Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 6

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--We speakers have naturally been a little embarra.s.sed at the outset this evening, for just as we were about to break into speech, your President reminded us that the only one worthy of having a monument built to his memory was William the Silent.

Well, it seemed to carry me back to those ancient days of Greece, when Pythagoras inaugurated his School of Silence, and called on Damocles to make the opening speech.

Your President has shown from the start this evening that he is determined to enforce discipline, totally regardless of previous acquaintance. He appears to have been in a Shakespearian mood to-night.

He seemed to be looking at each one of these alleged speakers and saying of him: "Therefore, I'll watch him till he be dieted to my request and then I will set upon him." But he must remember that Shakespeare also said: "Dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits."

I do not know how the rest of you feel, but after these delicious but somewhat plethoric dinners, I feel very much like Mr. b.u.t.terby, when his lavender-colored trousers were sent to him the night before his wedding, and he returned them to the tailor with a note saying, "Let them out two inches around the waist, which will leave a margin for emotion and the wedding breakfast." [Laughter.]

Now, we speakers to-night cannot expect to be received with any vast ebullition of boisterous enthusiasm here, for we understand that every member pays for his own wine. Besides, I am sure that you will not be likely to get any more ideas from me than you would get lather from a cake of hotel soap.

After having wrestled with about thirty dishes at this dinner, and after all this being called upon to speak, I feel a great sympathy with that woman in Ireland who had had something of a field-day on hand. She began by knocking down two somewhat unpopular agents of her absentee landlord, and was seen, later in the day, dancing a jig on the stomach of the prostrate form of the Presbyterian minister. One of her friends admired her prowess in this direction and invited her in, and gave her a good stiff gla.s.s of whiskey. Her friend said, "Shall I pour some water in your whiskey?" and the woman replied, "For G.o.d's sake, haven't I had trouble enough already to-day?" [Laughter.]

I am a little at a loss still to know how I got into this company to-night. I begin to feel like some of those United States Senators who, after they have reached Washington, look around and wonder how they got there. The nearest approach to being decorated with a sufficiently aristocratic epithet to make me worthy of admission to this Society was when I used to visit outside of my native State and be called a "Pennsylvania Dutchman." But history tells us that at the beginning of the Revolution there was a battle fought at Breed's Hill, and it was called the Battle of Bunker Hill, because it was not fought there; and I suppose I have been brought into this Dutch Society to-night because I am not a Dutchman. [Laughter.]

I have great admiration for these Dutchmen; they always get to the front. When they appear in New York they are always invited to seats on the roof; when they go into an orchestra, they are always given one of the big fiddles to play; and when they march in a procession, they are always sure to get a little ahead of the band. This Society differs materially from other so-called foreign societies. When we meet the English, we invariably refer to the common stock from which we sprang, but in the Dutch Society the stock is always preferred! and when a Dutchman dies, why, his funeral is like that funeral of Abel, who was killed by his brother Cain--no one is allowed to attend unless he belongs to a first family. [Laughter.]

Now, a Dutchman is only happy when he gets a "Van" attached to the front of his name, and a "dam" to the rear end of the city from which his ancestors came. I notice they are all very particular about the "dam."

[Laughter.]

There was a lady--a New York young lady--who had been spending several years in England and had just returned. She had posed awhile as a professional beauty. Then she attempted to marry into the aristocracy, but the market for t.i.tles was a little dull that year and she came home.

She had lived there long enough to become an Anglomaniac. She met a Dutchman in New York--I think he was a member of the Holland Society--and she said: "Everything seems so remarkably commonplace here, after getting back from England; I am sure you must admit that there is nothing so romantic here as in England." The Dutchman remarked: "Well, I don't know about that." She said: "I was stopping at a place in the country, with one of the members of the aristocracy, and there was a little piece of water--a sort of miniature lake, as it were--so sweet.

The waters were confined by little rustic walls, so to speak, and that was called the 'Earl's Oath'; we have nothing so romantic in New York, I'm sure." Said the Dutchman: "Oh, yes, here we have McComb's Dam."

[Laughter.]

But, Mr. President, I certainly am in earnest sympathy with the patriotic sentiment expressed in the toast which you have been pleased to a.s.sign to me to-night, saying, in effect, that the American is composed of the best strains of Europe, and the American cannot be worthy of his ancestors unless he aims to combine within himself the good qualities of all. America has gained much by being the conglomerate country that she is, made up of a commingling of the blood of other races. It is a well-known fact in the crossing of breeds that the best traits predominate in the result. We in this land, have gained much from the purity of those bloods; we have suffered little from the taint.

It is well in this material age, when we are dwelling so much upon posterity, not to be altogether oblivious to pedigree. It has been well said that he who does not respect his ancestors will never be likely to achieve anything for which his descendants will respect him. Man learns but very little in this world from precept; he learns something from experience; he learns much from example, and the "best teachers of humanity are the lives of worthy men."

We have a great many admirable so-called foreign societies in New York, and they are all doing good work--good work in collecting interesting historical data in regard to the ancestors who begat them; in regard to the lands from which they came--good work in the broad field of charity.

But it is the Holland Society which seems to be a little closer to us than the others--more _our_ Society, even with those of us who have no Dutch blood in our veins. We feel that these old Dutch names are really more closely a.s.sociated in our minds with the city of New York than with Holland itself.

The men from whom you sprang were well calculated to carry on the great work undertaken by them. In the first place, in that good old land they had educated the conscience. The conscience never lost its hold upon the man. He stood as firm in his convictions as the rock to its base. His religion was a religion of the soul, and not of the senses. He might have broken the tables of stone on which the laws were written; he never would have broken those laws themselves. He turned neither to the past with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He was a man inured to trials; practised in self-abnegation; educated in the severe school of adversity; and that little band which set out from Holland to take up its career in the New World was well calculated to undertake the work which Providence had marked out for them. Those men had had breathed into their nostrils at their very birth the true spirit of liberty.

Somehow or other liberty seemed to be indigenous in that land. They imbibed that true spirit of liberty which does not mean unbridled license of the individual, but that spirit of liberty which can turn blind submission into rational obedience; that spirit of liberty which Hall says stifles the voices of kings, dissipates the mists of superst.i.tion, kindles the flames of art, and pours happiness into the laps of the people. Those men started out boldly upon the ocean; they paused not until they dipped the fringes of their banners in the waters of the western seas. They built up this great metropolis. They bore their full share in building up this great nation and in planting in it their pure principles. They builded even better than they knew.

In the past year I think our people have been more inclined than ever before to pause and contemplate how big with events is the history of this land. It was developed by people who believed not in the "divine right of kings," but in the divine right of human liberty. If we may judge the future progress of this land by its progress in the past, it does not require that one should be endowed with prophetic vision to predict that in the near future this young but giant Republic will dominate the policy of the world. America was not born amidst the mysteries of barbaric ages; and it is about the only nation which knows its own birthday. Woven of the stoutest fibres of other lands, nurtured by a commingling of the best blood of other races, America has now cast off the swaddling-clothes of infancy, and stands forth erect, clothed in robes of majesty and power, in which the G.o.d who made her intends that she shall henceforth tread the earth; and to-day she may be seen moving down the great highways of history, teaching by example; moving at the head of the procession of the world's events; marching in the van of civilized and christianized liberty, her manifest destiny to light the torch of liberty till it illumines the entire pathway of the world, and till human freedom and human rights become the common heritage of mankind. [Applause.]

TRIBUTE TO GENERAL GRANT

[Speech of Horace Porter at the banquet of the Army of the Tennessee, upon the occasion of the inauguration of the Grant Equestrian Statue in Chicago, October 8, 1891.]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--When a man from the armies of the East finds himself in the presence of men of the armies of the West, he feels that he cannot strike their gait. He can only look at them wistfully and say, in the words of Charles II, "I always admired virtue, but I never could imitate it." [Laughter.] If I do not in the course of my remarks succeed in seeing each one of you, it will be because the formation of the Army of the Tennessee to-night is like its formation in the field, when it won its matchless victories, the heavy columns in the centre. [An allusion to the large columns in the room.] [Laughter.]

Almost all the conspicuous characters in history have risen to prominence by gradual steps, but Ulysses S. Grant seemed to come before the people with a sudden bound. Almost the first sight they caught of him was in the flashes of his guns, and the blaze of his camp-fires, those wintry days and nights in front of Donelson. From that hour until the closing triumph at Appomattox he was the leader whose name was the harbinger of victory. From the final sheath of his sword until the tragedy on Mount McGregor he was the chief citizen of the republic and the great central figure of the world. [Applause.] The story of his life savors more of romance than reality. It is more like a fabled tale of ancient days than the history of an American citizen of the nineteenth century. As light and shade produce the most attractive effects in a picture, so the singular contrasts, the strange vicissitudes in his marvellous career, surround him with an interest which attaches to few characters in history. His rise from an obscure lieutenancy to the command of the veteran armies of the republic; his transition from a frontier post of the untrodden West to the Executive Mansion of the nation; his sitting at one time in his little store in Galena, not even known to the Congressman from his own district; at another time striding through the palaces of the Old World, with the descendants of a line of Kings rising and standing uncovered in his presence [Applause.]--these are some of the features of his extraordinary career which appeal to the imagination, excite men's wonder, and fascinate all who read the story of his life. [Applause.]

General Grant possessed in a striking degree all the characteristics of the successful soldier. His methods were all stamped with tenacity of purpose, with originality and ingenuity. He depended for his success more upon the powers of invention than of adaptation, and the fact that he has been compared, at different times, to nearly every great commander in history is perhaps the best proof that he was like none of them. He was possessed of a moral and physical courage which was equal to every emergency in which he was placed: calm amidst excitement, patient under trials, never unduly elated by victory or depressed by defeat. While he possessed a sensitive nature and a singularly tender heart, yet he never allowed his sentiments to interfere with the stern duties of the soldier. He knew better than to attempt to hew rocks with a razor. He realized that paper bullets cannot be fired in warfare. He felt that the hardest blows bring the quickest results; that more men die from disease in sickly camps than from shot and sh.e.l.l in battle.

His magnanimity to foes, his generosity to friends, will be talked of as long as manly qualities are honored. [Applause.]

You know after Vicksburg had succ.u.mbed to him he said in his order: "The garrison will march out to-morrow. Instruct your commands to be quiet and orderly as the prisoners pa.s.s by, and make no offensive remarks."

After Lee's surrender at Appomattox, when our batteries began to fire triumphal salutes, he at once suppressed them, saying, in his order: "The war is over; the rebels are again our countrymen; the best way to celebrate the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the field." [Applause.] After the war General Lee and his officers were indicted in the civil courts of Virginia by directions of a President who was endeavoring to make treason odious and succeeding in making nothing so odious as himself. [Applause.] General Lee appealed to his old antagonist for protection. He did not appeal to that heart in vain.

General Grant at once took up the cudgels in his defence, threatened to resign his office if such officers were indicted while they continued to obey their paroles, and such was the logic of his argument and the force of his character that those indictments were soon after quashed.

So that he penned no idle plat.i.tude; he fashioned no stilted epigrams; he spoke the earnest convictions of an honest heart when he said, "Let us have peace." [Applause.] He never tired of giving unstinted praise to worthy subordinates for the work they did. Like the chief artists who weave the Gobelin tapestries, he was content to stand behind the cloth and let those in front appear to be the chief contributors to the beauty of the fabric. [Applause.]

One of the most beautiful chapters in all history is that which records the generous relations existing between him and Sherman, that great soldier who for so many years was the honored head of this society, that great chieftain whom men will always love to picture as a legendary knight moving at the head of conquering columns, whose marches were measured not by single miles, but by thousands; whose field of military operations covered nearly half a continent; whose orders always spoke with the true bluntness of the soldier; who fought from valley's depths to mountain heights, and marched from inland rivers to the sea.

[Applause.] Their rivalry manifested itself only in one respect--the endeavor of each to outdo the other in generosity. With hearts untouched by jealousy, with souls too great for rivalry, each stood ready to abandon the path of ambition when it became so narrow that two could not tread it abreast. [Applause.]

If there be one single word in all the wealth of the English language which best describes the predominating trait of General Grant's character, that word is "loyalty." [Applause.] Loyal to every great cause and work he was engaged in; loyal to his friends; loyal to his family; loyal to his country; loyal to his G.o.d. [Applause.] This produced a reciprocal effect in all who came in contact with him. It was one of the chief reasons why men became so loyally attached to him. It is true that this trait so dominated his whole character that it led him to make mistakes; it induced him to continue to stand by men who were no longer worthy of his confidence; but after all, it was a trait so grand, so n.o.ble, we do not stop to count the errors which resulted.

[Applause.] It showed him to be a man who had the courage to be just, to stand between worthy men and their unworthy slanderers, and to let kindly sentiments have a voice in an age in which the heart played so small a part in public life. Many a public man has had hosts of followers because they fattened on the patronage dispensed at his hands; many a one has had troops of adherents because they were blind zealots in a cause he represented, but perhaps no man but General Grant had so many friends who loved him for his own sake; whose attachment strengthened only with time; whose affection knew neither variableness, nor shadow of turning; who stuck to him as closely as the toga to Nessus, whether he was Captain, General, President, or simply private citizen. [Great applause.]

General Grant was essentially created for great emergencies; it was the very magnitude of the task which called forth the powers which mastered it. In ordinary matters he was an ordinary man. In momentous affairs he towered as a giant. When he served in a company there was nothing in his acts to distinguish him from the fellow-officers; but when he wielded corps and armies the great qualities of the commander flashed forth and his master strokes of genius placed him at once in the front rank of the world's great captains. When he hauled wood from his little farm and sold it in the streets of St. Louis there was nothing in his business or financial capacity different from that of the small farmers about him; but when, as President of the Republic, he found it his duty to puncture the fallacy of the inflationists, to throttle by a veto the attempt of unwise legislators to tamper with the American credit, he penned a State paper so logical, so masterly, that it has ever since been the pride, wonder, and admiration of every lover of an honest currency. [Applause.]

He was made for great things, not for little. He could collect for the nation $15,000,000 from Great Britain in settlement of the Alabama claims; he could not protect his own personal savings from the miscreants who robbed him in Wall Street.

But General Grant needs no eulogist. His name is indelibly engraved upon the hearts of his countrymen. His services attest his greatness. He did his duty and trusted to history for his meed of praise. The more history discusses him, the more brilliant becomes the l.u.s.tre of his deeds. His record is like a torch; the more it is shaken, the brighter it burns. His name will stand imperishable when epitaphs have vanished utterly, and monuments and statues have crumbled into dust; but the people of this great city, everywhere renowned for their deeds of generosity, have covered themselves anew with glory in fashioning in enduring bronze, in rearing in monumental rock that magnificent tribute to his worth which was to-day unveiled in the presence of countless thousands. As I gazed upon its graceful lines and colossal proportions I was reminded of that child-like simplicity which was mingled with the majestic grandeur of his nature. The memories cl.u.s.tering about it will recall the heroic age of the Republic; it will point the path of loyalty to children yet unborn; its mute eloquence will plead for equal sacrifice, should war ever again threaten the Nation's life; generations yet to come will pause to read the inscription which it bears, and the voices of a grateful people will ascend from the consecrated spot on which it stands, as incense rises from holy places, invoking blessings upon the memory of him who had filled to the very full the largest measure of human greatness and covered the earth with his renown.

[Applause.]

An indescribably touching incident happened which will ever be memorable and which never can be effaced from the memory of those who witnessed it. Even at this late date I can scarcely trust my own feelings to recall it. It was on Decoration Day in the City of New York, the last one he ever saw on earth. That morning the members of the Grand Army of the Republic, the veterans in that vicinity, arose earlier than was their wont. They seemed to spend more time that morning in unfurling the old battle flags, in burnishing the medals of honor which decorated their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, for on that day they had determined to march by the house of their dying commander to give him a last marching salute. In the streets the columns were forming; inside the house on that bed, from which he was never to rise again, lay the stricken chief. The hand which had seized the surrendered swords of countless thousands could scarcely return the pressure of the friendly grasp. The voice which had cheered on to triumphant victory the legions of America's manhood, could no longer call for the cooling draught which slaked the thirst of a fevered tongue; and prostrate on that bed of anguish lay the form which in the New World had ridden at the head of the conquering column, which in the Old World had been deemed worthy to stand with head covered and feet sandaled in the presence of princes, kings, and emperors. Now his ear caught the sound of martial music. Bands were playing the same strains which had mingled with the echoes of his guns at Vicksburg, the same quick-steps to which his men had sped in hot haste in pursuit of Lee through Virginia. And then came the heavy, measured steps of moving columns, a step which can be acquired only by years of service in the field. He recognized it all now. It was the tread of his old veterans.

With his little remaining strength he arose and dragged himself to the window. As he gazed upon those battle-flags dipping to him in salute, those precious standards bullet-riddled, battle-stained, but remnants of their former selves, with scarcely enough left of them on which to print the names of the battles they had seen, his eyes once more kindled with the flames which had lighted them at Shiloh, on the heights of Chattanooga, amid the glories of Appomattox; and as those war-scarred veterans looked with uncovered heads and upturned faces for the last time upon the pallid features of their old chief, cheeks which had been bronzed by Southern suns and begrimed with powder, were bathed in the tears of a manly grief. Soon they saw rising the hand which had so often pointed out to them the path of victory. He raised it slowly and painfully to his head in recognition of their salutations. The column had pa.s.sed, the hand fell heavily by his side. It was his last military salute. [Long continued applause and cheers.]

NOAH PORTER

TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Noah Porter, President of Yale College, at the seventy-second anniversary banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1877. The President of the Society, William Borden, occupied the chair. This speech of President Porter followed a speech of President Eliot of Harvard.

The two Presidents spoke in response to the toast: "Harvard and Yale, the two elder sisters among the educational inst.i.tutions of New England, where generous rivalry has ever promoted patriotism and learning. Their children have, in peace and war, in life and death, deserved well of the Republic. Smile, Heaven, upon this fair conjunction."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--The somewhat miscellaneous character of the sentiment which has called me up embarra.s.ses me not a little as to which of the points I should select as the subject of my remarks. I am still more embarra.s.sed by the introduction of additional topics on the part of my friend, the President of Harvard College. The president knows that it is our custom to meet once a year, and discuss all the matters to which he has referred, as often as we meet. [Laughter.] He knows also that he was providentially prevented, by a very happy occurrence to himself, from attending our last College Convention; and in consequence of his absence, for which we all excused and congratulated him, the meeting was more than usually tame. [Laughter.] Now, I find that all the sentiments which he had been gathering for a year have been precipitated upon me on this occasion. [Laughter.] I rejoice that His Excellency, the President of the United States, and the distinguished Secretary of State [Rutherford B. Hayes and William M. Evarts], are between us. [Laughter.]

For here is a special occasion for the application of the policy of peace. [Laughter.] I therefore reserve what few remarks I shall make upon this special theme for a moment later.

The first point in the sentiment proposed recognizes New England as the mother of two colleges. I think we should do well also to call to mind, especially under the circ.u.mstances by which we are surrounded this evening, that New England was not merely the mother of two colleges which have had some influence in this land, but that New England, with all its glory and its achievements, was, in a certain sense, the creation of a college. It would be easy to show that had it not been for the existence of one or two rather inferior colleges of the University of Cambridge in England, there never would have been a New England. In these colleges were gathered and trained not a few of the great leaders of opinion under whose influence the father of New England became a great political power in the mother country. It is not to the Pilgrim Fathers alone who landed at Plymouth on December 22, 1620, that New England owes its characteristic principles and its splendid renown, but it is also to the leaders of the great Puritan party in England, who reinforced that immigration by the subsequent higher and n.o.bler life of the planters of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, conspicuous among whom was the distinguished and ever-to-be-honored Governor Winthrop. [Applause.]

It was from these colleges that so many strong-hearted young men went forth into political public life in England to act the scholar in politics, and who, as scholars in politics, enunciated those new principles and new theories of government which made Old England glorious for a time, and which made New England the power for good which she afterward became, first at her home in the old States, and in all their extension westward even to this hour. These scholars sought emphatically a reform of the civil service in England. That was their mission. They vindicated their principles upon the scaffold and their rights upon the field of battle at home, and they transmitted that spirit to the emigrants who came out from among them before the great rebellion reached its great crisis and finished its memorable history.

While, then, we honor the universities of which New England has been the mother, let us remember that New England owes its being to a university. In remembering this, we shall be prepared to follow in the steps of our fathers, and to be mindful of what we ourselves owe to our own inst.i.tutions of learning.

In respect to the rivalry between Yale and Harvard, which was noticed in the sentiment to which I speak, and in reply to the suggestions which have been offered by the President of Harvard, I will venture a single remark. You, sir, who are learned in our New England history, are not unfamiliar with the saying which was once somewhat current, that when a man was found in Boston, in the earlier generations, who was a little too bad to live with, they sent him to Rhode Island [Laughter.]; and when they found a man who was a little too good to be a comfortable neighbor, they sent him to Connecticut. [Laughter.] The remainder--the men of average respectability and worth--were allowed to remain on the sh.o.r.es of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay and in Boston. And so it happened that these people of average goodness, from constantly looking each other in the face, contracted the habit of always praising one another with especial emphasis; and the habit has not been altogether outgrown. [Laughter.]

The people of Rhode Island, being such as I have described, found it necessary to have certain principles of toleration to suit their peculiar condition, which they denominated the principles of soul liberty.

The people of Connecticut, being so very good, could not allow their goodness to remain at home, and they very soon proceeded on a missionary errand westward toward the city of New York, and in due time captured the harbor and the infant city, and the great river of the North. In this way, New York fell into the hands of those super-excellent Connecticut Yankees, and with that began the stream of emigration westward which has made our country what it is. [Laughter and applause.]

Perhaps this piece of history is about as good an explanation of the jealousy of Yale toward Harvard as the interpretation which has been given by the President of that honorable university--that Yale College was founded because of the discontent of the self-righteous Puritans of Connecticut with the religious opinions of the ruling spirits at Harvard. [Laughter.] That piece of information has been amply discussed and exploded by an able critic, and I will not repeat the arguments here.