Chapter I: BELIEVE in the medicine of mirth, and in what I might call the

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

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

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

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

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

THE POLICE CAPTAINS' DINNER.

New York, January 24, 1888.

TOAST: DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES OF THE PRESS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GENERAL GRANT'S BIRTHDAY DINNER

New York, April 27, 1888.

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

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

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

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

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

TOAST: GENERAL GRANT

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOTOS CLUB DINNER, TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY.

New York, March 22, 1890.

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

Sometimes I think, and especially when I am at a meeting where they have what they call reminiscences, that a world with death in it is a mistake. What would you think of a man who built a railroad, knowing that every passenger was to be killed--knowing that there was no escape? What would you think of the cheerfulness of the passengers if every one knew that at some station, the name of which had not been called out, there was a hearse waiting for him; backed up there, horses fighting flies, driver whistling, waiting for you? Is it not wonderful that the passengers on that train really enjoy themselves? Is it not magnificent that every one of them, under perpetual sentence of death, after all, can dimple their cheeks with laughter; that we, every one doomed to become dust, can yet meet around this table as full of joy as spring is full of life, as full of hope as the heavens are full of stars?

I tell you we have got a good deal of pluck.

And yet, after all, what would this world be without death? It may be from the fact that we are all victims, from the fact that we are all bound by common fate; it may be that friendship and love are born of that fact; but Whatever the fact is, I am perfectly satisfied that the highest possible philosophy is to enjoy to-day, not regretting yesterday, and not fearing to-morrow. So, let us suck this orange of life dry, so that when death does come, we can politely say to him, "You are welcome to the peelings. What little there was we have enjoyed."

But there is one splendid thing about the play called Life. Suppose that when you die, that is the end. The last thing that you will know is that you are alive, and the last thing that will happen to you is the curtain, not falling, but the curtain rising on another thought, so that as far as your consciousness is concerned you will and must live forever. No man can remember when he commenced, and no man can remember when he ends. As far as we are concerned we live both eternities, the one past and the one to come, and it is a delight to me to feel satisfied, and to feel in my own heart, that I can never be certain that I have seen the faces I love for the last time.

When I am at such a gathering as this, I almost wish I had had the making of the world. What a world I would have made! In that world unhappiness would have been the only sin; melancholy the only crime; joy the only virtue. And whether there is another world, nobody knows. Nobody can affirm it; nobody can deny it. Nobody can collect tolls from me, claiming that he owns a turnpike, and nobody can certainly say that the crooked path that I follow, beside which many roses are growing, does not lead to that place. He doesn't know. But if there is such a place, I hope that all good fellows will be welcome.

MANHATTAN ATHLETIC CLUB DINNER.

New York, December 27, 1890.

TOAST: ATHLETICS AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

THE first record of public games is found in the twentythird Book of the Iliad. These games were performed at the funeral of Patroclus, and there were:

First. A chariot race, and the first prize was:

"A woman fair, well skilled in household care."

Second. There was a pugilistic encounter, and the first prize, appropriately enough, was a mule.

It gave me great pleasure to find that Homer did not hold in high esteem the victor. I have reached this conclusion, because the poet put these words in the mouth of Eppius, the great boxer winding up with the following refined declaration concerning his opponent:

"I mean to pound his flesh and smash his bones."

After the battle, the defeated was helped from the field. He spit forth clotted gore. His head rolled from side to side, until he fell unconscious.

Third, wrestling; fourth, foot-race; fifth, fencing; sixth, throwing the iron mass or bar; seventh, archery, and last, throwing the javelin.

All of these games were in honor of Patroclus. This is the same Patroclus who, according to Shakespeare, addressed Achilles in these words:

"In the battle-field I claim no special praise;
'Tis not for man in all things to excel--"

"Rouse yourself, and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane,
Be shook to air."

These games were all born of the instinct of self-defence. The chariot was used in war. Man should know the use of his hands, to the end that he may repel assault. He should know the use of the sword, to the end that he may strike down his enemy. He should be skillful with the arrow, to the same end. If overpowered, he seeks safety in flight--he should therefore know how to run. So, too, he could preserve himself by the skillful throwing of the javelin, and in the close encounter a knowledge of wrestling might save his life.

Man has always been a fighting animal, and the art of self-defence is nearly as important now as ever--and will be, until man rises to that supreme height from which he will be able to see that no one can commit a crime against another without injuring himself.

The Greeks knew that the body bears a certain relation to the soul--that the better the body--other things being equal--the greater the mind. They also knew that the body could be developed, and that such development would give or add to the health, the courage, the endurance, the self-confidence, the independence and the morality of the human race. They knew, too, that health was the foundation, the corner-stone, of happiness.

They knew that human beings should know something about themselves, something of the capacities of body and mind, to the end that they might ascertain the relation between conduct and happiness, between temperance and health.

It is needless to say that the Greeks were the most intellectual of all races, and that they were in love with beauty, with proportion, with the splendor of the body and of mind; and so great was their admiration for the harmoniously developed, that Sophocles had the honor of walking naked at the head of a great procession.

The Greeks, through their love of physical and mental development, gave us the statues--the most precious of all inanimate things--of far more worth than all the diamonds and rubies and pearls that ever glittered in crowns and tiaras, on altars or thrones, or, flashing, rose and fell on woman's billowed breast. In these marbles we find the highest types of life, of superb endeavor and supreme repose. In looking at them we feel that blood flows, that hearts throb and souls aspire. These miracles of art are the richest legacies the ancient world has left our race.

The nations in love with life, have games. To them existence is exultation. They are fond of nature. They, seek the woods and streams. They love the winds and waves of the sea. They enjoy the poem of the day, the drama of the year.

Our Puritan fathers were oppressed with a sense of infinite responsibility. They were disconsolate and sad, and no more thought of sport, except the flogging of; Quakers, than shipwrecked wretches huddled on a raft would turn their attention to amateur theatricals.

For many centuries the body was regarded as a decaying; casket, in which had been placed the gem called the soul, and the nearer rotten the casket the more brilliant the jewel.

In those blessed days, the diseased were sainted and insanity born of fasting and self-denial and abuse of the body, was looked upon as evidence of inspiration. Cleanliness was not next to godliness--it was the opposite; and in those days, what was known as "the odor of sanctity" had a substantial foundation. Diseased bodies produced all kinds of mental maladies. There is a direct relation between sickness and superstition. Everybody knows that Calvinism was the child of indigestion.

Spooks and phantoms hover about the undeveloped and diseased, as vultures sail above the dead.

Our ancestors had the idea that they ought to be spiritual, and that good health was inconsistent with the highest forms of piety. This heresy crept into the minds even of secular writers, and the novelists described their heroines as weak and languishing, pale as lilies, and in the place of health's brave flag they put the hectic flush.

Weakness was interesting, and fainting captured the hearts of all. Nothing was so attractive as a society belle with a drug-store attachment.

People became ashamed of labor, and consequently, of the evidences of labor. They avoided "sun-burnt mirth"--were proud of pallor, and regarded small, white hands as proof that they had noble blood within their veins. It was a joy to be too weak to work, too languishing to labor.

The tide has turned. People are becoming sensible enough to desire health, to admire physical development, symmetry of form, and we now know that a race with little feet and hands has passed the climax and is traveling toward the eternal night.

When the central force is strong, men and women are full of life to the finger tips. When the fires burn low, they begin to shrivel at the extremities--the hands and feet grow small, and the mental flame wavers and wanes.

To be self-respecting we must be self-supporting.

Nobility is a question of character, not of birth.

Honor cannot be received as alms--it must be earned.

It is the brow that makes the wreath of glory green.

All exercise should be for the sake of development--that is to say, for the sake of health, and for the sake of the mind--all to the end that the person may become better, greater, more useful. The gymnast or the athelete should seek for health as the student should seek for truth; but when athletics degenerate into mere personal contests, they become dangerous, because the contestants lose sight of health, as in the excitement of debate the students prefer personal victory to the ascertainment of truth.

There is another thing to be avoided by all athletic clubs, and that is, anything that tends to brutalize, destroy or dull the finer feelings. Nothing is more disgusting, more disgraceful, than pugilism--nothing more demoralizing than an exhibition of strength united with ferocity, and where the very body developed by exercise is mutilated and disfigured.

Sports that can by no possibility give pleasure, except to the unfeeling, the hardened and the really brainless, should be avoided. No gentleman should countenance rabbit-coursing, fighting of dogs, the shooting of pigeons, simply as an exhibition of skill.

All these things are calculated to demoralize and brutalize not only the actors, but the lookers on. Such sports are savage, fit only to be participated in and enjoyed by the cannibals of Central Africa or the anthropoid apes.

Find what a man enjoys--what he laughs at--what he calls diversion--and you know what he is. Think of a man calling himself civilized, who is in raptures at a bull fight--who smiles when he sees the hounds pursue and catch and tear in pieces the timid hare, and who roars with laughter when he watches the pugilists pound each other's faces, closing each other's eyes, breaking jaws and smashing noses. Such men are beneath the animals they torture--on a level with the pugilists they applaud. Gentlemen should hold such sports in unspeakable contempt. No man finds pleasure in inflicting pain.

In every public school there should be a gymnasium.

It is useless to cram minds and deform bodies. Hands should be educated as well as heads. All should be taught the sports and games that require mind, muscle, nerve and judgment.

Even those who labor should take exercise, to the end that the whole body may be developed. Those who work at one employment become deformed. Proportion is lost. But where harmony is preserved by the proper exercise, even old age is beautiful.

To the well developed, to the strong, life seems rich, obstacles small, and success easy. They laugh at cold and storm. Whatever the season may be their hearts are filled with summer.

Millions go from the cradle to the coffin without knowing what it is to live. They simply succeed in postponing death. Without appetites, without passions, without struggle, they slowly rot in a waveless pool. They never know the glory of success, the rapture of the fight.

To become effeminate is to invite misery. In the most delicate bodies may be found the most degraded souls. It was the Duchess Josiane whose pampered flesh became so sensitive that she thought of hell as a place where people were compelled to sleep between coarse sheets.

We need the open air--we need the experience of heat and cold. We need not only the rewards and caresses, but the discipline of our mother Nature. Life is not all sunshine, neither is it all storm, but man should be enabled to enjoy the one and to withstand the other.

I believe in the religion of the body--of physical development--in devotional exercise--in the beatitudes of cheerfulness, good health, good food, good clothes, comradeship, generosity, and above all, in happiness. I believe in salvation here and now. Salvation from deformity and disease--from weakness and pain--from ennui and insanity. I believe in heaven here and now--the heaven of health and good digestion--of strength and long life--of usefulness and joy. I believe in the builders and defenders of homes.

The gentlemen whom we honor to-night have done a great work. To their energy we are indebted for the nearest perfect, for the grandest athletic clubhouse in the world. Let these clubs multiply. Let the example be followed, until our country is filled with physical and intellectual athletes--superb fathers, perfect mothers, and every child an heir to health and joy.

THE LIEDERKRANZ CLUB, SEIDL-STANTON BANQUET.

New York, April 2, 1891

TOAST: MUSIC, NOBLEST OF THE ARTS.

IT is probable that I was selected to speak about music, because, not knowing one note from another, I have no prejudice on the subject.

All I can say is, that I know what I like, and, to tell the truth, I like every kind, enjoy it all, from the hand organ to the orchestra.

Knowing nothing of the science of music, I am not always looking for defects, or listening for discords. As the young robin cheerfully swallows whatever comes, I hear with gladness all that is played.

Music has been, I suppose, a gradual growth, subject to the law of evolution; as nearly everything, with the possible exception of theology, has been and is under this law.

Music may be divided into three kinds: First, the music of simple time, without any particular emphasis--and this may be called the music of the heels; second, music in which time is varied, in which there is the eager haste and the delicious delay, that is, the fast and slow, in accordance with our feelings, with our emotions--and this may be called the music of the heart; third, the music that includes time and emphasis, the hastening and the delay, and something in addition, that produces not only states of feeling, but states of thought. This may be called the music of the head,--the music of the brain.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language. It was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. Beneath the waves is the sea--above the clouds is the sky.

Before man found a name for any thought, or thing, he had hopes and fears and passions, and these were rudely expressed in tones.

Of one thing, however, I am certain, and that is, that Music was born of Love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music. Possibly some mother, looking in the eyes of her babe, gave the first melody to the enraptured air.

Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the sunshine--the climate--of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.

I am also satisfied that the greatest music is the most marvelous mingling of Love and Death. Love is the greatest of all passions, and Death is its shadow. Death gets all its terror from Love, and Love gets its intensity, its radiance, its glory and its rapture, from the darkness of Death. Love is a flower that grows on the edge of the grave.

The old music, for the most part, expresses emotion, or feeling-, through time and emphasis, and what is known as melody. Most of the old operas consist of a few melodies connected by unmeaning recitative. There should be no unmeaning music. It is as though a writer should suddenly leave his subject and write a paragraph consisting of nothing but a repetition of one word like "the," "the," "the," or "if," "if." "if," varying the repetition of these words, but without meaning,--and then resume the subject of his article.

I am not saying that great music was not produced before Wagner, but I am simply endeavoring to show-the steps that have been taken. It was necessary that all the music should have been written, in order that the greatest might be produced. The same is true of the drama, Thousands and thousands prepared the way for the supreme dramatist, as millions prepared the way for the supreme composer.

When I read Shakespeare, I am astonished that he has expressed so much with common words, to which he gives new meaning; and so when I hear Wagner, I exclaim: Is it possible that all this is done with common air?

In Wagner's music there is a touch of chaos that suggests the infinite. The melodies seem strange and changing forms, like summer clouds, and weird harmonies come like sounds from the sea brought by fitful winds, and others moan like waves on desolate shores, and mingled with these, are shouts of joy, with sighs and sobs and ripples of laughter, and the wondrous voices of eternal love.

Wagner is the Shakespeare of Music.

The funeral march for Siegfried is the funeral music for all the dead; Should all the gods die, this music would be perfectly appropriate. It is elemental, universal, eternal.

The love-music in Tristan and Isolde is, like Romeo and Juliet, an expression of the human heart for all time. So the love-duet in The Flying Dutchman has in it the consecration, the infinite self-denial, of love. The whole heart is given; every note has wings, and rises and poises like an eagle in the heaven of sound.

When I listen to the music of Wagner, I see pictures, forms, glimpses of the perfect, the swell of a hip, the wave of a breast, the glance of an eye. I am in the midst of great galleries. Before me are passing, the endless panoramas. I see vast landscapes with valleys of verdure and vine, with soaring crags, snow-crowned. I am on the wide seas, where countless billows burst into the white caps of joy. I am in the depths of caverns roofed with mighty crags, while through some rent I see the eternal stars. In a moment the music, becomes a river of melody, flowing through some wondrous land; suddenly it falls in strange chasms, and the mighty cataract is changed to seven-hued foam. .

Great music is always sad, because it tells us of the perfect; and such is the difference between what we are and that which music suggests, that even in the vase of joy we find some tears.

The music of Wagner has color, and when I hear the violins, the morning seems to slowly come. A horn puts a star above the horizon. The night, in the purple hum of the bass, wanders away like some enormous bee across wide fields of dead clover. The light grows whiter as the violins increase. Colors come from other instruments, and then the full orchestra floods the world with day.

Wagner seems not only to have given us new tones, new combinations, but the moment the orchestra begins to play his music, all the instruments are transfigured. They seem to utter the sounds that they have been longing to utter. The horns run riot; the drums and cymbals join in the general joy; the old bass viols are alive with passion; the 'cellos throb with love; the violins are seized with a divine fury, and the notes rush out as eager for the air as pardoned prisoners for the roads and fields.

The music of Wagner is filled with landscapes. There are some strains, like midnight, thick with constellations, and there are harmonies like islands in the far seas, and others like palms on the desert's edge. His music satisfies the heart and brain. It is not only for memory; not only for the present, but for prophecy.

Wagner was a sculptor, a painter, in sound. When he died, the greatest fountain of melody that ever enchanted the world, ceased. His music will instruct and refine forever.

All that I know about the operas of Wagner I have learned from Anton Seidl. I believe that he is the noblest, tenderest and the most artistic interpreter of the great composer that has ever lived.

THE FRANK B. CARPENTER DINNER.

New York, December 1, 1891

* There was a notable gathering of leading artists, authors,
scientists, journalists, lawyer, clergymen and other
professional men at Sherry's last evening. The occasion was
a dinner tendered to Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the famous
portrait and portrait group artist, by his immediate friends
to celebrate the completion of his new historical painting,
entitled "International Arbitration," which is to be sent to
Queen Victoria next week as the gift of a wealthy American
lady. No such tribute has ever been paid before to an artist
of-this country. Let us hope that the extraordinary
attention thus paid to Mr. Carpenter will give our "English
cousins" some idea of how he is prized and his work indorsed
at home. The dinner to Mr. Carpenter was a great success--
most enjoyable in every way. The table was laid in the form
ol a horse shoe with a train of smilax, and sweet flowers
extending the entire length of the table, amid pots of
chrysanthemums and roses. Ex-Minister Andrew D White
presided in the absence of John Russell

Young..........Mr. White said: "During the entire course of
these proceedings we have been endeavoring to find a
representative of the great Fourth Estate who would present
its claims in relation to arbitration on this occasion.
There are present men whose names are household words in
connection with the press throughout this land. There is
certainly one distinguished as orator: there is another
distinguished as a scholar. But they prefer to be silent. We
will therefore consider that the toast of 'The Press in
Connection with War and Peace' has been duly honored
although it has not been responded to, and now there is one
subject which I think you will consider as coming strangely
at this late hour. It is a renewal of the subject with which
we began, and I am to ask to speak to it a man who is
admired and feared throughout the country. At one moment he
smashes the most cherished convictions of the country, and
at another he raises our highest aspirations for the future
of humanity.

"It happened several years ago that I was crossing the
Atlantic, and when I had sufficiently recovered from
seasickness to sit out on the deck I came across Colonel
Ingersoll, and of all subjects of discussion you can imagine
we fell upon the subject of art, and we went at it hot and
heavy. So I said to him to-night that I had a rod in pickle
for him and that he was not to know anything about it until
it was displayed.

"I now call upon him to talk to us about art, and if he
talks now as he talked on the deck of the steamer I do not
know whether it would clear the room, but it would make a
sensation in this State and country. I have great pleasure
in announcing Colonel Ingersoll, to speak on the subject of
art--or on any other subject, for no matter upon what he
speaks his words are always welcome."

New York Press, December 2, 1891.

TOAST: ART.