Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 12

BOSTON

[Speech of Edward Everett Hale, D.D., at the first annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The President, Benjamin D. Silliman, in proposing the toast, "Boston,"

said: "We are favored with the company of a typical and eloquent Bostonian, identified with all that is learned and benevolent in that ancient home of the Puritans, and familiar with all its notions. In response to the toast, we call on the Rev. Edward Everett Hale."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I am sure that there is not a Boston boy who hears me to-night who does not recollect that when he went out to his first Pilgrim dinner, or to see f.a.n.n.y Kemble or to any other evening dissipation of fifty years ago, the last admonition of his mother was, "We will leave the candle burning for you, John, but you must be sure and be home before twelve o'clock!" I am sure that the memory of this admonition is lingering among our friends now, that we are entering on the small hours, and that I must only acknowledge your courtesy and sit down. I feel, indeed, all along in your talk of h.o.a.r antiquity, that I owe my place here only to your extreme hospitality. In these aged cities you may well say to me, "You Bostonians are children.

You are of yesterday," as the Egyptians said to the Greek traveller. For we are still stumbling along like little children, in the anniversaries of our quarter-millennium; but we understand perfectly well that the foundations of this city were laid in dim antiquity. I know that n.o.body knows when Brooklyn was founded. Your commerce began so long ago that n.o.body can remember it, but I know that there was a beaver trap on every brook in Kings County, while Boston was still a howling wilderness.

These n.o.ble ancestors of yours had made themselves at home on Plymouth Rock before we had built a flat-boat on any river in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.

[Applause.]

It is only as the youngest daughter, quite as a Cinderella, that we of Boston have any claim on your matchless hospitality. But, as Cinderella should, we have done our best at home to make ready our sisters when they should go to the ball. When my brother Beecher, just now, closed his speech with a Latin quotation, I took some satisfaction in remembering that we taught him his Latin at the Boston Latin school. And I could not but remember when I listened with such delight to the address of Mr. Secretary Evarts, which you have just now been cheering, that the first time I heard this persuasive and convincing orator, was when he took the prize for elocution, a boy of thirteen, on the platform in the great hall in our old schoolhouse in School Street. Nay, I confess also, to a little feeling of local as well as national pride, when the President of the United States [Rutherford B. Hayes] was speaking. Just as he closes this remarkable administration, which is going to stand out in history, distinguished indeed among all administrations from the beginning, so pure has it been, so honorable and so successful--just as he closes this administration he makes here this statement of the principles on which are based the success of an American statesman, in a few fit words so epigrammatic that they will be cited as proverbs by our children and our children's children. I heard that masterly definition of the laws which have governed the New Englander, I took pride in remembering that the President also was a graduate of our law school. These three are the little contributions which Cinderella has been preparing in the last half-century, for the first dinner-party of the Brooklyn Pilgrim Society. [Applause.]

I read in a New York newspaper in Washington the other day that something done in Boston lately was done with the "usual Boston intensity." I believe the remark was not intended to be a compliment, but we shall take it as one, and are quite willing to accept the phrase.

I think it is true in the past, I hope it will be true in the future, that we go at the things which we have to do with a certain intensity, which I suppose we owe to these Puritan Fathers whom to-night we are celebrating. Certainly we have gone at this business of emigration with that intensity. It is perfectly true that there are in Brooklyn to-day more people than there are in Boston, who were born in Boston from the old New England blood. Not that Brooklyn has been any special favorite.

When I met last year in Kansas, a ma.s.s meeting of twenty-five thousand of the old settlers and their children, my daughter said to me: "Papa, I am glad to see so many of our own countrymen." She certainly had never seen so many before, without intermixture of people of foreign races.

Now it is certainly our wish to carry that intensity into everything. If the thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing thoroughly. What we do we mean to do it for everybody. You have seen the result. We try, for instance, if we open a Latin school at all, to have it the best Latin school in the world. And then we throw it open to everybody, to native and heathen, to Jew and to Greek, to white and black and red, and we advise you to go and do likewise. [Applause.]

You recollect the old joke, I think it began with Preston of South Carolina, that Boston exported no articles of native growth but granite and ice. That was true then, but we have improved since, and to these exports we have added roses and cabbages. Mr. President, they are good roses, and good cabbages, and I a.s.sure you that the granite is excellent hard granite, and the ice is very cold ice. [Laughter and applause.]

WILLIAM F. HALL

YARN OF THE MANAGER BOLD

[Speech of William P. Hall (popularly known by his pen name, "Biff"

Hall) at the fortieth dinner of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., January 7, 1892. The Secretary, Joseph B. Mann, acted as Chairman. The general subject of the evening's discussion was, "The Modern Stage; its Mission and Influence."]

GENTLEMEN.:--I must confess that I have never regarded the drama in a very serious light. As to its purpose and mission, if I was trying to find out, I should consult the pleasant-faced young man who sits in the box-office. He knows how these things stand with the public.

Perhaps the reason I do so regard the matter may be found in my early experiences. The first theatrical performance I ever saw was in this city twenty-five years ago, and one of the prominent features was our old friend, Billy Rice.[6] Billy Rice never gives rise to a serious thought on any occasion. Why, the other night I went to hear Billy Rice, and I heard him tell that same old story that he told in the same old way twenty-five years ago. It really gave me the idea that the drama is not progressive. [Laughter.]

I consider that the theatre and the newspaper are brother and sister; they are always together. Wherever two or three are gathered together in the wilderness some venturesome individual starts a newspaper, and then immediately through its columns induces some other equally venturesome individual to build an opera-house. The people who act there are called turkey actors, for the reason that they hibernate during most of the year and only appear when the turkey is ripe for plucking in holiday time. They then go out and depredate the country. They have a wonderful repertoire, from Howard's "Shenandoah" to Hood's "Sarsaparilla." They play everywhere; it is called the kerosene circuit. If there is nothing else available they let the water out of the water-tank at the station and play in that. [Laughter.] Gentlemen, these are the pioneers of the drama. They convey to the rural mind what knowledge it has of real fire-engines and the triumphs of the scenic artist, and I think we should give to them the credit of spreading through this land those beautiful dramas, "Jim the Westerner," and "The Scout of the Rockies." I do not know what their influence may be; I don't care to touch upon that part of the subject; but I think I cannot better ill.u.s.trate the straits they are in sometimes than by reciting a little parody on W. S.

Gilbert's Bab Ballad, the "Yarn of the Nancy Bell." It is ent.i.tled:--

THE YARN OF THE MANAGER BOLD

It was near the town they call Detroit, In the State of Mich-i-gan, That I met on the rocks, with a property-box, A gloomy theatrical man.

His o. p. heel was quite worn off, And weary and sad was he, And I saw this "fake" give himself a shake, As he croaked in a guttural key: "Oh, I am the star and the manager bold, And the leading and juvenile man, And the comedy pet, and the pert soubrette, And the boss of the box-sheet plan."

He wiped his eye on a three-sheet bill, 'Twas lettered in blue and red, He cursed the fates and the open dates, And I spoke to him, and said: "'Tis little I know of the mimic show, But if you will explain to me-- I'll eat my vest if I can digest How you can possibly be, At once a star, and a manager bold, And a leading and juvenile man, And a comedy pet, and a pert soubrette, And a boss of a box-sheet plan."

He ran his hand through his dusty hair, And pulled down a brunette cuff, And on the rocks, with his property-box, He told me his story tough: "It was in the year of eighty-three, When a party of six and me Went on the road with a show that's knowed As a 'musical com-i-dee.'

I writ it myself--it knocked 'em cold-- It made 'em shriek and roar; But we struck a reef and came to grief, On the west of the Michigan sh.o.r.e.

Each night it rained, or snowed or blowed, And when the weather was clear They'd say: 'It's sad your house is bad.

But wait till you come next year.'

We travelled along from town to town A-tryin' to change our luck-- With nothin' to taste but bill-board paste An' the 'property' canvas duck.

At last we got to Kankakee, All travel-stained and sore, When the star got mad and shook us bad For a job in a dry-goods store-- And then the leading heavy man Informed me with a frown He was going away the very next day With a circus then in town; And the comedy pet and the pert soubrette Engaged as cook and waiter-- They are still doing well in a small hotel Near the Kankakee the-ay-ter.

Then only the 'comic' and me remained, For to leave he hadn't the heart; Each laugh was a drop of blood to him, And he loved that comedy part.

We played one night to a right good house, Eight dollars and a half; But to my ill-luck in my lines I stuck And I queered the comedian's laugh.

He fell down dead of a broken heart-- The coroner, old and sage, Said his brain was cracked with a bad attackt Of the centre of the stage.

I played that part all by myself For a week in Kankakee; O'er rails and rocks with this property-box I've walked to where I be.

I never say an actor's good, I always d.a.m.n a play; I always croak, and a single joke I have, which is to say: That I am the star, and the manager bold, And the leading and juvenile man And the comedy pet, and the pert soubrette, And the boss of the box-sheet plan."

[Laughter and applause.]

MURAT HALSTEAD

OUR NEW COUNTRY

[Speech of Murat Halstead at the 126th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1894. Alexander B.

Orr, President of the Chamber, in proposing this toast, said: "I now have the honor of introducing to you that eminent journalist, the Hon.

Murat Halstead, who will respond to the toast, 'Our New Country.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT:--In the Orkney Islands there is a cathedral described by the guide as of two parts--the old and the new. The story is glibly told that when it had stood for five hundred years a storm beat down the tower and did other damage, making reconstruction necessary; and that tempest was six hundred years ago. On the road from Geneva to Chamouni there is a point of which Baedeker says: "The rocks on the left are seven thousand feet high." In the Orkneys a tower six hundred years old is new, and in the Alps a precipice seven thousand feet high is a moderate bit of scenery. The standards of the measurement of time and s.p.a.ce may be exact, and yet are comparative, affected by the atmosphere of history and the scale of landscapes.

In that portion of this country which was the West a generation ago, a farm was old when the stumps had rotted in the fields, and the land was improved when the trees were cut. New ground was that which had not been ploughed. Once a man of varied experiences accounted to a pious woman for an unhappy bit of profanity by saying that when a boy he had ploughed new ground, and the plough caught in the roots, and the horses balked, and his feet were torn with splinters and thorns, and the handles of the plough kicked and hurt him, until depravity was developed. The lady said she would pray for his forgiveness, if he never would do so any more, and he promised, and I am told he did not keep that promise.

Daniel Boone's new country, when he lived on the Yadkin, in North Carolina, was Kentucky, and afterward it was Missouri. Washington's new country was first Ohio, and then Indiana. Lincoln's new country, when he was a child, was Indiana, and then Illinois. Beyond the Alleghany Mountains was the land of promise of the original States; beyond the Mississippi was the new world of those who moved west in wagons, before the Mexican war and the railroads broadened our dominions, and we were bounded east and west by the oceans. It was for the new country of their ages that Columbus and the Puritans and Captain John Smith set sail. In the new country there is always, at least, the dream of liberty and the hope that the earth we inherit may be generous in the bounties it yields to toil.

The march of manhood westward has reached the sh.o.r.es of the seas that look out on ancient Asia. We have realized the vision of the Genoese--finding in the sunset the footsteps of Marco Polo. We have crossed the mountain ranges and followed the majestic rivers, have traced the borders of the great lakes, whitened by the sails and darkened by the smoke of a commerce that competes in magnitude with that of the salted sea; and Texas, our France, confronts the Mediterranean of our hemisphere.

We have crushed the rocks and sifted the sand that yielded silver and gold, and the soil is ours that is richer than gold mines, whether we offer in evidence South Carolina, whose Sea-Island cotton surpa.s.ses the long staple of Egypt; or the Dakotas, matchless for wheat; or the lands of the cornstalk in the Mississippi Valley, that could feed all the tribes of Asia; or Nebraska, whose beets are sweeter with sugar than those that were the gift of Napoleon to Germany.

We have found the springs that yield immortal youth, not in bubbling waters in a flowery wilderness, but in the harvests of the fields and the stored energies of inexhaustible mines, not for the pa.s.sing person who perishes when his work is done, but for the imperishable race.

All this in our country, "rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun," but with the clothing of life on the ribs, and new in the evolution of conditions by the works of man that make the nations of the earth a family--achievements wonderful in scope, splendid in promise, marvellous in the renown that is of peace; in the fame of the genius that is labor, the spell-binder that gathers and builds, creates and glorifies.

Within the historic record of this Chamber of Commerce of New York, the waters of Lake Erie have been carried through our ca.n.a.ls and rivers to the Atlantic, making the Hudson River what Henry Hudson thought it was when he sailed through the beautiful gate of the incomparable continent--the road from the east to the west around the world; and the statue of Thomas Benton points westward from the great cross of the rivers in the heart of the continent--the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi--and the inscription reads: "There is the road to India."

How familiar is the construction of the Pacific railroad; of the telegraph lines across the continent and through the oceans; the record of steamers of ten thousand tons, five hundred knots a day; the miraculous telephone; the trolley, that is with us to stay and to conquer, introducing all the villages to the magic of rapid transit, promoting, with the incessant application of a new force, the American h.o.m.ogeneity of our vast and various population--blending them for one destiny. One is not venturing upon disputed ground--there is no prohibited politics in it to say that slavery is gone--for all cla.s.ses and sections of our common country will agree it is well. The earth has grown both small and great for us. Its gigantic mysteries are no more.

Its circ.u.mnavigation is commonplace. The kinetoscope comes to aid the phonograph to make pictures of action and lasting records of music and of speech. The people of coming generations are to hear the voices that have charmed or awed, persuaded, bewitched or commanded, in departed centuries. There will be libraries of rolls, storing for all time these treasures; rolls not unlike those cylinders preserved in the Babylonish deserts. Photography is bringing to us, as on parchment leaves painted with sunlight, the secrets of the depths of the seas and the skies; it is finding new stars, and with the telescopic camera likenesses may be s.n.a.t.c.hed across s.p.a.ces impenetrable by the naked eye. The aristocracy of intelligence becomes a democracy for the diffusion of the knowledge of the history of the day, which is the most important chapter that has been written, impartial, instantaneous, and is becoming universal.

This is more than a new country; it is a new world. Our own farmers are in compet.i.tion with those of Egypt, India, Russia and Argentina.

Australia with her wool and beef and mutton, Egypt and India with cotton and wheat, South America, Africa and Asia, made fruitful with resources, seek the same markets with our producers; and the mills of Old England are within a few cents and hours, in cost of transportation and time, as cheap and nigh as those of New England to New York. Once, a war between j.a.pan and China would have been so remote that, as they say in the newspapers, there could have been no news in it; but it means matter of business for us now. With the novel conditions, there come upon us new and enormous problems for solution, and responsibilities that cannot be evaded. Once, we were an isolated nation. There was no trouble about becoming involved in the "entangling alliances" that were the cause of alarm to the Father of his Country. Now, the ends of the earth are in our neighborhood, and we touch elbows with all the races of mankind, and all the continents and the islands are a federation. The newspapers are, to continue the poetic prophecy, "the parliament of man."

The drift of human experience is to increased aggregations, to concentration and to centralization. This mighty city, in her material grandeur, and, we may trust, her moral redemption, stands for forty-six indestructible States and one indivisible nation. Her lofty structures far surpa.s.s already the palaces of the merchant princes of Tyre and Venice and Liverpool, and we behold, in these imperial towers, the types of the magnificence of the coming time. There never was so fair and superb, ample and opulent a bride as she, in the wholesome arms of the ocean that embrace these islands, adorned with the trophies of the wealth of the world, and whose rulers, the slavery of crime abolished, are the sovereign millions. These are new developments of authority, new growths of responsibility.