Modern Eloquence Volume Iii Part 16

HONORED GUESTS AND FELLOW-MEMBERS:--I am sure that you have greatly enjoyed the brilliant and witty speech to which you have just listened--a speech which shows that our distinguished guest is as felicitous at the dinner-table as he is signally successful in other fields of oratory. But if you have deluded yourself with the idea that because of this change in the programme you are to escape the infliction of the usual address by the President of the Society, it is now my duty to undeceive you. [Laughter.] Even the keen reflections of General Harrison respecting the prepared impromptu speeches shall not deter us.

The rest of us who are not as gifted as he is have expended too much midnight oil and sacrificed too much of the gray matter of the brain to lose our opportunity. You will see that we have antic.i.p.ated his impromptu observations by carefully premeditating our impromptu reply.

[Laughter.] Lord Beaconsfield said that Carlyle had reasons to speak civilly of Cromwell, for Cromwell would have hanged him. [Laughter.]

General Harrison has been hanging the rest of us--yes, hanging and quartering us--though this is far from being the only reason for speaking civilly of him, and yet we must go on with the exhibition.

You have observed that on the programme, as arranged by the Committee, the first number is a prelude by the President and the last a hymn by the Society. The Committee evidently intended to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you have already had a part of the music and you will have the rest when I am done. For my part is only that of the leader in the old Puritan choir--to take up the tuning fork and pitch the key; and I do this when I say that we are a.s.sembled for the two hundred and seventy-third time [laughter] to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. If any one doubts the correctness of that chronology, let him consult Brothers Shortridge and Lewis and Clark and Cornish, who have been with us from the beginning. [Laughter.] We have met to celebrate these fourfathers [laughter], as well as some others, and to glorify ourselves. If we had any doubts about the duty we owe our ancestors, we have no scruples about the satisfaction we take in their posterity. "My idea of first-rate poetry," said Josh Billings, "is the kind of poetry that I would have writ." So our idea of first-rate posterity is the kind of posterity we are. [Laughter.]

But while not forgetting the posterity, it is not forbidden at these dinners to make an occasional and casual allusion to the Pilgrim Fathers. Thackeray tells us of an ardent young lady who had a devotion of the same sort to "Nicholas Nickleby." When she wanted instruction, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she wanted amus.e.m.e.nt, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she had leisure, she read "Nicholas Nickleby."

When she was busy, she read "Nicholas Nickleby." When she was sick, she read "Nicholas Nickleby," and when she got well, she read "Nicholas Nickleby" over again. [Laughter.] We return with the same infrequent, inconstant and uncertain fidelity to the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers.

If we seek the light persiflage and airy humor of the after-dinner spirit, we find an inexhaustible fountain in the quaint customs and odd conceits of the Pilgrim Fathers. If we seek the enkindling fire and the moral elevation of high principle and profound conviction and resolute courage, we find a never-ceasing inspiration in the unfaltering earnestness and imperishable deeds of the Pilgrim Fathers. [Applause.]

After praying for all the rest of mankind, the good colored preacher closed up with the invocation "And, finally, O Lord! bless the people of the uninhabited portions of the globe." [Laughter.] We are sometimes as comprehensive in our good-will as the colored brother; but to-night we fix our thoughts upon that more limited portion of mankind which belongs in nativity or ancestry to that more restricted part of the globe known as New England.

We are here to sing the praises of these st.u.r.dy people. They, too, sang--and sang with a fervor that was celebrated in the memorable inscription on one of the pews of old Salem Church:--

"Could poor King David but for once To Salem Church repair, And hear his Psalms thus warbled out, Good Lord! how he would swear."

And it was not in Salem Church, either, that the Psalms were sung with the peculiar variations of which we have record. An enterprising establishment proposed to furnish all the hymn-books to a congregation not abundantly blessed with this world's goods, provided it might insert a little advertis.e.m.e.nt. The thrifty congregation in turn thought there would be no harm in binding up any proper announcement with Watt and Doddridge; but when they a.s.sembled on Christmas morning, they started back aghast as they found themselves singing--

"Hark! The herald angels sing, Beecham's Pills are just the thing; Peace on earth and mercy mild, Two for man and one for child."

But if the Pilgrim Fathers were not the sweetest warblers, they at least never wobbled. They always went direct to their mark. As Emerson said of Napoleon, they would shorten a straight line to get at a point. They faced the terrors of the New England northeast blast and starved in the wilderness in order that we might live in freedom. We have literally turned the tables on them and patiently endure the trying hardships of this festive board in order that their memories may not die in forgetfulness.

We can never forget the hardships which they were forced to endure, but at the same time we must recognize that they had some advantages over us. They escaped some of the inflictions to which we have been compelled to submit. They braved the wintry blast of Plymouth, but they never knew the everlasting wind of the United States Senate. [Laughter.] They slumbered under the long sermons of Cotton Mather, but they never dreamed of the fourteen consecutive hours of Nebraska Allen or Nevada Stewart. They battled with Armenian dogmas and Antinomian heresies, but they never experienced the exhilarating delights of the Silver debate or throbbed under the rapturous and tumultuous emotions of a Tariff Schedule. [Laughter.]

They had their days of festivity. They observed the annual day of Thanksgiving with a reverent, and not infrequently with a jocund, spirit; but advanced as they were in many respects, they never reached that sublime moral elevation and that high state of civilization which enable us in our day to see that the only true way to observe Thanksgiving is to shut up the churches and revel in the spiritual glories of the flying wedge and the triumphant touchdown. [Laughter.]

Their calendar had three great red-letter days of celebration: Commencement day, which expressed and emphasized the foremost place they gave to education in their civil and religious polity; Training or Muster day, which ill.u.s.trated the spirit and the skill that gave them victory over the Indians and made them stand undaunted on Bunker Hill under Warren and Putnam until above the gleaming column of red-coats they could look into the whites of the enemies' eyes; and Election day, upon which, with its election sermon and its solemn choice of rulers, they acted out their high sense of patriotic duty to the Commonwealth.

We are deeply concerned in these days about the debas.e.m.e.nt of the ballot-box. Perhaps we could find a panacea in the practice of our Pilgrim Fathers. They enacted a law that the right of suffrage should be limited to church members in good standing. Suppose we had such a law now, what a mighty revolution it would work either in exterminating fraud or in promoting piety! "Men and Brethren!" said the colored parson, "two ways are open before you, the broad and narrow way which leads to perdition, and the straight and crooked way which leads to d.a.m.nation." [Laughter.] We have before us now the two ways of stuffed ballot-boxes and empty pews, and our problem is to change the stuffing from the ballot-boxes to the pews. I am not altogether sure which result would be accomplished; but it is quite clear that if the law of our Fathers did not destroy corruption in politics, it would at least kindle a fresh interest in the church. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, it is with honest pride and fresh inspiration that we gather once a year to revive our enkindling story. The Santa Maria, with its antique form and its flying pennant, contrasting the past with the present, amid the dazzling and now vanishing splendors of the wondrous White City, has this year recalled the discovery of America. But the jewel is more precious than the casket. The speaking picture appeals to us more than its stately setting. And heroic as was the voyage of the Santa Maria across a trackless sea to an unknown continent, it was the n.o.bler mission of the Mayflower to bring the priceless seeds of principle and liberty which have blossomed in the resplendent development and progress of our great free Republic. Conscience incarnate in Brewster and Bradford, in Winthrop and Winslow, smote Plymouth Rock; and from that hour there has poured forth from its rich fountain a perennial stream of intellectual and moral force which has flooded and fertilized a broad continent. The Puritan spirit was duty; the Puritan creed was conscience; the Puritan principle was individual freedom; the Puritan demand was organized liberty, guaranteed and regulated by law. [Applause.] That spirit is for to-day as much as for two centuries ago. It fired at Lexington the shot heard round the world, and it thundered down the ages in the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. It lives for no narrow section and it is limited to no single cla.s.s. The soul that accepts G.o.d and conscience and equal manhood has the Puritan spirit, whether he comes from Ma.s.sachusetts or Virginia, from Vermont or Indiana; whether you call him Quaker or Catholic, disciple of Saint Nicholas or follower of Saint George. [Applause.] The Puritan did not pa.s.s away with his early struggles. He has changed his garb and his speech; he has advanced with the progress of the age; but in his fidelity to principle and his devotion to duty he lives to-day as truly as he lived in the days of the Puritan Revolution and the Puritan Pilgrimage. His spirit shines in the lofty teachings of Channing and in the unbending principles of Sumner, in the ripened wisdom of Emerson and in the rhythmical lessons of Longfellow. The courageous John Pym was not more resolute and penetrating in leading the great struggle in the Long Parliament than was George F. Edmunds in the Senate of the United States. And the intrepid and sagacious John Hampden, heroic in battle and supreme in council, wise, steadfast, and true, was but a prototype of Benjamin Harrison.

HERBERT SPENCER

THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION

[Speech of Herbert Spencer at a dinner given in his honor in New York City, November 9, 1882. William M. Evarts presided.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--Along with your kindness there comes to me a great unkindness from Fate; for now, that above all times in my life I need the full command of what powers of speech I possess, disturbed health so threatens to interfere with them, that I fear I shall often inadequately express myself. Any failure in my response you must please ascribe, in part at least, to a greatly disordered nervous system. Regarding you as representing Americans at large, I feel that the occasion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought to begin with the time, some two and twenty years ago, when my highly valued friend, Professor Youmans, making efforts to diffuse my books here, interested on their behalf Messrs. Appleton, who have ever treated me so honorably and so handsomely; and I ought to detail from that time onward the various marks and acts of sympathy by which I have been encouraged in a struggle which was for many years disheartening.

But intimating thus briefly my general indebtedness to my numerous friends most of them unknown on this side of the Atlantic, I must name more especially the many attentions and proffered hospitalities met with during my late tour as well as, lastly and chiefly, this marked expression of the sympathies and good wishes which many of you have travelled so far to give at great cost of that time which is so precious to an American. I believe I may truly say that the better health which you have so cordially wished me will be in a measure furthered by the wish; since all pleasurable emotion is conducive to health, and as you will fully believe, the remembrance of this evening will ever continue to be a source of pleasurable emotion exceeded by few if any of my remembrances.

And now that I have thanked you sincerely though too briefly, I am going to find fault with you. Already in some remarks drawn from me respecting American affairs and American character, I have pa.s.sed criticisms which have been accepted far more good-naturedly than I could reasonably have expected; and it seems strange that I should now again propose to transgress. However, the fault I have to comment upon is one which most will scarcely regard as a fault. It seems to me that in one respect Americans have diverged too widely from savages. I do not mean to say that they are in general unduly civilized. Throughout large parts of the population even in long-settled regions there is no excess of those virtues needed for the maintenance of social harmony. Especially out in the West men's dealings do not yet betray too much of the "sweetness and light" which we are told distinguish the cultured man from the barbarian; nevertheless there is a sense in which my a.s.sertion is true.

You know that the primitive man lacks power of application. Spurred by hunger, by danger or revenge he can exert himself energetically for a time, but his energy is spasmodic. Monotonous daily toil is impossible to him. It is otherwise with the more developed man. The stern discipline of social life has gradually increased the apt.i.tude for persistent industry; until among us, and still more among you, work has become with many a pa.s.sion. This contrast of nature is another aspect.

The savage thinks only of present satisfactions and leaves future satisfactions uncared for. Contrariwise the American, eagerly pursuing a future good almost ignores what good the pa.s.sing day offers him; and when the future good is gained, he neglects that while striving for some still remoter good.

What I have seen and heard during my stay among you has forced on me the belief that this slow change from habitual inertness to persistent activity has reached an extreme from which there must begin a counter-change--a reaction. Everywhere I have been struck with the number of faces which told in strong lines of the burdens that had to be borne. I have been struck, too, with the large proportion of gray-haired men; and inquiries have brought out the fact that with you the hair commonly begins to turn some ten years earlier than with us.

Moreover, in every circle I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse due to the stress of business, or named friends who had either killed themselves by overwork or had been permanently incapacitated or had wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health.

I do but echo the opinion of all the observant persons I have spoken to that immense injury is being done by this high-pressure life--the physique is being undermined. That subtle thinker and poet whom you have lately had to mourn--Emerson,--says in his "Essay on the Gentleman,"

that the first requisite is that he shall be a good animal. The requisite is a general one--it extends to man, the father, the citizen.

We hear a great deal about the "vile body"; and many are encouraged by the phrase to transgress the laws of health. But Nature quietly suppresses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products and leaves the world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so foolish.

Beyond these immediate mischiefs, there are remoter mischiefs. Exclusive devotion to work has the result that amus.e.m.e.nts cease to please; and when relaxation becomes imperative, life becomes dreary from lack of its sole interest--the interest in business. The remark current in England that when the American travels, his aim is to do the greatest amount of sight-seeing in the shortest time, I find current here also; it is recognized that the satisfaction of getting on devours nearly all other satisfactions. When recently at Niagara, which gave us a whole week's pleasure, I learned from the landlord of the hotel that most Americans come one day and go away the next. Old Froissart, who said of the English of his day that "they take their pleasures sadly after their fashion," would doubtless, if he lived now, say of the Americans that "they take their pleasures hurriedly after their fashion." In large measure with us, and still more with you, there is not that abandonment to the moment which is requisite for full enjoyment; and this abandonment is prevented by the ever-present sense of mult.i.tudinous responsibilities. So that beyond the serious physical mischief caused by overwork, there is the further mischief that it destroys what value there would otherwise be in the leisure part of life. Nor do the evils end here. There is the injury to posterity. Damaged const.i.tutions re-appear in their children and entail on them far more of ill than great fortunes yield them of good. When life has been duly rationalized by science, it will be seen that among a man's duties the care of the body is imperative not only out of regard for personal welfare, but also out of regard for descendants. His const.i.tution will be considered as an entailed estate which he ought to pa.s.s on uninjured if not improved to those who follow; and it will be held that millions bequeathed by him will not compensate for feeble health and decreased ability to enjoy life.

Once more, there is the injury to fellow-citizens taking the shape of undue regard of compet.i.tors. I hear that a great trader among you deliberately endeavored to crush out everyone whose business competed with his own; and manifestly the man who, making himself a slave to acc.u.mulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder for all others engaged in it and excludes from it many who might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic motive, there are two altruistic motives which should deter from this excess in work.

The truth is there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven, the time was to be pa.s.sed in daily battles with magical healing of wounds, we see how deeply rooted may become the conception that fighting is man's proper business and that industry is fit only for slaves and people of low degree. That is to say, when the chronic struggles of races necessitate perpetual wars there is evolved an ideal of life adapted to the requirements. We have changed all that in modern civilized societies, especially in England and still more in America. With the decline of militant activity and the growth of industrial activity the occupations once disgraceful have become honorable. The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to fight; and in the one case as in the other the ideal of life has become so well established that scarcely anybody dreams of questioning it.

Practical business has been subst.i.tuted for war as the purpose of existence.

Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future? I think not.

While all other things undergo continuous change, it is impossible that ideals should remain fixed. The ancient ideal was appropriate to the ages of conquest by man over man and spread of the strongest races. The modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of the earth and subjection of the powers of Nature to human use is the predominant need.

But hereafter, when both these ends have in the main been achieved, the ideal formed will probably differ considerably from the present one. May we not foresee the nature of the difference? I think we may.

Some twenty years ago, a good friend of mine and a good friend of yours, too, though you never saw him, John Stuart Mill, delivered at St.

Andrew's an inaugural address on the occasion of his appointment to the Lord Rectorship. It contained much to be admired, as did all he wrote; there ran through it, however, the tacit a.s.sumption that life is for learning and working. I felt at the time that I should have liked to take up the opposite thesis. I should have liked to contend that life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life. The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circ.u.mstances as shall make living complete--all other uses of knowledge are secondary. It scarcely needs saying that the primary use of work is that of supplying the materials and aids to living completely; and that any other uses of work are secondary. But in men's conceptions the secondary has in great measure usurped the place of the primary.

The apostle of culture, as culture is commonly conceived, Mr. Matthew Arnold, makes little or no reference to the fact that the first use of knowledge is the right ordering of all actions; and Mr. Carlyle, who is a good exponent of current ideas about work, insists on its virtues for quite other reasons than that it achieves sustentation. We may trace everywhere in human affairs a tendency to transform the means into the end. All see that the miser does this when making the acc.u.mulation of money his sole satisfaction; he forgets that money is of value only to purchase satisfactions. But it is less commonly seen that the like is true of the work by which the money is acc.u.mulated--that industry, too, bodily or mental, is but a means, and that it is as irrational to pursue it to the exclusion of that complete living it subserves as it is for the miser to acc.u.mulate money and make no use of it. Hereafter when this age of active material progress has yielded mankind its benefits there will, I think, come a better adjustment of labor and enjoyment. Among reasons for thinking this there is the reason that the processes of evolution throughout the world at large bring an increasing surplus of energies that are not absorbed in fulfilling material needs and point to a still larger surplus for humanity of the future. And there are other reasons which I must pa.s.s over. In brief, I may say that we have had somewhat too much of the "gospel of work." It is time to preach the gospel of relaxation.

This is a very unconventional after-dinner speech. Especially it will be thought strange that in returning thanks I should deliver something very much like a homily. But I have thought I could not better convey my thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues in a fear. If, as I gather, this intemperance in work affects more especially the Anglo-American part of the population, if there results an undermining of the physique not only in adults, but also in the young, who as I learn from your daily journals are also being injured by overwork--if the ultimate consequence should be a dwindling away of those among you who are the inheritors of free inst.i.tutions and best adapted to them, then there will come a further difficulty in the working out of that great future which lies before the American nation. To my anxiety on this account you must please ascribe the unusual character of my remarks.

And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the Germanic on Sat.u.r.day, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my intercourse with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of health has prevented me from seeing a larger number.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY

AMERICA VISITED

[Speech of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, at the breakfast given by the Century Club, New York City, November 2, 1878.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--The hospitality shown to me has been no exception to that with which every Englishman meets in this country, in the endless repet.i.tion of kind words and the overwhelming pressure of genial entertainment which has been thrust upon me. That famous Englishman, Dr. Johnson, when he went from England to Scotland, which, at that time, was a more formidable undertaking than is a voyage from England to America at the present time, met at a reception at St.

Andrew's a young professor who said, breaking the gloomy silence of the occasion: "I trust you have not been disappointed!" And the famous Englishman replied: "No; I was told that I should find men of rude manners and savage tastes, and I have not been disappointed." So, too, when I set out for your sh.o.r.es I was told that I should meet a kindly welcome and the most friendly hospitality. I can only say, with Dr.

Johnson, I have not been disappointed.

But in my vivid though short experience of American life and manners, I have experienced not only hospitality, but considerate and thoughtful kindness, for which I must ever be grateful. I can find it in my heart even to forgive the reporters who have left little of what I have said or done unnoted, and when they have failed in this, have invented fabulous histories of things which I never did and sayings which I never uttered. Sometimes when I have been questioned as to my impressions and views of America, I have been tempted to say with an Englishman who was hard pressed by his const.i.tuents with absurd solicitations: "Gentlemen, this is the humblest moment of my life, that you should take me for such a fool as to answer all your questions." But I know their good intentions and I forgive them freely.

The two months which I have spent on these sh.o.r.es seem to me two years in actual work, or two centuries rather, for in them I have lived through all American history. In Virginia I saw the era of the earliest settlers, and I met John Smith and Pocahontas on the sh.o.r.es of the James River. In Philadelphia I lived with William Penn, but in a splendor which I fear would have shocked his simple soul. At Salem I encountered the stern founders of Ma.s.sachusetts; at Plymouth I watched the Mayflower threading its way round the shoals and promontories of that intricate bay. On Lake George and at Quebec I followed the struggle between the English and the French for the possession of this great continent. At Boston and Concord I followed the progress of the War of Independence.

At Mount Vernon I enjoyed the felicity of companionship with Washington and his a.s.sociates. I pause at this great name, and carry my recollections no further. But you will understand how long and fruitful an experience has thus been added to my life, during the few weeks in which I have moved amongst the scenes of your eventful history.

And then, leaving the past for the present, a new field opens before me.

There are two impressions which are fixed upon my mind as to the leading characteristics of the people among whom I have pa.s.sed, as the almanac informs me, but two short months. On the one hand I see that everything seems to be fermenting and growing, changing, perplexing, bewildering.

In that memorable hour--memorable in the life of every man, memorable as when he sees the first view of the Pyramids, or of the snow-clad range of the Alps--in the hour when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, silent, majestic, immovable. In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American destiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the distractions of the present--a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which characterize you both as individuals and as a nation.