Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 10

MERE MAN

[Speech of Sarah Grand [Mrs. M'Fall] at the annual ladies' banquet of the Whitefriars Club, London, May 4, 1900. Max O'Rell [Paul Blouet]

acted as chairman. L. F. Austin, who spoke earlier than Madame Grand, said, turning to Max O'Rell: "It used to be said of certain politicians by way of odium that they mumbled the dry bones of political economy; but you, sir, who sit trembling in that chair [laughter]--you are trying not to look it, but you are trembling with apprehension of the delicately anointed barb with which Madame Sarah.

Grand will presently transfix you [laughter]; you must feel that we shall not very long be permitted even to mumble the barren epigrams of a vanished ascendancy."]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--I have the honor to propose the toast of "Mere Man" [laughter], but why "Mere Man," I want to know? After all that has been said this evening so truthfully on the subject of "Sovran Woman,"

it is impossible for me to use such an epithet without feeling myself in an invidious position, in the position of the dog that bites the hand which has just caressed it--or rather I should feel myself in that position if I were in any way responsible for the use of the ungracious word. I beg most emphatically to state that I am not in any way responsible for it. I decline to be identified with such an expression: I decline to be accused of calling man any names [laughter], any names that I have not already called him. [Laughter.] I do not decline out of consideration for mere man altogether, but in self-defence. To use such an expression deprives me of any dignity which I might myself derive from the dignity of my subject. Besides, the words in my mouth, were I to be identified with them, would be used against me as a bomb by a whole section of the press, to blow me up. [Laughter.] I object to be blown up for nothing by a whole section of the press. [Laughter.] That is the sort of thing which almost ruffles my equanimity. My comfort is, that no one can accuse me of having originated such an expression, because it is well known no woman ever originated anything. [Laughter.]

I a.s.sure you I have seen it so stated in print; and in one article I read on the subject the perturbation of the writer, lest there should be any mistake about it, so agitated his grammar that it was impossible to pa.r.s.e it. I should like to know who was responsible in the first place for the expression which has been imposed upon me. It seems to me there is strong presumptive evidence that it was by man himself that man was dubbed mere man. If the lords of creation choose to masquerade sometimes as mere man by all means let them.

The saying is, "In small things, liberty; in great things, unity; in all things, charity," but when you meet a man who describes himself as a mere man, you would always do well to ask what he wants, because, since man first swung himself from his bough in the forest primeval and stood upright on two legs, he has never a.s.sumed that position for nothing.

[Laughter.] My own private opinion, which I confide to you, knowing it will go no further, is that he a.s.sumes that tone, as a rule, to draw sovran woman. [Laughter.] Mere man is a paradoxical creature--it is not always possible to distinguish between his sober earnest and his leg-pulling exercises. [Laughter.] One has to be on one's guard, and woe be to the woman who in these days displays that absence of the sense of humor which is such a prominent characteristic of our comic papers.

[Laughter.] I do not mean to say for a moment that man a.s.sumes his "mere man" tone for unpleasant purposes. On the contrary, he a.s.sumes it for party purposes as a rule--for dinner party purposes. [Laughter.]

When man is in his mere man mood sovran woman would do well to ask for anything that she wants--for it is then that he holds the sceptre out to her. [Laughter.] Unfortunately, the mood does not last; if it did he would have given us the suffrage ages ago. Sovran woman is the Uitlander of civilization--and man is her Boer. [Laughter.] It seems to me that sovran woman is very much in the position of Queen Esther; she has her crown, and her kingdom, and her royal robes, but she is liable to have her head snapped off at any moment. [Laughter.] On the other hand, there are hundreds of men who have their heads snapped off every day.

[Laughter.] Mere man has his faults, no doubt, but sovran woman also can be a rasping sort of creature, especially if she does not cultivate sympathy with cigarettes as she gets older. [Laughter.] Let us be fair to mere man. Mere man has always treated me with exemplary fairness, and I certainly have never maintained that the blockhead majority is entirely composed of men; neither have I ever insinuated that it is man that makes all the misery.

Personally, and speaking as a woman whose guiding principle through life has been never to do anything for herself that she can get a nice man to do for her [laughter], a principle which I have found entirely successful, and which I strongly recommend to every other woman--personally I have always found mere man an excellent comrade.

[Applause.] He has stood by me loyally, and held out an honest hand to me, and lent me his strength when mine was failing, and helped me gallantly over many an awkward bit of the way, and that, too, at times when sovran woman, whom I had so respected and admired and championed, had nothing for me but bonnet-pins. [Laughter.] It does upset one's ideas and unsettle one's principles when sovran woman has nothing for one but bonnet-pins. [Laughter.] The sharp points of those pins have made me a little doubtful about sovran woman at times--a little apt to suspect that in private life her name is Mrs. Harris [laughter], but I must be careful about what I say in this connection lest it should be supposed that I have been perverted.

In the great republic of letters to which I have the honor to belong--in the distinguished position of the letter "Z"--my experience is that woman suffers no indignity at the hands of man on account of her s.e.x.

That is the sort of experience which creates a prejudice. It is apt to color the whole of one's subsequent opinions. It gives one a sort of idea that there are men in the world who would stand by a woman on occasion; and I must confess that I began life with a very strong prejudice of that kind. For a woman to have had a good father is to have been born an heiress. If you had asked me as a child who ran to help me when I fell, I should have answered, "My daddy." When a woman begins life with a prejudice of this kind she never gets over it. The prejudice of a man for his mother is feeble in comparison with the prejudice of a woman for her father, when she has had a man for her father and not one of what Sh.e.l.ley called, those--

"Things whose trade is over ladies To lean and flirt and stare and simper, Till all that is divine in woman Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper."'

Whatever that woman has to suffer she never loses her faith in man.

Remembering what her father was, she always believes there are good men and true in the world somewhere. The recollection of her father becomes a buffer between that woman and the shocks and jars of her after life; because of him, there is nothing distorted in her point of view, and she remains sane. It rather spoils a woman in some ways to have a good husband as well as a good father, because then she is so sure that

"G.o.d's in His heaven, All's well with the world,"

that she becomes utterly selfish, and cares for nothing that is outside her own little circle. But the thing to guard against is loss of faith.

Men and women who have lost faith in each other never rise above the world again--one wing is broken, and they cannot soar. It has been said that the best way to manage man is to feed the brute [laughter], but sovran woman never made that discovery for herself--I believe it was a man in his mere man mood who first confided the secret to some young wife in distress--somebody else's young wife. [Laughter.] Feed him and flatter him. Why not? Is there anything more delightful in this world than to be flattered and fed? Let us do as we would be done by. It seems to me sometimes that it is impossible in reviewing our social relations ever to be wholly in earnest. One's opinions do wobble so. [Laughter.]

If one would earn a reputation for consistency one must be like that great judge who declined to hear more than one side of the case because he found that hearing the other side only confused him. [Laughter.]

The thing about mere man which impresses me most, which fills me with the greatest respect, is not his courage in the face of death, but the courage with which he faces life. The way in which we face death is not necessarily more heroic than the way in which we face life. The probability is that you never think less about yourself than you do at the moment when you and eternity are face to face. When you are sick unto death you are too sick to care whether you live or die. In some great convulsion of nature, a great typhoon, for instance, when the wind in its fury lashes the walls of the house till they writhe, and there are the shrieks of people in dire distress, and fire, and the crash of giant waves, and all that makes for horror, the shock of these brute irresponsible forces of nature is too tremendous for fear to obtrude.

Thought is suspended--you are in an ecstasy of awful emotion, emotion made perfect by the very strength of it.

But when it comes to facing life day after day, and day after day, as so many men have to face it, the workingmen, in all cla.s.ses of society, upon whom the home depends, men whose days are only too often a weary effort, and whose nights are an ache of anxiety, lest the strength should give out which means bread, when one thinks of the lives these men live, and the way in which they live them, the brave, uncomplaining way in which they fight to the death for those dear to them, when one considers mere man from this point of view, one is moved to enthusiasm, and one is fain to confess that "sovran woman" on a pedestal is a poor sort of creature compared with this kind of mere man in that so often she not only fails to help and cheer him in his heroic efforts, but to appreciate that he is making any effort at all. I positively refuse to subscribe to the a.s.sertion, "How poor a thing is man!" [Laughter.] It takes more genius to be a man than manhood to be a genius. [Applause.]

As to the differences between men and women, I believe that when finally their accounts have been properly balanced it will be found that it has been a case of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other, both in the matter of sovereignty and of mereness [laughter], and, therefore, without prejudice, I propose that the sixes to which I belong shall rise and cordially drink to the health of the other half dozens, our kind and generous hosts of to-night. [Applause.]

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT

A REMARKABLE CLIMATE

[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the seventy-fifth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1880.

The President, James C. Carter, in introducing General Grant, said: "Gentlemen, it is our good fortune to have with us to-night as a guest an ill.u.s.trious fellow citizen, who in a great and fortunate career has been enabled to render signal service to his country and to achieve a just renown for himself. [Applause.] Long may he live! But however long, he cannot outlive the regard or the affection of the sons of New England. I give you, gentlemen, 'The Health of General Grant.'" The announcement of the toast was greeted with loud and prolonged cheers, the company standing.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK:--I suppose on an occasion of this sort that you will expect me to say something about this Society and the people of New England and the pilgrims who first landed on Plymouth Rock. It was my fortune last night to attend a banquet of this sort in the princ.i.p.al city on New York harbor. [Applause and laughter.] I did not know until I went there [Brooklyn] that it was the princ.i.p.al city [laughter]--the princ.i.p.al city of the harbor of New York, a city whose overflow has settled up Manhattan Island, which has built up fine houses, business streets, and shown many evidences of prosperity for a suburb, with a waste of people flowing across the North River that forms a third if not one-half the population of a neighboring state. [Applause.] As I say, it was my good fortune to attend a banquet of this sort of the parent society [laughter], and to which all the societies known, even including the one which is now celebrating its first anniversary in Las Vegas, New Mexico, owe their origin. [Laughter.] I made a few remarks there, in which I tried to say what I thought were the characteristics of the people who have descended from the Pilgrims. I thought they were a people of great frugality, great personal courage, great industry, and possessed within themselves of qualities which built up this New England population which has spread out over so much of this land and given so much character, prosperity, and success to us as a people and a nation.

[Applause.] I retain yet some of the views I then expressed [peals of laughter], and should have remained convinced that my judgment was entirely right if it were not that some speakers came after me who have a better t.i.tle to speak for the people of New England than myself, and who dispelled some of those views. [Renewed laughter.]

It is too many generations back for me to claim to be a New Englander.

Those gentlemen who spoke are themselves New Englanders who have, since their manhood, emigrated to this great city that I speak of. They informed me that there was nothing at all in the Pilgrim fathers to give them the distinguishing characteristics which we attribute to them [laughter], and that it was all entirely dependent upon the poverty of the soil and the inclemency of the climate where they landed. [Shouts of laughter.] They fell upon an ungenial climate, where there were nine months of winter and three months of cold weather [laughter], and that had called out the best energies of the men and of the women, too, to get a mere subsistence out of the soil, with such a climate. In their efforts to do that they cultivated industry and frugality at the same time, which is the real foundation of the greatness of the Pilgrims.

[Laughter.] It was even suggested by some that if they had fallen upon a more genial climate and more fertile soil, they would have been there yet, in poverty and without industry. [Laughter.] I shall continue to believe better of them myself, and I believe the Rev. Dr. Storrs, who spoke here, will agree with me that my first judgment of them was probably nearly correct.

However, all jesting aside, we are proud in my section of the country of the New Englanders and of their descendants. We hope to see them spread over all this land, and carry with them the principles inculcated in their own sterile soil from which they sprang. [Applause.] We want to see them take their independence of character, their self-reliance, their free schools, their learning, and their industry, and we want to see them prosper and teach others among whom they settle how to be prosperous. [Applause.] I am very much obliged to the gentlemen of the infant New England Society [laughter] for the reception which they have accorded to me and the other guests of this evening. I shall remember it with great pleasure, and hope that some day you will invite me again.

[Long-continued applause.]

CHARACTERISTICS OF NEWSPAPER MEN

[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the eighth annual dinner of the New York Press Club, January 6, 1881. John C. Hennessy, President of the Press Club, was in the chair, and read the third toast: "The Republic's Honored ex-President." General Grant, on being introduced to respond to this toast, was received with a tumult of applause.]

MR. PRESIDENT, GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB:--I confess to a little embarra.s.sment this evening in being called upon unexpectedly to say a word to a set of such different men as compose not only the Press Club, but those a.s.sociated with the Press of the country. I thought this was an evening that I was going to spend where all would be quiet and good order [laughter]; where n.o.body would have anything to say. We all know the characteristic modesty of the people a.s.sociated with the Press [laughter], they never want to inquire into anybody's affairs, [laughter], to know where they are going, what they are going to do, what they are going to say when they get there. [Uproarious laughter.] I really thought that you would excuse me this evening, but I suppose you will expect me to say something about the Press--the Press of New York, the Press of the United States, the Press of the world. It would take a good deal to tell what is possible for the Press to do. I confess that, at some periods of my life when I have read what they had to say about me, I have lost all faith and all hope. [Great laughter.]

But since a young editor has spoken of the Press, and has fixed the lifetime, the generation of newspaper men at about twelve years [laughter], I have a growing hope within me that in the future the Press may be able to do some of the great good which we all admit is possible for it to do. [Laughter.] I have been somewhat of a reader of the newspapers for forty years--I could read very well when I was eight years of age. [Laughter.] It has given me forty years of observation of the Press; and there is one peculiarity that I have observed from reading it, and that is, in all of the walks of life outside of the Press, people have entirely mistaken their profession, their occupation.

[Laughter.] I never knew the Mayor of a city, or even a Councilman in any city, any public officer, any government official--I never knew a member of Congress, a Senator or a President of the United States, who could not be enlightened in his duties by the youngest member of the profession. [Great laughter and applause.] I never knew a general of the Army to command a brigade, a division, a corps of the Army who could begin to do it as well as men far away in their sanctums. [Renewed laughter.] I was very glad to see that the newspaper fraternity were ready to take with perfect confidence any office that might be tendered to them, from President to Mayor [laughter], and I have often been astonished that the citizens have not done so, because then all these offices would have been well and properly filled. [Laughter and applause.]

Well, gentlemen, I am very happy to have been here with you, and I hope when a new generation, about twelve years hence, comes on, that I shall again dine with the Press Club of New York City, and that I shall see that those of this generation who were so well fitted to fill all of the civil offices have all been chosen, and that there will be nothing left for them to criticise. [Peals of laughter.] Thank you, gentlemen. [Great applause, with "Three cheers" for General Grant.]

THE ADOPTED CITIZEN

[Speech of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the 115th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, May 8, 1883. George W.

Lane, President of the Chamber of Commerce, presided, and announced as the first regular toast: "The United States--the great modern Republic--the home of a new cosmopolitan race; may those who seek the blessings of its free inst.i.tutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose." The orchestra played "The Star-Spangled Banner," and General Grant, who was called upon to respond to this toast, was received with great enthusiasm.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND GUESTS:--I am very much obliged to your President for calling upon me first, because the agony will soon be over and I shall enjoy the misery of the rest of you. [Laughter.]

The first part of this toast--The United States--would be a voluminous one to respond to on a single occasion. Bancroft commenced to publish his notes on the History of the United States, starting even before President Lane established this Chamber, which I think was something over one hundred years ago. [Laughter.] Bancroft, I say, commenced earlier, and I am not prepared to dispute his word if he should say that he had kept an accurate journal from the time he commenced to write about the country to the present, because there has been no period of time when I have been alive that I have not heard of Bancroft, and I should be equally credulous if President Lane should tell me that he was here at the founding of this Inst.i.tution. [Laughter.] But instead of bringing those volumes of Bancroft's here, and reading them to you on this occasion, I will let the reporters publish them as the prelude to what I am going to say. [Laughter.]

I think Bancroft has finished up to a little after the time that President Lane established this Chamber of Commerce, and I will let you take the records of what he [Lane] has written and what he has said in their monthly meetings and publish them as the second chapter of my speech. And, gentlemen, those two chapters you will find the longest; they will not amount to much more than what I have to say taking up the subject at the present time. [Laughter.]

But in speaking of the United States, we who are native-born have a country of which we may well be proud. Those of us who have been abroad are better able, perhaps, to make the comparison of our enjoyments and our comforts than those who have always stayed at home. [Applause.] It has been the fortune, I presume, of the majority here to compare the life and the circ.u.mstances of the average people abroad with ours here.

We have here a country that affords room for all and room for every enterprise. We have inst.i.tutions which encourage every man who has industry and ability to rise from the position in which he may find himself to any position in the land. [Applause.] It is hardly worth my while to dwell upon the subject, but there is one point which I notice in the toast, that I would like to say a word about--"May those who seek the blessings of its free inst.i.tutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose." I think there is a text that my friend Mr. Beecher,[4] on the left, or my friend Dr. Newman,[5] on the right, might well preach a long sermon upon. I shall say only a few words.

We offer an asylum to every man of foreign birth who chooses to come here and settle upon our soil; we make of him, after a few years'

residence only, a citizen endowed with all the rights that any of us have, except perhaps the single one of being elected to the Presidency of the United States. There is no other privilege that a native, no matter what he has done for the country, has that the adopted citizen of five years' standing has not got. [Applause.] I contend that that places upon him an obligation which, I am sorry to say, many of them do not seem to feel. [Applause,]

We have witnessed on many occasions here the foreign, the adopted, citizen claiming many rights and privileges because he was an adopted citizen. That is all wrong. Let him come here and enjoy all the privileges that we enjoy, but let him fulfil all the obligations that we are expected to fulfil. [Loud applause.] After he has adopted it, let this be his country--a country that he will fight for, and die for, if necessary. I am glad to say that the great majority of them do it, but some of them who mingle in politics seem to bank largely on the fact that they are adopted citizens; and that cla.s.s I am opposed to as much as I am opposed to many other things that I see are popular now.