is no Dutch monument to which we may proudly point as we pass by. There ought to be a statue of that great Dutchman, William the Silent, on Riverside Drive. [Great applause.] Do you ever think of him? Do you ever think of his career, that of the prototype of our own Washington? At fifteen years of age the companion of an emperor; at twenty-one years of age, the commander of a great army, and later giving up wealth and pomp and power, preferring to be among the people of God, than to dwell at ease in the tents of wickedness; giving up everything for a life of tedious struggle in the cold marshes of the Netherlands, finally to die at the hand of an assassin with a prayer for his country upon his lips as he passed away. He was the first human being on the face of this earth, who fairly and fully understood the principles of religious and civic freedom. This great city, the exemplifier of those principles to which it owes so much for its prosperity and magnificence, has not yet commemorated that man. How long shall it be, sons of Hollanders, before William the Silent shall be there looking out upon the Hudson and lifted on high as an example for all time? I hope our eyes will see the day! [Great applause.]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THE HOLLANDER AS AN AMERICAN

[Speech of Theodore Roosevelt at the eleventh annual dinner of the
Holland Society of New York, January 15, 1896. The President, Dr.
D. B. St. John Roosa, said: "The next regular toast is: 'The
Hollander as an American,' and I shall have the pleasure of
introducing a gentleman who is a member of this Society, and,
therefore, descended on the male line [laughter] from some one who
came here before 1675, is it not? [A voice--"That is right; 1675."]
One of the first Roosevelts came very near outstripping Robert
Fulton and inventing the steamboat. He did invent a steamboat, and
you know the Roosevelts have had something of a steamboat in them
ever since. Now there is another thing I want you Dutchmen to teach
the Yankees to do--pronounce his name Rosavelt and not Rusevelt.
And, by the way, mine is pronounced Rosa too. Now Mr. Roosevelt is
a man, evidently, who has the courage of his convictions [A
Voice--"That is right." Applause], and it will be a cold day for
the party to which he belongs if they undertake to turn him down. I
hoped that you all thought so. There was an old darky that used to
say about the Commandments: 'Yes, preacher, they are all right, but
in this here neighborhood the eighth Commandment ought to be taught
with some discreetions.' [Great laughter.] [A Voice: "Which is the
eighth Commandment?"] 'Thou shalt not steal.' Now in New York there
are some people who think there are some commandments that ought to
be taught with some 'discreetions.' But they had better alter their
law if they don't like it, and they had better not put a Dutchman
in office after an oath to enforce the law and then ask him why he
does enforce it. [Great applause.] This gentleman does not need any
introduction, evidently--the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt." [Great
applause. Three cheers were proposed and given for Mr. Roosevelt. A
Voice: "Tiger!"] Mr. Roosevelt: "In the presence of the judiciary,
no!" [Laughter.] There was great cheering when Mr. Roosevelt rose
to respond.]

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN, AND BRETHREN OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY:--I am more than touched, if you will permit me to begin rather seriously, by the way you have greeted me to-night. When I was in Washington, there was a story in reference to a certain President, who was not popular with some of his own people in a particular Western State. One of its Senators went to the White House and said he wanted a friend of his appointed postmaster of Topeka. The President's Private Secretary said: "I am very sorry, indeed, sir, but the President wants to appoint a personal friend." Thereupon the Senator said: "Well, for God's sake, if he has one friend in Kansas, let him appoint him!" [Great laughter.]

_Photogravure after a photograph from life_]