Chapter XVII: Part THREE: Platform Practice (6)

Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, we have come all at once to the great experiences and trials of a full-grown nation, all of which we thought we should escape--the distractions of civil strife, the exhaustions of powerful war. We could summon from the people a million of men and inexhaustible treasure to help the Constitution in its time of need. Can we summon now resources enough of civil prudence and of restraint of passion to carry us through this trial, so that whatever result may follow, in whatever form, the people may feel that the Constitution has received no wound! To this court, the last and best resort for this determination, it is to be left. And oh, if you could only carry yourselves back to the spirit and the purpose and the wisdom and the courage of the framers of the government, how safe would it be in your hands? How safe is it now in your hands, for you who have entered into their labors will see to it that the structure of your work comports in durability and excellence with theirs. Indeed, so familiar has the course of the argument made us with the names of the men of the convention and of the first Congress that I could sometimes seem to think that the presence even of the Chief Justice was replaced by the serene majesty of Washington, and that from Massachusetts we had Adams and Ames, from Connecticut, Sherman and Ellsworth, from New Jersey, Paterson and Boudinot, and from New York, Hamilton and Benson, and that they were to determine this case for us. Act, then, as if under this serene and majestic presence your deliberations were to be conducted to their close, and the Constitution was to come out from the watchful solicitude of these great guardians of it as if from their own judgment in this court of impeachment.

THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH

AT A UNIVERSITY CLUB DINNER

Reprinted, with the author's permission, from a speech at a dinner of The Harvard Club of New York City.

BY HENRY E. HOWLAND

There should be a proper amount of modesty in one called upon to address such an intelligent audience of educated men as I see before me, and I am conscious of it in the same sense as the patient who said to his physician, "I suffer a great deal from nervous dyspepsia, and I attribute it to the fact that I attend so many public dinners." "Ah, I see," said the doctor, "you are often called upon to speak, and the nervous apprehension upsets your digestion." "Not at all; my apprehension is entirely on account of the other speakers; I never say a thing;" and it is with some hesitation that I respond to your call.

Following out that line of thought, there is a great deal that is attractive in a gathering of College men. They have such a winsome and a winning way with them.

Richest in endowments, foremost in progress, honored by the renown of a long line of distinguished sons, the university that claims you is worthy of the homage and respect which it receives from the educated men of America.

The study of the development of the human race by educational processes which change by necessity under changing conditions and environment, is one of the most interesting that we can engage in. The greatest men of this country, or any other, have not always been made by the university, however it may be with the average. You cannot always tell by a man's degree what manner of man he is likely to be. But the value of a technical or academic training is apparent as time goes on, population increases, occupations multiply and compete, and the strife of life becomes more fierce and strenuous.

Many in these days seem to prefer notoriety to fame, because it runs along the line of least resistance. A man has to climb for fame, but he can get notoriety by an easy tumble. And others forget the one essential necessary to success, of personal effort, and, assuming there is a royal road to learning, are content with the distinction of a degree from a university, without caring for what it implies, and answer as the son did to his father who asked him: "Why don't you work, my son? If you only knew how much happiness work brings, you would begin at once." "Father, I am trying to lead a life of self-denial in which happiness cuts no figure; do not tempt me."

But notwithstanding all these tendencies, the level of mankind is raised at these fountains of learning, the tone is higher, and the standards are continually advanced. The discipline and the training reaches and acts upon a willing and eager army of young recruits and works its salutary effect, like that upon a man who listened with rapt attention to a discourse from the pulpit and was congratulated upon his devotion, and asked if he was not impressed. "Yes," he replied, "for it is a mighty poor sermon that doesn't hit me somewhere."

However discouraging the action of our governing bodies through the obstruction and perverse action of an ignorant or corrupt majority or minority in them may be in the administration of great public affairs, the time at last comes when the nation arouses from its lethargy, shakes off its torpor, shows the strain of its blood, and follows its trained and intelligent leaders, like the man who, in a time of sore distress, after the ancient fashion, put ashes on his head, rent his garments, tore off his coat, his waistcoat, his shirt, and his undershirt, and at last came to himself. At such times, by the universal voice of public opinion and amid hearty applause of the whole people, we welcome to public office and the highest responsible stations such men as our universities have given to the country. It matters not to what family we belong--Harvard, Yale, Columbia, or Princeton--we are all of us one in our welcome to them, for they represent the university spirit and what it teaches--honor, high- mindedness, intelligence, truthfulness, unselfishness, courage, and patriotism.

THE EVACUATION OF NEW YORK

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--I came here to-night with some notes for a speech in my pocket, but I have been sitting next to General Butler, and in the course of the evening they have mysteriously disappeared. The consequence is, gentlemen, that you may expect a very good speech from him and a very poor one from me. When I read this toast which you have just drunk in honor of Her Gracious Majesty, the Queen of Great Britain, and heard how you received the letter of the British Minister that was read in response, and how heartily you joined in singing "God Save the Queen," when I look up and down these tables and see among you so many representatives of English capital and English trade, I have my doubts whether the evacuation of New York by the British was quite as thorough and lasting as history would fain have us believe. If George III, who certainly did all he could to despoil us of our rights and liberties and bring us to ruin--if he could rise from his grave and see how his granddaughter is honored at your hands to-night, why, I think he would return whence he came, thanking God that his efforts to enslave us, in which for eight long years he drained the resources of the British Empire, were not successful.

The truth is, the boasted triumph of New York in getting rid of the British once and forever has proved, after all, to be but a dismal failure. We drove them out in one century only to see them return in the next to devour our substance and to carry off all the honors. We have just seen the noble Chief Justice of England, the feasted favorite of all America, making a triumphal tour across the Continent and carrying all before him at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Night after night at our very great cost we have been paying the richest tribute to the reigning monarch of the British stage, and nowhere in the world are English men and women of character and culture received with a more hearty welcome, a more earnest hospitality, than in this very state of New York. The truth is, that this event that we celebrate to-day, which sealed the independence of America and seemed for a time to give a staggering blow to the prestige and the power of England, has proved to be no less a blessing to her own people than to ours. The latest and best of the English historians has said that, however important the independence of America might be in the history of England, it was of overwhelming importance in the history of the world, and that though it might have crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. And in the same spirit we welcome the fact that those social, political, and material barriers that separated the two nations a century ago have now utterly vanished; that year by year we are being drawn closer and closer together, and that this day may be celebrated with equal fitness on both sides of the Atlantic and by all who speak the English tongue.

TIES OF KINSHIP

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. I, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY SIR EDWIN ARNOLD

When I was conversing recently with Lord Tennyson, he said to me: "It is bad for us that English will always be a spoken speech, since that means that it will always be changing, and so the time will come when you and I will be as hard to read for the common people as Chaucer is to-day." You remember what opinion your brilliant humorist, Artemus Ward, let fall concerning that ancient singer. "Mr. Chaucer," he observed casually, "is an admirable poet, but as a spellist, a very decided failure."

To the treasure house of that noble tongue the United States has splendidly contributed. It would be far poorer to-day without the tender lines of Longfellow, the serene and philosophic pages of Emerson, the convincing wit and clear criticism of my illustrious departed friend, James Russell Lowell, the Catullus-like perfection of the lyrics of Edgar Allan Poe, and the glorious, large-tempered dithyrambs of Walt Whitman.

These stately and sacred laurel groves grow here in a garden forever extending, ever carrying further forward, for the sake of humanity, the irresistible flag of our Saxon supremacy, leading one to falter in an attempt to eulogize America and the idea of her potency and her promise. The most elaborate panegyric would seem but a weak impertinence, which would remind you, perhaps too vividly, of Sydney Smith, who, when he saw his grandchild pat the back of a large turtle, asked her why she did so. The little maid replied: "Grandpa, I do it to please the turtle." "My child," he answered, "you might as well stroke the dome of St. Paul's to please the Dean and chapter"

I myself once heard, in our Zoological gardens in London, another little girl ask her mamma whether it would hurt the elephant if she offered him a chocolate drop. In that guarded and respectful spirit is it that I venture to tell you here to-night how truly in England the peace and prosperity of your republic is desired, and that nothing except good will is felt by the mass of our people toward you, and nothing but the greatest satisfaction in your wealth and progress.

Between these two majestic sisters of the Saxon blood the hatchet of war is, please God, buried. No cause of quarrel, I think and hope, can ever be otherwise than truly out of proportion to the vaster causes of affection and accord. We have no longer to prove to each other, or to the world, that Englishmen and Americans are high-spirited and fearless; that Englishmen and Americans alike will do justice, and will have justice, and will put up with nothing else from each other and from the nations at large. Our proofs are made on both sides, and indelibly written on the page of history. Not that I wish to speak platitudes about war. It has been necessary to human progress; it has bred and preserved noble virtues; it has been inevitable, and may be again; but it belongs to a low civilization. Other countries have, perhaps, not yet reached that point of intimate contact and rational advance, but for us two, at least, the time seems to have come when violent decisions, and even talk of them, should be as much abolished between us as cannibalism.

I ventured, when in Washington, to propose to President Harrison that we should some day, the sooner the better, choose five men of public worth in the United States, and five in England; give them gold coats if you please, and a handsome salary, and establish them as a standing and supreme tribunal of arbitration, referring to them the little family fallings-out of America and of England, whenever something goes wrong between us about a sealskin in Behring Strait, a lobster pot, an ambassador's letter, a border tariff, or an Irish vote. He showed himself very well disposed toward my suggestion.

Mr. President, in the sacred hope that you take me to be a better poet than orator, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your reception to-night, and personally pray for the tranquility and prosperity of this free and magnificent republic.

CANADA, ENGLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES

From an address in Brewer's "The World's Best Orations," Vol. VII, Ferd P. Kaiser, St. Louis, Chicago, publishers.

BY SIR WILFRED LAURIER

Mr. Toastmaster, Mr. President, and Gentlemen,--I very fully and very cordially appreciate the very kind feelings which have just now been uttered by the toastmaster in terms so eloquent, and which you gentlemen have accepted and received in so sympathetic a manner. Let me say at once, in the name of my fellow-Canadians who are here with me and also, I may say, in the name of the Canadian people, that these feelings we shall at all times reciprocate; reciprocate, not only in words evanescent, but in actual living deeds.

Because I must say that I feel that, though the relations between Canada and the United States are good, though they are brotherly, though they are satisfactory, in my judgment they are not as good, as brotherly, as satisfactory as they ought to be. We are of the same stock. We spring from the same races on one side of the line as on the other. We speak the same language. We have the same literature, and for more than a thousand years we have had a common history.

Let me recall to you the lines which, in the darkest days of the Civil War, the Puritan poet of America issued to England:--

"Oh, Englishmen! Oh, Englishmen!
In hope and creed,
In blood and tongue, are brothers,
We all are heirs of Runnymede."

Brothers we are, in the language of your own poet. May I not say that while our relations are not always as brotherly as they should have been, may I not ask, Mr. President, on the part of Canada and on the part of the United States, if we are sometimes too prone to stand by the full conceptions of our rights, and exact all our rights to the last pound of flesh? May I not ask if there have not been too often between us petty quarrels, which happily do not wound the heart of the nation?

There was a civil war in the last century. There was a civil war between England, then, and her colonies. The union which then existed between England and her colonies was severed. If it was severed, American citizens, as you know it was, through no fault of your fathers, the fault was altogether the fault of the British Government of that day. If the British Government of that day had treated the American colonies as the British Government for the last twenty or fifty years has treated its colonies; if Great Britain had given you then the same degree of liberty which it gives to Canada, my country; if it had given you, as it has given us, legislative independence absolute,--the result would have been different; the course of victory, the course of history, would have been very different.

But what has been done cannot be undone. You cannot expect that the union which was then severed shall ever be restored; but can we not expect--can we not hope that the banners of England and the banners of the United States shall never, never again meet in conflict, except those conflicts provided by the arts of peace, such as we see to-day in the harbor of New York in the contest between the _Shamrock_ and the _Columbia_ for the supremacy of naval architecture and naval prowess? Can we not hope that if ever the banners of England and the banners of the United States are again to meet on the battlefield, they shall meet entwined together in the defense of some holy cause, in the defense of holy justice, for the defense of the oppressed, for the enfranchisement of the downtrodden, and for the advancement of liberty, progress, and civilization?

MONSIEUR AND MADAME

From a speech in "Modern Eloquence," Vol. I, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY PAUL BLOUET (MAX O'RELL)

Now, the attitude of men towards women is very different, according to the different nations to which they belong. You will find a good illustration of that different attitude of men toward women in France, in England, and in America, if you go to the dining-rooms of their hotels. You go to the dining-room, and you take, if you can, a seat near the entrance door, and you watch the arrival of the couples, and also watch them as they cross the room and go to the table that is assigned to them by the head waiter. Now, in Europe, you would find a very polite head waiter, who invites you to go in, and asks you where you will sit; but in America the head waiter is a most magnificent potentate who lies in wait for you at the door, and bids you to follow him sometimes in the following respectful manner, beckoning, "There." And you have got to do it, too.

I traveled six times in America, and I never saw a man so daring as not to sit there. In the tremendous hotels of the large cities, where you have got to go to Number 992 or something of the sort, I generally got a little entertainment out of the head waiter. He is so thoroughly persuaded that it would never enter my head not to follow him, he will never look round to see if I am there. Why, he knows I am there, but I'm not. I wait my time, and when he has got to the end I am sitting down waiting for a chance to be left alone. He says, "You cannot sit here." I say: "Why not? What is the matter with this seat?" He says, "You must not sit there." I say, "I don't want a constitutional walk; don't bother, I'm all right." Once, indeed, after an article in the _North American Review_--for your head waiter in America reads reviews--a head waiter told me to sit where I pleased. I said, "Now, wait a minute, give me time to realize that; do I understand that in this hotel I am going to sit where I like?" He said, "Certainly!" He was in earnest. I said, "I should like to sit over there at that table near the window." He said, "All right, come with me." When I came out, there were some newspaper people in the hotel waiting for me, and it was reported in half a column in one of the papers, with one of those charming headlines which are so characteristic of American journalism, "Max sits where he likes!" Well, I said, you go to the dining-room, you take your seat, and you watch the arrival of the couples, and you will know the position of men. In France Monsieur and Madame come in together abreast, as a rule arm in arm. They look pleasant, smile, and talk to each other. They smile at each other, even though married.

In England, in the same class of hotel, John Bull comes in first. He does not look happy. John Bull loves privacy. He does not like to be obliged to eat in the presence of lots of people who have not been introduced to him, and he thinks it very hard he should not have the whole dining-room to himself. That man, though, mind you, in his own house undoubtedly the most hospitable, the most kind, the most considerate of hosts in the world, that man in the dining-room of a hotel always comes in with a frown. He does not like it, he grumbles, and mild and demure, with her hands hanging down, modestly follows Mrs. John Bull. But in America, behold the arrival of Mrs. Jonathan! behold her triumphant entry, pulling Jonathan behind! Well, I like my own country, and I cannot help thinking that the proper and right way is the French. Ladies, you know all our shortcomings. Our hearts are exposed ever since the rib which covered them was taken off. Yet we ask you kindly to allow us to go through life with you, like the French, arm in arm, in good friendship and camaraderie.

THE TYPICAL AMERICAN

From "The New South," with the permission of Henry W. Grady, Jr.

BY HENRY W. GRADY

Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich eloquence of your speakers--the fact that the Cavalier as well as the Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was "up and able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I find no mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else. Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on this continent-- that Cavalier, John Smith, gave New England its very name, and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever since--and that while Miles Standish was cutting off men's ears for courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbade men to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the Cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilderness being full as the nests in the woods.

But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little books, I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he always has done with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survive as such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution; and the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than either, took possession of the Republic bought by their common blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.

My friend Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like valuable plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonist Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace, of this Republic--Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and in that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government--charging it with such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored; and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for mine.

THE PILGRIM MOTHERS

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

I really don't know, at this late hour, Mr. Chairman, how you expect me to treat this difficult and tender subject.

I might take up the subject etymologically, and try and explain how woman ever acquired that remarkable name. But that has been done before me by a poet with whose stanzas you are not familiar, but whom you will recognize as deeply versed in this subject, for he says:--

"When Eve brought woe to all mankind,
Old Adam called her woe-man,
But when she woo'd with love so kind,
He then pronounced her woman.

"But now, with folly and with pride,
Their husbands' pockets trimming,
The ladies are so full of whims
That people call them w(h)imen."

Mr. Chairman, I believe you said I should say something about the Pilgrim mothers. Well, sir, it is rather late in the evening to venture upon that historic subject. But, for one, I pity them. The occupants of the galleries will bear me witness that even these modern Pilgrims-- these Pilgrims with all the modern improvements--how hard it is to put up with their weaknesses, their follies, their tyrannies, their oppressions, their desire of dominion and rule. But when you go back to the stern horrors of the Pilgrim rule, when you contemplate the rugged character of the Pilgrim fathers, why, you give credence to what a witty woman of Boston said--she had heard enough of the glories and sufferings of the Pilgrim fathers; for her part, she had a world of sympathy for the Pilgrim mothers, because they not only endured all that the Pilgrim fathers had done, but they also had to endure the Pilgrim fathers to boot. Well, sir, they were afraid of woman. They thought she was almost too refined a luxury for them to indulge in. Miles Standish spoke for them all, and I am sure that General Sherman, who so much resembles Miles Standish, not only in his military renown but in his rugged exterior and in his warm and tender heart, will echo his words when he says:--

"I can march up to a fortress, and summon the place to surrender, But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not. I am not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon, But of a thundering 'No!' point-blank from the mouth of a woman, That I confess I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it."

Mr. President, did you ever see a more self-satisfied or contented set of men than these that are gathered at these tables this evening? I never come to the Pilgrim dinner and see these men, who have achieved in the various departments of life such definite and satisfactory success, but that I look back twenty or thirty or forty years, and see the lantern-jawed boy who started out from the banks of the Connecticut, or some more remote river of New England, with five dollars in his pocket and his father's blessing on his head and his mother's Bible in his carpetbag, to seek those fortunes which now they have so gloriously made. And there is one woman whom each of these, through all his progress and to the last expiring hour of his life, bears in tender remembrance. It is the mother who sent him forth with her blessing. A mother is a mother still--the holiest thing alive; and if I could dismiss you with a benediction to-night, it would be by invoking upon the heads of you all the blessing of the mothers that we left behind us.

BRIGHT LAND TO WESTWARD

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. III, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY E. O. WOLCOTT

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

We are a plain people, and live far away. We are provincial; we have no distinctive literature and no great poets; our leading personage abroad of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill"; and we use our adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork, and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city cousin; about as New to Old England, only we don't feel half so badly about it, and on the whole are rather pleased with ourselves. There is not in the whole broad West a ranch so lonely or so remote that a public school is not within reach of it. With generous help from the East, Western colleges are elevating and directing Western thought, and men busy making States yet find time to live manly lives and to lend a hand. All this may not be aesthetic, but it is virile, and it leads up and not down.

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

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

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

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

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

WOMAN

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. Ill, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY THEODORE TILTON

You must not forget, Mr. President, in eulogizing the early men of New England, who are your clients to-night, that it was only through the help of the early women of New England, who are mine, that your boasted heroes could ever have earned their title of the Pilgrim Fathers. A health, therefore, to the women in the cabin of the Mayflower! A cluster of Mayflowers themselves, transplanted from summer in the old world to winter in the new! Counting over those matrons and maidens, they numbered, all told, just eighteen. Their names are now written among the heroines of history! For as over the ashes of Cornelia stood the epitaph "The Mother of the Gracchi," so over these women of the Pilgrimage we write as proudly "The Mothers of the Republic." There was good Mistress Bradford, whose feet were not allowed of God to kiss Plymouth Rock, and who, like Moses, came only near enough to see but not to enter the Promised Land. She was washed overboard from the deck--and to this day the sea is her grave and Cape Cod her monument! There was Mistress Carver, wife of the first governor, who, when her husband fell under the stroke of sudden death, followed him first with heroic grief to the grave, and then, a fortnight after, followed him with heroic joy up into Heaven! There was Mistress White--the mother of the first child born to the New England Pilgrims on this continent. And it was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her passengers--a kind of amphibious prophecy that the newborn nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. There also was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds.

Then, after the first vessel with these women, there came other women-- loving hearts drawn from the olden land by those silken threads which afterwards harden into golden chains. For instance, Governor Bradford, a lonesome widower, went down to the seabeach, and, facing the waves, tossed a love letter over the wide ocean into the lap of Alice Southworth in old England, who caught it up, and read it, and said, "Yes, I will go." And she went! And it is said that the governor, at his second wedding, married his first love! Which, according to the New Theology, furnishes the providential reason why the first Mrs. Bradford fell overboard!

Now, gentlemen, as you sit to-night in this elegant hall, think of the houses in which the _Mayflower_ men and women lived in that first winter! Think of a cabin in the wilderness--where winds whistled--where wolves howled--where Indians yelled! And yet, within that log house, burning like a lamp, was the pure flame of Christian faith, love, patience, fortitude, heroism! As the Star of the East rested over the rude manger where Christ lay, so--speaking not irreverently--there rested over the roofs of the Pilgrims a Star of the West--the Star of Empire; and to-day that empire is the proudest in the world!

And now, to close, let me give you just a bit of good advice. The cottages of our forefathers had few pictures on the walls, but many families had a print of "King Charles's Twelve Good Rules," the eleventh of which was, "Make no long meals." Now King Charles lost his head, and you will have leave to make a long meal. But when, after your long meal, you go home in the wee small hours, what do you expect to find? You will find my toast--"Woman, a beautiful rod!" Now my advice is, "Kiss the rod!"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY HORACE PORTER

The story of the life of Abraham Lincoln savors more of romance than reality. It is more like a fable of the ancient days than the story of a plain American of the nineteenth century. The singular vicissitudes in the life of our martyred President surround him with an interest which attaches to few men in history. He sprang from that class which he always alluded to as the "plain people," and never attempted to disdain them. He believed that the government was made for the people, not the people for the government. He felt that true Republicanism is a torch--the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the brighter it will burn. He was transcendently fit to be the first successful standard bearer of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican party. He might well have said to those who chanced to sneer at his humble origin what a marshal of France raised from the ranks said to the haughty nobles of Vienna boasting of their long line of descent, when they refused to associate with him: "I am an ancestor; you are only descendants!" He was never guilty of any posing for effect, any attitudinizing in public, any mawkish sentimentality, any of that puppyism so often bred by power, that dogmatism which Johnson said was only puppyism grown to maturity. He made no claim to knowledge he did not possess. He felt with Addison that pedantry and learning are like hypocrisy in religion--the form of knowledge without the power of it. He had nothing in common with those men of mental malformation who are educated beyond their intellects.

The names of Washington and Lincoln are inseparably associated, and yet as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire life in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into rails. Washington could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. And Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they were never too long, and never too broad.

But his heart was not always attuned to mirth; its chords were often set to strains of sadness. Yet throughout all his trials he never lost the courage of his convictions. When he was surrounded on all sides by doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented Catilines, his faith was strongest. As the Danes destroyed the hearing of their war horses in order that they might not be affrighted by the din of battle, so Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all that might have discouraged him, and exhibited an unwavering faith in the justice of the cause and the integrity of the Union.

It is said that for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylę every child in the public schools of Greece was required to recite from memory the names of the three hundred martyrs who fell in the defense of that pass. It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education if every school child in America could contemplate each day the grand character and utter the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln, who has handed down unto a grateful people the richest legacy which man can leave to man--the memory of a good name, the inheritance of a great example!

TO ATHLETIC VICTORS

From a speech at a dinner of graduates of Yale University, in New York, 1889. By the kindness of the author.

BY HENRY E. HOWLAND

On Boston Common, under the shadow of the State House, and within the atmosphere of Harvard University, there is an inscription on a column, in honor of those who, on land and sea, maintained the cause of their country during four years of civil war. The visitor approaches it with respect and reverently uncovers as he reads.

With similar high emotions we, as citizens of the world of letters, and acknowledging particular allegiance to the province thereof founded by Elihu Yale, are assembled to pour libations, to partake of a sacrificial feast, and to crown with honors and with bays those who, on land and sea, with unparalleled courage and devotion, have borne their flag to victory in desperate encounters.

Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.

On large fields of strife, the record of success like that which we are called upon to commemorate would give the victors a high place in history and liken their country to ancient Thebes,--

"Which spread her conquest o'er a thousand states,
And poured her heroes through a hundred gates."

There are many reasons why Yale men win. One is that which was stated by Lord Beaconsfield, "The Secret of success is constancy of purpose." That alone sufficiently accounts for it.

We are here present in no vain spirit of boasting, though if our right to exalt ourselves were questioned, we might reply in the words of the American girl who was shown some cannon at Woolwich Arsenal, the sergeant in charge remarking, "You know we took them from you at Bunker Hill." "Yes," she replied, "I see you've got the cannon, but I guess we've got the hill."

We come rather in a spirit of true modesty to recognize the plaudits of an admiring world, to tell you how they were won. It was said in the days of Athenian pride and glory that it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man. We must be careful in these days of admiration of athletic effort that no such imputation is laid upon us, and that the deification of the human form divine is not carried to extremes.

It is a curious coincidence that a love of the classics and proficiency in intellectual pursuits should coexist with admiration for physical perfection and with athletic superiority during all the centuries of which the history is written. The youth who lisped in Attic numbers and was brought up on the language we now so painfully and imperfectly acquire, who was lulled to sleep by songs of Ęschylus and Sophocles, who discussed philosophy in the porches of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, was a more accomplished classical scholar than the most learned pundit of modern times, and was a model of manly beauty, yet he would have died to win the wreath of parsley at the Olympian games, which all esteemed an immortal prize. While, in our time, to be the winning crew on the Isis, the Cam, the English or American Thames, is equal in honor and influence to the position of senior wrangler, valedictorian, or Deforest prize man.

The man who wins the world's honors to-day must not be overtrained mentally or physically; not, as John Randolph said of the soil of Virginia,--"poor by nature and ruined by cultivation," hollow-chested, convex in back, imperfect in sight, shuffling in gait, and flabby in muscle. The work of such a man will be musty like his closet, narrow as the groove he moves in, tinctured with the peculiarities that border on insanity, and out of tune with nature.

No man can work in the world unless he knows it, struggles with it, and becomes a part of it, and the statement of the English statesman that the undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge who had the best stomach, the hardest muscles, and the greatest ambition would be the future Lord Chancellor of England, had a solid basis of truth.

Gentlemen of the bat, the oar, the racquet, the cinder path, and the leathern sphere, never were conquerors more welcome guests, in palace or in hall, at the tables of their friends than you are here.

You come with your laurels fresh from the fields you have won, to receive the praise which is your due and which we so gladly bestow. Your self-denial, devotion, skill, and courage have brought honor to your University, and for it we honor you.

THE BABIES

At a banquet in honor of General Grant, Chicago, 1877

BY SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain)

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--"The Babies." Now, that's something like. We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground--for we've all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn't amount to anything! If you, gentlemen, will stop and think a minute--if you will try to go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to a good deal--and even something over.

You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters, you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. When he called for soothing syrup, did you venture to throw out any remarks about certain services unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman? No; you got up and got it! If he ordered his pap bottle, and it wasn't warm, did you talk back? Not you; you went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right!--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet.

And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying, that when a baby smiles in his sleep it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but "too thin"--simply wind on the stomach, my friends. I like the idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself; one baby can furnish more business than you and your whole interior department can attend to; he is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and insurrections.

Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land there are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. For in one of these cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething; in another the future great historian is lying, and doubtless he will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment, to trying to find out some way to get his own big toe into his mouth, an achievement to which (meaning no disrespect) the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his attention some fifty-six years ago! And if the child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few will doubt that he succeeded.

THE OCCASIONAL POEM

CHARLES DICKENS

Read by Mr. Watson in New York, at the celebration of the Dickens Centenary, 1912. Reprinted from the public press.

BY WILLIAM WATSON

When Nature first designed In her all-procreant mind The man whom here tonight we are met to honor-- When first the idea of Dickens flashed upon her-- "Where, where" she said, "upon my populous earth Shall this prodigious child be brought to birth? Where shall we have his earliest wondering look Into my magic book? Shall he be born where life runs like a brook, Pleasant and placid as of old it ran, Far from the sound and shock of mighty deeds, Among soft English meads? Or shall he first my pictured volume scan Where London lifts its hot and fevered brow For cooling night to fan?" "Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides The ships of war step out with thundering prow And shake their stormy sides-- In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call-- He shall be born amid the drums and guns, He shall be born among my fighting sons, Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."

II

So there, where from the forts and battle gear And all the proud sea babbles Nelson's name, Into the world this later hero came-- He, too, a man that knew all moods but fear-- He, too, a fighter. Yet not his the strife That leaves dark scars on the fair face of life. He did not fight to rend the world apart; He fought to make it one in mind and heart, Building a broad and noble bridge to span The icy chasm that sunders man from man. Wherever wrong had fixed its bastions deep, There did his fierce yet gay assault surprise Some fortress girt with lucre or with lies; There his light battery stormed some ponderous keep; There charged he up the steep, A knight on whom no palsying torpor fell, Keen to the last to break a lance with Hell. And still undimmed his conquering weapons shine; On his bright sword no spot of rust appears, And still across the years His soul goes forth to battle, and in the face Of whatso'er is false, or cruel, or base, He hurls his gage and leaps among the spears, Being armed with pity and love and scorn divine, Immortal laughter and immortal tears.

THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL

Ye Mariners of England That guard our native seas! Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe: And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave, For the deck it is our field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly heart shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep. With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below, As they roar on the shore, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor-flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart And the star of peace return. Then, then, ye ocean warriors! Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow.

CLASS POEM

Read in Sanders Theater at the Harvard Class Day Exercises, 1903. Reprinted with permission.

BY LANGDON WARNER

Not unto every one of us shall come
The bugle call that sounds for famous deeds;
Not far lands, but the pleasant paths of home,
Not broad seas to traffic, but the meads
Of fruitful midland ways, where daily life
Down trellised vistas, heavy in the Fall,
Seems but the decent way apart from strife;
And love, and work, and laughter there seem all.

War, and the Orient Sun uprising,
The East, the West, and Man's shrill clamorous strife,
Travail, disaster, flood, and far emprising,
Man may not reach, yet take fast hold on life.
Let us now praise men who are not famous,
Striving for good name rather than for great;
Hear we the quiet voice calling to claim us,
Heed it no less than the trumpet-call of fate!

Profit we to-day by the men who've gone before us,
Men who dared, and lived, and died, to speed us on our way.
Fair is their fame, who make that mighty chorus,
And gentle is the heritance that comes to us to-day.