The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 14

And such a man, when he dies--or the friend of such a man, when that man dies--should not imagine that it is a very generous and liberal thing for some minister to say a few words above the corpse--and I do not want to see this profession cringe before any other.

One word more. I hope that you will sustain this splendid charity. I do not believe that more generous people exist than actors. I hope you will sustain this charity. And yet, there was one little thing I saw in your report of last year, that I want to call attention to. You had "benefits" all over this country, and of the amount raised, one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars were given to religious societies and twelve thousand dollars to the Actors' Fund--and yet they say actors are not Christians! Do you not love your enemies? After this, I hope that you will also love your friends.

THE CHILDREN OF THE STAGE.

New York, March 23, 1899.

* Col. Robert G. Ingersoll was the special star among stars at the benefit given yesterday afternoon at the Fifth Avenue Theatre for the Actors' Fund. There were a great many other stars and a very long programme. The consequence was that the performance began before one o'clock and was not over until almost dinner time.

Usually in such cases the least important performers are placed at the beginning and the audience straggles in leisurely without worrying a great deal over what it has missed. Yesterday, however, it had been announced in advance that Col. Ingersoll would start the ball a-rolling and the result was that before the overture was finished the house was packed to the doors.

Col. Ingersoll's contribution was a short address delivered in his characteristic style of florid eloquence.--The World, New York, March 24, 1899.

Disguise it as we may, we live in a frightful world, with evils, with enemies, on every side. From the hedges along the path of life, leap the bandits that murder and destroy; and every human being, no matter how often he escapes, at last will fall beneath the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife.

To change the figure: We are all pa.s.sengers on the train of life. The tickets give the names of the stations where we boarded the car, but the destination is unknown. At every station some pa.s.sengers, pallid, breathless, dead, are put away, and some with the light of morning in their eyes, get on.

To change the figure again: On the wide sea of life we are all on ships or rafts or spars, and some by friendly winds are borne to the fortunate isles, and some by storms are wrecked on the cruel rocks. And yet upon the isles the same as upon the rocks, death waits for all. And death alone can truly say, "All things come to him who waits."

And yet, strangely enough, there is in this world of misery, of misfortune and of death, the blessed spirit of mirth. The travelers on the path, on the train, on the ships, the rafts and spars, sometimes forget their perils and their doom.

All blessings on the man whose face was first illuminated by a smile!

All blessings on the man who first gave to the common air the music of laughter--the music that for the moment drove fears from the heart, tears from the eyes, and dimpled cheeks with joy!

All blessings on the man who sowed with merry hands the seeds of humor, and at the lipless skull of death snapped the reckless fingers of disdain! Laughter is the blessed boundary line between the brute and man.

Who are the friends of the human race? They who hide with vine and flower the cruel rocks of fate--the children of genius, the sons and daughters of mirth and laughter, of imagination, those whose thoughts, like moths with painted wings, fill the heaven of the mind.

Among these sons and daughters are the children of the stage, the citizens of the mimic world--the world enriched by all the wealth of genius--enriched by painter, orator, composer and poet. The world of which Shakespeare, the greatest of human beings, is still the unchallenged emperor. These children of the stage have delighted the weary travelers on the th.o.r.n.y path, amused the pa.s.sengers on the fated train, and filled with joy the hearts of the clingers to spars, and the floaters on rafts.

These, children of the stage, with fancy's wand rebuild the past. The dead are brought to life and made to act again the parts they played.

The hearts and lips that long ago were dust, are made to beat and speak again. The dead kings are crowned once more, and from the shadows of the past emerge the queens, jeweled and sceptred as of yore. Lovers leave their graves and breathe again their burning vows; and again the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s rise and fall in pa.s.sion's storm. The laughter that died away beneath the touch of death is heard again and lips that fell to ashes long ago are curved once more with mirth. Again the hero bares his breast to death; again the patriot falls, and again the scaffold, stained with n.o.ble blood, becomes a shrine.

The citizens of the real world gain joy and comfort from the stage.

The broker, the speculator ruined by rumor, the lawyer baffled by the intelligence of a jury or the stupidity of a judge, the doctor who lost his patience because he lost his patients, the merchant in the dark days of depression, and all the children of misfortune, the victims of hope deferred, forget their troubles for a little while when looking on the mimic world. When the shaft of wit flies like the arrow of Ulysses through all the rings and strikes the centre; when words of wisdom mingle with the clown's conceits; when folly laughing shows her pearls, and mirth holds carnival; when the villain fails and the right triumphs, the trials and the griefs of life for the moment fade away.

And so the maiden longing to be loved, the young man waiting for the "Yes" deferred; the unloved wife, hear the old, old story told again,--and again within their hearts is the ecstasy of requited love.

The stage brings solace to the wounded, peace to the troubled, and with the wizard's wand touches the tears of grief and they are changed to the smiles of joy.

The stage has ever been the altar, the pulpit, the cathedral of the heart. There the enslaved and the oppressed, the erring, the fallen, even the outcast, find sympathy, and pity gives them all her tears--and there, in spite of wealth and power, in spite of caste and cruel pride, true love has ever triumphed over all.

The stage has taught the n.o.blest lesson, the highest truth, and that is this: It is better to deserve without receiving than to receive without deserving. As a matter of fact, it is better to be the victim of villainy than to be a villain. Better to be stolen from than to be a thief, and in the last a.n.a.lysis the oppressed, the slave, is less unfortunate than the oppressor, the master.

The children of the stage, these citizens of the mimic world, are not the grasping, shrewd and prudent people of the mart; they are improvident enough to enjoy the present and credulous enough to believe the promises of the universal liar known as Hope. Their hearts and hands are open. As a rule genius is generous, luxurious, lavish, reckless and royal. And so, when they have reached the ladder's topmost round, they think the world is theirs and that the heaven of the future can have no cloud. But from the ranks of youth the rival steps. Upon the veteran brows the wreaths begin to fade, the leaves to fall; and failure sadly sups on memory. They tread the stage no more. They leave the mimic world, fair fancy's realm; they leave their palaces and thrones; their crowns are gone, and from their hands the sceptres fall. At last, in age and want, in lodgings small and bare, they wait the prompter's call; and when the end is reached, maybe a vision glorifies the closing scene.

Again they are on the stage; again their hearts throb high; again they utter perfect words; again the flowers fall about their feet; and as the curtain falls, the last sound that greets their ears, is the music of applause, the "bravos" for an encore.

And then the silence falls on darkness.

Some loving hands should close their eyes, some loving lips should leave upon their pallid brows a kiss; some friends should lay the breathless forms away, and on the graves drop blossoms jeweled with the tears of love.

This is the work of the generous men and women who contribute to the Actors' Fund. This is charity; and these generous men and women have taught, and are teaching, a lesson that all the world should learn, and that is this: The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.

ADDRESS TO THE PRESS CLUB.

New Orleans, February 1, 1898.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the New Orleans

Press Club: I do not remember to have agreed or consented to make any remarks about the press or anything else on the present occasion, but I am glad of this opportunity to say a word or two. Of course, I have the very greatest respect for this profession, the profession of the press, knowing it, as I do, to be one of the greatest civilizers of the world. Above all other inst.i.tutions and all other influences, it is the greatest agency in breaking down the hedges of provincialism. In olden times one nation had no knowledge or understanding of another nation, and no insight or understanding into its life; and, indeed, various parts of one nation held the other parts of it somewhat in the att.i.tude of hostility, because of a lack of more thorough knowledge; and, curiously enough, we are p.r.o.ne to look upon strangers more or less in the light of enemies. Indeed, enemy and stranger in the old vocabularies are pretty much of the same significance. A stranger was an enemy. I think it is Darwin who alludes to the instinctive fear a child has of a stranger as one of the heritages of centuries of instinctive cultivation, the handed-down instinct of years ago. And even now it is a fact that we have very little sympathy with people of a different country, even people speaking the same language, having the same G.o.d with a different name, or another G.o.d with the same name, recognizing the same principles of right and wrong.

But the moment people began to trade with each other, the moment they began to enjoy the results of each other's industry and brain, the moment that, through this medium, they began to get an insight into each other's life, people began to see each other as they were; and so commerce became the greatest of all missionaries of civilization, because, like the press, it tended to do away with provincialism.

You know there is no one else in the world so egotistic as the man who knows nothing. No man is more certain than the man who knows nothing.

The savage knows everything. The moment man begins to be civilized he begins to appreciate how little he knows, how very circ.u.mscribed in its very nature human knowledge is.

Now, after commerce came the press. From the Moors, I believe, we learned the first rudiments of that art which has civilized the world.

With the invention of movable type came an easy and cheap method of preserving the thoughts and history of one generation to another and transmitting the life of one nation to another. Facts became immortal, and from that day to this the intelligence of the world has rapidly and steadily increased.

And now, if we are provincial, it is our own fault, and if we are hateful and odious and circ.u.mscribed and narrow and peevish and limited in the light we get from the known universe, it is our own fault.

Day by day the world is growing smaller and men larger. But a few years ago the State of New York was as large as the United States is to-day.

It required as much time to reach Albany from New York as it now requires to reach San Francisco from the same city, and so far as the transmission of thought goes the world is but a hamlet.

I count as one of the great good things of the modern press--as one of the specific good things--that the same news, the same direction of thought is transmitted to many millions of people each day. So that the thoughts of mult.i.tudes of men are substantially tending at the same time along the same direction. It tends more and more to make us citizens in the highest sense of the term, and that is the reason that I have so much respect for the press.

Of course I know that the news and opinions are written by folks liable to the same percentage of error as characterizes all mankind. No one makes no mistakes but the man who knows everything--no one makes no mistakes but the hypocrite.

I must confess, however, that there are things about the press of to-day that I would have changed--that I do not like.

I hate to see brain the slave of the material G.o.d. I hate to see money own genius. So I think that every writer on every paper should be compelled to sign his name to everything he writes. There are many reasons why he has a right to the reputation he makes. His reputation is his property, his capital, his stock in trade, and it is not just or fair or right that it should be absorbed by the corporation which employs him. After giving great thoughts to the world, after millions of people have read his thoughts with delight, no one knows this lonely man or his solitary name. If he loses the good will of his employer, he loses his place and with it all that his labor and time and brain have earned for himself as his own inalienable property, and his corporation or employer reaps the benefit of it.

There is another reason establishing the absolute equity of this proposition, a reason pointing in other directions than to the writer and his rights. It is no more than right to the reader that the opinion or the narrative should be that of Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown or Mr. So and So, and not that of, say, the _Picayune_. That is too impersonal. It is no more than right that a single man should have his honor at stake for what is said, and not an impersonal something. I know that we are all liable to believe it if the _Picayune_ says it, and yet, after all, it is the individual man who is saying it and it is in the interest of justice that the reader be apprised of the fact.

I believe I have just a little fault to find with the tendency of the modern press to go into personal affairs--into so-called private affairs. In saying this, I have no complaint to lodge on my own behalf, for I have no private affairs. I am not so much opposed to what is called sensationalism, for that must exist as long as crime is considered news, and believe me, when virtue becomes news it can only be when this will have become an exceedingly bad world. At the same time I think that the publication of crime may have more or less the tendency of increasing it.

I read not long ago that if some heavy piece of furniture were dropped in a room in which there was a string instrument, the strings in harmony with the vibrations of the air made by that noise would take up the sound. Now a man with a tendency to crime would pick up that criminal feeling inspiring the act which he sees blazoned forth in all its detail in the press. In that view of the matter it seems to me better not to give details of all offences.

Now, as to the matter of being too personal, I think that one of the results of that sort of journalism is to drive a great many capable and excellent men out of public life. I heard a little story quite recently of a man who was being urged for the Legislature, and yet hesitated because of his fear of newspaper criticism of this character. "I don't want to run," said he to his wife, who urged that this was an opportunity to do himself and his friends honor, and that it was a sort of duty in him. "I would if I were you," said his wife. "Well, but there is no saying," he responded, "what the newspapers might print about me."

"Why, your life has always been honorable," said she; "they could not say anything to your disparagement." "But they might attack my father."