Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 5

[Laughter and applause.] He found the Indians on one side and the witches on the other. He was surrounded with troubles. He had to keep the Indians under fire and the witches over it. These were some of the things that reconciled that good man to sudden death. He frequently wanted to set up a mark and swear at it, but his principles would not permit him. He never let the sun go down upon his wrath, but he, no doubt, often wished that he was in that region near the pole where the sun does not go down for six months at a time, and gives wrath a fair chance to materialize. He was a thoughtful man. He spent his days inventing snow-ploughs and his evenings in sipping hot rum and ruminating upon the probable strength of the future Prohibition vote.

Those were times when the wives remonstrated with their husbands regarding the unfortunate and disappointing results of too much drink, particularly when it led the men to go out and shoot at Indians--and miss them. [Long continued laughter.] It is supposed that these men, like many others, generally began drinking on account of the bite of a snake, and usually had to quit on account of attacks from the same reptiles.

But, Mr. President, if you will allow me a few words of becoming gravity with which to retract any aspersions which I may have inadvertently cast upon the sacred person of the ancient Puritan, I a.s.sure you I will use those words with a due sense of the truth of the epigram--that "gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the poverty of the mind." That rugged old Puritan, firm of purpose and stout of heart, had been fittingly trained by his life in the Old World, for the conspicuous part he was to enact in the New. He was acquainted with hardships, inured to trials, practised in self-abnegation. He had reformed religions, revolutionized society, and shaken the thrones of tyrants. He had learned that tyranny you may have anywhere--it is a weed which grows on any soil--but if you want freedom you must go forth and fight for it. [Long continued applause.]

At his very birth he had had breathed into his nostrils the breath of that true liberty which can turn blind submission into rational obedience, which, as Hall says, can "smother the voice of kings, dissipate the mists of superst.i.tion, and by its magic touch kindle the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, the flames of eloquence."

[Applause.] He had the courage of his convictions, he counselled not with his fears. He neither looked to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He might have been a zealot--he was never a hypocrite; he might have been eccentric--he was never ridiculous. He was a Hercules rather than an Adonis. In his warfare he fired hot shot; he did not send in flags of truce; he led forlorn hopes; he did not follow in the wake of charges. When he went forth with his sledge-hammer logic and his saw-mill philosophy, all who stood in the path of his righteous wrath went down before him, with nothing by which to recognize them except the pieces he had left of them. When he crossed the seas to plant his banners in the West, when he disembarked upon the bleak sh.o.r.es of America, the land which was one day to speak with the voice of a mighty prophet, then the infant just discovered in the bulrushes of the New World, he came with loins girded and all accoutred for the great work of founding a race which should create a permanent abiding place for liberty, and one day dominate the destinies of the world. [Prolonged applause.] Unlike the Spanish conqueror upon far southern coasts, the leader did not have to burn his ship to retain his followers, for when the Mayflower spread her sails for home, not a man of Plymouth Colony returned on board her.

The Puritan early saw that in the new land, liberty could not flourish when subject to the caprices of European Courts; he realized with Burke that there was "more wisdom and sagacity in American workshops than in the cabinets of princes." He wanted elbow-room; he was philosophic enough to recognize the truth of the adage that it is "better to sit on a pumpkin and have it all to yourself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion."

When the struggle for independence came, the Puritan influence played no small part in the contest. When a separate government had been formed he showed himself foremost in impressing upon it his principles of broad and comprehensive liberty. He dignified labor; he believed that as the banner of the young Republic was composed of and derived its chief beauty from its different colors, so should its broad folds cover and protect its citizens of different colors.

He was a grand character in history. We take off our hats to him. We salute his memory. In his person were combined the chivalry of Knighthood, the fervor of the Crusader, the wit of Gascony, and the courage of Navarre. [Prolonged applause.]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

[Speech of Horace Porter at a dinner given by the Republican Club in honor of the ninetieth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday, New York City, February 12, 1889. Mortimer C. Addams, the newly elected President of the Club, occupied the chair. General Porter was called upon for a response to the first toast, "Abraham Lincoln--the fragrant memory of such a life will increase as the generations succeed each other." General Porter was introduced by the chairman, as one "whose long acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln, intimate relationship, both official and personal, with our ill.u.s.trious chieftain, General Grant, and distinguished career as a brave defender of his country in the time of her peril, have eminently fitted him to tell the story of our great War President."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I am enc.u.mbered with diverse misgivings in being called upon to rise and cast the first firebrand into this peaceful a.s.semblage, which has evidently been enjoying itself so much up to the present time. From the herculean task accomplished by the Republican party last fall we have come to think of its members as men of deeds and not of words, except the spellbinders. [Laughter.] I fear your committee is treating me like one of those toy balloons that are sent up previous to the main ascension, to test the currents of the air; but I hope that in this sort of ballooning I may not be interrupted by the remark that interrupted a Fourth of July orator in the West when he was tickling the American Eagle under both wings, delivering himself of no end of plat.i.tudes and soaring aloft into the brilliant realms of fancy when a man in the audience quietly remarked: "If he goes on throwing out his ballast, in that way, the Lord knows where he will land." [Laughter.] If I demonstrate to-night that dryness is a quality not only of the champagne but of the first speech as well, you may reflect on that remark as Abraham Lincoln did at City Point after he had been shaken up the night before in his boat in a storm in Chesapeake Bay. When he complained of the feeling of gastronomic uncertainty which we suffer on the water, a young staff officer rushed up to him with a bottle of champagne and said: "This is the cure for that sort of an ill." Said the President: "No, young man, I have seen too many fellows seasick ash.o.r.e from drinking that very article." [Laughter.]

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 a 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 cla.s.s 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. [Loud applause.] 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 n.o.bles of Vienna boasting of their long line of descent, when they refused to a.s.sociate with him: "I am an ancestor; you are only descendants!" [Laughter and cheers.] He was never guilty of any posing for effect, any att.i.tudinizing 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.

[Laughter.] 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. [Laughter.]

The names of Washington and Lincoln are inseparably a.s.sociated, 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. [Laughter.] And Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they were never too long, and never too broad. [Laughter.] He never forgot a point. A sentinel pacing near the watchfire while Lincoln was once telling some stories quietly remarked that "He had a mighty powerful memory, but an awful poor forgettery." [Laughter.]

The last time I ever heard him converse, he told one of the stories which best ill.u.s.trated his peculiar talent for pointing a moral with an anecdote. Speaking of England's a.s.sistance to the South, and how she would one day find she had aided it but little and only injured herself, he said: "Yes, that reminds me of a barber in Sangamon County. He was about going to bed when a stranger came along and said he must have a shave. He said he had a few days' beard on his face, and he was going to a ball, and the barber must cut it off. The barber got up reluctantly, dressed, and put the stranger in a chair with a low back to it, and every time he bore down he came near dislocating his patient's neck. He began by lathering his face, including nose, eyes, and ears, strapped his razor on his boot, and then made a drive sc.r.a.ping down the right cheek, carrying away the beard and a pimple and two or three warts. The man in the chair said: 'You appear to make everything level as you go.'

[Laughter.] The barber said: 'Yes, if this handle don't break, I will get away with what there is there.' The man's cheeks were so hollow that the barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor and an ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man's mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clean through the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man's mouth, and snapped the blood off it, looked at him, and said: 'There, you lantern-jawed cuss, you have made me cut my finger.'" [Laughter.] "Now,"

said Lincoln, "England will find she has got the South into a pretty bad sc.r.a.pe from trying to administer to her. In the end she will find she has only cut her own finger." [Applause.]

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. [Cries of "Bravo!" and cheers.]

It is said that for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylae 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 defence of that Pa.s.s. 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. [Loud applause.]

He has pa.s.sed from our view. We shall not meet him again until he stands forth to answer to his name at the roll-call when the great of earth are summoned in the morning of the last great reveille. Till then [apostrophizing Lincoln's portrait which hung above the President's head], till then, farewell, gentlest of all spirits, n.o.blest of all hearts! The child's simplicity was mingled with the majestic grandeur of your nature. You have 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! [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]

SIRES AND SONS

[Speech of Horace Porter at the eighty-sixth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1891. J.

Pierpont Morgan, the President, occupied the chair, and called upon General Porter to speak on "Sires and Sons."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--All my shortcomings upon this occasion must be attributed to the fact that I have just come from last night's New England dinner, in Brooklyn, which occurred largely this morning. They promised me when I accepted their invitation that I should get away early, and I did. I am apprehensive that the circ.u.mstance may give rise to statements which may reflect upon my advancing years, and that I may be pointed out as one who has dined with the early New Englanders.

I do not like the fact of Depew's coming into the room so late to-night and leaving so short an interval between his speech and mine. His conduct is of a piece with the conduct of so many married men nowadays who manifest such exceedingly bad taste and want of tact in dying only such a very short time before the remarriage of their wives.

I have acquired some useful experience in attending New England Society dinners in various cities. I dine with New Englanders in Boston; the rejoicing is marked, but not aggressive. I dine with them in New York; the hilarity and cheer of mind are increased in large degree. I dine with them in Philadelphia; the joy is unconfined and measured neither by metes nor bounds. Indeed, it has become patent to the most casual observer that the further the New Englander finds himself from New England the more hilarious is his rejoicing. Whenever we find a son of New England who has pa.s.sed beyond the borders of his own section, who has stepped out into the damp cold fog of a benighted outside world and has brought up in another State, he seems to take more pride than ever in his descent--doubtless because he feels that it has been so great.

[Laughter.]

The New England sire was a stern man on duty and determined to administer discipline totally regardless of previous acquaintance. He detested all revolutions in which he had taken no part. If he possessed too much piety, it was tempered by religion; while always seeking out new virtues, he never lost his grip on his vices. [Laughter.] He was always ambitious to acquire a reputation that would extend into the next world. But in his own individual case he manifested a decided preference for the doctrine of d.a.m.nation without representation.

When he landed at Plymouth he boldly set about the appalling task of cultivating the alleged soil. His labors were largely lightened by the fact that there were no agricultural newspapers to direct his efforts.

By a fiction of speech which could not have been conceived by a less ingenious mind, he founded a government based upon a common poverty and called it a commonwealth. He was prompt and eminently practical in his worldly methods. In the rigors of a New England winter when he found a witch suffering he brought her in to the fire; when he found an Indian suffering he went out and covered him with a shotgun. [Laughter.]

The discipline of the race, however, is chiefly due to the New England mother. She could be seen going to church of a Sabbath with the Bible under one arm and a small boy under the other, and her mind equally hara.s.sed by the tortures of maternity and eternity. When her offspring were found suffering from spring fever and the laziness which accompanies it, she braced them up with a heroic dose of brimstone and mola.s.ses. The brimstone given here was a reminder of the discipline hereafter; the mola.s.ses has doubtless been chiefly responsible for the tendency of the race to stick to everything, especially their opinions.

[Laughter.]

The New Englanders always take the initiative in great national movements. At Lexington and Concord they marched out alone without waiting for the rest of the Colonies, to have their fling at the red-coats, and a number of the colonists on that occasion succeeded in interfering with British bullets. It was soon after observed that their afternoon excursion had attracted the attention of England. They acted in the spirit of the fly who bit the elephant on the tail. When the fly was asked whether he expected to kill him he said: "No, but I notice I made him look round." [Laughter.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _THE MINUTE MAN_

_Photogravure after a photograph_

In commemoration of the famous Revolutionary struggle of the farmers of Concord, Ma.s.s., April 19, 1775, this statue was erected. The sculptor was Daniel Chester French, a native of Concord. The statue was unveiled at the centennial celebration of the battle, 1875. It is of bronze, heroic size, and stands near the town of Concord, by the battlefield, on the side of the Concord River occupied by the Americans. The position is described by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his lines which are graven in the pedestal of the statue:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world."]

Such are the inventive faculty and self-reliance of New Englanders that they always entertain a profound respect for impossibilities. It has been largely owing to their influence that we took the negro, who is a natural agriculturist, and made a soldier of him; took the Indian, who is a natural warrior, and made an agriculturist of him; took the American, who is a natural destructionist, and made a protectionist of him. They are always revolutionizing affairs. Recently a Boston company equipped with electricity the horse-cars, or rather the mule-cars, in the streets of Atlanta. When the first electric-motor cars were put into service an aged "contraband" looked at them from the street corner and said: "Dem Yankees is a powerful sma't people; furst dey come down h'yar and freed de n.i.g.g.e.rs, now dey've done freed de mules." [Laughter.]

The New Englander is so constantly engaged in creating changes that in his eyes even variety appears monotonous. When a German subject finds himself oppressed by his Government he emigrates; when a French citizen is oppressed he makes the Government emigrate; when Americans find a portion of their Government trying to emigrate they arm themselves and spend four years in going after it and bringing it back. [Laughter and applause.]

You will find the sons of New England everywhere throughout the world, and they are always at the fore. I happened to be at a French banquet in Paris where several of us Americans spoke, employing that form of the French language which is so often used by Americans in France, and which is usually so successful in concealing one's ideas from the natives.

There was a young Bostonian there who believed he had successfully mastered all the most difficult modern languages except that which is spoken by the brake-men on the elevated railroads. When he spoke French the only departure from the accent of the Parisian was that _nuance_ of difference arising from the mere accidental circ.u.mstance of one having learned his French in Paris and the other in Boston. The French give much praise to Moliere for having changed the p.r.o.nunciation of a great many French words; but his most successful efforts in that direction were far surpa.s.sed by the Boston young man. When he had finished his remarks a French gentleman sitting beside me inquired: "Where is he from?" I replied: "From New England." Said he: "I don't see anything English about him except his French." [Laughter.]

In speaking of the sons of New England sires, I know that one name is uppermost in all minds here to-night--the name of one who added new l.u.s.tre to the fame of his distinguished ancestors. The members of your Society, like the Nation at large, found themselves within the shadow of a profound grief, and oppressed by a sense of sadness akin to the sorrow of a personal bereavement, as they stood with uncovered heads beside the bier of William T. Sherman; when the echo of his guns gave place to the tolling of cathedral bells; when the flag of his country, which had never been lowered in his presence, dropped to half-mast, as if conscious that his strong arm was no longer there to hold it to the peak; when he pa.s.sed from the living here to join the other living, commonly called the dead. We shall never meet the great soldier again until he stands forth to answer to his name at roll-call on the morning of the last great reveille. At this board he was always a thrice welcome guest. The same blood coursed in his veins which flows in yours. All hearts warmed to him with the glow of an abiding affection. He was a many-sided man. He possessed all the characteristics of the successful soldier: bold in conception, vigorous in execution, and unshrinking under grave responsibilities. He was singularly self-reliant, demonstrating by all his acts that "much danger makes great hearts most resolute." He combined in his temperament the restlessness of a Hotspur with the patience of a Fabius. Under the magnetism of his presence his troops rushed to victory with all the dash of Caesar's Tenth Legion.

Opposing ranks went down before the fierceness of his onsets, never to rise again. He paused not till he saw the folds of his banners wave above the strongholds he had wrested from the foe.

While mankind will always appreciate the practical workings of the mind of the great strategist, they will also see in his marvellous career much which savors of romance as well as reality, appeals to the imagination and excites the fancy. They will picture him as a legendary knight moving at the head of conquering columns, whose marches were measured not by single miles, but by thousands; as a general who could make a Christmas gift to his President of a great seaboard city; as a chieftain whose field of military operations covered nearly half a continent; who had penetrated everglades and bayous; the inspiration of whose commands forged weaklings into giants; whose orders all spoke with the true bluntness of the soldier; who fought from valley's depth to mountain height, and marched from inland rivers to the sea. No one can rob him of his laurels; no man can lessen the measure of his fame. His friends will never cease to sing paeans in his honor, and even the wrath of his enemies may be counted in his praise. [Prolonged applause.]

THE a.s.sIMILATED DUTCHMAN

[Speech of Horace Porter at the fourth annual dinner of the Poughkeepsie District Members of the Holland Society of New York, October 3, 1893. The banquet was held in commemoration of the relief of the siege of Leyden, 1574. J. William Beekman, the President, introduced General Porter as follows: "Gentlemen, we will now proceed to a toast that we shall all enjoy, I am sure, after so much has been said about the Dutch. This toast is to be responded to by a gentleman whom we all know. It is hardly necessary to introduce him. But I will read the sentiment attached to this toast: 'The American: Formed of the blendings of the best strains of Europe, he cannot be worthy of his ancestry without combining in himself the best qualities of them all.' And I call upon General Horace Porter to respond."]