Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 8

I would, gentlemen, it were in my power to present, as on the mirror in the Arabian tale, the various scenes in our extended country, where the master-mind of our guest is at this moment acting. In the empty school-room, the boy at his evening task has dropped his grammar, that he may roam with Oliver or Nell. The traveller has forgotten the fumes of the crowded steamboat, and is far off with our guest, among the green valleys and h.o.a.ry hills of old England. The trapper, beyond the Rocky Mountains, has left his lonely tent, and is unroofing the houses in London with the more than Mephistopheles at my elbow. And, perhaps, in some well-lighted hall, the unbidden tear steals from the father's eye, as the exquisite sketch of the poor schoolmaster and his little scholar brings back the form of that gifted boy, whose "little hand" worked its wonders under his guidance, and who, in the dawning of intellect and warm affections, was summoned from the school-room and the play-ground forever. Or to some bereaved mother the tender sympathies and womanly devotion, the touching purity of little Nell, may call up the form where dwelt that harmonious soul, which uniting in itself G.o.d's best gifts, for a short s.p.a.ce shed its celestial light upon her household, and then vanishing, "turned all hope into memory."

But it is not to scenes like these that I would now recall you. I would that my voice could reach the ear of every admirer of our guest throughout the land, that with us they might welcome him, on this, his first public appearance to our sh.o.r.es. Like the rushing of many waters, the response would come to us from the bleak hills of Canada, from the savannas of the South, from the prairies of the West, uniting in an "earthquake voice" in the cheers with which we welcome Charles d.i.c.kens to this new world.

ANDREW V. V. RAYMOND

THE DUTCH AS ENEMIES

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Andrew V. V. Raymond at the thirteenth annual dinner of the Holland Society of New York, January 12, 1898. The President, John W. Vrooman, said: "I must now make good a promise, and permit me to ill.u.s.trate it by a brief story. A minister about to perform the last rites for a dying man, a resident of Kentucky, said to him with solemnity that he hoped he was ready for a better land. The man instantly rallied and cried out, 'Look here, Mr.

Minister, there ain't no better land than Kentucky!' To secure the attendance of our genial and eloquent College President I made a promise to him to state publicly at this time that there is no better college in the world than Union College; that there is no better president in the world than the president of old Union; and I may add that there is no better man than my valued friend, President Andrew V. V. Raymond, of Union College, who will respond to the toast: 'The Dutch as Enemies.--Did a person but know the value of an enemy he would purchase him with fine gold.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT:--Ladies--to whom now, as always, I look up for inspiration--and gentlemen of the Holland Society, when one has been rocked in a Dutch cradle, and baptized with a Dutch name and caressed with a Dutch slipper, and nursed on Dutch history, and fed on Dutch theology, he is open to accept an invitation from the Holland Society.

It is now four years since I had the pleasure of speaking my mind freely about the Dutch, and in the meantime so much mind--or is it only speech--has acc.u.mulated that the present opportunity comes very much like a merciful interposition of Providence on my behalf. During these years my residence has been changed, for whereas I used to live in Albany now I live in Schenectady, which is like moving from The Hague to Leyden, or in other words, going a little farther into the heart of Dutchdom, for nowhere else is Dutch spelled with a larger D than in the city of my residence to-day, with Lisha's Kill on one side, and Rotterdam on another, and Amsterdam on the third, and a real d.y.k.e on the fourth, to say nothing of the ca.n.a.l.

You do not remember that speech of mine four years ago for you did not hear it. That was not my fault, however, but your misfortune, of course.

You did not hear it because you were not here. You were asleep in your own beds, of course, where Dutchmen always go when they are sleepy, which is perhaps the princ.i.p.al reason why they are not caught napping in business hours. Unfortunately, however, that speech was printed in full, or I might repeat it now. One learns from such little experiences what not to do the next time. But if you do not remember the speech, I do--at least the subject--which was "The Dutch as Neighbors," and it has seemed wise to get as far as possible from that subject to-night lest I might be tempted to plagiarize, and so I propose to talk for a moment only about "The Dutch as Enemies."

I do not like the first suggestion of this subject any more than do you.

For to think of a man as an enemy is to think ill of him, and to intimate that the Dutchman was not and is not perfect is to intimate something which no one here will believe, and which no one certainly came to hear. But as a matter of fact, gentlemen, no one can be perfect without being an enemy any more than he can be perfect without being a friend. The two things are complementary; the one is the reverse side of the other. Everything in this universe, except a shadow, has two sides--unless, perhaps, it may be a political machine whose one-sidedness is so proverbial as to suggest that it also is a thing wholly of darkness caused by someone standing in the way of the light.

The Dutchman, however, is not a shadow of anything or of anybody. You can walk around him, and when you do that you find that he has not only a kindly face and a warm hand, but something called backbone, and it is that of which I am to speak to-night, for it suggests about all that I mean by the Dutchman as an enemy.

Some people are enemies, or become enemies, because of their spleen; others because of their total depravity; and others still because they persist in standing upright when someone wants them to lie down and be stepped on. That is the meaning of backbone, in this world of human strife, and if, from time to time, it has made an enemy of the peace-loving Dutchman, it has been the kind of enmity that has gathered to itself not a little grat.i.tude, for after all it is the kind of enmity that has made this world more tolerable as a place of temporary abode. If no one opposes tyrants and thieves and heretics and franchise-grabbers, city lots fall rapidly in price. It is the Dutchman who keeps up the real estate market. When I have suggested that it is because of his opposition that he is regarded as an enemy, I have come to the heart of all that I propose to say to-night. As a matter of fact, the Dutchman has never been very aggressive. He may not be enterprising, but his powers of resistance are superb, and as this world wags it is often better to hold fast than it is to be fast.

If the Dutchman has not been aggressive, he has certainly been steadfast. He has never become an enemy willingly, but always under compulsion; willing to let other people alone if they will let him alone, and if they will not do that, then he makes them do it. Those d.y.k.es tell the whole story. The Dutchman did not want the sea--only the earth. But when the sea wanted him he took up arms against it. It was so with those Roman legions. The Dutchman had no quarrel with Rome until Rome wanted to extend its empire that way, and to acquire him and grow fat from his tribute money. But the Dutchman had no need of an empire up his way, and so kept his tribute money, and sent the eagles home hungry.

If Spain had not wanted to whip the Dutchman, the Dutchman would not have whipped Spain. If England had not wanted a brush with the Dutch, that broom would never have been nailed to Tromp's masthead. If Jameson had not tried to raid the Dutchman, the Dutchman would not have corralled Jameson. From first to last, his battles have been on the defensive. He has always been ambitious to be a good friend with the latch-string always on the outside, and has only become an enemy when somebody has tried to get into his house through the window. That kind of enmity hurts no one who does not deserve to be hurt.

As this world goes, it is a great thing to say of a man that he never gets down his gun until he sees another gun pointed his way, but it is a greater thing to say that when he does see that other gun he does not get under the bed, and that is what can be said of the Dutchman more than of any other man in the world. He will not run into a fight; he will not run away from a fight--in fact he has no reputation whatever as a runner in any direction. But he can take a stand, and when the smoke has cleared away there he is, still standing. He will not vote himself an enemy, but if against his will he is voted an enemy, he accepts the election, and discharges the duties of his office with painstaking vigilance and care. Now, no one does that, and ever gets re-elected, no matter what the office. Such is the world. And so the Dutchman has never been voted an enemy twice by the same people. One term of his vigorous administration of hostile forces is quite enough, and inasmuch as he does not care for the office personally, and takes it only from a sense of duty, he never seeks a re-election. He is always ready to step down and out, and resume his old occupation of being a good neighbor and a peace-loving citizen.

That is perhaps his greatest virtue, and it all grows out of the fact that his spirit of antagonism is located in his backbone, leaving his heart free. He does not love strife and he does not hate the man with whom he fights, and so, in all his battles, he has never been vindictive, cruel, merciless. When he has had to fight he has fought like a man and a Christian, for righteousness' sake, and not like a demon to humiliate and to annihilate his foes. That makes the Dutchman a rare kind of enemy, and that, more than anything else, I think, has distinguished his enmity through all the years of his history. He has gone far toward obeying the precept, "Love your enemies, and bless them that curse you." If he has not been able to keep men from hating him, and cursing him, and persecuting him, he has been able to keep himself from hating and cursing and persecuting in return; and so, while he is one of the greatest of military heroes in history, he is also one of the greatest of moral heroes, and that is a greater honor, inasmuch as "He that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city."

I do not claim all glory for the Dutch. It is not given to any one nation to monopolize virtue. I only a.s.sert that the Dutchman's virtue is of a peculiarly exalted type. The Englishman's virtue is just as real, only another kind of virtue. If the Dutchman's spirit of hostility or of antagonism resides in his backbone, the Englishman's spirit of hostility or antagonism resides in his breastbone. That makes all the difference between them. The Englishman fights, but he fights aggressively. And as the heart lies back of the breastbone it never gets into his fighting.

He neither loves his enemies nor hates them. He simply loves England. If it has been the mission of the Dutch to keep, it has been the mission of the English to get, and in the getting he has had to do a world of fighting.

It comes with ill grace from us, however, to condemn the Englishman when to-day Uncle Sam is standing on the Pacific Slope expanding his chest toward Hawaii. But if we cannot condemn with good grace, there is no need to praise English aggressiveness and acquisitiveness overmuch; what we do need to praise and cultivate is the Dutch virtue of holding fast our own. We have inst.i.tutions and principles, rights and privileges, in this country which are constantly attacked, and the need of America is that the backbone which the Dutch have given to this country should a.s.sert itself. Hospitality loses its virtue when it means the destruction of the Lares and Penates of our own firesides. When a guest insists on sitting at the head of the table, then it is time for the host to become _hostis_. What America needs in this new year of grace is not less hospitality toward friends but more hostility toward intruders.

The spirit of this age is iconoclastic. It seeks to destroy sacred memorials, hallowed a.s.sociations, holy shrines, everything that tells of the faith and the worship of a G.o.d-fearing past. The spirit of the age is irreverent, destructive, faithless. Against this and all despoiling forces we as patriots are called to arms. For what does America stand?

What are the truths that have gone into her blood and made her strong and beautiful and dominant? The divineness of human rights, the claims of men superior to the claims of property; popular government--not an oligarchy; popular government--not a dictatorship; the sacredness of the home, the holiness of the sanctuary, faith in humanity, faith in G.o.d. These have made America, and without these there can be no America.

And because they are attacked, gentlemen, the need of the hour is a patriotism that shall breathe forth the spirit of the people who above all others in history have known how to keep their land, their honor, and their faith. The mission of little Holland will never be ended so long as America needs the inspiration of her glorious example, and the devoted citizenship of her loving sons.

OPIE P. READ

MODERN FICTION

[Speech of Opie P. Read at the eighty-second dinner of the Sunset Club, Chicago, Ill., January 31, 1895. The general subject of the evening's discussion was "The Tendency and Influence of Modern Fiction." The chairman of the evening, Arthur W. Underwood, said in introducing Mr. Read, "It is very seldom that the Sunset Club discharges its speakers in batteries of four, but something is due to the speakers. Four barrels is a light load, I am told, for a Kentucky colonel, and I have the pleasure of introducing the original 'Kentucky Colonel,' Mr. Opie P. Read."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--The drift of latter-day fiction is largely shown by the department store. The selling of books by the ton proves a return to the extremes of romanticism. People do not jostle one another in their eagerness to secure even a semblance of the truth.

The taste of to-day is a strong appet.i.te for sadism; and a novel to be successful must bear the stamp of society rather than the approval of the critic. The reader has gone slumming, and must be shocked in order to be amused. Reviewers tell us of a revolt against realism, that we no longer fawn upon a dull truth, that we crave gauze rather than substance. In fact, realism was never a fad. Truth has never been fashionable; no society takes up philosophy as an amus.e.m.e.nt.

But after all, popular taste does not make a literature. Strength does not meet with immediate recognition; originality is more often condemned than praised. The intense book often dies with one reading, its story is a wild pigeon of the mind, and sails away to be soon forgotten; but the novel in which there is even one real character, one man of the soil, remains with us as a friend. In the minds of thinking people, realism cannot be supplanted. But by realism, I do not mean the commonplace details of an uninteresting household, nor the hired man with mud on his cowhide boots, nor the whining farmer who sits with his feet on the kitchen-stove, but the glory that we find in nature and the grandeur that we find in man, his bravery, his honor, his self-sacrifice, his virtue. Realism does not mean the unattractive. A rose is as real as a toad. And a realistic novel of the days of Caesar would be worth more than Plutarch's Lives.

Every age sees a literary revolution, but out of that revolution there may come no great work of art. The best fiction is the unconscious grace of a cultivated mind, a catching of the quaint humor of men, a soft look of mercy, a sympathetic tear. And this sort of a book may be neglected for years, no busy critic may speak a word in its behalf, but there comes a time when by the merest accident a great mind finds it and flashes its genius back upon the cloud that has hidden it.

Yes, there is a return to romanticism, if indeed there was ever a turn from it. The well-told story has ever found admirers. To the world all the stories have not been told. The stars show no age, and the sun was as bright yesterday as it was the morning after creation. But a simple story without character is not the highest form of fiction. It is a story that may become a fad, if it be shocking enough, if it has in it the thrill of delicious wickedness, but it cannot live. The literary lion of to-day may be the literary a.s.s of to-morrow, but the a.s.s has his bin full of oats and cannot complain.

One very striking literary tendency of to-day is the worship of the English author in America and the hissing of the American author in London. And this proves that American literature is scarcely more popular in England than it is at home. But may not American publishers after awhile take up a London hissing and use it as an advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Hissing is surely a recognition, and proves that an author has not been wholly neglected.

The novel, whether it be of cla.s.sic form or of faddish type, makes a mark upon the mind of the public. Fiction is a necessary element of modern education. A man may be a successful physician or a noted lawyer without having read a novel; but he could not be regarded as a man of refined culture. A novel is an intellectual luxury, and in the luxuries of a country we find the refinements of the nation. It was not invention but fancy that made Greece great. A novel-reading nation is a progressive nation. At one time the most successful publication in this country was a weekly paper filled with graceless sensationalism, and it was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform that took hold of the public taste and lifted it above this trash--it was the publication in cheap form of the English cla.s.sics. And when the mind of the ma.s.ses had been thus improved, the magazine became a success.

One slow but unmistakable drift of fiction is toward the short story, and the carefully edited newspaper may hold the fiction of the future.

WHITELAW REID

THE PRESS--RIGHT OR WRONG

[Speech of Whitelaw Reid at the 108th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, May 4, 1876. Samuel D.

Babc.o.c.k, President of the Chamber, was in the chair, and proposed the following toast, to which Mr. Reid was called upon for a response: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right."]

MR. PRESIDENT:--Lastly, Satan came also, the printer's, if not the public's devil, _in propria persona_! [Laughter.] The rest of you gentlemen have better provided for yourselves. Even the Chamber of Commerce took the benefit of clergy. The Presidential candidates and the representatives of the Administration and the leading statesmen who throng your hospitable board, all put forward as their counsel the Attorney-General [Alphonso Taft] of the United States. And, as one of his old clients at my left said a moment ago, "a precious dear old counsel he was." [Laughter.]

The Press is without clergymen or counsel; and you doubtless wish it were also without voice. At this hour none of you have the least desire to hear anything or to say anything about the press. There are a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that platform--I utterly refuse to say whether I refer to Presidential candidates or not--but there were a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that table, who are very much more anxious to know what the press to-morrow morning will have to say about them [laughter], and I know it because I saw the care with which they handed up to the reporters the ma.n.u.script copies of their entirely unprepared and extempore remarks. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, the press is a mild-spoken and truly modest inst.i.tution which never chants its own praises. Unlike Walt Whitman, it never celebrates itself. Even if it did become me--one of the youngest of its conductors in New York--to undertake at this late hour to inflict upon you its eulogy, there are two circ.u.mstances which might well make me pause. It is an absurdity for me--an absurdity, indeed, for any of us--to a.s.sume to speak for the press of New York at a table where William Cullen Bryant sits silent. Besides, I have been reminded since I came here, by Dr. Chapin, that the pithiest eulogy ever p.r.o.nounced upon the first editor of America, was p.r.o.nounced in this very room and from that very platform by the man who at that time was the first of living editors in this country, when he said that he honored the memory of Benjamin Franklin because he was a journeyman printer who did not drink, a philosopher who wrote common sense, and an office-holder who did not steal. [Applause.]

One word only of any seriousness about your toast; it says: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right." Gentlemen, this is your affair. A stream will not rise higher than its fountain. The Hudson River will not flow backward over the Adirondacks. The press of New York is fed and sustained by the commerce of New York, and the press of New York to-day, bad as it is in many respects--and I take my full share of the blame it fairly deserves--is just what the merchants of New York choose to have it. If you want it better, you can make it better. So long as you are satisfied with it as it is, sustain it as it is, take it into your families and into your counting-rooms as it is, and encourage it as it is, it will remain what it is.

If, for instance, the venerable leader of your Bar, conspicuous through a long life for the practice of every virtue that adorns his profession and his race, is met on his return from the very jaws of the grave, as he re-enters the Court-room to undertake again the gratuitous championship of your cause against thieves who robbed you, with the slander that he is himself a thief of the meanest kind, a robber of defenceless women--I say if such a man is subject to persistent repet.i.tion of such a calumny in the very city he has honored and served, and at the very end and crown of his life, it is because you do not choose to object to it and make your objection felt. A score of similar instances will readily occur to anyone who runs over in his memory the course of our munic.i.p.al history for the last dozen years, but there is no time to repeat or even to refer to them here.

And so, Mr. President, because this throng of gentlemen, gathered about the doors, pay me the too great compliment by remaining standing to listen when they have started to go home--let me come back to the text you gave me, and the sentiment with which we began: "The Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be set right."

[Applause.] The task in either case is to be performed by the merchants of New York, who have the power to do it and only need resolve that they will.

I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the continued attractions of the annual entertainment you offer us; above all, I congratulate you on having given us the great pleasure of meeting once more and seeing seated together at your table the first four citizens of the metropolis of the Empire State: Charles O'Conor, Peter Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and John A. Dix. I thank you for the courtesy of your remembrance of the Press; and so to one and all, good-night. [Applause.]