a : | = Si ox Cornell University Library OF THE Hew Work State College of Hgriculture A MONT oo nnd HOTS. 1820 S a i000 4 49 iM ZZ i ae i 3 i 68 - Oo at 492 THE SPEECH FOR SPECIAL “OCCASIONS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK + BOSTON - CHICAGO DALLAS + SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limirep LONDON - BOMBAY + CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lrp. TORONTO THE SPEECH FOR SPECIAL OCCASIONS EDITED BY ELLA A. KNAPP, Px.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN GOUCHER COLLEGE AND JOHN C. FRENCH, Px.D. ASSOCIATE IN ENGLISH IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY New Bork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 Ali righis reserved S 2 PN4305 OF KS Aq, 401] CopyRIGHT, 1911, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1911. Reprinted October, 1922. Norioood Yress J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE TuHIs volume has been prepared primarily because the editors have felt in their own teaching the need of a convenient collection of such speeches as are here presented. Models of formal oratory and de- bate are abundant; but these are not enough. The old-fashioned college oration, the glory of contests and commencements, has survived a change of taste, and is becoming less useful as a college exercise. Debating, though valuable as discipline and attrac- tive on account of its frank and direct competition, appeals after all to a limited number of students. Moreover, the masterpieces of eloquence to which the student is commonly directed for reading and study sprang from occasions which have no parallels in his experience. He may come to the end of his days without knowing in the smallest measure the feeling that inspired the memorable passages in Demosthenes, Cicero, Stafford, Chatham, Fox, Grat- tan, Patrick Henry, or Webster. But the birthday of an esteemed person, the centenary anniversary of the renowned dead, the departure or arrival of a friend, or hunger to meet one’s fellows in the bonds of equality and friendship — these are the occasions that have called forth the greater part of public speech from Homer’s day to ours. Vv vi Preface It has seemed well, therefore, to select for this volume specimens of effective speech on such occa- sions as constantly recur, —on ordinary rather than extraordinary occasions, —and to furnish the student with examples of what he is called upon to say under similar circumstances. The selections lend them- selves to classroom discussion because they parallel the student’s own experience and observation. They are models because, in the increasing complexity of college life, a student finds frequent opportunity for just such speechmaking. The collection, it is hoped, will be helpful also to the general reader, who in an exigency that demands a speech would turn gladly to specimens of speeches adapted to a similar occasion. In order to widen the usefulness of the book in this way, references to col- lections of speeches, accessible in most libraries, have been included. Acknowledgment of the sources of material is made in the course of the book. The editors desire, however, to thank the authors and publishers who have generously given permission to reprint copy- righted selections. They are happy also to record their indebtedness to various universities and socie- ties, and to the London Times, for the opportunity to use speeches which but for a jealous custody would have faded with the memory of those who heard them. AUGUST, I9IO, CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE OCCASIONAL SPEECH e . . . II. . PREPARATION FOR SPEAKING . . . HII. PLANNING THE SPEECH . * . é . IV. BEGINNING THE SPEECH 7 . . . V. ENDING THE SPEECH . . . ‘ . VI. THE STYLE OF THE SPEECH. . ~*~. . VII. DELIVERING THE SPEECH . P . 5 SPEECHES I THE SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A CAUSE For the Old South Meeting-house _/ames Russell Lowell The Murder of Lovejoy. : Wendell Phillips For the Hospital for Sick Children . Charles Dickens II THE SPEECH OF A PRESIDENT 1. At Inauguration Inaugural Address, March 4, 1885 Grover Cleveland 2. As Chairman of a Meeting To the Wordsworth Society, May 2, 1883 . : Matthew Arua To the Burns Club . . William Cullen Bryant PAGE xi xiii xvii xxi XXV Xxxili xxxix co mm 21 35 43 48 viii Contents III THE SPEECH OF COMMEMORATION OR PERSONAL TRIBUTE 1. At Memorial Ceremonies Washington Irving Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Longfellow , ; . Oliver Wendell Holmes Phillips Brooks ‘ . Frederic William Farrar John Quincy Adams . . William Henry Seward Daniel Coit Gilman . : . Basil L. Gildersleeve 2. To the Living To William Cullen Bryant : George Bancroft To Susan B. Anthony % : Lucy M. Salmon 3. At Anniversary Celebrations Robert Burns . : . Ralph Waldo Emerson Daniel Webster : 7 . George Frishie Hoar IV THE SPEECH AT THE LAYING OF A CORNER-STONE OR AT A DEDICATION On Laying the Corner-stone of the New Grammar School at Bowness . 4 ‘ Wiliam Wordsworth The Man with the Muck-rake . - Theodore Roosevelt At the Opening of the New Rooms of the Junior Liberal Association of Birmingham ‘ - John Bright Vv THE SPEECH OF PRESENTATION OR ACCEPTANCE Presenting the Pilgrim Statue to the New England Society Daniel F. Appleton Presenting the Statue to the City Stewart L. Woodford Delivering the Statue of Daniel Webster to the Mayor of Boston sé é . Cornelius Conway Felton Presenting the Cheney-Ives Gateway to Yale University Harry Johnson Fisher PAGE 55 58 70 85 88 96 100 104 109 121 133 148 153 154 160 Contents Acceptance of the Cheney-Ives Gateway . Arthur T- oe Hediey Acceptance of a Gift from the Liberals of the Borough of Greenwich . ‘ William Ewart Gladstone Accepting a Portfolio on his Seventieth Birthday William Cullen Rajant VI THE RESPONSE OF A RECIPIENT OF AN HONOR Response to a Toast, Boston, 1842 . Charles Dickens On the Presentation of his Portrait . James C. Carter On Receiving the Degree of LL.D. . 5 Elihu Root “My Native Land” . s : . Washington Irving At a Dinner in his Honor . . William Cullen Bryant VII THE SPEECH PROPOSING A VOTE OF THANKS To Parke Godwin. 5 Edmund Clarence Stedman VII THE SPEECH OF WELCOME To the Brotherhood of Learning Arthur Twining Hadley To the King of the Belgians. . Benjamin Disraeli To John Quincy Adams_ . . William Henry Seward To Lafayette. i ‘i < . Henry Clay Response to Henry Clay : A 7 : Lafayette Response to the Governor of Pennsylvania Louds Kossuth IX THE SPEECH OF FAREWELL On Leaving for Washington, 1861 . Abraham Lincoln To the Army of Northern Virginia - . Robert E. Lee PAGE 161 163 165 169 177 180 185 188 199 205 208 2ul 216 218 221 229 230 x Contents To the Medical Profession of the United States and Canada William Osler On Resigning the Regius Professorship of History William Stubbs x THE SPEECH OF AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE To the Harvard Law School. . Zhomas M. Cooley To the University of Edinburgh : : . Karl Elze To the University of Edinburgh . Count Aurelio Safi Frankfort to Stratford-on-Avon. Frederick Max Muller Ata Harvard Commencement . é - James Bryce The Michigan Union c z ‘ Frank G. Kane The Class of 1857. - John Davis Long To the Republics of South ‘Armenia > : £lihu Root ‘To the Royal Agricultural Society . Daniel Webster XI THE SPEECH OF A POLITICAL REPRESENTATIVE 1. The Nominating Speech George F. Edmunds for President /ohkn Davis Long John Sherman for President . James A. Garfield z. The Speech to Constituents To the House of Commons : Queen Elizabeth Toa Republican Club . Charles Evans Hughes At the Pan-American Exposition William McKinley “The Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration” William M. Rais APPENDIX é i : . ‘ e é . PAGE 231 237 245 249 251 261 265 272 278 282 290 299 395 312 318 329 339 349 INTRODUCTION THE OCCASIONAL SPEECH The Speech. — The occasional speech, as the term is used in this book, is distinguished in kind from what may be called professional speech-making, — the sermon, the speech of a lawyer to a judge or a jury, the speech of a member of a deliberative assembly to the house. It is distinct in degree from the oration and the lyceum lecture. It is so named because it is inspired and limited by the occasion on which it is delivered; so that the speech exists on account of the occasion, and not, as is the case with most formal oratory, the occasion on account of the speech. The — _ occasional speech is not the conventional mode of any class or calling. It is used by all classes; and is, therefore, that form of public address which men and women who are not speech-makers by profession are called upon to attempt. When an occasion demands suitable public recognition, the choice of a speaker is sometimes determined by the chance of official position, sometimes by special knowledge or interest, some- times by the fact of a signal achievement in a field very different from public speech. The demand must x1 xii Introduction often be met by a speech for which the accepted models of demonstrative oratory give little help. The Occasion. — The occasions which give rise to such speech-making are varied and of frequent occur- rence. They range in importance from the intro- duction of a speaker to the presentation of a statue or the commemoration of a great man or a momentous event. They put the maker of the speech into the most varied relations with his audience, and demand of him ready adaptation to the most various require- ments of courtesy and convention. Few educated men and women do not find themselves now and again confronted by the necessity of saying a suitable word of welcome or farewell, of presenting or accepting a gift, or of responding to a toast. Such occasions do not as a rule represent a high tide of thought or feeling. For this reason the formal oration and the lecture, even when distinctly occa- sional, are here excluded from the classification. Mo- mentous utterances, given form when a great man has interpreted or subdued the passions of a people, are of small value as models for the simple every-day efforts that are required of most of us. Yet these simple speeches must express genuine feeling, for the speaker cannot be impersonal. They must obey certain general conventions, for the occasion is always more or less formal. They must be adequate in sub- stance, for the audience demands, not merely that the speaker shall have something to say, but that he shall Introduction xiii give fitting expression to what all vaguely feel to be true and appropriate. For these reasons, and be- cause the occasional speech naturally tends to brevity and so lends itself to classroom study and practice, this form of public address is peculiarly adapted to use in college classes in speaking. Between the formal and too often high-flown oration and the over- technical joint debate, it has been strangely neglected. PREPARATION FOR SPEAKING The Art of Speech.—For one who has to make an occasional speech, the very first preparation that is needed is a clear understanding of the process which he is about to undertake. Such an understanding will give him confidence in himself. For he will realize that success in public speech is not the product of some mysterious gift achieved intuitively. He will not say, ‘I never could make a speech,” and let it go at that ; for it will be clear to him that success is merely the necessary result of the right practice of an art. As practised by most of us, it is a modest, useful art, which requires no special aptitude or power. Every ’ educated man or woman should be able to make a decent speech to a moderate-sized audience. One who fails, fails for some reason that it should be possi- ble to find out. One who succeeds, as, for example, with a speech of welcome which fits the occasion, giving xiv Introduction it the grace and courtesy that it needs, succeeds because he has used correctly principles that can be determined and studied. The Subject.— The subject of an occasional speech is sometimes prescribed by the occasion. When it is so prescribed, however, it is usually extremely vague. The president of a society who finds himself called upon to award a prize for a literary composition knows that his remarks should deal with the prize and its meaning ; but he is often at a loss to know what is to be said about them. At the laying of a corner-stone, the general subject is obviously the edifice and what it represents; but what is the theme? The first step, then, is to limit the subject, suiting it to the occasion and to the audience. The Purpose. — Such adaptation will be best made by determining in advance what purpose the speaker hopes to accomplish. Too often a speaker has no purpose at all but to “occupy the time.”’ The result is rarely more than was aimed at. If the speaker is a representative of one organization, speaking to the members of another, his purpose may be to promote a good understanding between the two; it may be to pay a deserved tribute to an institution or a person; it may be to prepare the way for a reform which is to be urged later. Whatever the purpose, it must grow naturally out Introduction XV of the occasion, so that the audience shall not feel that the speaker has wrested the occasion to his own ends. When George W. Curtis was invited to deliver an address before the alumni of Brown University, he seized upon the occasion as an opportunity to defend American scholarship from such attacks as that made upon it by Wendell Phillips in his notable Phi Beta Kappa address of a year before. The choice was happy, for the general subject, education, was hinted by the occasion, and his turning of it to the theme, the leadership of educated men, was in accord with the spirit of the day. Sometimes the purpose is even more specifically determined by the opportunity. This was illustrated by Curtis on another occasion, when, in a speech before the New England Society in New York, he made a direct appeal for a law-abiding settlement of a grave problem in national politics. Whether the purpose be as specific as this, or more general in its application, some purpose clearly recog- nized there should be before the speaker is ready to go forward to the next step, — the choice of a theme. The Theme. — The theme of the speech will be the purpose phrased; the general subject narrowed and turned in a specific direction. It should grow legiti- mately out of the subject and the occasion. It should, moreover, be chosen with regard for the audience and for the speaker’s powers. Granted such a wise xvi Introduction choice of theme, the speaker is ready to undertake the writing of his speech. It is now necessary to know all the facts that may be useful. The speaker should set himself to know what the occasion really means. If it is a centenary, the history of the event commemorated should be grasped; if a memorial to a man, what he has done that is memorable; if an inaugural, what the office signifies and what problems await solution. Many a speech is vague and halting because the speaker proceeds with the consciousness of half knowledge. He has not had to choose from a wealth of material, but to thinly disguise his poverty. After knowledge of the facts should come interpre- tation of them. To know the history of the occasion is essential, but it is not enough in itself. The speaker should ask himself what the history means in its relation to the present, and what it signifies to the audience which he is to speak to. Insight is not vouchsafed to us all; and it does not come to any of us without patient thought. The student should realize that the work of writing a speech is not chiefly a matter of turning phrases. The real work is done in the turning over in the mind of the knowledge that has been acquired. This can and should be done before one sits down to write. Time that is not avail- able for reading or writing is often free for thinking, Introduction xvii and should be used resolutely, for a train of thought set going in advance often brings its return of happy phrase at the very moment of expression. PLANNING THE SPEECH When a speaker sits down with an uneasy conscious- ness that he has not said what he intended to say, his failure is often due, not to the want of knowledge or skill, but to the lack of a careful plan. An occasional speech, evena speech that appears to be impromptu, is a complete whole which must be organized if it is to be effective, and the organization of material cannot easily be extemporized. No wise man ever speaks absolutely extempore if he has any chance for forethought. Whether a speech is to be written out or not, it should be planned in advance. In such planning, a speaker should have regard for three qualities which a good speech will possess; namely, logical progress, an obvious structure, and a satisfying culmination. Logical Progress. — Of these qualities the first is perhaps the most essential. An audience has always the right to demand of a speaker that his speech shall move forward. He is supposed to have some end in view and to be tending toward it. Every part of the \ speech should be-a consequence of what it follows and a legitimate precursor of what it precedes. Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, which is a dedicatory speech in a Xviii Introduction condensed form, is an illustration of such progress. The three brief paragraphs are three steps in a logical progression. Beginning with an allusion to the past, it proceeds by contrast to the present, and passes to the duty in the future of the assembled hearers. No disarrangement of this order is possible without de- stroying the effect of the speech. Every paragraph might easily be expanded into several, but the move- ment of the speech would be the same. In speeches that are not carefully planned, there is sometimes progress in a circle. Some speakers have an awkward habit of eddying about an idea, returning to it from time to time, having merely wasted words without substantial progress. Others make progress that is not logical, led on by one idea to another until they are far from the starting-point, and come back with a jerk. Obvious Structure. — Since a speech is heard and not read, it must be understood at once if at all. If the bearing of a particular part of the speech is not clear when it is uttered, it may never become clear. It is important, therefore, that as a speech proceeds the audience shall know where they are and whither they are tending. A speech must have a sufficiently intelligible structure. Such rigid division as goes to a scientific exposition is not here needed; but a sugges- tive partition of the subject is not inconsistent with Introduction xix the ease and informality that belong to an occasional speech, and some hint of the principle on which the parts are ordered is often absolutely necessary. If a student wishes to make an appeal for the support of a playground association or a social-settlement house, . he may very well announce that he proposes to tell what it is, what it does, and what it needs. When the subject is thus outlined in advance, the interest of the audience is quickened and an intelligent following of the speech is assured. The use of such anticipatory division in the course of an informal speech is well illustrated in Dr. Osler’s farewell to his fellow-physi- cians in America. ‘I have had but two ambitions in the profession,” he says at one point, and follows with a detailed account of each. Next comes the sentence: “T have had three personal habits,” and each is explained. The structure may be made intelligible, also, by the use of parallel phrasing. That is, each division of the speech begins with the same form of words, varied so as to give its specific topic in a familiar setting. Thus President Hadley, speaking of the brotherhood of learning, represented at the Yale Bi-Centennial (p. 205), introduces successive divisions of his speech with the following expressions: ‘It knows no bound of age;” “Our brotherhood knows no bounds of place;”” ‘“ Our brotherhood knows no bounds of occu- XX Introduction pation; “ Nor does our brotherhood know any bound of creed.” The structure of the speech is thus made perfectly obvious. More formal indications of structure are the direc- tive phrases, in the first place, in the second place, finally, and the like. Such pointing out of divisions is perhaps too methodical in a brief speech, yet for- mality is not a necessary consequence of method. There is a comforting sense of certainty for the hearer in such explicit sign-posts as he proceeds, and a speaker may use them without making them obtrusive. Whether the structure is announced in advance or is openly indicated as the speech pro- ceeds, structure there must be. It must, moreover, be sufficiently obvious, so that the hearer is always prepared for what greets him, and does not stop to ask himself, ‘What has all this to do with the subject?” A Satisfying Culmination.— A good speech will have, finally, a satisfying culmination. There should be not merely progress according to an intelligible plan, but progress that will maintain the interest of the audience. The law of climax is one of the few rhetorical principles that apply always and to all forms. The speaker who has carefully phrased his beginning and has given no thought to the end is very likely to violate this law. And such a fault is Introduction xxi fatal. No amount of wit and wisdom in the first part of a speech will atone for a weak and floundering approach to the end. To avoid such an anticlimax, the author of a speech should so order his material that it will grow in interest and impressiveness toward _ the end. This often means progress from the general to the specific. The general aspects of the subject are significant; they help to an understanding of the speech. Its specific aspects are likely to be impressive; they bring the matter in hand home to the audience. The progress of the speech, therefore, should in general be from what is significant to what is impressive. So Dickens, in his appeal for a child’s hospital (p. 21), begins with the general topic, love of children, and passes to a concrete case of need, ending with the touching figure of the dream-children of Charles Lamb. BEGINNING THE SPEECH The Introduction. — The opening words of a speech are the most difficult to choose and to say. They are uttered at the moment of the speaker’s greatest trepi- dation, possibly after introductory remarks by a speaker much more familiar with the audience. They are heard with fresh and expectant attention by an audience with which the speaker has as yet had no chance to establish friendly relations. It is not strange, therefore, that an inexperienced speaker often xxii Introduction feels that the waiting audience is coldly critical and ready to rejoice at his blunders. This is, however, just what is usually not the case. The beginner should comfort himself with the thought that an audience just settling itself expectantly into attention is really in its most complaisant mood, willing to be pleased and disposed to suspend judgment. The introduction to an occasional speech is rarely needed for concilia- tion, for the hearers are very likely to be both atten- tive and well-inclined. The fact remains, however, that the introduction of the speech is important, because it is the speaker’s opportunity to meet his audience halfway and to get his speech upon the level which it is to follow. A scrutiny of the speeches in this collection will betray the fact that the introductory words have been chosen with care. It will be obvious, too, that certain types of introductions occur again and again. It may be observed, in the first place, that the occasional speech does not ordinarily call for the definition of the subject, and rarely in the opening paragraph for any elaborate statement of the plan. The introduction is more likely to be of the type that may be called connotative ; that is, it exists to do more than to give information, and is valuable for what it suggests rather than for what it says. Such an introduction is usually more specific in topic than the theme of the speech. It ae == Introduction Xxiil necessarily takes a great variety of forms, only a few of which can be discussed here. The Personal Beginning.—A common type of the specific introduction is the personal beginning. In it the speaker makes clear his relation to his audience, deprecates the honors that have been bestowed upon him, or makes his acknowledgments of the favor with which he has been received. On some occasions such a personal beginning is necessary. The student should remember that the first requisite here is sincer- ity, and that genuine feeling expresses itself simply. Humility overdone is worse than none at all. He should remember, too, that complimentary remarks about the audience or the presiding officer are best when made with reserve. Fulsome praise is worse, after all, than faint praise. When the speaker is a representative of an organization, the personal allusion most naturally open to him is that which sinks his personality in that of the institution which he repre- sents. He hastens to make himself the mouthpiece of those for whom he speaks. The Anecdote. — Another type of beginning, akin to personal allusion, is the anecdote. A well-chosen anecdote well told may at the very outset put audience and speaker on common ground ; but good anecdotes are rare, and those who can tell them with perfect choice of time and fitness of manner have no need of Xxiv Introduction advice on the subject. The inexperienced speaker will do well to avoid this beginning unless he feels sure of his audience, for an anecdote that falls flat falls very flat indeed ; and even an anecdote that wins a laugh is futile if it is not seen to have pertinence to the subject or the occasion. The Illustration. — A third type of beginning is the use of an illustration. Thus Curtis in his well-known oration, ‘The Leadership of Educated Men,” begins with ‘the description of a painting, which leads him to the suggestive words, “To-day and here we ” Tf a fundamental image ig to bé meet ourselves. used in the speech, as in this of Curtis, the introduction should present it. So Roosevelt in the so-called Muck- rake Speech (p. 133) begins with a comment on the general significance of the occasion, and then introduces the allusion to the Man with the Muck-rake, who gives the speech its text. An illustrative quotation often serves in much the sameway. Henry W. Grady was fond of this beginning. Historical allusion, also, is used, as, for example, by Judge Cooley at the dinner of the Harvard Law School (p. 245), to give at the beginning the key of the whole speech. It must, of course, be apt, and must not occupy too much time ; or the natural interest of the allusion will dis- tract rather than centre the thought of the audience. The General Beginning. — A very common type Introduction XXV of introduction is more general‘than the theme. Thus a speaker may begin, not by discussing the specific occasion of his speech, but such occasions in general. In some cases this procedure seems naturally sug- gested. Blaine in his eulogy on Garfield began with the words: — For the second time in this generation the great departments of the Government of the United States are assembled in the Hall of Representatives to do honor to the memory of a murdered President. The same method is used by President Hadley in his acceptance of the Cheney-Ives Gateway at Yale (p. 161), and on a more elaborate scale by Curtis in his oration, “The Public Duty of Educated Men.” The general beginning may also take the form, as does. _ that of Dickens in his speech in behalf of a child’s hospital (p. 21), of a generalization of the principles involved in the theme. ENDING THE SPEECH The Importance of the Conclusion. — How to end the speech is a problem even more difficult than how to begin it. The speaker is conscious that a suitable leave-taking of his audience is necessary ; yet it is not always easy to think of anything that demands to be said last. No new thought is to be added, for the XXvi Introduction conclusion looks backward and not forward; and until the theme has been adequately developed, it is not time for the concluding words. In an occasional speech, recapitulation of the points already made is, as a rule, needlessly formal. Mere repetition of something that has been said is obviously unsuitable. It is no uncommon thing to hear an inexperienced speaker, who has said what he got up to say, flounder helplessly in the effort to extemporize something that will enable him to bring his speech to a fitting close. The first step toward the solution of the problem may be taken by obeying a very simple rule: foresee your conclusion. Whether he writes out his speech. in full or uses an outline only, a speaker should make a part of his planning the choice of a closing thought. He may then attack the heads of his speech in turn, improvising and adapting as the stimulus of a listening audience may drive him, secure in the confidence that when he has reached the end at which he aims he will know what to do. The last words are too important to be left to the chance of impromptu phrasing. Even when the speech is written out and memorized, the conclusion should be revised and tested with more care than goes to any other part of the composition. The Form of the Conclusion. — What the conclusion should be like, may perhaps be best determined by asking what an audience naturally looks for in the Introduction Xxvii close of a speech. Though the hearers cannot, like the speaker, foresee the end from the beginning, they are, if the structure is intelligible, aware when the orator begins to “ draw toward a conclusion.” Atten- tion quickens to meet the expected end, and the audi- tors, by a kind of instinct, anticipate something larger, more vital, and more momentous. They wait for a worthy culmination of the progress that has carried their interest through the speech. They find perfectly natural here a heightened style and a more impressive delivery. They expect a recurrence to the larger issues of the subject and welcome a return to its central theme. If these expectations are not fulfilled, the audience is likely to go away feeling that the speech, however excellent in substance, has not survived its lame conclusion. Some of the general qualities of a conclusion that will satisfy these requirements are obvious. In the first place, it must be brief. The office of the conclu- sion is not to arouse interest, but to satisfy it finally. In the introduction, suspense may heighten the interest of what follows ; in the conclusion, if the expected close is deferred, the speaker has a restless audience, and is himself to blame. In the second place, the con- cluding words should be forcible. There must not only be no delay ; there must be no weakness. In style the conclusion should be concise, even sententious. XXVili Introduction There should be words that stick like burrs, phrases that will linger after their context has faded. Finally, the conclusion must be consistent with the speech. In foreseeing his concluding words, the speaker must not forget that they are to grow out of what precedes them. The conclusion rises to a climax, but it is a natural climax. It gives play to more connotation in style, but it is not false in manner or in mood to what prepares for it. The conclusion is subsidiary to the speech and must exist to enforce it: The temp- tation to use a pretty but not perfectly apt quotation for its own sake, to indulge in a bit of fine writing under license of climax, or to appeal to a sentiment not really involved should be resisted. In a happy ending the last words are, once uttered, felt to be inevitable. The Personal Ending. — The forms which an effec- tive conclusion may take are of course beyond enu- meration. Of the few that are common enough to become typical, the personal ending is a familiar example. It corresponds in purpose and in manner to the personal beginning. In such a conclusion, the speaker frankly recurs to himself and his relations with the audience, thanking them for their patience, apologizing perhaps for his own performance, express- ing anew his pleasure at being before them. This is obviously more suitable for the man whose personality rises above the occasion, in itself commanding respect Introduction Xxix or affection. The inexperienced speaker should use it with caution, lest he obtrude himself too much. Lowell, in his speech in behalf of the Old South Meeting- house (p.7), ends with a half-humorous allusion to himself that is much in keeping with the personal tone of the beginning. Similarly, Canorf Farrar ends his tribute to Phillips Brooks, as he had begun it, with a personal allusion. Summing up in the last paragraph the loss that has been sustained in Phillips Brooks’s death, the speaker says : — With a very sad heart, I bid him farewell, and lay this ‘shadow of a wreath of lilies” on the fresh grave of the noblest, truest, and most stainless man I ever knew. So Webster concludes his speech before a British agricultural society: — With respect to the occasion which has called us together, I beg to repeat the gratification which I have felt in passing a day in such a company, and to conclude with the most fervent expression of my wish for the prosperity and usefulness of the Agri- . cultural Society of England. Sometimes the personal ending takes the form of ‘official action. Thus a nominating speech naturally ends, as do both of those reproduced in this volume, XXX Introduction with the name of the candidate in whose honor the speech has been made. A speech of introduction leads naturally to the conventional ending in which the speaker is formally presented. In the presentation or the acceptance of a gift the speaker, especially if he is acting’as a representative, may make a grace- fully phrased statement of his official act the climax of the speech. Such is the conclusion of Felton’s speech presenting the statue of Daniel Webster to the city of Boston (p. 159). The Summary. — A second type of conclusion is the summary, often epigrammatic in form, of the theme of the speech. Less frank and easy than the personal ending, it is more emphatic and memorable. It is well illustrated in the concluding paragraph of an appeal by David Dudley Field in behalf of the Chil- dren’s Aid Society :— This paper has already reached the limit intended. It has not gone into particulars; on the contrary, it has been carefully confined to certain general propositions. Their development and execution are matters of detail. The aim of the article is attained if it has helped to impress upon the reader this les- son, partly social and partly political : Take care of the children, and the men and women will take care of themselves. Introduction XXxi A common form of this type of conclusion is the sen- timent of a toast expressed at the end of the speech which it thus brings to focus in one significant sentence. Such is the ending of William M. Eyarts’s speech on the Geneva Tribunal (p. 346). The Hortatory Ending. — Another type of ending looks forward, turning the thought of the’speech into a final exhortation or prophecy. Such a conclusion. is particularly fitting as the climax of a speech which has appealed to feelings’ of loyalty or patriotism, and for which a personal ending might be.an anticlimax. In this way the purpose of a whole speech may be ‘concentrated in a brief and memorable compass. So Professor Elze concludes his speeth at the Ter-Cente- nary of Edinburgh University (p. 251). So Ambassador Bryce, on receiving a degree from Harvard University (p..271). Similarly, the note of prophecy is heard in the conclusion of Frank G. Kane’s speech before the Michigan Union (p. 277), of Elihu Root’s at the Con- ference of American Republics (p. 289), and of Bancroft’s tribute to William Cullen Bryant (p. 99). Quotation and Allusion. —Still another way of meeting the special requirements of the conclusion of a speech is the use of a suitable quotation or historical allusion. The frequency with which poetry is so used is an evidence of the fact that the ending is the point of high connotation. The speaker who has no XXXli Introduction phrasing of his own that seems to rise to the height demanded may often find what he wants in a quotation that will have the added force of familiarity. He should be certain, however, that the quotation fits the occasion, and does not seem to have been dragged in for its own sake. Examples of the happy use of quotation or allusion are too abundant to need citation at length. So Lowell, in a tribute to Coleridge, makes Coleridge’s own lines serve as last words : — “Tt seems like stories from the land of spirits If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he attains.” Both conditions are fulfilled to-day. So Curtis concludes his eulogy of Bryant :— Here then we leave him, with tender reverence for the father of our song, with grateful homage to the spotless and faithful citizen, with affectionate admiration for the simple and upright man. Here we leave him, and we—we go forward refreshed, strengthened, inspired, by the light of the life which like a star serene and inextinguishable, “Flames in the forehead of our morning sky.” At the end of his speech at the laying of the corner- stone of the Washington Memorial Arch in New York, Curtis used effectively a quotation from Washing- ton :— Introduction Xxxili .’. . If any words were to be inscribed upon this arch, these words of Washington would be apples of gold in pictures of silver. What hesaid to the conven- tion hesaystous. Itis the voice of the heroic spirit which in council and in the field has made, and alone will preserve, our America. It is the voice that will speak from the Memorial Arch to all coming genera- tions of Americans. Whatever may betide; what- ever war, foreign or domestic, may threaten ; what- ever specious sophistry may assail the political con- science of the country, or bribery of place or money corrupt its political action ; above the roar of the mob and the insidious clamor of the demagogue, the voice of Washington willstill be the voice of American patri- otism and of manly honor —“‘ Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hands of God.” Tue STYLE OF THE SPEECH Qualities of Style. — The qualities of style that are essential to a good occasional speech are primarily those that belong to any form of oral discourse. The funda- mental quality of such a speech, as of any piece of writing, is clearness. It should not be necessary here to say that in the preparation of a speech one’s first care should be to make it as lucid as his powers permit. XXXIV Introduction And this will not ordinarily be a difficult matter, for an occasional speech does not, as a rule, deal with a subject that is hard to understand. Neither does it commonly have to win its way against indifference or hostility. In so far as it differs from other types of public address, the occasional speech has special need for those qualities of style that please and interest. These are precisely the qualities for which it is most difficult to lay down definite rules. In general, it may be said that a pleasing style is the result of success- ful adaptation to the speaker, to the occasion, and to the audience. Adaptation to the Speaker.— When a speaker adapts his style to his own character and ability, the result is that the speech seems natural. Sincerity is particularly essential in the occasional speech, which more than any other form of public address puts the speaker into a personal relation with his audience, The beginner in the art of public speaking should be content to have his style represent himself, even if he has at first to practise resolute simplicity. He should know the resources of style, but employ them only as his own purpose demands their use. He may copy the method of a successful speaker, but not his man- ner. He may make his own style as graceful as his ability permits, but he may not, with hope of success, cultivate airs and graces for their own sake, or affect Introduction XXXV a style for which he is not suited. By such care- ful adaptation he will escape the error described by Jowett: — A young person is about to make a speech — it is one of the most important things he can do in life (and one of the most trying) — when many persons are listening to his words and he a weak swimmer far out tosea; he has prepared what he is going to say, tricked out his oration with metaphors and figures of speech; he has seen himself speaking, not exactly in the looking-glass, ‘but in the glass of his own mind; and lo! the result is a miserable failure. He has mistaken his own powers, he has struck a wrong note, pitched his speech in a false key. What can be more humiliating? Yet perhaps it is also the very best lesson which he has ever had in his life. Let him try again (there was one who said that he had tried at many things and had always succeeded at last). Let him try again, and not allow himself by a little innocent merriment to be deprived of one of the great- est and most useful accomplishments which any man can possess — the power of addressing an audience. Adaptation to the Occasion. — In the second place, the style of the speech should be adapted to the occasion. The occasion has usually its appropriate mood, which the speaker should foresee and avail himself of. An XXXVI Introduction earnest speaker may sway his hearers to his mood; but none but a speaker of great force can hope to succeed if he runs counter to the spirit of the occasion. It is obvious that a farewell address should differ in tone from an inaugural, that it should be more personal and simple, more colored by feeling. A patriotic celebration has one significance, an academic occasion another, the centenary of a great man yet another. The specific character of the occasion will hardly fail to have its effect on the audience, making them ready to respond to a proper expression of its meaning. ‘The great power of the few simple sentences of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Speech lies in their ultimate phrasing of what everybody felt to be the real significance of the dedicatory ceremony. Adaptation to the Audience. — A speech should also be adapted to the audience. This implies, of course, adaptation to hearers rather than readers. In so far as the laws of style differ for oral and for written dis- course, they emphasize for the speech qualities which ordinarily are good in all writing. A speech should be simple in diction, for unfamiliar words are less easily recognized by the ear than by the eye. It should be lucid in structure, for an audience has no chance to go over a troublesome sentence again and again until it becomes clear. It should be fluent and well balanced, for awkwardness of structure is made Introduction XXXVIi more prominent by oral delivery. The sentences should be so constructed that the emphasis of the voice will fall easily and naturally upon the words that deserve emphasis. At the same time an emphatic word should not be called upon to bear emphasis that should be distributed over several words. In the sentence :— There is one indispensable foundation for the du- rable satisfactions of life, — health, the last word, though deserving of emphasis, is too heavily stressed for convenient utterance, and the sen- tence lacks cadence. Writing intended for oral delivery should be carefully tested by reading it aloud sentence by sentence. Some speakers find it easier to adapt their style to oral expression by composing it orally. The outline is first determined upon and jotted down. Then each topic in turn is expanded orally, the process amount- ing to successive attempts at extemporaneous speak- ing. As each paragraph is worked out, it may be has- tily written down to preserve the phrasing. It will be found, however, that a speech composed in this way is memorized as soon as it is finished. If the speech that is actually delivered differs in details from that which was prepared, it is apt to be better; and in any case it will not deviate from the chosen plan. This method teaches confidence, and helps toward the gain- XXXVili Introduction ing of the highest power of the public speaker, the power to think and phrase clearly on his feet. To fit the style, not to an audience, but to the audience, to choose both matter and manner, so that the speech shall win and hold the particular hearers to whom it is addressed, is a more difficult task. Here, again, it is well to warn the beginner against artifice. The best way to interest an audience is to say some- thing interesting. A writer in The Outlook tells, from the point of view of one of the workingmen,of the efforts of various clergymen to make effective noonday talks to the men in a large factory. One was ingratiating, another apologetic ; and both failed to hold the audi- ence. A third was straightforward and concrete. His success is described as follows: — After the cornetist got through, a young fellow stepped on to a machine and began to talk in an off- hand way about the six mechanical principles that enter into the manufacture of machinery. He at once got every fellow’s attention. He was meeting them on their own ground. That chap didn’t seem to be preaching at all, but before he got through he landed some body blows that most of us remember. Instead of the men leaving, others kept coming until he had more than the first fellow started off with. He spoke every day for a week. Introduction . XXX1X DELIVERING THE SPEECH Although public speech is capable of the highest artistic excellence, oratory as a fine art is beyond the scope of this book. Of the delivery of an occasional speech, it is perhaps the highest praise to say that no one stops to think about it. The audience should be thinking of what is said, not of the skill with which it is said. One’s manner in speech should be as incon- spicuous as his manner in dress. For the development of voice and the overcoming of vocal defects, one should go to a competent teacher. For the highest profit from experience in speaking, the frank criticisms of a dis- criminating friend will be helpful. It is possible in a book to give only a few suggestions that the speaker may apply for himself. Voice. — In enunciation the occasional speech should be at the same time natural and distinct. The tone of conversation is natural, but ordinary conversation is too rapid and too low to be distinctly heard by an audience. On the other hand, a loud auctioneering voice will be distinct but will be artificial and unpleas- ing. Both naturalness and distinctness, however, are attained when the conversational voice, raised slightly in pitch, is made slower and is more distinctly stressed so as to carry farther. The difference between such speech and ordinary conversation is illustrated by Senator Hoar in the following suggestion: — xl Introduction In managing the voice, the speaker, when he is engaged in earnest conversation, commonly and nat- urally falls into the best tone and manner for pub- lic speaking. Suppose you are sitting about a table with a dozen friends, and some subject is started in which you are deeply interested. You engage in an earnest and serious dialogue with one of them at the other end of the table. You are perfectly at ease, not caring in the least for your manner or tone of voice, but only for your thought. The tone you adopt then will ordinarily be the best tone for you in public speaking. To this general counsel, a few specific suggestions may be added. A speaker should not hurry, mistak- ing haste and bustle for vigor. The opening words, especially, should be deliberate. He should not be afraid to pause. A speaker may pause almost any- where and much longer than one would think, if only he will keep his inflection up. It is much better to pause long enough between clauses to be sure of your words than to interlard them with er’s and ah’s. In general, one should avoid overworking the falling inflection. Inexperienced speakers often use this inflection too much, because it gives emphasis and they are striving to be impressive. But it also gives abruptness and formality, and when wrongly used destroys the coherence of the style. Monotony should Introduction xli be avoided by varying the pitch at the beginning of sentences and by pausing slightly before emphatic words, as, for example, before the last word or phrase of the sentence to give it the emphasis demanded by climax. Some have found it helpful to single out a- particular person in the audience and speak as if talking to him alone. Whether this expedient be adopted or not, one should speak to and not at his audience, addressing them as directly and naturally as possible. Gesture. — Gesture, which includes much more than motions with the arms, is an essential element of all public speech. For the occasional speaker the most important consideration is how he shall stand before an audience. He wants a comfortable posture, squarely facing his hearers, that leaves him free to move readily and gracefully. This may be accomplished by standing with the toes about equally far forward, one foot pointing straight ahead and the other making with it an angle of about fifty degrees, and the heels three or four inches apart. The weight of the body is poised on the straight foot, and the oblique foot rests lightly, free to lead in moving to another position. When one stands so, the body is not twisted or half turned from the audience, as is the case when one foot is thrust forward, nor is stiffened, as happens when the heels are brought sharply together in military fashion. xlii Introduction In taking his place on the platform, the speaker lets the foot last down fall into the oblique position. When he moves, the oblique foot leads ; and, as before, the foot last down becomes the oblique or free foot. He should avoid the two extremes of standing as if glued to one spot and of pacing recklessly up and down. Moving about will be simple and graceful, if the speaker will use the feet correctly and will always move during a pause, the feet dropping into position as the first words of the new sentence are uttered. The hands should be left to gravity. Allowed to hang, they will be graceful. Hung up on the person anywhere, in pockets, in the folds of the coat, or clasped, they are almost certain to be stiff and awkward. When the speaker stands behind a desk or table, he should not lean upon it. One hand may rest lightly on a desk at the speaker’s side, but the desk gives no more than moral support. When the hands are allowed to hang naturally, they are free for instant use in gestures, and should be so used when the impulse to use them is felt strongly. An awkward gesture is often better than none at all. A gesture that is felt to be awkward should be made graceful by practice. In general, a beginner should see that his gestures do not go too high, and should let them follow a flowing line, ending with a flexure of the wrist at the emphatic word. A little scrutiny of the gestures made by suc- Introduction xliii cessful speakers will give him more assistance than any series of pictures, and faithful practice in his own room will make his range of gesture wider. In the earnest- ness of speaking, he will make unconscious use of his observation and practice; and for both speaker and audience the manner of speaking will be lost in the substance of the speech. THE SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A CAUSE I THE SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A CAUSE JAMES RussELL Lowe. Speech for the Old South Meeting-house, January 18, 1877.1 Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen: — I think this is the second occasion on which I have had the pleasure of publicly addressing my neighbors in Cambridge. During the late presidential canvass, I was asked to preside at a political meeting, and my speech on taking the chair was so— what shall I say ?>— well, so impartial that I was never again invited to per- form asimilar function. I was not encouraged by the result of that first experiment, I confess. The cheerful- ness, however, with which you receive me convinces me that you expect a short speech, and it is only a few words which I intend to address to you. The hat is so assiduously passed around in this com- munity that I confess, for one, if I meet an acquaint- ance who, in saluting me, lifts his hat with a little more ceremony than common, so as to reveal its 1 Reprinted, by permission, from Old South Meeting-house Report, 1877. B t 2 The Speech for Special Occasions eleemosynary hollow, I either feel for my pocket or look for the most secure corner. Scarcely have we begun to save the Old South when Dighton Rock looms in the distance, the engraved characters on its face meaning (whatever else they may mean), “at sight, please to pay.” Our English cousins are in the habit of, I will not say sneering at, but accounting for the benevolence, the great generosity of the people of this country toward any enterprises of the kind we are met to encourage to-night, by saying that an American has nothing else to do with his money; he cannot found a family ; there is no use in building a house for other people to live in; and, accordingly, he very natu- rally pours his money into the first hat that offers. This is an easy solution of it, and I grant that a great deal of our charity, perhaps, is the result of cowardice. We have not the courage to take either of the methods which our friend, Dr. Holmes, recommended, — either to show the persistent applicant to the door, or “go quietly and drop a button in the hat.” But I think myself that this is a very creditable kind of communism, this sentiment which is so prevailing here, that every man who has more money, even if it is a very little, than he knows what to do with, and that any:man who has a little money to spare, owes it to the public. To me there is something very fine in this public-spirited instinct. The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 3 Now the building which we are asked to save is not, I think, —I see the Professor of Fine Arts in front of me, and I will not appeal to him to say that it is, —a model of architecture. I do not think it is, in any esthetic sense. It is not in that sense ; but in another it seems to me a model of architecture. It was the best thing that our fathers could do in their day, and they thought it beautiful. I have no doubt they thought it beautiful. When my father came over from Europe seventy years ago, one of his parishioners, as he afterwards told me, said to him: ‘“ Well, Mr. Lowell, you have seen all the finest buildings in Europe now; but I suppose you never saw any like our meeting- house.”’ Now, I confess, you do not find anything like the ‘‘ Old South” in Europe; but to me it is like the feeling I have toward our college buildings, for instance. There is a pathos of poverty about them that touches me as no grandeur or grace of architecture could. (Laughter.) Nay, 1am speaking seriously. They recall the “day of small things,” of generosity when it was hard to be generous. For it was a great deal harder for our fathers to build such a building as the “ Old South” than it is for us to build a beautiful hall like the one we are in now, exceedingly creditable as it is to the generosity of the alumni of Harvard College. It seems to me that when we hear so much about the continuity of history, and that truth is impressed upon 4 The Speech for Special Occasions us with such almost wearisome iteration by some recent historical writers, it is well for us to think that there is alsosucha thing as continuity of tradition and continuity of association, which, I think, feeds the roots of a very fine sentiment in us ; for I confess, Mr. President, Iam old-fashioned enough still to prefer patriotism, the love of country, to the longer word, “‘ cosmopolitanism,” which we sometimes hear recommended as a good substitute for it. It is this continuity of habitual associations, I think, in great part, that has made our mother England so great. She is reénforced with a past of fourteen hundred years. In this country we have not a very long past, but I confess that I some- times think that anything that is older than my mem- ory is somehow or other infinitely past; that Bunker Hill is no easier flight for the imagination than Mara- thon ; and I think there is something not precisely respectful said in a book which has hitherto been highly valued in New England about those who build the monuments to the fathers. Now, those people, it seems to me, are to be respected rather who preserve the monuments of the fathers than those who build them. When we build monu- ments, a little personal vanity somehow or other is apt to mingle with it. I think our monuments are quite as much a compliment to ourselves as to the persons they commemorate, in nine cases out of ten. The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 5 But there is something in a pile of stone, in a pile of bricks, — blind though they are, — that have looked upon great events which touches us profoundly, and which, I think, lifts our minds to a higher level of feeling. It has always seemed to me a fine instinct with which Byron spoke of “‘ the mountains that look upon Marathon.” He felt the need of some witness contemporaneous with the event, and his imagination endowed those blind precipices with sight for the occasion. I think no one can have gone to Europe without having had this feeling strongly borne in upon his mind. Dante says that every stone in the walls of Rome is sacred to him, simply for that same reason, that they were coeval with great achievements. I remember in Florence, how near Dante himself was brought to me as I was crossing a square, and saw under my feet, engraved upon a stone, “Sasso di Dante,”’ simply because tradition said that there, upon that block which was prepared for the build- ing of the cathedral, Dante used to sit and watch the structure as it rose. I grant that our associa- tion — and association usually furnishes us with most that is poetical in our daily lives — association is but a kind of unconscious, or half-conscious, or habitual memory, and the wisest people who ever lived, you remember, called memory the “mother of all the Muses.” I admit that association sometimes has 6 The Speech for Special Occasions rather a hard time of it here. But sentiment will cling to a very flat surface, like the ivy, and gives ° the beauty it cannot find. I remember the feeling with which I used to walk up what was once called the “West Cambridge Road” (it will always be the “West Cambridge Road ”’ to me), and look upon the old farm-houses that had seen Lord Percy’s cannon pass by, and I have no doubt that they gave me as in- spiring a sensation as the “mountains that look on Marathon” gave Byron. I feel it still. I wish a single one of those houses was left. J always fan- cied the people who looked out at the windows till I seemed to look with them, and it brought that day near to me as it could be brought in no other manner. I will not detain you long, ladies and gentlemen, for I have very little else to say, but I can say one thing more which, I think, has some pertinency. I confess that I myself was not at first strongly interested in the saving of the “Old South.” The building that I would have wished to save, partly, perhaps, from a personal sentiment, and partly from old association, was the Province House, which was long ago desecrated. I would have saved it, not only for its old historic associations, but also because it had been touched by the illuminating finger of Hawthorne, who has shown us, surely, if any man could, what the power of imagi- nation could do even amidst scenery of the past so poor The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 7 as ours is sometimes said to be. I do not think, Mr. President, that I love the past more dearly than a wise man should. The minds and characters of all of us are ‘“‘made and moulded of things past”’ more than we are always willing to acknowledge. This instinctive conservatism is a part, and a large part, of the cement that holds society together. The habit of looking back is associated with that of looking forward, and fosters those cautious virtues which are the safeguards of a nation. The “Old South” seems a very costly monument, but remember that it will seem infinitely precious after it is once irrevocably gone. But what I was going to say, which I thought might be more effective than anything else that I could possibly say, after having confessed this early want of interest in the enterprise, an indifference corrected by after re- flection (and my want of interest was not so great that I did not subscribe to what I thought was the extent ‘of my means) ; what I was going to say is that I intend to double my subscription, and, if it is possible, I intend to treble my subscription, and I should not be surprised if, fortune serving me, I quadrupled it. 8 The Speech for Special Occasions WENDELL PHILLIPS THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY! Mr. Chairman : — We have met for the freest discussion of these reso- lutions, and the events which gave rise to them. 1 From ‘“ Speeches of Wendell Phillips,” Boston, 1864. The speech was taken down imperfectly at the time, and from the report of the audience now exists as a pale reflection of the hour and the utterance. The immediate occasion was the murder of Lovejoy, a clergyman and graduate of Waterville College, Maine, and of Princeton Theo- logical Seminary, who lived at Alton, Illinois, as editor of The Ob- server. His press was the third time destroyed in retaliation for his published views and, especially, his condemnation of the summary death by burning at the stake of a negro who had killed an officer in his effort to avoid arrest. On the arrival of the third press, Love- joy had enrolled a special police, with the mayor’s consent, to pro- tect his property and suppress disorder. Lovejoy was shot down by the mob, the police were overpowered, his house was fired, and the press was destroyed. The country, Boston especially, was greatly moved, and a mass meeting was called, under the lead of Rev. William Ellery Channing, in Faneuil Hall in defence of free speech and a free press. The meeting was called for the morning of December 8, 1837, and a crowd filled the hall — free-speech advocates, a few Abolitionists, and indifferent spectators. Resolutions were presented by Dr. Channing, and seconded by George A. Hillard in a speech. As Hillard con- cluded, James T. Austin, attorney-general, unexpectedly harangued the crowd and justified the violence of the mob, saying: that Lovejoy had died ‘fas the fool dieth.” The demagogue won the crowd to his side; the ancient hall of Liberty was in the hands of the foes of a free press. At the height of the excitement, Wendell Phillips, a man of twenty- The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 9 (Cries of “Question,” “Hear him,’ “Go on,” “No gagging,” etc.) I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, — surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! (Great applause.) Fellow- citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? (“No, no.’’) The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights, — met to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their title to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament had a right to tax these Colonies. It is manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground, for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own six, who had five months before pronounced his first public speech, sprang upon the platform and began an answer to Austin. In a masterful way, he subdued the turbulent crowd, and closed his speech in a thunder-roll of applause, 10 The Speech for Special Occasions roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against and over the laws, the mob, as the gentleman terms it, mob, for- sooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvel- lously patient generation! the “ orderly mob” which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp-act Jaws/ Our fathers resisted, not the King’s prerogative, but the King’s usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional, — beyond its power. It was not till this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The differ- ence between the excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our day go for their The Speech in Behalf of a Cause II own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentle- man lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips (pointing to the portraits in the hall) would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, — the slanderer of the dead. (Great applause and counter- applause.) The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up. (Applause and hisses, with cries of “Take that back.” The uproar became so great that for a long time no one could be. heard.) Fellow-citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely the attorney-general, so long and well known here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am, — my voice never before heard within these walls! Another ground has been taken to excuse the mob and throw doubt and discredit on the conduct of Lovejoy and his associates. Allusion has been made to what lawyers understand very well,—the “conflict of laws.” Weare told that nothing but the Mississippi River rolls between St, Louis and Alton; and the 12 The Speech for Special Occasions conflict of laws somehow or other gives the citizens of the former a right to find fault with the defender of the press for publishing his opinions so near their limits. Will the gentleman venture that argument before lawyers? How the laws of two States could be said to come into conflict in such circumstances I question whether any lawyer in this audience can explain or understand. No matter whether the line that divides one sovereign State from another be an imaginary one or ocean-wide, the moment you cross it the State you leave is blotted out of existence, so far as you are concerned. The Czar might as well claim to control the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws of Missouri demand reverence, or the shadow of obedience, from an inhabitant of Illinois. I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the executive, — trust their defence to the police of the city. It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, sir, that they did act with the approbation and sanction of the mayor. In strict truth, there was no executive to appeal to for protection. The mayor acknowledged that he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 13 them to defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the posse comitatus, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city, acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to be sustained here, that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in executing the laws ? Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist? Sir, I protest against the question, instead of answering it. Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they mean. He did not throw himself back on the natural right of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow. Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an indi- vidual protecting his property ; it was not one body of armed men resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws under foot. No; the men in that house were regularly enrolled, under the sanction of the mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with 14 The Speech for Special Occasions the approbation of the mayor. These relieved each other every other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next evening it was not thought neces- sary to summon more than half that number; among these was Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city resisting rioters, — civil govern- ment breasting itself to the shock of lawless men. Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It is, in fact, simply this: Has the civil magistrate a right to put down a riot ? Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. ‘No one of us,” says an eye-witness and a comrade of Lovejoy, ‘‘has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the command of the mayor.” Anarchy did not settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, repre- sented in his person, sustained itself against its foes. When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had “ planted himself on his constitutional rights,” — appealed to the laws, —claimed the protection of the civil authority, — taken refuge under “the broad shield of the Constitution. When through that he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer in a common catastrophe.” He took refuge under the banner of liberty, — amid its folds; and when he fell, its glorious The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 15 stars and stripes, the emblem of free institutions, around which cluster so many heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr’s blood. It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Love- joy or his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who have the best means of knowing. Guns were first fired by the mob. After being twice fired on, those within the building consulted together and deliberately returned the fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right so to do; not only the right which every citizen has to defend himself, but the further right which every civil officer has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our sympathy, or destroy his title to be considered a martyr in defence of a free press. The question now is, Did he act within the Constitu- tion and the laws? The men who fell in State Street on the 5th of March, 1770, did more than Lovejoy is charged with. They were the first assailants. Upon some slight quarrel they pelted the troops with every missile within reach. Did this abate one jot of the eulogy with which Hancock and Warren hallowed their memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the cause of American liberty? If, sir, I had adopted what are called peace princi- ples, I might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you who believe, as I do, in the right and duty 16 The Speech for Special Occasions of magistrates to execute the laws, join with me and ‘brand as base hypocrisy the conduct of those who assemble year after year on the 4th of July, to fight over the battles of the Revolution, and yet “damn with faint praise,” or load with obloquy, the memory of this man, who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the press! Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that within the limits of our country civil authority should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defence, and to arm in vain. The gentleman says Lovejoy was presump- tuous and imprudent, —he “died as the fool dieth.” And a reverend gentleman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publi- cation, on him rests its guilt! He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions. If this be so, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 17 as a check for the abuses of the press, not the Jaw, but the dread of a mob. By so doing, it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometimes provoke disturbance from the minority. A few men may make a mob as well as many. The majority, then, have no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead toa mob. Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits! Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he hated sat again upon the throne. Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: “ The patriots are routed, — the redcoats victorious, — Warren lies dead upon the field.” With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who should have charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that, bred a physician, he was “out of place” in that battle, and “died as the fool dieth!”’ (Great applause.) How would the intimation c 18 The Speech for Special Occasions have been received, that Warren and his associates should have waited a better time? But if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence, Res pice finem, — wait till the end. Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age? Somuch before the age as to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the commu- nity. Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked the Revolution — taxation without representation —is far beneath that for which he died. (Here there was a strong and general expression of disapprobation.) One word, gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the King did but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence, had England offered to put a gag upon his lips. (Great applause.) The question that stirred the Revolution touched our civil interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions of the pulpit and the progress of our faith. The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 19 The clergy “marvellously out of place” where free speech is battled for,—liberty of speech on national sins? Does the gentlem4n remember that freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print? I thank the clergy here present, as I rever- ence their predecessors, who did not so far forget their country in their immediate profession as to deem it their duty to separate themselves from the struggle of 76, the Mayhews and Coopers, who remembered they were citizens before they were clergymen. Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had fled from city to city, —suffered the destruction of three presses patiently. At length he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come; it was full time to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a community like our own, of fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but, one ‘in the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.” The people there, children of our older States, seem to have forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the priceless value of the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their wandering and confused ideas. 20 The Speech for Special Occasions He and his advisers looked out on a community staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights, and confused in their feeling. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the necessity of resist- ance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be ar- rested. Does not the event show they judged rightly? Absorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the nation all at once come to a stand? Men begin, as in 1776 and 1640, to discuss principles, to weigh characters, to find out where they are. Haply we may awake before we are borne over the precipice. I am glad, sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be here. When liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the key-note for these United States. I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition led by the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively, the deep indignation with which Boston regards this outrage. The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 21 CHARLES DICKENS Speech at the Anniversary Festival of the Hospital for Sick Children, February 9, 1858. Spoken at a dinner. Ladies and Gentlemen :— It is one of my rules in life not to believe a man who may happen to tell me that he feels no interest in children. I hold myself bound to this principle by all kind consideration, because I know, as we all must, that any heart which could really toughen its affec- tions and sympathies against those dear little people must be wanting in so many humanizing experiences of innocence and tenderness as to be quite an unsafe monstrosity among men. Therefore I set the asser- tion down, whenever I happen to meet with it, — which is sometimes, though not often, —as an idle word, origi- nating possibly in the genteel languor of the hour, and meaning about as much as that knowing social lassi- tude, which has used up the cardinal virtues and quite found out things in general, usually does mean. I suppose it may be taken for granted that we, who come together in the name of children and for the sake of children, acknowledge that we have an interest in them ; indeed, I have observed since I sat down here that we are quite in a childlike state altogether, repre- senting an infant institution, and not even a grown-up company. A few years are necessary to the increase 22 The Speech for Special Occasions of our strength and the expansion of our figure; and then these tables, which now have a few tucks in them, will be let out, and then this hall, which now sits so easily upon us, will be too tight and small for us. Nevertheless, it is likely that even we are not without our experience now and then of spoilt children. I do not mean of our own spoilt children, because no- body’s own children ever were spoilt, but I mean the disagreeable children of our particular friends. We know by experience what it is to have them down after dinner, and, across the rich perspective of a miscellaneous dessert to see, as in a black dose darkly, the family doctor looming in the distance. We know, I have no doubt we all know, what it is to assist at those little maternal anecdotes and table entertain- ments illustrated with imitations and descriptive dia- logue which might not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption (cutaneous) of Master Alexander. We know what it is when those children won’t go to bed; we know how they prop their eyelids open with their forefingers when they will sit up; how, when they become fractious, they say aloud that they don’t like us, and our nose is too long, and why don’t we go? And we are perfectly ac- quainted with those kicking bundles which are carried off at last, protesting. An eminent eye-witness told me The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 23 that he was one of a company of learned pundits who assembled at the house of a very distinguished phi- losopher of the last generation to hear him expound his stringent views concerning infant education and early mental development, and he told me that while the philosopher did this in very lucid and beautiful language, the philosopher’s little boy, for his part, edified the assembled sages by dabbling up to the el- bows in an apple pie which had been provided for their entertainment, having previously anointed his hair with the syrup, combed it with his fork, and brushed it with his spoon. It is probable that we also have our similar experiences sometimes, of principles that are not quite practice, and that we know people claiming to be very wise and profound about nations of men who show themselves to be rather weak and shallow about units of babies. But, ladies and gentlemen, the spoilt children whom I have to present to you after this dinner of to-day are not of this class. I have glanced at these for the easier and lighter introduction of another, a very different, a far more numerous, and a far more serious, class. The spoilt children whom I must show you are the spoilt children of the poor in this great city, the children who are, every year, forever and ever irrevo- cably spoilt out of this breathing life of ours by tens of thousands, but who may in vast numbers be pre- 24 The Speech for Special Occasions served if you, assisting and not contravening the ways of Providence, will help to save them. The two grim nurses, Poverty and Sickness, who bring these children before you, preside over their births, rock their wretched cradles, nail down their little coffins, pile up the earth above their graves. Of the annual deaths in this great town, their unnatural deaths form more than one-third. I shall not ask you, according to the cus- tom as to the other class —I shall not ask you on behalf of these children to observe how good they are, how pretty they are, how clever they are, how promising they are, whose beauty they most resemble —I shall only ask you to observe how weak they are, and how like death they are! And I shall ask you, by the remembrance of everything that lies between your own infancy and that so miscalled second childhood when the child’s graces are gone, and nothing but its helplessness remains —T shall ask you to turn your thoughts to these spoilt children in the sacred names of Pity and Compassion. Some years ago, being in Scotland, I went with one of the most humane members of the humane medical profession on a morning tour among some of the worst-lodged inhabitants of the old town of Edin- burgh. In the closes and wynds of that picturesque place — Iam sorry to remind you what fast friends pic- turesqueness and typhus often are—we saw more pov- The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 25 erty and sickness in an hour than many people would believe in a life. Our way lay from one to another of the most wretched dwellings, reeking with horrible odors, shut out from the sky, shut out from the air, mere pits anddens. Inaroom in one of these places, where there was an empty porridge pot on the cold hearth, with a ragged woman and some ragged children crouching on the bare ground near it— where, I remember, as I speak, that the very light, refracted from a high, damp- stained and time-stained house wall, came trembling in, as if the fever which had shaken everything else there had shaken even it—there lay, in an old egg-box which the mother had begged from a shop, a little, feeble, wasted, wan, sick child, with his little wasted face, and his little hot, worn hands folded over his breast, and his little bright, attentive eyes looking steadily at us. I can see him now, as I have seen him for several years : there he lay in his little frail box, which was not at all a bad emblem of the little body from which he was slowly parting — there he lay, quite quiet, quite patient, saying never a word. He seldom cried, the mother said; he seldom complained; “he lay there, seemin’ to woonder what it was a’ aboot.” God knows, I thought, as I stood looking at him, he had his reasons for wondering — reasons for wondering how it could possibly come to be that he lay there, left alone, feeble and full of pain, when he ought to have been as bright 26 The Speech for Special Occasions and as brisk as the birds that never got near him — reasons for wondering how he came to be left there, a little decrepit old man pining to death, quite a thing of course, as if there were no crowds of healthy and happy children playing on the grass under the summer’s sun within a stone’s throw of him; as if there were no bright moving sea on the other side of the great hill overhanging the city; as if there were no great clouds rushing over it; as if there were no life, and no move- ment and vigor anywhere in the world—nothing but stoppage and decay. There he lay looking at us, saying, in his silence, more pathetically than I have ever heard anything said by any orator in my life, “ Will you please to tell me what this means, strange man? and if you can give me any good reason why I should be so soon so far advanced on my way to Him who said that children were to come into His presence, and were not to be forbidden; but who scarcely meant, I think, that they should come by this hard road by which I am travelling; pray give that reason to me, for I seek it very earnestly, and wonder about it very much ;” and to my mind he has been wondering about it ever since. Many a poor child, sick and neglected, I have seen since that time in this London; many a poor sick child I have seen most affectionately and kindly tended by poor people, in an unwholesome house and under untoward circumstances, wherein its recov- The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 27 ery was quite impossible ; but at all such times I have seen my poor little drooping friend in his egg-box, and he has always addressed his dumb speech to me, and I have always found him wondering what it meant, and why, in the name of a gracious God, such things should be! Now, ladies and gentlemen, such things need not be, and will not be, if this company, which is a drop of the life-blood of the great compassionate public heart, will only accept the means of rescue and prevention ‘which it is mine to offer. Within a quarter of a mile of this place where I speak, stands a courtly old house, where once, no doubt, blooming children were born, and grew up to be men and women, and married, and brought their own blooming children back to patter up the old oak staircase, which stood but the other day, and to wonder at the old oak carvings on the chimney- pieces. In the airy wards into which the old state drawing-rooms and family bedchambers of that house are now converted are such little patients that the attendant nurses look like reclaimed giantesses, and the kind medical practitioner like an amiable Chris- tian ogre. Grouped about the little low tables in the centre of the rooms are such tiny convalescents that they seem to be playing at having been ill. On the doll’s beds are such diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is supplied with its tray of toys; and, 28 The Speech for Special Occasions looking round, you may see how the little, tired, flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on its way into the ark, or how one little dimpled arm mowed down—as I saw myself—the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the beds’ heads are pictures of the figure which is the universal embod- iment of all mercy and compassion, the figure of Him who was once a child himself, and a poor one. Besides these little creatures on the beds, you may learn in that place that the number of small out-patients brought: to that house for relief is no fewer than ten thousand in the compass of one single year. In the room in which these are received you may see against the wall a box, on which it is written, that it has been calculated that if every grateful mother who brings a child there will drop a penny into it, the hospital funds may possibly be increased in a year by so large a sum as forty pounds. And you may read in the hospital Report, with a glow of pleasure, that these poor women are so respondent as to have made, even in a toiling year of difficulty and high prices, this estimated forty, fifty pounds. In the printed papers of this same hospital you may read with what a generous earnestness the highest and wisest members of the medical profession testify to the great need of it; to the immense difficulty of treating children in the same hospital with grown-up people, The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 29 by reason of their different ailments and requirements; to the vast amount of pain that will be assuaged, and of life that will be saved, through this hospital; not only among the poor, observe, but among the prosper- ous, too, by reason of the increased knowledge of chil- dren’s illnesses, which cannot fail to arise from a more systematic mode of studying them. Lastly, gentle- men, and I am sorry to say, worst of all (for I must present no rose-colored picture of this place to you—I must not deceive you) lastly, the visitor to this chil- dren’s hospital, reckoning up the number of its beds, will find himself perforce obliged to stop at very little over thirty; and will learn, with sorrow and surprise, that even that small number, so forlornly, so miserably diminutive, compared with this vast London, cannot possibly be maintained, unless the hospital be made better known ; I limit myself to saying better known, because I will not believe that in a Christian commu- nity of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, it can fail, being better known, to be well and richly endowed. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this, without a word of adornment, — which I resolved when I got up not to allow myself, —this is the simple case. This is the pathetic case which I have to put to you, not only on behalf of the thousands of children who annually die in this great city, but also on behalf of the thousands 30 The Speech for Special Occasions of children who live half developed, racked with preventable pain, shorn of their natural capacity for health and enjoyment. If these innocent creatures cannot move you for themselves, how can I possibly hope to move you in theirname? The most delightful paper, the most charming essay, which the tender imagination of Charles Lamb conceived, represents him as sitting by his fireside on a winter night telling stories to his own dear children, and delighting in their society, until he suddenly comes to his old, solitary, bachelor self, and finds that they were but dream- children who might have been, but never were. ‘‘ We are nothing,” they say to him, “less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and we must wait upon the tedious shore of Lethe, millions of ages, before we have existence and aname.” ‘And immediately awaking,” he says, “‘I found myself in my arm-chair.” The dream-children whom I would now raise, if I could, before every one of you, accord- ing to your various circumstances, should be the dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might have had, the child you certainly have been. Each of these dream-children should hold in its power- ful hand one of the little children now lying in the child’s hospital, or now shut out of it to perish. Each of these dream-children should say to you, “ Oh, help this little suppliant in my name; oh, help it for my The Speech in Behalf of a Cause 31 sake!” Well! And immediately awaking, you should find yourselves in the Freemasons’ Hall, happily arrived at the end of a rather long speech, drinking “‘ Prosperity to the Hospital for Sick Children,” and thoroughly resolved that it shall flourish. TI THE SPEECH OF A PRESIDENT 1. At Inauguration 2. As Chairman of a Meeting II THE SPEECH OF A PRESIDENT 1. At [Inauguration 2. As Chairman of a Meeting GROVER CLEVELAND First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1885.' In the presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen I am about to supplement and seal, by the oath which I shall take, the manifestation of the will of a great and free people. In the exercise of their power and right of self-government they have committed to one of their fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust, and he here consecrates himself to their service. This impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn sense of responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to all the people of the land. Nothing can relieve me from anxiety lest by any act of mine 1 Reprinted, by permission of Funk and Wagnalls Company, from ‘Bryan-Halsey’s “The World’s Famous Orations.” New York and London. Copyright, 1906. 35 36 The Speech for Special Occasions their interests may suffer, and nothing is needed to strengthen my resolution to engage every faculty and effort in the promotion of their welfare. Amid the din of party strife the people’s choice was made, but its attendant circumstances have demon- strated anew the strength and safety of a government by the people. In each succeeding year it more clearly appears that our democratic principle needs no apology, and that in its fearless and faithful application is to be found the surest guarantee of good government. But the best results in the operation of a government, wherein every citizen has a share, largely depend upon a proper limitation of purely partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen. ' To-day the executive branch of the government is transferred to new keeping. But this is still the govern- ment of all the people, and it should be none the less an object of their affectionate solicitude. At this hour the animosities of political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat, and the exultation of partisan triumph should be supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will, and a sober, conscientious concern for the general weal. Moreover, if from this hour we cheerfully and honestly abandon all sectional prejudice and distrust, and determine, with manly confidence The Speech of a President 37 in one another, to work out harmoniously the achieve- ment of our national destiny, we shall deserve to realize all the benefits which our happy form of government can bestow. On this auspicious occasion we may well renew the pledge of our devotion to the Constitution, which, launched by the founders of the republic and conse- crated by their prayers and patriotic devotion, has for almost a century borne the hopes and the aspirations of a great people through prosperity and peace and through the shock of foreign conflicts and the perils of domestic strife and vicissitudes. By the Father of his Country our Constitution was commended for adoption as “ the result of a spirit of amity and mutual concession.” In that same spirit it should be administered, in order to promote the lasting welfare of the country and to secure the full measure of its priceless benefits to us and to those who will succeed to the blessings of our national life. The large variety of diverse and competing interests sub- ject to federal control, persistently seeking the recog- nition of their claims, need give us no fear that “ the greatest good to the greatest number ”’ will fail to be accomplished if in the halls of national legislation that spirit of amity and mutual concession shall prevail in which the Constitution had its birth. If this involves the surrender or postponement of private interests and 38 The Speech for Special Occasions the abandonment of local advantages, compensation will be found in the assurance that the common interest is subserved and the general welfare advanced. In the discharge of my official duty I shall endeavor to be guided by a just and unstrained construction of the Constitution, a careful observance of the distinc- tion between the powers granted to the federal govern- ment and those reserved to the States or to the people, and by a cautious appreciation of those functions which by the Constitution and laws have been especially assigned to the executive branch of the government. But he who takes the oath to-day to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation which every patriotic citizen —on the farm, in the workshop, in the busy marts of trade, and everywhere — should share with him. The Constitution which prescribes his oath, my countrymen, is yours; the government you have chosen him to administer for a time is yours; the suf- frage which executes the will of freemen is yours; the laws and the entire scheme of our civil rule, from the town meeting to the State capitals and the national. capital, is yours. Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust. Nor is this all. Every citizen owes to the country a vigi- lant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants The Speech of a President 39 and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity and usefulness. Thus is the people’s will impressed upon the whole framework of our civil polity — munic- ipal, State, and federal; and this is the price of our liberty and the inspiration of our faith in the republic. It is the duty of those serving the people in public place to closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the government, economically administered, because this bounds the right of the government to exact tribute from the earnings of labor or the property of the citizen, and because public extravagance begets extravagance among the people. We should never be ashamed of the simplicity and prudential economies which are best suited to the operation of a republican form of government and most compatible with the mission of the American people. Those who are se- lected for a limited time to manage public affairs are still of the people, and may do much by their example to encourage, consistently with the dignity of their official functions, that plain way of life which among their fellow-citizens aids integrity and promotes thrift and prosperity. The genius of our institutions, the needs of our people in their home life, and the attention which is demanded for the settlement and development of the resources of our vast territory dictate the scrupulous avoidance of any departure from that foreign policy commended 40 The Speech for Special Occasions by the history, the traditions, and the prosperity of our republic. It is the policy of independence, fa- vored by our position and defended by our known love of justice and by our own power. It is the policy of peace suitable to our interests. It is the policy of neutrality, rejecting any share in foreign broils and ambitions upon other continents and repelling their intrusion here. It is the policy of Monroe and of Washington and of Jefferson — ‘‘ Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliance with none.” A due regard for the interests and prosperity of all the people demands that our finances shall be estab- lished upon such a sound and sensible basis as shall secure the safety and confidence of business interests and make the wages of labor sure and steady, and that our system of revenue shall be so adjusted as to relieve the people of unnecessary taxation, having a due regard to the interests of capital invested and workingmen employed in American industries, and preventing the accumulation of a surplus in the Treasury to tempt extravagance and waste. Care for the property of the nation and for the needs of future settlers requires that the public domain should be protected from purloining schemes and unlawful occupation. The conscience of the people demands that the The Speech of a President 41 Indians within our boundaries shall be fairly and hon- estly treated as wards of the government, and their education and civilization promoted with a view to their ultimate citizenship, and that polygamy in the Territories, destructive of the family relation and offen- sive to the moral sense of the civilized world, shall be repressed. The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizen- ship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization. The people demand reform in the administration of the government and the application of business principles to public affairs. As a means to this end, civil service reform should be in good faith enforced. Our citizens have the right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely as the reward of partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of those who promise and the vicious methods of those who expect such re- wards; and those who worthily seek public employ- ment have the right to insist that merit and compe- tency shall be recognized instead of party subserviency or the surrender of honest political belief. In the administration of a government pledged to do equal and exact justice to all men, there should be 42 The Speech for Special Occasions no pretext for anxiety touching the protection of the freedmen in their rights or their security in the enjoy- ment of their privileges under the Constitution and its amendments. All discussion as to their fitness for the place accorded to them as American citizens is idle and unprofitable except as it suggests the necessity for their improvement. The fact that they are citizens entitles them to all the rights due to that relation and charges them with all its duties, obligations, and respon- sibilities. These topics and the constant and ever varying wants of an active and enterprising population may well receive the attention and the patriotic endeavor of all who make and execute the federal law. Our duties are practical, and call for industrious application, an intelligent perception of the claims of public office, and, above all, a firm determination, by united action, to secure to all the people of the land the full benefits of the best form of government ever vouchsafed to man. And let us not trust to human effort alone, but humbly acknowledging the power and goodness of Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of nations and who has at all times been revealed in our country’s history, let us invoke His aid and His blessing upon our labors. The Speech of a President 43 MattrHEw ARNOLD Speech as president of the Wordsworth Society, at a meeting held May 2, 1883, in the College Hall, Westminster.' At your last meeting you did me the honor, although I was not a member of your society, to elect me your president for this year. I had declined to join the Wordsworth Society for the same reason that I decline to join other societies — not from any disrespect to their objects or to their promoters, but because, being very busy and growing old, I endeavor to avoid fresh engage- ments and distractions, and to keep what little leisure I can for reflection and amendment before the inevi- table close. When your election of me came, however, I felt that it would be ungracious to decline it; and, as generally happens, having decided to accept it and to join you, I soon began to find out a number of excellent reasons for doing what I had resolved to do. In former days, you know, people who had in near view that inevitable close of which I just now spoke, people who had their fill of life’s business and were tired of its labor and contention, used to enter a monastery. In my opinion they did a very sensible thing. I said to myself: Times and circumstances have changed; you cannot well enter a monastery, but you can enter the Wordsworth Society. The two 1From Transactions of the Wordsworth Society, No. V. 44 The Speech for Special Occasions things are not so very different. A monastery is under the rules of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Well, and he who comes under the discipline of Wordsworth comes under those same rules. Wordsworth constantly both preached and practised them. He was “ frugal and severe” ; he ever calls us to “ plain living and high thinking.” There you have the ruleof poverty. His chosen hero and exemplar, the pedler of “The Excur- sion,” was formed and fashioned by the Scottish Church having held upon him in his youth, with a power which endured all his life long, “the strong hand of her pu- ” rity.” There you have the rule of chastity. Finally, in an immortal ode, Wordsworth tells us how he made it his heart’s desire and prayer to live the “ bondman of duty in the light of truth.” There you have the rule of obedience. We live in a world which sometimes, in our morose moments, if we have any, may almost seem to us, perhaps, to have set itself to be as little poor as possible, and as little chaste as possible, and as little obedient as possible. Whoever is oppressed with thoughts of this kind, let him seek refuge in the Wordsworth Society. As your president, it is my duty not to occupy too much of your time myself, but to announce the papers which are to be read to you, and to introduce their readers. It was hoped that a paper would have been read by Lord Coleridge. There was an additional The Speech of a President 45 reason for joining your society. But the paper has to be put off, alas, till next year. There is a reason for continuing to belong to you. Mr. Stopford Brooke — whose published remarks on Wordsworth, as on other great English writers, we all know, and excellent they are— Mr. Stopford Brooke, I am glad to say, will read us a paper. Mr. Aubrey De Vere — who has given us more interesting and trustworthy reports of Wordsworth in his old age than any one except Miss Fenwick — Mr. Aubrey De Vere has pre- pared a paper, which will be read by our secretary — if he is not more properly to be called the author of our being— Professor Knight. If Professor Knight’s work in founding us (I may say in passing) had even had no other result than the production of those photo- graphs of Wordsworth which appear in the Society’s Transactions of last year, that result alone would have been a sufficient justification of his work. Other mat- ters, besides the papers which I have mentioned, will come before you, and I must leave way for them. But suffer me, before I sit down, to say seriously and sincerely what pleasure I find in the testimony afforded by the prosperity of your society, and by the numbers present here to-day, to the influence of Wordsworth. His imperfections, the mixture of prose with his poetry, I am probably more disposed than some members of the society to admit freely. But I doubt whether 46 The Speech jor Special Occasions any one admires Wordsworth more than I do. I admire him, first of all, for the very simple and solid reason that he is such an exceedingly great poet. One puts him after Shakespeare and Milton. Shakespeare is out of comparison. Milton was, of course, a far greater artist than Wordsworth; probably also a greater force. But the spiritual passion of Wordsworth, his spiritual passion when, as in the magnificent sonnet of farewell to the River Duddon, for instance, he is at his highest, and “ sees into the life of things,” cannot be matched from Milton. I will not say it is beyond Milton, but he has never shown it. To match it, one must go to the ocean of Shakespeare. A second inval- uable merit which I find in Wordsworth is this: he has something to say. Perhaps one prizes this merit the more as one grows old, and has less time left for trifling. Goethe got so sick of the fuss about form and technical details, without due care for adequate contents, that he said if he were younger he should take pleasure in setting the so-called art of the new school of poets at nought, and in trusting for his whole effect to his hav- ing something important to say. (In Eckermann, ““Gesprache mit Goethe,” II, 260-262.) Dealing with no wide, varied, and brilliant world, dealing with the common world close to him, and using few materials, Wordsworth, like Leopardi, is yet profoundly impres- sive, because he has really something to say. And the The Speech of a President 47 mention of Leopardi, that saddest of poets, brings me, finally, to what is perhaps Wordsworth’s most distinc- tive virtue of all—his power of happiness and hope, his “deep power of joy.” What a sadness is in those brilliant poets of Italy — what a sadness in even the sweetest of them all, the one whom Wordsworth specially loved, the pious and tender Virgil! “‘ Optima quzque dies miseris mortalibus vi Prima fugit —” — “ Georgics,’”’ IIT. 66-68. “the best days of life for us poor mortals flee first away;”’ subeunt morbi, ‘then come diseases, and old age, and labor, and sorrow; and the severity of unrelenting death hurries us away.” Et dure rapit inclementia mortis. From the ineffable, the dissolving melan- choly of those lovely lines, let us turn our thoughts to the great poet in whose name we are met together to-day — to our Westmoreland singer of ‘the sublime attractions of the grave,” and to the treasure of happi- ness and hope — “Of hope, the paramount duty which Heaven lays, For its own honour, on man’s suffering heart —” which is in him. We are drawn to him because we feel these things; and we believe that the number of these who feel them will continue to increase more and more, long after we are gone. 48 The Speech for Special Occasions WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Speech as president of the day at a-banquet of the Burns Club of New York, in celebration of the centenary of the poet’s birth." On rising to begin the announcement of the regular toasts for this evening, my first duty is to thank my excellent friends of the Burns Club, with whom I do not now meet for the first time, and whose annual festivities are among the pleasantest I ever attended, for the honor they have done me in calling me to the chair I occupy —an honor the more to be prized on account of the rare occasion on which it is bestowed. An honor which can be conferred but once in a century is an honor indeed. This evening the memory of Burns will be celebrated as it never was before. His fame, from the time when he first appeared before the world as a poet, has been growing and brightening, as the morning brightens into the perfect day. There never was a time when his merits were so freely acknowl- edged as now; when the common consent of the liter- ary world placed him so high, or spoke his praises with so little intermixture of disparagement; when the an- niversary of his birth could have awakened so general and fervent an enthusiasm. If we could imagine a 1 From “Chronicle of the Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns,” edited by James Ballantine. Edinburgh and London, 18509. The Speech of a President 49 human being endowed with the power of making him- self, through the medium of his senses, a witness of whatever is passing on the face of the globe, what a series of festivities, what successive manifestations of the love and admiration which all who speak our language bear to the great Scottish poet, would present themselves to his observation, accompanying the shadow of this nightin its circuitround theearth. Some twelve hours before this time he would have heard the praises of Burns recited and the songs of Burns sung on the banks of the Ganges— the music flowing out at the open windows on the soft evening air of that region, and mingling with the murmurs of the sacred river. A little later he might have heard the same sounds from ... [the mouth of the Euphrates; the southern extremity of Africa; the shores of the Tonian Isles; the groves of Malta; the banks of the Seine; the British Isles; Liberia and Sierra Leone; from Newfoundland, the St. Lawrence, the Schuylkill, the Potomac, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Sacramento; from Australia]. And thus will this com- memoration pursue the sunset round the globe, and follow the journey of the evening star till that gentle planet shines on the waters of China. Well has our great poet deserved this universal commemoration — for who has written like him? What poem descriptive of rural manners and virtues, rural life in its simplicity E 50 The Speech for Special Occasions and dignity — yet without a single false outline or touch of false coloring — clings to our memories and lives in our bosoms like his ‘‘ Cotter’s Saturday Night”? What humorous narrative in verse can be compared with his ‘Tam O’Shanter”? From the fall of Adam to his time, I believe, there was nothing written in the vein of his “‘ Mountain Daisy” ; others have caught his spirit from that poem, but who among them all has excelled him? Of all the convivial songs I have ever seen in any language, there is none so overflowing with the spirit of conviviality, so joyous, so contagious, as his song of “ Willie brewed a peck 0’ maut.”’ What love- songs are sweeter and tenderer than those of Burns ? What song addresses itself so movingly to our love of old friends and our pleasant recollections of old days as his “Auld Lang Syne”’ or to the domestic affections so powerfully as his “‘ John Anderson”? ? You heard yesterday, my friends, and will hear again to-day, better things said of the genius of Burns than I can say. That will be your gain and mine. But there is one observation which, if I have not already tried your patience too far, I would ask your leave to make. If Burns was thus great among poets, it was not because be stood higher than they by any preéminence of a creative and fertile imagination. Original, affluent, and active his imagination certainly was, and it was always kept under the guidance of a The Speech of a President 51 masculine and vigorous understanding; but it is the feeling which lives in his poems that gives them their supreme mastery over the minds of men. Burns was thus great because God breathed into him, in larger measure than into other men, the spirit of that love which constitutes His own essence, and made him, more than other men, a living soul. Burns was great by the greatness of his sympathies — sympathies acute and delicate, yet large, comprehensive, boundless. They were warmest and strongest toward those of his own kind, yet they overflowed upon all sentient beings: upon the animal in his stall, upon the “wee, sleekit, cowerin’ timorous beastie,” dislodged from her autum- nal covert; upon the hare wounded by the sportsman; upon the very field flower, overturned by his share and crushed among the stubble. And in all this we feel that there is nothing strained or exaggerated, nothing affected or put on, nothing childish or silly, but that all is true, genuine, manly, noble. We honor, we ven- erate the poet while we read; we take the expression of these sympathies to our hearts, and fold it in our memory forever. And now, having said all I purposed to say — to your weariness I fear —- I proceed to give out the first regular toast, a toast in which, if you do not heartily join, I shall wonder why you are here. I give you “The Day we Celebrate’”’—a day “which makes 52 The Speech for Special Occasions the whole world kin,” uniting by sympathetic emo- tion men of all degrees, in every land, in honoring the memory and the genius of Robert Burns, one of “the few, the immortal names that were not born to die.” II THE SPEECH OF COMMEMORATION OR PERSONAL TRIBUTE 1. At Memorial Ceremonies 2. To the Living 3. At Anniversary Celebrations III THE SPEECH OF COMMEMORATION OR PERSONAL TRIBUTE 1. At Memorial Ceremonies 2. To the Living 3. At Anniversary Celebrations Henry WapswortH LONGFELLOW TRIBUTE TO IRVING Spoken before the Massachusetts Historical Society, December 15, 1859." Every reader has his first book: I mean to say, one book, among all others, which, in early youth, first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me, this first book was the ‘‘ Sketch-Book” of Washington Irving. I was a schoolboy when it was published, and read each suc- ceeding number with ever increasing wonder and de- light, — spellbound by its pleasant humor, its melan- choly tenderness, its atmosphere of revery; nay, even by its gray-brown covers, the shaded letters of the 1 From Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1859. 55 56 The Speech for Special Occasions titles, and the fair, clear type, which seemed an out- ward symbol of the style. How many delightful books the same author has given us, written before and since, —volumes of history and fiction, most of which illustrate his native land, and some of which illuminate it, and make the Hud- son, I will not say as classic, but as romantic, as the Rhine. Yet still the charm of the ‘Sketch-Book”’ remains unbroken; the old fascination still lingers about it, and, whenever I open its pages, I open also that mysterious door which leads back into the haunted chambers .of youth. Many years afterward I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Irving in Spain, and found the author, whom I had loved, repeated in the man, — the same playful humor, the same touches of sentiment, the same poetic atmosphere, and, what I admired still more, the entire absence of all literary jealousy, of all that mean avarice of fame, which counts what is given to another as so much taken from one’s self,— “And rustling, hears in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades.” At this time Mr. Irving was at Madrid, engaged upon his “ Life of Columbus”’; and, if the work itself did not bear ample testimony to his zealous and conscien- tious labor, I could do so from personal observation. He seemed to be always at work. “Sit down,” he The Speech of Commemoration 57 would say; “I will talk with you in a moment, but I must finish this sentence.” One summer morning, passing his house at the early hour of six, I saw his study window already wide open. On my mentioning it to him afterwards, he said, “Yes; I am always at my work as early as six.” Since then I have often remem- bered that sunny morning and that open window, so suggestive of his sunny temperament and his open heart, and equally so of his patient and persistent toil; and have recalled those striking words of Dante: — “‘Seggendo in piuma, In fama non si vien, né sotto coltre; Senza la qual, chi sua vita consuma, Cotal vestigio in terra, di sé lascia Qual fummo in aere ed in acquia Ja schiuma.” “Seated upon down, Or in his bed, man cometh not to fame; Withouten which, whoso his life consumes, Such vestige of himself on earth shall leave As smoke in air and in the water foam.” Remembering these things, I esteem it a great though a melancholy privilege to lay upon his hearse the pass- ing tribute of these resolutions: — Resolved, That while we deeply deplore the death of our friend and associate, Washington Irving, we rejoice in the completeness of his life and labors, which, closing together, have left behind them so sweet a fame and a memory so precious. 58 The Speech for Special Occasions Resolved, That we feel a just pride in his renown as an author, not forgetting that to his other claims upon our gratitude he adds also that of having been the first to win for our country an honorable name and position in the history of letters. Resolved, That we hold in affectionate remembrance the noble example of his long literary career, extending through half a century of unremitted labors, graced with all the amenities of authorship, and marred by none of its discords and contentions. Resolved, That, as members of this Historical Society, we regard with especial honor and admiration his lives of Columbus, the Discoverer, and of Washington, the Father of our Country. Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be trans- mitted to his family, with the expression of our deepest and sincerest sympathy. OLIVER WENDELL Holmes TRIBUTE TO LONGFELLOW Spoken before the Massachusetts Historical Society, April 13 1882." Resolved, That in yielding from our roll the name of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow we put on our records the expression of our profoundest regard, esteem, and admiring appreciation of his character and genius, and our grateful sense of the honor and satisfaction we have shared in his companionship. 1 From Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1882. The Speech of Commemoration 59 Dr. Holmes seconded the resolution, and addressed the society, as follows: — It is with no vain lamentations, but rather with profound gratitude that we follow the soul of our much- loved and long-loved poet beyond the confines of the world he helped so largely to make beautiful. We could have wished to keep him longer, but at least we were spared witnessing the inevitable shadows of an old age protracted too far beyond its natural limits. From the first notes of his fluent and harmonious song to the last, which comes to us as the “voice fell like a falling star,” there has never been a discord. The music of the mountain stream, in the poem which reaches us from the other shore of being, is as clear and sweet as the melodies of the youthful and middle periods of his minstrelsy. It has been a fully rounded life, beginning early with large promise, equalling every anticipation in its maturity, fertile and beautiful to its close in the ripeness of its well-filled years. Until the silence fell upon us we did not entirely appreciate how largely his voice was repeated in the echoes of our own hearts. The affluence of his pro- duction so accustomed us to look for a poem from him at short intervals that we could hardly feel how pre- cious that was which wasso abundant. Not, of course, that every single poem reached the standard of the highest among them all. That could not be in Homer’s 60 The Speech for Special Occasions time, and mortals must occasionally nod now as then. But the hand of the artist shows itself unmistakably in everything which left his desk. The O of Giotto could not help being a perfect round, and the verse of Longfellow is always perfect in construction. He worked in that simple and natural way which characterizes the master. But it is one thing to be simple through poverty of intellect, and another to be simple by repression of all redundancy and overstate- ment; one thing to be natural through ignorance of all rules, and another to have made a second out of the sovereign rules of art. In respect of this simplicity and naturalness, his style is in strong contrast to that of many writers of our time. There is no straining for effect, there is no torturing of rhythm for novel patterns, no wearisome iteration of petted words, no inelegant clipping of syllables to meet the exigencies of a verse, no affected archaism, rarely any liberty taken with language, unless it may be in the form of a few words in the translation of Dante. I will not except from these remarks the singular and original form which he gave to his poem of “‘ Hiawatha,” —a poem with a curious history in many respects. Sud- denly and immensely popular in this country, greatly admired by many foreign critics, imitated with perfect ease by any clever schoolboy, serving as a model for metrical advertisements, made fun of, sneered at, The Speech of Commemoration 61 abused, admired, but at any rate a picture full of pleasing fancies and melodious cadences. The very names are jewels which the most fastidious muse might be proud to wear. Coming from the realm of the Androscoggin and of Moosetukmaguntuk, how could he have found two such delicious names as Hiawatha and Minnehaha? The eight-syllable trochaic verse of “Hiawatha,” like the eight-syllable iambic verse of “The Lady of the Lake,” and others of Scott’s poems, has a fatal facility, which I have elsewhere endeavored to explain on physiological principles. The recital of each line uses up the air of one natural expiration, so that we read, as we naturally do, eighteen or twenty lines in a minute, without disturbing the normal rhythm of breathing, which is also eighteen or twenty breaths to the minute. The standing objection to this is that it makes the octosyllabic verse too easy writing and too slipshod reading. Yet in this most frequently criticised composition the poet has shown a subtle sense of the requirements of his simple story of a primitive race, in choosing the most fluid of measures, that lets the thought run through it in easy singsong, such as oral tradition would be sure to find on the lips of the story-tellers of the wigwam. Although Long- fellow was not fond of metrical contortions and acro- batic achievements, he well knew the effects of skilful variation in the forms of verse and well-managed re- 62 The Speech for Special Occasions frains or repetitions. In one of his very earliest poems, — “Pleasant it was when Woods were Green,” — the dropping of a syllable from the last line is an agreeable surprise to the ear, expecting only the common mo- notony of scrupulously balanced lines. In “ Excelsior ” the repetition of the aspiring exclamation, which gives its name to the poem, lifts every stanza a step higher than the one which preceded it. In the ‘“ Old Clock on the Stairs,” the solemn words, ‘‘ Forever, never, never, forever,” give wonderful effectiveness to that most impressive poem. All his art, all his learning, all his melody, cannot account for his extraordinary popularity, not only among his own countrymen and those who in other lands speak the language in which he wrote, but in foreign realms, where he could be read only through the ground glass of a translation. It was in his choice of subjects that one source of the public favor with which his writings, more especially his poems, were received, obviously lay. A poem, to be widely popular, must deal with thoughts and emotions that belong to common, not exceptional, character, conditions, interests. The most popular of all books are those which meet the spiritual needs of mankind most power- fully, such works as “The Imitation of Christ” and “Pilgrim’s Progress.” I suppose if the great multi- tude of readers were to render a decision as to which The Speech of Commemoration 63 of Longfellow’s poems they most valued, the “Psalm of Life” would command the largest number. This is a brief homily enforcing the great truths of duty and of our relation to the unseen world. Next in order would very probably come “ Excelsior,” a poem that springs upward like a flame and carries the soul up with it in its aspiration for the unattainable ideal. If this sounds like a trumpet-call to the fiery energies of youth, not less does the still small voice of that most sweet and tender poem, “Resignation,” appeal to the sensibilities of those who have lived long enough to have known the bitterness of such a bereavement as that out of which grew the poem. Or take a poem before referred to, ‘The Old Clock on the Stairs,” and in it we find the history of innumerable households told in relating the history of one, and the solemn burden of the song repeats itself to thousands of listen- ing readers, as if the beat of the pendulum were throb- bing at the head of every staircase. Such poems as these — and there are many more of not unlike char- acter — are the foundation of that universal acceptance his writings obtain among all classes. But for these appeals to universal sentiment, his readers would have been confined to a comparatively small circle of edu- cated and refined readers. There are thousands and tens of thousands who are familiar with what we might call his household poems, who have never read the 64 The Speech for Special Occasions “Spanish Student,” ‘The Golden Legend,” “‘ Hia- watha,” or even “ Evangeline.” Again, ask the first schoolboy you meet which of Longfellow’s poems he likes best, and he will be very likely to answer, “ Paul Revere’s Ride.” When he is a few years older, he might perhaps say, ‘“ The Building of the Ship,” that admirably constructed poem, beginning with the literal description, passing into the higher region of sentiment by the most natural of transitions, and ending with the noble climax — “* Thou, too, sail on, O ship of state,” which has become the classical expression of patriotic emotion. | Nothing lasts likea coinand alyric. Long after the dwellings of men have disappeared, when their temples are in ruins, and all their works of art are shattered, the ploughman strikes an earthen vessel holding the golden and silver disks, on which the features of a dead mon- arch, with emblems, it may be, betraying the beliefs or the manners, the rudeness or the finish of art, and all which this implies, survive an extinct civilization. Pope has expressed this with his usual Horatian felic- ity, in the letter to Addison, on the publication of his little ‘“‘ Treatise on Coins” : — “A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, And little eagles wave their wings in gold.” The Speech of Commemoration 65 Conquerors and conquered sink in common oblivion ; triumphal arches, pageants the world wonders at, all that trumpeted itself as destined to an earthly immor- tality pass away; the victor of a hundred battles is dust; the parchment or papyrus on which his deeds were written are shrivelled and decayed and gone:— * And all his triumphs shrink into a coin.” So it is with a lyric poem. One happy utterance of some emotion or expression, which comes home to all, may keep a name remembered when the race to which the singer belonged is lost sight of. The cradle song of Danaé to her infants as they tossed on the waves in the imprisoning chest has made the name of Simonides immortal. Our own English literature abounds with instances which illustrate the same fact so far as the experience of a few generations extends. And I think we may venture to say that some of the shorter poems of Longfellow must surely reach a remote posterity, and be considered then, as now, ornaments to English literature. We may compare them with the best short poems of the language with- out fearing that they will suffer. Scott, cheerful, wholesome, unreflective, should be read in the open air; Byron, the poet of malcontents and cynics, in a prison cell; Burns, generous, impassioned, manly, social, in the tavern hall; Moore, elegant, fastidious, full of F 66 The Speech for Special Occasions melody, scented with the volatile perfume of the Eastern gardens, in which his fancy revelled, is pre- eminently the poet of the drawing-room and the piano; Longfellow, thoughtful, musical, home-loving, busy with the lessons of life, which he was ever studying, and loved to teach others, finds his charmed circle of listeners by the fireside. His songs, which we might almost call sacred ones, rarely if ever get into the hymn- books. They are too broadly human to suit the special- ized tastes of the sects, which often think more of their differences from each other than of the common ground on which they can agree. Shall we think less of our poet because he so frequently aimed in his verse not simply to please, but also to impress some elevating thought on the minds of his readers? The Psalms of King, David are burning with religious devotion and full of weighty counsel, but they are not less valued, certainly, than the poems of Omar Khayy4m, which cannot be accused of too great a tendency to find a useful lesson in their subject. Dennis, the famous critic, found fault with the “‘ Rape of the Lock”’ because it had no moral. It is not necessary that a poem should carry a moral, any more than that a picture of the Madonna should always be an altarpiece. The poet himself is the best judge of that in each particular. case. In that charming little poem of Wordsworth’s ending — The Speech of Commemoration 67 “And then my heart with rapture thrills And dances with the daffodils,” we do not ask for anything more than the record of the impression which is told so simply, and which justifies itself by the way in which it is told. But who does not feel with the poet that the touching story, “Hart-leap Well,” must have its lesson brought out distinctly, to give a fitting close to the narrative ? Who would omit those two lines ? — “Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that lives.” No poet knew better than Longfellow how to impress a moral without seeming to preach. Didactic verse, as such, is, no doubt, a formidable visitation, but a cathedral has its lesson to teach as well as a school- house. ‘These beautiful medallions of verse which Longfellow has left us might possibly be found fault with as conveying too much useful and elevating truth in their legends ; having the unartistic aim of being serviceable as well as delighting by their beauty. Let us leave such comment to the critics who cannot handle a golden coin fresh from the royal mint without clipping its edges and stamping their own initials on its face. Of the longer poems of our chief singer, I should not hesitate to select ‘‘ Evangeline” as the masterpiece, and I think the general verdict of opinion would confirm 68 The Speech for Special Occasions my choice. The German model which it follows in its measure and the character of its story was itself suggested by an earlier idyl. If Dorothea was the mother of Evangeline, Luise was the mother of Doro- thea. And what a beautiful creation is the Acadian maiden! From the first line of the poem, from its first words, we read as we would float down a broad and placid river, murmuring softly against its banks, heaven over it and the glory of the unspoiled wilderness all around, — “This is the forest primeval.” The words are already as familiar as “ Maju dede, Gea,” “Arma virumque cano.” The hexameter has been often criticised, but I do not believe any other measure could have told that lovely story with such effect, as we feel when carried along the tranquil current of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines. Imagine for one moment a story like this minced into octosyllabics. The poet knows better than his critics the length of step which best befits his muse. T will not take up your time with any further remarks upon writings so well known to all. By the poem I have last mentioned, and by his lyrics, or shorter poems, I think the name of Longfellow will be longest remem- The Speech of Commemoration 69 bered. Whatever he wrote, whether in prose or poe- try, bore always the marks of the finest scholarship, the purest taste, fertile imagination, a sense of the music of words, and a skill in bringing it out of our English tongue which hardly more than one of his contemporaries who writes in that language can be said to equal. The saying of Buffon, that the style is the man him- self, or of the man himself, as some versions have it, was never truer than in the case of our beloved poet. Let us understand by style all that gives individuality to the expression of the writer; and in the subjects, the handling, the spirit and aim of his poems, we see the reflex of a personal character which made him worthy of that almost unparalleled homage which crowned his noble life. Such a funeral procession as attended him in thought to his resting-place has never joined the train of mourners that followed the hearse of a poet, —could we not say of any private citizen? And we all feel that no tribute could be too generous, too universal, to the union of a divine gift with one of the loveliest of human characters. yo The Speech for Special Occasions FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR TRIBUTE TO PHILLIPS BROOKS! It was with a shock of grief that I read in the Amer- ican telegrams of January 23 the announcement of the death of my most dear and honored friend, Phillips Brooks. When I parted from him at the end of last July, it seemed immensely more likely that I—five years his senior — should be called — “To where beyond these voices there is peace,” than that he should pass away so suddenly from the scene of his splendid activities. He was a man of magnificent physique — six feet five high and strong and large in proportion. His handsome features, his manly carriage, his striking and massive head, his strong health, his vigorous personality, seemed to promise a long life to him if to any man. Every one, indeed, noticed during his last visit to England that he looked much thinner than he had done two years before, but he always spoke of himself as perfectly well, and his great boyish heart seemed as full as ever of love and hope and joy. I noticed in him a just perceptible deepening of gravity in tone, but no dimi- nution of his usually bright spirits. He resembled our common friend, the late Dean Stanley, in the fact that 1 Reprinted, by permission, from The Review of Reviews, March, 1893. Copyright, 1893, by The Review of Reviews Co. The Speech of Commemoration qi his genius had all the characteristics of “‘ the heart of childhood taken up and matured in the powers of man- hood.” Tattributed the slightly less buoyant tempera- ment of last summer — the sort of half sadness which sometimes seemed to flit over his mind, like the shadow of a summer cloud — to the exigencies and responsibili- ties of his recent dignity. For his work as a bishop was to the last degree exhausting. He used to send me the printed list of his engagements. They were daily and incessant. I stood amazed at them. They were, no doubt, greatly increased by his unprecedented popularity with the laity; but to discharge them as he would discharge them must have required, and must, I fear, have im- paired, a giant’s strength. And this tax upon his powers, joined to the stress of a winter which has been terribly severe in America, must have hastened the end, which is for him so happy a release, but which to us seems so untimely a deprivation. I cannot but think that if he had not accepted the call to the bishopric of Massachusetts he might have lived for many a long and happy year. Assuredly it was not ambition which led him to desire such empty shadows as precedence and a title. I knew him too well to suppose that he would care a broken straw for such gilt fragments of potsherd, such dust in the mid- night, as the worldly adjuncts of an inch-high distinc- 72 The Speech for Special Occasions tion. His heart was too large for so small an ambition. Had he chosen to answer the world according to its idols, to trim his sails to the veering breezes of eccle- siastical opinion, to suppress or tamper with his cher- ished convictions, and, as Tennyson says, “to creep and crawl in the hedge-bottoms,” he, with his rich gifts, might easily have been a bishop thirty years ago. In ability and every commanding quality he towered head and shoulders above the whole body of American ecclesiastics, only one or two of whom are known out- side their own parishes or dioceses. Probably no se- verer lot could have befallen him than to be made bishop. For he was a man who had lived a very happy life, and although he was in no sense of the word indolent, he managed to escape the entanglements of work which so disastrously crowd the lives of too many of us, not only with harassing labors, but also with endless worry, fussy littlenesses, and an infinite deal of nothing. Wisely and rightly he left a margin to his life, and did not crowd its pages to the very edge. He enjoyed his quiet smoke and hour of social geniality in the evening. He had an insatiate love for travel. He had visited much of what was best worth seeing in both hemi- spheres, and wherever he went — being blessed with admirable taste and ample means—he collected memo- rials of his journeys. His bachelor home in Boston—in which I twice spent happy weeks—was full of careless The Speech of Commemoration 73 beauty and solid comfort, and was constantly brightened with the presence of friends who loved him as few men havebeenever loved. Hisepiscopate must have greatly altered the peaceful and joyous tenor of his life. It must have exposed him to hundreds of small vexations, which, as they revealed to him the inherent littleness of mankind, —especially as it displays itself in spheres ecclesiastical, must have put a severe strain on his faith in human nature. I believe that he accepted his so-called promotion solely for two reasons: because he felt that to do so was a solemn duty laid upon him, and because he hoped by this self-sacrifice— not only of wealth and ease, but of things which he valued far more than both— to render real, high, and most needful services to the church to which he belonged. I do not know that he was right. No man could do the work he has done and was doing, but much smaller men could have discharged the more ordinary functions of his new routine. The following letter will, show some of his feelings on his new appointment: — 233 CLARENDON STREET, BosTON, May 10, 1891. Dear Dr. Farrar: A thousand thanks for your most kind letter. I knew that I should have your sympathy ! I am not Bishop yet. We have a complicated constitution, and all the Dioceses and all the Bishops have to vote upon me before I am confirmed and can be consecrated. And so it will * 74 The Speech for Special Occasions be some time yet ; but it willcome. Massachusetts has done its part, rather unexpectedly to everybody, and I shall prob- ably be consecrated somewhere about October 1. It looks quite interesting and attractive, and I hope I shall not be quite useless in the new work which will occupy the remainder of my days. I have had a delightful life, and the last twenty years of it which I have spent in Trinity Church have been un- broken in their happiness. Why should I believe that the good Father has left me now, and has not made ready some- thing good for me to do and be in these new fields? So I go on with good heart. It will spoil any chance of my coming this year to Europe, and so I must not hope to preach in St. Margaret’s. A quiet summer here at home, looking over the work, closing up the past, and making ready for the future, is what evidently is appointed me. Iam sorry for that. I do not like to let the years go by with so rare sights of friends’ faces. And it will be long since I saw yours — another year, perhaps! You know how constantly I think of you, and with what wonder and admiration I hear of your abounding labors, and with what deep sorrow I know of suffering that comes to you! It is a joy to me that you should put my name in your new book. It touches me and pleases me exceedingly. And so, dear friend, may God’s best blessing be to you and yours. My truest love to them. And let me be always, affectionately your friend, Puitires Brooks. Whether, in addition to other t ials, he suffered much from the malevolence of his opponents — whether he was in the slightest degree moved by reading such articles as that which was quoted in the last number of this Review, in which the Church Times, with its The Speech of Commemoration "5 usual exquisite amenity, and that beautiful exhibition of the elementary Christian graces by which (in addi- tion to infallibility) it is characterized —I do not know. I think and hope that he was indifferent to what Montalembert calls ‘‘ the unknown voices that bellow in the shade, and swell the language of falsehood and of hate.” What I do know is that in the cause of duty he feared, as little as I do myself, to encounter the daggers of masked “ religious”? calumniators. If he had to pass through veritable hurricanes of abuse from anonymous critics, he could always turn from the storm without to the sunshine of “pure conscience ‘within’; and he knew that he was enshrined in the enthusiastic affection of tens of thousands of the brother Christians whom he had so nobly served. I never knew a man so supremely unaffected by the “Status, entourage, worldly circumstance” of his episcopal rank. It was with difficulty that I persuaded him to wear in England his episcopal robes, though any ordinary surplice looked ridiculous on his massive frame. Once when I gave the title, “my Lord,” to dear old Bishop Lee, of Delaware, —then, I think, the presiding American bishop, —with whom I was staying, he quietly said, “ You are giving me, sir, a title to which I have no claim.” What Phillips Brooks would have done to me had I so addressed him, Ican hardly conjecture. I knew him too well to 76 The Speech for Special Occasions make the attempt. I have experienced in the case of more than one man that when he becomes a bishop under the modern circumstances and surroundings of that position, if he does not quite “Bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus,” yet all the old familiar friendship is utterly at an end. But his elevation did not make one atom of difference in the case of Phillips Brooks. To the last he was the dear, frank, manly, noble Phillips Brooks, as humble, as cordial, asever. He was too truly great to be merged in small superiorities. All artificiality, and all pretence, and all looking down upon others were to him impos- sible. Marcus Aurelius had to say to himself, “Do not be Cesarized.”” But Phillips Brooks had no need of the warning not to be puffed up. He was immensely greater than his bishopric. He was too much of a man to be lost in the ecclesiastic. He did not develop that excess of caution which leads some men to meas- ure their words as though they were the answers of an oracle, and makes others so self-conscious and timid that they “Dare not with too confident a tone Proclaim the nose upon their face their own.” Such greatness as Phillips Brooks had lay in his true, large-hearted manhood; and his manhood was too supreme to be artificialized into pomposity and eu- phuisms, The Speech of Commemoration 77 The letter which he wrote to me on December 13, his fifty-seventh and last birthday, lies before me. I print it here, omitting only a few words which his great kindness spoke. How strangely the words read to me, “I pray you to live.” The greater and the better is taken; the feebler and less worthy is left. 233 CLARENDON STREET, Boston, Tuesday, December 13, 1892. My pEAR ARCHDEACON: It is partly that I want to send you Christmas greeting, and partly that I need your sympathy to-day when I am fifty-seven years old — for these two reasons and a hundred others I am going to fill these four pages with talk with you across the water. In the midst of a thousand useless things which I do every day there is always coming up the recollection of last summer, and how good you were to me, and what enjoyment I had in those delightful idle days. Never shall I cease to thank you for taking me to Tennyson’s, and letting me see the great dear man again. How good he was that day! Do you remember how he read those two stanzas about “Faith,” which he had just written? I can hear his great voice booming in them as I read them over in the new volume which has come since the poet died. And how perfect his death was! And how one feels that he has brooded so on death, and grown familiar with its mystery on every side, that it cannot have come with sur- prise to him. And Whittier, too, is gone. He never forgot the visit which you paid him, nor ceased to speak of it when- ever 1saw him. But how strange it seems, this writing against one friend’s name after another that you will see his face no more. I pray you to live, for to come to London and not see 78 The Speech for Special Occasions you there, what should I care for the old places, St. Margaret’s, and the Abbey, and the Dean’s Yard, and all the rest ? I hope you know how I valued the sermons which I heard from you in the Abbey on those Sunday afternoons last sum- mer. They have been in my ears and in my heart ever since. Indeed, when I look back over these years, I owe you very much indeed. I hope that you are very well and happy. Do not let the great world trouble you, but be sure that many are rejoicing in your brave work. O, that you were here to-night! With all best Christmas wishes for Mrs. Farrar and you and your children, I am, affectionately your friend, Putts BROOKS. I first made his acquaintance about sixteen years ago. Hecalled on mein Dean’s Yard with his brother. He brought no introduction, but kindly came of his own accord to make my acquaintance. I asked Dean Stanley to appoint him to preach in the Abbey, and he preached on that occasion the sermon on “‘ The Candle of the Lord,”’ which attracted such wide atten- tion. He had not then published any volume of sermons. I urged him to do so, and he complied, naming the volume from the sermon by which we had all been struck. That was the beginning of many years of close friendship. His first visit when he came to England was generally to my house, and his first sermons were at St. Margaret’s and the Abbey. We in England were, of course, less familiar with his The Speech of Commemoration 79 voice, and less able to catch his immensely rapid into- nations than our American brethren. It was not only the rush of words which rendered it difficult to follow him, but the rush of thoughts. The two together made him the despair of reporters. Dean Stanley used to compare him to an express train going to its appointed terminus with majestic speed, and sweeping every obstacle, one after another, out of his course. I once tried to induce him to adopt a more measured utterance. He told me that for him it was absolutely impossible. In youth he had suffered from something resembling an impediment in his speech, and he could only preach rapidly or not at all. He was supremely devoid of all self-consciousness in the pulpit. When an American clergyman was deploring to him the emp- tiness of many American churches, he said, with the utmost simplicity, that it must be quite a mistake, for wherever he preached he. found all the churches quite full. It does not seem to have occurred to him that it was his name and fame and singular influence which attracted such large multitudes wherever he was an- nounced to preach. He has given us his views on preaching in his pub- lished lectures on the subject. The value of his own sermons lay in their genuine manliness, their sincer- ity of conviction, their freshness and originality, their unity and directness of thought, their classic diction, 80 The Speech for Special Occasions and their brilliant illustrations. They contain sen- tences which, when we have once read them, we never forget. He generally preferred to read his sermons; but he could preach equally well extempore, and that without a note. Indeed, if the hearer shut his eyes, he would have been unable to say whether Phillips Brooks —as all Americans loved to call him to the last — was preach- ing a written or an unwritten sermon; he preached his old sermons with as little reluctance as Dr. Chalmers. I noticed on his Mss. that, even in his own church, he often repeated the same sermon within four years of its delivery. So far from resenting this, his vast congre- gation liked it, and asked him to preach again and againthesamesermon. ‘Iam so glad that he preached that sermon at St. Margaret’s,” said an American lady tome. ‘It is a special favorite of ours at Boston.” In the present phase of ecclesiastical opinion, what is called “ Catholicity ” is apparently regarded as identi- cal with intolerance. It takes its tones from the Pa- pacy, and feebly echoes its anti-Christian haughtiness and empty anathemas. He in these days is supposed to be the best “ Catholic” and the most faithful “ Church- man” who turns his back most contumeliously on his Christian brethren who are not of the same fold as himself, and shows the greatest amount of hesitation even in handing them over to the possibility of “ uncov- The Speech of Commemoration 81 enanted mercies.” The Christianity of Phillips Brooks was not of this narrow, repellent, sacerdotal, and Pop- ish type. He deliberately and constantly committed the crime, so unpardonable in the eyes. of the new tyranny, of regarding all his fellow-Christians, to whatever denomination they belonged, as no less honest and no less dear to God than himself —as the heirs with him of the common mysteries of redemption and immor- tality, the children with him of a common Father, the redeemed with him of acommon Saviour, the sheep with him of one flock, though in different folds, fellow-heirs with him of a common and unexclusive heaven. Like Henri Peyrréve, he hated to see churches make their gates bristle with razors and anathemas. He would have said with St. Ireneus, Ubi Christus ibi Ecclesia. He did not explain away the plain words of Christ : ‘‘ Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” He had not ceased to attach any meaning to the words, “When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the kingdom of Heaven to all be- lievers.”’” He would have said with the Abbess Angelique Arnauld, “I am of the Church of all the saints, and all the saints are of my Church.” When he saw the fruits of the Spirit, he was convinced of the presence of the Spirit, and no loud assertion made him believe that that Spirit was present in factions which yield only the G 82 The Speech for Special Occasions fruits of bitterness, and are chiefly conspicuous for the broad phylacteries of uncharitable arrogance. ' Religious animosity might bark at his heels, but he was so inherently noble in himself that it did not make him lose his faith, his hope, his love, his courage, nor did it ever cause him to swerve a hair’s breadth from the inflexible line on which he saw that his duty lay. And he had his reward. His opponents will subside. into their native insignificance and be forgotten, except so far as the accident of connecting themselves with his name will preserve them from oblivion. His name will live for many a long year as the name of the fore- most of all American ecclesiastics of this generation; as the name of a man whose manhood and whose sweet and lofty character won and, as Americans would say, “magnetized,” to an unprecedented extent, all true hearts. Outside of sacerdotal cliques, every one knew, every one admired, every one loved, Phillips Brooks, He was the common property, the common enthusiasm, of the great American nation. The great writers of America recognized him, and him only, among clerics, as their intellectual peer. At his house, and at the Saturday Club, I have dined with Mr. Lowell and Dr. O. W. Holmes, and many of the Americans who were foremost in literary, scientific, and political circles, and he was always the favorite of all. -The venerable Quaker poet, J. G. Whittier, treated him like a brother. The Speech of Commemoration 83 In all this his life was very enviable, but perhaps most of all in the influence which he wielded over the hearts of young men. I was with him at Harvard, at Yale, at Portland, at Syracuse, and at other American schools and universities. As the guest and stranger it always fell to me to address those eager young students; but when I had finished, if Phillips Brooks was with me on the platform, “the boys” always shouted for him, and would not leave off till he had said a few words to them. Often what he said was perfectly simple, and was in no way striking. Ido not remember the topic of his little speeches any more than I remember my own; but when he had spoken to them, “ the boys ” were always satis- fied, for they always felt that they had been listening to a man. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his royal optimism. With him it was a matter of faith and temperament. He had not had to fight his way into it as, perhaps, Browning had— whom among other great Englishmen I had the pleasure of introducing to him. I think he must have been born an optimist. But often, when I was inclined to despond, his conver- sation, his bright spirits, his friendliness, his illimitable hopes, came to me like a breath of vernal air. He rejoiced to have been born in this century because of its large outlook; and when he became godfather to one of my grandchildren, he wrote that the children 84 The Speech for Special Occasions were to be envied whose lot would be cast in an epoch which he believed would be rendered glorious by dis- coveries and progress even more memorable than those which have marked our own. He is gone. He has left the world much poorer for his loss. All that is best, every element that is not ignoble in the American Church, has special cause to grieve his irreparable loss. There is not one eccle- siastic in America whose death could cause anything like so deep a sorrow, or create anything like so im- mense a void. Would to God that we had a few men such as hein the English Church. I have known many men — even not a few clergymen— of higher genius, of far wider learning, of far more brilliant gifts. But I never met any man, or any ecclesiastic, half so natural, so manly, so large-hearted, so intensely Catholic in the only real sense, so loyally true in his friendships, so absolutely unselfish, so modest, so unartificial, so self- forgetful. He is gone, and I for one never hope to look upon his like again. To have known him, to have been honored by his friendship, to have witnessed his noble life and his large aspirations, consoles me much. It is in itself “a liberal education.” And now that his lot is among the saints, who would wish him back amid all the pettiness and baseness and strife of tongues, which are, alas! quite as common in the nominal Church as in the authentic world? A blessing and a The Speech of Commemoration 85 gracious presence has vanished out of many lives. With a very sad heart I bid him farewell, and lay this “shadow of a wreath of lilies” on the fresh grave of the noblest, truest, and most stainless man I ever knew. WrttiAmM HENRY SEWARD TRIBUTE TO JOHN QUINCY ADAMS Delivered at Albany, February 25, 1848. May it please your Honor : — The Capitol is deserted! The legislature have sus- pended their labors ; the city is in mourning; a sudden blow has fallen on the master-chord in the heart of this nation, and grief is diffusing itself throughout the Union. The voice of JonN Quincy ApAms has died away on earth, and he has resumed converse with John Adams and Jefferson, with La Fayette and with Washington, in heaven. Death found the statesman where he wished to meet ‘it —in the Capitol; in his place; in the performance of his duty; in defending the cause of peace and of freedom. He submitted to the inevitable blow as those who loved and honored him foretold and desired that he would — saying only, “‘ This is the last of earth —I am content.” I will not suffer myself to speak all I feel on this sad occasion. While the American people have lost a father and a guide — while Humanity has lost her most 86 The Speech for Special Occasions eloquent, persevering, and indomitable advocate — I have lost a patron, a guide, a counsellor, and a friend — one whom I loved scarcely less than the dearest rela- tions, and venerated above all that was mortal among men. I speak in behalf of my associates. Great as he was, illustrious as his achievements were, he was one of us. He was a civilian, a lawyer, a jurist. His great mind was imbued with the science of our noble profession, and enriched with all congenial learning; and to these he added the ornaments of rhetoric and eloquence. Trained in constitutional law, in the school of its founders, Washington called him in precocious youth to the kindred field of diplomacy. That mission discharged, he returned to his profession, and devoted himself to it with assiduity until the people called him from the duty of expounding laws to the higher department of making laws. Rising through various and very responsible depart- ments of public service, be became chief magistrate of the republic. There he impressed on its history an enduring illustration of a wise, peaceful, and enlight- ened administration, devoted to the cultivation of peace, to its arts and its interests, and to extending the sway of republican institutions over the continent, and yet in all things subordinate to the law and regu- lated by the law. The Speech of Commemoration 87 When he had thus filled the measure of the world’s expectations and of his own generous ambition, he resumed his place in the national legislature, and devoted what remained of life to a long, arduous, and finally successful vindication of the constitutional liberty of speech, and of the universal inalienable right of petition. Nor can we forget that, while thus engaged, he set a noble example for us, by returning again to the field of his early labors, the unpaid, un- rivalled advocate of the Amistad captives. Those unhappy fugitives, rescued by him from the oppression of two great nations, were restored to Africa, the first of the many millions of her people of whom she had been despoiled by the avarice of our superior race. Whatever difference of opinion there may be concern- ing the principles and policy of the deceased, all men will now agree that he won among American statesmen, and eminently more than any other, the fame accorded to the most illustrious chevalier of France — the fame of a statesman — sans peur et sans reproche. It is fit that the death of such a citizen should be marked with all the testimonials of public grief, in order that his life may have its just influence on man- kind. It is fit that it should be honored in this tribu- nal, the fame of which is not unknown throughout the world, and the records of which will remain for- ever. In behalf of the members of the bar, therefore, 88 The Speech for Special Occasions I move that such an expression be entered on the record, and that the court do then adjourn. Basit L. GILDERSLEEVE TRIBUTE TO DANIEL COIT GILMAN! In the many tributes already paid to the revered and beloved first president of the Johns Hopkins University, the old-fashioned functionary known to foreign univer- sities now as the Public Orator, now as the Professor of Eloquence, would find ample material for a formal address on this memorable occasion. To the crowning achievement of his life, to the organization of this school, by which men date a new era in the history of American education, converged as to a centre all the lines of his earlier activities. It was for this in the Providence of God that he was imbued with the noble traditions of a great college, that he was brought into contact with the scientific and social life of Europe, that he made himself familiar with the work of the librarian, that he mastered the system of public educa- tion, that he discharged the active duties of a professor- ship, that he planned the machinery of a great scien- tific school, that he served as the head of a great uni- versity. The preparation for the supreme task of his life was as elaborate as his personal endowments were Reprinted, by permission of the author, from the Johns Hop- kins University Circular, N. S., 1908, No. 10. “ Daniel Coit Gilman,” The Speech of Commemoration 89 rare; and from the centre thus gained there went forth a radiation of beneficent influences that were felt in every part of the community and the country. It was the glory of the Johns Hopkins University that its president was foremost in every good word and work. It was no fountain sealed — it was a source of life and light. Such was the central sphere, such the ever enlarging cycles of his philanthropic endeavor; and so effective was his work that he seemed to be the one great champion of each cause that he espoused. Wherever he appeared, there came light and hope and confidence. His wide vision was matched by his dis- cernment of spirits, which is the secret of power, his marvellous resourcefulness by his wonderful sense of order. There have been many to tell of these things, of his untiring energy, of his unfailing courtesy, which was the effluence of a sympathy unfeigned, his large and gracious hospitality, his inexhaustible generosity, which not only responded to every appeal for help, but even divined the needs of those who hid their trouble as if it were a treasure. His native dignity had no touch of austerity. His presence was a bright pres- ence and a pure presence. There are few who like him have not sinned with their lips under the tempta~ tion of the infectious mirth of the social circle. High qualities all these, but they are marred in some men by a self-seeking spirit which regards all praise of go The Speech for Special Occasions others as an encroachment on vested rights. No man so utterly free as was he from envy and jealousy. He rejoiced in the successes of his followers more than in his own. He delighted to espy the first recognition of a member of his academic staff, to get the first appre- ciative newspaper clipping, to secure the first copy of a new book by one of his men in advance of the author himself. If recognition was slow in coming to one of - his associates, its value was enhanced when it came by the eagerness with which he tried to make good the long arrears. Chief trait of all was his faith in his high calling — the faith that led him to triumph, that sus- tained him under trial. Optimism men call it. He was known as an optimist. And so he was in the best sense. He lived as looking forward to the best, as hoping for the best, as seeing Him who is invisible. All these things have been brought out with varying stress, now in unstudied interview, now in formal reso- lution, by those who have undertaken to speak his praise, to tell of their love and reverence. But to say again what others have said and said better than I could say it — that is not the office to which I have been called to-day. I have been asked to speak because to me the man, Daniel Coit Gilman, was not a mere synonym for an array of high achievements, an assem- blage of high qualities, a treasury of noble thoughts, a source of happy influences. He was much more to The Speech of Commemoration OI me than all that, and though others of his colieagues were nearer to him than I, still there are circumstances in our common history that would make it recreancy in me not to respond to the request that I should undertake to represent the thought, the judgment, the feelings, of those who shared his work and followed his standard. I am the oldest, if not the earliest, of his Baltimore fellow-workers now living. For twenty-five years, a considerable stretch in the longest life, —a period that suffices for the true mission of most men, —for twenty- five years, for more than twenty-five years, we were friends in council, and he often playfully referred to the early days of the University when he and I consti- tuted the faculty. Those days soon passed, but the memory of them is precious to the survivor, and at a time when each man is talking to his neighbor of the common loss, and recalling this incident and that, to illustrate the character and the career of the departed master, I may be forgiven for bringing forth my treas- ured remembrance of the hour when we first met in my old academic home, and when, all unsuspected by me, he was taking my measure for the office I was des- tined to fill, my treasured remembrance of the long consultation in Washington when he invited me to share his work, and, contrary to his wont, for he kept early hours, pursued until the night waxed old the 92 The Speech for Special Occasions high theme of the University that was to be. To- gether we journeyed in the cause of the University, in which the founder himself had made provision for my native South—to Staunton, to Richmond, to Raleigh. But time would fail me to tell the story of that early fellowship, or even to touch on the salient points of those far-off days. “The old favor sleeps ” is the plaint of a Greek poet, but Iam happy to think that with him the old favor never slept or slumbered, and in my last interview with him just thirty-three years— just a generation— after he sought me out at the Uni- versity of Virginia, we could look back on all that long period of unbroken friendship and unforfeited confi- dence, — and when I go over in my mind the details of that last interview, I cannot help thinking that his never- failing benignity had in it something of the tenderness of a last farewell. No wonder that I have dreaded for years lest this hour should come to me, that I had hoped he should be the one to say the little that was to be said about his fellow-worker and his follower, and that I should not have to face the impossible task of summing up his achievements, of portraying his character. You see, my friends, I cannot even at this time dissociate my private loss from the public loss, nor can I suppress the personal note in this public tribute. My plea must be that my relations to him have their counterpart in the experience of all those The Speech~of Commemoration 93 who were privileged to work under the first Head of the University, and hateful as the first person always is I find that I cannot better illustrate than by my own example the potent influence of the great admin- istrator, or rather let me say the great taskmaster. It is indeed a homely word, but it is one he himself would not have disapproved, he who lived as ever in his great Taskmaster’s eye. No Egyptian taskmaster was he with cruel criticism and meddlesome interfer- ence; no unwise taskmaster to burden, himself with the assumption of duties which he had assigned to others. There were two men of genius in the little band the first president first gathered about him. Now the wind of genius bloweth where it listeth, and no one dreams of setting a task to men like Sylvester and Rowland, yet they, too, were ministers to his far- reaching plans; and momentous as the work of these men was in itself, its effectiveness was due in large measure to the infinite tact of the man who guided the fortunes of the University. Few men would have been large-minded enough to appreciate the value of those idealists — few men would have known how to make a plain path before them. And now I go on to make my confession as to his dealings with another of his staff, with his only close ‘contemporary in that first company. No man con- 04 The Speech for Special Occasions siders himself a problem, for every man fancies that he knows himself. But looking backward it seems to me that I, too, must have been a problem. With twenty years behind me of familiarity with university work, in which questions of administration as well as problems of instruction were always coming up, with all the spirit of independence bred by the conditions of my nativity, by the atmosphere of my only academic home, a man of his own age and so not overawed by the old experience of another, I might have given trouble to aman less familiar with the stops of human will. And yet while I was free as air in the conduct of the special work I was appointed to do, I have been so swayed by what I once called his mild but fatal insistence that I have engaged in lines of effort that were foreign to my habits and my inclinations, and much that I have accomplished from my entrance upon the work of the Johns Hopkins University down to this day has been due to his initiative. He knew that we were children of the same creed, he knew that we had both been trained to respond to the call of the stern daughter of the voice of God — to obey the mandate: “ This is the way. Walk ye in it.” And so it came about that a man who was radically un-American in his aversion to public performance, — who in twenty years had only four or five public discourses to his account — was called on over and over The Speech of Commemoration 95 again in the early years of the University to represent by formal addresses and popular lectures the spirit of the new institution; and if for many years I have sel- dom figured in that capacity, it has been because he found other work for me to do, work for which he deemed me better fitted, though it was work for which, I must confess, I had little relish. That editorial work involved self-abnegation, it meant a subordination of personal ambition to the promotion of the interests of American scholarship, it meant resigning at least in a measure the delightful, if arduous, exercise of construc- tive activity. It was, after all, following in his footsteps and subscribing to his faith in the power of the press — for he was a believer in the power of the press, and the Johns Hopkins Press, which he founded in the face of criticism, will hold the University to its high mission and maintain the University in its high repute, whether the worshippers at the academic shrine be few or many. And so it was that he revealed to me, as he revealed to so many, the path of duty, and after walking in it with steady if not eager feet all these years, I have publicly acknowledged my obligation to him and pub- licly confessed that I could not have been more use- fully employed. My recompense of reward is his recompense of reward, and the circumstances are not unlike. For he also was too much of a student not to regret that in his busy life he had not found time 96 The Speech for Special Occasions to set his seal to some supreme achievement in letters or science. But it must have been a consolation to him —nay, I am sure it was a consolation to him— to know how many of the successes of his followers bore the impress of his administrative genius. And it is only as one of many that I have attempted to show how he energized as well as organized the Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, only as one of many that I bear this testimony to our great taskmaster. No testimony is needed, none would suffice, for those who knew him as a friend. GEORGE BANCROFT Tribute to Bryant at the festival in his honor, Novem- ber 5, 1864." William Cullen Bryant : — The Century has set apart this evening to show you honor. All its members, the old and the young, crowd around you like brothers round a brother — like children round a father. Our wives and daughters have come with us, that they, too, may join in the pleasant office of bearing witness to your worth. The artists of our association, whose labors you have ever been ready to cheer, whose merits you have loved to proclaim, unite to bring an enduring memorial to your excellence in an art near akin to their own. A noble band of your compeers in your own high calling, from all parts 1From “The Bryant Festival at the Century Club,” 1864. The Speech of Commemoration 97 of the country, offer their salutations and praise and good wishes in a full chorus of respect and affection. Others, who could not accept our invitation, keep the festival by themselves, and are now in their own homes going over the years which you have done so much to gladden. It is primarily your career as a poet that we celebrate. The moment is well chosen. While the mountains and the ocean side ring with the tramp of cavalry and the din of cannon, and the nation is in its agony, and an earthquake sweeps through the land, we take a respite to escape into the serene region of ideal pur- suits which can never fail. It has been thought praise enough of another to say that he “ wrote no line which dying he could wish to blot.” Every line which you have written may be remembered by yourself and by others at all times, for your genuis has listened only to the whisperings of the beautiful and the pure. Moreover, a warm nationality runs through all your verse. Your imagination took the hue of the youth of our country, and has reflected its calm, con- templative moods, when the pulses of its early life beat vigorously but smoothly, and no bad passions had ‘distorted its countenance.” The clashing whirl- winds of civil war, the sublime energy and persever- ance of the people, the martyrdom of myriads of its HK 98 The Speech for Special Occasions bravest and best, its new birth through terrible suffer- ings, will give a more passionate and tragic and varied cast to the literature of the coming generations. A thousand years hence posterity will turn to your pages as to those which best mirror the lovely earnestness of the rising republic, the sweet musings of her years of innocence, when she was all unfamiliar with sorrow, bright with the halo of promise, seizing the great solitudes by the busy hosts of civilization, and guiding the nations of the earth into the pleasant paths of freedom and of peace. You have derived your inspiration as a poet from your love of Nature, and she has returned your affec- tion and blessed you as her favored son. At three- score and ten years your eye is undimmed, your step light and free as in youth, and the lyre which ever responded so willingly to your touch refuses to leave your hand. Our tribute to you is to the poet; but we should not have paid it had we not revered you asa man. Your blameless life is a continuous record of patriotism and integrity; and passing untouched through the fiery conflicts that grow out of the ambition of others, you have, as all agree, preserved a perfect consistency with yourself, and an unswerving, unselfish fidelity to your convictions. This is high praise, but the period at which we ad- The Speech of Commemoration 99 dress you removes even the suspicion of flattery, for it is your entrance upon your seventieth year. It is a solemn thing to draw nearer and nearer to eternity; you teach us how to meet old age. With each year you have become more and more genial, have cherished larger and still larger sympathies with your fellow-men, and if time has set on you any mark, you preserve in all its freshness the youth of the soul. What remains but to wish you a long-continued life, crowned with health and prosperity, with happi- ness and honor? Live on till you hear your children’s children rise up and call you blessed. Live on for the sake of us, your old associates, for whom life would lose much of its lustre in losing you as a companion and friend. Live on for your own sake, that you may enjoy the better day of which your eye already catches the dawn. Where faith discerned the Saviour of the world, the unbeliever looked only on a man of sorrows, crowned with thorns, and tottering under the burden of the cross on which he was to die. The social sceptic sees America sitting apart in her affliction, stung by vipers at her bosom, and welcomed to the pit by “earth’s ancient kings’; but through all the anguish of her grief you teach us to behold her in immortal beauty as she steps onward through trials to brighter glory. Live to enjoy her coming triumph, when the acknowledged power of right shall tear the root of 100 The Speech for Special Occasions sorrow out of the heart of the country, and make her more than ever the guardian of human liberty and the regenerator of the race. Lucy M. SaLtmon A tribute to Susan B. Anthony, delivered on the College Evening of The Thirty-eighth Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Feb- ruary 8, 1906. Miss Anthony sat upon the platform.! Many years ago a child of perhaps ten received the permission of her parents to attend a meeting addressed by Miss Anthony. She understood nothing of the sub- ject of the address beyond the fact that it was about something quite shocking, but she went home feeling a grown-up woman because she had tasted of the knowl- edge of good and evil. Some years later the girl, grown to high school age, was accidentally thrown with a college freshman, and under the necessity of becoming acquainted through a somewhat mechanical process, she addressed to her a series of questions intended to probe her intellectual and moral character. One of the first was, “Do you believe in woman suffrage?” and when the innocent reply of the young Quaker ancestry was, “Why, yes, - don’t you?” the interrogator had the same hopeless 1Reprinted, by permission of the author, from the Report of the Association. The Speech of Commemoration IOI feeling in regard to the morals of her new acquaintance that she had in regard to her spiritual condition when, a Puritan of the Puritans, she found that her Quaker companion was a Unitarian. Three years later the high school girl, developed into a college junior, became the devoted friend of a senior, a brilliant young woman ambitious to study medicine at a time when medical study for women was held in ill repute, and an ardent advocate of woman suffrage. She was most anxious that her younger friend should become one of the faithful, and near the end of her college course, after an impassioned plea in support of equal suffrage, she said with tears in her eyes, “But you will believe in woman suffrage, won’t you?” To deny any request of the brilliant senior was some- thing the junior had never believed possible for her or for any one, but the Puritan training forbade the lie or the evasion, and with white lips and the courage of a Christian martyr, she replied, “ No, I cannot.” Still some years later the college junior, advanced to be the holder of a fellowship at a new woman’s college, was conversing with one of the trustees of the institu- tion. He turned the conversation to the subject of woman suffrage, and casually remarked, “ You natu- rally favor it.” Again it required something of courage to say, “I am not interested in the question.” The college fellow, grown older and wiser, is here to- 102 The Speech for Special Occasions night to join with all in this great assembly in giving honor to the pioneers in the equal suffrage movement. The personal experience will perhaps be pardoned if it is considered representative of the possibly chang- ing attitude of other college women toward the sub- ject. The natural stages in the development seem to have been opposition, due to ignorance; rejection, due to conscientious disapproval; indifference, due to pre- occupation in other lines of work; acceptance, due to appreciation of what the work for equal suffrage has accomplished. It has been a work positive rather than negative, active rather than passive, constructive rather than de- structive, and thus it is coming to appeal to the judg- ment and the reason of the college woman. College women are coming to realize that they have been taught by these pioneers, both through precept and by example, to look at the essential things of life and to ignore the unessential, and for this they are grateful. College women are thus learning that the enemy of society is not the woman in Colorado who votes, but the woman in New York who plays bridge; it is not the woman who takes an intelligent interest in the public life of which she is a part, but the woman who sits by the window and watches the callers of her neighbor across the way and the arrival of new furniture at the The Speech of Commemoration 103 house next door; it is not the woman who through change in industrial processes works in the shop or the factory, but the woman whose days are passed at the bargain counter; it is not the woman who is interested in keeping the streets clean, but the woman who sells chances in articles offered at church fairs; it is not the woman who earns money, but the woman who wastes it because she has never learned its value. The college woman is beginning to wonder if it is worth while to reckon the mint, anise, and cummin, while the weightier matters of the law are forgotten; if it is worth while to tabulate the statistics that show the percentages of women who vote and who do not vote, while leaving uncounted those who frequent the races; if it is worth while to guess at the number of women repeaters, while betting and gambling go unrebuked; if it is worth while to inquire too closely into the moral character of the women who vote, while society everywhere receives the once, twice, and thrice divorced; if it is worth while to estimate the number of women who sell their votes, while the money won at bridge goes unrecorded. For a larger outlook on life we are all indebted to Miss Anthony, to Mrs. Howe, and to their colleagues. We are indebted to them in large measure for the edu- cational opportunities of to-day. We are indebted to them for the theory, and in some places for the reality, 104 The Speech for Special Occasions of equal pay for men and women when the work per- formed is the same. We are indebted to them for making it possible for us to spend our lives in fruitful work rather than in idle tears. We are indebted to these pioneer women for the substitution of a positive creed for inertia and indifference. From these pioneer women we also inherit the weighty responsibility of passing on to others in degree, if not in kind, all that we have received from them. RaLtpH WALDO EMERSON Speech at the Burns Centenary, Boston, January 25, 1858. Spoken at a banquet.’ Mr. President and Gentlemen : — I do not know by what untoward accident it has chanced —and I forbear toinquire — that, in this accom- plished circle, it should fall to me, the worst Scotsman of all, to receive your commands, and at the latest hour, too, to respond to the sentiment just offered, and which indeed makes the occasion. But I am told there is no appeal, and I must trust to the inspiration of the theme to make a fitness which does not otherwise exist. , Yet, sir, I heartily feel the singular claims of the 1From “Chronicle of the Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns,” edited by James Ballantine. Edinburgh and London, 1859. The Speech of Commemoration 105 occasion. At the first announcement, from I know not whence, that the 25th of January was the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, a sudden consent warmed the great English race, in all its king- doms, colonies, and States, all over the world, to keep the festival, We are here to hold our parliament with love and poesy, as men were wont to do in the Middle Ages. Those famous parliaments might or might not have had more stateliness, and better singers than we, — though that is yet to be known, — but they could not have better reason. I can only explain this singular unanimity in a race which rarely acts together, but rather after their watch- word, each for himself, by the fact that Robert Burns, the poet of the middle class, represents in the mind of men to-day that great uprising of the middle class against the armed and privileged minorities — that up- rising which worked politically in the American and French revolutions, and which, not in governments so much as in education and in social order, has changed the face of the world. In order for this destiny, his birth, breeding, and fortune were low. His organic sentiment was absolute independence, and rested, as it should, on a life of labor. No man existed who could look down on him. They that looked into his eyes saw that they might look down the sky as easily. His muse and teaching was common sense, joyful, aggres- 106 The Speech for Special Occasions sive, irresistible. Not Latimer, not Luther, struck. more telling blows against false theology than did this brave singer. The “ Confession of Augsburg,”’ the “Declaration of Independence,” the French “Rights of Man,” and the “ Marseillaise ” are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns. His satire has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through the air. He is so substantially a reformer, that I find his grand plain sense in close chain with the greatest masters — Rabelais, Shakespeare in comedy, Cervantes, Butler, and Burns. If I should add another name, I find it only in a living countryman of Burns. He is an exceptional genius. The people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns. It was indifferent —they thought who saw him — whether he wrote verse or not; he could have done anything else as well. Yet how true a poet is he! And the poet, too, of poor men, of hodden-gray, and the Guernsey coat, and the blouse. He has given voice to all the experi- ences of common life; he has endeared the farm-house and cottage, patches and poverty, beans and barley; ale, the poor man’s wine; hardship, the fear of debt, the dear society of weans and wife, of brothers and sisters, proud of each other, knowing so few, and finding amends for want and obscurity in books and thought. The Speech of Commemoration 107 What a love of nature! Not great, like Goethe, in the stars, or like Byron on the ocean, or Moore in the luxurious East, but in the homely landscape which the poor see around them — bleak leagues of pasture and stubble, ice and sleet, and rain, and snow-choked brooks; birds, hares, field-mice, thistles, and heather, which he daily knew. How many “ Bonny Doons,” and “Jean Anderson my Joes,” and “Auld Lang Synes,”’ applied to! And his love-songs still woo and melt the youths and maids; the farm work, the country holiday, the fishing coble, are still his debtors to-day, And, as he was thus the poet of the poor, anxious, all around the earth, have his verses been cheerful, working humanity, so had he the language of low life. He grew up in a rural district, speaking a patois unintelligible to all but natives, and he has made that Lowland Scotch a Doric dialect of fame. It is the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man. But, more than this, he had that secret of genius to draw from the bottom of society the strength of its speech, and aston- ish the ears of the polite with these artless words, better than art, and filtered of all offence through his beauty. It seemed odious to Luther that the devil should have all the best tunes; he would bring them into the churches; and Burns knew how to take from fairs and gypsies, blacksmiths and drovers, the 108 The Speech for Special Occasions speech of the market and street, and clothe it with melody. But I am detaining you too long. The memory of Burns —I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of it to leave us anything to say. The west winds are murmuring it. Open the windows behind you, and hearken for the incoming tide, what the waves say of it. The doves, perching always on the eaves of the stone chapel opposite, may know something about it. Every home in broad Scotland keeps his fame bright. The memory of Burns — every man’s and boy’s and girl’s head carries snatches of his songs, and can say them by heart, and, what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. The winds whisper them, the birds whistle them, the corn, barley, and bulrushes hoarsely rustle them; nay, the music-boxes at Geneva are framed and toothed to play them; the hand-organs of the Savoy- ards in all cities repeat them, and the chimes of bells ring them in the spires. They are the property and solace of mankind. It is said by hearers that in this speech Emerson took “sovereign possession of the audience,’’ exciting them to the highest enthusiasm. The Speech of Commemoration 109 GEORGE Frispre Hoar Speech at the banquet on the occasion of the Webster Centennial at Dartmouth College, September 25, 1901.' Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — How many men have there been in this country whose college would celebrate their taking their degree one hundred years afterward, or fifty years after they died? It might have been done for Washington and Lincoln. But they were not college men. It might have been done for Hamilton and Jefferson. But neither Hamilton nor Jefferson got through college, and Jefferson was not in general a favorite with college men. I believe Bowdoin will do it for Longfellow, and I believe Harvard will do it for Emerson. I can- not think of any other. Yet no man will doubt the absolute fitness of the ceremonial of to-day. Daniel Webster died under a cloud of obloquy. He had deeply offended the North, and he had not won the South. He had offended his own State, which had so honored and loved him. The ordinary polit- ical antagonisms, always bitter, bitter now, were bitter in his time to a degree we can hardly comprehend now. He had pained and grieved the conscience of his coun- 1Reprinted, by permission of Dartmouth College, from the Pro- ceedings of the Webster Centennial, September 25, 1901. Edited by E. M. Hopkins, Hanover, N. H. 110 The Speech for Special Occasions try. He was held for a time to be untrue to liberty. I suppose the contemporary judgment when he died was that of Theodore Parker rather than that of Choate or of Everett. But now few men can be found anywhere who think otherwise than kindly and lov- ingly of this illustrious son of Dartmouth. We have had fifty years to think of it. If the republic abide, his name and fame will abide with it. If the republic die, his name and fame shall be inseparably intertwined with its memory, as the fame of Pericles is intertwined with that of Athens. The wisest and best men are likely to differ most sharply in applying what seem the simplest and clear- est principles of morals and duty and political liberty to the conduct of States, as they differ most sharply as to the creeds of religious sects, and the man who is most positive is most likely to be wrong. The moral is not that good men should abate their zeal for right- eousness or liberty, but only that they should abate the bitterness of their judgments of others with whom they differ. We have learned, nearly all of us, that the things about which honest and brave and patriotic men are most likely to differ and to impute bad motives and inconsistencies to each other are those which seem to them the plainest principles and the clearest maxims of public liberty, or the most express and un- mistakable mandates of religion. Each man has given The Speech of Commemoration III to him his own light. He is a laggard or a dastard if he does not follow it. But he is nowhere commanded to sit in judgment on the motives of other men. On the contrary, the divine command is, “ Judge not,” and the punishment for disobedience to that command is that you are to be treated as you treat other men, and that the measure you mete shall be measured to you again. In doing justice to him, let us do justice to the men who condemned him. Those of us who thought, as I thought, and as I now think, the coun- sel he gave his countrymen in regard to the Compro- mise Measures in conflict with the great mandate of justice and of constitutional liberty and in conflict with the doctrine he had taught his countrymen throughout his life, may still bring their tribute of honor to his memory, as Whittier, who had written “Ichabod,” brought his imperishable tribute of affec- tion and honor, which, alas! was never placed on the brow of Webster, but only laid-on his grave. I have been asked to speak of Mr. Webster as a senator. He was, beyond doubt, the foremost of American senators. When we think of the Senate chamber, we think of him as its principal figure and ornament. Yet he did much less than many other men to influence the action of the Senate. In his time, the Senate, more than before or since, might have been described as a meeting of the ambassadors 112 The Speech for Special Occasions of States. Its members met with minds made up, and did not expect to convince one another. He spoke, as his successor said he did, “‘ as from the pul- pit with a lofty sounding-board,” with the whole people for his congregation. His place in history is that of a public teacher, guiding the thoughts and inspiring the emotions of his countrymen when the issues, on which hung the fate of the republic, were being determined. For this function he was fitted alike by his intellect and his heart. He was a great reasoner, a great orator, and a great lover. He had the qualities which belong to humanity, by which its hold, half on earth and half on heaven, is maintained. Matthew Arnold said that our American public.men lacked distinc- tion. He allowed that quality to Grant, though he could not find it in Abraham Lincoln. If he did not find it in Webster, the cultured and fastidious Eng- lishman would probably have denied it to the Apollo Belvedere, or the Phidian Jove, or the great god Pan. Why, the draymen in London turned to look after him in the streets! Sydney Smith said he was a steam-engine in breeches. He moved to an unwonted admiration the bitter cynicism of Carlyle. If ever being walked the earth clad in the panoply of an imperial manhood, it was Daniel Webster. If ever being trod the earth of whom the Greek or Roman The Speech of Commemoration 113 fable would have made a demigod, it was this child of the New Hampshire farm-house. Even when his foes would describe him, at the time when political hatred was most bitter, they had to borrow Milton’s lofty imagery, as he pictures the fallen angels gathered in their awful Senate chamber. He was a great lover. Was there ever a man who loved his country, or who loved his college, or who loved his father and his brother and his children, and his neighbors and friends, who loved the old scenes over which his mother had led his boyish feet, or where he dwelt with his neighbors by mountain or shore, as Daniel Webster loved them? There was never a child entered his presence that did not re- member to his dying day the kindly and tender look that came from the deep eyes, and the winning and beautiful smile that lit up the melancholy of the grave face, no matter what care might be weighing upon the brow. His sentences dwell and abide with us like the Psalms of David or the songs of Burns. Bright boys repeat them over and over to themselves. The fisherman on the boat thinks of them, and the sailor at the helm, and the farmer as he holds the plough. They come up in the mind of the soldier as he goes into battle, and the patriot on his dying bed. When New Hampshire, a little while ago, placed his I 114 The Speech for Special Occasions statue in the Capitol, I had something to do with the transaction. Just afterward, I got two letters from brave soldiers of the Civil War. One of them says: “In the forlorn hope at Port Hudson, beaten back, we sought the refuge of the scraggy brushes, and then, on that cloudless afternoon, I saw the flag of our regiment, and his undying peroration returned to my mind. Who can say how much that speech shotted our guns?”’ The other told me that he was stationed one night on picket duty, where two sen- tinels in succession had just before been shot down. As he marched up and down in the loneliness of the night, thinking that at any time his death-shot might ring out from the thicket, he kept up his courage by repeating to himself, over and over and over again, the closing passage of the reply to Hayne, which he had got by heart in his boyhood. The same thoughts have been uttered before and since by other orators. Other men have appealed to the same emotion. Other men have spoken to the same people, but only to meet the fate of him who tried to rival the inimitable thunderbolt and storm with sounding of brass and trampling of feet of horses. “Qui nimbus et non imitabile fulmen Aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum.” It is said that other countries are founded upon force; that in the end they rest upon the bayonet The Speech of Commemoration II5 and the cannon. I am not sure that this theory will bear the light of careful consideration. But however that may be, the republic is founded upon ideas. When those ideas lose their power over the minds and hearts of the people, the republic will come to an end. It is the fortune of Daniel Web- ster, as of no other man except Jefferson, that the great ideas which lie at the foundation of the repub- lic clothe themselves to every man’s understanding in his language, and rest for their sanction and vin- dication upon his argument. In general, our knowl- edge of history is like our memory of a journey in a foreign land. We remember vividly a few great pictures in great galleries. We think of a few land- scapes, and, perhaps, the forms and faces of a few famous men. If we met them and talked with them, we remember what they said. Everything else is blurred and indistinct. So history is made up to us of a few memorable scenes, a few human figures, or a few sentences that have fallen from some great actor on a great occasion. We know our own history as well as any people on the face of the earth. Yet what I have said is true of us. To every American, certainly to every son of New England, to blot out the figure of Daniel Webster from our history, from the day Washington died to the day Lincoln took the oath of office, would be like cutting out the figure 116 The Speech for Special Occasions of the Virgin Mary from Raphael’s great painting at Dresden. How it mingles with every great event and in every historic spot! To the lover of consti- tutional liberty, there is nothing like the reply to Hayne since Pericles died, save only the dying speech of Chatham, and that of Patrick Henry at Williams- burg. There is nothing like it since, save Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg. We cannot think of the Senate chamber without him. We cannot think of the Supreme Court without him. We cannot think of Dartmouth College without him. We cannot think of Faneuil Hall without him. We cannot think of Boston, or Concord, or Lexington, or Bunker Hill, without him. We cannot think of New Hamp- shire without him. We cannot think of Massachu- setts without him. We cannot think of America with- out him. We cannot think of the Constitution or of the Union without him. His figure naturally be- longs to and mingles with all great scenes and great places which belong to liberty. Emerson said his presence would have been enough, even had he re- frained from speech, when the monument at Bunker Hill was dedicated. There was the monument and there was Webster. There is no judgment of any court, save Marshall’s, more weighty —I am afraid there is none more likely to be of permanent authority —than the recorded opinions of Webster on con- The Speech of Commemoration 117 stitutional law. There is nothing in our forensic literature more likely to endure than his speeches. He not only seemed to give a new nobility to what is noble and great, but he ennobled and made great the common scenes of common life with which he mingled. I venture to say that every man now living,. or every man who ever did live, who saw Webster, if it were but as he passed in the street, remembered it freshly ever afterward as an indelible memory of life. Whether it were in the schoolroom at Exeter, or the class room at Dartmouth, or the quiet visit at some neighbor’s home, or in some great natural scene, or some great public gathering by the seashore, or on the mountain, or in the college hall, or in the court room, or in the Senate chamber, he is still everywhere the foremost figure, and is in- separably blended with the scene. IV THE SPEECH AT THE LAYING OF A CORNER-STONE OR AT A DEDICATION IV THE SPEECH AT THE LAYING OF A CORNER-STONE OR AT A DEDICATION WILLIAM WoRDSWORTH Speech at the laying of the foundation stone of the new grammar school in the village of Bowness, Windermere, 1836. Standing here as Mr. Bolton’s substitute, at his own request, —an honor of which I am truly sensible, — it gives me peculiar pleasure to see, in spite of this stormy weather, so numerous a company of his friends and neighbors upon this occasion. How happy would it have made him to have been an eye-witness of an assemblage which may fairly be regarded as a proof of the interest felt in his benevolent under- taking, and an earnest that the good work will not be in vain. Sure I am, also, that there is no one present who does not deeply regret the cause why that excellent man cannot appear among us. The public spirit of Mr. Bolton has ever been remark- able both for its comprehensiveness and the judicious way in which it has been exerted. Many years ago, rar 122 The Speech for Special Occasions when we were threatened with foreign invasion, he equipped and headed a body of volunteers for the defence of our country. Not long since the inhabi- tants of Ulverston (his native place, I believe) were indebted to him for a large contribution toward erecting a church in that town. His recent munifi- cent donations to the public charities of Liverpool are well known; and I only echo the sentiments of this meeting when I say that every one would have rejoiced to see a gentleman who has completed his eightieth year taking the lead in this day’s proceed- ings, for which there would have been no call, but for his desire permanently to benefit a district in which he has so long been a resident proprietor. It may be gathered from old documents that upwards of two hundred years ago this place was provided with a school, which early in the reign of Charles II was endowed by the liberality of certain persons of the neighborhood. The building, originally small and low, has long been in a state which rendered the erection of a new one very desirable; this Mr. Bol- ton has undertaken to do at his sole expense. The structure, which is to supersede the old schoolhouse, will have two apartments, airy, spacious, and lofty, one for boys, the other for girls, in which they will be instructed by respective teachers, and not crowded together as in the old schoolroom, under one and the The Speech at a Dedication 123 same person; each room will be capable of contain- ing at least one hundred children; within the in- closure there will be spacious and separate play- grounds for the boys and girls, with distinct covered sheds to play in in wet weather. There will also be a library room for the school, and to contain books for the benefit of the neighborhood; and, in short, every arrangement that could be desired. It may be added that the building, from the elegance of its architecture, and its elevated, conspicuous situation, will prove a striking ornament to the beautiful coun- try in the midst of which it will stand. Such being the advantages proposed, allow me to express a hope that they will be turned to the best possible account. The privilege of the school being free will not, I trust, tempt parents to withdraw their children from punctual attendance upon slight and trivial occa- sions; and they will take care, as far as depends upon themselves, that the wishes of the present benefac- tor may be met, and his intentions fulfilled. Those wishes and intentions, I will take upon me to say, are consonant to what has been expressed in the original trust deed of the pious and sensible men already spoken of, who in that instrument declare that they have provided a fund “ toward the finding and maintenance of an able schoolmaster, and re- pairing the schoolhouse from time to time, forever ; 124 The Speech for Special Occasions for teaching and instructing of youth within the said hamlets, in grammar, writing, reading, and other good learning and discipline meet and convenient for them; for the honor of God, for the better advance- ment and preferment of the said youth, and to the perpetual and thankful remembrance of the founders and authors of so good a work.’ The effect of this beautiful summary upon your minds will not, I hope, be weakened if I make a brief comment upon the several clauses of it, which will comprise nearly the whole of what I feel prompted to say upon this occasion. I will take the liberty, however, of inverting the order in which the purposes of these good men are mentioned, beginning at what they end with: “the perpetual and thankful remembrance of the founders and authors of so good a work.” Do not let it be supposed that your forefathers, when they looked onwards to this issue, did so from vanity and love of applause, uniting with local attachment; they wished their good works to be remembered principally because they were conscious that such remembrance would be beneficial to the hearts of those whom they desired to serve, and would effectually promote the particular good they . had in view. Let me add for them, what their modesty and humility would have prevented their insisting upon, that such tribute of grateful recol- The Speech at a Dedication 125 lection was, and is still, their due; for, if gratitude be not the most perfect shape of justice, it is as- suredly her most beautiful crown,—a halo and glory with which she delights to have her brows encircled. So much of this gratitude as those good men hoped for I may bespeak for your neighbor, who is now animated by the same spirit, and tread- ing in their steps. The second point to which I shall advert is that where it is said that such and such things shall be taught “for the better advancement and preferment of the said youth.” This purpose is as honorable as it is natural, and recalls to remembrance the time when the northern counties had, in this particular, great advantages over the rest of England. By the zealous care of many pious and good men, among whom I cannot but name (from his connection with this neighborhood and the benefits he conferred upon it) Archbishop Sandys, free schools were founded in these parts of the kingdom in much greater num- bers than elsewhere. The learned professions derived many ornaments from this source; but a more re- markable consequence was that till within ‘the last forty years or so, merchants’ counting-houses and offices, in the lower departments of which a certain degree of scholastic attainment was requisite, were supplied in a great measure from Cumberland and 126 The Speech for Special Occasions Westmoreland. Numerous and large fortunes were the result of the skill, industry, and integrity which the young men, thus instructed, carried with them to the metropolis. That superiority no longer exists; not so much, I trust, from a slackening on the part of the teachers, or an indisposition of the inhabitants to profit by their free schools, but because the king- dom at large has become sensible of the advantages of school instruction; “and we of the North conse- quently have competitors from every quarter. Let not this discourage, but rather stimulate us to more strenuous endeavors, so that if we do not keep ahead of the rest of our countrymen, we may at least take care not to be left behind in the race of honorable ambition. But after all, worldly advancement and preferment neither are nor ought to be the main end of instruction, either in schools or elsewhere, and particularly in those which are in rural places and scantily endowed. It is in the order of Providence, as we are all aware, that most men must end their temporal course pretty much as they began it, nor will the thoughtful repine at this dispensation. In lands where nature in the many is not trampled upon by injustice, feelingly may the peasant say to the courtier : — “The sun that bids your diamond blaze To deck our lily deigns.”’ The Speech at a Dedication 127 Contentment, according to the common adage, is better than riches; and why is it better? Not merely because there can be no hapfiness without it, but for the sake, also, of its moral dignity. Mankind, we know, are placed on earth to have their hearts and understandings exercised and improved, some in one sphere and some in another, to undergo various * trials, and to perform divers duties; that duty which, in the world’s estimation, may seem the least, often being the most important in the eyes of our heavenly Father. Well and wisely has it been said, in words which I need not scruple to quote here, where ex- treme poverty and abject misery are unknown: — “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state Is kingly — thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er land and ocean without rest ; They also serve who only stand and wait.” Thus am I naturally led to the third and last point in the declaration of the ancient trust deed, which I mean to touch upon: ‘“ Youth shall be instructed in grammar, writing, reading, and other good discipline, meet and convenient for them, for the honor of God.” Now, my friends and neighbors, much as we must admire the zeal and activity which have of late years been shown in the teaching of youth, I will candidly ask those among you who have had suffi- 128 The Speech for Special Occasions cient opportunities to observe, whether the instruc- tion given in many schools is, in fact, meet and con- venient? In the building about to be erected here I have not the smallest reason for dreading that it will be otherwise. But I speak in the hearing of persons who may be active in the management of schools elsewhere; and they will excuse me for say- ing that many are conducted at present so as to’ afford melancholy proof that instruction is neither meet nor convenient for the pupils there taught, nor, indeed, for the human mind in any rank or condition of society. I am not going to say that religious in- struction, the most important of all, is neglected; far from it; but I ‘affirm that it is too often given with reference, less to the affections, to the imagina- tion, and to the practical duties, than to subtile dis- tinctions in points of doctrine, and to facts in Scrip- ture history, of which a knowledge may be brought out by a catechetical process. This error, great though it be, ought to be looked at with indulgence, because it is a tempting thing for teachers unduly to exercise the understanding and memory, inasmuch as ‘progress in the departments in which these faculties are employed is most obviously proved to the teacher ‘himself, and most flatteringly exhibited to the in- ‘spectors of schools and casual lookers-on. A still more lamentable error, which proceeds from much The Speech at a Dedication 129 the same cause, is an overstrained application to mental processes of arithmetic and mathematics, and a too minute attention to departments of natural and civil history. How much of trick may mix with this we will not ask, but the display of precocious intellectual power in these branches is often astonish- ing; and, in proportion as it is so, may, for the most part, be pronounced not only useless, but injurious. The training that fits a boxer for victory in the ring gives him strength that cannot, and is not required, to be kept up for ordinary labor, and often lays the foundation of subsequent weakness and fatal disease. In like manner, there being in after life no call for these extraordinary powers of mind, and little use for the knowledge, the powers decay, and the knowl- edge withers and drops off. Here is then not only a positive injury, but a loss of opportunities for cul- ture of intellect and acquiring information, which, as being in a course of regular demand, would be hereafter, the one strengthened and the other naturally increased. All this mischief, my friends, originates in a decay of that feeling which our fathers had upper- most in their hearts, viz., that the business of education should be conducted “for the honor of God.” And here I must direct your attention to a fundamental mistake, by which this age, so distinguished for its marvellous progress in arts and sciences, is unhappily gE 130 The Speech for Special Occasions characterized —a mistake, manifested in the use of the word “education,” which is habitually confounded with tuition or school instruction ; this is indeed a very important part of education, but when it is taken for the whole, we are deceived and betrayed. Education, according to the derivation of the word, and in the only use of which it is strictly justifiable, comprehends all those processes and influences, come from whence they may, that conduce to the best development of the bodily powers, and of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual faculties which the position of the individual admits of. In this just and high sense of the word the education of a sincere Christian, and a good member of society, upon Christian principles, does not termi- nate with his youth, but goes on to the last moment of his conscious earthly existence — an education not for time but for eternity. To education like this is in- dispensably necessary, as codperating with school- masters and ministers of the gospel, the never ceasing vigilance of parents; not so much exercised in superadding their pains to that of the school- master or minister in teaching lessons or catechisms, or by enforcing maxims or precepts (though this part of their duty ought to be habitually kept in mind), but by care over their own conduct. It is through the silent operation of example in their own well- regulated behavior, and by accustoming their children The Speech at a Dedication 131 early to the discipline of daily and hourly life, in such offices and employment as the situation of the family requires, and as are suitable to tender years, that parents become infinitely the most important tutors of their children, without appearing, or positively meaning, to be so. This education of circumstances has happily, in this district, not yet been much in- fringed upon by experimental novelties; parents here are anxious to send their offspring to those schools where knowledge substantially useful is inculcated, and those arts most carefully taught for which in after life there will be most need ; this is especially true of the judgment of parents respecting the instruction of their daughters, which I know they would wish to be confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic, and plain needlework, or any other art favorable to economy and home comforts. Their shrewd sense perceived that hands full of employment, and a head not above it, afford the best protection against restlessness and discontent, and all the perilous temptations to which, through them, youthful females are exposed. It is related of Burns, the celebrated Scottish poet, that once, while (in the company of a friend) he was look- ing from an eminence over a wide tract of country, he said that the sight of so many smoking cottages gave a pleasure to his mind that none could understand who had not witnessed, like himself, the happiness and 132 The Speech for Special Occasions worth which they contained. How were those happy and worthy people educated? By the influence of hereditary good example at home, and by their paro- chial schoolmasters opening the way for the admoni- tions and exhortations of their clergy; that was at a time when knowledge was perhaps better than now distinguished from smatterings of information, and when knowledge itself was more thought of in due subordination to. wisdom. How was the evening before the Sabbath then spent by the families among which the poet was brought up? He has himself told us in imperishable verse. The Bible was brought forth, and after the father of the family had reverently laid aside his bonnet, passages of Scripture were read, and the poet thus describes what followed : — “Then kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King, The saint, the father, and the husband prays; Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing, That thus they all shall meet in future days; There ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator’s praise In such society, yet still more dear; While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere.” May He who enlightened the understanding of those cottagers with a knowledge of Himself for the enter- tainment of such hope, ‘‘ who sanctified their affections that they might love Him, ind put His fear into them The Speech at a Dedication 133 that they might dread to offend Him ’—may He who, in preparing for these blessed effects, disdained not the humble instrumentality of parochial schools, enable this of ours, by the discipline and teaching pursued in it, to sow seeds for a like harvest! In this wish, I am sure, my friends, you will all fervently join ; and now, after renewing our expression of regret that the benevolent founder is not here to perform the ceremony himself, we will proceed to lay the first stone of the intended edifice. THEODORE ROOSEVELT THE MAN WITH THE MUCK-RAKE! Delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Office Building of the House of Representatives, April 14, 1906. Over a century ago Washington laid the corner-stone of the Capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great ad- ditional buildings for the business of the govern- ment. This growth in the need for the housing of the government is but a proof and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of action of the national government has grown. We now administer the affairs of a nation in which the extraor- 1 Reprinted, by permission, from Putnam’s Magazine, October, 1906. 134 The Speech for Special Occasions dinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth and the growth in complex inter- ests. The material problems that face us to-day are not such as they were in Washington’s time, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered external form we war with the same tendencies toward evil that were evident in Washington’s time, and are helped by the same tendencies for good. It is about some of these that I wish to say a word to-day. In Bunyan’s ‘‘Pilgrim’s Progress” you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor. In “Pilgrim’s Progress”? the Man with the Muck- rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debas- ing. Now it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake ; and there are times and places where this The Speech at a Dedication 135 service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil. There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use onlyif it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a pre- mium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscrimi- nate assault upon character does no good, but very great harm. The soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed. 136 The Speech for Special Occasions Now, it is easy to twist out of shape what I have just said, easy to affect to misunderstand it, and, if it is slurred over in repetition, not difficult really to misunderstand it. Some persons are sincerely inca- pable of understanding that to denounce mud-slinging does not mean the indorsement of whitewashing ; and both the interested individuals who need whitewashing, and those others who practise mud-slinging, like to encourage such confusion of ideas. One of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate assault upon men in business or men in public life is that they invite a reaction which is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who really ought to be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible, to be put in the penitentiary. If Aristides is praised overmuch as just, people get tired of hearing it; and overcensure of the unjust finally and from similar reasons results in their favor. Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reaction, instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the ex- cess, is very apt to take the form either of pun- ishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the The Speech at a Dedication 137 stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price. As an instance in point, Imay mention that one serious difficulty encoun- tered in getting the right type of men to dig the Panama Canal is the certainty that they will be exposed, both without, and, I am sorry to say, sometimes within, Congress, to utterly reckless assaults on their char- acter and capacity. At the risk of repetition, let me say again that my plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure of, the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the posi- tion he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more dam- age to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that I ask that the war be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution. The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when 138 The Speech for Special Occasions to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone. If the whole picture is painted black, there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such paint- ing finally induces a kind of moral color-blindness ; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but that all are gray. In other words, they believe neither in the truth of the attack nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offence; it becomes well-nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrong- doing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the-despair of honest men. To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping gener- alizations as to include decent men in the general con- demnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general attitude either of cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad, Either attitude is fraught with untold The Speech at « Dedication 139 damage to the country as a whole. The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well-nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition. There is any amount of good in the world, and there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done than now. The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. It is a foolish and timid, no less than a wicked, thing to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good. Hysterical sensationalism is the very poor- est weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. The men who, with stern sobriety and truth, assail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders and allies 140 The Speech for Special Occasions of all engaged in the work for social and political better- ment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say, if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they thereby betray the good cause, and play into the hands of the very men against whom they are nominally at war. In his “Ecclesiastical Polity” that fine old Eliza- bethan divine, Bishop Hooker, wrote : — “He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers, be- cause they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regimen is subject; but the secret lets and difficulties which in public proceeding are in- numerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider.” This truth should be kept constantly in mind by every free people desiring to preserve the sanity and poise indispensable to the permanent success of self- government. Yet, on the other hand, it is vital not to permit this spirit of sanity and self-command to degenerate into mere mental stagnation. Bad though a state of hysterical excitement is, and evil though the results are which come from the violent oscillations such excitement invariably produces, yet a sodden acquiescence in evil is even worse. At this moment we are passing through a period of great unrest — The Speech at a Dedication 141 social, political, and industrial unrest. It is of the utmost importance for our future that this should prove to be not the unrest of mere rebelliousness against life, of mere dissatisfaction with the inevitable inequal- ity of conditions, but the unrest of a resolute and eager ambition to secure the betterment of the indi- vidual and the nation. So far as this movement of agitation throughout the country takes the form of a fierce discontent with evil, of a determination to punish the authors of evil, whether in industry or politics, the feeling is to be heartily welcomed as a sign of healthy life. If, on the other hand, it turns into a mere crusade of appetite against appetite, a contest between the brutal greed of the ‘‘have-nots”’ and the brutal greed of the “haves,” then it has no significance for good, but only for evil. If it seeks to establish a line of cleavage, not along the line which divides good men from bad, but along that other line, running at right angles thereto, which divides those who are well off from those who are less well off, then it will be fraught with immeasurable harm to the body politic. We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse 142 The Speech for Special Occasions than, the so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in murder. One attitude is as bad as the other and no worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice ; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime. There is nothing more antisocial in a democratic republic like ours than such vicious class-consciousness. The multi-millionaires who band together to prevent the enactment of proper laws for the supervision of the use of wealth, or to assail those who resolutely enforce such laws, or to exercise a hidden influence upon the political destinies of parties or individuals in their own personal interest, are a menace to the whole community ; and a menace at least as great is offered by those laboring men who band together to defy the law, and by their openly used influence to coerce law- upholding public officials. The apologists for either class of offenders are themselves enemies of good citizenship; and incidentally they are also, to a pe- culiar degree, the enemies of every honest-dealing corporation and every law-abiding labor-union. It is a prime necessity that if the present unrest is to result in permanent good, the emotion shall be translated into action, and that the action shall be marked by honesty, sanity, and self-restraint. There The Speech at a Dedication 143 is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform. The reform that counts is that which comes through steady, continuous growth; violent emotionalism leads to exhaustion. It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well won and fortunes ill won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law-honesty. Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them. As a matter of personal conviction, and with- out pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progres- sive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual —a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous ‘fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed -by the national and not the State government. Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the 144 The Speech for Special Occasions inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those. fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits. Again, the national government must in some form exercise supervision over corporations engaged in inter- state business — and all large corporations are engaged in interstate business, — whether by license or other- wise, so as to permit us to deal with the far-reaching evils of overcapitalization. This year we are making a beginning in the direction of serious effort to settle some of these economic problems by the railway rate legislation. Such legislation, if so framed, as I am sure it will be, as to secure definite and tangible results, will amount to something of itself ; and it will amount to a great deal more in so far as it is taken as a first step in the direction of a policy of superintendence and control over corporate wealth engaged in inter- state commerce, this superintendence and control not to be exercised in a spirit of malevolence toward the men who have created the wealth, but with the firm purpose both to do justice to them and to see that they in their turn do justice to the public at large. The first requisite in the public servants who are to deal in this shape with corporations, whether as legislators or as executives, is honesty. This honesty can be no respecter of persons. There can be no such thing as unilateral honesty. The danger is not really from corrupt corporations: it springs from the cor- The Speech at a Dedication 145 ruption itself, whether exercised for or against corpo- rations. The eighth commandment reads, ‘“‘Thou shalt not steal.”” It does not read, “‘Thou shalt not steal from the rich man.” It does not read, ‘‘Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.” It reads simply and plainly, ‘Thou shalt not steal.”” No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the mis- deeds practised at their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against the misdeeds of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the corpora- tion itself from wrongful aggression. Ifa public manis willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich corporations, it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the interest of a corporation. But, in addition to honesty, we need sanity. No honesty will make a public man useful if that man is timid or foolish, if he is a hot-headed zealot or an impracticable visionary. As we strive for reform, we L 146 The Speech for Special Occasions find that it is not at all merely the case of a long up- hill pull. On the contrary, there is almost as much of breeching work as of collar work; to depend only on traces means that there will soon be a runaway and an upset. The men of wealth who to-day are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in check- ing the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed, they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accom- pany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth. On the other hand, the wild preachers of unrest and discontent, the wild agitators against the entire exist- ing order, the men who act crookedly, whether because of sinister design or from mere puzzle-headedness, the men who preach destruction without proposing any substitute for what they intend to destroy, or who pro- pose a substitute which would be far worse than the existing evils, —all these men are the most dangerous opponents of real reform. If they get their way, they will lead the people into a deeper pit than any into which they could fall under the present system. If they fail to get their way, they will still do incalculable harm by provoking the kind of reaction which, in its The Speech at a Dedication 147 revolt against the senseless evil of their teaching, would enthrone more securely than ever the very evils which their misguided followers believe they are attacking. More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man. The wel- fare of the wage-worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil—upon this depends the welfare of the entire country ; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all our statesmanship. Materially we must strive to secure a broader eco- nomic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Spiritually and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living and right thinking. “We appreciate that the things of the body are important; but we appre- ciate also that the things of the soul are immeasurably more important. The foundation-stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen. 148 The Speech for Special Occasions Joun BRIGHT Speech at the opening of the new rooms of the Junior Liberal Association of Birmingham. Mr. Chamberlain [president of the club] and Gentlemen: — Two or three weeks ago I met with a paragraph in a newspaper informing the public that this meeting was about to be held, that Mr. Chamberlain was to preside, and that I was to deliver what was called an inaugural address. This ratheralarmed me. The word inaugural is one that is not very harmonious, and I think one of the least pleasant words, as to sound, in our language. It comes down from a very famous people — the Romans of old time... . [The defi- nition of the word is given.] Now, we do not profess on this platform to deal with prophecy or the predictions of coming events, but I recollect about six or seven months ago — the week preceding the general election—I did venture upon a prophecy which has since been pretty nearly accomplished. It was after the dissolution of Par- liament, but it was before the elections —I think on the Friday before the elections, just at the end of March — and I said, ‘During the month of April we shall have a new Parliament.” Well, that was not a real prediction. Everybody seems to agree 1 Reprinted, by permission, from The Times, November 17, 1880. The Speech at a Dedication 149 with me in that; but further I said, ‘In the month of May you will have a new administration, and in the month of June you will discover that the country has adopted and sanctioned a new policy.” That was a prophecy which has come, I believe, absolutely and literally true ; and we might venture to-night upon prophecy if there were time for it and if we could do it with equal certainty. You know, no doubt, for I think I was the first person in this country to quote it, the wise saying of Hosea Biglow, who said, “Never prophesy unless you know,” and I will therefore leave prophecy and the augurs of Rome. And TI will not even attempt to deliver an inaugural address, but will make two or three observations with regard to the special object of our meeting.? 1 After defining the higher uses of a club, Mr. Bright states the theme of his address: That a man should be “a partner in a club for the purpose of furthering in every way .. . right and sound principles of legislation and of government.” The speech is an exposition of this thought. Vv THE SPEECH OF PRESENTATION OR ACCEPTANCE Vv THE SPEECH OF PRESENTATION OR ACCEPTANCE THE PitcRim STATUE DANIEL F. APPLETON Speech as chairman of the Monument Committee, presenting the statue to the New England Society. Delivered at the unveiling of the statue, New York City, June 6, 1885. It is now more than six years since you appointed a Committee, of which I have the honor to be president, directing us to erect in the City of New York a monu- ment to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock. Your Committee has finished its labors, and we believe that the wisdom of our choice in selecting Mr. Ward as our artist is fully justified by the great excellence of his work, which we now tender to you in the hope that it will be as acceptable to the Society as it is satisfactory to the Committee. 153 154 The Speech for Special Occasions Stewart L. WoopForp Speech as president of the Society, presenting the statue to the City of New York." To you, Mr. Appleton, and to your fellow-mem- bers of the Monument Committee, the New England Society is indebted for the admirable manner in which your task has been performed. To the sculptor our thanks are also due, but while yonder statue stands, it will tell better than words of mine can tell how he has done his work. He has wisely chosen an ideal of the Pilgrim Fathers as his subject —for the Pilgrim was the Puritan of the Puritans. It is fitting that in this great city, whose population numbers so many of New England’s sons, we should raise a memorial to those whose character and princi- ples have so largely made our city what it is. New England men fully recognize and gratefully admit that all nations, all peoples, and tongues make up this city of our homes and love. New York is the product of many forces and of many lands. While we New Englanders thus praise the work of others, we should be false to our ancestry and to the memories of Plym- outh Rock if we did not modestly, good-naturedly, but positively, assert our belief that the work and 1¥From “Proceedings of the Pilgrim Statue,’ New York, 1885, (Pamphlet.) The Speech of Presentation 155 influence of the Pilgrim and Puritan have done more than all else for this imperial city. As we look back upon that solitary figure, standing with far-away gaze, as if those searching eyes could pierce through long generations and catch a glimpse of the golden future beyond, our thoughts turn back to another scene in striking contrast to the one around. What a step across the centuries from the desolation of Plymouth Rock to this Central Park on this glo- rious June day! We seem for one moment to stand on New England’s rugged coast and greet a band of homeless exiles. All honor to our Pilgrim forefathers who, listening to the higher voices, obeyed the com- mands of conscience, and, leaving home and country for duty’s sake, ‘‘sailed with God the seas.” The past fades, and we are back in this busy, breathing present. New York is around us. Only yonder statue is before us. The art of the sculptor has made those bronze lips speak. They tell us of heroic endur- ance, of obedience to the voice of duty, of loyalty to justice, truth, and right. The shadow of Plymouth Rock steals across the centuries. May it not fallover us in vain! Yonder figure stands, as the Pilgrim of old stood, with his back to his friends and flatterers, and with his face to his foes and duty., We give this statue to the city. Long may the blue skies bend over it, and long may our city prosper 156 The Speech for Special Occasions and keep its faith in the principles for which the Pil- grim Fathers wrought and lived, suffered and died ! CorNELIUS CONWAY FELTON Speech delivering the statue of Daniel Webster to the mayor of Boston, September, 1859." Mr. Mayor: — It has been the custom of the most civilized nations to erect bronze and marble statues in commemora- tion of their great men. There is a fond desire in the hearts of the living to prolong the memory, by perpetuating the form and lineaments, of those who have been distinguished in the service of God and man; and when a mourning nation has followed an illustrious citizen or ruler to the tomb, and time has softened down the first vehemence of grief, the hand of genius is employed to clothe his mortal semblance in the immortality of art. After the death of Demosthenes, on the little island of Calaurea, which looks over from the oppo- site coast of the classic sea that washes his native Attica, the Athenian people passed a decree 1o set up in the place of greatest public resort a bronze statue of that martyr to liberty whose fame has filled the world for more than twenty centuries. The an- cient traveller, as he wandered through the Agora, 1 From a report of the Proceedings. Boston, 1859. (Pamphlet.) The Speech of Presentation 157 surveyed that masterly work of art, standing in front of the Acropolis, and in sight of the Bema, whence his resistless eloquence had so often “fulmined over Greece, To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.” While contemplating the wonderful force and beauty of expression the sculptor had stamped on brow and feature, he recalled the triumphs of the great states- man’s life, his civil courage, his lofty virtues, his devotion to the welfare and honor of his country, and his tragic death. The same classic sea still sings his requiem below the ruined temple of Neptune, where he died. Our great citizen, Mr. Mayor, like that illustrious ancient, consecrated his peerless genius and _ his mighty eloquence, his civil courage and his manly virtues, to the service of his country, and died in the midst of public cares. In silence and in sorrow we followed all that was mortal of Daniel Webster to his last resting-place, and saw him laid in the bosom of the sacred earth at Marshfield. He sleeps with Pilgrim and kindred dust, by the broad ocean; and the broad ocean he loved so well shall sing his re- quiem forever. Desirous to give a durable expression to their sense of his public greatness and of his private virtues; desirous, also, to transmit to the coming ages a 158 The Speech for Special Occasions monument that shall represent to them the dignity of personal bearing with which he moved among his contemporaries, — ‘ A combination and a form indeed, ° Where every god did seem to set his seal, And give the world assurance of a man,”’— his fellow-citizens have thought proper to cause a statue of heroic size to be made by a most distin- guished American sculptor. The committee charged with the honorable duty of executing their wishes have now finished the grateful task, and with the consent of the public authorities have placed the statue here — here, on the Capitol of Massachusetts, that it may stand, like a sentinel guarding the sanctuary of the commonwealth, as during his life ke guarded the Constitution and the laws of the Union. The stranger approaching this sacred spot shall linger to gaze on the noble form of Webster; and, as he crosses the threshold of the State House, his eye shall behold the sculptured majesty of Washington. WasHINGTON and WEB- STER! Fortunate conjunction! August companion- ship of the great departed! The one established, the other defended, the Constitution of the country, and their names shall live, inseparable and immortal, in the same transcendent eloquence, and in the hearts of their grateful countrymen. The Speech of Presentation 159 The duty has been assigned to me, Mr. Mayor, of transferring this’ statue of Mr. Webster to your charge, as the honored chief magistrate of the city of Boston. For here, more than elsewhere, was the scene of his social and domestic happiness, while the whole country was the theatre of his triumphs. Here were formed many of his earliest and his latest friend- ships — the glory of his opening manhood and the joy of his advancing age. Among the tried and the true who consoled his last hours by their presence were warm hearts from this city, —- some of them, alas! now cold in the grave, — beloved friends who stood by his side in the battle of life, and wept around his dying bed. The greatness of Webster is an eternal acquisition to his country; but the city and the State which adopted and cherished him share with the place of his birth the dearest interest in his renown. As the organ of the subscribers to this statue and the Executive Committee, I now formally deliver it, Mr. Mayor, to you. From this,moment it is no longer a private possession; it becomes a sacred public trust. Here let it stand, not only to perpetu- ate our reverence for an illustrious man, but to keep alive the principles that inspired, and the virtues that adorned, his long and patriotic career. ’ 160 The Speech for Special Occasions Harry JOHNSON FISHER Speech presenting the Cheney-Ives Gateway to Yale University on behalf of the class of 1896." President Hadley and Yale Men: — I am here as a representative of the class of ninety- six, to present to you this gate. In its stone and iron it typifies the rugged manliness of those to whose lasting memory it has been erected. That is our wish. To you who are now gathered beneath these elms, and to those Yale men who shall follow after us, we wish this memorial to stand first of all for the manhood and courage of Yale. In the evening shadows the softer lights may steal forth and infold it, but through the daylight hours of toil and accom- plishment let the sun shine down upon it, and bring out each line of strength, that every Yale man may be imbued with that dauntless spirit which inspired these two sons of Yale in their lives and in their deaths. We do not wish you merely to stand before this memorial and gaze upon it as a monument. We want every one of you, whether graduate at Com- mencement time or undergraduate in term time, to come to it and to sit upon its benches, just as we of 1 Reprinted, by permission, from ‘Yale Bicentennial Celebra- tion, 1901,” New Haven, 1902. Copyright, 1901, by the University. The Speech of Presentation 161 ninety-six shall come to it during the advancing years, and, in the coming, keep always alive in our hearts the spirit of these two who did their work and held their peace, and had no fear to die. That is the lesson these two careers are singularly fitted to teach us. To the one came the keenest disap- pointment which can come to a soldier, the dis- appointment of staying behind, and after that the toil, the drudgery, and the sickness, — all bravely borne. To the other it was given to meet death with that steadfast courage which alone avails to men who die in the long quiet after the battle. It is no new service these two have given to Yale. Looking back to-day through the heritage of two centuries, these names are but added to the roll of those who have served Yale because they have served their country. The stone and iron of this gate will keep alive the names of these two men. It is our hope that the men of Yale will, in their own lives, perpetuate their manhood and courage. ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY Speech of acceptance of the Cheney-Ives Gateway. Of all the memorials which are offered to a uni- versity by the gratitude of her sons, there are none which serve so closely and fully the purposes of her M 162 The Speech for Special Occasions life as those monuments which commemorate her dead heroes. The most important part of the teach- ing of a place like Yale is found in the lessons of public spirit and devotion to high ideals which it gives. These things can in some measure be learned in books of poetry and of history. They can in some measure be learned from the daily life of the college and the sentiments which it inculcates. But they are most solemnly and vividly brought home by visible signs, such as this gateway furnishes, that the spirit of ancient heroism is not dead, and that its highest lessons are not lost. It seems as if the bravest and best in your class, as well as in others, had been sacrificed to the cruel exigencies of war. But they are not sacrificed. It is through their death that their spirit remains im- mortal. It is through men like those whom we have loved, and whom we here commemorate, that the life of the republic is kept alive. As we have learned lessons of heroism from the men who went forth to die in the Civil War, so will our children and our children’s children learn the same lesson from the heroes who have a little while lived with us and then entered into an immortality of glory. The Speech of Presentation 163 WILi1iam Ewart GLADSTONE Accepting a chair from the Liberals of the borough of Green- wich.’ Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: — I am sure you will think I shall best discharge my duty if upon this occasion I confine myself to the briefest expression of thanks for this last and newest favor which the constituency of Greenwich has con- ferred upon me. The former favors have not been, and cannot be, forgotten; and, although our political connection as constituency and representative has been dissolved, yet you may rely upon it that my interest in your welfare, which was enhanced by that connection, can never disappear. I thank you greatly for this new mark of your enduring kindness. I accept it with peculiar joy and pleasure on this auspicious day, in the presence of Lord Granville, Lord Hartington, and all those colleagues to whose powerful codperation it is that I owe my being able to appear before you with the conviction that I have not disgraced the functions with which, in common with them, I am charged. The events of the session hardly form a fitting topic for me to dwell upon. They have been remark- able in many respects. They have been remarkable, 1 Reprinted, by permission, from The Times, August 18, 1881. 164 The Speech for Special Occasions perhaps, for the difficulty in the midst of which our duties have been discharged; but they have been remarkable above all things, perhaps, for this, that they have brought into view a new and great neces- sity, —a necessity in which the people of England will feel the keenest interest, — the necessity of re- storing the House of Commons to its position as the great security for your liberties and for enabling leg- islation to be carried on in its full efficiency. That duty, gentlemen, is one which is indeed for a future year, but, you may rely upon it, it is one to which we shall address ourselves when the opportunity arises —I will not say with all the power which it demands, but at any rate with all the zeal and earnest- ness which so great a cause can inspire. Great is the interest connected with separate subjects of legisla- tion, but greater still, and paramount, is the interest which must be awakened in your minds by a matter which touches vitally the condition of the great organ of all our legislation — that noble representa- tive assembly which has served as a pattern to the representative assemblies of the world, and which has done more than any of them, perhaps more than all of them, to cherish the aspirations of freedom and to maintain the traditions of law and order among the whole of civilized mankind. Gentlemen, permit me to offer you my most grateful The Speech of Presentation 165 thanks for this renewed token of your kindness, and to express the hope that until I deliver over into other and worthier hands the charge that now rests upon me, I may do nothing to forfeit your favor, or betray the confidence which you have been pleased to repose in me. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT Accepting a portfolio on his seventieth birthday.’ Allow me, through you, as one of their representa- tives, to return to the artists of the “Century” my best acknowledgments for the superb gift they have made me. I have no title to it but their generosity, yet I rejoice to possess it, and shall endeavor to pre- serve it as long as I live. Among the artists of the country are some of my oldest and best friends. In their conversation I have taken great delight, and derived from it much instruction. In them the love and the study of nature tend to preserve the native simplicity of character, to make them frank and ingenuous, and divert their attention from selfish interests. I shall prize this gift, therefore, not only as a memorial of the genius of our artists, in which respect alone it possesses a high value, but also as a token of the good- will of a class of men for whom I cherish a particular regard and esteem. 1 From ‘The Bryant Festival at the Century Club,’”’ 1864. VI THE RESPONSE OF THE RECIPIENT OF AN HONOR VI THE RESPONSE OF THE RECIPIENT OF AN HONOR CHARLES DICKENS Speech in response to the toast, ‘Health, happiness, and a hearty welcome to Charles Dickens.” Spoken at a dinner in Boston, February 1, 1842.' Gentlemen : — If you had given this splendid entertainment to any one else in the whole wide world, —if I were to-night to exult in the triumph of my dearest friend, — if I stood here upon my defence, to repel any unjust attack, — to appeal as a stranger to your generosity and kindness as the freest people on the earth, —I could, putting some restraint upon myself, stand among you as self-possessed and unmoved as I should be alone, in my own room in England. But when I have the echoes of your cordial greeting ringing in my ears; when I see your kind faces beaming a welcome so warm and earnest as never man had —I feel, it is my nature, so vanquished and subdued, that I have 1From the report of a dinner to Charles Dickens, Boston, 1842. 169 170 The Speech for Special Occasions hardly fortitude enough to thank you. If your presi- dent, instead of pouring forth that delightful mixture of humor and pathos which you have just heard with so much delight, had been but a caustic, ill- natured man, —if he had only been a dull one, — if I could only have doubted or distrusted him or you, I should have had my wits at’ my fingers’ ends, and, using them, could have held you at arm’s-length. But you have given me no such opportunity; you take advantage of me in the tenderest point; you give me no chance of playing at company, or holding you at a distance, but flock about me like a host of brothers, and make this place like home. Indeed, gentlemen, indeed, if it be natural and allowable for each of us, on his own hearth, to express his thoughts in the most homely fashion, and to appear in his plainest garb, I have a fair claim upon you to let me do so to-night, for you have made my house an Aladdin’s palace. You fold so tenderly within your breasts that common household lamp in which my feeble fire is all enshrined, and at which my flicker- ing torch is lighted up, that straight my household gods take wing, and are transported here. And whereas it is written of that fairy structure that it never moved without two shocks, — one when it rose, and one when it settled down, —I can say of mine that, however sharp a tug it took to pluck it from The Response 171 its native ground, it struck at once an easy and a deep and lasting root into this soil, and loved it as its own. I can say more of it, and say with truth, that long before it moved, or had a chance of moving, its master — perhaps from some secret sympathy between its timbers and a certain stately tree that has its being hereabout and spreads its broad branches far and wide — dreamed by day and night, for years, of setting foot upon this shore, and breathing this pure air. And trust me, gentlemen, that, if I had wandered here, unknowing and unknown, I would — if I know my own heart — have come with all my sympathies clustering as richly about this land and people, — with all my sense of justice as keenly alive to their high claims on every man who loves God’s image, — with all my energies as fully bent on judg- ing for myself, and speaking out, and telling in my sphere the truth, as I do now, when you rain down your welcomes on my head. Your president has alluded to those writings which have been my occupation for some years past; and you have received his allusions in a manner which assures me —if I needed any such assurance — that we are old friends in the spirit, and have been in close ‘communion for a long time. It is not easy for a man to speak of his own books. I dare say that few persons have been more inter- 172 The Speech for Special Occasions ested in mine than I, and if it be a general principle in nature that a lover’s love is blind, and that a mother’s love is blind, I believe it may be said of an author’s attachment to the creatures of his own imagination that it is a perfect model of constancy and devotion, and is the blindest of all. But the objects and purposes I have had in view are very plain and simple, and may be easily told. I have always had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful cheerfulness and enjoy- ment. I have always had, and always shall have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which loves the darkness and winks and scowls in the light. I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every beautiful object in external nature claim some sympathy in the breasts of the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread. I believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she dwells rather oftener in alleys and byways than she does in courts and palaces, and that it is good and pleasant and profit- able to track her out and follow her. I believe that to lay one’s hand upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and most thought- The Response 173 less, ‘These creatures have the same elements and capacities of goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same form, and made of the same clay; and though ten times worse than you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature amidst the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten times better,” I believe that to do this is to pur- sue a worthy and not useless avocation. Gentlemen, that you think so too, your fervent greeting sufficiently assures me. That this feeling is alive in the Old World as well as in the New, no man should know better than I—JI, who have found such wide and ready sympathy in my own dear land. That in ex- pressing it we are but treading in the steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before, we know by reference to all the bright examples in our litera- ture from Shakespeare downward. There is one other point, connected with the labors (if I may call them so) that you hold in such gener- ous esteem, to which I cannot help adverting. I can- not help expressing the delight, the more than happi- ness, it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened on this side of the water in favor of that little heroine of mine, to whom your president has made allusion, who died in her youth. I had letters about that child, in England, from the dwellers in log houses, amongst the morasses and swamps and densest for- 174 The Speech for Special Occasions ests and deepest solitudes of the far west. Many a sturdy hand, hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer’s sun, has taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with words of interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived from it; and my cor- respondent has always addressed me, not as a writer of books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles away, but as a friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and sorrows of his own fireside. Many a mother—TI could reckon them now by dozens, not by units—has done the like, and has told me how she lost such a child at such a time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how, in this or that respect, she resembled Nell. I do assure you that no circumstance of my life has given me one-hundredth part of the gratification I have derived from this source. I was wavering at the time whether or not to wind up my Clock and come and see this country, and this decided me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I were bound to pack up my clothes and come and see my friends; and even now I have such an odd sensation in con- nection with these things that you have no chance of spoiling me. I feel as though we were agreeing — as indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious char- The Response 175 acters the classes from which they are drawn — about third parties, in whom we have a common interest. At every new act of kindness on your part, I say to myself, “That’s for Oliver; I should not wonder if that were meant for Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;”’ and so I become a much hap- pier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man than ever I was before. Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America brings me back naturally, and of course, to you. Coming back to you, and being thereby reminded of the pleasure we have in store in hearing the gentle- men who sit about me, I arrive by the easiest, though not by the shortest, course in the world, at the end of what I have to say. But before I sit down there is one topic on which I am desirous to lay particular stress. It has, or should have, a strong interest for all of us, since to its literature every country must look for one great means of refining and improving its people, and one great source of national pride and - honor. You have in America great writers — great writers — who will live in all time, and are as fa- miliar to our lips as household words. Deriving (which they all do in greater or less degree, in their several walks) their inspiration from the stupendous country that gave them birth, they diffuse a better knowledge of it, and a higher love for it all over the 176 The Speech for Special Occasions civilized world. I take leave to say, in the presence of some of those gentlemen, that I hope the time is not far distant when they, in America, will receive of right some substantial profit and return in England from their labors; and when we, in England, shall receive some substantial profit and return in America from ours. Pray do not misunderstand me. Secur- ing to myself from day to day the means of an honor- able subsistence, I would rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow-men than I would have heaps and mines of gold. But the two do not seem to me to be incompatible. They cannot be, for nothing good is incompatible with justice; there must be an international arrangement in this respect. England has done her part, and I am confident that the time is not far distant when America will do hers. It be- comes the character of a great country; firstly, be- cause it is justice; secondly, because without it you never can have, and keep, a literature of your own. Gentlemen, I thank you with feelings of gratitude such as are not often awakened, and can never be expressed. As I understand it to be the pleasant custom here to finish with a toast, I would beg to give you, ‘‘America and England, and may they never have any division but the Atlantic between them.” The Response 177 James C. CARTER Speech on the occasion of the presentation of his portrait to the Harvard Club of New York City.! The chairman of the Committee on the painting of the por- traits of Joseph H. Choate and James C. Carter said, “... I present them to the Club in the name of the Committee and of the subscribers to the fund; and I never expect to perform a much happier duty.” Mr. Alexander and Mr. Wendell unveiled the portraits, painted by Sargent. Mr. James C. Carter was called upon to speak, and said: — Mr. President and Brethren of the Harvard Club: — I had it on my tongue to say as I arose that I was very full to-night. And why should I not say it? For indeed I am very full—full of grateful ac- knowledgments, which I may well express at this time — the first opportunity I have had since I re- tired from the office which you now occupy, Mr. President — of thanks to the Club and its members for the repeated instances in which they have evi- denced their favor and their partiality for me, by electing me to the office of president of this Club, an honor which I regard as one of the most dis- tinguished, perhaps the most distinguished, of my humble career. 1 Speeches at the annual dinner of the Harvard Club of New York City, February 21, 1900. N 178 The Speech for Special Occasions Again, I must thank those of my friends, I do not indeed know who they are, who did me the honor to ask me to sit to Sargent for my portrait. To be painted by one of the first painters of the age is in- deed an honor. A great painter achieves immortality by his works, for they live after him in enduring forms, and he confers a sort of subsidiary and inci- dental immortality upon the subjects of his art. Because I have been painted by Sargent, my humble name may be carried to future generations, who would otherwise never hear it, so that I may borrow from some familiar verse and say that — “While along the stream of time his name Expanded flies and gathers all his fame, My little bark may attendant sail, Pursue the triumph and partake the gale.” I feel also particularly grateful, and very thankful, to the Club for the honor they do me in having this picture hung upon their walls, and for having it hung up alongside of my life-long friend and companion, my brother [Joseph Hodges] Choate. I do not know how otherwise my career in life might have turned, but for the advantage of that long friendship, acquired originally within the walls of old Harvard itself, and which I feel to be one of the great satis- factions of my life. It is a pleasing thought to me that the intimate companionship which we have en- The Response 179 joyed all our lives may thus in some manner be per- petuated when both of us are gone. And I must never cease to express my gratitude at my good fortune in having been a son of Harvard, and under such pleasant circumstances. My first sight of that place was when I was a boy not more than ten years of age, when I was taken from my home in the country to the beautiful city of Cam- bridge. I saw the place and its people, the ancient University with its noble buildings and spreading elms, and I then thought it must be one of the su- preme felicitie$ of human life to be a graduate of that University. That was a good round sixty years ago, and I have seen no occasion to change my opinion since. ... . And now, Mr. President, thanking you for the op- portunity you have given me to make these acknowl- edgments, and expressing the pleasure with which I meet the sons of Harvard on this occasion, which pleasure I hope to have often repeated hereafter, I will turn with you to the pleasure of listening to our other guests. 180 The Speech for Special Occasions E.rau Root Speech at the Commencement Day Dinner of Harvard Univer- sity, 1907, after receiving the degree of LL.D.’ Mr. President, President Eliot, Gentlemen: — To become an adopted son of Harvard is for me most grateful appreciation. I am deeply your debtor already: your debtor for all that you have done for every lover of his country ; your debtor for that brilliant and noble series of leaders of the bar at which for forty years it has been my fortune to prac- tise, which has always during that period had at the forefront a Harvard man. I am especially your debtor for the pleasure and the influence upon my life of two warm and unbroken friendships of many years, for the influence of those great and beloved leaders of the bar, those faithful sons of Harvard, James Coolidge Carter, who, alas! has laid aside his earthly glories, and Joseph Hodges Choate, whom may God spare to us for many years to come in his brilliant and noble life. I am a debtor to Harvard in the same great measure for having prepared and laid before me the opportunity to help in a humble but I believe a loyal way in the leadership of one of your sons in an administration of the federal govern- 1 Reprinted, by permission of the author, from The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, September, 1907. * The Response 181 ment which I believe, as history comes to be written, will be found to have been one of the greatest, in service and in influence for the future, of any Ameri- can administration. But the institution is more than any individual. Under that mysterious law by which spiritual succes- sion approaches so nearly to personal continuance of life from generation to generation, there has been handed down to this great company of the students and alumni of Harvard the spirit of the early days which saw the formation and struggles and the initial triumphs of the American republic. There has never been in history a more wonderful example of the power of character than the formative power exer- cised by the descendants of the few colonists who landed upon the Atlantic shores of America over the great masses of men who with their descendants now make up the American people. The Dutch and Swedes, the French and Germans, all the original stocks, and added to them the millions of immigrants who have crowded into our ports during our life- time, more than twenty million coming in the last half century, — all have had impressed upon them the principles, the methods, the sense of justice and of freedom, the self-control, the consideration for the rights of others, the personal independence and cour- age born and developed in the early struggles of the 182 The Speech for Special Occasions. English people, and all together making up Anglo- Saxon freedom. The power that has thus impressed itself upon a great composite nation, the formative power, never turned aside, never diluted, that has given to the composite nation, made up of all the people of the earth, with all the traditions, all the systems of law, all the acquired habits of thought known to civilized man, the power that has impressed upon them all the simple principles of John Harvard’s day, is the greatest power that has been at work in human government since history began to be written. And in that formative power the men of Harvard have played a great and a distinguished part. The occasion of its exercise has not yet passed away. Rather is there more need than ever before. I am glad that you are about to institute a school for instruction in business. I am glad that no de- partment in which high intelligence can be usefully exercised is to be neglected by this University. But the most important business that lies before the American people to-day is the business of govern- ment. The enormous complication of modern life, the interdependence of all men upon others, the necessity for regulating, controlling, directing, those activities necessary to the life of every man and of every family, make government, which is organization for the con- trol and regulation of all the activities necessary to The Response 183 life, of greater and more immediate importance than ever it has been in any past generation. So compli- cated has it become that the ordinary common sense upon which Americans have been wont to rely finds itself often at a loss for wise conduct. The treatment of the great activities which have to be regulated, as our governor has told us, is a scientific treatment; it requires knowledge, study, disciplined minds; the spirit of the learning that makes men free is the spirit that requires every man whose mind has be- come disciplined to give to the country the service of that discipline in the science and practice of the government that is intimately connected with every home. The man who thinks that the proper way to make a barrel-hoop lie down is to step on it, fre- quently meets with a disagreeable surprise, and such men are found in multitudes, always ready to apply those new solutions to every problem of government, and perfect cures for every evil. It is only by dealing with government. as a science, by study, by practical experiment, that the work can be continued under our modern conditions. The great body of our people desire good government. But how? How to deal with the new evils that our newly complicated life brings about? The question is with you and such as you to answer, and it is a question pressing upon us with urgency and with serious consequences. 184 The Speech for Special Occasions I venture to suggest that there are two things to be done of vital importance, both of which require the highest degree of intelligence. One is that, for the solution of the complicated questions that are now before us, government should be simplified in the highest degree. And to simplify is the function of learning. The other is that responsibility shall be fixed, so that the people may know whom to hold responsible for failures to produce good government. The fixing of responsibility is a matter for the highest intelligence and courage. The question of national, of State control, is a question to be resolved, not by the feelings of a popular assembly, but by the careful study of consequences, of results. The solution which seems to be useful for a particular purpose may be most baleful as a precedent. The men of Harvard live in every State of the Union; their influence may bring the legislation and administration of every State into conformity with general ideals without break- ing down the right of local self-government. Men of Harvard go into every State and look back to this common centre of affection which binds them all together as citizens of one country, and their in- fluence may hold the States to the Union, to the national ideal, to the supremacy of our country, with- out the surrender of local attachment or local pride. Underlying the arduous efforts which lie before us The Response 185 in dealing with questions of labor and of capital, in dealing with wealth, with corporations, with social- ism, with selfishness and greed, with the crude and immature ideas of amateur reformers, underlying our treatment of all is the spirit of American freedom as it has been handed down to you from the early days when the few men of Harvard gathered in this insti- tution of the State of Massachusetts, closely allied with government, the dominant influence in creating that great formative power that has made the Ameri- can commonwealth. The essence of that spirit is consideration for the rights of others, willingness to do justice one’s self, patience in dealing with those who differ from us in opinion, willingness to spend time and money and trouble in the service of one’s country without regard to fame or office or honor, a deep sense of responsibility for handing down to our children the blessings of peace and justice and indi- vidual opportunity which our fathers have handed down to us. WASHINGTON IRVING MY NATIVE LAND Spoken at a reception in his honor, May 30, 1832. In re- sponse to the toast, ‘Our Illustrious Guest, thrice wel- come to his native land.” I find myself, after a long absence of seventeen years, surrounded by the friends of my youth — by 186 The Speech for Special Occasions those whom in my early days I was accustomed to look up to with veneration; by others, who, though personally new to me, I recognize as the sons of the patriarchs of my native city. The manner in which I have been received by them has rendered this the proudest, the happiest, moment of my life. And what has rendered it more poignant is, that I have been led, at times, to doubt my standing in the affec- tions of my countrymen. Rumors and suggestions had reached me that absence had impaired their kind feelings — that they considered me alienated in heart from my country. Gentlemen, I was too proud to vindicate myself from such a charge; nor should I have alluded to it at this time, if the warm and affectionate reception I have met with on all sides since my landing and the overpowering testimonials of regard here offered me had not proved that my misgivings were groundless. Never certainly did a man return to his native place after so long an absence under happier aus- pices. On my side I see changes, it is true, but they are the changes of rapid improvement and growing prosperity; even the countenances of my old associates and townsmen have appeared to me but slightly affected by the lapse of years, though perhaps it was the glow of ancient friendship and heartfelt welcome beaming from them that prevented me from seeing the ravages of time. The Response 187 As to my native city, from the time I approached the coast, I had indications of its growing greatness. We had scarce descried the land, when a thousand sails of all descriptions gleamed along the horizon, and all standing to or from one point, showed that we were in the neighborhood of a vast commercial emporium. As I sailed up our beautiful bay, with a heart swelling with old recollections and delightful associations, I was astonished to see its once wild features brightening with populous villages and noble piles, and a seeming city extending itself over heights I had left covered with green forests. But how shall I describe my emotions when our city rose to sight, seated in the midst of its watery domain, stretching away to a vast extent, where I beheld a glorious sunshine lighting up the skies and domes, some familiar to memory, others new and unknown, and beaming upon a forest of masts of every nation, extending as far as the eye could reach. I have gazed with admiration upon many a fair city and stately harbor, but my admiration was cold and ineffectual, for I was a stranger, and had no property in the soil. Here, however, my heart throbbed with pride and joy as I admired —I had a birthright in the brilliant scene before me: this was “my own, my native land.” It has been asked, Can I be content to live in this 188 The Speech for Special Occasions country? Whoever asks that question must have but an inadequate idea of its blessings and delights. What sacrifice of enjoyments have I to reconcile myself to? JI come from gloomier climes to one of sunshine and inspiring purity. I come from coun- tries lowering with doubt and danger, where the rich man trembles and the poor man frowns — where all repine at the present and dread the future. I come from these to a country where all is life and animation; where I hear on every side the sound of exultation; where every one speaks of the past with triumph, the present with delight, the future with growing and confident anticipation. Is this not a community in which one may rejoice to live? Is this not a city of which one may be proud to be received as a son? Is this not a land in which one may be happy to fix his destiny and his ambition — if possible, to found a name? I am asked how long I mean to remain here. They know but little of my heart or my feelings who can ask me this question. I answer, ‘‘As long as I live.” Witiiam CULLEN BRYANT Speech at the festival in his honor, November s, 1864.7 I thank you, Mr. President, for the kind words you have uttered, and I thank this good-natured com- 1From ‘The Bryant Festival at the Century Club,” 1864. The Response 189 pany for having listened to them with so many tokens of assent and approbation. I must suppose, how- ever, that most of this approbation was bestowed upon the orator rather than upon his subject. He who has brought to the writing of our national history a genius equal to the vastness of the subject has, of course, more than talent enough for humbler tasks. I wonder not, therefore, that he should be applauded this evening for the skill he has shown in embellish- ing a barren topic. I am congratulated upon having completed my seventieth year. Is there nothing ambiguous, Mr. President, in such a compliment? To be congratu- lated upon one’s senility! To be congratulated on having reached that stage of life when the bodily and mental powers pass into decline and decay! Lear is made by Shakespeare to say, — “Age is unnecessary,” and a later poet, Dr. Johnson, has expressed the same idea in one of his sonorous lines : — “Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.” You have not forgotten, Mr. President, the old Greek saying, — “Whom the gods love die young,” nor the passage in Wordsworth : — . . . “Oh, sir, the good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, Burn to the socket.” 190 The Speech for Special Occasions Much has been said of the wisdom of Old Age. Old Age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enter- prises, for it has not the power nor the time to exe- cute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoid- ing danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and con- verted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted. What a world would this be if it were made up of old men! generation succeeding generation of hoary ancients who had but a dozen years or perhaps half that time to live! What new work of good would be attempted? What existing abuse or evil corrected? What strange subjects would such a world afford for the pencils of our artists — groups of superannuated graybeards basking in the sun through the long days of spring, or huddling like sheep in warm corners in the winter-time; houses with the timbers dropping apart; cities in ruins; roads un- wrought and impassable; weedy gardens and fields with the surface feebly scratched to put in a scanty harvest; decrepit old men clambering into crazy wagons, perhaps to be run away with, or mounting horses, if they mounted them at all, in terror of being The Response 191 hurled from their backs like a stone from a sling. Well it is that in this world of ours the old men are but a small minority. Ah, Mr. President, if we could but stop this rush- ing tide of time that bears us so swiftly onward, and make it flow towards its source; if we could cause the shadow to turn back on the dial-plate! I see before me many excellent friends of mine, worthy to live a thousand years, on whose countenances years have set their seal, marking them with the lines of thought and care, and causing their temples to glisten with the frosts of life’s autumn. If to any one of them could be restored his glorious prime, his golden youth, with its hyacinthine locks, its smooth, un- wrinkled brow, its fresh and rounded cheek, its pearly and perfect teeth, its lustrous eyes, its light and bounding step, its frame full of energy, its ex- ulting spirits, its high hopes, its generous impulses, and, added to all these, the experience and fixed principles of mature age, I am sure, Mr. President, that I should start at once to my feet and propose that, in commemoration of such a marvel, and by way of congratulating our friend who was its sub- ject, we should hold such a festivity as the Century has never seen nor will ever see again. Eloquence should bring its highest tribute, and art its fairest decorations to grace the festival; the most skilful 192 The Speech for Special Occasions musicians should be here with all manner of instru- ments of music, ancient and modern; we should have sackbut, and trumpet, and shawm, and damsels with dulcimers, and a modern band three times as large as the one that now plays on that balcony. But why dwell on such a vain dream, since it is only by passing through the darkness that overhangs the Valley of the Shadow of Death that man can reach his second youth? I have read in descriptions of the Old World of the families of princes and barons coming out of their castles to be present at some rustic festivity, such as a wedding of one of their peasantry. I am reminded of this custom by the presence of many literary persons of eminence in these rooms, and I thank them for this act of benevolence. Yet I miss among them several whom I had wished rather than ventured to hope that I should meet on this occa- sion. I miss my old friend Dana, who gave so grandly the story of the Buccaneer in his solemn verses. I miss Pierpont, venerable in years, yet vigorous in body and mind, and with an undimmed fancy; and him whose pages are wet with the tears of maidens who read the story of Evangeline; and the author of “Fanny” and ‘The Croakers,” no less renowned for the fiery spirit which animated his ‘‘ Marco Bozzaris”’ ; and him to whose wit we owe the Biglow Papers, The Response 193 who has made a lowly flower of the wayside as classi- cal as the rose of Anacreon; and the Quaker poet, whose verses, Quaker as he is, stir the blood like the voice of a trumpet calling to battle; and the poetess of Hartford, whose beautiful lyrics are in a million hands ; and others, whose names, were they to occur to me here as in my study, I might accompany with the mention of some characteristic merit. But here is he whose serial verse has raised the little insect of our fields, making his murmuring journey from flower to flower, the humblebee, to a dignity equal to that of Pindar’s eagle; here is the “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” author of that most spirited of naval lyrics, beginning with the line, — ‘* Ay, tear her tattered ensign down; ” here, too, is the poet who told in pathetic verse the story of Jephthah’s daughter; and here are others, worthy compeers of those I have mentioned, yet greatly my juniors, in the brightness of whose rising fame I am like one who has carried a lantern in the night, and who perceives that its beams are no longer visible in the glory which the morning pours around him. To them and to all the members of the Century, allow me, Mr. President, to offer the wish that they may live longer than I have done, in health of body oO 194 The Speech for Special Occasions and mind, and in the same contentment of spirit and serenity of spirit which has fallen to my lot. I must not overlook the ladies who have deigned to honor these rooms with their presence. If I knew where, amid myrtle bowers and flowers that never wither, gushed from the ground the Fountain of Perpetual Youth, so long vainly sought by the first Spanish adventurers on the American continent, I would offer to the lips of every one of them a beaker of its fresh and sparkling waters, and bid them drink unfading bloom. But since that is not to be, I will wish what, perhaps, is as well, and what some would think better, that the same kindness of heart which has prompted them to come hither to-night may lend a beauty to every action of their future lives. And as to the Century itself, —the dear old Century, — to whose members I owe both the honors and the embarrassments of this occasion, — to that associa- tion, fortunate in having possessed two such presi- dents as the distinguished historian who now occupies the chair and the eminent scholar and admirable writer who preceded him, I offer the wish that it may endure, not only for the term of years signified by its name,—not for one century only, but for ten centuries, —so that hereafter, perhaps, its mem- bers may discuss the question whether its name should not be changed to that of the Club of a Thou- The Response 195 sand Years, and that these may be centuries of peace and prosperity, from which its members may look back to this period of bloody strife as to a frightful dream soon chased away by the beams of a glorious morning. VII THE SPEECH PROPOSING A VOTE OF THANKS VII THE SPEECH PROPOSING A VOTE OF THANKS EpMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN A speech at the close of Mr. Parke Godwin’s address on George William Curtis, proposing a vote of thanks to the orator.! Mr. President: — A speaker whose voice is heard just after such an address realizes only too forcibly the pith of Armado’s saying, ‘‘The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.’’ None the less, I would always feel remorse should I now forego the privilege of ex- pressing, however inadequately, what every one of this fit audience, not few, desires to hear expressed. For we have all passed from interest to enjoyment, and from enjoyment to exaltation, under the spell of our veteran and noble eulogist. As the beauty of his tribute still haunts the ear, we reflect that but two of those whom the Century last year bore upon its 1 Reprinted, by permission, from ‘George William Curtis: a Com- memorative Address.” By Parke Godwin. New York, 1893. 199 200 The Speech for Special Occasions rolls could have so moved us— the man to whom we have just listened, and the man whose life and attributes were his theme. The second has gone from us in his mellow prime; the chance of time and fate has kindly left us the elder to declare the other’s fame, and in the strength of age to supplement the records of his own distinguished past and outvie the eloquence of younger men. If there was much of felicity in the life of Curtis, he was not wholly bereft of it in his too early death. It is well with one who thus departs, justified by such a tribute, and leaving a friend who, above all others, has the heart and the matchless natural gifts required for its utterance. And, in truth, who now is left of the silver-tongued group who spoke for us “fin tears, in pleasure, and in passion,” save this our last of the orators? His compeers have passed and are passing; he sees a new generation about him, but not like that of which the Roman spoke, declar- ing that it is hard “to render an account before the men of a period different from that in which one has lived.” For each of us would fain be his staff to-day, though we see he needs none. Long may it be the spirit of this association to cherish to the utmost, to honor to the last, our sages, equipped with memory and with wisdom, and uttering winged words, and still making its council-halls their home. The ora- The Speech Proposing a Vote of Thanks 201 tion which has held our rapt attention.is the latest, and second to no other, of our vouchers for the worth of this sweet tradition. There is not one of us who does not hold its pronouncer in gratitude and honor — not one who does not expect me to offer, as I now do, a resolution of thanks to Mr. Godwin for his beautiful and eloquent tribute to George William Curtis, and to make the request that he furnish the text of it for our distribution in printed form. Even that text, with all its lasting qualities, cannot wholly convey the strength of its delivery, for we all have noted how—as his mind caught fire by its own friction — he rose again and again above it with the fervor which only the impulse of the born orator can display. ; {[Mr. Stedman’s resolution was unanimously adopted.] VIII THE SPEECH OF WELCOME VII THE SPEECH OF WELCOME ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY Address of welcome on the occasion of the Bicentennial Cele- bration of Yale University, rgor.' Of all the pleasures and the duties which a birth- day brings with it, the most welcome duty and the most exalted pleasure is found in the opportunity which it affords for seeing, united under one roof, the fellow-members of a family who are often far separated. On this two-hundredth birthday of Yale University, it is our chief pride to have with us the representatives of that brotherhood of learning which knows no bounds of time or place, of profession or creed. It knows no bounds of age, either among the hosts or among the guests. The Yale that welcomes you here includes in its membership all parts of the col- legiate body, from the youngest student to the oldest 1 Reprinted, by permission, from “The Yale Bicentennial Cele- bration, 1901.” New Haven, 1902. Copyright, 1902, by Yale University. 205 206 The Speech for Special Occasions professor. It includes all those who, coming here without officially recognized connection with the University itself, bear to it such relationship that they partake in its spirit, and feel themselves sharers of its glories and its duties. Nor is it the living alone that welcome you. Present with us in spirit are men who have recently gone from us, like Phelps and Dana and Whitney. Present is a long line of great dead who have devoted their services to Yale, and who, being dead, yet speak. Present are those givers of books who, two hundred years ago, out of their poverty founded that college of Connecticut which to-day welcomes brothers, younger and older, to its anniversary. Representatives of colleges whose birth we have watched and in whose growth we can claim an almost paternal interest stand here side by side with delegates from those institutions, whether in the New World or the Old, which can point to a longer past than ours, and with whose achievements the centuries have rung. - Our brotherhood knows no bounds of place, no limits, natural or artificial. Characteristic of univer- sity learning from the very beginning was its cos- mopolitan spirit. While States and cities dwelt in self-centred isolation, the universities of the Middle Ages established the first post-office by which intelli- gence could be interchanged and nations grow by The Speech of Welcome 207 one another’s intellectual work. That community of thought which the members of the brotherhood of learning have thus pursued from the outset has been in recent days helped beyond anticipation by those modern inventions which have annihilated space, and have made it possible to have with us representa- tives, not only from the North and the South, from the Mississippi and from the Pacific, but from Stock- holm and St. Petersburg, from Japan and from Aus- tralasia. Our brotherhood knows no bounds of occupation. The day is past when people thought of the learned professions as something set apart from all others, the exclusive property of a privileged few! Opinions may differ as to the achievement of democracy; but none can fail to value that growing democracy of letters which makes of every calling a learned and noble profession, when it is pursued with the clearness of vision which is furnished by science or by history and with the disinterested devotion to the public welfare which true learning inspires. We are proud ‘to have with us not only the theologian or the jurist or the physician; not merely the historical investigator or the scientific discoverer; but the men of every name who, by arms or by arts, in letters or in commerce, have contributed to bring all callings equally within the scope of university life. 208 The Speech for Special Occasions Nor does our brotherhood know any bounds of creed. Even those institutions of learning which at some period in their history have had a more or less sectarian character tend to grow as the world grows —making their theology no longer a trammel but an inspiration, and welcoming as friends all who. contribute to that inspiration, whether under the same forms or under others. Our common religion, so fundamental that we can all unite therein, teaches us broad lessons of reverence, of tolerance, and of earnestness. Ours be the reverence of those who have learned silence from the stars above and the graves beneath; ours the tolerance which can ‘‘see a good in evil and a hope in ill-success’’ ; ours the ear- nestness which would waste no time in the discussion of differences of standpoint, but would unite us as leaders in the world’s great movement toward higher standards in science and in business, in thought and in life. BENJAMIN DISRAELI Speech welcoming the king of the Belgians, at the Royal Literary Fund Dinner, May 8, 1872.! Sire, forty years ago a portion of Europe, and one not the least fair, seemed doomed by an inexorable fate to permanent dependence and periodical devastation. 1 Reprinted, by permission, from The Times, May 9, 1872. The Speech of Welcome 209 And yet the conditions of that country were favorable to civilization and human happiness: a fertile soil skil- fully cultivated, a land covered with beautiful cities and occupied by a race prone alike to liberty and religion, and always excelling in the fine arts. In the midst of a European convulsion a great statesman, resolved to terminate that deplorable destiny, conceived the idea of establishing the independence of Belgium on the prin- ciple of political neutrality. That idea was welcomed at first with sceptical contempt. But we who live in the after generation can bear witness to the triumphant success of that principle, and can now take the oppor- tunity of congratulating that noble policy which con- secrated to perpetual peace the battle-field of Europe. Such a fortunate result was, no doubt, owing in a great degree to the qualities of the race which inhabited the land. They have shown on more than one occa- sion, under severe trials, that they have possessed those two qualities which can alone enable a nation to main- tain the principle of neutrality —alike energy and discretion. But we must not forget that it was their fortunate lot that the first monarch who ascended their throne was the most eminent statesman of the nineteenth century. With consummate prudence, with unerring judgment, with vast and varied expe- rience, he combined those qualities which at the same time win and retain the heart of communities. We P 210 The Speech for Special Occasions can, especially at this moment, remember with pride that he was virtually an English prince, — not merely because he was doubly allied to our royal race, but be- cause he had been educated, — and with his observant mind such an opportunity was invaluable, —he had been educated for years in this country in the practice of constitutional freedom. And when he ascended the throne he proved at once that he was determined to be, not the chief of a party, but the monarch of a nation. When he left us, Europe was disheartened. The times were troublous and menacing, and all felt how much depended upon the character of his successor. In the presence of that successor it does not become me—it would be in every sense presumptuous — to offer a panegyric. But I may be permitted to speak of a public career in the language of critical apprecia- tion; and I think that all will agree that the king of the Belgians, from the first moment at which he entered into public life, proved that he was sensible of the spirit of the age in which he lived, that he felt that authority, to be revered, must be enlightened, and that the seat of no sovereign was so secure as that of him who had confidence in his subjects. The king of the Belgians, our sovereign chairman, derived from his royal father another heritage besides the fair province of Flanders; he inherited an affection for the people The Speech of Welcome 211 of England. He has proved that in many instances and on many occasions, but never, in my mind, with more happy boldness than when he crossed the Channel, and determined to accept our invitation and become the chairman of the Royal Literary Fund. With what felicity he has fulfilled his duties this evening you are all witnesses. I have been connected with your society for many years, as those who preceded me with my name also were long before; and I think I can venture to say that in your annals none of those who have sat in that chair have performed its duties in a manner more admirable. It is something delightful, though at first sight inconsistent, that the republic of letters should, as it were, be presided over to-day by a monarch; but if there be a charming inconsistency in such a circumstance, let us meet it with one as amiably flagrant, and give to our sovereign chairman to-night a right royal welcome. It is with these feelings, gentlemen, that I now propose to you, “‘ The health of his Majesty the King.” Wittiam Henry SEWARD Address to John Quincy Adams, Auburn, 1843.’ Sir :— I am charged with the very honorable and most agreeable duty of expressing to you the reverence and 1¥rom William H. Seward, “ Works.” New York, 1853. 212 The Speech for Special Occasions affectionate esteem of my fellow-citizens assembled in your presence. A change has come over the spirit of your journey since your steps have turned toward your ancestral seaside home. An excursion to invigorate health impaired by labor too arduous for age in the public councils, and expected to be quiet and contemplative, has become one of fatigue and excitement. Rumors of your advance escape before you, and a happy and grateful community rise up in their clustering cities, towns, and villages, impede your way with demonstra- tions of respect and kindness, and convert your un- pretending journey into a triumphal progress. Such honors frequently attend public functionaries, and such a one may sometimes find it difficult to determine how much of the homage he receives is paid to his own worth, how much proceeds from the habitual reverence of good republican citizens to constituted elective authority, and how much from the spirit of venal adulation. You, sir, labor under no suchembarrassment. The office you hold, though honorable, is purely legislative, and such as we can bestow by our immediate suffrage on one of ourselves. You conferred personal benefits sparingly when you held the patronage of the nation. That patronage you have relinquished, and can never regain. Your hands will be uplifted often during The Speech of Welcome 213 your remaining days, to invoke blessings on your country, but never again to distribute honors or rewards among your countrymen. The homage paid you, dear sir, is sincere, for it has its sources in the just sentiments and irrepressible affections of a free people, their love of truth, their admiration of wisdom, their reverence for virtue, and their gratitude for beneficence. Nor need you fear that enthusiasm exaggerates your title to the public regard. Your fellow-citizens, in spite of political prudence, could not avoid honoring you on grounds altogether irrespective of personal merit. John Adams, who has gone to receive the reward of the just, was one of the most efficient and illustrious founders of this empire, and afterward its chief ruler. The son of such a father would, in any other age, and even in this age in any other country than this, have been entitled by birth alone to a sceptre. We not merely deny hereditary claims to civil trust, but regard even hereditary distinction with jealousy. And this circumstance enhances justly the estimate of your worth. For when before has it happened that, in such a condition of society, the son has, by mere civic achievements, attained the eminence of such a sire, and effaced remembrance of birth by justly acquired renown ? The hand we now so eagerly grasp was pressed in con- fidence and friendship by the Father of our Country. 214 The Speech for Special Occasions The wreath we place on your honored brow received its earliest leaves from the hand of Washington. We cannot expect, with the agency of free and universal suffrage, to be always governed by the wise and good. But surely your predecessors in the chief magistracy were men such as never before successively wielded power in any state. They differed in policy, as they must; and yet throughout their several dynasties, without any sacrifice of personal independence, and while passing from immature youth to ripened age, you were counsellor and minister to them all. We seem, therefore, in this interview with you, to come into the presence of our departed chiefs. The majestic shade of Washington looks down upon us; we hear the bold and manly eloquence of the elder Adams; and we listen to the voices of the philosophic and sagacious Jefferson, the refined and modest Madison, and the generous and faithful Monroe. A life of such eminent patriotism and fidelity found its proper reward in your elevation to the eminence from which you had justly derived so many honors. Although your administration of the government is yet too recent for impartial history or unbounded eu- logy, our grateful remembrance of it is evinced by the congratulations you now received from your fellow- citizens. But your claims to the veneration of your country- The Speech of Welcome 215 men do not end here. Your predecessors descended from the chief magistracy to enjoy in repose and tran- quillity honors even greater than those which. belonged to that eminent station. It was reserved for you to illustrate the important truths that offices and trusts are not the end of public service, but are merely inci- dents in the life of the true American citizen; that duties remain when the highest trust is resigned; and that there is a scope for a pure and benevolent ambi- tion beyond even the presidency of the United States of America. You have devoted the energies of a mind unper- verted, the learning and experience acquired through more than sixty years, and even the influence and fame derived from your high career of public service, to the great cause of universal liberty. The praises we bestow are already echoed back to us by voices which come rich and full across the Atlantic, hailing you as the indefatigable champion of humanity — not that humanity which embraces a single race or clime, but that humanity which regards the whole family of man. Such salutations as these cannot be mistaken. They come not from your contemporaries, for they are gone. You are not of this generation, but of the past, spared to hear the voice of posterity. The greetings you receive come up from the dark and uncertain future. They are the whisperings of posthumous fame — fame 216 The Speech for Special Occasions which impatiently awaits your departure, and which, spreading wider, and growing more and more distinct, will award to John Quincy Adams a name to live with that of Washington. Henry Cray A speech of welcome to Lafayette as the guest of the nation, December 10, 1824. Mr. Clay was at the time Speaker of the House of Representatives.’ General : — The House of Representatives of the United States, impelled alike by its own feelings, and by those of the whole American people, could not have assigned to me a more gratifying duty than that of being its organ to present to you cordial congratulations upon the occasion of your recent arrival in the United States, in compliance with the wishes of Congress, and to assure you of the very high satisfaction which your presence affords on this early theatre of your glory and renown. Although but few of the members who compose this body shared with you in the War of our Revolution, all have, from impartial history, or from faithful tradition, a knowledge of the perils, the suffer- ings, and the sacrifices, which you voluntarily encoun- tered, and the signal services, in America and in Europe, 1From the “Register of Debates in Congress,” Second Session, Eighteenth Congress, Vol. I, p. 3. The Speech of Welcome. 217 which you performed for an infant, a distant, and an alien people ; and all feel and own the very great extent of the obligations under which you have placed our country. But the relations in which you have ever stood to the United States, interesting and important as they have been, do not constitute the only motive of the respect and admiration which this House enter- tains for you. Your consistency of character, your - uniform devotion to regulated liberty, in all the vicis- situdes of a long and arduous life, also commands its admiration. During all the recent convulsions of Europe, amidst, as after, the dispersion of every polit- ical storm, the people of the United States have beheld you, true to your old principles, firm and erect, cheer- ing and animating, with your well-known voice, the votaries of liberty, its faithful and fearless champion, ready to shed the last drop of that blood which here you so freely and nobly spilt in the same cause. The vain wish has been sometimes indulged that Providence would allow the patriot, after death, to return to his country, and to contemplate the inter- mediate changes which had taken place; to view the forests felled, the cities built, the mountains levelled, the canals cut, the highways constructed, the progress of the arts, the advancement of learning, and the increase of population. General, your present visit 218 The Speech for Special Occasions to the United States is a realization of the consoling object of that wish. You are in the midst of posterity ! Everywhere you must have been struck with the great changes, physical and moral, which have occurred since you left us. Even this very city, bearing a venerated name, alike endeared to you and to us, has since emerged from the forest which then covered its site. In one respect you behold us unaltered; and that is in the sentiment of continued devotion to liberty, and of ardent affection and profound gratitude to your departed friend, the Father of his Country, and to you, and to your illustrious associates in the field and in the cabinet, for the multiplied blessings which surround us, and for the very privilege of addressing you which I now exercise. This sentiment, now fondly cherished by more than ten millions of people, will be transmitted, with unabated vigor, down the tide of time, through the countless millions who are destined to inhabit this continent, to the latest posterity. Marquis DE LAFAYETTE Speech in response to Henry Clay, December 10, 1824. Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Represen- tatives: — While the people of the United States and their honorable representatives in Congress have deigned to make choice of me, one of the American veterans, The Speech of Welcome 219 to signify in his person their esteem for our joint services, and their attachment to the principles for which we have had the honorito fight and bleed, I am proud and happy to share those extraordinary fa- vors with my dear revolutionary companions. Yet it would be, on my part, uncandid and ungrateful not to acknowledge my personal share in those testimo- nies of kindness, as they excite in my breast emotions which no adequate words could express. My obligations to the United States, sir, far exceed any merit I might claim. They date from the time when I had the happiness to be adopted as a young soldier, a favored son of America. They have been continued to me during almost half a century of con- stant affection and confidence; and now, sir, thanks to your most gratifying invitation, I find myself greeted by a series of welcomes, one hour of which would more than compensate for the public exertions and sufferings of a whole life. The approbation of the American people, and their representatives, for my conduct during the vicissitudes of the European revolution, is the highest reward I could receive. Well may I stand “ firm and erect,” when, in their names, and by you, Mr. Speaker, I am declared to have, in every instance, been faithful to those American principles of liberty, equality, and true social] order, the devotion to which, as it has been 220 The Speech for Special Occasions from my earliest youth, so it shall continue to be to my latest breath. » You have been pleased, Mr. Speaker, to allude to the peculiar felicity of my situation, when, after so long an absence, I am called to witness the immense improvements, the admirable communications, the prodigious creations, of which we find an example in this city, whose name itself is a venerated palladium ; in a word, all the grandeur and prosperity of these happy United States, which, at the same time they nobly secure the complete assertion of American inde- pendence, reflect on every part of the world the light of a far superior political civilization. What better pledge can be given of a persevering national love of liberty, when those blessings were evidently the result of a virtuous resistance to oppres- sion, and of institutions founded on the rights of man and the republican principle of self-government? No, Mr. Speaker, posterity has not begun for me — since, in the sons of my companions and friends I find the same public feelings, and, permit me to add, the same. feelings in my behalf, which I have had the happiness to experience in their fathers. Sir, I have been allowed, forty years ago, before a committee of thirteen States, to express the fond wishes of an American heart. On this day I have the honor, and even the delight, to congratulate the The Speech of Welcome 221 representatives of the Union, so vastly enlarged, on the realization of those wishes, even beyond every human expectation, and upon the almost infinite pros- pects we can with certainty anticipate. Permit me, Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the House of Representatives, to join to the expression of these sentiments a tribute of my lively gratitude, affectionate devotion, and profound respect. Louis KossutH Speech at Harrisburg at a reception in the capitol, in response to Governor Johnston’s address of welcome.! Senators and Representatives of Pennsylvania : — I came with confidence, I came with hope to the United States, — with the confidence of a man who trusts to the certainty of principles, knowing that where freedom is sown, there generosity grows, — with the hope of a man who knows that there is life in his cause, and that where there is life there must be a future yet. Still, hope is only an instinctive throb with which Nature’s motherly care comforts adversity. We often hope without knowing why, and like a lonely wanderer on a stormy night direct our weary steps toward the first glimmering window light, uncertain whether we are about to knock at the-door of a phi- lanthropist or of a heartless egotist. But the hope 1 January 14, 1852. o22 The Speech for Special Occasions and confidence with which I came to the United States was not such. There was a knowledge of fact in it. I did not know what persons it might be my fate to meet, but I knew that meet I should with two living principles — with that of FREEDOM and that of NATIONAL HosPIrAaLity. Both are political principles here. Freedom is ex- pansive like the light: it loves to spread itself; and hospitality here in this happy land is raised out of the narrow circle of private virtue into political wis- dom. As you, gentlemen, are the representatives of your people, so the people of the United States at large are representative of European humanity —a congregation of nations assembled in the hospitable hall of American liberty. Your people is linked to Europe, not only by the common tie of manhood, — not only by the communicative spirit of liberty, — not only by commercial intercourse, but by the sacred ties of blood. The people of the United States is Europe transplanted to America. And it is not Hun- gary’s woes alone—it is the cause of all Europe which Iam come to plead. Where was ever a son, who in his own happy days could indifferently look at the suffer- ings of his mother, whose heart’s blood is running in his very veins? And Europe is the mother of the United States. I hope to God that the people of this glorious land The Speech of Welcome 223 is, and will ever be, fervently attached to this, their free, great, and happy home. I hope to God that whatever tongue they speak, they are and will ever be American and nothing but American. And so they must be, if they will be free—if they desire for their adopted home greatness and perpetuity. Should once the citizens of the United States cease to be Americans, and become again English, Irish, German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish, French, America would soon cease to be what it is now—freedom elevated to the proud position of a power on earth. But while I hope that all the people of the United States will never become anything but Americans, and that even its youngest adopted sons, though fresh with sweet home recollections, will know here no South, no North, no East, and no West — nothing but the whole country, the common nationality of freedom —in a word, America; still I also know that blood is blood — that the heart of the son must beat at the contemplation of his mother’s sufferings. These were the motives of my confident hope. And here in this place I have the happy right to say, God the Al- mighty is with me; my hopes are about to be realized. Sir, it is a gratifying view to see how the generous sympathy of individuals for the cause which I respect- fully plead is rising into public opinion. But nowhere had I the happy lot to see this more clearly expressed 224 The Speech for Special Occasions than in this great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the mighty “Keystone State” of the Union. The peo- ple of Harrisburg spoke first: no city before had so distinctly articulated the public sympathy into acknowledged principles. It has framed the sympa- thy of generous instinct into a political shape. I will forever remember it with fervent gratitude. Then came the metropolis [Philadelphia], — a hope and a consola- tion by its very name to the oppressed, — the sanc- tuary of American independence, where the very bells speak prophecy — which is now sheltering more in- habitants than all Pennsylvania did, when, seventy- five years ago, the prophetic bell of Independence Hall announced to the world that free America was born; which now, with the voice of thunder, will, I hope, tell the world that the doubtful life of that child has unfolded itself into a mighty power on earth. Yes, after Harrisburg, the metropolis spoke, a flourishing example of freedom’s self-developing energy ; and after the metropolis, now so mighty a centre of nations, and fit ally of international law — next came Pittsburg, the immense manufacturing workshop, alike memo- rable for its moral power and its natural advantages, which made it a link with the great valley of the West, a cradle of a new world, which is linked in its turn to the old world by boundless agricultural interests. And after the people of Pennsylvania have thus spoken, The Speech of Welcome 225, here now I stand in the temple of this people’s sover- eignty, with joyful gratitude acknowledging the inesti- mable benefits of this public reception, wherewith the elected of Pennsylvania, intrusted with the legislative and executive power of the sovereign people, gather into one garland the public opinion, and with the authority of their high position announce loudly to the world the principles, the resolution, and the will of the two millions of this great commonwealth. Sir, the words your Excellency has honored me with will have their weight throughout the world. The jeering smile of the despots, which accompanied my wandering, will be changed, at the report of these proceedings, to a frown which may yet cast fresh mourning over fami- lies, as it has over mine; nevertheless, the afflicted will wait to be consoled by the dawn of public happiness. From the words which your Excellency spoke, the nations will feel double resolution to shake off the yoke of despotism. The proceedings of to-day will, more- over, have their weight in the development of public opinion in other States of your united republic. Governor! I plead no dead cause. Europe is no corpse; it has a future yet, because it wills. Sir, from the window of your room, which your hospitality has opened to me, I saw suspended a musket and a pow- der horn, and this motto — “Material Aid.” And I believe that the Speaker of the House of Representa- Q 226 The Speech for Special Occasions tives of Pennsylvania is seated in that chair whence the Declaration of American Independence was signed. The first is what Europe wants in order to have the success of the second. Permit me to take this for a happy augury ; and allow me with the plain words of an honest mind to give you the assurance of my country’s warm, everlasting gratitude, in which, upon the basis of our restored independence, a wide field will be opened to mutual benefit by friendly commercial intercourse, ennobled by the consciousness of imparted benefit on your side, and by the pleasant duty of gratitude on the side of Hungary, which so well deserves your generous sympathy. Ix THE SPEECH OF FAREWELL IX THE SPEECH OF FAREWELL ABRAHAM LINCOLN Farewell speech at Springfield, Illinois, February 11, 1861.! My Friends: — No one not in my situation can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, ard one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all 1 Reprinted, by permission, from “Abraham Lincoln’s Complete Works.” Edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Copyright 1894. New York, The Century Company, 1894, Vol. I, p. 672. 229 230 The Speech for Special Occasions will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell. RoBeRT E. LEE A speech delivered at the headquarters of the army of northern Virginia, Appomattox Court House, April 10, 1865. After four years of arduous service, marked by un- surpassed courage and fortitude, the army of northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them; but, feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that would have attended the continuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes, and remain there until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faith- fully performed; and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy The Speech of Farewell 231 and devotion to your country, and a grateful remem- brance of your kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell. WILLIAM OSLER Speech at a farewell dinner given by the medical profession of the United States and Canada, New York, May 20, 1905.! I am sure you all sympathize with me in the feel- ings which naturally almost overpower me on such an occasion. Many testimonials you have already given me of your affection and of your regard, but this far exceeds them all, and I am deeply touched that so many of you have come long distances, and at great inconvenience, to bid me God-speed in the new venture I am about to undertake. Pardon me, if I speak of myself, in spite of Montaigne’s warning that one seldom speaks of one’s self without some detriment to the person spoken of. Happiness comes to many of us and in many ways, but I can truly say that to few men has happiness come in so many forms as it has come to me. Why I know not, but this I do know, that I have not deserved more than others, and yet a very rich abundance of it has been vouch- safed to me. I have been singularly happy in my 1 Reprinted, by permission, from “ ASquanimitas and other Addresses.” By William Osler. Second Edition. Philadelphia, 1906, p. 469. L’ Envoy. 232 The Speech for Special Occasions friends, and for that I say ‘‘God be praised.” I have had exceptional happiness in the profession of my choice, and I owe all of this to you. I have sought success in life, and if, as some one has said, this con- sists in getting what you want and being satisfied with it, I have found what I sought in the estimation, in the fellowship and friendship, of the members of my profession. I have been happy, too, in the public among whom I have worked,— happy in my own land in Canada, happy here among you in the country of my adop- tion, from which I cannot part without bearing tes- timony to the nobility and the grace of character which I have found here in my colleagues. It fills me ‘with joy to think that I have had not only the considera- tion and that ease of fellowship which means so much in life, but the warmest devotion on the part of my patients and their friends. Of the greatest of all happiness I cannot speak — of my home. Many of you know it, and that is enough. I would like to tell you how I came to this coun- try. The men responsible for my arrival were Samuel W. Gross and Minis Hays of Philadelphia, who concocted the scheme in the Medical News office and asked James Tyson to write a letter asking if I would be a candidate for the professorship of Clinical The Speech of Farewell 233 Medicine in the University of Pennsylvania. That letter reached me at Leipsic, having been forwarded to me from Montreal by my friend Shepherd. So many pranks had I played on my friends there that, when the letter came, I felt sure it was a joke, so little did I think that I was one to be asked to suc- ceed Dr. Pepper. It was several weeks before I ventured to answer that letter, fearing that Dr. Shepherd had perhaps surreptitiously taken a sheet of University of Pennsylvania notepaper on purpose to make the joke more certain. Dr. Mitchell cabled me to meet him in London, as he and his good wife were commissioned to ‘‘look me over,” particularly with reference to personal conditions. Dr. Mitchell said there was only one way in which the breeding of a man suitable for such a position, in such a city as Philadelphia, could be tested: give him cherry pie, and see how he disposes of the stones. I had read of the trick before, and disposed of them genteelly in my spoon — and got the chair ! My affiliations with the profession in this country have been wide and to me most gratifying. At the University of Pennsylvania I found men whom I soon learned to love and esteem, and when I think of the good men who have gone — of Pepper, of Leidy, of Wormley, of Agnew, of Ashhurst—I am full of thankfulness to have known them before they were 234 The Speech for Special Occasions called to their long rest. I am glad to think that my dear friends Tyson and Wood are here still to join in a demonstration to me. At Johns Hopkins University I found the same kindly feeling of friendship, and my association with my colleagues there has been, as you all know, singu- larly happy and delightful. With my fellow-workers in the medical societies — in the American Medical Association, in the Associa- tion of American Physicians, in the Pediatric, Neuro- logical, and Physiological societies my relations have been most cordial, and I would extend to them my heartfelt thanks for the kindness and considera- tion shown me during the past twenty years. With the general practitioners throughout the country my relations have been of a peculiarly in- timate character. Few men present, perhaps very few men in this country, have wandered so far and have seen in so many different sections the doctor at work. To all of these good friends who have given me their suffrage I express my appreciation and heart- felt thanks for their encouragement and support. And, lastly, my relations with my students — so many of whom I see here — have been of a close and most friendly character. They have been the in- spiration of my work, and I may say truly, the in- spiration of my life. The Speech of Farewell 235 I have had but two ambitions in the profession: first, to make of myself a good clinical physician, to be ranked with the men who have done so much for the profession of this country — to rank in the class with Nathan Smith, Bartlett, James Jackson, Bigelow, Alonzo Clark, Metcalfe, W. W. Gerhard, Draper, Pepper, Da Costa, and others. The chief desire of my life has been to become a clinician of the same stamp with these great men, whose names we all revere, and who did so much good work for clinical medicine. My second ambition has been to build up a great clinic on Teutonic lines, not on those previously fol- lowed here and in England, but on lines which have proved so successful on the Continent, and which have placed the scientific medicine of Germany in the forefront of the world. And if I have done any- thing to promote the growth of clinical medicine, it has been in this direction, in the formation of a large clinic with a well-organized series of assistants and house physicians and with proper laboratories in which to work at the intricate problems that confront us in internal medicine. For the opportunities which I have had at Johns Hopkins Hospital to carry out these ideas, I am truly thankful. How far I have been successful — or not —- remains to be seen. But of this I am certain: if there is one thing above 236 The Speech for Special Occasions another which needs a change in this country, it is the present hospital system in relation to the medical school. It has been spoken of by Dr. Jacobi, but cannot be referred to too often. In every town of fifty thousand inhabitants a good model clinic could be built up, just as good as in smaller German cities, if only a self-denying ordinance were observed on the part of the profession and only one or two men given the control of the hospital service, not half a dozen. With proper assistance and equipment, with good clinical and pathological laboratories, there would be as much Clinical work done in this country as in Germany. I have had three personal ideals. One, to do the day’s work well and not to bother about to-morrow. It has been urged that this is not a satisfactory ideal. It is, and there is not one which the student can carry with him into practice with greater effect. To it, more than to anything else, I owe whatever success I have had — to this power of settling down to the day’s work and trying to do it well to the best of one’s ability, and letting the future take care of itself. The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, towards my professional brethren and towards the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success The Speech of Farewell 237 with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready, when the day of sorrow and grief comes, to meet it with the courage befitting a man. What the future has in store for me I cannot tell — you cannot tell. Nor do I care much, so long as I carry with me, as I shall, the memory of the past you have given me. Nothing can take that away. I have made mistakes, but they have been mis- takes of the head, not of the heart. I can truly say, and I take upon myself to witness, that in my sojourn among you — “T have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth, Nursed no delusion, Allowed no fear.” WILi1AmM STUBBS Farewell speech, on resigning the Regius Professorship of Modern History in Oxford University.' And so I come to my parting words. I am going to leave Oxford, not for a place of rest, but for a post of work. I frankly confess that I have always worked towards an ideal of rest; my own 1 Reprinted, by permission, from ‘Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History,” delivered at Oxford. By William Stubbs, Oxford. At the Clarendon Press, 1887. A last statutory public lecture. (May 8, 1884.) Good-by. 238 The Speech for Special Occasions anticipations have been, after a few years more here, during which I might see some of my boys started in the world, I might have retired, we will say to the Parks, and have given no more lectures. But I have always believed, in the case of other people, that the reward of good work is to have more work given you; and I do trust that it may be so with myself. If the gifts that I have done my best to make useful here are such as can for a little time be made useful elsewhere, I am grateful and hopeful in the change, although it is so very different from anything that I thought I was working for. I am going to leave with Oxford many, very many, friends; to leave, but not, I trust, to lose them. I hope that I have made no enemies; I have more dread of making enemies than is at all consistent with a properly constituted moral courage. I hope that I - have succeeded. At all events I have never reviewed the books of ally or opponent, or any one else; I have never given pain or incurred hostility in that way. I have abstained from controversy, religious, political, or historical, for I have tried to live up to my own ideal of a strong position, that it consists far more in proved confidence in your own cause, in the vigilant maintenance of your own defences, in the thorough realization of your sources of strength and weakness, than in the most adroit use of weapons or The Speech of Farewell 239 the most energetic tactics of aggression. I have never scrupled to correct my own mistakes, and I have never made a captious use of the mistakes of other men. I trust that I have never plucked a candidate in the schools without giving him every opportunity of setting himself right. I hope that I have never intrigued or bullied; I do not say this with any wish to imply that such things are ever done here, al- though the popular idea of the professional character might suggest the need of a disclaimer; but, if there was temptation to do so, I claim to have resisted it. So much, I trust that you will let me take credit for. I know that I have great faults: I have a good deal of sympathy but too little zeal; sometimes I have feared that, in my lack of zeal, my fellow-workers have detected or suspected a lack of sympathy; somehow the adage, ‘‘melior est conditio prohibentis,” does come to be confused with or to be interpreted into the policy of ‘How not to do it”; perhaps I have tried to work too much in my own way and too little in theirs. Then, too, I have never been able to reconcile myself with smoking, late hours, dinner- parties, Sunday breakfasts, or University sermons; nor is Joe Pullen’s tree such a landmark in my life as it might very well be to the benefit of my constitu- tion. Iwill say no more about informal instruction ; ‘I think that need not be remembered against me ; if 540: The Speech for Special Occasions I am not mistaken, I have read over many proof- sheets, and my name appears as the name of a helper in many prefaces. Well, so much for my apologia and confession ! for want of zeal, for want of temper, for occasional absence of discretion, I do ask pardon of all whom I may have offended, or disappointed, or misunder- stood. I do not mind under the circumstances being called sentimental; I feel sentimental. I confess that I do hope that you will remember me kindly; and I wish to be judged, as I have tried to judge other historical personages, according as I have acted or not acted up to my lights. I know that I have not been much of an organizer; I dislike to organize for other people; I still more dislike other people to organize for me; I have a great dislike of hard and fast rules; I would not so rule other people; I should still more dislike to have such rules made for me. If there is any virtue in this love of freedom, do not think that I am blind to the drawbacks which beset it. Only. all men have not the same gifts, and hap- pily all men are not set to the same tasks, even pro- fessors under schedules. Please to think of me as of one who, very conscious of his own shortcomings, and wanting, consciously wanting, in many of the instincts of the successful academic administrator, still tried to do his duty; tried to maintain for history The Speech of Farewell 241 its proper place among the studies of Oxford, and to maintain the reputation of Oxford as a nursery of historical study among the academies of Europe; tried and worked hard to do honor to the University, to Christ Church, and to the Colleges, to which he owes, humanly speaking, all that he has and is, and his capacity for doing better. xX THE SPEECH OF AN OFFICIAL REPRE- SENTATIVE xX THE SPEECH OF AN OFFICIAL REPRE- SENTATIVE Tuomas M. CooLrey Speech as representative of the University of Michigan at the dinner of the Harvard Law School.' Coming from a distant State to look in upon Har- vard in the day of its festivity, I have something of that feeling which we may suppose would have thrilled the explorer, Ponce de Leon, if in his search for the Fountain of Youth he had found the myth a reality, and been permitted a sight of the waters of perennial renovation. For here, indeed, we stand in the presence of a true fountain of perpetual youth. Empires will be built up and be overthrown, but Harvard goes on forever, with a perpetual renewal of lusty youth, and a perpetual taking on of new vigor and new capabilities. For Harvard there is neither fear of time nor doubt of time’s beneficence; and 1 Reprinted, by permission, from “The Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Harvard University, 1886.” 245 246 The Speech for Special Occasions while trees grow and waters run, this school of learn- ing will be noting the vicissitudes of nations, as they rise and fall, and calmly teaching the moral of their story to the youth of successive generations. But the Law School of Harvard, which more im- mediately receives our attention to-day, has a life and vigor of its own, which has impressed the po- litical institutions of the country more than most of us, perhaps, have realized. You who have gathered in this hall of good fellowship and pleasant reminis- cence, though yourselves a part of its strength and its greatness, will very naturally have the Law School in mind in its personal rather than its general aspects; but one who, unfortunately, cannot claim the per- sonal relation, but who, nevertheless, for many years has observed how Harvard, by its teachings and by the leadership of strong minds, has built itself into the political institutions of the land, making every commonwealth and every municipality the better for its sound law and wholesome constitutional doctrine, must be permitted to look beyond the membership, and to say a word of results which have been the most striking and impressive of all its grand realities. Those who are of the brotherhood may take delight in the men who, in the forum of the Senate, have made the Law School famous; but one who is not of the household may, as an American, indulge his patriotic The Speech of an Official Representative 247 pride in contemplating what it has done for the whole country, in confident anticipation of what it will do hereafter. Its beneficent influence has not been bounded by State lines or limited to sectional divisions. The most adventurous pioneer who pene- trates the remote wilderness is likely, if his rights are brought in controversy, to find them determined on the authority of Harvard’s great teachers; and the political philosopher who studies the constitutional unity in diversity (which the founders of the repub- lic hoped for, but did not live to realize), will remem- ber that the teachings of the Harvard Law School led steadily up to the great consummation, and that there went out from it an influence, born not less of conviction than of sentiment, which in the hour of national peril was as necessary to unity as the army itself. Indeed, it was the firm belief in the federal Constitution as an instrument of indissoluble union that made an invincible army possible; so that it is no small part of the just renown of Harvard that its legal oracles perceived the truth from the first, and maintained the faith, and taught it until it became irresistible. It has been my fortune to be to some extent in various ways a teacher of the law; and in what I have done in that field I have taken pleasure in seek- ing wisdom from Harvard, and in accepting its guid- 248 The Speech for Special Occasions ance, — whether in presenting the principles of right which lie at the foundation of our inherited institu- tions, or in pointing out the necessary dependence of true liberty upon steady administration of law, or in inculcating the nobility of the lawyer’s calling, which should be at once the effective instrument of justice and of true benevolence. If my efforts have not been in vain, I have done something to make the fact obvious that, aside from physical needs, the State is most of all dependent for the happiness of its people upon a clear recognition and ready acceptance of the rules which determine and protect our rights. The sense of security, upon which public content, not less than public liberty, depends, must spring mainly from a steady administration of just laws; and we fail to appreciate the dignity of our profession if we look for it either in profundity of learning or in forensic triumphs. These, however striking and notable, are only means to the great end for which the profession exists. Its reason for being must be found in the effective aid it renders to justice, and in the sense it gives of public security through its steady support of public order. These are commonplaces, but the strength of the law lies in its commonplace character; and it becomes feeble and untrustworthy when it expresses some- thing different from the common thoughts of men. The Speech of an Official Representative 249 Harvard in the past has been a great school of the common law; and it will be a great school of a nobler common law in the future, as the common law im- proves with an improving and elevating humanity. So may it be! And we in the distant West, whether between the Great Lakes, or on the boundless prairies, or over the sun-crowned mountains, will bare our heads to it reverently as we behold it still “nourish- ing a youth sublime,” while its ‘centuries behind it like a fruitful land repose.” CarL FRIEDRICH ELZE Speech at the Tercentenary Festival of the University of Edin- burgh, April, 1884. Spoken at a dinner. I am highly privileged in having been selected to return thanks, both in the name of my own Univer- sity and of the German universities in general, to the University of Edinburgh, for the most hospitable and flattering reception it has given to the German dele- gates, and for all the kind feelings to which Sir Lyon Playfair has lent such eloquent expression. The University of Halle, which I have the honor to represent, feels itself united to the University of Edinburgh, not only by the common bond of science 1From “A Short Account of the Tercentenary Festival of the University of Edinburgh.” Edited by R. S. Marsden. Published by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1884. All rights reserved. 250 The Speech for Special Occasions and learning, but by ties that are nearer and dearer still. The University of Halle, or, as it is officially styled, the combined University of Halle-Wittenberg, is virtually the University of Martin Luther and of the German Reformation, and this circumstance brings it forcibly to my mind that I am staying in the city of John Knox, the great reformer of the Scottish Church. From its very beginning the Uni- versity of Edinburgh has been imbued with the spirit of the Reformation. A thirst for knowledge and en- lightenment, an earnest seeking after truth, a striv- ing for moral improvement and religious liberty, a grappling with the highest and most arduous tasks of mankind, became her vital breath. All progress that has since been made is due to this spirit of the Reformation, which pervades the Scottish nation to-day no less than it did three hundred years ago — and may it pervade her forever. At the same time the history of the University of Edinburgh teaches us, perhaps more strikingly than that of any other uni- versity, what success may be achieved by persevering intellectual labor, and how high aspirations and lofty energies may carry the world before them. From your eminent principal’s admirable work, than which no university could receive a more ap- propriate birthday gift, it will be seen that the Uni- versity of Edinburgh, like all mighty things, “from The Speech of an Official Representative 251 small beginnings grew,” and that in its onward course it was beset by a host of difficulties, but con- quered them all successfully until it attained to that prominent position which it now occupies in the front rank of European universities. In all branches of science and learning it has done the world excellent service, and you know far better than I do to what extent English literature and English culture are in- debted to the Scottish metropolis and its University. The living waters of Scottish learning and teaching, of Scottish literature and poetry, are flowing through the world in innumerable channels and rills, and every student that has once tasted of them owes the University of Edinburgh a debt of gratitude. May, then, the Alma Mater Edinburgensis prosper to the end of time, and may God’s blessing rest upon her. This is the ardent wish of her German sister univer- sities at her tercentenary. Count AURELIO SAFFI Speech at the Tercentenary Banquet of the University of Edin- burgh.* My Lord Chancellor, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — In acknowledging the toast proposed in such elo- quent words by Sir Lyon Playfair to the sister 1 Reprinted, by permission, from “‘A Short Account of the Tercen- tenary Festival of the University of Edinburgh.” William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1884. All rights reserved. 252 The Speech for Special Occasions universities, and the benevolent allusions he made to Bologna, and to the connection between the Scottish and the Italian universities, and thanking you most sincerely for your kind and highly honor- able welcome, allow me to attribute it, not to any personal merit of mine, but to the character I am invested with of representative, on this solemn occa- sion, of the most ancient seat of learning in Europe, — the alma mater, I may say, of European universi- ties, — a character and office which ought, indeed, to have been assumed, either by the Rector of our University, Professor Francis Magni, or by the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor Joseph Ceneri, — an illustration, the former of the medical science, the second of the Italian bar,— had they not been pre- vented by urgent engagements from accepting the charge. Still, leaving aside my humble capacity in all that regards scientific attainments, my presence here has, peradventure, a peculiar, significance as a sign of the times. It is now seven-and-twenty years since I had the honor, in this very month of April, 1857, of visiting on a lecturing tour this noble country, in order to bring home to the people of Scotland the sufferings and the aspirations of the people of Italy, who were then, with the exception of one noble province, Pied- mont, writhing under domestic and foreign oppression. 4 s The Speech of an Official Representative 253 The English society of the Friends of Italy, of which the Honorable James Stansfeld was then the chair- man, and my excellent friend Professor Masson the secretary, and to whose generous exertions in her behalf my native country owes the highest debt of gratitude, had intrusted to me the arduous task; nor have I ever forgotten the hearty demonstrations of sympathy I met with among your fellow-citizens in favor of the cause which I was then pleading before them. Divided by conquest and by the arbitrary transac- tions of diplomacy into seven states, with no bond of national union between them, Italy was at that time powerless abroad, and destitute of all political rights in her internal constitution. Freedom of thought and conscience, the manifestations of public opinion, the press, the pursuits of science, literature, and art, were put under the most severe restrictions. The University of which I have the privilege of standing here as official delegate was placed under control of priestly authority in the whole range of her studies; and I was myself an exile who had sought refuge under protection of British hospitality from the con- sequences which attended in those days, in my father- land, the crime of having followed and served the cause of her political and moral redemption. And now Italy is an independent and united 254 The Speech for Special Occasions nation. Whatever may be the difference of opinion and convictions among political parties on the form of government best suited to her wants and traditions, she is virtually the mistress of her destinies. The Utopia of thirty years ago has become an indefeasible reality; and the doubts of superficial scepticism, which we (the believers) were struggling then to con- tradict by argument, are now fully refuted by fact. What was, gentlemen, the cause of the marvellous change? Undoubtedly, Mazzini’s indomitable faith and constant efforts, Garibaldi’s heroism, the con- currence of all parties — the monarchical as well as the republican —in the struggle for independence, and a whole people’s cry for national unity, have powerfully contributed to the solution of the problem. But the substantial agency that operated from the depths of the movement on all its elements, and brought about its historical necessity, is to be found in the very laws of the general progress of thought and civilization in our age. Indeed, the political and ecclesiastical system of government which rested on medieval forms of authority under papal and im- perial arbitration, had fallen into moral decay long before its material dissolution. The growth of civil jurisprudence in Italy and elsewhere in opposition to the canon law, the awakening of a purer sense of Christianity through the Reformation, the industrial The Speech of an Official Representative 255 and commercial development of nations, and ther emancipation of intellect from the prejudices of the past by the discoveries of physical science, — all these combined agencies have gradually defeated and triumphed over the powers of the past. But restricting myself to the point of view of law and polity, let me say, gentlemen, that it was the undying glory of Italy, and more particularly of our old school of law in Bologna, to have rekindled, amidst the very depth of medieval darkness, the light of ancient reason and equity in all that regards the private relations of men, as it is the undying glory of the British nation to have nursed, with unceasing vigilance, from the early seed of her time-hallowed customs, the tree of liberty and justice in all that regards the relations between man and the state. As those “iron Barons” of the Magna Charta — whose barbarous Latin, according to the somewhat emphatic expression of Lord Brougham, is worth all the classics — secured to posterity the constitutional guarantees of personal and public rights, so the un- couth Italian jurists of old, who, following in the steps of Guarnerius, applied themselves to the inter- pretation of the fragments of ancient wisdom in the “‘Pandecte,” opened the way by their glosse and their generalized rules of right to the progress of the science of law in subsequent times. ‘“‘Solertes ad 256 The Speech for Special Occasions indagandam equi bonique naturam... et sepe optimi condendi juris auctores etiam tum cum con- ditionali sunt interpretes,” as Grotius justly says. And it is really wonderful to think of the display of mental activity which took place through their free exertions and emulations, in that rude age, for the restoration of ancient right in connection with the rising of commonwealths. The School of Law was founded by Guarnerius— Irnerius through Italian euphony —in the first quarter of the twelfth cen- tury, and soon became the centre of a great privileged corporation of studies. Scholars flocked there by thousands from all parts of Europe, thence to return and spread the acquired learning in their native countries — in France, in Germany, in Bohemia, in Poland, in Hungary, in Spain, in England, and in Scotland. The records of the University register the names of the most distinguished among them, and point clearly to the cosmopolitan character of the institution. The return of men’s minds to the traditions of Roman law was a fact of the highest bearing on the intellectual and social improvement of European nations. And when, owing to the revival of classic literature and the advancement of historical knowl- edge in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a new era opened for the study of jurisprudence, the works The Speech of an Official Representative 254 of the great jurists of the Renaissance led straight- forward to the modern heights of the history and science of legislation. At the same time, owing to the progress of scientific intellect since Galileo and Bacon, followed up by a more refined moral sense, a new spirit of humanity and toleration breathed over society, and the great academies which rose to foster experimental inquiry and inductive philosophy — the Lincei in Rome itself, the Cimento in Florence, the Royal Society in London, the Académie des Sciences in Paris, the Instituto in Bologna, and so on — became effectually the harbingers of the general tendency and progress of modern thought, leading the universities which had remained behind the movement of the age to free themselves from obsolete prejudices and traditions. And, gentlemen, allow me to remark that the full growth of your Atheneum, from the preceding cen- tury down to the present day, is one of the most splendid results of mental activity and progress. Here rose several of the leading masters of the philoso- phy of the human mind — your Browns and Dugald Stewarts and Reids and Hamiltons. Here Adam Smith defined the laws of political economy; so that, if modern society is indebted to the oldest of Euro- pean universities for the culture of the great princi- ples of civil equity, she is indebted to the more vigor- s 258 The Speech for Special Occasions ous energies of one of the younger among them for some of the most important initiations of European intellect to the laws that guide the human under- standing, and the laws that preside over the develop- ment of labor and the welfare of nations. Still, although the improved notion of right has better established the juridical capacity of the indi- vidual within the limits of each State, and the progress of knowledge has given a larger and freer scope to the employment of man’s faculties, it is sad to think that the external relations, even of the more ad- vanced countiies, are as yet left in a considerable measure to the domain of chance and arbitrary action. The unsettled state of a portion of Europe, owing to unnatural divisions or amalgamations of races, and the economical disorder dependent on the unproduc- tive expenses of huge military establishments, disturb the harmony of the whole, and a strong bias in the most prejudiced or the most ignorant elements of society to decide by violence the questions that ought to be resolved by reason and mutual forbear- ance counteracts the tendencies of the peoples and the yearnings of the wise for justice and peace. Never- theless, reason and thought are destined to prevail over error and passion, and it is not a groundless assumption to argue with Kant that the very process which led men within the pale of each civilized coun- The Speech of an Official Representative 259 try to a juridical status of mutual securities and common right will impel nations to place under the sanction of a common fedus their reciprocal interests and obligations. Indeed, the general wants of the times and the efforts of the noblest minds are all pointing to that goal; and whilst the obstacles of distance and time have almost entirely been removed by the power of science from among the family of nations, and the links of mutual interest and inter- course wonderfully interwoven throughout the earth; whilst the charities of our common nature are com- bating war or mitigating its horrors, and limiting its arbitrary sway, we must hope that the time, perhaps, is not far distant when the very causes of war will greatly be reduced by the gradual application of the principles of nationality and federal association to the constitution of European states, and that the most civilized nations will form, in their collective capacity, a true civitas gentium, in which arbitration shall be permanently substituted for force in the solution of their quarrels. Now, gentlemen, as intellect supported by science and conscience is growing daily into a great social power, —in fact, the ruling power of society, — ex- tending its action over all classes of the community, it is clear that the universities, which are the great laboratories of intellectual development, will attain a 260 The Speech for Special Occasions position of the highest importance in relation to the progress of civil and political life. It is therefore highly desirable that a more intimate and frequent interchange of thought and of the fruits of their studies, from country to country, should take place between them by the appliance of those means which may best suit the purpose — such as the teaching of the principal languages and literatures of Europe in each university, the foundation of bursaries to send students abroad to improve and generalize their culture, the periodical convocation of international congresses of science, and the like. The personal intercourse of professors and students of different countries and different faculties would create ties and sympathies conducive to the expansion of friendly feeling among nations, and to a more comprehensive view of the correlation of truths among the various branches of knowledge; and it would foster, at the same time, a higher sense of the ideal and moral ends of life over the material and merely utilitarian aspects of contemporary civilization. Let me then, in this solemn festival of science and humanity, invoke that spirit of universal communion which animated our schools of old, and, in the name of the venerable institution which I have the honor to represent, invite my illustrious fellow-guests to join with me in wishing all health and prosperity to The Speech of an Official Representative 261 the University of Edinburgh, under the hallowed auspices of the association of intellects and the har- monious union of all truths, physical and moral, on the onward march and brotherhood of nations, and for the unfolding of the noblest faculties of man toward the fulfilment of his destiny under the guid- ance of the great moral law that rules the universe. FREDERICK Max MULLER Speech at the Shakespeare Tercentenary, April, 1864.' Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen of the Town Council : — The city of Frankfort, the birthplace of Goethe, sends her greetings to the city of Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. The old ftee-town of Frankfort, which since the days of Frederick Bar- barossa has seen the emperors of Germany crowned within her walls, might well at all times speak in the name of Germany. But to-day she sends her greeting, not as the proud mother of German emperors, but as the prouder mother of the greatest among the poets of Germany, and it is from the very house in which Goethe lived, and which has since become the seat of the ‘‘Free German Institute for Science and Art,” that this message of the German admirers of Shake- speare has been sent which we are asked to present to you, the mayor and council of Stratford-on-Avon. 1 By permission, from The Times, April 25, 1864. 262 The Speech for Special Occasions When honor was to be done to the memory of Shakespeare, Germany could not be absent, for next to Goethe and Schiller, there is no poet so truly loved by us, so thoroughly- our own, as your Shakespeare. He is no stranger to us, no mere classic, like Homer, or Virgil, or Dante, or Corneille, whom we read and admire and then forget. He has become one of our- selves, holding his own place in the history of our literature, applauded in our theatres, read in our cot- tages, studied, known, loved, ‘‘as far as sounds the , German tongue.” There is many a student in Ger- many who has learnt English solely in order to read Shakespeare in the original, and yet we possess a translation of Shakespeare with which few translations of any work can vie in any language. What we in Germany owe to Shakespeare must be read in the his- tory of our literature. Goethe was proud to call him- self the pupil of Shakespeare. I shall at this moment allude to one debt of gratitude only which Germany owes to the poet of Stratford-on- Avon. Ido not speak of the poet only, and of his art, so perfect because so artless, I think of the man with his large, warm heart, with his sympathy for all that is genuine, unselfish, beautiful, and good; with his con- tempt for all that is petty, mean, vulgar, and false. It is from his plays that our young men in Germany. form their first ideas of England and the English na- The Speech of an Official Representative 263 tion, and in admiring and loving him we have learnt to admire and to love the people that may proudly call him their own. And it is right that this should be so. As the height of the Alps is measured by Mount Blanc, let the greatness of England be measured by the great- ness of Shakespeare. Great nations make great poets ; great poets make great nations. Happy the nation that possesses a poet like Shakespeare. Happy the youth of England whose first ideas of this world in which they are to live are taken from his pages. That silent influence of Shakespeare’s poetry on millions of young hearts in England, in Germany, —in all the world, —shows the almost superhuman power of human genius. If one looks at that small house in a small street of a small town of a small island, and then thinks of the world-embracing, world-quickening, world-en- nobling spirit that burst forth from that small garret, one has learnt a lesson and carried off a blessing for which no pilgrimage would have been too long. Though the great festivals which in former days brought together people from all parts of Europe to worship at the shrine of Canterbury exist no more, let us hope, for the sake of England more than for the sake of Shakespeare, that this will not be the last Shake- speare festival in the annals of Stratford-on-Avon. To this cold and critical age of ours the power of wor- shiping, the art of admiring, the passion of loving 264 The Speech for Special Occasions what is great and good are fast dying out. May England never be ashamed to show to the world that she can love, that she can admire, that she can worship, the greatest of her poets. May Shakespeare live on in the love of each generation that grows up in England! May the youth of England long continue to be nursed, to be fed, to be reproved, and judged, by his spirit ! With that nation, that truly English, because truly Shakespearean, nation, the German nation will always be united by the strongest sympathies ; for, superadded to their common blood, their common religion, their common battles and victories, they will always have in Shakespeare a common teacher, a common bene- factor, a common friend. James BRYCE Speech at a dinner in Memorial Hall, at the Harvard Com- mencement Exercises in 1907, Mr. Bonaparte presiding.’ Mr. Bonaparte introduced the speaker as follows: — I learned with much pleasure from the speech of my friend, the Ambassador of France, that certain daring explorers from Harvard, reversing the journey of the Pilgrims, were going back amid the wilds of Europe to spread there some knowledge of the good _ 1? Reprinted, by permission, from the report of the Memorial Hall Exercises of Commencement, published in The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine for September, Vol. XVI, No. 61. Copyright, 1907. Re- vised by the author, The Speech of an Official Representative 265 things which we have in this world. Now they ought not to confine their attention to any one country of the Old World; it should be the duty of Harvard to pro- mote the concert of nations, and all that good feeling which we have sent our delegates to The Hague to inflame. Therefore, if these same explorers are to have imitators, I hope that the latter may cross the channel from France and, with a view to leading them to do so, I will ask our friend, Mr. Bryce, whom I mention rather by that name than as Ambassador, to tell us what they will find in England. AMBASSADOR BRYCE Mr. President, President of Harvard University, Your Excellency the Governor, Alumni of Harvard : — I feel even more than usually unwilling to venture to address such an audience as this to-day, because J am one of the two youngest graduates of Harvard, — with my friend the French ambassador, the youngest member of the class of 1907. It is a position which may well make one feel timorous to stand in the pres- ence of an audience like this, which represents the ‘accumulated wisdom and knowledge of so many Harvard generations. I have to call to my aid all the audacity which belongs to youth, an audacity generally born of little experience, and to remember the principle embodied in the dictum of the late Master of Trinity 266 The Speech for Special Occasions College, Cambridge, when, after a somewhat stormy meeting in which some of the younger fellows had expressed their feelings with great decision and positive- ness, he observed with a sigh, ‘‘Let us remember we are none of us infallible; no, not even the youngest among us.” But I cannot decline the opportunity which you give me, Mr. President, in calling upon me to-day, of thanking the University for the great honor, enhanced as it was by the kindness with which the audience in the theatre and with which you now, ‘gentlemen, have been good enough to receive me. I take it as an expression of your warm feeling towards that country from which so many of the ancestors of men of Massachusttts came, and which is always and always will be proud of having laid the foundations of the two famous commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia. And I noted an interesting trace of the way in which the Old World lives in the Newin the fact that the air to which you have just sung the song of “Fair Harvard” was anair composed by someunknown Celtic minstrel centuries ago in Ireland, who never dreamed of the immortality his air was to attain, and in the fact that the song with which you are going to close our gathering to-day is the song which all over the English-speaking world is used at moments of parting, and which comes from the pen of my country- man, Robert Burns. It is not only in great things The Speech of an Official Representative 267 but also in little things like these that we see how deep the unity of our feelings goes. You asked me just now, Mr. President, you askéd me just now to say what those who are going across to The Hague will find in England. I can tell you very easily. It was brought to my mind by some words which fell from the lips of the president of this University. You will find there ancient universities weltering in an abyss of poverty. Think of my feelings, gentlemen, when the president of Harvard University said that within the last six years Har- vard University had received gifts from private benefactors to the amount of eight millions. Think of the fact that the class of 1882 is giving and other classes hereafter are expected, with what I have no doubt is a prescience born of long observation, to give one hundred thousand dollars, or as much more as may befit the growing wealth of the country. Add these endowments together, and then think of how much richer Harvard becomes every year; and think of the fact that in England we can hardly scrape to- gether even the money that is necessary to enable us to set up proper scientific apparatus for university teaching and research and adequately support our world-famous libraries. The old moralists and preach- ers — indeed, many of the poets also — were fond of dilating upon the blessings of poverty and the dangers 268 The Speech for Special Occasions of wealth. The only fear I can have for the future of Harvard arises from the reflex action of those millions. How will you ever spend the wealth that is descending in a golden torrent upon you? We, I suppose, ought to have the virtues which poverty is supposed to foster. There is an anecdote of a Scotch lady who was dragged in a carriage by runaway horses; the bottom fell out of the carriage, and she suffered severely for two miles before the horses could be pulled up; but one of her friends who came to condole with her, being of a very pious spirit, said, ‘‘After all, my dear, it must have been a blessed experience.”” And we, I suppose, when we think of the blessings which moralists see in the hardship of. the poor, and of the many temptations incident to wealth, ought to feel glad that those temp- tations are not thrown in our way. You probably remember the anecdote of the man who was seen lying on the pavement of a street in London by commiser- ating spectators, one of whom, trying to raise his head, observed, “Poor fellow, he must be very ill,” upon which a cabman standing by said, ‘‘I only wish, sir, I had half his complaint.’”’ We would be willing, gentlemen, to have half the complaint with which Harvard is threatened by its increasing opulence. Since, however, poverty is our lot, we try to live upon our traditions. They are a tonic sort of food, but they are not nutritious. However, they are all The Speech of an Official Representative 269 we have. They are ancient and glorious traditions; yet perhaps they are not relatively more ancient than yours, because your traditions began within a very few years of the settlement of this continent, when a man of whom little is known except that he was a man of university training and high ideals gave a small fund for the foundation of a college here which has become the cradle of the whole university system of America. And you have built up long and glorious traditions. When I look around at the walls of this room; when I think of the famous men who have adorned Harvard; when I think not only of those famous men, but of the thousands of noble lives, of those who died in the Civil War, and of those who have lived lives devoted to their country before and since the war, men who were inspired by the traditions of Harvard, I think how great a power a university has of forming the spirit of a people. Both you and we have our traditions, and we prize them. You need your traditions to save you from your wealth; we need our traditions to support us in our poverty. Gentlemen, I cannot tell you how much I feel the honor that ‘is done me by this ancient University of yours. Ever since I first visited America I have thought that the universities of America are the most interesting, the most characteristic, and most promising feature of your country. They are popular in a sense 270 The Speech for Special Occasions in which the universities of no other country, not even of Germany, not even of my own Scotland, are popu- lar. They lead the enlightened thought of the country. They form that public opinion which more than any- thing else governs your country. They send out young men in whom the hope and future of your nation lie. So, more than twenty-five years ago you sent out a young man into the not altogether bracing atmos- phere of the legislature of a neighboring State, a young man, who is now President of your republic, and among whose many titles to your honor and esteem I think there is none greater than this, that he dedicated his first youth to the effort to grapple with the problems of practical politics and bring fresh air and ardent public spirit into the legislature of the State of New York. You are popular universities, too, in this sense, that you draw in to you a larger part of the whole population of the country than is the case in any European nation. I am struck by the fact, so unlike what one sees in Europe, that here it is not only the men destined for the professions, not only the men who require special scientific or legal or scholarly training in order to fit them for their work in life who come to receive a liberal education. It is also the men who desire simply and solely to be made good citizens and enlightened spirits, men who seek that best kind of education which will make their lives The Speech of an Official Representative 271 happy and useful to the country, that resort here. In this respect you seem to me to have gone beyond any other country, and to have touched the high-water mark of what universities may do. Such an assembly as is met here this afternoon is the best proof of the hold that the universities have upon the nation. You are inspired by the traditions of Harvard ; you feel that you are members of a body whose life far transcends our own, a life reaching centuries into the future, a life the greatness of which transfigures our own and makes us feel that our own life is ampler and higher than any isolated life can be. You come here to-day because you feel what Harvard did for you in the first years of your youth, and you come here also because you feel what Harvard is doing and will do for the nation. May it ever beso! May you cherish those traditions which are among the holiest and highest that any country has formed. Nothing can ever be better for your people than that you should value, respect, honor, your universities as we see you do. 272 The Speech for Special Occasions FRANK G. KANE Response to “The Undergraduates and the Union,” ‘at a ban- quet of the Michigan Union, November 15, 1907.’ From talks with those who know, or at least with those who ought to know, I am led to the belief that twice in the life of even the hardiest undergraduate he has license to be afraid : once when he rises to speak to or for a large body of his fellows, and again when he is first called on in President Angell’s International Law. The latter is the more completely overwhelming. Now, when the two causes for nervousness, the presence of the president and of this large body of students, are brought together, how much more earnestly may not the undergraduate claim the indulgence which the world has seen fit to extend to the stu- dents, since the days when Zeno taught in the painted porch. To meit has always seemed a pity that the banquet- ers at feasts where I have been called upon to respond to toasts were not privileged to hear my real response. To-night I know you are not going to hear it, no mat- ter how keen your ears. Made up of nobly rounded periods, expressive of ideas that ought to be dwelt on, it is to be declaimed in imagination before an enthu- 1 Reprinted, by permission of the author, from the Michigan Alum- nus of December, 1907. The Speech of an Official Representative 273 siastic assembly, also imaginative, when I shall have resumed my seat. The annual Union banquet partakes largely of the nature of a round-up, a balancing of the books. Here the three components of a strong university — faculty, alumni, and undergraduate bodies — meet to render account of their stewardship — to review the achieve- ments of the year, to view the present tendencies, and to project plans for the direct and indirect strength- ening of the University. At such a time, emphasis must necessarily fall upon codperation. And, there- fore, in what I have to say as to the sentiments and activities of the undergraduate of to-day, I shall speak with reference to the question: Are we doing our share? Of late years there has been a leaven of seriousness in the undergraduate’s life at Michigan. It has come through his gradually realizing that something or other, some force or other, was lacking in college life here. What the missing element could be he was for a long time at a loss to determine. Until he found it, no such effort as the undergraduate is to-day putting forth with an idea of strengthening the University could possibly be made. He had first to be his own phi- losopher, thinking out the theory on which to base his solution of the problem. The students were here. The elements of democracy were here. What, then, was lacking? That organization which gives force = € 274 The Speech for Special Occasions to the freedom of the individuals, and directs that force through an inspiring rather than any oppressively ‘formal institution. The plan of organization came with the formation of the Michigan Union. Its scheme was worked out in the aspirations and activities of the Union. Its tangible manifestation was secured less than a year ago when the Union was provided with a home. Its future is secure, we believe, because of our ambition to make that organization permanent, interesting; life-breathing. * When one comes to sum up the activities and benefits which the Union is to embrace, he no longer wonders why the undergraduate concentrates his attention on it. To the right-minded student it is not merely an institution to provide a grill-room, a lounging-room, billiard-tables, and files with the latest newspapers and periodicals. It is to be the centre of undergraduate social life, the means of expressing undergraduate opinion, the medium through which is to be stimulated that desirable intercourse between teachers and pupils so much needed in a university where classes are large and the distance between professor and pupil liable to increase. Already we note on the campus the influence of this Union. The college publications are quick to accept its dictum as the verdict of the student body. The Speech of an Official Representative 275 The different honorary societies are tending to sound its opinion on men and measures. And most of all is its spirit to be seen in the more deliberative attitude that the student body is assuming on questions affect- ing the University. I think that we can directly credit to the Union the ever increasing sentiment against the “rah-rah,” as he appears in dress, in manner, and in speech. The same spirit has led the students to be courageous but not impertinent in the crises through which they have but lately passed in the trend and tone of their athletics. It has led them to see that there is some- thing in victorious athletic representation, and even more in sound athletic representation. It has given them breadth and power enough to realize the impor- tance of forensic contests in maintaining the prestige of the University. It has killed antagonistic class spirit, and has made other affiliations secondary. Especially is it teaching the undergraduate that as an integral part of the University of Michigan he has obligations, as well as rights and privileges, to share with the faculty and alumni. In other words, the study of himself and his environ- ment that called forth the idea and plan of the Mich- igan Union is making the Michigan undergraduate a more capable, self-reliant, appreciative, dignified young man. 276 The Speech for Special Occasions Is there any danger in the trend? Does it tend to make us too much the man and too little the youth ? Is it robbing us of a wholesome forcefulness by making us stop too long to consider before we act? Are we in danger of becoming mollycoddles, afraid of distinc- tive dress, campus vernacular, and the vigorous enun- ciation of the locomotive yell ? I do not think there is a man here who would answer in the affirmative. There is in the present-day under- graduate’s activity too much opportunity for the inter- action of sound opinions on faulty judgments, with its resultant wholesome conclusion, to admit of any- thing but a sturdier college spirit of the right type for Michigan. Nothing better calls attention to this than the evident realization on the part of the students that in some things they have failed, and must yet put their shoulders to the wheel for many and many a turn before they have converted the failures into successes. But now that we are in possession of the organization through which to work effectively, we should be able to gain the desired ends speedily enough. The point is that the spirit is keen among us to reach the ends we have in view, — to be democratic and to be of use to the Union. In our efforts we are not holding aloof from the other bodies in the University, the faculty and alumni, but inviting their codperation. We know that our aims will be fully attained only through The Speech of an Official Representative 277 their active participation. We feel justified in asking material and moral support, because we think the project we have in hand is making directly for the strength of the undergraduates and therefore for the strength of the body of which the undergraduate group is a member. It may be a question with some as to whether our effort, so plainly marked along a certain line, is progress. Time alone can tell. Time alone submits a verdict on the progressiveness or retrogression of any plan or policy. The best a man can do is to make up his mind conscientiously as to the value of a plan, put into the attempt to execute it the very best he has in him, and hope for a favorable judgment. We think that we are on the right track. We know we are advancing along a definite front. And con- fidently we expect to see our efforts in behalf of Mich- igan Union rewarded by the growth of the University of Michigan through the strength of its undergraduates physically and mentally, through the increasing friend- liness and helpfulness of intercourse between the stu- dents and the faculty corps, through the loyalty and service of its alumni, through the broadening of its democracy and the solidifying of the better type of college spirit. Some day we know we shall look upon an even greater and grander University of Michigan ; each of us should so act and so serve that when that 278 The Speech for Special Occasions ‘time comes he may feel glad that in his undergraduate days he did his share. Jonn Davis Lone “PIFTY-SEVEN ” Response for the class of 1857 at the Commencement Day Dinner of Harvard University, 1907.’ I should be happy to speak for my classmates if I knew where they are. I left them — it was only yester- day — clustered in the college yard, a merry, brown- haired, beardless crowd of boys, with a college song on their lips and the sunrise on their faces. But all this fore- noon I have been looking for them, and can find only a half dozen, and even these have disguised themselves as Rip Van Winkles in the last act of that play. Iam told that some of them are off to the war, risking life for union and freedom; that some of them are saw- ing the air in pulpit or court or forum; and that others are reaching up to make their mark in letters or the professions or the industrial and business world. I cannot find them. I am sure, however, that they are all here, a few with their shields, though the rest are on them — all here or accounted for, ready, while their alma maier calls the roll, to lay their record in 1 Reprinted, by permission, from The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, September, 1907. The Speech of an Official Representative 279 her lap, and hoping to receive on their heads the pat of her benignant hand. Time would fai] me to do justice to the record of each of them; it would be invidious to speak of some of them and not of all. They have done the best they could. It has been in our country a wonderfully eventful fifty years. The historian fills volume after volume with the incomplete story. The greatest civil war, consummating union and freedom. Financial crises, settling into the security of unquestioned national credit, and a full and safe treasury reservoir. Marvel- lous industrial expansions. Such advances in science and especially in the application of the unlocked powers of nature as have utterly transformed all systems of carriage, lighting, communication, and material product. Absorption and elevation of the stranger within our gates. Extension of the conveniences and comforts ‘of life so that the inmates of our almshouses and peni- tentiaries enjoy a luxury of living compared with which the palace of a Tudor was a hovel. Intense frictions between the forces of brain and brawn, capital and labor, which are still in incessant struggle, unconscious of their common interest and weal. As each year has brought its tidal wave, it has seemed very wreck and chaos ; but as we now look back, we see only the steady current of progress, — successive snug harbors of safety. Instead of war, peace. Arbitration forestalling armed 280 The Speech for Special Occasions or class conflict. Union absorbing sectionalism in State or industry. Consolidation impacting competi- tive forces into the irresistible energy of achievement. Education the common lot. Character, the ideal. The swift verdict of public opinion condemning and lashing the vices, frauds, thefts, corruptions, and all the little foxes which, seemingly in swarms, but really few in comparison with the great honest multitude, in vain attempt to spoil the vines of growth and fruitage. May the next half century meet its problems as bravely and successfully! Of one thing we are sure — that the Harvard of the future, like the Harvard of the ancient past and the Harvard of our own splendid time, will be a factor in their solution, a mighty help in the world’s good work. But these are not themes for me here and now. Every Commencement orator and baccalaureator is wearing them into threadbare commonplaces. Enough for us of ’57 that to-day it is not speculation or sermon, but memory, blessed angel, twin of imagination, that is filling our minds and hearts, —the memory of the age which we love to recall as an Arcadian, provincial, rural, purely New England golden age, when we were in college; when no architectural abortions disfigured the college yard; when the college pump was in glory (would that Hawthorne had made it the text of his The Speech of an Official Representative 281 immortal tribute !) ; when the turf was certainly greener and the shade of the trees certainly richer ; when each class was small and snug, so that every face and name was familiar; and when the hourly omnibus was at least safer than the trolley or the automobile. Harvard may not then have been bigger or better or busier, but it was our college, and we loved and still love it. The instruction was meagre and poor. I remember only two teachers who emitted any spark of inspiring enthusiasm. I recall with something of pathos that no college official ever spoke to me outside the recita- tion-room, or put a kindly hand on my shoulder, or gave me, a little homesick hermit, a sympathetic lift. The presidency was sometimes, not however in our four years, a shelf for disabled veterans. But it was Harvard. And it was Harvard on the eve of its tran- sition, under later and splendidly efficient admin- istration, into its present glory and greatness and supremacy. An eventful half century indeed! If, however, you would measure its stride, I can give you an easy formula. You will find it, in letters of light, in the achievements, the written and spoken words, the in- fluential lives, the eternal youth, and of course the modest complacency, of the class of 1857. Those of it who survive speak for themselves. Of those who have hasted to the Elysian fields, if the Sibyl, first 282 The Speech for Special Occasions helping you find the golden branch that admits the living to those abodes, will lead you there, she will point you to them and say :— Hic manus, ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi; Quique sacerdotes casti dum vita manebat ; Quique pii vates, et Phoebo digna locuti; ’ Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes: Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo, Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vitta. E1mu Root Speech as honorary president of an Extraordinary Session of the Third Conference of American Republics.* Mr. President |Joaquin Nabuco] and Gentlemen of the Third Conference of American Republics : — I beg you to believe that I highly appreciate and thank you for the honor you do me. I bring from my country a special greeting to her elder sisters in the civilization of America. Unlike as we are in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all engaged under new conditions, and free from the traditional forms and limitations of the Old World, in working out the same problem of popular self-government. 1 From “Speeches incident to the Visit of Secretary Root to South America, July 4 to September 30, 1906.” His Speech as Honorary President of the Conference held at Rio de Janeiro, July 31, 1906. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1906. The Speech of an Official Representative 283 It is a difficult and laborious task for each of us. Not in one generation nor in one century can the effective control of a superior sovereign, so long deemed necessary to government, be rejected, and effective self-control by the governed be perfected in its place. The first-fruits of democracy are many of them crude and unlovely; its mistakes are many, its partial fail- ures many, its sins not a few. Capacity for self-gov- ernment does not come to man by nature. It is an art to be learned, and it is also an expression of character to be developed among all the thousands of men who exercise popular sovereignty. To reach the goal towards which we are pressing forward, the governing multitude must first acquire knowledge that comes from universal education, wisdom that follows practical experience, personal independence and self-respect befitting men who acknowledge no superior, self-control to replace that external control which a democracy rejects, respect for law, obedience to the lawful expressions of the public will, consideration for the opinions and interests of others equally entitled to a voice in the State, loy- alty to that abstract conception— one’s country — as inspiring as that loyalty to personal sovereigns which has so illumined the pages of history, subordi- nation of personal interests to the public good, love of justice and mercy, of liberty and order. All these 284 The Speech for Special Occasions we must seek by slow and patient effort; and of how many shortcomings in his own land and among his own people each one of us is conscious. Yet no student of our times can fail to see that not America alone but the whole civilized world is swinging away from its old governmental moorings and intrust- ing the fate of its civilization to the capacity of the popular mass to govern. By this pathway mankind is to travel, whithersoever it leads. Upon the success of this our great undertaking the hope of humanity depends. Nor can we fail to see that the world makes sub- stantial progress toward more perfect popular self- government. I believe it to be true that, viewed against the back- ground of conditions a century, a generation, a decade ago, government in my own country has advanced, in the intelligent participation of the great mass of people, in the fidelity and honesty with which they are represented, in respect for law, in obedience to the dictates of a sound morality, and in effectiveness and purity of administration. Nowhere in the world has this progress been more marked than in Latin America. Out of the wrack of Indian fighting and race conflicts and civil wars, strong and stable governments have arisen. Peaceful succession in accord with the people’s will has replaced The Speech of an Official Representative 285 the forcible seizure of power permitted by the people’s indifference. Loyalty to country, its peace, its dig- nity, its honor, has risen above partisanship for indi- vidual leaders. The rule of law supersedes the rule of man. Property is protected and the fruits of enter- prise are secure. Individual liberty is respected. Continuous public policies are followed ; national faith is held sacred. Progress has not been equal every- where, but there has been progress everywhere. The movement in the right direction is general. The right tendency is not exceptional; it is continental. The present affords just cause for satisfaction; the future is bright with hope. It is not by national isolation that these results have been accomplished, or that this progress can be con- tinued. No nation can live unto itself alone and continue to live. Each nation’s growth is a part of the development of the race. There may be leaders and there may be laggards, but no nation can long continue very far in advance of the general progress of mankind, and no nation that is not doomed to extinction can remain very far behind. It is with nations as it is with individual men; intercourse, association, correction of egotism by the influence of others’ judgments, broadening of views by the ex- perience and thought of equals, acceptance of the moral standards of a community the desire for whose 286 The Speech for Special Occasions good opinion lends a sanction to the rules of right conduct, — these are the conditions of growth in civil- ization. A people whose minds are not open to the lessons of the world’s progress, whose spirits are not stirred by the aspirations and the achievements of humanity struggling, the world over, for liberty and justice, must be left behind by civilization in its steady and beneficent advance. To promote this mutual interchange and assistance between the American republics, engaged in the same great task, inspired by the same purpose, and profess- ing the same principles, I understand to be the function of the American Conference now in session. There is not one of all our countries that cannot benefit the others; there is not one that cannot receive benefit from the others; there is not one that will not gain by the prosperity, the peace, the happiness, of all. According to your program, no great and impressive single thing is to be done by you; no political questions are to be discussed ; no controversies are to be settled; no judgment is to be passed upon the conduct of any State; but many subjects are to be considered which afford the possibility of removing barriers to inter- course; of ascertaining for the common benefit what advances have been made by each nation in knowledge, in experience, in enterprise, in the solution of difficult questions of government, and in ethical standards; The Speech of an Official Representative 287 of perfecting our knowledge of each other; and of doing away with the misconceptions, the misunder- standings, and the resultant prejudices that are such fruitful sources of controversy. And there are some subjects in the program which invite discussion that may lead the American repub- lics towards an agreement upon principles, the general practical application of which can come only in the future through long and patient effort. Some advance at least may be made here towards the complete rule of justice and peace among nations in lieu of force and war. The association of so many eminent men from all the republics, leaders of opinion in their own homes; the friendships that will arise among you; the habit of temperate and kindly discussion of matters of common interest; the ascertainment of common sympathies and aims; the dissipation of misunder- standings ; the exhibition to all the American peoples of this peaceful and considerate method of conferring upon international questions — this alone, quite irre- spective of the resolutions you may adopt and the con- ventions you may sign, will mark a substantial advance in the direction of international good understanding. These beneficent results the government and the people of the United States of America greatly desire. We wish for no victories but those of peace; for no 288 The Speech for Special Occasions territory except our own; for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves. We deem the indepen- dence and equal rights of the smallest and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to as much respect as those of the greatest empire, and we deem the observance of that respect the chief guarantee of the weak against the oppression of the strong. We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or powers that we do not freely concede to every Ameri- can republic. We wish to increase our prosperity, to expand our trade, to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit; but our conception of the true way to accom- plish this is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin, but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a common growth, that we may all become greater and stronger together. Within a few months, for the first time, the recog- nized possessors of every foot of soil upon the Ameri- can continents can be and I hope will be represented with the acknowledged rights of equal sovereign States in the great World Congress at The Hague. This will be the world’s formal and final acceptance of the decla- ration that no part of the American continents is to be deemed subject to colonization. Let us pledge ourselves to aid each other in the full performance of the duty to humanity which that accepted declaration implies; so that in time the weakest and most unfor- The Speech of an Official Representative 289 tunate of our republics may come to march with equal step by the side of the stronger and more fortunate. Let us help each other to show that for all the races of men the liberty for which we have fought and labored is the twin sister of justice and peace. Let us unite in creating and maintaining and making effective an all-American public opinion, whose power shall influ- ence international conduct and prevent international wrong, and narrow the causes of war, and forever preserve our free lands from the burden of such ar- maments as are massed behind the frontiers of Europe, and bring us ever nearer to the perfection of ordered liberty. So shall come security and prosperity, pro- duction and trade, wealth, learning, the arts, and happiness for us all. Not in a single conference, nor by a single effort, can very much be done. You labor more for the future than for the present; but if the right impulse be given, if the right tendency be established, the work you do here will go on among all the millions of people in the American continents long after your final ad- journment, long after your lives, with incalculable benefit to all our beloved countries, which may it please God to continue free and independent and happy for ages to come. 290 The Speech for Special Occasions DANIEL WEBSTER A speech delivered at a dinner of the Royal Agricultural Society, Oxford, England, July 18, 1839.* Earl Spencer presided, and in introducing Mr. Webster, said: . . . Among these foreigners [present] is one gentleman, of a most distinguished character, from the United States of America, that great country whose people we are obliged legally to call foreigners, but who are still our brethren in blood. It is most gratifying that such a man is present at this meeting, that he may know what the farmers of England really are, and be able to report to his fellow-citizens the manner in which they are united, from every class, in promoting their peaceful and most important objects. I propose, ‘The health of Mr. Webster and other dis- tinguished strangers.” Mr. Webster said :— The notice which the noble earl at the head of the table has been kind enough to take of me and the friendly sentiments which he has seen fit to express toward the country to which I belong, demand my most cordial acknowledgments. I should therefore begin by saying how much I am gratified in having it in my power to pass one day among the proprietors, 1 Reprinted from ‘‘The Works of Daniel Webster,” Vol. I, Eleventh Edition. Boston, 1858. The Speech of an Official Representative 291 the cultivators, the farmers, of Old England—that England of which I have been reading and conversing all my life and now have the privilege of visiting. I would say in the next place, if I could say, how much I have been pleased and gratified with one por- tion of the exhibition for which we are indebted to the formation of the Royal Agricultural Society, and that is, the assemblage of so large a number of the farmers of England. When persons connected with some pur- suit, of whatever description, assemble in such num- bers, I cannot look on them but with respect and regard ; but I freely confess that I am more than or- dinarily moved on such occasions, when I see before me, on either continent, a great assemblage of those whose interests, whose hopes, whose objects and pur- suits in life are connected with the cultivation of the soil. Whatever else may tend to enrich and beautify society, that which feeds and clothes comfortably the great mass of mankind should always be regarded as the great foundation of national prosperity. I need not say that the agriculture of England is instructive to all the world; as a science, it is here better under- stood; as an art, it is here better practised; as a great interest, it is here as highly esteemed as in any other part of the globe. The importance of agriculture to a nation is obvious 292 The Speech for Special Occasions to every man; but it perhaps does not strike every mind so suddenly, although certainly it is equally true, that the annual produce of English agriculture is a great concern to the whole civilized world. The civ- ilized and commercial states are so connected, their interests are so blended, that it is a matter of notoriety that the fear or the prospect of a short crop in Eng- land deranges and agitates the business transactions and commercial speculations of the whole trading world. It is natural that this should be the case in those nations which look to the occurrence of a short crop in England as an occasion which may enable them to dispose profitably of their own surplus produce. But the fact goes much farther, for when such an event occurs in the English capital, —the centre of commer- cial speculations, where the price of commodities is settled and arranged for the whole world, where the exchanges between nations are conducted and con- cluded, — consequences are felt everywhere, as no one knows better than the noble earl who occupies the chair. Should there be a frost in England fifteen days later than usual in the spring, should there be an unseasonable drought, or ten cold and wet days, instead of ten warm and dry ones, when the harvest is reaped, every exchange in Europe and America is more or less affected by the result. The Speech of an Official Representative 293 I will not pursue these remarks. I must, however, say that I entertain not the slightest doubt of the great advantages to the interest of agriculture which must result from the formation and operation of this society. Is it not obvious to the most common observer that those who cultivate the soil have not the same conveniences, facilities, and opportunities of daily intercourse and comparison of opinions as the commercial and manufacturing interests? Those who are associated in the pursuits of commerce and manufactures naturally congregate in cities. They have immediate means of frequent communication. Their sympathies, feelings, and opinions are instan- taneously circulated, like electricity, through the whole body. ' But how is it with the cultivators of the soil? Sep- arated, spread over a thousand fields, each attentive to his own acres, they have only occasional opportu- nities of communicating with each other. If among commercial men, chambers of commerce, and other institutions of that character,—if among the trades, guilds are found expedient, how much more necessary and advisable to have some such institutions as this society, which, at least annually, shall bring together the representatives of the great agricultural interest ! In many parts of the country to which I belong there are societies upon a similar principle which have 204 The Speech for Special Occasions been found very advantageous. As with you, they offer rewards for specimens of fine animals and for implements of husbandry supposed to excel those which have been known before. They turn their attention to everything designed to facilitate the operations of the farmer, and improve his stock and interest in the country. Among other means of im- proving agriculture, they have imported largely from the best breeds of animals known in England. I am sure that a gentleman who to-day deservedly obtained many prizes for stock will not be displeased to learn that I have seen, along the rich pastures of the Ohio and its tributary streams, animals raised from those which had been furnished by his farms in Yorkshire and Northumberland. But, apart from this subject, I beg leave to make a short response to the very kind sentiments, which went near to my heart, as uttered by the noble earl at the head of the table. The noble chairman was pleased to speak of the people of the United States as kindred in blood with the people of England. I am an American. I was born on that great continent, and I am wedded to the fortunes of my country, for weal or for woe. There is no other region of the earth which I cancall my country. But I know, and I am proud to know, what blood flows in these veins, The Speech of an Official Representative 295 I am happy to stand here to-day and to remember that, although my ancestors, for several generations, lie buried beneath the soil of the western continent, yet there has been a time when my ancestors and your ancestors toiled in the same cities and villages, culti- ‘vated adjacent fields, and worked together to build up that great structure of civil polity which has made England what England is. When I was about to embark for this country, some friends asked me what I was going to England for. To be sure, gentlemen, I came for no object of business, public or private ; but I told them I was coming to see the elder branch of the family. I told them I was coming to see my distant relations, my kith and kin of the old Saxon race. With regard to whatsoever is important to the peace of the world, its prosperity, the progress of knowledge and of just opinions, the diffusion of the sacred light of Christianity, I know nothing more important to the promotion of those best interests of humanity, and the cause of the general peace amity and concord, than the good feeling subsisting between the Englishmen on this side of the Atlantic and the descendants of Englishmen on the other. Some little clouds have overhung our horizon, —I trust they will soon pass away; I am sure that the age we live in does not expect that England and America 296 The Speech for Special Occasions are to have controversies carried to the extreme, upon any occasion short of the last importance to national interests and honor. We live in an age when nations, as well as individuals, are subject to a moral responsibility. Neither gov- ernment nor people—thank God for it!—can now trifle with the general sense of the civilized world ; and I am sure that the civilized world holds your country and my country to a very strict account, if, without very plain and apparent reason deeply affecting the independence and great interests of the nation, any controversy between them should have other than an amicable issue. I will venture to say that each country has intelli- gence enough to understand all that belongs to its just rights, and is not deficient in means to maintain them; and if any controversy between England and America were to be pushed to the extreme of force, neither party would or could have any signal advan- tage over the other, except what it could find in the justice of its cause and the approbation of the world. With respect to the occasion which has called us together, I beg to repeat the gratification which I have felt in passing a day in such company, and to conclude with the most fervent expression of my wish for the prosperity and usefulness of the Agricultural Society of England. XI THE SPEECH OF A POLITICAL REP- RESENTATIVE XI THE SPEECH OF A POLITICAL REP- RESENTATIVE 1. The Nominating Speech 2. The Speech to Constituents Joun Davis Lone Speech nominating George F. Edmunds in the Republican Presidential Convention at Chicago, 1884." Mr. President and Fellow-delegates : — We are here to discharge a trust. Let us remem- ber that we are to account for it hereafter. I appeal to the unimpassioned judgment of this Convention. I appeal from the excitement of this vast concourse to the afterthought of the firesides of the people. And, remembering that an American audience never fails in fair play, I appeal even at this late hour for an opportunity for brave little Vermont. The Republican party commands to-day the confidence of the country. It need not invoke its 1From “After-Dinner and Other Speeches,” by John D. Long, Boston. Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1895. Copyright, 1895, by John D. Long. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. 299 4 300 The Speech for Special Occasions record of twenty-five years, for that is the common knowledge and admiration of the world. It need not appeal to its principles, for those are the very foundation of the marvellous progress and prosperity of this great republic. There only needs that, in its candidate, in the simple elements of his personal and public character, it furnish a guarantee of its con- tinued fidelity to itself. There only needs that it respond to the instinct of the people. That done, its triumph in the coming presidential election is as sure as the coming of election day. But, gentlemen, that instinct must be obeyed. It represents a de- mand which is as inexorable as fate itself. It recog- nizes the merits and the services of all the candidates before us. It obtrudes no word of depreciation for any of them. It cares little for issues of expediency or preferences of personal or party liking. But by that awful voice of the people which is as the voice of God, it sets an imperative standard of its choice, and bids us rise to that or fall. We are convened, therefore, in behalf of no man. The country and the party are greater than the for- tunes or the interests of any man, however dear or honored. We are here as Republicans, and yet brave and broad enough not to be here in the interest of the Republican party alone. Even in this tu- multuous excitement we feel that, charged with the The Speech of a Political Representative 301 most sacred responsibilities that can fall upon repre- sentatives of the people, we are here in the interests of the people, and all the people — of the country, and the whole country We are here to select for President a man from our own ranks, indeed, but a man whose record and character, whose tested service, whose tried incorruptibility, whose unscathed walk through the storms and fires of public life, whose ap- proved wisdom, equal to every emergency, whose recognized capacity to put a firm, safe hand upon the helm, and whose hold upon the confidence of the people, make him not our choice for them, but their choice for themselves. He must be one who will command their undivided support. Not merely brilliant qualities, on the one hand, or meritorious qualities, on the other, are enough. He must be of the staying qualities of the sturdiest American char- acter. He must represent no wing or faction of the party, but the whole of it. He must be one who will hold every Republican to his cordial allegiance, who will rally indifference and independence even into aroused conviction and an earnest front on our line; one who will stand for every beat that ever throbbed in the national heart for humanity, freedom, con- science, and reform; one who will stand for whatever has been honest and of good report in our national history —for whatever has made for economy, financial 302 The Speech for Special Occasions wisdom, clean politics, and the integrity of national life. And, above all, he must be one whose name will carry in the coming canvass that sense of security to which, at each presidential election, the country turns as the very rock of salvation. Such a man, honest and capable, will first master the sober judg- mentand approval of the people, and thenceforward stir them to the only enthusiasm, my friends, that counts, and that is the enthusiasm of public confidence. And then on election day, conscious where their safety lies, the irresistible uprising of the people, like the mighty inrolling of an ocean tide, will sweep him, never fear, into the highest seat of your public service. That is the measure and demand, not of a party, but of the country. Meet it, and you have done your work and won your victory in advance. Re- spond here and now to this instinct of the people. and they will take care of the result. The standard is high, but the candidate I name rises to it. If there be an ideal American citizen in the best sense, it is he. You know, the people know, that his char- acter, his ability, his worth, his courage, are as recog- nized and familiar as a household word. Calumny dare not assail him, and, if it dare, recoils as from a galvanic shock. Against no other candidate can less be said than against him. For no other candidate can more. The Speech of a Political Representative 303 I stand here, Mr. President, honored though I stood alone, with the duty of presenting his name to this Convention. But it is not I, it is not the State nor the delegates whom I here represent, who present that name to you. It is presented by uncounted numbers of our fellow-citizens, good men and true, all over this land, who only await his nomination to spring to the swift and hearty work of his election. It is presented by an intelligent press, from Maine to California, representing a healthy public sentiment and an advanced public demand. It is the name of one whose letter of acceptance of an unsolicited honor will constitute all the machinery he will have put into its procurement. It is a name which in itself is a guarantee of inflexible honesty in government, and of the best and wisest cabinet the country can afford, —no man in it greater than its head. It is a guar- antee of appointments to office, fit, clean, and dis- interested all the way through, — a guarantee of an administration which I believe, and which in your hearts you know, will realize, not only at home, but abroad, the very highest conceptions of American statesmanship. It is a name, too, which will carry over the land a grateful feeling of serenity and se- curity like the benignant promise of a “perfect day in June.” It will be as wholesome and refreshing as the green mountains of the native State of him who 304 The Speech for Special Occasions bears it. Their summits tower not higher than his worth; their foundations are not firmer than his convictions and truth;' the verdant and _ prolific slopes that grow great harvests at their feet are not richer than the fruitage of his long and lofty labors in the service of his country. Honest and capable, unexceptionable and fit, the best and most avail- able, the very stanchest of the old Republican guard, the most unflinching of American patriots, with the kindly heart of a courteous gentleman, as well as the robust and rugged mind of a great states- man, not more sternly just in the halls of Congress than tender in that sanctity of the American heart, the American home, a man of no class, no caste, no pretence, but a man of the people, East, West, North, South, because a representative of their homeliest, plainest, and best characteristics! Massachusetts, enthusiastically leaping her own borders, commends and nominates him to this great Republican Con- vention as the man it seeks, as a man of its instinc- tive and honest choice, as the one man whom its constituents everywhere will hail with one unbroken shout, not only of satisfaction, but of relief. Gentlemen, I nominate as the Republican candidate for the next President of the United States the hono- rable, aye, the honorable George F. Edmunds of Vermont. The Speech of a Political Representative 305 James A. GARFIELD Speech nominating Sherman for President, June 5, 1880, in the Republican National Convention in Chicago.' I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep solicitude. Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level, of the sea, from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed, and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astrono- mer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths. Gentlemen of the Convention, your present tem- per may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find below the storm and passion that calm level of public opinion from which the thoughts of a mighty people are to 1 Reprinted, by permission, from Bryan-Halsey’s “The World’s Famous Orations,” ro vols. Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1906. x 306 The Speech for Special Occasions be measured, and by which final action will be deter- mined. Not here, in this brilliant circle, where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of the republic to be decreed for the next four years. Not here, where I see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates, waiting to cast their lots into the urn and determine the choice of the republic, but by four millions of Republican fire- sides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men who have adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their hearts, — there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the ballot-boxes of the republic, in the quiet of November, after the silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled. And now, gentlemen of the Convention, what do we want?! Bear with me a moment. “ Hear me for my cause,” and for a moment “be silent that you may hear.” Twenty-five years ago this republic was bearing and wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long famil- 1 At this point a voice called out, ‘“‘We want Garfield.” The Speech of a Political Representative 307 jarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people; the narrowing and disintegrating doctrine of State sovereignty had shackled and weakened the noblest and most beneficent powers of the national government; and the grasping power of slavery was seizing upon the virgin territories of the West, and dragging them into the den of eternal bondage. At that crisis the Republican party was born. It drew its first inspiration from that fire of liberty which God has lighted in every human heart, and which all the powers of ignorance and tyranny can never wholly extinguish. The Republican party came to deliver and to save. It entered the arena where the beleaguered and assailed territories were struggling for freedom, and drew around them the sacred circle of liberty, which the demon of slavery has never dared to cross. It made them free for- ever. Strengthened by its victory on the frontier, the young party, under the leadership of that great man who on this spot,! twenty years ago, was made its chief, entered the national Capitol, and assumed the high duties of government. The light which shone from ‘its banner illumined its pathway to power. Every slave-pen and the shackles of every 1 Lincoln was nominated for President in Chicago. 308 The Speech for Spectal Occasions slave within the shadow of the Capitol were consumed in the rekindled fire of freedom. Our great national industries by cruel and calculat- ing neglect had been prostrated, and the streams of revenue flowed in such feeble currents that the treasury itself was well-nigh empty. The money of the people consisted mainly of the wretched notes of two thousand uncontrolled and irresponsible State banking corporations, which were filling the country with a circulation that poisoned, rather than sus- tained, the life of business. The Republican party changed all this. It abolished the Babel of confusion, and gave to the country a currency as national as its flag, based upon the sacred faith of the people. It threw its protecting arm around our great industries, and they stood erect with new life. It filled with the spirit of true nation- ality all the great functions of the government. It confronted a rebellion of unexampled magnitude, with slavery behind it, and, under God, fought the final battle of liberty until the victory was won. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the calm words of peace spoken by the conquering nation, saying to the foe that lay prostrate at its, feet: ‘This is our only revenge — that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars forever and ever, the immortal principles The Speech of a Political Representative 309 of truth and justice: that all men, white or black, shall be free, and shall stand equal before the law.” Then came the questions of reconstruction, the national debt, and the keeping of the public faith. In the settlement of these questions, the Republican party has completed its twenty-five years of glorious existence, and it has sent us here to prepare it for another lustrum of duty and of victofy. How shall we accomplish this great work? We cannot do it, my friends, by assailing our Republican brethren. God forbid that I should say one word, or cast one shadow, upon any name on the roll of our heroes. The coming fight is our Thermopylae. We are stand- ing upon a narrow isthmus. If our Spartan hosts are united, we can withstand all the Persians that the Xerxes of Democracy can bring against us. Let us hold our ground this one year, and then ‘‘the stars in their courses” will fight for us. The census will bring reénforcements and continued power. But in order to win victory now we want the vote of every Republican, — of every Grant Repub- lican and every anti-Grant Republican in America, —of every Blaine man and every anti-Blaine man. The vote of every follower of every candidate is needed to make success certain. Therefore I say, gentlemen and brethren, we are here to take calm counsel together, and inquire what we shall do. 310. The. Speech for Special Occasions We want a man whose life and opinions embody all the achievements of which I have spoken. We want a man who, standing on a mountain height, traces the victorious footsteps of our party in the past, and, carrying in his heart the memory of its glorious deeds, looks forward prepared to meet the dangers to come. We want one who will act in no spirit of unkindness toward those we lately met in battle. The Republican party offers to our brethren of the South the olive-branch of peace, and invites them to renewed brotherhood on this supreme con- dition — that it shall be admitted forever that in the war for the Union we were right and they. were wrong. On that supreme condition we meet them as brethren, and ask them to share with us the bless- ings and honors of this great republic. Now, gentlemen, not to weary you, I am about to present a name for your consideration, — the name of one who was the comrade, associate, and friend of nearly all the noble dead whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-night;' a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years ago, — who courageously confronted the slave power in the days of peril on the plains of Kansas, when first began to fall the red drops of that bloody shower 1A reference to the portraits of Lincoln, Sumner, Wade, Chandler, and others, which were hanging in the Convention Hall. The Speech of a Political Representative 311 which finally swelled into the deluge of gore in the late Rebellion. He bravely stood by young Kansas, and, returning to his seat in the national legislature, his pathway through all the subsequent years has been marked by labors worthily performed in every department of legislation. You ask for his monument. I point you to twenty- five years of national statutes. Not one great, benefi- cent law has been placed on our statute books with- out his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided in formulating the laws to raise the great armies and navies which carried us through the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that restored and brought back ‘“‘the unity and married calm of States.” His hand was in all that-great legislation that created the war currency, and in all the still greater work that redeemed the promises of the government and made the currency equal to gold. When at last he passed from the halls of legisla- tion into a high executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness, and poise of char- acter which have carried us through a stormy period of three years, with one-half the public press crying “Crucify him!” and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success. In all this he remained unmoved until victory crowned him. The great fiscal affairs of the nation, and the vast business interests of the 312 The Speech for Special Occasions country, he guarded and preserved while executing the law of resumption, and effected its object without a jar and against the false prophecies of one-half of the press and of all the Democratic party. He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the government. For twenty-five years he has trodden the perilous heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of “that fierce light that beats against the throne”; but its fiercest ray has found no flaw in his armor, no stain upon his shield. I do not present him as a better Republican or a better man than thousands of others that we honor; but I present him for your deliberate and favorable consideration. T nominate John Sherman of Ohio. QUEEN ELIZABETH Her Most Gracious Speech unto the House fof Commons] When They Presented Themselves before Her in a Full Body to Return Her Thanks for Recalling Sundry Letters Patents of Monopoly.’ Mr. Speaker: — We have heard your Declaration and perceive your care of our State, by falling into the consideration of 1“ The Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, both of the House of Lords and House of Commons.” Collected by Sir Simonds D’Ewes. London, 1682, pp. 659-660. An. 43. Reg. Eliz. Anno Dom., 1601. The Speech of a Political Representative 313 a grateful acknowledgement of such benefits as you have received; And that your coming is to present thanks unto us, which I accept with no less joy than your Loves can have desire to offer such a present. I do assure you, that there is no Prince that loveth his subjects better, or whose love can countervail our love; There is no Jewel, be it of never so rich a prize, which I prefer before this Jewel, I mean your Love; .for I do more esteem it than any Treasure or Riches: for that we know how to prize, but Love and Thanks I count inestimable. And though God hath raised me High, yet this I count the Glory of my Crown, that I have reigned with your Loves. This makes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a People. Therefore, I have cause to wish nothing more than to content the Subject, and that is a duty which I owe. Neither do I desire to live longer dayes, than that I may see your Pros- perity, and that’s my only desire. And as I am that Person that still, yet under God, hath delivered you, so I trust by the Almighty Power of God, that I still shall be His Instrument to preserve you from Envy, Peril, Dishonor, Shame, Tyranny, and Op- pression, partly by means of your intended helps, which we take very acceptably, because it mani- festeth the largeness of your Loves and Loyalties e 314 The Speech for Special Occasions unto your Sovereign. Of myself I must say this, I never was any greedy, scraping grasper; nor a straight, fast-holding Prince, nor yet a Waster. My heart was never set on Worldly Goods, but only for my Subjects’ good. What you do bestow on me, I will not hoard it up, but receive it to bestow on you again. Yea, mine own properties I count yours to be expended for your good. Therefore render unto them from me, I beseech you, Mr. Speaker, such thanks as you imagine my Heart yieldeth, but my tongue cannot express. Mr. Speaker, You give me thanks, but, I doubt me, I have more cause to thank you all than you me; And I charge you to thank them of the House of Commons from me: for had I not received a knowl- edge from you, I might have fallen into the lap of an error, only for lack of true Information. Since I was Queen, yet did I never put my pen to any grant, but that upon pretext and semblance made unto me, that it was both good and beneficial to the Subjects in general, though a private profit to some of my antient Servants who had deserved well: But the contrary being found by experience, I am exceeding beholding to such Subjects as would move the same at first. And I am not so simple to purpose, but that there be some of the Lower House whom these grievances never touched; And for them I think they The Speech of a Political Representative 315 speak out of zeal to their countries, and not out of spleen or malevolent affection, as being parties grieved; and I take it exceeding grateful from them, because it gives us to know that no respects or in- teresses had moved them, other than the minds they bear to suffer no diminution of*our Honour, and our Subjects’ Love unto us. The Zeal of which Affection tending to ease my People and knit their hearts unto me, I embrace with a Princely Care; far above all Earthly Treasure I esteem my Peoples’ Love, more than which I desire not to merit. That my grants should be grievous to my people, and oppressions to be Priviledged under colour of our Patents, our Kingly Dignity shall not suffer it; Yea, when I heard it I could give no rest to my thoughts until I had reformed it. Shall they think to escape un- punished, that have thus oppressed you, and have been respectless of their duty, and regardless of our Honour? No, Mr. Speaker, I assure you, were it not more for conscience sake, than for any glory or encrease of Love, that I desire these errors, troubles, vexations, and oppressions, done by these varlets and lewd persons, not worthy the name of subjects, should not escape without condign punishment. But I perceive they dealt with me like physicians, who ministering a drug make it more acceptable by giving it a good Aromatical Savour, or when they 316 The Speech for Special Occasions give pills do gild them all over. I have ever used to set the last Judgment Day before mine eyes, and so to rule as I shall be judged to answer before a Higher Judge. To Whose Judgment Seat I do appeal, that never thought was cherished in my heart that tended not to my people’s ‘good. And now if my Kingly Bounty have been abused, and my grants turned to the hurt of my people, contrary to my will and mean- ing; or if any in authority under me, have neglected or perverted what I have committed to them, I hope God will not lay their culps and offences to my charge; and though there were danger in repealing our grants, yet what danger would not I rather incur for your good, than I would suffer them still to continue? [ know the Title of a King is a glorious title; but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding but that we will know and remember, that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the Great Judge. To be a King and wear a crown is more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasure to them that bear it. For my Self, I was never so much enticed with the glorious name of a King, or Royal Authority of a Queen, as delighted that God hath made me this Instrument to maintain His Truth and Glory, and to defend this Kingdom (as I said) from peril, dishonor, tyranny, and oppression. The Speech of a Political Representative 317 There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects, and that will sooner with willingness yield and venture her life for your good and safety than my Self. And though you have had and may have many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had or shall have any that will be more careful and Joving. Should I ascribe anything to my Self and my sexly weakness, I were not worthy to live then, and of all most unworthy of the mercies I have had from God, Who hath ever given me a heart which never yet feared foreign or home Enemies. I speak it to give God the praise as a testimony before you, and not to attribute any thing unto myself; For I, O Lord, what am I, whom practices and perils past should not fear! O what can I do [These she spake with a great emphasis] that I should speak for any Glory! God forbid. This, Mr. Speaker, I pray you deliver unto the House, to whom heartily recommend me. And so I commit you all to your best Fortunes, and further Counsels. And I pray you, Mr. Comp- troller, Mr. Secretary, and you my Council, that before these gentlemen depart into their countries, you bring them all to kiss my hand. 318 The Speech for Special Occasions CHARLES Evans HUGHES Speech delivered at the Republican Club dinner, October 18, . 1907. A speech to his constituents. Nearly twenty years ago I joined this club. It was the first political organization with which I be- came identified. Many of you have been my per- sonal friends. It was in this building that I accepted the nomination for governor and stated the issues which were regarded as paramount in the last cam- paign. It was under your auspices that, after the election, on an occasion which for the warmth of its greeting and the cordiality of its good wishes will never be forgotten, I attempted to set forth the principles which should govern my administration. Related as I am to this club by such intimate and sentimental associations, it is especially gratifying to have this opportunity of meeting with you. And I may be pardoned if I speak in a somewhat personal vein. I shall not attempt to recount in any detailed or comprehensive manner what was accomplished at the last session of the legislature. It was a long session, but one remarkable for the importance of the general legislation enacted, and it reflected great credit upon the legislature. One of the fundamental purposes of the adminis- The Speech of a Political Representative 3109 tration is to vindicate the adequacy of our institu- tions, to put an end to abuses without tumult or dis- order, without injustice or demagoguery, and in a patient, deliberate, but none the less vigorous manner to insist upon the recognition and enforcement of public rights by availing ourselves to the utmost of the existing machinery of government and by mak- ing such new provision as the interests of the people may require. A difficult problem of first importance was presented in connection with our public service corporations. It was our object to remove this from the field of reckless agitation and to provide, to the fullest extent consistent with constitutional require- ments, methods of investigation and redress through which the public obligations of reasonable, impartial, and adequate service could be enforced, and public safety and convenience be conserved. Our public service commissions law provides the necessary ma- chinery and powers, to the use of which have been called men owing no allegiance to any special interest, unembarrassed by either financial or political obliga- tion, who are devoting themselves with a single pur- pose to the protection of the rights of the people. Means have been provided to prevent the repetition of the wrongs which have been committed in the past and through the use of the powers governing the issue of bonds and stocks, through insistence upon 320 The Speech for Special Occasions proper methods of bookkeeping, through the pre- scribed supervision of the transactions of these cor- porations, it is believed that necessary publicity will be secured, that the rights of investors will be safe- guarded, and that the public will be protected from the reckless exploits of the unscrupulous, who hitherto have had their way without effective restraint. I believe most thoroughly in the efficient regulation of these public service corporations in the interest of the public. I believe that their transactions should be conducted in the light of day and under the public eye; that they should be compelled to furnish the service which they are bound by their charters to render; and that all their public obligations should rigorously be enforced. I also believe in the reign of justice and in the patient consideration of every question to the end that it may be settled in a spirit of fairness. I have no more confidence in vengeful methods and arbitrary legislation —in those political grafters who endeavor to make selfish profit out of public wrongs — than I have in the sycophants of corporate power. Nothing is permanent but truth and justice. And to attain it, in view of our human imperfections and inherent limitations, we must address ourselves unceasingly to this end, content only with the award of our best judgment after a thorough understanding of the The Speech of a Political Representative 321 matter with which we attempt to deal. Accordingly I advocated a measure containing a full grant of power to secure the right determination of each matter and to compel obedience to the requirements of the law. And at the same time I opposed arbitrary measures framed without consideration and reckless of consequences. It is also important that those who obtain privi- leges from the State should make due return to the State. In connection with our water-powers a prece- dent has been established, and consideration is now being given to the whole question of the develop- ment of the water-powers of the State, so that what belongs to the people may be wisely used for their benefit upon just terms. The legislation of the last session had regard not only to metropolitan problems, to evils afflicting commerce, but also to the needs of our great rural communities. The highway legislation enacted in accordance with the recommendations of the State Grange, and the consideration by the legislative com- mittee now sitting of questions affecting the mainte- nance and construction of roads, promise to put these important matters upon a better basis than ever before. The Labor Department has been strength- ened, and legislation in relation to hours of labor, child-labor, and conditions of labor has been enacted. ¥ 322 The Speech for Special Occasions Our corrupt practices act has been improved, and we are looking forward to needed changes in our methods of nomination and election. I cannot dwell upon these matters at this time, but I wish to express my appreciation of the labor and the support, in and out of the legislature, which have had their result in the important enactments to some of which I have briefly referred. Now with reference to matters of administration, it has been sought to conduct the public affairs solely in the interest of the people and not in behalf of any special interest or for selfish purposes, and not for partisan advantage save as fidelity and efficiency may have their due reward in public confidence. This may seem a counsel of perfection, and of course human nature is not changed by official relations. But the welfare of the State depends upon the main- tenance of this standard, and if there is one thing more than another for which I desire the present administration to stand, it is for disinterestedness in public service. To avoid any possibility of misapprehension re- garding my own course, I may say this further word: I do not seek any public office. The majority of people doubtless think that the distinction and power of office are an irresistible attraction. If you had been constantly in my company during the past nine The Speech of a Political Representative 323 months, you would see that another point of view is quite possible. To me public office means a burden of responsibility — a burden of incessant toil at times almost intolerable — which under honorable condi- tions and at the command of the people it may be a duty and even a pleasure to assume, but is far from being an object of ambition. I have not sought, nor shall I seek, directly or indirectly, to influence the selection or the vote of any delegate to any conven- tion, and with reference to the action of any delegate _ to any convention there will be no suggestion or thought of influence, protest, or reprisal in the Execu- tive Chamber. Those whom I have appointed to office have been counselled to have sole regard to the efficiency of the work of their departments. I have asked no man for favors; but, on the contrary, I have constantly insisted that the work of government shall be carried on not with reference to the selfish advantage of any one, but exclusively in the interest of the people. It has been stated that I have not paid sufficient attention to those who are politically active and who bear the burden and heat of the day in political cam- paigns. It has been said that I regard political activity as a disqualification for public office. Now, no cause can be advanced without hard work, and it must be the object of zealous devotion. I esteem 324 The Speech for Special Occasions those who in an honorable manner work for the party. Political activity by virtue of the experience and knowledge of affairs gained in it, so far from being a disqualification, may be a most important qualification for office. But I want that political activity to be of such a character as to leave a man free and independent in the dignity of his manhood to perform the duties of office, if appointed, unem- barrassed by improper influences and unaffected by accumulated obligations. We want in office men adapted to the office, with the character and the capacity which will enable them to discharge its duties, and if they can call political experience to their aid, so much the better, so long as in that experience they have maintained their individuality and self- respect and have remained worthy of the public confidence. This is a question of character and not of environment—a question of one’s conception of and fidelity to duty. Talking in this personal vein, I may say that I have steadfastly refrained from becoming associated in any manner with factional controversies. I have no connection with or interest in the ambitions or efforts of rivals for political preferment or political leadership in any locality or in the State at large. I desire to see party activities conducted honorably, the freest expression of popular choice, and to have The Speech of a Political Representative 325 party organization represent the untrammelled wish of the members of the party without any interference on the part of the executive. To this end I have favored the adoption of a plan for direct nominations, and have favored a permissive bill so that the plan could have a fair trial in the communities where it has the support of public sentiment. It is of great importance in my judgment that the discharge of the duties of the governorship should not be embarrassed by attempts at political manage- ment. Such is the power of the office that it lends itself easily to efforts at political control, and such a use of the office is, I believe, fraught with danger to the interests of the people of the State. It is far better that the governor should exercise his office in the interest of the people without being embarrassed by the exigency of maintaining control of party ma- chinery. And as a party man he will serve his party best in office by adhering strictly to his duties and maintaining the highest standards of impartial ad- ministration. It may be well that he should become the exponent of the principles and policies in further- ance of which he may have been elected. But his strength for their advancement in popular approval and in the adoption which should rest upon that ap- proval will soon be lost if he permits himself to take part in contests for office or for party representation. 326 The Speech for Special Occasions I am frequently asked to express approval or dis- approval of party action or of particular candidacies. _ Should I do so, it would fairly be incumbent upon me to pronounce upon such action or candidacies in advance, and thus to attempt to determine the course to be pursued. If this were done in one case, it would be inevitable that it should be done in many cases, with consequent responsibility. If such responsibility be assumed, it must be accompanied by action — by such attention to matters of management as would be commensurate with the responsibility and would justify its assumption. The result is certain. Ex- perience shows you cannot stop short of it. If such a course be taken, either the governor—and he cannot separate himself from his office — will be in undisputed control of party management and become a party boss, or he will be involved in continual con- tests for the maintenance of his political influence and prestige. Now I do not aim to be a party boss. I want simply to be governor during my term. The only alternative to the course that I have criticised is to divorce the governorship from political entangle- ments, to keep its influence free from controversies that do not concern the office. And my conception of the duties, the responsibilities, and the power for good of that office forbids me from throwing its weight or attempting to exercise its power except The Speech of a Political Representative 324 for the purpose of performing its constitutional functions. I have also frequently commented upon the im- portance of constant practical recognition of the limits assigned under our system of government to the exercise of legislative, judicial, and executive powers. I have no desire to usurp the function of the legislature in any degree. It is my privilege and duty to recommend to the legislature such matters as I deem expedient. And when a matter is deemed to be expedient, it is my duty to urge it as vigorously as I may. It is also my duty to pass upon the bills that come before me, and when I believe that a measure is contrary to the interests of the State to express my disapproval in the constitutional manner. But it is not my province to attempt to curtail the privileges of the legislature or to seek to control its action, except as it may be influenced by the expres- sion of sound opinion and by recommendations sup- ported by the people of the State. I desire to see our legislative halls filled with men of strength and independence, — men yielding to no influence and subject to no control but that of reason and conscience and an honest conception of public duty. Undoubtedly opposition sometimes takes the name of independence when it only expresses servility to interests which cannot be openly espoused. Of 328 The Speech for Special Occasions such counterfeit independence which attempts in the interest of special privilege to balk efforts at honest government, I do not speak. There are important: measures to be considered by the next legislature. I do not ask any blind or servile following. I ask simply for honest consideration in the light of reason and for that support which men of rectitude, faithful to their oaths as legislators, true to their duty as representatives of the people, can give with a clear conscience. Fellow-Republicans: The future is bright with hope. By his vigorous administration, his virility, his broad humanity, and his determined opposition to notorious abuses, our fellow-citizen, the distinguished President of the republic, has won the hearts of the people. We have not only his example, but we know that he is and has been in cordial sympathy with every effort for efficient administration, for the cor- rection of evil and for the improvement of our laws. The Republican party has been a party of ideals, of masterful leaders, and of constructive power. Weare proud that we are members of it. It is a national party, but its potency in national affairs inevitably depends in large degree upon its zealous pursuit in State affairs of those ideals of disinterested and capable administration which are treasured by the people, irrespective of party. In this State our The Speech of a Political Representative 329 highest duty to the party is to bring to public service men who are resolute, efficient, and single-minded, and to insure the exercise of governmental powers in the interest of all the people. Discharging this duty, the party cannot fail to enlarge the area of its sup- port, and the successes of the future will far transcend the distinction of its past accomplishments. WILtiamM McKINLEY Speech at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, Thursday, September 5, rgor.' President Milburn, Director-General Buchanan, com- missioners, ladies and gentlemen: — I am glad to be again in the city of Buffalo and exchange greetings with her people, to whose gener- ous hospitality I am not a stranger, and with whose good-will I have been repeatedly and signally honored. To-day I have additional satisfaction in meeting and giving welcome to the foreign representatives assem- bled here, whose presence and participation in this exposition have contributed in so marked a degree to its interest and success. To the commissioners of the Dominion of Canada and the British colonies, the French colonies, the republics of Mexico and Central and South America, and the commissioners of Cuba 1From Senate Documents, Fifty-eighth Congress, Second Session, 1904. 330 The Speech for Special Occasions and Porto Rico, who share with us in this undertak- ing, we give the hand of fellowship, and felicitate with them upon the triumphs of art, science, educa- tion, and manufacture which the old has bequeathed to the new century. Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement. They stimu- late the energy, enterprise, and intellect of the people, and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of information to the student. Every exposition, great or small, has helped to some onward step. Comparison of ideas is always educational, and as such instructs the brain and hand of man. Friendly rivalry follows, which is the spur to industrial improvement, the inspiration to useful invention and to high endeavor in all depart- ments of human activity. It exacts a study of the wants, comforts, and even the whims of the people, and recognizes the efficacy of high quality and new prices to win their favor. The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, im- prove, and economize in the cost of production. Business life, whether among ourselves or with other people, is ever a sharp struggle for success. It will be none the less so in the future. Without com- petition we should be clinging to the clumsy and The Speech of a Political Representative 331 antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century. But, though commercial com- petitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be. The Pan-American Exposition has done its work thoroughly, presenting in its exhibits evidences of the highest skill, and illustrating the progress of the human family in the Western Hemisphere. This portion of the earth has no cause for humiliation for the part it has performed in the march of civilization. It has not accomplished everything; far from it. It has simply done its best, and without vanity or boastfulness; recognizing the manifold achievements of others, it invites the friendly rivalry of all the powers in the peaceful pursuit of trade and com- merce, and will codperate with all in advancing the highest and best interests of humanity. The wisdom and energy of all the nations are none too great for the world’s work. The success of art, science, indus- try, and invention is an international asset and a common glory. After all, how near one to the other is every part of the world. Modern inventions have brought into close relation widely separated peoples and made them better acquainted. Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist, but distances have 332 The Speech for Special Occasions been effaced. Swift ships and fast trains are becom- ing cosmopolitan. They invade fields which a few _years ago were impenetrable. The world’s products are exchanged as never before, and with increasing transportation facilities come increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are fixed with mathematical precision by supply and demand. The world’s sell- ing prices are regulated by market and crop reports. We travel greater distances in a shorter space of time and with more ease than was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. The same important news is read, though in different languages, the same day in all Christendom. The telegraph keeps us advised of what is occurring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, with more or less accuracy, the plans and purposes of the nations. Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every commercial mart, and the invest- ments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. Vast transactions are’ conducted and international exchanges are made by the tick of the cable. Every event of interest is immediately bulletined. The quick gathering and transmission of news, like rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are only made pos- sible by the genius of the inventor and the courage of The Speech of a Political Representative 333 the investor. It took a special messenger of the government, with every facility known at the time for rapid travel, nineteen days to go from the city of Washington to New Orleans with a message to General Jackson that the war with England had ceased and a treaty of peace had been signed. How different now. We reached General Miles in Porto Rico by cable, and he was able, through the military telegraph, to stop his army on the firing line with the message that the United States and Spain had signed a protocol suspending hostilities. We knew almost instantly of the first shots fired at Santiago, and the subsequent surrender of the Spanish forces was known at Wash- ington within less than an hour of its consummation. The first ship of Cervera’s fleet had hardly emerged from that historic harbor when the fact was flashed to our capital, and the swift destruction that fol- lowed was announced immediately through the won- derful medium of telegraphy. So accustomed are we to safe and easy com- munication with distant lands, that its temporary interruption even in ordinary times results in loss and inconvenience. We shall never forget the days of anxious waiting and awful suspense when no information was permitted to be sent from Peking, and the diplomatic representatives of the nations in 334 The Speech for Special Occasions China, cut off from all communication, inside and outside of the walled capital, were surrounded by an angry and misguided mob that threatened their lives ; nor the joy that thrilled the world when a single message from the government of the United States brought through our minister the first news of the safety of the besieged diplomats. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile of steam railroad on the globe. Now there are enough miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric tele- graph; now we have a vast mileage traversing all lands and all seas. God and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And as we are brought more and more in touch with each other, the less occasion is there for misunderstanding, and the stronger the disposition, when we have differences, to adjust them in the court of arbitration, which is the noblest form of settlement in international disputes. My fellow-citizens, trade statistics indicate that this country is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are almost appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and forests and mines, and that we are furnishing profitable employment to the millions of workingmen throughout the United States, bringing comfort and happiness to their homes and The Speech of a Political Representative 335 making it possible to lay by savings for old age and disability. That all the people are participating in this great prosperity is seen in every American com- munity and shown by the enormous and unprece- dented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty is the care and security of these deposits, and their safe investment demands the highest integrity and the best business capacity of those in charge of these depositories of the people’s earnings. We have a vast and intricate business, built up through years of toil and struggle, in which every part of the country has its stake, which will not per- mit of either neglect or of undue selfishness. No narrow, sordid policy will subserve it. The greatest skill and wisdom on the part of manufacturers and producers will be required to hold and increase it. Our industrial enterprises, which have grown to such proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has developed so enormously and our products have so multiplied that the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate atten- tion. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we have. No other policy will get more. In these times of marvellous business energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future and strengthen- ing the weak places in our industrial and commercial 336 The Speech for Special Occasions systems, that we may be ready for any storm or strain. By sensible trade arrangements, which will not interrupt our home production, we shall extend the outlets for our increasing surplus. A system which pro- vides a mutual exchange of commodities is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible, it would not be best for us, or for those with whom we deal. We should take from our customers such of their products as we can use without harm to our industries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural out- growth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic consump- tion must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past. The expan- sion of our trade and commerce is the pressing prob- lem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good-will and friendly trade relations will ‘prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with The Speech of a Political Representative 337 the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are not. ' If perchance some of our tariffs are no longer needed, for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be em- ployed to extend and promote our markets abroad ? Then, too, we have inadequate steamship service. New lines of steamers have already been put in com- mission between the Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the western coasts of Mexico and Central and South America. These should be followed up with direct steamship lines between the eastern coast of the United States and South Ameri- can ports. One of the needs of the times is direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the fields of consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the convenience to carry it to the buyer. We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have more ships. They must be under the American flag, built and manned and owned by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense; they will be messengers of peace and amity wherever they go. We must build the Isthmian Canal, which will unite the two oceans and give a straight line of water communication with the western coasts of Central and South America and Zz 338 The Speech for Special Occasions Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable cannot be longer postponed. In the furtherance of these objects: of national interest and concern you are performing an important part. This exposition would have touched the heart of that American statesman whose mind was ever alert and thought ever constant for a larger com- merce and a truer fraternity of the republics of the New World. His broad American spirit is felt and manifested here. He needs no identification to an assemblage of Americans anywhere, for the name of Blaine is inseparably associated with the Pan-Ameri- can movement which finds this practical and sub- stantial expression, and which we all hope will be firmly advanced by the Pan-American Congress that assembles this autumn in the capital of Mexico. The good work will go on. It cannot be stopped. These buildings will disappear; this creation of art and beauty and industry will perish from sight; but their influence will remain to “Make it live beyond its too short living, With praises and thanksgiving.” Who can tell the new thoughts that have been awakened, the ambitions fired, and the high achieve- ment that will be wrought through this exposition? Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict, and that our real eminence The Speech of a Political Representative 339 rests in the victories of peace, not those of war. We hope that all who are represented here may be moved to higher and nobler effort for their own and for the world’s good, and that out of this city may come not only greater commerce and trade for us all, but, more essential than these, relations of mutual respect, confidence, and friendship which will deepen and endure. ' Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth. WILLIAM MAXWELL EvarRTs A response to the toast: ‘‘ The Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration ; a victory of peace demonstrating that the statesman’s wisdom is mightier than the warrior’s sword.”’ Delivered at a dinner of the New England Society in New York City. Mr. Evarts had argued the claims of the United States before the Tribunal.' Mr. President and gentlemen of the New England Society: — It has, I believe, in the history of our race, never been permitted that a great nation should pass through the perils of a serious internal conflict with- 1 Reprinted, by permission, from “The Sixty-seventh Anniversary Celebration of the New England Society,” in the City of New York, December 23, 1872. 340 The Speech for Special Occasions out suffering, in some form or other, an intervention in its affairs by other nations that would not have been permitted, or been possible, but for the distrac- tion of its power, or the stress to which it was ex- posed by its intestine strifes. And when, in our modern civilization, a nation so great as ours was pressed by so great a stress as our Civil War im- posed upon us, we could not escape this common fate in human affairs. It has rarely, in the history of our race, been permitted to a nation that has suffered this foreign intervention, in whatever form, to preserve its peace and the peace of the world, and yet settle its account with the nations which had interposed in its affairs. When the great power of France seized upon the occasion of our Civil War to renew a European pos- session upon our boundaries, and when England, upon the same opportunity, swept the seas of our commerce, properly to deal with those forms of intervention, when our domestic troubles were ended by the triumph of our arms, called for the exercise of the highest statesmanship and the most powerfuldiplomacy. It was at this juncture that our great minister of foreign affairs (than whom no greater has been seen in our country, and than whom no greater has been pre- sented in the service of any foreign nation) was able, without war, to drive the French from Mexico, and The Speech of a Political Representative 341. to establish the principle of arbitration for the settle- ment of our controversy with England. It was re- served for the present administration to extricate the imperfect work of the adjustment of the differences between England and the United States from a diffi- culty of the gravest character, and to place the nego- tiations upon a footing satisfactory to the public sense of our people by the illustrious work of the Joint High Commission at Washington. It was re- served for that administration to complete, within its first term of power, the absolute extinction of all antecedent causes, occasions, or opportunities for future contention between our nation and the mother- country, by the actual result of the Geneva Arbitration. And now, gentlemen, I think we may well be ‘ proud of that self-contained, yet adequate, apprecia- tion of our power, of our right, and of our duty, that could thus, while abating not one jot or tittle of our rights, compose such grave differences by the wisdom of statesmanship, instead.of renewing the struggles of war. I may, I think, recognize in the general appreciation by our countrymen of the excellence of this great adjustment between England and the United States, their satisfaction with this settlement, which, without in the least abating the dignity or disturbing the peace of England, has maintained the dignity and made secure the peace of the United 342 The Speech for Special Occasions States. I think I may recognize in this general satis- faction of our countrymen their conviction that the result of the Geneva Arbitration has secured for us every point that was important as indemnity for the past, and yet has so adjusted the difficult question between neutrality and belligerency as to make it safe for us in maintaining our natural, and, as we hope, our perpetual, position in the future of a neutral, and not a belligerent. The gentlemen to whom were intrusted, by the favor of the President of the United States, the rep- resentation of our country in this great forensic con- troversy, have been somewhat differently situated from lawyers, in ordinary lawsuits, charged with the interests of clients. For, as we all know, the interest of the client and the duty of the lawyer are, for the most part, limited to success in the particular con- troversy that is being agitated, and, therein, the whole power of the lawyer and all his resources may be properly directed to secure the completest victory in the particular suit. But, when a nation is a party, and when the lawsuit is but an incident, in its per- petual duty and its perpetual interests, in which it must expect to change sides, in the changing circum- stances of human affairs, it is very plainly its interest and the duty of those to whom its interests are in- trusted, to see to it, that in the zeal of the particular The Speech of a Political Representative 343 contest there shall be no triumph that shall disturb, embarrass, or burden its future relations with foreign nations. In other words, when our government was calling to account a neutral which had interfered with our rights as belligerents, it was of very great im- portance that we should insist upon neither a measure of right nor a measure of indemnity that we could not wisely and safely submit to in the future our- selves. While, then, there was a preliminary question of gravest importance to be determined in this arbitra- tion,— this peaceful substitute of war, “the terrible litigation of States,”—no less than this, how widely and how heavily we should press the question of ac- countability against a neutral, and how far the ques- tion should be pressed in the future against us, I must congratulate the country for having received, at the outset of the deliberations at Geneva, a deter- mination from the Tribunal upon the general prin- ciples of public law, that when peaceful adjustments in redress of wrongs are attempted between friendly States, no measure of indemnity can be claimed which at all savors of the exactions made only by a victorious over a beaten foe. And when we come to the final award of this high Tribunal, I think the country may be congratulated, and the world may be congratulated, that while we 344 The Speech for Special Occasions have secured a judgment of able and impartial pub- licists in favor of the propositions of international law on which we had insisted, and have received amends by its judgment for the wrongs we had suffered from Great Britain, we have also secured great principles in favor of neutrality in the future, making it easier, instead of harder, for nations to repress the sympathies, the passions, and the enlist- ments of their people, and to keep, during the pendency of war, the action of a neutral State within and sub- ject to the dictates of duty and of law. For we have there established that the duty of a neutral govern- ment to preserve its subjects from interference with belligerent rights is in proportion to the magnitude of the evils that will be suffered by the nation against whom, and at whose cost, the infraction of neutrality is provoked. We have made it apparent, also, that a powerful nation, in the advanced civilization of our age, cannot escape from an accountability upon the rough calculation upon which so much reliance has doubtless been placed in the past, upon the unwilling- ness of the offended and injured nation, in the correc- tion of its wrongs, to rush into the costs and sacrifices of war. And we have made it apparent to the proud- est powers in the world (and there is none prouder than our own nation) that there must be a peaceful accounting for errors and wrongs, in which justice The Speech of a Political Representative 345 shall be done without the effusion of blood. Prac- tically, too, we have established principles of great importance in aid of the efforts of every government to preserve its neutrality in trying and difficult situa- tions of sympathy. An error long provided, that ifa vessel, in violation of neutrality, should escape to commit its ravages upon the sea, and should once secure the protection of a commission from the offending belligerent, that that was an end of it, and all the nations of the world must bow their heads before these bastard flags of belligerency. But the Tribunal has determined, as the public law of the world, that a commission from a belligerent gives no protection to a vessel that owes its power and place upon the seas to a violation of neutrality. The con- sequence is, that so far from our success in this arbitra- tion having exposed us, as a neutral nation, in the future to greater difficulties, we have established principles of law that are to aid our government, and every other government, to restrain our people, and every other people, in the future from such infrac- tions of neutrality. And now, gentlemen, is it too much for us to say that, coming out from a strife with our own blood and kindred, upon the many hard-fought fields of our Civil War, with our government confirmed, with the principles of our confederation made secure 346 The Speech for Special Occasions forever, we have also come out from this peaceful con- test with a great power of the world, with important principles established between this nation and our principal rival in the business affairs of the world, and with an established conviction, alike prevalent in both countries, that hereafter each must do its duty to the other, and that each must be held account- able for that duty ? I give you, gentlemen, in conclusion, this sentiment : “The little court room at Geneva — where our royal mother, England, and her proud though untitled daughter, alike bent their heads to the majesty of Law and accepted Justice as a greater and better arbiter than Power.” APPENDIX APPENDIX I THE SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A CAUSE OUTLINE OF A SPEECH BY PHILLIPS Brooks? INTRODUCTION Watching the spontaneous generosity of Philadelphia, one sees the stream of benevolence deepening and widening. [Simile] THE Bopy OF THE SPEECH I. The two purposes of this meeting have been mentioned : (1) to give information of the work of the Society, and (2) to stir enthusiasm. 1. “Information” — to reinstate the displaced atoms , of humanity. 2. “Enthusiasm” — seeing the beauty and glory of what we do — the beauty and glory of the work of this Society. a. [Explication.] b. It is little we do — to come here and make con- tributions. 1 Delivered to the Children’s Aid Society. Complete in Essays and Addresses. New York, E. P. Dutton, 1894. 349 350 Appendix c. Parallels this enthusiasm with that witnessed at the time of the Civil War — giving and doing for the soldiers in the field. II. The work is important. 1. It is not possible to estimate the limits of such work as this. a. [Explication of forces for good or ill of the future.] b. [Explication of the relation of the child to these undefined and fearful energies.] c. It behooves a man as a man to recognize the dangers that threaten the future, and to meet them with joy, yet with fear. (1) [Explication of the dangers.] (2) Conflict with evil strengthens men, and gives them sense of danger. d. In danger, men fall back upon primal forces. 2. The primal forces keep the world safe. a. “Primal thing” —the simple, child-nature of man. (1) [Definition of “child-nature” by repetition in other words. ] Faith in humanity, in the family, and in God are to preserve the future. [Repeats 2.] 3. A Society like this conserves that faith. a. Brings back to the neglected child its innocence. 4. Let us recognize the dangers of the future, but let us inspire strength in the powers that preserve the world. 5. This Society is meeting the responsibility of its generation to the next. [Running theme recalled.] Appendix 351 a. [Explication of their work for the child as a reinstatement of a displaced force in our social life.] It is God’s provision that one generation shall care for the generation that isto be. [Repeats 5 in concrete terms.] a. He that does for the child is doing for humanity. (1) [Definition.] [Theme repeated] There is hope in the thought that we may reinstate the child, to whom the mystery of life is yet not revealed. [‘ Mystery a] He who helps a child helps humanity more effectively than in any other way. [Definition how — (by particulars and by anecdote.)] CoNCLUSION (Illustration in harmony with the theme that runs through the speech.] REFERENCES AND ASSIGNMENTS The speech in behalf of a cause especially lends itself to study and practice. In the study of the selections the student should ‘analyze the speeches as efforts at persua- sion. In the analysis of a particular speech the following questions may be found helpful: — The cause: What is its relation to the audience? To what motives may an appeal for such a cause be addressed ?: 352 Appendix (A sense of justice, patriotism, humanity, pity?) Why is an appeal made on this occasion? The speaker: Why is he chosen to make the appeal? Has he any special claim to a hearing? to the confidence of the audience? What evi- dence does he give of understanding his audience? Is his speech personal or impersonal, and why? The speech: Is the speech or any part of it extemporaneous? , What is its theme? What evidences of structure are obvious? What is the point of view? Where has the speaker found his subject-matter? Has the topic, the subject-matter, the language, the personality of the speaker, or a special gift of oratory probably contributed most to the effect? Further examples of the speech in behalf of a cause, for collateral.reading, may be found in the following: Charles Sumner: Speech on the Antislavery Duties of the Whig Party, Faneuil Hall, September 23, 1846 (in Orations and Speeches, II, 117-130, Boston, 1850); Speech in the Senate in favor of an allowance to the widow of the late Andrew J. Downing, August 26, 1852 (Works, III, 197, Boston, 1875); Benjamin Disraeli: Speech at the Seventh Anniversary Dinner of the Hospital for Consumptives, Brompton, May 2, 1849 (Works, III, London, 1882, edited by T. E. Kebel); Louis Kossuth: Speech at Birmingham (in Life of Lowis Kossuth, by P. C. Headley, pp. 375-396, Auburn, N.Y., 1852); Edward Everett: Speech at Fanueil Hall in Aid of the Suffering. People .of Savannah, January 9, 1865 (in Orations and Speeches, Vol. IV, Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1872); Lord Henry Brougham: Speech at the Grey Festival in response to a toast to his Majesty’s ministers, Edinburgh, September 15, 1834 (in Speeches, IV, 77-86, Edinburgh, Appendix a5 1838); Charles Francis Adams: “The Fiftieth Year” (in Three Phi Beta Kappa Addresses, pp. 187-193, Boston, 1907). In Bryan-Halsey: The World’s Famous Orations (Funk and Wagnalls, New York, 1906) the following: Demos- thenes, “‘On the Crown,” I, 143 ; Cato, “The Oppian Law,” II, 14 ; Strafford, III, 68; Rumbold, ITI, 146 ; Churchill, V, 99 ; Grattan, VI, 59 ; Curran, VI, 99 ; Parnell, VI, 224; Hugo, VI, 193 ; Henry, VIII, 62 ; Susan B. Anthony, X, 58. SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES To a general audience address an appeal for contribu- tions to one of the following objects. Be specific and con- crete. 1. To provide milk and medical attention during the summer months to sick babies in a large city. 2. A “fresh-air fund.” 3. Playgrounds for poor children. 4. To establish a Sunday-school in a remote country district. 5. A refuge for homeless and worn-out domestic animals. 6. A social settlement house. 7A relief fund for sufferers from fire, flood, or earth- quake. To a mass-meeting of students at the beginning of the college year, make a speech urging the students (especially new students) to join and support some college organiza- tion. 8. The glee club. g. The dramatic club. 2a 354 Appendix 10. The college Y.M.C.A. 11. The chess club. 12. The debating society. 13. The football team. Before a similar student mass-meeting urge one of the following measures: — 14. The adoption of the honor system. 15. An interfraternity alliance to do away with abuses of fraternity rivalry. 16. The organization of a good government club. 17. War with a foreign power seems imminent. It is proposed to form a college company to begin drilling in anticipation of a call from the government. Make a speech calling for volunteers. 18, A neighborhood mass-meeting has been called for the purpose of organizing an improvement association. Make a plea for the support of such an association. 19. A growing village with a tendency to become a summer resort is named Smithville. Propose a more euphonious name, and before a meeting of citizens advo- cate its adoption. 20. Before a woman’s club in a large city urge early Christmas shopping. 21. Advocate on the part of the same club an active interest in equal suffrage. 22. Before a school board, speaking on behalf of a local club, ask for the adornment of the rooms and grounds of a certain school. Urge the establishment of a gymnasium in the same school. 23. To a committee of the city council address a plea for the restriction of bill-board advertising. Appendix 355 24. Before a mothers’ club insist on the importance of municipal supervision of the moving-picture shows. 25. Before a mass-meeting called for the purpose make an appeal for the preservation of a historic old house or ship. II THE SPEECH OF A PRESIDENT REFERENCES FOR READING AND STUDY A president speaks both for himself and for his office. Inaugural addresses are, therefore, usually constructive, the speaker passing quickly from his personal acknowledg- ments to the consideration of vital issues of organization or policy. In the selections the student should note the two motives of personal feeling and responsibility. How does the chairman recognize the obligations of his office? What determines his choice of subject? What does the speech tell you of the character and opinions of the audi- ence? Further illustrations of the type, suitable for study, will be found as follows: 1 — INAUGURAL ADDRESSES. — Washington, as President of the United States, in Works, in Johnston-Woodburn’s A meri- can Eloquence, and in Great Works from Great Americans, New York, 1898) ; Lincoln’s First and Second Inaugurals; John Adams, March 4, 1797 (in Works and in Brewer, The World’s Best Orations, Vol. IV); Sir Robert Peel as Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, January 11, 1837 (in The World’s Famous Orations, VIII, 315); Lowell, ‘ Democ- racy,” on assuming the presidency of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Birmingham, England, October 6, 356 Appendix 1884 (in Works, VI, 7-37, Boston, 1891); Charles W. Eliot, as president of Harvard, October 19, 1869 (in Educational Reform, Essays and Addresses, pp. 1-38, New York, 1905); Daniel Coit Gilman as president of Johns Hopkins, February 22, 1876 (in University Problems, pp. 1-41, New York, 1898); Edward Everett, as president of Harvard College, April 30, 1846 (in Orations and Speeches, II, 503-518, Boston, 1870) ; as president of the Union Club, Boston, April 9, 1863 (in Orations and Speeches, IV, 553-588, Boston, 1872); William E. Gladstone, at the University of Edinburgh, 1860 (in Gleanings of Past Years, New York). ADDRESSES OF PRESIDING OFFICERS. — William Cullen Bryant, at a mass meeting, New York, March 25, 1874, “National Honesty” (in Prose Writings, II, 332-334, New York, 1884); Edward Everett, as chairman at the Harvard Centennial Celebration, September 8, 1836 (in Orations and Speeches, II, 169-179, Boston, 1870); Francis L. Patton, on the occasion of the inauguration of W. H. P. Faunce as president of Brown University, October 17, 1899 (published by the University). In Reed’s Modern Eloquence, note in Volume VII the speeches of M. B. Anderson, Joseph Chamberlain, W. E. Channing, and Charles Dickens ; in Volume VIII the speeches of Edward Eggleston, W. E. Gladstone, G. J. Goschen, and Douglas Jerrold ; in Volume IX, J. H. Newman and Lord Macaulay. SPEECHES MADE BY THE PRESIDENT OR TOASTMASTER AT A DINNER. — (The references are all to Reed’s Modern Eloquence.) Joseph H. Choate at the Harvard alumni dinner, June 27, 1883 (I, 173-178) ; Chief Justice Coleridge at a banquet to Henry Irving, London, July 4, Appendix 357 1883 (I, 246-253); William Dean Howells, as editor of the Atlantic and president of the day at a dinner to Whittier, Boston, December 17, 1877 (II, 653-656); Oliver Wendell Holmes, as president of the day at a dinner of Harvard alumni, Cambridge, July 19, 1860 (II, 625-627); James Russell Lowell, as president of a dinner at Harvard (II, 737-741); D. B. St. John Roosa, as president of the Holland Society, at their annual dinner (III, 992-997); Walter Wyman, as president of the Sons of the Revolution (III, 1288-1290); Edmund C. Sted- man, as chairman of the dinner given by the Author’s Club to Richard H. Stoddard (III, 1085-1090). SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES Make a brief speech suitable for delivery upon taking the chair as president of 1. The college Y. M. (or W.) C. A. 2. The dramatic club on the eve of an ambitious un- dertaking. 3. Your class in senior year. 4. The alumni association of your class. 5. The athletic association of your college. Make an appropriate opening, and introduce an invited speaker as follows. (Give him a name; if possible, select an actual person.) 1. A famous football coach at a meeting of your athletic association. 2. A chess expert at a meeting of your chess club. 3. The governor of your State at a mass-meeting arranged by the college Republican (or Democratic) club. 358 Appendix 4. The author of the play which your club is about to produce, at a meeting of the club. 5. The captain of the football team at a dinner in cele- bration of a successful season. 6. The mayor of the city at a meeting of a “City Beautiful” club. 7. A well-known author, a member of your fraternity, as guest of honor at a dinner of your chapter. + Ill THE SPEECH OF COMMEMORATION OR PERSONAL TRIBUTE OUTLINE OF A SPEECH OF EDWARD EVERETT A TRIBUTE TO IRVING Spoken before the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1859.1 INTRODUCTION If the year of Irving’s birth is memorable for the number of eminent men which it gave the world, the year 1859 is thus far signalized for the number of bright names which it has TAKEN from us, and that of Irvinc . .. with the BRIGHTEST. THEME OF THE SPEECH It Is PROPER THAT WE SHOULD TAKE A RESPECTFUL NOTICE OF HIS DECEASE 1. He has stood for many years ON the ROLL of our HONORARY members. 1 Publications of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1859. Appendix 350 . He has ENRICHED LITERATURE with two first-class historical works (Columbus, Washington). . A RARE good FORTUNE attended his literary career. Salmagundi enjoyed success. Knickerbocker’s History placed him at head of humor- ists — made him known in Europe. [Anecdote.] + [Letter from Scott.] . He PRODUCED a series of woRKS . . . which attained POPULARITY . . . HARDLY EQUALLED by that of English contemporaries. [Established by particulars.] . And In A ForM not cultivated with success in Eng- land (Goldsmith excepted) since the days of Addison. . [INDEPENDENT and ORIGINAL] in MANNER. The styles of Addison and of Irving bear little re- semblance. [Particulars.] . a. Irving REAPED LAURELS as a great national his- torian. [Established by an account of the Columbus] — a monument of industry and literary talent. [Established by an account of the Washington] — fit close of the life of its illustrious author. b. Irving leads the long line of American historians. [Establishment.] . A more BEAUTIFUL LIFE than Mr. Irving’s can hardly be imagined. [Established by particulars.] CONCLUSION AND SUMMARY 360 Appendix OvuttinE of the speech of Mr. John Morley, proposing the toast, “The Dictionary of National Biography,” at a dinner given by the Lord Mayor, to celebrate the comple- tion of the Dictionary, June 29, 1900.1 [Running theme] IN THE OPINION OF COMPETENT JUDGES, THE WORK IS ONE OF THE MOST ENDURING AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPOR- TANT LITERARY MONUMENTS OF THE TIME. I. The proprietor has carried out a GREAT ENTERPRISE . and has done an act of Goop CITI- ZENSHIP of no ordinary quality or magni- tude. a. [The Lord Mayor had mentioned illustrious persons commemorated in the Dictionary during the reign of the queen.] Mr. Morley sees before him material for two large supplementary volumes. 6. One can but see the Goop SERVICE Mr. Smith has rendered. (1) 195 Smiths in the volume, but none had per- formed better act of citizenship than Mr. George Smith. (2) Other such great undertakings had been under patronage of government or had been quasi-governmental. But THIS ENTER- PRISE Was DUE TO disinterested ZEAL OF a single PRIVATE CITIZEN. (a) Facts of Dictionary well known (reviews them). 1The speech is taken, by permission, from The Times. Appendix 361 c. Envies the proprietor and the editors (Stephen and Lee) the Goop work done. (1) Love of research signalized editors and con- tributors. II. Of course all such works are open to criticism: millions of definite statements of facts. a. Might be errors. (1) The Bishop of London admitted some in his contribution. (2) In his own, on Cobden, he (Mr. Morley) had not discovered any. 6. All would feel that they could improve on Mr. Stephen’s scale and standard of propor- tion in this gallery of biographies. (x) Anecdote: As to omissions, he was told the other day that some one who was a posses- sor of Boxana thought that the prize-ring had been very inadequately dealt with. (2) It is miscellaneous by necessity of its national scale. (a) Malefactors have a place scarcely inferior to benefactors. (3) Some names are omitted that ought to be there: Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Frank- lin — all British subjects. c. All agree as to the high standard of excellence pre- served. (r) Pitched in a sober key. (2) Contributors of articles have been recognized as equally successful in previous under- takings. (a) Gardiner, Firth, Stephen, Lee. 362 Appendix [Conclusion : recalls running theme] The Dictionary is valuable and delightful to read: “and he ventures in the name of all present to offer his own and their congratulations to the proprietor and editors of the book, which had been BOLDLY CONCEIVED, zealously and STRENUOUSLY EXECUTED, and carried that day to a happy and triumphant COMPLETION.” REFERENCES AND ASSIGNMENTS The commemorative speech is built upon historical fact. Unless the history is familiar, the speaker usually rehearses it. Sometimes the narrative method is used throughout. In the eulogy a speaker may adopt the bio- graphical method, telling the story of the whole life; he may confine himself to significant parts of the life; or, abandoning biography altogether, he may expound the character of the man. The opportunity to interpret the present significance of the past is rarely ignored. The following references will furnish additional examples. MemoriaL TRIBUTES. — William Cullen Bryant: Com- memorative discourses upon James Fenimore Cooper (Prose Writings, I, 299-331), Washington Irving (i., I, 332-368), Fitz-Greene Halleck (2b., I, 369-394), and his speech at the Schiller Festival, November 11, 1859 (2b., II, 215-220); Daniel Webster: “Jeremiah Mason” and “Joseph Story” (in Speeches and Orations, Boston, 1906); James Russell Lowell: ‘Garfield,’ on the occasion of the President’s death, at a memorial meeting in Exeter Hall, London, September 24, 1881 (in Works, Elmwood Edition, Vol. ITT, Boston, 1904); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: “George Appendix 363 Otis Shattuck” (in Speeches, Boston, 1900); Henry Ward Beecher (in Patriotic Addresses, New York, 1891) : “ Ulysses S. Grant” (pp. 840-857), Abraham Lincoln (pp. 701-712) ; Phillips Brooks: ‘Henry Hobson Richardson” (in Essays and Addresses, pp. 483-489, New York, 1894); William E. Gladstone: “Beaconsfield,” delivered in the House of Commons, May 9, 1881 (in Parliamentary Debates of same date, and in Brewer, The World’s Best Orations, VI, 2291), “The Death of the Prince Consort,” an address at Manches- ter, before the Mechanics’ Institute, April 23, 1862; George William Curtis: eulogies of Charles Sumner, James Gar- field, and William Cullen Bryant (all in Orations and Ad- dresses, Vol. III, New York, 1894);. Parke Godwin, “George William Curtis,” a commemorative address before the Century Association, New York, December 17, 1892 (Harper Brothers, 1893); James G. Blaine: “James A. Garfield,” a memorial address delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, February 27, 1882; William H. Seward: “Henry Clay,” in the Senate, June 30, 1852 (in Works, edited by G. E. Baker, III, 104-110, New York, 1853); Theodore Roosevelt: ‘William McKin- ley (in Addresses and Presidential Messages, pp. 100-108, New York, 1904), “ Abraham Lincoln,” an address at the Lin- coln farm, March 12, 1909. In Reed’s Modern Eloquence: Alfred Austin, “Chaucer,” VII, 45-48; A. Birrell, “Dr. Johnson’s Personality,” VII, 87-96, and “Burke,” IV 71-93; Charles Dickens, “Bulwer-Lytton,” I, 398-401 ; Hugo, “Voltaire,” VIII, 710-720; F. W. Farrar, “U. S. Grant,” VIII, 464-472; Joseph Jefferson, “Edwin Booth,” II, 691-693; J. C. Lamar, “Sumner,” VII, 767; W. Laurier, “Victoria,” VII, 702-704; Wendell Phillips, 364 Appendix “Toussaint L’Ouverture,” VI, 846-867; Carl Schurz, “Sherman,” IX, 1026-1028; C. D. Warner, “G. W. Cur- tis,” IX, 1130-1135; E. C. Stedman, “R. L. Stevenson,” IX, 1098-1103; H. Watterson, “Francis Scott Key,” IX, II43-II5I. SPEECHES IN COMMEMORATION OF AN EVENT. — Phillips Brooks: ‘The Two-hundredth Commemoration of the Founding of King’s Chapel” (in Essays and Addresses, pp. 162-169, New York, 1894); Address at the Commemo- ration of the Founding of the First Church, Boston, (ib., pp. 82-86) ; Address at the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the Latin School, Boston (in Essays and Addresses) ; Charles Sumner: Response to the Toast, ‘‘The Senate of the United States,” at the Festival in Commemo- ration of the Embarkation of the Pilgrims, Plymouth, August 1, 1853 (in Works, III, 269-175, Boston, 1875); James Russell Lowell: “Cur Literature,” at a banquet in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of Washington (in Prose Works, Literary and Political Addresses); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. : “The Soldier’s Faith,’ a Memorial Day Address (in Speeches, Boston, 1900). SPEECHESIN PRAISE OF THE Livinc.— Joseph H. Choate, “General Miles” (in Modern Eloquence, I, 193-195); E. C. Stedman, “Richard H. Stoddard” (z., ITI, ro85—- 1090); Lord Coleridge, ‘Henry Irving,” (2b., I, 246-253) ; C. A. Dana, “Whitelaw Reid” (z)., I, 318-321); D. D. Field, “S. H. B. Morse” (2b., II, 490-492) ; W. D. Howells, “J. G. Whittier,” at a dinner in celebration of the poet’s seventieth birthday (7b., II, 653-656). Appendix 365 SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES 1. A recent alumnus of the college has been killed ina skirmish in the Philippines. Invent character and inci- dent, and prepare a brief speech suitable for memorial services held by his class. 2. Eulogize a medical student who has lost his life in in- vestigations as to the cause and prevention of yellow fever. 3. Read H. H. Boyesen’s “Brier Rose” or John Hay’s “Jim Bludso of the Prairie Bell,” and prepare a brief tribute to either suitable for use at a memorial meeting. 4. Suppose Benedict Arnold to have been killed in battle while still loyal to his country. Read the record of his military service, and write a speech of commemoration. 5. Two young men, Wells and McComas, are said to have saved Baltimore in 1814 by shooting, at the sacrifice of their own lives, the general in command of the British forces. Invent details, and make a speech suitable for the meeting of a patriotic society. 6. By reference to Poole’s Index, The Reader’s Guide, Who’s Who in America, and similar sources, learn what you can of the public services of one of the following per- sons. Prepare such a speech as you might properly deliver at a dinner in his presence. a, Judge Benjamin B. Lindsey. b. Luther Burbank. c. Thomas A. Edison. d. Charles E. Hughes. e. Andrew Carnegie. f. Theodore Roosevelt. g. William Dean Howells. 366 Appendix 7. A meeting of a literary society is devoted to recogni- tion, on the anniversary of his birth, of one of the following men of letters. Prepare an appropriate tribute to his mem- ory. (Narrow the subject in your own way.) . Robert Louis Stevenson. . Sidney Lanier. . Mark Twain. . Bret Harte. . Matthew Arnold. f. Walt Whitman. g. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 8. You are invited to speak on the Fourth of July to a company of the “ Boys’ Brigade.” Submit an outline. Aa oe bo IV THE SPEECH AT THE LAYING OF A CORNER- STONE OR AT A DEDICATION ANALYSIS OF LINCOLN’s GETTYSBURG SPEECH! INTRODUCTION a. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition -that.all men are created equal. 6. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. c. We are met on a great BATTLE FIELD of that War. 1 The speech is taken, by permission, from Abraham Lincoln’s Com- plete Works, edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Copyright, 1894. The Century Company, New York. Appendix 367 THEME STATED I. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is alto- gether fitting and proper that we should do this. THEME EXPANDED BY OBVERSE Ii. But, in a larger sense, WE CANNOT DEDICATE, WE CAN- NOT CONSECRATE, WE CANNOT HALLOW, this ground. 1. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have CONSECRATED it far above our poor power to add or detract. a. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. THEME EXTENDED BY CONTRAST It is for US, THE LIVING, rather TO BE DEDICATED here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. THEME DEFINED It is rather for US TO BE HERE DEDICATED to the great fask remaining before us — that from these honored dead WE TAKE increased DEVOTION to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of DEVOTION, that we here highly RE- SOLVE that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, shall have a new 368 Appendix birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. OUTLINE OF A SPEECH BY WILLIAM Ewart GLADSTONE! At the laying of the foundation stone, Wedgwood Institute, October 27, 1863. INTRODUCTION Mr. High Bailiff, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen: — We have now laid this stone in honor of Josiah Wedg- wood. [Reviews incident of his invitation to give address, and why he consented — because he looked upon this as a NatIonaL DEsiIcn.] DISCUSSION Tuts 1s A NATIONAL DEsIGN because of the high Prrnct- PLES of MANUFACTURE which Wedgwood observed with tenacity. [The theme of the speech.] I. THesE PRINCIPLES ARE MATTERS which may not be LEFT TO REGULATE THEMSELVES, BUT IT IS A FUNC- TION OF GOVERNMENT TO APPLY PRINCIPLES OF Economy. 1. We may consider Prorits of industry: utility, cheapness, the condition of the working people. « a. Wrong may arise in laying down any abstract principle about the condition of working people, but it is necessary to do so where 1The speech is taken, by permission, from The Times. Appendix 369 children are employed. However, this is not now our special topic. 6. Association of BEauty with Utirity — here is the peculiar GREATNESS of Mr. Wedgwood. (1) Beauty is not an accident —it pervades creation. Therefore, reject the false philosophy that “‘if a thing is useful, what does beauty matter?” (2) God has shed beauty over creation profusely. {Developed by particulars.] (3) The pursuit of BEAUTY in manufacture will chasten and refine the commercial spirit. [Establishment.] (4) Further, striving after EXCELLENCE reacts upon the character of men. (a) Publications of Wedgwood and Bentley speak plainly upon this: ‘‘The pressure of economic laws tells severely on the finer elements of trade ;”’ but that which appears cheapest at first is not cheapest in the long run. (1) Reasons. (2) Reasons. (3) Reasons. Wedgwood perceived the true law of industrial art. [Definition of “true law.”] [Establishment and definition of his part as distinct from that of his part- ners. | (a) (2) 2B 370 Appendix (c) One principle pervades the work — the adaptation of every material object to its proper end. If “proper end” is com- modity for use, then a plural aim is before the designer. (x) (2) Il. Tuesr Hich Prrncreres WEDGwoop OBSERVED. He combined BEAUTY with USEFULNESS. [The theme ~ tepeated.] His lower works were distinguished by fineness of adaptation. [Examples of common plates.] He abhorred pretension. III. Wedgwood always HAD IN VIEW A STANDARD OF Ex- CELLENCE INDEFINITELY HicH. [Established by specific instances. ] His ExTRAORDINARY MERIT was as a restorer of (1) form in fictile products and (2) character of colors. [The theme in concrete terms.] (Particulars. ] Wedgwood must have formed a DELIBERATE RESO- LUTION . . . TO EXHIBIT A HIGHER STANDARD OF EXCELLENCE. [Transition.] ‘THE DEMAND FOR CHEAPNESS PRESSES HARD UPON THE MANUFACTURER, YET NOTHING WHICH DEPRESSES THE MorAL or Puysicat ConpirTion below the standards of sufficiency of health can in the end be cheap. [Adds a related thought.] A ppendix 371 The material condition of workers in Wedgwood’s towns — country and people improved — an honorable testimony to Wedgwood. APPLICATION AND CONCLUSION May you, his successors, . . . profit more and more by the lessons Mr. Wedgwood bequeathed you. OUTLINE OF THE EXERCISES AT THE UNVEILING OF THE STATUE OF GLADSTONE AT BOWE 1. Speech by Earl Granville referring to the labor of Gladstone and the aims of Gladstone and his party. Earl Granville uses the occasion to correct errors of opinion regarding Gladstone. 2. Uncovering of the statue by Lord Carlingford. OUTLINE OF LorD CARLINGFORD’S SPEECH INTRODUCTION Congratulation upon the possession of this work of art — of this presentment of a man “whose name is a household word.” Discussion I. Gladstone’s personal character. First of living statesmen, great orator, parliamenta- rian, — his vast public work. a. Financial reforms and beneficent results. b. Popular suffrage. [Transition.] c. Greater work — bound up with Ireland. Work not fully recognized; through it Gladstone inspired fear, which is a political disease. “To effect by policy changes which revolution would effect by force.” — DisRAEL1. [Apothegm.] 372 Appendix II. Gladstone’s mission: what was left to the Liberal party and to Gladstone to fulfill. Gladstone did not make the circumstances; they made him, or, rather, they found him. The hour for great work came, and there is the image of the man who was able to do it. III. Gladstone’s success: we are told that the policy has failed — a hasty, shallow assertion. 1. We have done right— our best; we, Gladstone and his party, shall not fail. 2. It is unreasonable to say now that we have, that he has, failed. [Figurative comparison of his work with that of physician over long-standing disease.] We believe that we see already signs of deliverance and health. IV. Gladstone’s public character. You need not be told of his zeal for public im- provement, his ardent love of justice, his warm sympathies with popular progress. CONCLUSION When I look at your statue I feel, like Hamlet, as if I did it wrong, being so majestical in its ora- torical attitude, by multiplying in its pres- ence such words as mine. I congratulate you again. I congratulate the donor and the Appendix 373 artist, and I trust that your children’s chil- dren will come here to see, and they will see truly, what manner of man this Gladstone was. 3. A member of the popular Board of Works formally received the care of the statue. 4. Lord Granville asked the spectators to give a cordial vote of thanks to the citizen who gave the statue for his public-spirited gift. Lord Granville made a brief speech upon Gladstone as a man, a colleague, and as a political chief : — “Mr. B. has by his munificent gift afforded you an opportunity of anticipating the verdict of history, ... among all great statesmen who have ever wielded the destinies of this our country there has been none more pure or more noble.” I beg to propose a vote of thanks to the donor of this statue. 5. Mr. J. P. Bryce, M.P., seconded the motion, which was received with renewed cheering. 6. Mr. B. made suitable acknowledgment of the compli- ment. 7. Mr. W. H. Gladstone proposed a vote of hea | _ Lord C. and congratulated the sculptor. Mr. Buxton seconded the motion, which was passed with cheers. EXERCISES AT THE UNVEILING OF THE PILGRIM STATUE! Prayer. Brief address. 1Presented to the city by the New England Society of the ay of New York, June 6, 1885. 374 Appendix a. Historical — of the character of the Puritan. b. Welcoming the memorial. Music, chorus, rendering of Mrs. Hemans’s “Pilgrim Fathers.” [As the regimental band played the last strains, the sculptor drew the cords which bound the flag about the statue.] ; Presentation of the statue to the New England Society. (By the chairman of the committee, who was, also, the first to propose the statue.) Reception of the statue on behalf of the New England Society.. (By the president of the Society.) Presentation of the statue to the City of New York. (By the same speaker.) Speech of the mayor, who received the statue “in the name and in behalf of the people of the City of New York.” Music, chorus, I. Lombardi’s “ Pilgrim Chorus.” Oration. Music, “America.” [Sung by the audience, led by full band.] In the evening the Committee of Arrangements enter- tained the orator of the day and the sculptor, with guests of the Society, at a dinner. REFERENCES FOR THE STUDY OF THE SPEECH OF - DEDICATION Daniel Webster: Address at the laying of the corner- stone of the addition to the Capitol, July 4, 1851; Address on the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (both in Speeches and. Orations, Boston, 1906); George William Curtis: Address at the laying of the corner-stone of the Appendix 375 Washington Memorial Arch, New York, May 30, 1890; Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, September, 24, 1872 (both in Orations and Addresses, Vol. III, New York, 1894); Phillips Brooks: Dedication of the public high school, Boston, February 22, 1881 (in Essays and Addresses, pp. 336-340); Address at the laying of the corner-stone of the Wells Memorial Institute, Boston, May 30, 1882 (ib., pp. 367-374); William E. Gladstone: Speech at the founding of Wedgwood Institute, Staffordshire, England, October 26, 1863 (in Brewer’s World’s Best Orations, Vol. VI); William Cullen Bryant: at the unveiling of the statue of S. P. B. Morse, June 10, 1871 (in Prose Writings, II, 278-285); at the Goethe Centennial Festival, New York, August 27, 1875 (ib., II, 335-342); at the un- veiling of the bust of Mazzini, May 29, 1878, in Central Park (ib., II, 342-346) ; at the unveiling of a statue of Sir Walter Scott, November 4, 1872 (zb., II, 310-313); at the unveiling of a statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, ‘May 22, 1872 (ib., II, 300-305); James Russell Lowell: Speech at the unveiling of a bust of Fielding, at Taunton, September 4, 1883; on the occasion of a memorial erected to Dean Stanley in the Chapter House; at the unveiling of a bust of Coleridge in Westminster Abbey, May 7, 1885 (all in Works, Vol. VI, Boston, 1904) ; Edward Everett: Speech at the dedication of the Everett Schoolhouse, Boston, September 17, 1860 (in Ovations and Speeches, ‘IV, 316-325, Boston, 1872); at the dedication of the Cambridge High School, December 22, 1859 (#b., II, 597-604); at the dedication of the Eliot Schoolhouse (4b., IV, 263-267); at the erection of a monument to 376 Appendix John Harvard, September 26, 1828 (#b., I, 173-181, Edition 1870); Henry Lee Higginson: Addresses on the occasion of presenting Soldier’s Field, June 10, 1890, and the Harvard Union, October 15, 1899, to Harvard University’ (both in Addresses, Boston, 1902); Horace Porter: Speech at the banquet of the Army of Tennessee on the occasion of the inauguration of the Grant Equestrian Statue, Chi- cago, October 8, 1891 (in Reed’s Modern Eloquence, Ul, 944-949). SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES As a member of a graduating class, prepare a speech for delivery before the class and a general audience on one of the following occasions : — 1. The planting of a class ivy. 2. The unveiling of a tablet to the memory of a deceased classmate. (Invent incident.) 3. The erection of a sun-dial. 4. The unveiling of the portrait of an honorary member. 5. As chairman of the athletic association, prepare a speech for the opening of a new athletic field. Make a brief speech, in the rooms of a debating society, at the unveiling of a bust of : — 6. Daniel Webster. 7. Henry Clay. 8. Abraham Lincoln. 9. William Pitt. to. As president of your fraternity, speak at the laying of the corner-stone of a new chapter-house. 11. Speak at the opening of new rooms for a literary society. Appendix 377 Vv THE SPEECH OF PRESENTATION OR ACCEPTANCE OUTLINE OF A SPEECH BY WILLIAM Ewart GLADSTONE ACCEPTING A GIFT FROM HIS CONSTITUENTS 1. “Tam sure you will think I best discharge my Dury, if I confine myself to an expression of thanks for this last and newest favor.” [The theme of the speech. ] a. He refers to this present from the constituency. b. He refers to former favors as not forgotten, and to his interest as representing them in the party; also, he speaks of their mutual relation. c. “I thank you, with joy and pleasure, . . . in the presence of [his political colleagues], to whose powerful codperation it is that I owe being able to appear before you with the conviction that I have not disgraced the functions with which, in common with them, I am charged.” [Consti- tutes a transition to topic.] 2. The EVENTS OF THE SESSION [indirectly, his “political duties”’] hardly form a fitting topic to dwell upon. [Apologetic introduction.] They have been remarkable in many respects. a. “For the difficulty in the midst of which our puttEs have been discharged.” b. “For this, that THEY have brought into view a new and great necessity . . . for restoring the House 378° Appendix > of Commons tc its position as the great security of your liberties and for enabling legislation to be carried on in its full efficiency.” 3. “That puty is one to which we shall address ourselves when the opportunity arises . . . with all that zeal so great a cause can inspire.” “Great is the interest connected with separate subjects of legislation, but . . . paramount is the interest . . . touching the representa- tive assembly which has served as a pattern to the world . . . and to cherish aspirations of freedom and to maintain law and order among . . . mankind.” CoNCLUSION “Gentlemen, permit me to offer my .. . thanks . and to express the hope that until [I secteil the chara that now rests upon me, I may do nothing to forfeit . . . the confidence you repose in me.” OUTLINE OF THE PRESENTATION AND ACCEPTANCE OF THE CHENEY-IvES GATEWAY HARRY JOHNSON FISHER Speech of Presentation 1. The occasion which has called the speaker before the audience. [Particulars.] 2. The point of view of the speaker, and the idea which governed the choice of this gift. [Definition] Appendix 379 3. The higher end which the material gift is to subserve. [Definition.] 4. Summarizing conclusion. PRESIDENT HADLEY Speech of Acceptance 1. The significance of the gift. [Definition.] 2. The significance of the deed which merits memorial, [Explanation.] a. By authority. 6. By analogy. When a gift is officially presented, as a statue given by a society to the State or city, the speeches of presentation and acceptance are usually either brief and formal, or they are in the nature of dedicatory speeches. When, however, the presentation is personal, these speeches belong to a distinct type. The giver usually minimizes the value of the gift and magnifies the merit of the recipient, dwelling perhaps on the gift as an evidence of regard. The recipient magnifies the gift and deprecates the praise that goes with it, often sharing with others whatever commendation of himself the first speech may have expressed. The note of sincerity is, of course, indispensable in both speeches. SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES 1. Present to the college, as a gift from your class, the portrait of a member of the faculty. 2. Present in the same way a memorial window in the chapel to the memory of deceased classmates. 380 “Appendix 3. A wealthy alumnus has given a college “union” for the use of the students. As president of the senior class, accept the gift on behalf of the whole body of students. 4. An athletic coach who has served efficiently without pay is forced by his business to give up the work. In acknowledgment of his services, the athletic association gives him a gold watch. Present it, as president of the association. 5. Make the coach’s speech of acceptance. 6. The manager of a street railway company is called to another city. The directors give him a punch-bowl. As president of the company, present the gift. (Invent particulars.) 7. As manager, accept the gift. 8. A wealthy citizen presents a memorial drinking-foun- tain to the city. Make his speech. g. As mayor, accept the fountain. VI THE RESPONSE OF THE RECIPIENT OF AN HONOR OUTLINE OF THE RESPONSE OF SIDNEY LEE TO THE SPEECH OF Mr. MorLEY ON THE COMPLETION OF “THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY.” INTRODUCTION The speaker quotes Dr. Johnson’s saying, that the editor of a dictionary could only hope to escape reproach — not to receive reward. [Theme of speech] Appendix. 381 ' THERE ARE THOSE IN THIS ROOM WHO WOULD GIVE Dr. JouNson (if present) a DirFERENT OBJECT-LESSON IN THE GROWTH OF MAGNANIMITY : — 1. Mr. Smith’s munificence and public spirit. 2. Punctuality of contributors and printers. 3. Enthusiasm of contributors for research. a. [Narrates one contributor’s successful search for facts concerning a character lost in the obscurity of time.] 1.) Search of the war offices of three great powers of the world. 6. He could give other examples of enthusiasm and of universality of interest which the Dictionary had evoked. OUTLINE OF THE RESPONSE OF G. S. SMITH TO THE SAME SPEECH 1. The occasion is unprecedented. Proprietors and editors had never before been entertained by the chief citizen of the greatest city in the world. 2. The work is unprecedented. a. None of like extent exists. (It represents eighteen years of unremitting work.) b. For such a work, especial qualification is necessary. (1) Experience. Volumes were to appear quarterly on the ap- pointed day. (2) Special knowledge. (3) Good fortune. (a) In securing punctual publication. 382 Appendix (6) In appointing an editor and his chief assistant. (1) Mr. Lee edited forty-two volumes and contributed largely. (2) Mr. Lee has sound judgment in select- ing assistants. REFERENCES FOR THE STUDY OF THE RESPONSE Charles Sumner: Speech at a public reception given him in Boston, November 3, 1856 (in Works, Vol. IV, Boston, 1875); Henry Clay: Response at a dinner in his honor at the time of his retirement from the post of Secretary of State, March 7, 1829 (in Life and Speeches, I, 303, New York, 1844); Louis Kossuth: Response to a toast. at a banquet by the Press Club of New York (in his honor), December 15, 1851 (in Life by Headley, pp. 420-435); Speech before the corporation of New York, December 11, 1851, in response to a toast coupling his name with that of Hungary (2b., pp. 397-420) ; T. B. Macaulay: Address in Edinburgh on his reélection to Parliament (in The Times, November 4, 1852. Reprinted in Speeches, II, 382-401, New York, 1852); Edward Everett: Speech at a reception at Hereford, September 9, 1843 (in Orations and Speeches, Il, 471-473); Response to a toast at a dinner at Nashville, Tennessee, June 2, 1839, at which he was the guest of honor (#b., I, 190-197); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: Speech at a dinner in his honor by the Bar Association of Boston, March 7, 1900 (in Speeches, Boston, 1900); Arthur P. Stanley: Speech at the Century Club, November 2, 1878 (in Reed’s Modern Eloquence, UI, 1073-1076); Henry M. Stanley: Response Appendix 383 at a dinner in his honor (zb., III, 1078-1084); Bayard Taylor: Speech at a reception in his honor by the Goethe Club of New York (ib., III, 1136-1138) ; Edward J. Phelps: Response at a banquet in his honor to the toast, “His Excellency, the American Minister, Mr. Phelps” (ib., III, 888-991) ; Cyrus W. Field: Response at a ban- quet in his honor given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York (d., Vol. VIII). SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES 1. As winner of an interstate oratorical contest you are present at a dinner given by your society in celebration of the victory. Respond to a toast in your honor. 2. A luncheon is given at the completion of a difficult piece of railroad engineering. Make the response of the chief engineer to the congratulations of the superintendent of the division. 3. You are officially notified of your nomination as a can- didate for Congress. Reply to the speech of notification. 4. Having been influential in fostering the work of the “Naturalists’ Club” of the high school in your city, you are elected an honorary member of the club. Youare present at the meeting in which this action is taken. Make an appropriate speech. s. A citizen of your town who has won distinction in the government service finds upon his return a brass band and a. gathering of his fellow-citizens ready to welcome him. The mayor greets him with a brief speech of welcome. Make a suitable reply. 6. You have been chosen captain of the football team for the next year. Make a speech of acknowledgment. ._ 384 Appendix VIir THE SPEECH OF WELCOME OUTLINE OF AN ADDRESS OF WELCOME BY JOSIAH Quincy A welcome to Charles Dickens. (Spoken at a dinner, Boston, 1842).1 INTRODUCTION The occasion is unprecedented in the annals of literature. a. Definition. THEME How SHALL WE ACCOUNT FOR THE WELCOME EXTENDED TO CHARLES DICKENS? 1. He comes as an old friend. a. [Particulars from his books.] 2. He has won us through his portrayal of public wrongs. a. [Particulars from his writings.] : 3. He has endeared himself to us by making us more kind-hearted and charitable. a. [Particulars from his books.] 4. Everywhere in our land he is loved and admired. CONCLUSION I would, gentlemen, it were in my power to present, as on the mirror in the Arabian tale, the various scenes in our 1From Report of a Dinner to Charles Dickens. Boston, 1842. [Pam- phlet.] Reported by Thomas Gill and William English, reporters of the Morning Post. ‘ Appendix 385 extended country, where the master-mind of our guest is at this moment acting. In the empty schoolroom, the boy at his evening task has dropped his grammar, that he may’ room with Oliver or Nell. The traveller has for- gotten the fumes of the crowded steamboat, and is far off with our guest among the green valleys and hoary hills of old England. The trapper beyond the Rocky Mountains has left his lonely tent and is unroofing the houses in Lon- don 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 schoolroom and the playground forever. Or to some bereaved mother the tender sympathies and womanly devotion of Little Nell may call up the form where dwelt that harmonious soul which, uniting in itself God’s best gifts, for a short space 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 appear- ance, to our shores. 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” the cheers with which we welcome Charles Dickens to this New World. 2c 386 Appendix “Health, happiness, and a hearty welcome to Charles Dickens.” REFERENCES FOR THE STUDY OF THE SPEECH OP WELCOME Edward Everett: Address of Welcome to his Imperial Highness, Prince Napoleon, at Boston, February 25, 1861 (in Orations and Speeches, Vol. IV, pp. 457-463, Boston, 1870); Joseph H. Choate: Speech of Welcome to Lord Houghton, guest of honor at a reception by the Union “League Club of New York, November 23, 1875 (in Reed’s Modern Eloquence, Vol. 1, pp. 152-155); Charles W. Eliot : Speech of Welcome to Prince Henry of Prussia, at a Com- plimentary Dinner given to the Prince by the city of Boston, March 6, 1902 (in G. P. Baker’s Forms of Public Address, New York, 1904); Elmer H. Capen: Welcome to John D. Long (in Occasional Addresses, pp. 227-235, Tufts College Press, 1902); John D. Long: Welcome to the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Welcome to the National Convention of Charities (in After-Dinner and Other Speeches). SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES 1. As president of the local chapter, welcome the dele- gates to a convention of your fraternity. 2. “The Woman’s Literary Club” of the town joins with your literary society in the celebration of the birth- day of a poet. Make a brief speech in which you recognize the presence of the invited guests. 3. A noted tennis expert who chances to be in the city is present by invitation at a meeting of your tennis club. A ppendix 387 Explain to the club how it was possible to have him pres- ent, express to him your appreciation of his presence, and call upon him for a speech. 4. As mayor of the city, welcome the delegates to a convention of candy manufacturers, of a benevolent or patriotic order, or of the “Christian Endeavor Society.” 5. Welcome home a distinguished citizen who has re- turned from a notable exploring trip. 6. As chairman of a mass meeting of students, welcome home a college president who has been absent for some months on account of ill-health and who has fully recovered. IX THE SPEECH OF FAREWELL OUTLINE OF THE SPEECH OF LoRD MACAULAY ON RETIRING FRoM PoxiticaAL Lire. GLascow, Marcu 22, 1849 INTRODUCTION He thanks the chairman and his constituency for the honor they have conferred upon him [the freedom of the city]. At the close of his career he can look back over it calmly. Discussion I. He looks back over his political life with a clear conscience. i. He acknowledges errors and deficiencies, but he believes his consistent choice of one set of friends and of one set of opinions has been in the main correct. 388 A ppendix 2. His path of duty has avoided the two dangerous extremes. II. The history of the country has justified the correct- ness of his principles. 1. The country has escaped both bigoted conserva- tism and the sovereignty of the mob. 2. The course which =ighteen years before gave politi- cal power to such cities as Glasgow is now fully justified. TII.. Though now out of politics, he hopes still to be able to teach profitable lessons of charity and patriotism. CoNCLUSION He will now resume with alacrity another task. He repeats his thanks. ... “With every wish for the pros- perity, the peace, and the honor of our fair and majestic Glasgow, I now bid you, my kind friends and fellow- citizens, a most respectful farewell.” SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES 1. As retiring president of your literary society, having served two terms, make a brief speech of farewell. 2. As captain of your football team, speak at a dinner at the end of the season. (You graduate in June and go into business.) 3. As manager of a large factory, upon resigning to accept another position, you address the men during the noon hour. ° 4. As principal of a high school, at the last session at which you are to teach, say a few appropriate words of farewell. 5. The president of an improvement association which Appendix 389 has owed its success largely to his efforts is about to move to another city. Make his speech of farewell upon the acceptance of his resignation. 6. Your defeat for reélection as president of a social club means a change of policy which you do not approve. Your partisans are disaffected. Make a farewell speech that will restore harmony. xX THE SPEECH OF AN OFFICIAL REPRESEN- TATIVE OUTLINE OF A SPEECH BY DANIEL WEBSTER AT A DINNER OF THE RoyaL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND [This is a typical speech of the representative of one organi- zation or country at a public ceremony of another. The full text of the speech is given on page 290.] INTRODUCTION 1. The speaker acknowledges his introduction and kindly reception. 2. He indicates his appreciation of the occasion which has brought the people together. 3. He points out the significance of the society to the world. {Establishment.] a. Agriculture is skilfully practised and highly es- teemed in England. b. English agriculture affects the exchanges of the world. 390 A ppendix DIscussION I. Great advantage must result to agriculture from the existence of this society. [Exposition of the advantages.] a. Analogy with other interests. b. Contrast with other interests. c. Example of American societies. (Specific in- stances.) II. Webster adverts to the remark of the chairman con- cerning the kinship of English and Amer- icans. 1. He alludes to his own English ancestors. [Anecdote: why he came to England.] 2. He points out that good feeling between the two nations is essential to the best interests of humanity. [Exposition.] a. Nations as well as individuals are subject to a moral responsibility to public opinion. 1. The world would hold America and Eng- land to strict account in case of contro- versy between them. 2. Neither nation could gain advantage over the other with justice and the approbation of the world. CONCLUSION Webster expresses his gratification in the day spent with the society and wishes it prosperity. Appendix 391 REFERENCES FOR THE STUDY OF THE SPEECH OF AN OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE Edward Everett: Response to a toast given by the president of the British Association for the Promotion of Science at Manchester, May 25, 1842 (in Orations and Speeches, II, 424-430); Response to a toast in honor of the foreign ministers, at the Anniversary Dinner of the Royal Academy of Art, May 6, 1843 (4b., pp. 459- 460); Response to a toast at the dinner of the Royal Agricultural Society at Bristol, July 14, 1842 (ib., pp. 435- 441); Response to a toast at a dinner of Emmanuel College, July 4, 1842 (2b., pp. 431-434); Response at the Lord Mayor’s dinner, November 9, 1842 (7b., 451-453); at the general meeting of the British Association for the Promotion of Science (2b., pp. 479-473, extempore); Joseph H. Choate: Speech at a banquet in his honor by the Associated Chambers of Commerce, London, March 15, 1899 (in Reed’s Modern Eloquence, I, 195-200); Ralph Waldo Emerson : Speech at the banquet of the Manchester Atheneum, November, 1847 (ib., II, 437-439); Response at a banquet to the minister from China to the toast, “The Union of the Farthest East and the Farthest West” (ib., II, 445-447); Charles W. Eliot: Response at a ban- quet of the New England Society of New York, December 22, 1877, to the toast, ‘Harvard and Yale” (ib., II, 427- 430); Daniel C. Gilman: Speech at a dinner of the Har- vard alumni, Cambridge, June 29, 1881 (ib., II, 528-529); F. W. Farrar: “Farewell Thoughts” (in Sermons and Addresses, delivered in America, 1885). 392 Appendix SUBJECTS FOR SPEECHES 1. At a symposium of students from various colleges, speak on the topic, “Student Activities at my College.” 2, At a dinner of English football players at which you chance to be a guest, you are called on to speak as an ex- ponent of American football. 3. As student representative at the dedication by another college of a’‘memorial athletic field, you are invited at the dinner to speak for your college. 4. Known to be interested in social settlement work, you are called upon to speak at the Social Service club of a college at which you are a guest. 5. As president of a convention, you reply to the mayor’s speech of welcome. 6. Speak for your own State at the opening of your State building at an exposition. XI THE SPEECH OF A POLITICAL REPRESEN- TATIVE REFERENCES FOR STUDY Daniel Webster: Speech at Niblo’s Saloon in New York, March 15, 1837 (in Speeches and Orations, Boston, 1906); Speech at a dinner in Fanueil Hall, September 30, 1842; Speech at a reception in Buffalo, May 22, 1851; Speech at the National Republican Convention at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 12, 1842 (all in Complete Works, Boston, 1851). Campbell-Bannerman : Speech on the Pol- Appendix 393 icy of the Liberal Party (in Bryan-Halsey’s The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. V); Theodore Roosevelt: Speech at the Founder’s Day Banquet of the Union League, Phila- delphia, November 22, rg01 (in Addresses and Presidential Messages, New York, 1904); Arthur J. Balfour: “Fiscal Reform” (in Speeches, 1880-1905, published by Longmans, Green, & Co.). GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY Books ON SPEECH-MAKING Apams, JoHN Quincy. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory. 2vols. Cambridge, 1810. Baker, Grorce P. The Forms of Public Address. New York, 1904. Carep, Jonn. University Addresses. “The Art of Public Speaking.” Glasgow and New York, 1906. CHANNING, Epwarp T. Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory. Boston, 1856. Cicero. ‘De Oratore,” “De Claris Oratoribus.” Donovan, J. W. Speeches and Speech-Making. Detroit, 1895. Emerson, R. W. “Eloquence,” in Society and Solitude, Boston, 1904. Harpwicke, H. A History of Oratory and Orators. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Hiccinson, T. W. Hints on Writing and Speech-M baie Boston, 1887. Hoar, GeorcE F, “Oratory and Orators I have Known,” in his Autobiography of Seventy Years. Also in Scrib- ner’s Magazine, XXIX, 756, and XXX, 61. 394 A ppendix Jess, R. C. The Aitic Orators, Introduction, pp. Ixii- cxxxiii. London, 1876. Kietser, G. How to Speak in Public. New York, 1907. Lez, G.C. The Principles of Public Speaking. New York, 1899. Matruews, BRANDER. Notes on Speech-Making. New York, 1gor. Martuews, WILLIAM. Oratory and Orators. Chicago, 1879. PITTENGER, WILLIAM. How to Become a Public Speaker. Philadelphia, 1887. Power, Joun O’Connor. The Making of an Orator. London and New York, 1906. Rinewatt, R.C. Modern American Oratory. New York, 1898. Rosinson, W. C. Forensic Oratory. Boston, 1893. Sears, Lorenzo. The Occasional Address. New York, 1897. SHEPPARD, NaTHAN. Before an Audience. New York, 1886, SHURTER, Epwin D. The Rhetoric of Oratory. New York, 1909. Waitman, G. M. American Orators and Oratory. Chi- cago, 1884. COLLECTIONS OF SPEECHES Avams, C. K. Representative British Orations. 3 vols. New York, 1884. Baxer, G. P. The Forms of Public Address. New York, 1904. Brewer, J. D. The World’s Best Orations. St. Louis, 1899. A ppendix 395 British Orations (Putnam’s). New York, 1884. Bryan, W. J., and F. W. Hatsry. The World’s Famous Orations. 10 vols. New York, 1906. CaRPENTER, S. C. Select American Speeches. Philadel- phia, 1815. DENNY, J.V. American Public Addresses. Chicago, 1910. Derew,C.M. Library of Oratory. 15 vols. New York, Ig02. Bobnmns, C. A. Select British Eloquence. New York, 1852. Hazuirt, Wirtram. The Eloquence of the British Senate. Brooklyn, 1810. Jounston, A., and J. A. WoopBurN. American Orations, 4vols. New York, 1896. Ler, G.C. The World’s Orators. New York, 1900. RIncGWALT, R.C. Modern American Oratory. New York, 1898. Reep, T. B. Modern Eloquence. 10 vols. Philadelphia, IQOI. SHurTER, E. D. Masterpieces of Modern American Ora- tory. New York, 1907. Wacner, L. Modern Political Orations. New York, 1896. INDEX OF AUTHORS Appleton, Daniel F., 153. Arnold, Matthew, 43. Bancroft, George, 96. Bright, John, 148. Brooks, Phillips, 349. Bryant, William Cullen, 48, 165, 188. Bryce, James, 265. Carlingford, Lord, 371. Carter, James C., 177. Clay, Henry, 216. Cleveland, Grover, 35. Cooley, Thomas M., 245. Dickens, Charles, 21, 169. Disraeli, Benjamin, 208. Elizabeth, Queen, 312. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 104. Evarts, William M., 339. Everett, Edward, 358. Farrar, Frederic William, 70. Felton, Cornelius Conway, 156. Fisher, Harry Johnson, 160, 378. Garfield, James A., 305. Gildersleeve, Basil L., 88. Gladstone, William Ewart, 163, 368, 377- Hadley, Arthur T., 161, 205, 379. Hoar, George Frisbie, 109. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 58. Hughes, Charles Evans, 318. Irving, Washington, 185. Kossuth, Louis, 221. Lafayette, Marquis de, 218. Lee, Robert E., 230. Lee, Sidney, 380. Lincoln, Abraham, 220, 366. Long, John Davis, 278, 299. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 55. Lowell, James Russell, 1. Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 387. McKinley, William, 320. Morley, John, 360. Muller, Frederick Max, 261. Osler, William, 231. Phillips, Wendell, 8. Quincy, Josiah, 384. Roosevelt, Theodore, 133. Root, Elihu, 180, 282. Saf, Count Aurelio, 251. Salmon, Lucy M., 100. Seward, William H., 85, 211. Smith, G. S., 381. Stedman, Edmund C., 199. Stubbs, William, 237. Webster, Daniel, 290, 3809. Woodford, Stewart L., 154. 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The author has attempted neither to expound a philosophy of criticism nor to elaborate a critical method, but simply to state some qualities that by common consent are to be found in all writing deserving to be called literature, and to lay down some fundamental principles that must be assumed in all sound criti- cal judgments. CRAVEN LAYCOCK anp ROBERT L. SCALES Argumentation and Debate Cloth, r2mo, $1.10 net In this work the peculiar difficulties which stand in the way of making a text-book at once teachable, practical, and easily understood, for use in teaching argumentation and debate, have been overcome. The treatment of the topics presented—the proposition, the issues, pre- liminary reading, evidence, kinds of arguments, fallacies, brief-draw- ing, the principles of presentation, refutation, and debate —is lucid and interesting as well as highly profitable. HENRY SEIDEL CANBY anp oTHERS English Composition in Theory and Practice Cloth, r2mo, $1.25 net A thoroughly practical book of directions for good writing, based upon sound principles. An extensive collection of examples drawn from all the forms of discourse and inclusive of brief excerpts and complete essays is also included. The authors, who are professors of English composition in the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale Uni- versity, have so handled their subject that the work is not limited to any one class of students, but is of a general interest to all concerned in the writing of good English. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York By G. R. CARPENTER ann W. T. BREWSTER Modern English Prose Cloth, 12mo, $1.10 net “This book will prove of great service to English teachers. The selections, complete and unabridged as they are, and made with nice discrimination, will be welcomed by instructors who desire to place before their pupils some of the best examples of modern prose writ- ing.” — WiLMoT B. MITCHELL, Bowdoin College, Maine. By MILTON PERCIVAL ann R. A. JELLIFFE Of Oberlin College Specimens of Exposition and Argument Cloth, r2mo, $0.90 net The selections in this volume, chosen from a wide range of literature, illustrate the different phases of argument such as persuasion, refuta- tion, and controversy, and the different types of exposition such as descriptions, explanations, definitions, and interpretations. “Tt is not often that the student is given the opportunity to use a text-book at once so fascinating and so essentially practical.’ — Philadelphia Public Ledger. By LANE COOPER Of Cornell University Theories of Style Cloth, r2mo, $1.10 net In bringing together the principal treatises and the loci on “Theories of Style” from Plato to Frederic Harrison, Professor Lane Cooper has made a book useful at once for the classroom student and the professional writer. The familiar views of Plato, Aristotle, Coleridge, De Quincey, and Spencer, as well as those of Wackernagel, Schopen- hauer, and Brunetiére, are included. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York By W. T. BREWSTER By Specimens of Modern English Literary Criticism Cloth, r2mo, $1.00 net This book belongs to the realm of rhetoric rather than of literature or literary history. It aims to use critical writing more completely than is done in any text-book of selections as an agent in rhetorical study and intellectual discipline. The selections cover Leslie Stephen, Dr. Johnson, Macaulay, Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Shelley, Coleridge, and others, with many notes and an excellent and comprehensive introduction. Studies in Structure and Style With an Introduction by GEorGE RICE CARPENTER, Professor of Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia University Cloth, r2mo, $1.10 ned The author has used rare discrimination in selecting the essays which he discusses, insisting that they should be of the highest class of mod- ern literature and that they should serve as models to the student. The analysis of structure and style in these volumes is most able, and the book will be found a most valuable one as a text in the higher institutions of learning. WILBUR L. CROSS The Development of the English Novel Cloth, 12mo, $1.50 net “This thorough and comprehensive work on English fiction is based upon sound scholarship. Professor Cross has mastered his material, and his presentation is not only logical in its general classifications but entirely adequate in its particulars. For these reasons it is an admirable text-book, and the student will find, besides the organic treatment of the whole, a basis for an exhaustive study of independent periods.” —7he Washington Star. PUBLISHED BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York