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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/wreathoflaurelbeOOwint 
 
a Wrcatf) of 
 Haurel 
 
 BEING SPEECHES ON DRAMATIC 
 AND KINDRED OCCASIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM WINTER 
 
 public ationjef of €1^ 2DunIa^ ^ocietp, l^eto Jtttk^ 
 l^ctoforfe, 1898. 
 
This is one of an edition of two hundred and sixty 
 7Q copies printed from type foi 
 in the month of November, 1898 
 
 five copies printed from type for the^Dunlap Society 
 
 . QC,{^^^^^^' 
 
X 
 
E. BIERSTADT, ARTOTYPE. 
 
 ley 
 
A WREATH OF LAUREL 
 
 BEING 
 SPEECHES ON DRAMATIC 
 AND KINDRED OCCASIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM WINTER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE DUNLAP SOCIETY 
 
 1898 
 
TS334-1 
 18176 
 
 Copyright 
 By William Winter 
 
 £r:d cf^p-:, ({ mil wm 
 
 I *v^' r^y i^4 
 
 %. 
 
 i^ S^^l 
 
TO 
 
 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 
 
 WHOSE FINE GENIUS AND EXQUISITE ART 
 
 HAVE ILLUMINED AND ADORNED 
 
 MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 WITH HONOR FOR HIS ACHIEVEMENT 
 
 WITH GRATITUDE FOR HIS EXAMPLE 
 
 AND WITH AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE 
 
 OF HIS LIFELONG FRIENDSHIP 
 
 WILLIAM WINTER 
 
 July z5, i8g8 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Henry Irving and the Drama. 
 
 Speech and Poem at a Pen and Pencil 
 Club Festival in Honor of Henry 
 Irving, at the Waterloo Hotel, 
 Edinburgh, October 31, 1894 ... i 
 
 II. Ian Maclaren: Poetry and Pathos in 
 Scottish Literature. 
 Speech and Poem at a Festival in 
 Honor of Ian Maclaren (Dr. John 
 Watson) given by the Lotos Club, 
 New York, December 6, 1896 ... 15 
 
 III. The Stage and its Apostles. 
 
 Speech and Poem delivered before 
 the Lotos Club, New York, at a 
 Festival given by the Club, in Honor 
 of the Speaker, April 24, 1897 . . 27 
 
 IV. The Intellectual Standard in Acting 
 
 AND Writing. 
 Speech delivered before the Actors' 
 Fund Society, at the Garrick Thea- 
 tre, New York, June 8, 1897 ... 41 
 
viii Contottjs?* 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V. The Ancient Glories of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. 
 Speech and Poem at a Festival in 
 Honor of Judge Joseph F. Daly, 
 given by the Catholic Club, New 
 York, November 6, 1897 51 
 
 VI. Joseph Jefferson: The Poet and the 
 Actor. 
 Speech and Poem at a Festival in 
 Honor of Joseph Jefferson, given 
 BY the Colonial Club, New York, 
 March 31, 1898 59 
 
 II 
 
 I. Youth and Opportunity. 
 
 Speech delivered at the Theatre 
 in Stapleton, Staten Island, June 
 i9> 1891 73 
 
 II. The Ideal in Education. 
 
 Speech delivered at the Theatre 
 IN Stapleton, Staten Island, June 
 17, 1892 87 
 
^Tontent^* 
 
 III. The Truth in Eulogy. 
 
 Speech delivered on Curtis Memo- 
 rial Day, at the Staten Island 
 Academy, February 25, 1895 ... 99 
 
 IV. The Ideal in Life. 
 
 Speech delivered at the Theatre 
 in Stapleton, Staten Island, June 
 18, 1895 107 
 
 V. In Memory of George William Curtis. 
 Speech delivered at the Seminary 
 Building, New Brighton, Staten Is- 
 land, February 24, 1896 117 
 
 VI. The Staten Island Academy. 
 
 A Word of Welcome. — The Intel- 
 lectual Principle. — A Word of 
 Farewell. — Speeches delivered at 
 THE Staten Island Academy, June 15 
 AND June 16, 1896 129 
 
 Record of Names 143 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Associates of mine in the Dunlap Society, being 
 desirous of another book from my pen, have approved 
 this collection of my comparatively recent speeches, 
 and I now offer it with the hope that members of the 
 Society in general, and other readers to whom it may 
 come, will accept it, if not with entire approbation, at 
 least with kindly tolerance. 
 
 Some of these speeches relate to dramatic subjects, 
 and others, not specifically dramatic, which I have 
 ventured to include, relate to kindred subjects, because 
 they descant on the study of human experience and 
 the conduct of human life. The Academic Speeches, 
 constituting Part Second of the volume, are included 
 for the reason that, as souvenirs of a writer long and 
 intimately associated with the stage, they may com- 
 mend themselves to the favor of theatrical readers; 
 and also for the reason that they relate to a Library, 
 founded by me, which is opulent with dramatic and 
 musical books, and other artistic treasures, and which, 
 by particular ordainment, is accessible to members of 
 the dramatic profession. 
 
 Reference may appropriately be made, in this place, 
 to earlier volumes of my speeches, to which this is a 
 companion. My oration on "The Press and the 
 Stage," delivered before the Goethe Society, at the 
 
xii ^tttatt* 
 
 Brunswick Hotel, New York, January 28, 1889, was 
 originally published in " Harper's Weekly," March 23, 
 1889, and afterward was put into a book: only 250 
 copies of it were made, and that book is out of print. 
 My oration on " The Actor, and his Duty to his 
 Time," was delivered before the Actors' Fund Society, 
 at Palmer's Theatre, New York, June 4, 1889, and it 
 was published in " Harper's Weekly " the next day. 
 Messrs. Harper & Brothers, at all times considerate 
 of authors, generously waived their claim of copyright, 
 and sanctioned a reprint of both those works. The 
 later and a few companions constitute Number Thirteen 
 of the first series of the publications of the Dunlap 
 Society, having been issued, under the title of " The 
 Actor, and Other Speeches," in 1891. On February 
 24, 1893, at the Castleton, St. George, Staten Island, 
 I delivered an oration commemorative of George 
 William Curtis, and that was published, a little later, 
 by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The present, accord- 
 ingly, is the fourth volume of my speeches. 
 
 I have never pretended to be an orator, I never 
 liked to meet or to see crowds of people, and I never 
 was conscious of a desire to convert anybody to my 
 way of thinking, on any subject whatever. Orators 
 aim to convince and to sway; my aim has been to 
 extol genius, to celebrate nobility, to declare the wor- 
 ship of beauty, and, if possible, to diffuse a soothing 
 and elevating charm of poetic grace. In my youth, 
 in 1856, impelled by the political enthusiasm of that 
 storm-swept time, I became a speaker for Fremont, in 
 the presidential campaign against Buchanan, and sub- 
 
ptttatt* xiii 
 
 sequently I delivered lectures at New England ly- 
 ceums, and so the art of public speaking became more 
 or less a custom. 
 
 The favor accorded to these speeches when they 
 were spoken encourages me to think that they may be 
 liked when they are read, and it is my hope that they 
 will serve a good purpose to the historian, in the distant 
 future, by helping to show that certain fine spirits of 
 our age were not unappreciated in their own generation. 
 
 W. W. 
 
 Fort Hill, New Brighton, 
 Staten Island, N. Y., 
 September 24, 1898. 
 
I 
 DRAMATIC SPEECHES 
 
HENRY IRVING 
 
^:a^/ ^^f 
 
A WREATH OF LAUREL 
 
 l$tntii 3>*ing ana tl^e ?E>rama. 
 
 speech and poem at a festival in honor of 
 
 henry irving, given by the pen and 
 
 pencil club, at the waterloo hotel, 
 
 edinburgh, october 31, 1894.^ 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of 
 
 THE Pen and Pencil Club : 
 
 IT is a pleasure and a privilege to meet this dis- 
 tinguished assemblage, the choice and master 
 spirits of art and of thought in this beautiful and re- 
 nowned city of Edinburgh, — " dear for her reputation 
 through the world " : yet the pleasure is not un- 
 tempered with solicitude. I am deeply conscious of 
 the honor conferred on me, — a stranger and a wan- 
 derer from a distant land, — by your wish that I should 
 respond to the toast of the Drama, with which my 
 
 lA festival in honor of Henry Irving was given at midnight of October 31, 
 1894, at the Waterloo Hotel, Edinburgh, by the Pen and Pencil Club, of that 
 city. About one hundred and fifty persons were present, representative of the 
 art, literature, and society of Edinburgh. The place was the great hall of the 
 Waterloo, which thirty years ago was a theatre. The chair was taken by G. W. 
 W. Barclay, Esq., of Aberdeen, — the vice-chairmen being Messrs. J. C. Dibdin 
 (grandson of Charles Dibdin, author of the sea songs) and A. W. Yokes. 
 
2 % Wtteitl^ of SaureL 
 
 name has been so graciously coupled, and I thank 
 you, most gratefully, for the signal kindness with which 
 the mention of that name has been received. The 
 Drama is an institution with which I have been associ- 
 ated during most of my life, and one which I have, in 
 an humble way, faithfully labored to serve : yet I can- 
 not fail to reflect that every thought which is likely to 
 occur to my mind, in speaking to such an audience as 
 this, — an audience of artists and thinkers, — upon any 
 subject connected with art, probably has occurred to 
 each one of my listeners, over and over again. Un- 
 der circumstances less important I might venture to 
 take refuge among the anecdotes. There is "snug 
 lying in the abbey " of old Joe Miller. Under the 
 circumstances that exist I cannot but remember how 
 dangerous it is to rehearse old stories in the presence 
 of club men and experienced men of the world. The 
 most felicitous of comic yams, marred by publicity, 
 becomes at last monotonous,— like Charles Lamb's 
 " Poor Relation," — and " the guests think they have 
 seen him before." 
 
 This moment, for me, accordingly, is one of serious 
 trial, and I must be permitted to add that my perplex- 
 ity is heightened by a deep and stirring sense of my 
 
 The chairman, referring to the occasion as the twentieth anniversary of Irving's 
 performance of Hamlet, at the London Lyceum, — then managed by H. L. 
 Bateman, — paid an earnest tribute to the genius of the actor, and to his wise 
 and fine conduct of his dramatic career. Irving, in the course of an eloquent 
 reply, advocated the establishment of a municipal theatre. Musical exercises 
 followed, and speeches were made by Messrs. G. A. Peacock, Bram Stoker, 
 and J. C. Dibdin. In reply to the toast of the Drama, I delivered the following 
 speech and poem. Much of the speech was humorous, "but that part of it was 
 not reported and has been lost. 
 
ipenrp 3(»^bmg* 
 
 extraordinary environment. Amid the scenes and 
 associations that now surround me, it is, I think, ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to fix the mind upon the facts of 
 the present, or to put into intelligible form the impres- 
 sions that are prompted by the passing hour. You, to 
 whom these scenes are familiar, are able to dwell 
 among them with comparative composure, — for they 
 are a part of your every-day experience. The stranger, 
 when he looks upon Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood 
 Palace, the hallowed Grey friars and the storied Cathe- 
 dral, the pathetic desolation of Craigmillar and the 
 royal glory of Dunfermline, is agitated, astonished, 
 bewildered, and overwhelmed. There, almost within 
 the sound of my voice, is the grave of David Hume, 
 — that strong and splendid historian, that wise phi- 
 losopher, that benign, pure spirit, whom to remember 
 is to bless! In yonder valley, hard by the dust of 
 Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart, stands the stone 
 that your national poet, Robert Burns, placed to com- 
 memorate the genius of the lamented Ferguson, At 
 the foot of your Castle Rock rest the ashes of the won- 
 derful De Quincey. Along your High Street, tran- 
 quil and fearless, going proudly to his death, still 
 moves, in the gaze of fancy, the imperial figure of the 
 great Montrose; and through the West Port and 
 down the hill, while the drums crash and the trumpets 
 blare, the intrepid Marquis of Dundee rides forth, un- 
 knowing, to meet his doom. There is no limit to the 
 wonderful and inspiring associations of this regal capi- 
 tal. I cannot look upon them unmoved. I should 
 be grieved indeed if I could walk the streets of your 
 
4 % Wttatfy of %mtd. 
 
 august and lovely city without a thrill of more than 
 common joy and gratitude to find myself treading in 
 the footprints of Walter Scott. Familiar things, I 
 say, these are to you, whose lot has been cast among 
 them : but for the stranger it is no common experience 
 to look upon the home of that illustrious genius whose 
 influence upon this world, to exalt the human race 
 and to bless, it, goes hand in hand with that of Shake- 
 speare, and is scarcely second to that of the incompar- 
 able master, in the magic and the grace of romantic 
 art. 
 
 In discussing the Drama there is always the danger 
 — and I do not think it is always avoided — of run- 
 ning into platitude. Speakers on the Drama are but 
 too apt to tell us of its decline from certain "palmy 
 days," — which no one of them can remember, — and 
 of the great necessity which exists for "the elevation of 
 the stage." Nothing could be more false, nothing 
 more wearisome. The Drama requires neither res- 
 toration nor authority ; for it is one of the elemental 
 necessities of social life. But, while it stands in no 
 need of regeneration, it requires, and it ought at all 
 times to receive, wise and just treatment. In Great 
 Britain it still endures the odium of conventional prej- 
 udice. Dr. Johnson, I believe, — or was it some other 
 sage ? — observed that a man may brew and still be a 
 gentleman, while no man can be a gentleman and 
 bake. The brewer, the tradesman, can go to Court. 
 The actor is, practically, proscribed — and he is pro- 
 scribed because of his profession. In America no 
 such prejudice prevails. There is, of course, the re- 
 
^mtp fttJing. 
 
 ligious antipathy; but that is dying away. In both 
 America and Great Britain, however, the stage suffers 
 under pernicious influences. In both countries there 
 are vacuous persons who declare that all they want in 
 the theatre is something to laugh at. In both coun- 
 tries there is a narrow criticism that examines ideals 
 and emotions with a tape-measure and a microscope. 
 And in both there is the speculative theatrical manager 
 who will present anything, no matter how vile, so that 
 he can draw a good house. We are all familiar with 
 the specious doctrine that the way to prosper is to 
 " give the people what they want." I would not be a 
 fanatic in my enthusiasm for the Drama. I would 
 not insist upon continual Shakespeare or everlasting 
 classics. I would not sequester the stage from the 
 people: but I would most strongly insist that the 
 Theatre shall not be mobbled up with the Music Hall, 
 and that intellectual purpose and authority shall con- 
 trol it, and not the crude taste of an idle multitude ; — 
 to the end that prosperity may no longer be possible 
 to those enemies of art and of society who are willing 
 to traffic in human weakness and folly. 
 
 Something might be said in protest against those 
 dramatists of the hour who think it well to celebrate 
 the infatuation of a male fool for a female idiot, — for- 
 ever ringing the changes upon the ethics of matrimo- 
 nial incontinence, and upon the vicious triviality of 
 that profligate living so well designated by Dr. John- 
 son as " conduct which, in all ages, the good have con- 
 demned as vicious, and the bad have despised as 
 foolish." That is a sad abuse. Let us look upon 
 
6 % Wttatlis of %mxtt\. 
 
 our Drama not with despondency, but with faith and 
 hope. The children of the gods do not perish. In 
 each successive period of dramatic history a great man 
 has arisen, to bear the torch of genius and to hght 
 the pathway of art. In Shakespeare's time it was Bur- 
 bage. After him came Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, 
 Kean, Macready, and Edwin Booth. To-day the 
 leader is your honored guest, Henry Irving. I need 
 not dwell upon his career. The underlying principles 
 of it are known to all the world, — profound faith in 
 the beauty, purity, and power of dramatic art, and 
 inflexible devotion to a noble ideal of life. This great 
 actor is happily with you, and I know that your lives 
 are brighter for his presence, and that the only touch 
 of sadness in this hour is a thought of the parting that 
 soon must come. Let me conclude these remarks with 
 a few verses of mine, — written to honor him on an 
 earlier occasion, but, perhaps, not inappropriate here, — 
 as at least indicative of what we all feel, not only for 
 him, but for that great actress and beautiful woman 
 Ellen Terry, whose genius and whose superlative charm 
 have potently aided and cheered his progress, and 
 have shed an imperishable splendor upon the artistic 
 achievements of his bright career. 
 
^entp ^(ttmg* 
 
 HENRY IRVING. 1 
 
 But let fhe golden waves leap up 
 
 While yet our hearts beat near him ! 
 No bitter drop be in the cup 
 
 With which our hope would cheer him ! 
 Pour the red roses at his feet! 
 
 Wave laurel boughs above him ! 
 And if we part or if we meet 
 
 Be glad and proud to love him ! 
 
 His life has made this iron age 
 
 More grand and fair in story; 
 Illumed our Shakespeare's sacred page 
 
 With new and deathless glory; 
 Refreshed the love of noble fame 
 
 In hearts all sadly faring, 
 And lit anew the dying flame 
 
 Of genius and of daring. 
 
 Long may his radiant summer smile 
 
 Where Albion's rose is dreaming, 
 And over art's Hesperian isle 
 
 His royal banner streaming; 
 While every trumpet blast that rolls 
 
 From Britain's lips to hail him 
 Is echoed in our kindred souls, 
 
 Whose truth can never fail him. 
 
 On your white wings, ye angel years. 
 
 Through roseate sunshine springing. 
 Waft fortune from all happier spheres. 
 
 With garlands and with singing; 
 Make strong that tender heart and true — 
 
 That thought of Heaven to guide him — 
 And blessings pour like diamond dew, 
 
 On her that walks beside him ! 
 
 1 Copyright by the Macmillan Company, of New York. 
 
% Wttat^ of %mtd. 
 
 And when is said the last farewell, 
 
 So solemn and so certain, 
 And fate shall strike the prompter's bell 
 
 To drop the final curtain, 
 Be his, whom every muse hath blest. 
 
 That best of earthly closes — 
 To sink to rest on England's breast 
 
 And sleep beneath her roses. 
 
 An earlier tribute of mine to Henry Irving may appropriately 
 be preserved in this place, — a speech and poem, delivered at a 
 festival in his honor, given by many citizens of New York, at 
 Delmonico's, April 6, 1885. 
 
 In this illustrious presence and in this memorable 
 hour I do not presume to think that any words of 
 mine are needed to complete the expression of your 
 sense of intellectual obligation to Henry Irving, or 
 your sorrow in bidding him farewell. Having, in other 
 places, said and written much in celebration of this 
 theme, I might well be content to remain silent now. 
 Such, however, was not the will of the immediate man- 
 agers of this occasion, who lately signified to me that 
 a few words from my lips would be expected here to- 
 night, by way of a God-speed to the parting guest. 
 
 Those words I could not decline to speak ; and per- 
 haps it is not altogether inappropriate that a voice 
 which has accompanied and proclaimed every one of 
 his great professional triumphs upon the American 
 
Jpenrp SfJ^tJing* 
 
 stage should be heard here, for one moment, in this 
 crowning commemoration of his renown. This hour 
 belongs to friendship. The memories of a long period 
 come thronging into my thoughts j and with them 
 comes that mournful sense of separation which is 
 present to you all. 
 
 In every true votary of the dramatic art you will 
 perceive a peculiar and delicate sensibility. This is 
 largely resultant from the fact that an actor, in pre- 
 senting his art upon the stage, presents also his phys- 
 ical personality — addressing the public as an actual 
 individual, and not through the protective medium of 
 print, or paint, or marble, or other material substance. 
 And just as there is acute sensibility in the artist, so 
 there should be, and naturally and usually there is, a 
 deep sympathy in the nature of the rightful and com- 
 petent judge of art. 
 
 When you have long and patiently studied an 
 actor's intellectual constitution ; when you have tried 
 to fathom the depth of his feelings ; when you have 
 minutely traced and interpreted the beauty and the 
 mystery of his acting; when, striving to live in his 
 grand ideals of imaginative life, you have been made 
 to live a more exalted and glorious life of your own, 
 it is inevitable that you should become bound to him 
 by ties of an affection as true, as deep, as strong, and 
 as permanent as any that human nature can feel. For 
 this reason you are clustered to-night around this great 
 actor, to bid him Farewell ; and I shall be glad if these 
 simple lines of mine can even hint the tenderness 
 which is warm at your hearts : 
 
 5 
 
% Wteat^ of Hautcl* 
 
 VALE.' 
 
 I. 
 
 Now fades across the glimmering deep, now darkly drifts away 
 
 The royal monarch of our hearts, the glory of our day : 
 
 The pale stars shine, the night wind sighs, the sad sea makes its 
 
 moan, 
 And we, bereft, are standing here, in silence and alone. 
 
 Gone every shape of power and dread his magic touch could paint: 
 Gone haunted Aram's spectral face, and England's martyred saint: 
 Gone Mathias, of the frenzied soul, and Louis' sceptred guile, 
 The gentle head of poor Lesurques, and Hamlet's holy smile. 
 
 No more in gray Messina's halls shall love and revel twine ; 
 No more on Portia's midnight bowers the moon of summer 
 
 shine ; 
 No golden barge on Hampton's stream salute the perfum'd 
 
 shore ; 
 No ghost on Denmark's rampart cliff affright our pulses more. 
 
 The morning star of art, he rose across the eastern sea. 
 To wake the slumbering harp and set the frozen fountain free : 
 Now, wrapt in glory's mist, he seeks his orient skies again. 
 And tender thoughts in sorrowing hearts are all that must re- 
 main. 
 
 11. 
 
 Slow fade, across a drearier sea, beneath a darker sky. 
 
 The dreams that cheer, the lights that lure, the baffled hopes that 
 
 die. 
 Youth's trust. Love's bliss. Ambition's pride — the white wings 
 
 all are flown, 
 And Memory walks the lonely shore, indifferent and alone. 
 
 1 Copyright by the Macmillan Company, of New York. 
 
i^enrp 9[tbing» 
 
 II 
 
 Yet sometimes o'er that shadowy deep, by wand'ring breezes 
 
 blown, 
 Float odors from Hesperian isles, with music's organ tone. 
 And something stirs within the breast, a secret, nameless thrill, 
 To say, though worn and sear and sad, our hearts are human 
 
 still ;— 
 
 If not the torrid diamond wave that made young life sublime, 
 If not the tropic rose that bloomed in every track of time. 
 If not exultant passion's glow when all the world was fair. 
 At least one flash of heaven, one breath of art's immortal air ! 
 
 Ah, God make bright, for many a year, on Beauty's heavenly 
 
 shrine, 
 This hallowed fire that Thou hast lit, this sacred soul of Thine, 
 While Love's sweet light and Sorrow's tear — life's sunshine 
 
 dimm'd with showers — 
 Shall keep for aye his memory green in these true hearts of 
 
 ours ! 
 
IAN MACLAREN 
 

91an iHaclaren. 
 
 POETRY AND PATHOS IN SCOTTISH 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 SPEECH AND POEM AT A LOTOS CLUB DINNER 
 . TO IAN MACLAREN (REV. JOHN WATSON, D. D.), 
 NEW YORK, DECEMBER 6, 1896. 
 
 Mr, President AND Gentlemen of THE Lotos Club: 
 
 IT is a pleasure to know, from the assurance we have 
 just received, that every man who rises upon the 
 platform of the Lotos Club immediately becomes elo- 
 quent, — for I do not recall an occasion when the need 
 of eloquence was more urgent. In this distinguished 
 presence I should have been pleased to remain silent ; 
 to listen, not to speak. But since, in your kindness, 
 you will have it otherwise, I must thank you as well as 
 I can, and I do thank you, most sincerely, for the privi- 
 lege of participating in your whole-hearted and lovely 
 tribute to the great writer who is your guest to-night. 
 All that I feel, as an humble and obscure votary of 
 literature standing in the presence of one of its masters, 
 could not be briefly spoken, but the httle that it seems 
 essential I should say can be said in a few words. 
 My oratorical ministrations, as many of my present 
 hearers are aware, have usually, and almost exclusively, 
 been invoked upon occasions of farewell, — until I have 
 
 IS 
 
i6 % Wttat^ of %amd. 
 
 come to feel like that serious Boston clergyman who 
 declined to read the wedding service because he con- 
 sidered himself "reserved for funerals." A certain 
 delightful humorist now present, however, has recorded 
 for you the reassuring opinion of the grave-digger of 
 Drumtochty, that there is no real pleasure in a mar- 
 riage, because you never know how it will end: 
 whereas there is no risk whatever in a burial. Under 
 these circumstances you know what to expect. It is 
 no part of my intention to infringe upon the facetious 
 treatment of this occasion. 
 
 About eight years ago, when I visited for the first 
 time [1888], the glorious city of Edinburgh, I had the 
 singular good fortune to meet with a venerable gentle- 
 man, — Capt. W. Sandylands, — then more than eighty, 
 who, in his youth, had personally known Sir Walter 
 Scott ; and he described, minutely and with natural en- 
 thusiasm, the appearance of that great man, as he had 
 often seen him, when walking in Prince's street, on 
 his way to and from that Castle street house which 
 has become a shrine of devout pilgrimage from every 
 quarter of the world. What a privilege it was to have 
 looked upon that astonishing genius — that splendid 
 image of chivalry and heroism! To have heard his 
 voice ! To have seen his greeting smile ! To have 
 clasped the hand that wrote "Ivanhoe" and "The 
 Antiquary," " Old Mortality " and " The Lady of the 
 Lake " ! As I listened, I felt myself drawn nearer 
 and ever nearer to the sacred presence of a great 
 benefactor ; to the presence of that wonderful man, 
 who, next to Shakespeare, has, during all my life, been 
 
%m flu^aclaren* 17 
 
 to me the most bountiful giver of cheer and strength 
 and hope and happy hours. To you, my hearers, for- 
 tunate children of the Lotos flower, within the twenty- 
 six years of your club life, has fallen the golden op- 
 portunity of personal communion with some of the 
 foremost men, whether of action or of thought, who 
 have arisen to guide and illumine the age; — Froude, 
 who so royally depicted the pageantry and pathos of 
 the Past ; Grant, who so superbly led the warrior le- 
 gions of the Present; Charles Kingsley, with his deep 
 and touching voice of humanity; Wilkie Collins, with 
 his magic wand of mystery and his weird note of ro- 
 mance; Oliver Wendell Holmes, the modern Theoc- 
 ritus, the most comforting of philosophers; Mark Twain, 
 true and tender heart and first humorist of the age ; 
 and Henry Irving, noble gentleman and prince of 
 actors. Those bright names, and many more, will rise 
 in your glad remembrance ; and I know you will agree 
 that, in every case, when the generous mind pays its 
 homage to the worth of a great man, the impulse is 
 not that of adulation, but that of gratitude. Such is 
 the feeling of this hour, when now you are assembled 
 to honor the author of the " Bonnie Brier Bush," the 
 most exquisite literary artist, in the vein of mingled 
 humor and pathos, who has risen in Scotland, since the 
 age when Sir Walter Scott, — out of the munificence 
 of his fertile genius, — created Wamba the Jester, Cud- 
 die Headrigg, Caleb Balderstone, Dugald Dalgetty, 
 Dominie Sampson, and Jeannie Deans. 
 
 There are two principles of art, or canons of criti- 
 cism, call them what you will, to which my allegiance 
 6 
 
i8 ^ Wttatf^ of %amd. 
 
 is irrevocably plighted : that it is always best to show 
 to mankind the things which are to be emulated, 
 rather than the things which are to be shunned, and 
 (since the moral element, whether as morality or im- 
 morality, is present in all things, perpetually obvious, 
 and always able to take care of itself), that no work 
 of art should have an avowed moral. Those prin- 
 ciples are conspicuously illustrated in the writings of 
 Dr. Watson. Without didacticism they teach, and 
 without effort they charm. Their strength is ele- 
 mental; their stroke is no less swift than sure, — like 
 the scimetar of Saladdin, which, with one sudden waft 
 of the strong and skilful hand, could shear in twain the 
 scarf of silk or the cushion of down. Dr. Watson has 
 himself told you that " we cannot analyze a spiritual 
 fact." We all know that the spirit of his art is noble, 
 and that its influence is tender and sweet. We all 
 know that it has, again and again, suddenly, and at 
 the same instant, brought the smile to our lips and the 
 tears into our eyes. I cannot designate its secret. I 
 suppose it to be the same inaccessible charm of truth 
 that hallows the simple words of the dying Lear : 
 
 Pray you undo this button : Thank you, sir ; 
 
 the same ineffable pathos that is in the death speech 
 of Brutus : 
 
 Night hangs upon mine eyes ; my bones would rest, 
 That have but labour'd to attain this hour ; 
 
 the same voice of patient grief that breathes in the 
 touching farewell of Cassius : 
 
Slan ^atWm. 19 
 
 Time is come round, 
 And where I did begin there shall I end — 
 My life is run his compass ; 
 
 the same woful sense and utterance of human misery 
 that thrills through the wonderful words of Timon : 
 
 My long sickness 
 Of health and living now begins to mend, 
 And nothing brings me all things ; 
 
 the same exquisite flow of feeling that is in the lilt of 
 Burns, when he sings of the Jacobite cavalier : 
 
 He turned him right and round about 
 
 Upon the Irish shore ; 
 And gave his bridle reins a shake 
 
 With adieu for evermore, my dear, 
 
 And adieu for evermore. 
 
 I remember that magic touch in some of the poems 
 of Richard Henry Stoddard, and in some of the stories 
 — the matchless American stories — of Bret Harte. 
 I recognize it in the sad talk of poor old Bows, the 
 fiddler, when, in the night, upon the bridge at Chat- 
 teris, he speaks to the infatuated Pendennis, about the 
 heartless and brainless actress to whom they both are 
 devoted, and drops the stump of his cigar into the 
 dark water below. I feel it in that solemn moment 
 when, as the tolling bell of the Charterhouse chapel 
 calls him for the last time to prayer, the finest gentle- 
 man in all fiction answers to his name and stands in 
 the presence of the Master : and I say that there is 
 but one step from the death-bed of Colonel Newcome 
 to the death-bed of William Maclure. 
 
20 % Wtmf^ of Haurd* 
 
 Through all that is finest and most precious in lit- 
 erature, like the King's Yarn in the cables of the old 
 British navy, runs that lovely note of poetry and 
 pathos. So, from age to age, the never-dying torch 
 of genius is passed from hand to hand. When Rob- 
 ert Burns died, in 1796, it might have been thought 
 that the authentic voice of poetry had been hushed 
 forever; but, even then, a boy was playing on the 
 banks of the Dee, whose song of passion and of grief 
 would one day convulse the world ; and the name of 
 him was Byron. In that year of fatality, 1832, when 
 Crabbe and Scott and Goethe died, and when the ob- 
 server could not but remember that Keats and Shelley 
 and Byron were also gone, it might again have been 
 thought that genius had taken its final flight to Hea- 
 ven ; but, even then, among the pleasant plains of 
 Lincolnshire, the young Tennyson was ripening for 
 the glory that was to come. And now, when we look 
 around us, and see, in England, such writers as Black- 
 more, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling, and, in 
 Scotland, such writers as John Watson, and Barrie, 
 and William Black, and Crockett, I think that we 
 may feel, — much as we reverence the genius of Dick- 
 ens and Thackeray and George Eliot, and much as 
 we deplore their loss, — that the time of acute mourn- 
 ing for those great leaders has come to an end. 
 
 Nor am I surprised that the present awakening of 
 poetry, passion, and pathos in literature has come 
 from Scotland. When, on a windy Sabbath day of 
 cloud and sunshine, I have stood upon the old Calton 
 hill, and, under a blue and black sky, seen the white 
 
9[an ^odatetu 
 
 smoke from a thousand chimneys drifting over the 
 gray city of Edinburgh; when from the breezy, fra- 
 grant Braid Hills I have gazed out over the crystal 
 Forth, " whose islands on its bosom lie, like emeralds 
 chased with gold"; when from the gloomy height 
 of the Necropolis I have looked across to ancient 
 Glasgow and the gaunt and grim Cathedral of Rob 
 Roy; when I have seen Dumbarton rock burst through 
 the mountainous mist and frown upon the sparkling 
 Clyde; when, from the slopes of Ben Cruachan, I 
 have watched the sunset shadows darkening in the 
 dim valleys of Glen Strae; when, just before the 
 dawn, I have paused beside the haunted Cona, and 
 looked up at the cold stars watching over the black 
 chasms of Glencoe; and when at midnight, I have 
 stood alone in the broken and ruined Cathedral of 
 lona, and heard only the ghostly fluttering of the 
 rooks and the murmuring surges of the desolate sea, I 
 have not wondered that Scotland has all the poetry, 
 and that deep in the heart of every true Scotchman 
 there is a chord that trembles not alone to the im- 
 mortal melodies of Burns and Scott, but to the eternal 
 harmonies of Nature and of God. There may be 
 countries that are more romantic and more poetical. 
 I have not seen them ; and as I think of Scotland I 
 echo the beautiful words of Burns : 
 
 Still o'er the scene my mem'ry wakes, 
 And fondly broods with miser care ; 
 
 Time but th' impression deeper makes, 
 As streams their channels deeper wear. 
 
% Wttm of %antd. 
 
 I propose this sentiment: Scotland, its glories, its 
 memories, its beauties, and its loves : and I will close 
 this address with some verses of mine, expressive of 
 the feeling with which I parted from the most sacred 
 of Scottish shrines : 
 
 FAREWELL TO lONA.^ 
 
 Shrined among their crystal seas — 
 Thus I saw the Hebrides : 
 
 All the land with verdure dight; 
 All the heavens flushed with light ; 
 
 Purple jewels 'neath the tide ; 
 Hill and meadow glorified ; 
 
 Beasts at ease and birds in air ; 
 Life and beauty everywhere ! 
 
 Shrined amid their crystal seas — 
 Thus I saw the Hebrides. 
 
 Fading in the sunset smile — 
 Thus I left the Holy Isle; 
 
 Saw it slowly fade away. 
 Through the mist of parting day ; 
 
 Saw its ruins, grim and old, 
 And its bastions, bathed in gold, 
 
 1 Copyright by the Macmillan Company, of New York. 
 
3(an !3i^acJatcn» 23 
 
 Rifted crag and snowy beach, 
 
 Where the sea-gulls swoop and screech, 
 
 Vanish, and the shadows fall, 
 To the lonely curlew's call. 
 
 Fading in the sunset smile — 
 Thus I left the Holy Isle. 
 
 As Columba, old and ill. 
 Mounted on the sacred hill, 
 
 Raising hands of faith and prayer, 
 Breathed his benediction there, — 
 
 Stricken with its solemn giace — 
 Thus my spirit blessed the place: 
 
 O'er it while the ages range. 
 
 Time be blind and work no change! 
 
 On its plenty be increase! 
 On its homes perpetual peace! 
 
 While around its lonely shore 
 Wild winds rave and breakers roar. 
 
 Round its blazing hearths be blent 
 Virtue, comfort, and content ! 
 
 On its beauty, passing all. 
 
 Ne'er may blight nor shadow fall ! 
 
 Ne'er may vandal foot intrude 
 On its sacred solitude ! 
 
24 31 Wttst^ of Haurcl. 
 
 May its ancient fame remain 
 Glorious, and without a stain; 
 
 And the hope that ne'er departs, 
 Live within its loving hearts ! 
 
 Slowly fades the sunset light. 
 Slowly round me falls the night: 
 
 Gone the Isle, and distant far 
 All its loves and glories are; 
 
 Yet forever, in my mind, 
 
 Still will sigh the wand'ring wind. 
 
 And the music of the seas, 
 Mid the lonely Hebrides. 
 
MY LOTOS NIGHT 
 
 ' AND WHAT HAVE I TO GIVE YOU BACK, WHOSE WORTH 
 MAY COUNTERPOISE THIS RICH AND PRECIOUS GIFT?" 
 
 — SHAKESPEARE 
 
Cl^e ^tage ant) it^ ^po^tle^* 
 
 speech and poem delivered before the lotos 
 
 club, new york, at a festival in honor 
 
 of the speaker, april 24, 1 897. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen 
 OF the Lotos Club : 
 
 THE meaning and the elements of this charming 
 spectacle, — the lights, the flowers, the music, the 
 gentle, eager, friendly faces, the kind and generous 
 words which have been so graciously spoken, the cor- 
 dial sympathy and welcome with which those words 
 have been received, the many denotements, unequiv- 
 ocal and decisive, of personal good will, — are as 
 touching to the heart as they are lovely to the senses, 
 and a fond and proud remembrance of this beautiful 
 scene will abide with me as long as anything in my 
 life is remembered. 
 
 On previous occasions when I have been privileged 
 to participate in festivals of the Lotos Club it has been 
 my glad province to unite in homage to others : on 
 the present occasion I am to thank you, — and I do 
 thank you, most heartily, — for a tribute of friendship 
 to myself. Gratitude is easy; but an adequate ex- 
 pression of it, under the circumstances which exist, is 
 well nigh impossible. The Moslems have a fanciful 
 27 
 
28 % Wtm^ of EauteL 
 
 belief that the soul of the Faithful, just before it enters 
 into Paradise, must walk, barefooted, across a bridge 
 of red-hot iron. That ordeal not inaptly typifies the 
 experience of the honored guest who, at a feast like 
 this, is bidden to consider his merits, must hear the 
 commendation of his deeds, and must utter his thanks 
 for the bounty of praise. My first impulse would be 
 to declare that I have done nothing to merit this honor : 
 but, without qualification, to disclaim all desert would be 
 to impugn your judgment and discredit your kindness. 
 The great and wise Dr. Johnson, I remember, did not 
 scruple to accept the praises of his sovereign. " When 
 the King had said it," he afterward remarked, " it was 
 to be so." My literary life, — dating from the publi- 
 cation of my first book, in Boston, in 1854, — has ex- 
 tended over a period of forty-three years, thirty-seven 
 of which have been passed, in active labor, in this com- 
 munity. Since 1865 I have been the accredited and 
 responsible representative of" The New York Tribune " 
 in the department of the Drama. In the dramatic 
 field, and also in the fields of Poetry, Essay, Biography 
 and Travel, I have put forth my endeavors, striving to 
 add something of permanent value to the literature of 
 my native land. No one knows so well as I do my 
 failures and my defects. But, — I have tried to follow 
 the right course; I have done my best; and now, in 
 the review of that long period of labor, if you, my 
 friends, find anything that is worthy of approval, any- 
 thing that seems, in your eyes, to justify such a testi- 
 monial as thiS;, it would ill become me to repel an 
 approbation which it is honorable to possess, and which 
 
9[^p HotOjSf 0ii^t 29 
 
 I have labored and hoped to deserve. When the King 
 has said it, it is to be so ! 
 
 While, however, I gratefully accept and deeply value 
 the honor that you have bestowed, I feel that you 
 have intended something much more important and 
 significant than a compliment to me. You have de- 
 sired to effect a rally of stage veterans and of the 
 friends of the stage, and, at a time of theatrical de- 
 pression, when the fortunes of the actor seem dubious 
 and perplexed, to evince, once more, your practical 
 admiration for the great art of acting, your high es- 
 teem for the stage as a means of social welfare, and 
 your sympathy with every intellectual force that is 
 arrayed for its support. The drift of your thought, 
 therefore, naturally, is toward a consideration of the 
 relation between the theatre and society, together with 
 the province of those writers by whom that relation is 
 habitually discussed. It is a wide subject, and one 
 upon which there are many and sharply contrasted 
 views. For my own part, I have always believed — 
 of all the arts — that they are divinely commissioned 
 to lead humanity, and not to follow it, and that it is 
 the supreme duty of a writer to advocate, and to ex- 
 ercise, a noble influence, rather than much to concern 
 himself with the delivery of expert opinions upon indi- 
 vidual achievement. The right principle is expressed 
 in the quaint words of Emerson : 
 
 I hold it a little matter 
 
 Whether your jewel be of pure water, 
 
 A rose diamond or a white, 
 
 But whether it dazzle me with light. 
 
30 % Wtm^ of %mtd. 
 
 The essential thing is the inspiration that is fluent 
 from a great personahty. The passport to momentous 
 and permanent victory, whether on the stage or off, is 
 the salutary and ennobling strength of splendid char- 
 acter. It is not enough that you possess ability; your 
 ability must mean something to others, and the world 
 must be exalted by it. 
 
 Many images crowd upon the mind at such a mo- 
 ment as this, and many names are remembered which 
 it would be good to mention and pleasant to hear. 
 My thoughts go back to my young acquaintance with 
 such stage advocates as Epes Sargent and Edwin 
 Percy Whipple, Henry Giles and William Clapp, Wal- 
 lace Thaxter and Charles T. Congdon, Francis A. 
 Durivage, Charles Fairbanks, Curtis Guild, and James 
 Oakes (the friend of Forrest); and, as I think of 
 them, I recall a time when Catherine Farren was the 
 Juliet of my dreams, and Julia Dean the goddess of 
 every youth's idolatry, and when the green curtain (in 
 those days it was always green), never rose except 
 upon a land of enchantment, and the roses were always 
 bright by the calm Bendemeer. Much might be said 
 of those old times, and much might be said of the crit- 
 ical art, as it was exemplified by those old writers. 
 But this is not the moment for either a memoir or an 
 essay ; and, after all, experience may sometimes utter 
 in a sentence the lesson of a life. As I have said 
 elsewhere, — to understand human nature; to ab- 
 sorb and coordinate the literature of the drama; 
 to see the mental, moral, and spiritual aspect of 
 the stage, and likewise to see the popular aspect of 
 
09p EotOiBf l^igjjt 31 
 
 it ; to write for a public of miscellaneous readers, and 
 at the same time to respect the feelings and interpret 
 the ambitions of actors; to praise with discretion and 
 yet with force ; to censure without asperity ; to think 
 quickly and speak quickly, and yet avoid error; to op- 
 pose sordid selfishness, which forever strives to degrade 
 every high ideal ; to give not alone knowledge, study, 
 and technical skill, but the best powers of the mind 
 and the deepest feelings of the heart to the embellish- 
 ment of the art of others, and to do that with an art 
 of your own, — this it is to accomplish the work of the 
 dramatic reviewer. It is a work of serious moment 
 and incessant difficulty. But it has its bright side; 
 for, as years speed on and life grows bleak and lone- 
 some, it is the Stage that gives relief from paltry con- 
 ventionality ; it is the Stage, with its sunshine of hu- 
 mor and its glory of imagination, that wiles us away 
 from our defeated ambitions, our waning fortunes, and 
 the broken idols of our vanishing youth. In the long 
 process of social development, — at least within the last 
 three hundred years, — no other single force has borne 
 a more conspicuous or a more potential part. " The 
 reason of things," said Dr. South, "lies in a small com- 
 pass, if a man could but find it out." The reason of 
 the Drama has never been a mystery. All life has, for its 
 ultimate object, a spiritual triumph. The Divine Spirit 
 works in humanity by many subtle ways. It is man's 
 instinctive, intuitive imitation of nature that creates ar- 
 tificial objects of beauty. Those, in turn, react upon 
 the human mind and deepen and heighten its sense of 
 the beautiful. It is man's interpretation of humanity 
 
32 % IBreatU of Hautel. 
 
 that has revealed to him his Divine Father and his 
 spiritual destiny. All things work together for that 
 result, — the dramatic art deeply and directly, be- 
 cause, when rightly administered, it is the pure mirror 
 of all that is glorious in character and all that is noble 
 and gentle in the conduct of life; showing ever the 
 excellence to be emulated and the glory to be gained, 
 soothing our cares, dispelling our troubles, and casting 
 the glamour of romantic grace upon all the common- 
 places of the world. What happy dreams it has in- 
 spired ! What grand ideals it has imparted ! With 
 what gentle friendships it has blessed and beautified 
 our lives! 
 
 Moralists upon the Drama are fond of dwelling on 
 its alleged decline from certain " palmy days " of the 
 past, — a vague period which no one distinctly remem- 
 bers or defines, and which still recedes, the more dili- 
 gently it is pursued, " in the dark backward and abysm 
 of time." One difference between the Past and the 
 Present is that the stage which once lived in a camp 
 now lives in a palace. Another difference is that emi- 
 nent talents which once were concentrated are now 
 diffused. The standard of taste has fluctuated. At 
 the beginning of the century it appears to have been 
 more fastidious and more intellectual than it is now, 
 but not more so than it has two or three times been, 
 within the intervening period. In my boyhood the 
 great tragic genius of the stage was the elder Booth, 
 whom I saw as Pescara, during his last engagement 
 in Boston, in 1851, — and a magnificent image he was, 
 of appalling power and terror. The popular sovereign. 
 
ar^P Hoto^ l^igjt 33 
 
 however, was Edwin Forrest, and for many years his 
 influence survived, affecting the style of such com- 
 peers as Eddy, Neafie, Scott, Proctor, Kirby, and Mar- 
 shall, and more or less moulding that of the romantic 
 Edwin Adams, the intellectual Lawrence Barrett, and 
 the gentle, generous, affectionate, stalwart John Mc- 
 Cullough, " the noblest Roman of them all." In com- 
 edy the prevalent tradition was that of Finn, — whom 
 I never saw, but of whom I constantly heard, — but 
 the actual prince was the elder Wallack ; and very soon 
 after he had sparkled into splendid popularity the rosy 
 gods of mirth released such messengers of happiness as 
 Warren and Gilbert, Burton and Blake, Hackett and 
 Fisher, Placide and Owens, and the buoyant John 
 Brougham, whose memory is still cherished in all our 
 hearts. A little later, — the more intellectual taste in 
 tragedy gaining a sudden preeminence, from the reac- 
 tion against Forrest, — the spiritual beauty and the wild 
 and thrilling genius of Edwin Booth enchanted the 
 public mind and captured an absolute sovereignty of 
 the serious stage ; while, in comedy, the glittering figure 
 of Lester Wallack bore to the front rank, and reared 
 more splendidly than ever before, the standard of 
 Wilks, and Lewis, and Elliston, which had been pre- 
 served and transmitted by Charles Kemble, the elder 
 Wallack, and both the chieftains of the house of 
 Mathews. Meanwhile Murdock, Vandenhoff, E. L. 
 Davenport, and the younger James Wallack main- 
 tained, in royal state, the fine classic tradition of 
 Kemble, Cooper, Macready, and Young; the gran- 
 deur of Sarah Siddons lived again in Charlotte Cush- 
 
34 % HBreatl) of %mttl 
 
 man ; and, in the realm of imaginative, romantic, human 
 drama, a more exquisite artist of humor and of tears 
 than ever yet had risen on our stage — an artist who is 
 to Acting what Reynolds was to Painting and what 
 Hood was to Poetry — carried natural portraiture to 
 ideal perfection, and made illustrious the name of 
 Joseph Jefferson. 
 
 The stage, in itself, is not degenerate. The old fires 
 are not yet dead. The world moves onward, and " the 
 palmy days " move onward with the world. At this 
 moment the public taste is fickle and the public mo- 
 rality infirm ; but this moment is reactionary, and of 
 course it will not last. The stage has been degraded ; 
 the press has been polluted ; the church has been 
 shaken; the whole fabric of society has been threat- 
 ened. The assaults of materialism, blighting faith and 
 discrediting romance, have had a temporary triumph. 
 The dangerous delusion that there is a divinity in the 
 untaught multitude has everywhere promoted disorder, 
 violence, and vulgarity. So, from time to time, the 
 dregs endeavor to reach the top. But all this fever 
 and turmoil will pass; and, in those saner times which 
 are at hand, the Stage, as we know it and love it, — 
 the stage of Wignell and Dunlap, the stage of Keach 
 and Barry, the stage of Wallack, and Booth, and Henry 
 Irving, and Augustin Daly, the stage that, in our day, 
 has been adorned by Rachel, Ristori, Seebach, Jan- 
 auschek, and Modjeska, and by Adelai Neilson 
 and Mary Anderson (twin stars of loveliness, the one 
 all passion and sorrow, the other all innocence, light, 
 and joy !), the stage that possesses the wild, poetic 
 
2t9p Eoto^ mm* 35 
 
 beauty and rare, elusive, celestial spirit of Ellen Terry, 
 and the enchanting womanhood and blithe, gleeful, 
 tender human charm of Ada Rehan, the stage that 
 is consecrated to intellect, genius and beauty, — will 
 again assert its splendid power, and will again rejoice 
 in all the honors, and manifest all the inherent virtues, 
 of the stage of our forefathers, in the best of their 
 golden days. 
 
 But I detain you too long from voices more eloquent 
 than mine, and thoughts more worthy. There is little 
 more to be said. My career as an active writer about 
 the stage may, perhaps, be drawing to a close. It has 
 covered the period of more than one generation ; it has 
 been freighted with exacting responsibility; it has 
 been iiiexpressibly laborious ; and its conclusion would 
 cause me no regret. I have no enmities, and if ever 
 in my life I have wounded any heart, I have done 
 so without intention, and I hope that my error may 
 be forgiven. For the rest, I should exactly express 
 my feelings, if I might venture to use the words of 
 Landor : 
 
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ; 
 
 Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art ; 
 I warmed both hands against Jhe fire of life : 
 
 It sinks, and I am ready to depart. 
 
 Let me close this response with some Hnes that I 
 have written, remembering other days and other faces, 
 now hidden behind the veil, and remembering that 
 for me also the curtain soon may fall : 
 
2,6 % mtt&t)^ of Hautd* 
 
 MEMORY. 1 
 
 A tangled garden, bleak and dry 
 And silent 'neath a dark'ning sky, 
 Is all that barren Age retains 
 Of costly Youth's superb domains. 
 Mute in its bosom, cold and lone, 
 A dial watches, on a stone ; 
 The vines are sere, the haggard boughs 
 In dusky torpor dream and drowse ; 
 The paths are deep with yellow leaves, 
 In which the wind of evening grieves ; 
 And up and down, and to and fro. 
 One pale gray shadow wanders slow. 
 
 II. 
 When now the fading sunset gleams 
 Across a glimm'ring waste of dreams ; 
 When now the shadows eastward fall. 
 And twilight hears the curlew's call ; 
 When blighted now the lily shows, 
 And no more bloom is on the rose ; 
 What phantom of the dying day 
 Shall gild the wanderer's sombre way — 
 What new illusion of delight — 
 What magic, ushering in the night ? 
 For, deep beneath the proudest will 
 The heart must have its solace still. 
 
 III. 
 Ah, many a hope too sweet to last 
 Is in that garden of the Past, 
 And many a flower that once was fair 
 Lies cold and dead and wither'd there; 
 
 ^ Copyright by the Macmillan Company, of New York. 
 
^ %m^ ^mt^ 37 
 
 Youth's promise, trusted Friendship's bliss, 
 Fame's laurel, Love's enraptured kiss, 
 Beauty and strength — the spirit's wings — 
 And the glad sense of natural things. 
 And times that smile, and times that weep — 
 All shrouded in the cells of sleep ; 
 While o'er them careless zephyrs pass. 
 And sunbeams, in the rustling grass. 
 
 So ends it all : but never yet 
 Could the true heart of love forget. 
 And grander sway was never known 
 Than his who reigns on Memory's throne ! 
 Though grim the threat and dark the frown 
 With which the pall of night comes down, 
 Though all the scene be drear and wild, 
 Life once was precious, once it smiled. 
 And in his dream he lives again 
 With ev'ry joy that crowned it then. 
 And no remorse of time can dim 
 The splendor of the Past for him ! 
 
 The sea that round his childhood played 
 
 Still makes the music once it made, 
 
 And still in Fancy's chambers sing 
 
 The breezes of eternal Spring ; 
 
 While, thronging Youth's resplendent track. 
 
 The princes and the queens come back, 
 
 And everywhere the dreary mould 
 
 Breaks into Nature's green and gold ! 
 
 It is not night — or, if it be, 
 
 So let the night descend for me, 
 
 When Mem'ry's radiant dream shall cease, 
 
 Slow lapsing into perfect peace. 
 
ACTING AND WRITING 
 
VL^t 9!ntellectual ^tanuarn in 
 acting ann mntin^. 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED BEFORE THE ACTORS' FUND 
 
 SOCIETY, AT THE GARRICK THEATRE, NEW YORK, 
 
 JUNE 8, 1897. 
 
 Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 IT is an honor and a pleasure to be permitted to par- 
 ticipate in this festival of art, taste, scholarship 
 and friendship, within the limits of the dramatic pro- 
 fession, and I thank you for the kindness with which 
 my name has been greeted. After about forty years 
 of continuous public service, as a reviewer of the acted 
 Drama and as an essayist on the art of acting and 
 on the achievements of actors, I hope it will not be 
 considered a presumption if I venture to speak of 
 myself as a friend of the stage. In that capacity I 
 respond, as well as I may, to this summons — in that 
 capacity and that alone. 
 
 The fact that an old professional reviewer of the 
 drama is asked to say a word, on this occasion, seems 
 to imply that some among you are mindful of the re- 
 lation which exists between the stage and its review- 
 ers, and are willing to remember it with kindness, at 
 this time. For my part, I wish that the relation be- 
 tween actor and commentator might always be viewed 
 as one of sympathy, and always remembered with 
 
 9 41 
 
42 311 l^teatjj of %mtth 
 
 kindness. Upon both sides there are, perhaps, some- 
 what mistaken views. " All the world's a stage," — 
 but the stage is not all the world. The press is a 
 power, — but the destiny enwrapt in character is 
 a greater power than the press. Actors sometimes 
 expect too much. Writers sometimes assume both 
 omniscience and omnipotence. A little moderation 
 might promote that fraternal feeling which certainly is 
 desirable between the professors of kindred arts. 
 
 Upon the province of the stage it is not needful for 
 me here to expatiate. Upon the province of the press 
 my views are, perhaps, somewhat peculiar. If I were 
 to suggest a line of thought, I should declare that the 
 function of the press is, first, to furnish the news, and, 
 secondly, to comment upon it in such a way as to 
 guide the public taste and opinion toward practical 
 favor of all things which are good. No writer can 
 either make or unmake the reputation of an actor. 
 He may accelerate the success of merit or the failure 
 of vain pretense, but he can neither suppress the one 
 nor sustain the other. Words are powerful, not be- 
 cause they are spoken, but because they are true; and 
 it is in the wise, clear, and cogent exposition of princi- 
 ples that truth makes itself practically felt. Personal 
 praise and personal censure have little, if any, serious 
 effect — for no one regards them. " What harm does 
 it do to a man," said Dr. Johnson, " to call him Holo- 
 fernes ? " The proper critic for most actors is the 
 stage manager. It is only the exceptional person, in 
 any art, who incarnates those influences which make 
 that art important to society, and thus render it a 
 
cutting anb 3©ntmg» 43 
 
 proper subject of public discussion. Actors ought not 
 to read anything that is printed about themselves, 
 whether it be good, bad, or indifferent. Upon the 
 one hand, printed commendation may prove an incen- 
 tive to vanity, — which usually needs no encourage- 
 ment, — while, on the other hand, printed censure is 
 sure to prove a depressing and enervating influence. 
 
 Early in my life (I do not speak as an actor, but as 
 a writer), the poet Longfellow, at whose fireside I was 
 often a guest, said to me: " I receive many reviews of 
 my writings. I look at the beginning, and if I find that 
 an article is agreeable, I read it through ; if not, I drop 
 it into my fire, and that is an end of the worry. You 
 are at the beginning of your career. Never read un- 
 pleasant criticisms, and never answer an attack." I 
 took that counsel to heart. I haye never answered an 
 attack, and it is many years since I have read any 
 reference to myself in print. I have a vague impres- 
 sion that references occur, — sometimes friendly and 
 sometimes hostile, — but I have kept myself in igno- 
 rance of almost all of them, and thus I have been able 
 to do my work in comparative peace. My advice to 
 actors has always been to take the same course, — to 
 avoid all reviews, my own included. 
 
 Discussion of the stage is intended not for actors, 
 but for readers, and it fulfils its purpose, — almost the 
 only purpose it can fulfil, — when it interests the 
 reader in the subject. Individual actors may some- 
 times be wounded by an exposition of principles of 
 art : that is almost inevitable : but the greatest service 
 any writer can render to the Drama is to oppose, — at 
 
44 % Wttatt^ Of Haurd* 
 
 all times and with all his strength, — those influences 
 which tend to degrade its intellectual standards. A 
 few examples will enforce my meaning. About 1861 
 Charles Fechter appeared upon the English stage 
 and gave an extraordinary performance of Hamlet. 
 It subsequently (1869-70) reached America. It was 
 "the rage" upon both sides of the sea. In a techni- 
 cal sense it was a performance of ability, but it was 
 chiefly remarkable for light hair and bad English. 
 Fanny Kemble tells a story of a lady who, at a dinner 
 in London, was asked by a neighboring guest whether 
 she had seen Mr. Fechter as Hamlet. " No," she 
 said, " I have not ; and I think I should not care to 
 hear the English blank verse spoken by a foreigner." 
 The inquirer gazed meditatively upon his plate for 
 some time, and then he said, " But Hamlet zvas a for- 
 eigner, was n't he ? " That is the gist of the whole 
 matter. We were to have the manner of" nature," in 
 blank verse. We were to have Hamlet in light hair, 
 because Danes are sometimes blonde. We were to 
 have the great soliloquy on life and death omitted, 
 because it stops the action of the play.i We were to 
 have the blank verse turned into a foreigner's broken 
 English prose. We were to have Hamlet crossing his 
 legs, upon the gravestone, as if he were Sir Charles 
 Coldstream ; and this was to be " nature." Mr. Fech- 
 ter's plan may have been finely executed, but it was 
 radically wrong, and it could not rightly be accepted. 
 
 1 Mr. Fechter did not discard that soliloquy, but he expressed, to Lester 
 Wallack, — who mentioned it to me, — his opinion that the omission of that 
 passage would be advantageous to the movement of the play ; and he always 
 spoke it as if it were prose. 
 
Acting anb l^titing* 45 
 
 Some courage was required to oppose it, because Mr. 
 Fechter had come to us (to me among others), person- 
 ally commended by no less a man than the great 
 Charles Dickens. A little later we had " the blonde " 
 craze. Horace Greeley once said to me : " Mr. Win- 
 ter, what is a blonde ? What is it like ? " " Sir," I 
 said, "it is an exuberant young female who has 
 bleached her hair, in order to resemble an albino, and 
 who sings, dances, and prattles nonsense." A little 
 later came the " Black Crook " craze — the semi-nude 
 figure and the red-fire spectacle. Those things were 
 not intrinsically injurious. I have never known sound 
 moral instincts to be corrupted by anything on the 
 stage. But those forces were injurious to the art of 
 acting and to " the legitimate drama," in which I devot- 
 edly believe, and therefore it was right and necessary 
 to oppose them. A little later came the great Salvini, 
 a man of remarkable powers, of extraordinary phy- 
 sique, of vast experience, and of a colossal reputation. 
 He performed Othello — and he gave a radically 
 wrong performance. Half of it was grossly animal 
 and sensual, and the other half of it was hideously fe- 
 rocious. You cannot find that Moor in the pages of 
 Shakespeare. It was impossible to resist the power 
 of Salvini's executive dramatic genius; but his stan- 
 dard was radically wrong, for the English classic 
 drama, and therefore it was rightly opposed ; for if the 
 physical method of Salvini be correct, all the traditions 
 of the English stage are useless, and every student ot 
 Shakespeare, from Coleridge to Dowden, has gone 
 astray. Next, out of France, came Sarah Bernhardt, 
 
46 % Wtmtt^ of Eaiurd* 
 
 a woman of rare powers and large experience, who, al- 
 most invariably, with an iteration not less astonishing 
 than deplorable, devoted her genius to the exposition 
 of the most pernicious and hateful ideal of woman 
 that can be imagined — the woman who is radically 
 depraved, sensual, carnal, and base, and whose loath- 
 some career of appetite and crime culminates in mur- 
 der and terminates in violent death. The skill with 
 which that ideal was presented impressed many 
 people as marvellous. The effect of it was that ot 
 distress, horror, and aversion, — causing the specta- 
 tor to remember the theatre, not as a temple of beauty, 
 but as a hospital or a madhouse. Latest of all these 
 dramatic " fads " came a series of unfragrant plays, 
 exploiting the relation of the blackguard and the 
 demirep, calling it "a social problem," and causing no 
 better effect than a profound disgust for human nature, 
 together with the domestic embarrassment of awk- 
 ward questions at breakfast. Other examples might 
 be cited, but these suffice. Opposition to the fancy 
 of the hour may, at the moment, seem unwise and 
 unkind, but, in the long run, it is seen to be right; for 
 the principles of dramatic art do not change; the 
 moral law is inexorable; and the duty of the critic, 
 at all times, is to protect the stage against every 
 wrong and bad influence, and to maintain and insist 
 that acting can achieve the best results, and rise to the 
 highest summits, and still remain within the limits of 
 good breeding and good taste. 
 
 It was lately my fortune to be greatly honored by 
 the Lotos Club, of New York, with a complimentary 
 
cutting anb Hunting* 47 
 
 banquet, the gracious tribute of friendly persons, who 
 see that Time has showered me with silver, and who, 
 as they think of many farewells, may perhaps have 
 reflected that yet another is not far away. As I 
 looked around upon those crowded tables I could not 
 but notice that the countenances were mostly those of 
 strangers ; but I saw, as in a vision, the faces of more 
 than a hundred actors, men and women of the past, 
 all of whom were my personal friends; all of whom 
 would gladly have been present; all of whom were 
 gone! And the tender lines of Uhland floated into 
 my mind : 
 
 Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee, — 
 
 Take, I give it willingly ; 
 
 For, invisible to thee, 
 
 Spirits twain have crossed with me. 
 
 What was the peculiarity of those actors of the 
 Past? Their peculiarity was that, with little excep- 
 tion, they were engaged in doing noble things. They 
 aimed at splendid intellectual results. Is that the 
 case, to any considerable extent, upon the American 
 stage to-day ? And if it be not the case to-day, why 
 should it not be? The same human nature exists. 
 The sunrise and the sunset are still beautiful. Youth 
 and innocence and goodness are as much in the world 
 as they ever were. Art is still subtle ; genius is still 
 sublime; and still the fires of love and hope are burn- 
 ing with immortal splendor on the living altars of the 
 human heart. 
 
 It is said that we cling too much to the Past. Well, 
 some of us, perhaps, do. It was noticed by Patrick 
 
48 311 Wteatf^ of %mttl 
 
 Henry that " the past at least is secure." What else 
 have we got, to cling to ? The past is the glory of 
 Greece and of Rome. The past is the splendid 
 civilization and the matchless literature of England. 
 The past is Shakespeare, and Milton, and Byron, and 
 Scott, and Wordsworth, and Burns, and Shelley, and 
 Coleridge, and Tennyson. The past is Burbage, 
 and Betterton, and Garrick, and Kemble, and Kean, 
 and Macready, and Forrest, and Davenport, and 
 Cushman, and Edwin Booth — and all the rest of that 
 long line of superb actors by whom your profession 
 has been ennobled and adorned. And just as we 
 travel in foreign lands to absorb the beauty that 
 we would reproduce and perpetuate in our own, so 
 we love and venerate and study the past, in order, by 
 its lessons of grandeur and of grace, to advance, to 
 ennoble, and to consecrate the present. 
 
THE ANCIENT GLORIES OF THE 
 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 
 
Cl^e ancient (lE>lorie0 of 
 Cl^e iSoman Catl^olic €l)mc^. 
 
 speech and poem at a festival in honor of judge 
 joseph f, daly, given by the catholic club, 
 new york, november 6, 1897. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of 
 THE Catholic Club : 
 
 SPEECH is said to be silver, silence to be golden, 
 and since I was ever a believer in the gold stan- 
 dard, it would be my preference to remain silent, — to 
 listen, not to speak. But, since you wish it to be 
 otherwise, I will say a few words, to thank you for your 
 kind greeting and for the pleasure of participating in 
 your festival. It is a festival with which I deeply 
 sympathize, — because its purpose is to express affec- 
 tion for a beloved comrade, and to pay a tribute of 
 honor to a noble gentleman. For the privilege of 
 being present on this occasion I am indebted to no 
 merit of my own, but to a long-existent friendship 
 with your distinguished guest, — a friendship which, 
 beginning thirty years ago, has never known a single 
 passing cloud, but has grown ever lovelier and more 
 precious as those years have drifted away. Your kind 
 invitation, accordingly, came to me more as a com- 
 mand than a request ; and also, let me add, consid- 
 51 
 
52 % Wtmf^ of atautri- 
 
 ering the name and the character of your club, it came 
 to me with irresistible allurement. 
 
 The bond of your society, as I comprehend it, is 
 not only that of friendship, but that of religion. Be- 
 hind the Catholic Club stands the Catholic Church, 
 and to think of the Catholic Church is to think of the 
 oldest, the most venerable, and the most powerful in- 
 stitution existing among men. I am not a churchman, 
 of any kind : that, possibly, is my misfortune : but I 
 am conscious of a profound obligation of gratitude to 
 that wise, august, austere, yet tenderly human eccle- 
 siastical power which, self-centred amid the vicis- 
 situdes of human affairs, and provident for men of 
 learning, imagination, and sensibility throughout the 
 world, has preserved the literature and art of all the 
 centuries, has made architecture the living symbol of 
 celestial aspiration, and, in poetry and in music, has 
 heard, and has transmitted, the authentic voice of God. 
 I say that I am not a churchman; but I would also 
 say that the best hours of my life have been hours of 
 meditation passed in the glorious cathedrals and 
 among the sublime ecclesiastical ruins of England. I 
 have worshipped in Canterbury and York; in Win- 
 chester and Salisbury; in Lincoln and Durham; in 
 Ely, and in Wells. I have stood in Tintern, when 
 the green grass and the white daisies were waving in 
 the summer wind, and have looked upon those gray 
 and russet walls, and upon those lovely arched case- 
 ments, — among the most graceful ever devised by hu- 
 man art, — round which the sheeted ivy droops, and 
 through which the winds of heaven sing a perpetual 
 
€j)c 0oman Catjjolic 4lljiu:c8» 53 
 
 requiem. I have seen the shadows of evening slowly 
 gather and softly fall, over the gaunt tower, the roof- 
 less nave, the giant pillars, and the shattered arcades 
 of Fountains Abbey, in its sequestered and melancholy 
 solitude, where ancient Ripon dreams, in the spacious 
 and verdant valley of the Skell. I have mused upon 
 Netley^ and Kirkstall, and Newstead, and Bolton, and 
 Melrose, and Dryburgh. And, at a midnight hour, 
 I have stood in the grim and gloomy chancel of 
 St. Columba's Cathedral, remote in the storm-swept 
 Hebrides, and looked upward to the cold stars, and 
 heard the voices of the birds of night, mingled with 
 the desolate moaning of the sea. With awe, with 
 reverence, with many strange and wild thoughts, I 
 have lingered and pondered in those haunted, holy 
 places; but one remembrance was always present, — 
 the remembrance that it was the Catholic Church that 
 created those forms of beauty, and breathed into them 
 the breath of a divine life, and hallowed them forever ; 
 and, thus thinking, I have felt the unspeakable pathos 
 of her long exile from the temples that her passionate 
 devotion prompted and her loving labor reared. 
 
 It was natural, therefore, that I should be allured 
 by your invitation, — should be attracted to the votaries 
 of this Catholic Club, to whom such relics are sacred, 
 and to whom such thoughts, however inadequate, may 
 not seem entirely vain. It was especially natural that 
 I should be attracted to this society, assembled to 
 honor an old friend, who, in every walk of life, has 
 borne himself with dignity and ability, and who stands 
 now, without blemish and without reproach, at the 
 
54 ^ IBreatU of Hautd* 
 
 white summit of his noble career. Rich in scholar- 
 ship, copious and delicate in humor, accomplished 
 in jurisprudence, eloquent, faithful, and just, Judge 
 Daly merits every plaudit that respect can prompt or 
 love can utter. I am indeed grateful to be allowed to 
 add my humble homage to your more eloquent and 
 more worthy tribute. In my youth I was a lawyer, a 
 member of the Suffolk bar, in Boston (though never in 
 practice), when Goodrich and Loring, Hallett and 
 Prince, Bartlett and Rufus Choate contended in the 
 forum, and when Nash, and Bigelow, and Metcalf, and 
 Shaw were illustrious upon the bench. Joel Parker, 
 Emory Washburn, and Theophilus Parsons had been 
 my teachers ; and, if I learned nothing else in those 
 distant days, I learned to reverence the glorious science 
 of the Law, and to appreciate the attributes of a great 
 jurist. 
 
 It is a comfort to think that such homage as you are 
 offering to-night has not been withheld till it could no 
 longer gratify the mind or cheer the heart of the 
 friend whom you delight to honor. Tributes of this 
 kind, amid the tumult of our busy civilization, are not 
 too frequent. The day declines; the darkness draws 
 on; the Old Guard is fast passing away. Its mem- 
 bers may well be mindful of each other, while there is 
 yet time. I did not intend a speech, but only to ex- 
 press my sympathy and my gratitude; and I cannot 
 more fully say what I feel than by repeating one ot 
 my poems, which, although not originally intended 
 for an occasion, may, perhaps, be considered appro- 
 priate here. It is called 
 
€f)e toman (ITatlJoIic Cgurcft* 55 
 
 THE SIGNAL LIGHT.i 
 
 The lonely sailor, when the night 
 
 O'er ocean's glimm'ring waste descends, 
 
 Sets at the peak his signal light. 
 And fondly dreams of absent friends. 
 
 Starless the sky above him broods. 
 
 Pathless the waves beneath him swell ; 
 
 Through peril's spectral solitudes 
 That beacon flares — and all is well. 
 
 So, on the wand'ring sea of years, 
 When now the evening closes round, 
 
 I show the signal flame that cheers. 
 And scan the wide horizon's bound. 
 
 The night is dark, the winds are loud, 
 The black waves follow, fast and far ; 
 
 Yet soon may flash, through mist and cloud, 
 The radiance of some answ'ring star. 
 
 Haply across the shuddering deep. 
 One moment seen, a snowy sail 
 
 May dart with one impetuous leap, 
 And pass with one exultant hail ! 
 
 And I shall dearly, sweetly know. 
 
 Though storm be fierce and ocean drear. 
 
 That somewhere still the roses blow. 
 
 And hearts are true, and friends are near. 
 
 Each separate on the eternal main. 
 We seek the same celestial shore ; 
 
 Sometimes we part to meet again, 
 Sometimes we part to meet no more. 
 
 1 Copyright by the Macmillan Company, of New York. 
 
s6 % nateatf) of %mtd. 
 
 Ah, comrades, prize the gracious day 
 When sunshine bathes the tranquil tide. 
 
 And, careless as a child at play, 
 
 Our ships drift onward, side by side ! 
 
 Too oft, with cold and barren will, 
 
 And stony pride of iron sway, 
 We bid the voice of love be still, 
 
 And thrust the cup of joy away. 
 
 No comfort haunts the yellow leaf! 
 
 Wait not till, broken, old and sere. 
 The sad heart pines, in hopeless grief. 
 
 For one sweet voice it used to hear. 
 
 Thought has its throne and Power its glow, 
 And Wealth its time of transient ease ; 
 
 But best of hours that life can know 
 Are rose-crowned hours that fleet like these. 
 
 Let laughter leap from every lip ! 
 
 To music turn the perfumed air ! 
 Ye golden pennons, glance and dip ! 
 
 Ye crimson banners, flash and flare ! 
 
 On them no more the tempest glooms 
 Whose freed and royal spirits know 
 
 To frolic where the lilac blooms 
 And revel where the roses blow ! 
 
 But lights of heaven above them kiss. 
 
 As over silver seas they glide — 
 One heart, one hope, one fate, one bliss — 
 
 To peace and silence, side by side. 
 
JOSEPH JEFFERSON 
 
THE POET AND THE ACTOR. 
 
 speech and poem at a dinner in honor of 
 
 joseph jefferson, given by the colonial 
 
 club of new york, march 31, 1 898. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 
 Colonial Club : 
 
 I AM indeed grateful for the privilege of participa- 
 tion in this beautiful tribute of affection and honor 
 to a great actor and a noble person, and I heartily 
 thank you for the kind welcome with which the mention 
 of my name has been received. As I gaze upon this im- 
 pressive spectacle, as I consider the motive that has 
 prompted this assemblage and the spirit with which it 
 is animated — a motive and a spirit suggestive and 
 stimulative of all high thought and noble emotion — I 
 can but regret that no power of eloquence is within 
 my reach, fitly to express the meaning of this scene or 
 the feeling which it inspires. Something, however, I 
 would say of the many precious memories that throng 
 upon my mind, and especially of one memory, that 
 comes upon me with peculiar force at this time, of a 
 great personal, representative experience. I am think- 
 59 
 
6o % Wtm^ of ^laurel. 
 
 ing of a lovely summer night, more than twenty years 
 ago, in the old town of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the 
 heart of England. The sky was cloudless ; the winds 
 were hushed ; the river was flowing sweetly, like 
 music heard in a dream ; and, as the knell of midnight 
 floated away from the dark and venerable tower, the 
 ancient streets, so quaint and so cleanly, were vacant 
 and silent, under the cold light of the stars ; and pres- 
 ently the comrade of my walk, laying his hand gently 
 upon my arm, said to me, in a low and reverent tone, 
 that I shall never forget, " This is the place." We 
 were standing before the house in which Shakespeare 
 was bom, and my companion was Joseph Jefferson. 
 Most men, under such circumstances, would have 
 spoken much : my wise and gentle friend said those 
 few simple words, and said no more. For a long time 
 we stood there, in silence, and then, silently, we walked 
 away. The remembrance of that solemn hour is often 
 in my thoughts ; for as I look back across the long 
 period of our friendship — a period of well nigh forty 
 years — it seems to me that, not once but many times, 
 he has been present, at supreme moments of my life, 
 still leading me to shrine after shrine of nobility and 
 beauty, and still saying to me, in the same spirit of 
 sympathy, awe, reverence, and worship, " This is the 
 place." 
 
 It sometimes happens that one man is divinely or- 
 dained to be a guide and a blessing to others. We do 
 not well understand either the source or the nature of 
 his celestial faculty, but we call it poetic genius, and we 
 accept it with gratitude and with delight. Joseph 
 
So^ei^l) ^t^et^m. ex 
 
 Jefferson has exercised poetic genius in the art of 
 acting, and in that way he has been a guide and a 
 blessing to thousands of people, all over the English- 
 speaking world. It was not only natural, it was inevi- 
 table, that this great actor should dedicate his life to 
 the service of poetry and beauty, for that mission was 
 his inheritance. In the long artistic annals of his race, 
 extending over a period of more than one hundred 
 and fifty years, each succeeding picture is one of ever- 
 growing romance and renown. The baleful echoes of 
 Culloden were still sounding across the Scottish bor- 
 der, when young Thomas Jefferson rode from Ripon 
 to London — there to become an actor in the company 
 of Garrick, and to found the Jefferson family of actors 
 upon the stage. Washington was President of the 
 United States when, crossing the Atlantic, in quest of 
 fame and fortune, the second Jefferson began his career 
 in the American theatre — a career that bore him to 
 the highest eminence, and hallowed his name not only 
 with admiration, but with love. The American stage 
 had felt the impetus, and had begun to rise and 
 broaden under the influence of Cooper, Edwin For- 
 rest, the elder Wallack and the elder Booth, when the 
 third Jefferson obtained and held an honorable place 
 among the actors and managers of his day. An 
 auspicious fate, amid the horrors of the San Domingo 
 rebellion of Toussaint L'Ouverture, spared and saved 
 the lovely girl who was destined to become, in the 
 ripe maturity of her beneficent womanhood, the mother 
 of the fourth Jefferson, and thus to enrich our civiliza- 
 tion and to bless our lives with the consummate 
 
62 % Wtt&t^ of %antth 
 
 comedian whom, this night, we are assembled to 
 honor. Thus through succeeding generations that 
 legacy of genius has been transmitted and that minis- 
 try of beauty has been prolonged. The first Jefferson, 
 dead for ninety years and more, sleeps in the shadow 
 of the gray cathedral of Ripon. Not many months 
 ago it was my fortune to stand beside his grave, on 
 which the grass was rippling and the sunbeams were 
 at play ; and as I gazed upon that scene of peace I 
 could but reflect upon the brilliant days of David Gar- 
 rick and Margaret Woffington, when that sleeper was 
 in the pride and glory of his youth, with Dodd and 
 Bannister for his comrades, and Fanny Abington for 
 his sweetheart, and Edmund Burke and Goldsmith 
 and Gibbon and Doctor Johnson for his auditors. 
 But the past is always blended with the present, and 
 nothing in this world is ever ended here. At this mo- 
 ment I am carrying a little box of golden shell which 
 once was owned and carried by the poet Byron, dead 
 since 1824, and in it there is a piece of the hair of 
 Sarah Siddons, the idolized actress of her age, dead 
 since 1831 ; and you, to-night, hearing the voice of 
 Joseph Jefferson, have heard a living echo from the 
 great English days of Queen Anne, when Bolingbroke 
 led the senate and Marlborough led the field, when 
 Gibber was bearing the sceptre of comedy, when Con- 
 greve was writing his plays and Fielding his novels, 
 and when poetry commingled thought and fancy, 
 philosophy and satire, imagery and wit, in the melo- 
 dious cadences of Prior and in the crystal couplets 
 and the burning rhetoric of Pope. 
 
Sloisfejj^ Si^i^^on* 63 
 
 In the days of Robert Wilks, and in the later days 
 of Spranger Barry and David Garrick, there were but 
 two important theatres in England, and all the good 
 actors were concentrated in one or the other of those 
 two houses. In the days of Hodgkinson and Anne 
 Brunton in America there were but three important 
 theatres in the whole country. In our day the thea- 
 tres are numerous, and the good actors are widely 
 scattered and diffused. There is a public for tainted 
 trash and tinkling nonsense, but there is also a public 
 for the noblest poetry and the finest art ; and when 
 we remember the one we shall be wise not to forget 
 the other. You are all familiar, no doubt, with the 
 reply of the old woman to the minister who had asked 
 for her opinion upon the doctrine of total depravity, 
 " It is an excellent doctrine," she said, " if people would 
 only live up to it." At the present time there are indi- 
 cations that the people who support some of the thea- 
 tres are living up to that doctrine, in the fullest degree. 
 While, however, we observe the prominence of theatri- 
 cal trash, we must not ignore the golden record of 
 dramatic art. Charlotte Cushman and Mrs. Bowers, 
 Edwin Booth and Lester Wallack, Lawrence Barrett 
 and John McCullough, Mary Anderson and Ada 
 Rehan, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, Charles Cogh- 
 lan and John Hare, each and all presenting works of 
 the highest character, have, each and all, obtained the 
 amplest recognition and the most brilliant success ; and 
 Joseph Jefferson, after a career of more than sixty 
 years, is the most admired, the most beloved, and the 
 most popular of all the actors of his time. No fact 
 
64 % Wttstfy of %antd. 
 
 could possess more significance nor convey a more 
 practical encouragement; for this great actor has 
 never paltered with falsehood, nor sacrificed the right 
 to the expedient, nor addressed the baser public, nor 
 taken his law from the multitude; but, from first to 
 last, he has been true to his mission, as an apostle of 
 poetry and beauty. In earlier years, as some among 
 my hearers are aware, he acted scores of parts, long 
 since discarded and forgotten, but for a long time he 
 has wisely restricted himself to characters in which he 
 is peerless. Chief among those characters is Rip Van 
 Winkle; and when I mention that name I call up 
 before you the blithest, the most romantic, the most 
 pathetic figure of the modern stage. All the extremes 
 of life are comprised in Rip Van Winkle: youth and 
 age, laughter and tears, happiness and misery, the 
 natural and the preternatural. Even the environment 
 is composed of contrasts, for it passes from the " settled 
 low content " of the rustic cabin to the desolate moun- 
 tain peak, solitary beneath the awful loneliness of the 
 empty sky. Other actors played the part before Jeffer- 
 son played it — Flynn and Parsons, Chapman and 
 Hackett, Yates, Isherwood, and Burke — and other 
 actors, no doubt, will play it, when he is gone : but no 
 other actor ever invested it with the charm which is 
 the magic of Jefferson — the charm of poetry. In that 
 one word is the secret of his victory and the reason of 
 his greatness. It cannot be analyzed — for poetry is 
 elusive, and not to be captured by a definition. We 
 only know that it arouses the imagination, touches the 
 heart, and ennobles the mind. Some persons indeed 
 
3[o^q^j) Slrffer^on* 65 
 
 there are to whom it speaks in vain. Standing before 
 one of the pictures of Turner, a censorious artist said 
 to that great master: " I cannot see such color as that 
 in nature." " No," said Turner, " you cannot see it; 
 don't you wish you could?" Happy the man who 
 possesses humor to cheer and beautify his passage 
 through this mortal life, and poetry, to open upon his 
 spiritual vision the promise and the glory of the life to 
 come ! I have passed the most of my days in the 
 study of human nature and in the observance of those 
 artistic forces which, from all directions, are liberated 
 to act upon mankind ; and I declare, as the result of 
 all that I have seen and known, that the mission of art 
 is the revelation and interpretation of beauty, and that 
 the chief obligation of the artist, whatever be his field, 
 is to show the ideal to be emulated, and not the horror 
 to be shunned. Joseph Jefferson has fulfilled that ob- 
 ligation, and in doing that he has lived a beneficent 
 life and has crowned his honored age with the love of 
 his fellow-men and with the spotless laurel of an illus- 
 trious renown. 
 
 Not very long ago I wrote a poem in honor of Jef- 
 ferson, but I have never spoken it in his presence. 
 Let me so far encroach upon your kindness as to re- 
 peat it now : 
 
66 % Wtm^ of %mtd. 
 
 JEFFERSON.i 
 
 The songs that should greet him are songs of the mountain — 
 No sigh of the pine-tree that murmurs and grieves, 
 
 But the music of streams rushing swift from their fountain, 
 And the soft gale of spring through the sun-spangled leaves. 
 
 In the depth of the forest it woke from its slumbers — 
 His genius, that holds every heart in its thrall ! 
 
 Beside the bright torrent he learned his first numbers — 
 The thrush's sweet cadence, the meadow-lark's call. 
 
 O'er his cradle kind Nature — that Mother enchanted 
 Of Beauty and Art — cast her mantle of grace ; 
 
 In his eyes lit her passion, and deeply implanted 
 
 In his heart her strong love for the whole human race. 
 
 Like the rainbow that pierces the clouds where they darken, 
 
 He came, ev'ry sorrow and care to beguile : 
 He spoke — and the busy throng halted to harken ; 
 
 He smiled — and the world answered back with a smile. 
 
 Like the sunburst of April, with mist drifting after, 
 When in shy, woodland places the daisy uprears. 
 
 He blessed ev'ry bosom with innocent laughter — 
 The more precious because it was mingled with tears. 
 
 Like the rose by the wayside, so simple and tender, 
 His art was — to win us because he was true ; 
 
 We thought not of greatness, or wisdom, or splendor — 
 We loved him — and loving was all that we knew ! 
 
 He would heed the glad voice of the summer leaves, shaken 
 By the gay wind of morning that sports through the trees — 
 
 Ah, how shall we bid that wild music awaken. 
 
 And thrill to his heart, with such accents as these ? 
 
 1 Copyright by the Macmillan Company, of New York. 
 
g[o^ej>|) 3[ete!6fon» e^ 
 
 How utter the honor and love that we bear him — 
 The High Priest of Nature, the Master confest — 
 
 How proudly yet humbly revere, and declare him 
 The Prince of his Order, the brightest and best ! 
 
 Ah, vain are all words ! But as long as life's river 
 Through sunshine and shadow rolls down to the sea ; 
 
 While the waves dash in music, forever and ever ; 
 While clouds drift in glory, and sea-birds are free ; 
 
 So long shall the light and the bloom and the gladness 
 Of nature's great heart his ordainment proclaim. 
 
 And its one tender thought of bereavement and sadness 
 Be the sunset of time over Jefferson's fame. 
 
II 
 
 ACADEMIC SPEECHES 
 
 1 891-1896 
 
 ' AND WHAT ARE ALL THE PRIZES WON 
 
 TO youth's enchanted view ? 
 
 AND what is all THE MAN HAS DONE; 
 TO WHAT THE BOY MAY DO ?" 
 
 — OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
YOUTH AND OPPORTUNITY 
 
goutl^ and C^pportunit^* 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE THEATRE IN STAPLETON, 
 STATEN ISLAND, JUNE 19, 1891. 
 
 AS I look upon the faces of these young students, I 
 j7\. do not perceive in them any sign of insuperable 
 reluctance that our oratorical exploits should be cut 
 short. Nor does that surprise me. Young people 
 may not always be studious of books, but they are al- 
 ways studious of change. They do not consciously 
 value the present ; they crave the future. Nothing in 
 the passing moment suffices for the youthful mind, — 
 which looks ever toward the joy that is promised and 
 the hour that is to come. I remember my experience 
 when I was a school-boy, in far-off years, in the old 
 city of Boston, — how often it happened, on a summer 
 afternoon, as I sat in the school-room and, gazing 
 through the open windows, saw the green, waving 
 branches of the great elms, and the long, fresh grass 
 rippling in sun and breeze, that my thoughts would 
 drift away from the teacher, and the task, and the hum 
 of study, winging their flight across the sparkling crys- 
 tal of Boston's beautiful harbor, to Fort Independence, 
 and Governor's Island, and Point Shirley, and the 
 rest of those engirdling jewels — 
 
 The isles that were the Hesperides 
 Of all my youthful dreams. 
 
 13 73 
 
74 ^ J^rcatD of laurel 
 
 So true is it, — and ever has been, and ever will be, — 
 as your poet Longfellow has told you, that 
 
 A boy's will is the wind's will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. 
 
 Long as they are, however, they are not long enough 
 to reach and grasp the great and golden fact, which can 
 only be learned by experience, that there is no blessing 
 in life so precious as the Opportunity of Youth. Shades 
 of the prison-house may indeed begin to gather, as the 
 poet Wordsworth says they do, about the growing boy : 
 yet now, if ever, he possesses freedom. Care has not 
 laid its burden on his spirit. Doubt has not chilled 
 his hope. Worldly strife has not embittered his mind. 
 Everything that comes to him now comes with a smile. 
 Never yet has he heard, in the silence of his sorrow- 
 ing soul, those words which are the saddest in human 
 speech: " It is too late." Does any youth ever realize 
 his privilege? Does any youth ever reflect and 
 comprehend that this is the period when defects of 
 character may be modified or removed ; when errors 
 of conduct may be avoided, and sometimes may be 
 repaired ; when the mind may be fed with knowledge 
 and the soul exalted with beauty ; when " the world 
 is all before him, where to choose " ? The almost uni- 
 versal testimony of dejection and regret, in mature 
 years, is the melancholy answer. " If I could only be 
 young once more," cries the veteran, " if I could only 
 live my life over again, how different it would be ! " 
 
 Not that the days of childhood and school are the 
 best days! That notion is only one of the many 
 
§dutf) anb <i^jrpottunitp» 75 
 
 prosperous platitudes that conventional usage has 
 made respectable. ** Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis 
 folly to be wise." But ignorance is not always bliss. 
 Knowledge sometimes is bliss — and where knowledge 
 is bliss 'tis folly to be ignorant. These beginners, 
 these young adventurers upon the ocean of life, I 
 doubt not, have many days in store for themselves, 
 brighter and happier than any that ever yet they have 
 known — days when, with developed and matured 
 faculties and the ample equipments of learning, taste, 
 and experience, they enter into the kingdom of wis- 
 dom, which is power; of love, which is life; of ac- 
 tive virtue, which is honor, conquest, glory, success ! 
 But the surpassing privilege of youth is the unfettered 
 spirit, the uncompromised intellect, the boundless op- 
 portunity. The page is yet unsullied. The pathway 
 lies clear and open in the sunshine. The blue heaven 
 rears its dome of splendor and of promise, without 
 one cloud to hint of peril or storm. And, even as 
 now, in these beautiful days of June, the world that 
 opens to their eager, youthful gaze is a wilderness of 
 roses that sway and murmur in the summer wind. 
 
 What of the future? What will you do with 
 your lives ? We, who are older, who have lived 
 longer and traveled further, are usually ready enough 
 with our counsel: but it is your ideal that must 
 lead you now, and not the advice of others. Honor 
 and truth we take for granted. " I would be vir- 
 tuous," said an old philosopher, "though no one 
 were to know it, just as I would be clean, though no 
 one were to see me," The book of commonplace pre- 
 
76 % H^rcatf) of laurel* 
 
 cept need not be opened here. Yet there is one word 
 of counsel which now more than ever, — in a Pagan 
 age of denial and democracy, — ought to be spoken 
 to the youth of America. Be yourselves, and never 
 abandon your noble aspirations ! You cannot live in 
 absolute independence of the world. You must have 
 affiliations with other persons: but it is not impera- 
 tive that those affiliations should be numerous, and 
 you have it within your power to make them select. 
 You are under no obligation to imitate others or to 
 do as others do. You ought never to permit your 
 minds to be inundated with the ignorance, the crudity, 
 and the vapid chatter of commonplace persons. Do 
 not too much reverence the Past. Old burdens that 
 have rolled from the shoulders of weary and dying 
 men and women should not be taken up again by 
 you. It is your life that you must live; it is not 
 theirs; and now that they rest from their labors, 
 let their works follow them. Neither must you sup- 
 pose yourselves enjoined to assume the burdens that 
 other persons have created, in the present day. Let 
 those attend to grievances who have them, and do not 
 allow your spirits to be dejected, your hopes darkened, 
 and your lives encumbered with the vices, the errors, 
 the follies, and the weakness of failures and of fools. It 
 is, no doubt, pitiable and deplorable that failures and 
 fools should exist and suffer; but they must not be 
 permitted, merely because they exist and suffer, to 
 drag you also into failure and folly. Respect the 
 sanctity of your souls, and beware of superfluous con- 
 tact with other lives. 
 
foutf) anb <^ppottunit^, 77 
 
 For it is only the temporary and the expedient that 
 are gregarious. In every great moment of life, in every 
 time of insight or inspiration or crisis, the human be- 
 ing is alone. The object of education, therefore, 
 should be the development and building of an origi- 
 nal, noble, adequate character, — not simply a prepara- 
 tion for industrial pursuits, but an armament for ever- 
 lasting life. The occupations of this world, however 
 important, are transitory. The soul of man is immor- 
 tal. Other views, I am aware, are entertained. Peo- 
 ple who claim to be practical, but are only narrow, are 
 never weary of declaring that education must be sensi- 
 ble and not visionary. An effort to worry the public 
 mind on that subject is a part of the errant activity 
 of the complacent Man of Business, all the world over, 
 and it has been so, at periodic intervals, for many 
 years. I remember its pernicious existence long ago, 
 — the jealous sneer at what was called "book-learn- 
 ing," as opposed to what was called practical know- 
 ledge of affairs ; meaning thereby cotton, iron, coal, 
 the stock exchange and the revised statutes. Not 
 long since (in 1890), in the newspapers of New York, 
 that epidemic of commonplace burst forth with un- 
 commxon virulence, and various individuals, in every 
 case possessed of more wealth than wisdom, apprized 
 us that scholastic training is superfluous, because it 
 aims to furnish an equipment wholly in excess of what 
 is requisite for business. My old friend William 
 Warren, the comedian, used to tell, in his inimitable 
 way, a story about a pompous, conventional trades- 
 man, who was addressing the pupils of a Sunday- 
 
78 % JSrcatf) of %mtd. 
 
 school. " I knew a little boy," he said,- " who always 
 obeyed his mother, always washed his face in the 
 morning, always came early to Sunday-school, and 
 never stole an apple ! And where do you think that 
 good boy is now ? " To this inquiry a small voice 
 piped out an answer — " In Heaven, sir." " No, sir," 
 cried the disgusted orator, " not in Heaven ! He 's in 
 a store / " That is the mental drift of those enemies 
 of the higher education. To their minds the chief 
 end of man is to get himself employed in a store. 
 They are what Joseph Jefferson called '' the selfish- 
 made men of our time." They recall the remark of 
 an old cynic, Henry Clapp, Jr., who said : " If you 
 want to know what God Almighty thinks of money, 
 look at the men to whom he gives the most of it." 
 Perhaps, however, the sensitive perturbation mani- 
 fested by those button-makers, those disciples of the 
 grocery and the till, is a good sign. Certainly the 
 fact is significant that the sensitive feeling is all on one 
 side. Educated men are not worried. If education 
 has not always given them wealth, it has given them 
 blessings that no prodigality of wealth can buy ; and 
 by this token they know that the province of educa- 
 tion is not to train young people for business, but to 
 embark them upon life, — of which business is only an 
 incident. The best wisdom of the wisest of mankind 
 has always taught that lesson. Make your business 
 tributary to your mind, and not your mind subservient 
 to your business. " The world is too much with us," 
 cried Wordsworth. Do not defer to the world, said 
 Matthew Arnold : 
 
§outj) anti <B^pnttvmtp. 79 
 
 For they, believe me, who await 
 No gifts from Chance have conquered Fate. 
 They, winning room to see and hear. 
 And to men's business not too near, 
 Through clouds of individual strife 
 Draw homeward to the general life. 
 
 Judgment will differ as to the question of educa- 
 tion, but there is one subject upon which we can all 
 agree — and that is, our obligation to the young. For 
 some persons within the sound of my voice the roses 
 have already been gathered, the sunshine has begun 
 to fade, the music is dying into silence. Life, for 
 some of us who are gathered here, has taken its set- 
 tled shape and hue, and it cannot signify much, and it 
 will not signify long, which way the current flows or 
 whither the clouds may drift. But the green leaves 
 follow the sere, and the fragrance of nature and the 
 rapture of life are still in the world. To our tired 
 eyes the scene grows barren and gray; but to the 
 eyes of the children it is bright and beautiful. 
 
 Ah, shield the little hearts from wrong. 
 While childhood's laugh is ringing ; 
 
 And kiss the lips that sing the song. 
 Before they cease their singing, i 
 
 When the record is made up and we look back upon 
 the past, it is not the memory of what we have done 
 
 1 Lines from a poem by Miss Harriet McEwen Kimball, of Portsmouth, 
 New Hampshire, whose devotional poetry is not less beautiful than sincere, 
 and whose character and life are an honor to human nature and a blessing to 
 all who know them. 
 
8o % IBireatfj of %antd. 
 
 for ourselves that will comfort and strengthen us, but 
 the memory of what we have done for others. 
 
 The portal through which I entered into the service 
 of the Staten Island Academy was that of calamity 
 and bereavement. The Library that my wife and I 
 have established here commemorates our beloved son 
 Arthur, who perished, in a sudden and lamentable 
 manner, in January, 1886. It is natural that parents 
 should cherish their children as excellent beyond com- 
 parison and precious beyond value. I think, however, 
 that I utter the conviction of all who knew him when 
 I declare that, in brilliancy of mind, gentleness of 
 manner, sweetness of temperament, beauty of person, 
 and the exquisite and indescribable charm of genius, 
 Arthur Winter was extraordinary and unique. His 
 life, in this world, lasted not quite fourteen years, and 
 every moment of it was a blessing. For his mother 
 and for me the world is changed and darkened since 
 he went away, and it can never be the same that once 
 it was. I must not, however, speak more than these 
 few words about him now. 
 
 His part in all the pomp that fills 
 The circuit of the summer hills 
 Is, that his grave is green. 
 
 And yet, not altogether so ; for he was more than 
 worthy of the monument that we have erected, and 
 time will more and more testify, in the growth and the 
 worth of this institution, as the years drift away, how 
 rich is the legacy of beneficence that the community 
 inherits from genius and goodness that are consecrated 
 
by sorrow and immortalized by love. The noble work 
 that he might have done in the world, had his life 
 been spared, can only now be conjectured ; but as long 
 as this memorial endures the influence of his gentle spirit 
 must still be active for the welfare of others, and 
 therefore it will outlast the lives of all who mourn 
 for him, and survive even the regrets of affection and 
 the tears of grief. 
 
 To live in hearts we leave behind 
 Is not to die. 
 
 In the making of the Library I have been guided by 
 one thought. I wished to give to other children what, 
 if he had lived, I should have given to him. The use 
 of this collection of books is not limited exclusively to 
 the academy. The public also, and especially the 
 actors, may claim kindred here and have their claim 
 allowed. The books are such as persons with bright 
 minds can read. A resolute effort has been made to 
 exclude dullness. In my childhood it was my mis- 
 fortune to be restricted, for my reading, to the convivial 
 companionship of such works as the " Night Thoughts " 
 of Dr. Young, the melancholy numbers of Henry 
 Kirke White, the versified preachments of the un- 
 fortunate Cowper, — whose life was darkened and 
 whose mind was well-nigh ruined by the blight of Cal- 
 vinism, — and a remarkable compound of elegies by 
 Gray and Mason, Yalden on Darkness, Dr. Porteus 
 on Death, and Dr. Blair on The Grave. From the 
 natural consequence of brooding over these refreshing 
 14 
 
82 311 Wttat^ of %antd. 
 
 compositions it was difficult to recover; and later, 
 when they had been left behind, I had still to endure, 
 for some time, the weight of " Paradise Lost " and 
 the somnolent didacticism of " Rasselas, Prince of 
 Abyssinia." Nobody told me of such authors as Cow- 
 ley, Herrick, Shelley, Keats, Moore, Burns, Scott, and 
 Byron, and it was only by chance that I was presently 
 liberated into the celestial world of Shakespeare. In 
 directing my efforts, therefore, and in guidingthose of the 
 dear and honored friends among the actors and authors 
 who have aided me in building up the Arthur Winter 
 Memorial Library, I have striven to assemble such 
 creations of literature as will inform, elevate, strengthen, 
 and cheer; such books as will impart pleasure as well 
 as wisdom, and happiness as well as virtue ; such books 
 as will be read with delight and remembered with 
 affection; such books as are a blessing and not a 
 burden, 
 
 I must trespass no further upon your patience. Other 
 voices are to be heard — voices that I am sure you 
 will rejoice to hear. One of them, Erastus Wiman, 
 speaks to you with the authority of a man of affairs, 
 glad and grateful, however, that he can turn away from 
 the strife of the practical world, to bear his testimony 
 here, as he has borne it elsewhere, to the imperative 
 necessity of educational discipline, the importance of 
 learning, and the dignity of the scholastic life. The 
 other, George William Curtis, speaking to you from 
 the noble eminence of laureled scholarship and beauti- 
 ful art, weaves yet again the welcome spell of match- 
 less eloquence, turning the memory of other tones to 
 
f out!) anti <Bppottnmt^. 83 
 
 oblivion, and pointing with new emphasis the lovely 
 thought of Milton: 
 
 How charming is divine philosophy ! 
 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
 
 And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, 
 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns. 
 
THE IDEAL IN EDUCATION 
 
Cl^e 91tieal in thutation. 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE THEATRE IN STAPLETON, 
 STATEN ISLAND, JUNE 17, 1892. 
 
 IN these proceedings the part that has been assigned 
 to me is simple, and I venture to hope that my 
 performance of it will meet with your approval, if for 
 no other reason, because it will be brief. As President 
 of the trustees of the Staten Island Academy I am to 
 deliver the diplomas of the institution into the hands 
 of the students who are graduated here to-day ; and, 
 in behalf of their instructors and of my official asso- 
 ciates, I am to wish, for these brave young spirits, — 
 these adventurous mariners, just embarked upon the 
 ocean of untried experience, — a prosperous voyage, a 
 peaceful haven, and a safe deliverance out of all the 
 perils and tribulations of human life. That wish is 
 deeply felt and it is soon spoken. " JVz/ niortalibus 
 ardui est." Speed onward and be happy! Shake- 
 speare, who says everything for us so much better 
 than we can say it ourselves, has given us a word for 
 this hour, among the rest : 
 
 Upon your sword * 
 
 Sit laurel victory, and smooth success 
 Be strewed before your feet ! 
 
 With that aspiration I might consider my duty ful- 
 filled. It has, indeed, been suggested that I should 
 
 87 
 
88 % Wttat^ of %mctL 
 
 proceed further and should address this audience 
 upon such topics as the occasion naturally involves. 
 The friendly makers of that suggestion, however, have 
 but imperfectly considered, or have not considered at 
 all, the formidable obstacle with which I am con- 
 fronted. George William Curtis, who was to have 
 spoken, is, unfortunately, kept away by illness, and, 
 practically, I am requested to fill the place of the most 
 accomplished orator in America. It is a task that far 
 transcends my powers. I could not hope even to 
 echo the music of that magical voice. The utmost 
 that I could do would be to honor, — as, with all my 
 heart, I do, — the exalted ideal of character, conduct, 
 and scholarship of which he is the conspicuous and 
 consummate image. His presence would have been 
 a kindness and a benefit : his absence is a loss and a 
 sorrow. Yet his absence unseals the lips of homage, 
 and, at least, I may speak of his example. In no 
 better way than when I point to our illustrious fellow- 
 citizen could I denote the ideal of excellence toward 
 which our desires and labors in this institution are 
 directed — the excellence of absolute integrity; of in- 
 flexible principle ; of profound and incessant devotion 
 to duty ; of ample scholarship and a broad mind ; of 
 that intrinsic virtue of character which imparts dignity 
 and power to individual life, and that sensibility, re- 
 finement, and gentleness which are its surpassing 
 crown of grace. I know that I shall speak the un- 
 equivocal sentiment, not of this assemblage only, but 
 of the community, when I exclaim, in the beautiful 
 words of the great Roman poet, 
 
€8e 3[ti0al in €bucattott 89 
 
 Ibimus, ibimus, 
 Utcunque praecedes, supremum 
 Carpere iter, comites parati. 
 
 When I had the privilege of speaking to you, last 
 year, in this place, I urged the superlative importance 
 of the higher education, I deplored the custom of its 
 depreciation, peculiar to a class of business men who, 
 without learning and without culture, have neverthe- 
 less acquired wealth, and who therefore indulge the 
 delusion that they are successful in life. My views 
 upon that subject remain unchanged. Yet I would 
 not be supposed to underrate the importance of ex- 
 ecutive ability or of a suitable training for practical 
 affairs. The natural tendency of mankind is toward 
 self-indulgence, selfishness, and sloth. It is only by 
 sleepless vigilance and resolute activity that a virtuous 
 social progress is stimulated and maintained. Noth- 
 ing is more important to society than the man of 
 action who is controlled by wisdom and animated 
 by a noble purpose. It has long been observed of 
 the scholar that he is also the hermit. Men of fine 
 spiritual strain and of high intellectual attainment are, 
 usually, reclusive. They do not like close contact 
 with affairs. They are contented to be spectators. 
 They dwell apart — as Goethe did, and Niebuhr, and 
 Emerson. They see the errors of the vagrant human 
 race, and sometimes they indicate them. They con- 
 sider their duty fulfilled when they have shown the 
 true principle and the right path, and they do not 
 wish to be any further troubled. They, generally, do 
 not expect to see anything made right ; — and that is 
 
 IS 
 
90 % Wttat^ of Hautri* 
 
 natural ; because, for the most part, the world has al- 
 ways passed them by unheeded. They are relegated 
 to solitude and isolation, and they are content. Not 
 until the weakness of age came upon him did that wise 
 philosopher Emerson, for example, show the least im- 
 patience because his ideas were not practically adopted 
 and applied. He was satisfied with the diffusion of 
 influence upon the thought of his time. All his days 
 he could look onward, to the great Hereafter, when 
 we shall see wisely and clearly, and be at peace. 
 
 It may happen, however, that the scholar is also the 
 man of action, and then indeed there is reason for pub- 
 lic gratitude. If truth and beauty are assailed, he will 
 defend them. If right is trampled down, he will raise 
 it up. If ignorant, swarming numbers threaten, — as 
 in Great Britain and in this Republic of ours they do 
 threaten, — to overwhelm and destroy the safeguards 
 of a rational civilization, he will oppose them, he 
 will quell their tumult and enforce their obedience. 
 Honor^ therefore, to the practical man ! Yet, since 
 scholarship is a weapon not less than a grace, I see 
 not any reason why he who possesses the potentiality 
 of action should not also be regnant in the domain of 
 thought. Let us augment the chances of social wel- 
 fare by the widest possible diffusion of the equipments 
 and blessings of learning and of art. The higher a 
 man's spiritual and intellectual development, — the 
 ampler his resources of knowledge and of trained abil- 
 ity, the greater his mastery of the experience of the 
 past, — the more trenchant and the more puissant and 
 splendid must be his capacity for helping the progress 
 
€J)e Slbeal in €tiucation» 91 
 
 of his fellow-men ! Practical esteem for practical re- 
 sults is not a new idea. The modems, with all their 
 boasting, do little except to rediscover and reaffirm 
 the ideas of the ancients. Respect for executive force 
 and labor did not originate with the class that now 
 assumes to bear its banner. It was, and it ever has 
 been, the feeling and the purpose of the scholar. I 
 will mention one denotement of it. More than seven 
 centuries ago, in the reign of King Stephen, and while 
 his war with the Empress Maud was still raging, a 
 synod of the clergy, who were the scholars of that 
 time, was held in the ancient city of Winchester, — the 
 king's brother, the astute and formidable Bishop 
 Henry de Blois, presiding, — and in that august eccle- 
 siastical assembly, representative of all that was best 
 in the thought and culture of the age, it was formally 
 decreed that the same privilege of sanctuary that ap- 
 pertained to the Church should also appertain to the 
 Plough : and thereupon, solemnly, with lighted torches 
 in their hands, those monks pronounced the awful sen- 
 tence of excommunication upon all persons who, from 
 that day forward, should molest or injure any laborer 
 in agriculture. Labor has often assailed learning, but 
 learning has always been the protective friend of labor. 
 Discrepancies of theory, however, are merely super- 
 ficial. Nature is above art. Truth survives error. 
 Things fall into their places without regard to opin- 
 ion. A conspicuous recent assailant of the higher 
 education, for instance, is Mr. Andrew Carnegie. 
 Actions, it is said, speak louder than words : it might 
 be added that they speak a different language. Mr. 
 
92 % Wtmfi of %amd. 
 
 Carnegie has declared that he can dispense with the 
 classics and with all that is implied in the university 
 scheme of classical education. Yet I observe that 
 Mr. Carnegie's highest personal ambition is to be 
 recognized as an author. I observe that the weapon 
 he uses against the higher education is a weapon 
 drawn from its own armory — the weapon of literary 
 style : an implement of thought that he might use 
 with more than his present fluency if he had been 
 trained in those classical studies which he decries, and 
 of which, perhaps, he is not the most competent judge. 
 I remember, also, that the objects of Mr. Carnegie's 
 zealous admiration are those apostles of the intellect, 
 Matthew Arnold and Herbert Spencer, — both of 
 whom he entertained when they were in America. 
 And, finally, I remember that when, with Mr. Carne- 
 gie, the practical work had been done, — when the 
 great fortune was accumulated, when the man of busi- 
 ness and of wealth wished to insure an actual, perma- 
 nent, unassailable, indestructible result, — he founded 
 libraries ; he built a college ; he started what will one 
 day be a grand picture-gallery ; and he established a 
 superb Academy of Music in the metropolis of his 
 adopted land. That exemplifies the law of mind, the 
 organic, elemental law of spiritual life, operating inde- 
 pendently of all crude theories and transient, ephemeral 
 moods : 
 
 For nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
 In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows wide withal. 
 
€|je 3l^eal in €bucation. 93 
 
 From the operation of that elemental law there is, 
 ultimately, no escape ; but the predominance of spirit- 
 ual truth may be facilitated by environment. There 
 are times when a hard, cold, or mean environment 
 becomes intolerable. In youth the right environment 
 is imperative. Nothing so much conduces to the 
 development of character in the right direction. 
 Nothing tends so much toward the economy of force. 
 Nothing so directly contributes to the building of a 
 beautiful life. Youths who are rightly surrounded at 
 the beginning are often saved from errors that it would 
 cost a lifetime to repair. 
 
 I have often been called a dreamer. I hope 
 the word is true. The dream that comes to me 
 when I muse upon the future of this institution is 
 part a memory and part a vision. I remember an 
 ancient city, sleeping in the sunshine, on the moun- 
 tainous banks of the rapid Moselle. I see again, on 
 its embowered crag, the colossal fragments and ivy- 
 mantled walls of the most romantic if not the grandest 
 ruin in Europe. In the far distance glimmers the 
 sparkling Rhine. Around me towers a glorious coli- 
 seum of the pine-clad hills. The wind of summer, 
 fragrant with spice and balm, is blowing from the 
 Black Forest, and once again I hear the heavenly 
 music of those golden bells of Heidelberg which are 
 the sweetest in the world. Standing in that venerable 
 place, I stand at the cradle of learning, which also is 
 its monumental shrine. I remember the pensive tran- 
 quillity of Stratford-upon-Avon. I see again the gray 
 tower of the ancient Guild Chapel, in which the youths 
 
94 % Wtml^ of Haurri. 
 
 of King Edward's school annually assemble for their 
 closing day ; and, as the organ sounds and the hymn 
 of worship floats upward to heaven, I know they will 
 gaze through the arched casements that Shakespeare 
 saw, and will look toward the sacred spot, less than a 
 hundred feet away, where the greatest of all poets 
 drew his last breath and closed his eyes forever upon 
 the world. I remember the monastic peace and the 
 celestial majesty of the close of Canterbury, — the lofty 
 elms, the brooding rooks, the ivy-mantled masonry of 
 the middle ages blent with cosy dwellings of a gentler 
 period and a softer taste, and that stupendous tower 
 which rises like a pillar of silver into the sunshine of 
 heaven, — and I see the boys of King IJenry's school, 
 in cloister and chapter-house and sanctuary, surrounded 
 with the most august and impressive objects and as- 
 sociations of historic renown. And, thus remembering 
 and beholding what temples of culture and beauty 
 have been reared for the children and students of other 
 lands, I dream of a time when, upon yonder hillside, 
 overlooking your beautiful bay, will rise the gables 
 and turrets of the stateliest building that ever yet, in 
 all this region, wisdom and art have devoted to the 
 sacred service of education — which is the service of 
 freedom, of religion, of benevolence, of gentleness, 
 and of steadfast and immutable belief in man's supreme 
 and superb destiny of everlasting development and 
 progress, through the countless ages of immortal hfe. 
 
 And now, my young friends, — completing a cere- 
 mony which has been too long delayed, — I place in 
 your hands the diplomas of your academy. Your 
 
€|)e Sjbeal in oJbucation. 95 
 
 days have been happy ; but many happier days are in 
 store for you than any that ever you have known. Let 
 these memorials be to you the souvenirs of youthful 
 friendships and of precious ties. Let them constantly 
 remind you of the time when your opening lives were 
 dedicated to the service of truth and beauty. To that 
 service be faithful forever. And as often as you look 
 upon these tokens let them admonish you that educa- 
 tion is never completed ; that as long as you live the 
 opportunity of growth in knowledge, wisdom, and vir- 
 tue will keep an equal pace with life. I part from you 
 with the beautiful thought of Longfellow : 
 
 Bear a lily in your hand ! 
 Gates of brass cannot withstand 
 One touch of that magic wand. 
 
THE TRUTH IN EULOGY 
 
 i6 
 
Cl^e Crwt]^ in €uloq,v* 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED ON CURTIS MEMORIAL DAY, 
 
 AT THE STATEN ISLAND ACADEMY, 
 
 FEBRUARY 25, 1895. 
 
 THE last word is to be spoken by me, and for that 
 reason I venture to believe it will be welcome. 
 Exacting duties have prevented me from carefully pre- 
 paring an address for this day, and I shall ask your in- 
 dulgence if I utter my thoughts precisely as they come 
 into my mind. It is always, however, a dangerous ex- 
 periment. I remember, in a talk with George William 
 Curtis upon this subject, that he said to me : " I am 
 always glad when it is somebody else who is to speak," 
 and he told me that once, at a banquet, a prominent 
 person said to him : " Do you prepare what you have to 
 say at these dinners." Curtis replied that he did. 
 " Well," said the other, " I do not." And then Curtis 
 added, with that sweet smile of his which many of you 
 so well remember, "When he came to address the 
 meeting I found that he had told the truth." I dare 
 say you will derive much the same impression from 
 the careless speech that I shall utter now. 
 
 A great observer of life, the poet Byron, wrote that ; 
 
 Men are the sport of circumstances, when 
 Those circumstances seem the sport of men. 
 
 99 
 
loo % Wtcat^ of Eaurd* 
 
 Circumstances of affliction and sorrow caused me to 
 found, in this institution, a memorial library, led to my 
 election in the board of trustees, and thus, indirectly, 
 made me the chief officer of the corporation. Since ever 
 I have believed anything I have believed that educa- 
 tion is the corner-stone of society, but I never ex- 
 pected to be personally associated with the cause of 
 education. From the earliest moment when I became 
 connected with this institution I have labored with all 
 my heart and strength for its advancement. I have 
 especially desired that there should be, in this acad- 
 emy, a home influence, a home atmosphere, an atmo- 
 sphere of kindness, gentleness, refinement, and beauty. 
 I have desired that teachers should be liberal and 
 noble in their methods of tuition, and mild and rea- 
 sonable in their methods of discipline, and I have de- 
 sired that pupils should be docile, obedient, mindful 
 of their opportunities, and studious to improve them — 
 for the privilege and the glory of youth come but 
 once, and not till they are gone do we know how pre- 
 cious they were. That has been, and is, my ideal. 
 We all have ideals, and howsoever they may be marred 
 or defeated by the hard experience of life, I think we 
 shall be wise to hold fast by them, and cherish them. 
 
 One reason why I have wished that the life and the 
 character of our honoured and lamented friend Curtis 
 — his beautiful character, his beneficent life — should 
 be urged upon your attention, as often as the anni- 
 versary of his birth recurs, is the fact that he pos- 
 sessed, in an eminent degree, those great virtues, es- 
 pecially necessary in studious life, and precious in all 
 
€j)e €mij[j in ^ulogp* loi 
 
 life — forbearance and patience. I have a little dreaded, 
 however, lest much insistence upon the example of 
 Curtis might cause our eulogy of him to seem monoto- 
 nous and tiresome. Nothing is more easy than to 
 make the name of a good man tedious in the ears of 
 eager youth. When George Peabody died, in Eng- 
 land, many days elapsed before his body was brought 
 home and his obsequies were completed : whereupon 
 there was a reference to the subject, in a western news- 
 paper, — a reference intended to be sympathetic, — 
 and the editor said : " Such a long time has passed 
 between the death of Peabody and his burial, and the 
 newspapers have been so full of the subject, and so 
 much has been said about him, that we could almost 
 wish he had not died." There is always the danger 
 that people in general, and especially young people, — 
 who live in hope and not in memory, — may grow 
 weary of hearing Aristides called the Just. 
 
 History and biography are prone to extreme views. 
 If a man is to be denounced as bad, he is made so bad 
 that we feel he never could have existed, — at least in 
 the temperature with which we are acquainted. Look, 
 for instance, upon the character of Richard III. The 
 genius of Shakespeare has laid upon that character 
 a blight which it is impossible to remove ; yet nothing 
 is more certain than that two-thirds of the stories 
 told about Richard III are untrue. The story, for 
 example, that he murdered his wife, is ridiculous. 
 Their marriage was a love-match, and no two people 
 ever lived more happily together than Richard and 
 his Anne. The story that he murdered Henry VI, in 
 
I02 % Wttatt^ of %amd. 
 
 the Tower, has been exploded by the clearest evidence. 
 Consider that much-married man, Henry VIII. When 
 I first read about him and his wives I was amazed at 
 the number of his marriages, and at the surprising 
 elasticity of spirit with which, in spite of such deplor- 
 able ill-luck, he succeeded in keeping alive the flame 
 of hope in his royal breast. And so, I was quite pre- 
 pared, when the truth came, as it did at last, when Mr. 
 Froude published the evidence, to learn that those 
 marriages were political, and that it was a political 
 policy that sacrificed King Henry VIII upon the 
 altar of matrimony. 
 
 As with the bad men, so with the good. We have 
 all been reared in the belief that if there ever was an 
 angel out of heaven it was William III, who accom- 
 plished the revolution of 1688, in England. An angel 
 he may have been, but he was one of the most colos- 
 sal schemers of whom history preserves the record, 
 and he possessed the additional accomplishment that 
 he could call Heaven to witness his duplicity, and 
 did not hesitate to do so. When his plot against his 
 father-in-law was on the point of completion, his mes- 
 sage to his most intimate friend said, simply : " I have 
 not the least intention to make an attempt on the 
 crown, and I pray God, who is powerful over all, to 
 bless this, my sincere intention." 
 
 Think of the injustice that has been done to the 
 stately and splendid character of Washington. You will 
 find in the library Mr, Weems' " Life of Washington," 
 and you will find in that book, — there printed for the 
 first time, — the story of the cherry tree and the hatchet, 
 
€l[je €tut{j in €ulo0p» 103 
 
 a pure invention, a yarn that its maker took care not 
 to publish until the immediate relatives of Washington 
 had passed away. I do not know any exalted char- 
 acter that has been subjected to more ill-usage. Were 
 it not the character of one of the greatest of men, it 
 would have been seriously impaired in the esteem of 
 posterity, by the " goodies " who have so smirched it 
 with their fatuous insipidity. When I >vas a youth, I 
 saw a large picture in a shop window in Broadway, rep- 
 resenting the Republican Court. In the centre stood 
 the Father of his Country, and beside him stood his 
 mother. One of that lady's hands was laid upon his 
 shoulder, while the other pointed to an eight-day 
 clock, which had recorded the hour of nine. Beneath 
 the picture was an inscription, consisting of words 
 which she was supposed to be saying, in the presence 
 of the Republican courtiers : " Come, George, it is 
 time to retire ! Late hours are injurious ! " To hang 
 such a fringe of Sunday-school ornament upon the im- 
 perial character of Washington is little less than a 
 sacrilege. 
 
 Curtis was a reticent man, and some people thought 
 him a cold man. He was not effusive, but it would 
 be a grave injustice to consider him a formalist or a 
 " goody." One of the pioneers who went to the Cali- 
 fornia gold fields in '49, records that one day he 
 had placed a cloth across the window of his hut, so 
 that he might change his apparel and shave, when he 
 was astonished to see the cloth suddenly pulled down 
 and to hear a voice which loudly inquired : " What is 
 going on here so private ? " That is a ten- 
 
I04 % Wttat^ of flaurri* 
 
 dency in American life. There must be no individual 
 privacy. He who is not gregarious is supposed to be 
 aping the airs of aristocracy. Curtis not only dwelt 
 apart, but his life was ruled by the sternest moral prin- 
 ciple. Whatever might happen, he stood for the right, 
 and he felt, with his friend Lowell, that 
 
 They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right, with two or three. 
 
 I should like to linger upon the career of Curtis as a 
 writer and speaker, but I have said much upon that 
 theme elsewhere, and you have heard much upon it 
 from others. Curtis had a high standard of rectitude, 
 and by that standard he regulated his conduct and 
 tested the conduct of others. But he was never a bore, 
 either moral or intellectual. He did not pose as a 
 model. He neither prattled precepts nor distributed 
 tracts. He was fastidious, and, in an eminent degree, 
 self-contained, and, as he lived under the strain of 
 continual intellectual labor, he was, to some extent, 
 isolated; but no man looked with more charity upon 
 the faults and frailties of humanity; no man more 
 deeply sympathized with the joys and sorrows of 
 common life ; and no man more earnestly desired, or 
 more faithfully labored to promote, the happiness of 
 his fellow-men. As I think of him, I repeat the words 
 of his friend Longfellow, by whom he was dearly 
 loved : 
 
 O, though oft depressed and lonely, 
 All my fears are laid aside, 
 
 If I but remember only, 
 Such as these have lived and died. 
 
THE IDEAL IN LIFE 
 
 17 
 
Cl&e 3!tieal in Uit. 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE THEATRE IN STAPLETON, 
 STATEN ISLAND, JUNE l8, 1895. 
 
 AS often as this anniversary comes around it brings 
 Xjl a sense of relief and peace. The work of the aca- 
 demic year is finished. The long ordeal of anxiety 
 and endeavor is past. The goal has been reached 
 and the toilers may rest. Like pilgrims ascending a 
 mountain-side, who pause, at noonday, in a grateful 
 shade, and, with equal serenity and pleased indiffer- 
 ence, gaze downward upon the smiling valley far be- 
 low, and upward to the cloud-swept summits far 
 above, we feel that a portion of our toilsome journey 
 is happily completed, and that now, for a little while, 
 we can be idle. 
 
 The sun is in the heavens, and the proud day, 
 Attended with the pleasures of the world, 
 
 and nothing remains but to listen to the ripple of the 
 brook, the rustle of the branches, and the gentle 
 whisper of the summer wind. 
 
 It will be well for us, however, not to forget that 
 equally in the hour of repose and in the hour of action 
 the development of individual character must proceed, 
 107 
 
io8 % Wtmt^ of %mcd. 
 
 and that, under all circumstances, the inexorable ob- 
 ligation of duty remains unchanged. Spiritual, moral, 
 and intellectual advancement is the law of human 
 life. The mind that does not aspire and advance 
 will deteriorate and recede. At a moment like this, 
 therefore^ the chief consideration which presents itself 
 to every thoughtful observer is that of the solemn re- 
 sponsibility, and, at the same time, the splendid privi- 
 lege of youth. It is an old and hackneyed theme, and 
 yet for each successive generation it is vital, para- 
 mount, and absorbing, — and therefore, if its impor- 
 tance be considered, it is forever new. Thousands of 
 eager spirits have asked the question, in times that 
 are past, and thousands will ask it in times that are to 
 come, — What is rightfully expected at our hands, and 
 what shall we do with our lives ? 
 
 The youths who are graduated here to-day are so 
 much nearer than they were to an active participation 
 in the cares and labors of the world. Other youths 
 will follow them, year after year, passing through the 
 same portal of joyous expectation and entering upon 
 the same dubious and dangerous highway of action, 
 emulation, and strife. Many trials await those ad- 
 venturous spirits, but also, as we gladly trust, much 
 happiness awaits them ; and to that fortune they are 
 committed, with all our blessings and with all our 
 prayers ! No man can foresee the future ; and so the 
 best counsel that experience dictates can only speak 
 the old heroic watchwords, — Courage, Hope, and 
 Cheer! It is all crystallized in the golden lines of 
 Shakespeare : 
 
€f^t 3!beal m %iSt. 109 
 
 Look what thy soul holds dear ! Imagine it 
 
 To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st : 
 
 Suppose the singing-birds musicians, 
 
 The grass whereon thou tread'st the Presence, strew'd. 
 
 The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more 
 
 Than a delightful measure, or a dance. 
 
 There has not been a time, within my knowledge, 
 when that auspicious admonition was more needed 
 than it is in these hard, ghttering, boisterous days, by 
 those who are entering upon the active pursuits of life. 
 The age upon which they are cast is one of painful 
 transition, of agnosticism, of the aggressive, self-asser- 
 tive encroachment of numbers, and of seething popu- 
 lar tumult. In almost every direction, conflict and 
 noise! In almost every quarter, luxury, profanity, 
 vulgarity, and pretentious mediocrity ! The cities are 
 resonant with hideous clangor, and overrun with loco- 
 motive agencies of electrical massacre ! The country 
 is populous with political quacks and crazy socialists! 
 Leaders of thought, however, have hailed this time 
 as one of splendid achievement, — and this hour is not 
 one for controversy, or even for dissent. The music 
 of your festival should not be marred by a single dis- 
 cordant note. I will only venture to remind you 
 that, after more than seventy years of continuous and 
 amazing scientific development, the dominant influ- 
 ences of the age are more material than spiritual; 
 and, without disparaging science, I should wish to 
 urge that materialism, — promoting selfishness and 
 closing the portal of hope, — is a fruitful cause of evil, 
 and to declare that nothing is so essential to the young 
 
no % Wttatf^ of %mtd. 
 
 as fidelity to the spiritual principle and inflexible de- 
 votion to the ideal. Whatever be the characteristics 
 of the age, its votaries must confront the hour. I 
 know not how they could be better armed than with 
 the sacred purpose to preserve, to the end of their 
 days, the romance and the beauty of their youth, — 
 with all its sweet illusions and all its glorious beliefs, 
 — and to keep themselves unspotted from the world. 
 There are, indeed, moments when the philosophy 
 of the ideal seems visionary; when the disheartening 
 force of the commonplace seems to overwhelm every- 
 thing with platitude and dullness; when "the seamy 
 side " of life comes uppermost, with an effect that is 
 almost comic. I was speaking to an old friend of 
 mine, in England, — the Duke of Beaufort, — and with 
 enthusiastic interest, about that famous ruin, Tintem 
 Abbey. " Make a visit to me at Troy House," the 
 Duke said : " Come when there is the harvest moon, 
 for then the place is at its best; and we will go there 
 together, and see the ghost." And then he added: 
 " Tintern is a part of my property, and it lately cost 
 me a thousand pounds to dig the rubbish out of it." 
 To us that venerable ruin is associated with historic 
 and romantic traditions and with the sublime poetry of 
 Wordsworth. To the owner it is, at times, an object 
 of mere pecuniary solicitude. So goes the world. 
 There is a commonplace side to everything ; but there 
 is also an ideal side — and it is only by fixing our 
 eyes upon the ideal that we are able to forget the 
 toils and cares of a laborious existence and to bear 
 with patience the ills of mortality. 
 
It is not devotion to a fantasy that I would advo- 
 cate : it is devotion to the intellect ; to learning ; to 
 purity, nobility, simpHcity, beauty; to the life of the 
 spirit, which no worldly mishap can ever defeat ! Ex- 
 amples of that devotion might readily be drawn from 
 the history of literature. Such a book as William 
 Gifford's Autobiography, — usually prefixed to his 
 translation of Juvenal, — is worth more to the young 
 than pages of precept. But I must not linger upon 
 examples. Amid the vicissitudes of experience, de- 
 votion to the ideal is the only sure refuge. At the 
 outset of life it is natural that the future should be 
 viewed with anxiety ; but this anxiety is often mis- 
 placed and useless. Every youth must find a voca- 
 tion, but the building of character is more important 
 than the choice of employment. When I review the 
 past, and recall the companions of my youth, and 
 consider the victors and the vanquished, — who has 
 been exalted and who has fallen by the way, — I am 
 almost persuaded that the control of circumstances is 
 well-nigh impossible. Most persons who have ar- 
 rived at the autumn of life have rested upon that con- 
 clusion. That chord of memory was deftly touched 
 by Thackeray, in his quaint " Ballad of Bouillabaisse " : 
 
 There's Jack has made a wond'rous marriage ; 
 
 There's laughing Tom is laughing yet; 
 There's brave Augustus drives his carriage ; 
 
 There's poor old Fred in the Gazette ; 
 On James's head the grass is growing — 
 
 Good Lord ! the world has wagged apace, 
 Since here we set the claret flowing, 
 
 And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse. 
 
112 ^ Wttai^ of %mttl 
 
 But, however the world may wag, the fine spirit 
 never falters. Whatever may be the burdens laid 
 upon it, the fine spirit rises to the ordeal, and meets 
 them, and bears them. Whatever the sorrows that 
 darken the world of man, the fine spirit looks through 
 the darkness, and sees beyond it the eternal sunshine 
 of the world of God. Hold fast, therefore, by the 
 spirit that is within you ! Cherish your aspirations ! 
 Trust in the dreams of your youth! The ships that 
 sailed at morning will all come home before the dark. 
 Life will have trials, and much that time may give 
 will, in time, be taken away ; but the hour will never 
 come that can take from you the proud supremacy of 
 your intellect, the rich treasures of your learning, the 
 integrity of your character, the purity of your honor ! 
 That is true success! 
 
 Who misses or who wins the prize ? 
 Go, lose or conquer as you can ; 
 But if you fall or if you rise, 
 
 Be each, pray God, a gentleman ! 
 
 Four years ago a voice that we all loved was heard 
 in this place, speaking to cheer our young adventurers 
 upon their morning march. We did not then know 
 that we were hearing the honored Curtis for the last 
 time — that this, for us, was indeed "the setting sun 
 and music at the close." If we could have known it, 
 how sacred every word would have seemed to be! 
 how precious the counsel! how solemn the hour! I 
 know not if it will ever be my privilege to address this 
 academy again. To you, the graduates, let me ex- 
 
€|)c Sl^eal in %ik. 113 
 
 press my earnest wish that the lesson of my parting 
 words may sink deep into your hearts, and always 
 abide there. You have labored long and well, and 
 you are graduated here with the approbation of your 
 teachers and with the sympathy and delighted favor of 
 your friends. Take from my hands these diplomas 
 that you have merited so well; and take from my 
 lips the heartfelt wish that your lives will be successful 
 and happy ! Parting is always sad, — but the sad- 
 ness of this parting will soon be forgotten. Not so, 
 I profoundly hope and believe, the purpose with which 
 you now set forward, to fulfil, by steadfast, unswerv- 
 ing, passionate fidelity to noble ends, the golden 
 promise of your beautiful youth. I cannot better 
 conclude this address than with the wise admonition 
 of Longfellow, commending the example of the builders 
 of old : 
 
 Let us do our work as well, — 
 
 Both the unseen and the seen ; 
 Make the house where gods may dwell 
 
 Beautiful, entire, and clean ! 
 
IN MEMORY OF 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
9|n i^emori? of 
 (tE»eorge 2IKlliam €uxti^* 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE SEMINARY BUILDING, NEW 
 BRIGHTON, STATEN ISLAND, FEBRUARY 24, 1 896. 
 
 THE trustees of the Staten Island Academy have 
 authorized the present celebration of the birthday 
 of Curtis, and, speaking as their president and repre- 
 sentative, I have now to declare their deep sympathy 
 with the motive, spirit, and purpose of this occasion. 
 " The reason of things," said the old English divine 
 Dr. South, " lies in a little compass, if the mind could, 
 at any time, be so happy as to light upon it." Curtis 
 was one of our friends and benefactors, but it is not 
 for that reason that we select his birthday for especial 
 observance. The academy is grateful to all its friends 
 and benefactors, whether living or passed away, but it 
 does not, and cannot, commemorate them. Curtis was 
 more than a friend and benefactor; he was a great 
 and unusual character, and, dwelling for many years 
 in this community, and coming into more or less inti- 
 mate contact with many of our lives, he left to us a 
 great and unusual example; and, since our cause is 
 education, which aims ever at harmonious develop- 
 ment of character and wise conduct of life, it is 
 117 
 
ii8 m Wttal^ of %amd. 
 
 appropriate that we should, from time to time, 
 recall the image and dwell upon the memory of 
 one whose nobleness was once a living delight, and 
 whose spotless fame is now a hallowed monitor and 
 guide. 
 
 The records of biography, ample and widely diversi- 
 fied, present but few men who, living, as Curtis did, for 
 nearly three score years and ten, developed themselves 
 in a manner so perfectly symmetrical, and exerted 
 upon society an influence at once so strong, so gentle, 
 and so pure. His vocations were journalism, litera- 
 ture, politics, and oratory, and in all of them he was 
 beneficent, because in all of them the exercise of his 
 splendid abilities was inexorably and invariably gov- 
 erned and directed by a clear and fine sense of duty. 
 It would be superfluous here to specify his talents or 
 enumerate his achievements. The word for this hour 
 and this place is simply a reminder of the beauty of 
 his life. He lived for others, and the loveliest attributes 
 of his nature were his sweet and cheerful patience and 
 his exquisite refinement. His mind was invincibly 
 anchored upon what he has himself defined as " that 
 celestial law which subordinates the brute force of 
 numbers to intellectual and moral ascendency," and to 
 the last, and in the face of every adverse occurrence, 
 he believed in the ultimate triumph of virtue and 
 beauty in the ordination of human affairs. The pres- 
 ence of such a man is, at all times, a blessing; the 
 memory of such a man, in the present time of insen- 
 sate luxury, vacuous vulgarity, and the insolent tyranny 
 of ignorant numbers, is an inexpressible comfort. As 
 
<0corge H^iftiam Curtis* 119 
 
 I think of his example, I remember the noble words 
 of Longfellow: 
 
 The star of the unconquered will, 
 
 He rises in my breast. 
 Serene, and resolute, and still. 
 
 And calm, and self-possessed. 
 
 For the abuses of this period, I am wishful to believe, 
 as he believed, will pass away. Our hope is in the 
 cause of education, which he represented, and for 
 which we labor. As that cause advances, the people will 
 learn that they are not wise, virtuous, and noble simply 
 because they happen to be born, but that much self- 
 discipline is essential to make them adequate to the 
 duties of citizenship and worthy of its rights. As that 
 cause advances, the discordant elements of our hybrid 
 population will become subdued and harmonized, and 
 we shall hear no more of "the Irish vote," or "the 
 German vote "; of murders on election day; of thieves 
 and assassins elected or appointed to public office ; of 
 Indians robbed and slaughtered ; or of negroes hanged 
 upon trees and tortured with fire. As that cause 
 advances, the press will cease to be, — what, for the 
 most part, it has become, — an odious chronicle of 
 small beer and a hideous, primer-like picture-book for 
 hare-brained fools; while the theatre, which plays so 
 large a part in contemporary social life, will present 
 spectacles that ennoble and cheer, instead of scenes 
 that sadden and disgust. As that cause advances, our 
 highways may be relieved of the baleful engines of 
 racket, destruction, and sudden death with which they 
 
I20 % Wtmf^ of %mt^. 
 
 are now furnished, and something Hke a nornnal con- 
 dition of the pubHc ears and nerves may be restored. 
 As that cause advances, profane and filthy language 
 will be no longer heard in our streets and our pub- 
 lic vehicles, as it is now, and the great American 
 pastimes of spitting, swearing, and bragging will 
 happily be discarded. As that cause advances, the 
 right of voting will be properly restricted and the 
 intelligence, and not the ignorance and folly, of the 
 nation will prevail in its government; the cackle of 
 silly laughter at all serious things will cease to be heard ; 
 and the love and reverence that bind the human heart 
 to the fireside of home and to the altar of God will 
 blossom in a civilization of honorable industry, gentle 
 manners, dignity, and peace. 
 
 Swift fly the years and rise th' auspicious morn ! 
 
 Bayard Taylor, in 1869, said these words: 
 
 We have relaxed the rough work of two and a half centuries, 
 and are beginning to enjoy that rest and leisure out of which the 
 grace and beauty of civilization grow. The pillars of our 
 political fabric have been slowly and massively raised, like the 
 drums of Doric columns, but they still need the crowning capi- 
 tals and the sculptured entablature. Law and right and physical 
 development build well, but they are cold, mathematical archi- 
 tects ; only the poet and the artist make beautiful the temple. 
 Our natural tendency, as a people, is to worship positive material 
 achievement, in whatever form displayed ; even the poet must 
 be a partisan before the government will recognize his existence. 
 So much of our intellectual energy has been led into the new 
 paths which our national growth has opened, — so exacting are 
 the demands upon working brains, — that taste and refinement of 
 
•George IBiHiam Curtijef* 
 
 121 
 
 mind and warm appreciation of the creative spirit of beauty are 
 only beginning to bloom, here and there, among us, like tender 
 exotic flowers. " The light that never was on sea or land " shines 
 all around us, but few are the eyes whose vision it clarifies. Yet 
 the faculty is here, and the earnest need. The delight in art, of 
 which poetry is the highest manifestation, has ceased to be the 
 privilege of a fortunate few, and will soon become, let us hope, 
 the common heritage of the people. 
 
 More than a quarter of a century has passed since 
 those words were uttered, and as we look upon our 
 " Doric columns," emblazoned with the great names of 
 the several bosses, together with the various and 
 illustrious Mikes and Barneys by whom our govern- 
 ment is infested, our legislation bartered, and our 
 politics disgraced, we are able to reflect that we still 
 possess the blessed privilege of hope. 
 
 In the commemorative oration on Curtis that I 
 delivered at the Castleton, on February 24, 1893, 
 I said these words upon literature: 
 
 " The mission of the man of letters is to touch the 
 heart; to kindle the imagination; to ennoble the 
 mind. He is the interpreter between the spirit of 
 beauty that is in Nature and the general intelligence 
 and sensibility of mankind. He sets to music the 
 pageantry and the pathos of human life, and he keeps 
 alive in the soul the holy enthusiasm of devotion to the 
 ideal. He honors and perpetuates heroic conduct, and 
 he teaches by many devices of art — by story and 
 poem, and parable, and essay, and drama — purity of 
 life, integrity to man, and faith in God. He is con- 
 tinually reminding you of the goodness and loveliness 
 to which you may attain ; continually causing you to 
 
 19 
 
122 % Wtm^ of Eaurd* 
 
 see what opportunities of nobility your life affords; 
 continually delighting you with high thoughts and 
 beautiful pictures. He does not preach to you. He 
 does not attempt to regulate your specific actions. 
 He does not assail you with the hysterical scream of 
 the reformer. He does not carp and vex and meddle. 
 He whispers to you, in your silent hours, of love and 
 heroism, and holiness, and immortality, and you are 
 refreshed and strong, and come forth into the world 
 smiling at fortune and bearing blessings in your hands." 
 Curtis was, first of all and most of all, a man of 
 letters ; yet in whatever aspect you please to contem- 
 plate his life you find him always the image of integ- 
 rity, simplicity, and taste. He was a representative 
 American gentleman, and no man of his time more 
 completely embodied the essential virtues of the 
 American character. The heroes of English history 
 whom he had selected as his models, and whose 
 example he kept constantly in view, were Sir Philip 
 Sidney, John Milton, and John Hampden. The 
 American whom he most revered was Washington, 
 and there was in his nature a strong infusion of the 
 reticence, the continence, the coldness, the calm 
 endurance, and iron resolution, — in a word, the 
 inherent, stately aristocracy, — for which Washington 
 was remarkable. He believed in " the rights of man," 
 in the liberty which is not license, in equality before 
 the law ; but he did not believe that " the rights of 
 man" are obtained by gregarious wallowing in the 
 mire of vulgarity. He would have equalized society, 
 not by degrading the lofty, but by raising the low. As 
 
(jBeorgc IBiiHiam Curtis* 123 
 
 a patriot he neither bragged nor " hollered." He knew 
 that the Republic is based upon great principles, which 
 the passage of " Resolutions " can neither hinder nor 
 help. He was not provincial, and, had he been living 
 now, he would have been one of the foremost to 
 repudiate and denounce the hysterics with which the 
 peace of our country has of late ^ been endangered, its 
 intelligence humiliated, and its prosperity marred. In 
 politics he esteemed fidelity to principle as more 
 essential than allegiance to party, and his single aim 
 was to do right, without regard to the consequence. 
 As a journalist he respected the sanctity of private 
 life, he did not publish slop and call it " news," he 
 discussed ideas and policies, and he strove to mould 
 and guide the public opinion, not as a follower, but as 
 a leader. As an orator he preserved and illustrated 
 the high and splendid traditions of Burke, Everett, 
 Sumner, and Phillips. His eloquence was dedicated 
 to the service of truth and beauty, to the commemora- 
 tion of great deeds, and to the glory of splendid 
 names. In literature he had the purity of Addison 
 and the gentleness of Goldsmith, together with a moral 
 fervor, a cheerful sweetness, and a pensive grace that 
 were his own. 
 
 The American authors in association with whose 
 names I treasure that of Curtis are the elder Dana, 
 Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and Donald 
 G. Mitchell; not because he resembled them, in all 
 their attributes, but because, like them, he diffused 
 refinement and cheer from a region of meditative 
 
 1 The allusion is to the Venezuela folly. 
 
124 ^ Wttat^ of StauteL 
 
 seclusion. Washington Irving I never saw, but the 
 elder Dana I saw and heard, in my youth, and I 
 remember a glimpse of Halleck. The most interesting 
 of American authors now alive is Mitchell, and he is 
 so because, among other reasons, while profoundly 
 devoted to his art, he is not feverishly solicitous as to 
 the admiration of the world. 
 
 The commemoration of such men as Curtis is among 
 the good auguries of our turbulent time, for it means 
 that probity, personal distinction, learning, art, and the 
 graces of life are not wholly unrecognized or un- 
 valued. Thirty years ago not a single monument had 
 been erected in the United States to an American 
 poet. The first monument of that kind ever set up 
 in this country was the obelisk commemorative of 
 Halleck, at Guilford, Connecticut, where he was born 
 and where his ashes rest.i Curtis was not distinctively 
 a poet, although he possessed elements of the poetic 
 temperament, but he was a representative man of 
 letters, and his beautiful pages have enriched our 
 literature and our lives. The Staten Island Academy 
 purposes to erect his monument. It will be the 
 Curtis Lyceum, and within it will be placed his portrait 
 and his bust, together with the relics of him that we 
 are able to assemble; and within it, as the years drift 
 away, by speech, by song, by festival, by every form of 
 artistic effort and by every manifestation of innocent 
 joy, all that is finest in the mind and brightest in the 
 beauty of our island will unite to honor him, as he 
 
 1 The Halleck Monument, at Guilford, Connecticut, was dedicated on 
 July 8, 1869. 
 
ciBieorge tl^iHiam €urttj?» 125 
 
 would have wished to be honored, by association with 
 their happiness, and thus to keep his memory forever 
 green. 
 
 Let me close this address with the gentle aspiration 
 of the poet Whittier : 
 
 Our lips of praise must soon be dumb, 
 
 Our gratefal eyes be dim ; 
 O, brothers of the days to come, 
 
 Take tender charge of him ! 
 
 Note. — In the course of this address the speaker told humorous anecdotes, 
 and he counselled the students to read only those authors whose writings 
 awaken in their minds a spontaneous, alluring sjrmpathy, and not to expend 
 their time in merely conventional reading. He also repeated, as appropriate 
 to Curtis, the touching lines on Joseph Rodman Drake, written many years 
 ago by Halleck, beginning : 
 
 " Green be the turf above thee. 
 Friend of my better days ! 
 None knew thee but to love thee. 
 None named thee but to praise." 
 
THE STATEN ISLAND ACADEMY 
 
 1 A WORD OF WELCOME 
 
 2 THE INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLE 
 
 3 A WORD OF FAREWELL 
 
a moth of melcome* 
 
 SPEECH AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW BUILDING 
 
 OF THE STATEN ISLAND ACADEMY, AT ST. 
 
 GEORGE^ NEW BRIGHTON, S. I., JUNE 
 
 15, 1896. 
 
 A PLEASANT duty, — one of the most pleasant 
 duties that have ever engaged my attention, — 
 devolves upon me now. To you, the teachers and 
 pupils of the Staten Island Academy, now for the first 
 time formally assembled in its new building, I wish to 
 speak a welcome, warm as kindness can make it, to 
 this beautiful and permanent home. You will not 
 expect me to say many words. The occasion, indeed, 
 is one that scarcely calls for speech, because " things 
 seen are mightier than things heard," and because to- 
 day the evidence of our work is seen. 
 
 This massive fabric, with its pleasing outlines, its 
 graceful gables, and its romantic aspect, rising, under 
 verdant trees, upon the golden shore of your beautiful 
 Island, tells its own glad story of a noble purpose splen- 
 didly fulfilled. This eager assemblage, also, is elo- 
 quent of the consummation of a high endeavor. The 
 long and weary years of anxious toil and waiting are 
 ended. The courage that nothing could daunt and 
 the patience that nothing could tire are rewarded 
 now. I welcome you to light and beauty and plea- 
 sure; to a habitation of comfort; to spacious halls 
 20 129 
 
I30 % f^rreatfj of %mtd. 
 
 and studios, wherein art and luxury will deftly min- 
 ister to the needs of use ; to a library that will make 
 you intimate with the best of all society, the immortal 
 minds of every language and of every land. In one 
 word, I welcome you to an ideal scholar's home. 
 
 The reader of that precious biography, Boswell's 
 Life of Johnson, is usually amused by the philoso- 
 pher's description of the vendible brewery of his friend 
 Thrale. " It is not," said Dr. Johnson, " merely a 
 collection of vats and boilers, it is the potentiality of 
 growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice." In a 
 somewhat kindred vein, let me declare of this acad- 
 emy — it is not merely a collection of chalk and 
 blackboards, of slates and pencils, of the hard and 
 barren paraphernalia of tuition ; it is a temple of cul- 
 ture : and by culture I mean the possibility of a hap- 
 piness that no vicissitude can alienate, the possibility 
 of a success that no adversity can mar. In this 
 scholastic haven you will, we hope, be happy, — find- 
 ing the pathways of knowledge pleasant, and laying, 
 firm and broad and deep, the foundations of an 
 honorable, useful, lovely life. Opportunity is an 
 angel that never comes but once. That angel has ar- 
 rived for you ; and her face is radiant with promise 
 and her hands are filled with blessings. Whether 
 that promise will be fulfilled, and whether those bless- 
 ings will be enjoyed, it is, in a great measure, for you 
 to determine. Your future will depend upon your use 
 of the present. 
 
 Every human creature, I am aware, acts according 
 to the trend of character — for that is fate; but even 
 
€6e ^mm 3[^toti lllcatiemp* 131 
 
 fate can be modified by the action of the will; and 
 you, who are upon the threshold of life, have now the 
 golden opportunity, if you so resolve, to profit by the 
 lovely environment that others have provided for you, 
 and also by the monition of their experience. That 
 monition would be, to make no error at the beginning. 
 No human being ever entirely recovers from the con- 
 sequences of a mistake at the start. Heed the warn- 
 ing of those who have preceded you. The highway 
 of human life, which to you seems strange and new, 
 is a beaten track to them. Strengthen yourselves for 
 your long journey, by the acquisition of knowledge, 
 by cultivating the habit of independent thought, and 
 by a devout allegiance to high standards of character, 
 duty, and conduct. Aim always at the highest. It is 
 recorded of the great Admiral, Lord Nelson, that when 
 he was first made a captain, he used to encourage the 
 midshipmen on his quarter-deck, by saying to them, 
 " I am going a race to the mast-head ; I hope to have 
 the pleasure of meeting you there." We are all mak- 
 ing for the mast-head. May it be your privilege to 
 nail your purple banners of victory to the peak, where 
 they shall float and flash, in the golden glory of the 
 sun, through all the tranquil hours of your long and 
 happy day! 
 
Cl^e gintellectual l^rinciple* 
 
 SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE STATEN ISLAND 
 ACADEMY, JUNE l6, 1896. 
 
 JUNE has come back, and with it the abundant 
 grass, the glistening foliage, and the roses triumph- 
 ant in the sun. It is the season of bloom and beauty, 
 and all nature is exultant and superb. It is the season 
 of rejoicing, and rightly and naturally it brings to us 
 our festival of scholarship and our annual time of rest. 
 Once more we cast aside our burdens. Once more 
 we look to the ocean and to the stars. 
 
 The clouds sail and the waters flow 
 Whichever way they care to go, 
 And all the sounds of action seem 
 Like distant music in a dream. 
 
 Shades of regret mingle, indeed, with all occasions 
 like this, for the reason that these festivals of parting 
 indicate the flight of time and the incessant and inex- 
 orable operations of change. For some of us — per- 
 haps for all of us — after to-day, nothing will be as 
 once it was. In this assemblage, however, the feel- 
 ing of the hour is chiefly one of gladness. The dedi- 
 cation of this noble building marks an auspicious 
 triumph for the cause of education, and thus for the 
 welfare of the community, and in that we may well be 
 glad. 
 
 133 
 
134 ^ Wteatf^ of %mctl 
 
 When I speak of education, I do not mean merely 
 the impartment of knowledge, but the development of 
 the character and the building of the mind. The in- 
 fluence that leads to that result is always a public ben- 
 efit. Civilization succeeds when it produces commu- 
 nities that are governed by justice, dignified by intelli- 
 gence, and adorned by refinement. In parts of the 
 republic it has amply and brilliantly succeeded; in 
 others it has failed ; and it has failed for want of true 
 education — the education that exalts the soul above 
 material things, and that cultivates, not the senses, but 
 the intellect. 
 
 I must not linger upon the shadows of the national 
 picture, but neither must I disguise from myself that 
 some of the signs of these times are ominous and sad. 
 The church seems divided against herself. The po- 
 litical situation is fraught with danger. The populace 
 of labor views with discontent the spectacle of wealth 
 concentrated in the hands of a few persons, and would 
 gladly disperse it. The newspapers, with here and 
 there an exception, by their reckless appeal to the low 
 tastes and passions of the multitude, have widely cor- 
 rupted the public morals and much debased the stan- 
 dard of public intelligence. Developments are every- 
 where in progress, — notably in the application of 
 electricity to common life, — which, unless more wisely 
 regulated, must inevitably, and within a few years, 
 make us a nation of nervous invalids. 
 
 While, however, I believe that ignorance and folly 
 were never more widely diffused than they are now, 
 and that levity and coarseness were never more ram- 
 
€j)e M>t&,tm Sl^Ianti ^catiemp. 135 
 
 pant, I also believe that devotion to splendid ideals 
 was never more profound with those who feel it, or 
 more determined to conquer and to rule. The hope of 
 civilization is in the school ; and, therefore, the bril- 
 liant success of such an enterprise as we celebrate to- 
 day is auspicious, not only for its advocates and pro- 
 moters, but for society. This is one of many steps 
 in the right direction. 
 
 When I have wandered in the old world; when I 
 have roamed among the scholastic cities of England ; 
 when I have paused among the groves and avenues 
 of Oxford and Cambridge, and seen those stately tem- 
 ples and palaces rising, glorious, upon those incom- 
 parable lawns; when I have mused in the gray and 
 haunted gloom of venerable Winchester; when I 
 have stood awe-stricken beside the ancient towers ot 
 the cathedral of Canterbury, while the ivy was trem- 
 bling on its walls, and the rooks were flying over it, 
 and the western sun was flooding its great windows, 
 and the organ was throbbing in its bosom, like a voice 
 out of heaven, then, deep in my heart, I have felt the 
 passionate desire that this celestial beauty, or some- 
 thing like it, might be communicated to my own 
 land, and made perpetual for the benefit of my people. 
 
 That is the spirit in which I have felt, and thought, 
 and written, and labored. That is why I am an ad- 
 vocate and a worker for education ; and if it were 
 essential for me to exhort you on this subject (which 
 it is not, because you will be addressed by an honored 
 friend of mine,i a far abler and more eloquent voice), 
 
 1 John Foord, Esq. 
 
136 % IBreatf) of %antd. 
 
 I should strive to impress upon your minds and memo- 
 ries the enormous importance to a community of hav- 
 ing within its centre an institution fraught with the 
 celestial associations of beauty and devoted to the 
 sacred service of learning and art. 
 
 In my speech delivered here yesterday I addressed 
 myself to the pupils, with words of friendly counsel. 
 To you, sir, the principal of the Staten Island Acad- 
 emy ,i I now address myself, with words of cordial con- 
 gratulation. In every enterprise that I have known 
 there has always been one moving spirit, whose in- 
 domitable purpose and incessant industry at last ac- 
 complished the desired result. In this academy en- 
 terprise you have been the moving spirit. Yours was 
 the steadfast purpose to obtain the new building, and 
 to that purpose the last ten years of your life have 
 been devoted. Your design was worthy of a scholar 
 and a public-spirited citizen, and the fulfilment of it 
 was worthy of an enlightened community. You have 
 labored with exemplary fidelity, and you have con- 
 spicuously manifested the virtues of resolution 
 and patience. You now rejoice in ample and auspi- 
 cious success. That success it is my privilege to 
 crown. With the sanction of the trustees, and in 
 the presence of your pupils and your admiring 
 friends, I now commit to you the custody of this build- 
 ing, and I place in your hands its keys, which are 
 the symbols of your charge. No responsibility in life 
 is more momentous than that which attends the 
 guidance of youth. The influence of the teacher, af- 
 
 1 Frederick E. Partington, Esq. 
 
€8e i^taten Sl^ianb 3ficabeitip, 137 
 
 fecting the character and conduct of the pupil, is 
 perpetual. I believe that you appreciate and deeply 
 feel the solemn importance of your vocation, and I 
 have only now to express the earnest hope that your 
 enthusiasm and your zeal will continually be en- 
 couraged and cheered by the public sympathy and 
 support, and that, as the field of your labor broadens, 
 your strength will endure and your success increase. 
 May all blessings rest upon you, in the perform- 
 ance of your duty, and upon the institution over 
 which you have presided so long, so ably, and so well. 
 
 21 
 
a morti of f aretxjelL 
 
 CLOSING SPEECH AT THE STATEN ISLAND ACADEMY, 
 JUNE l6, 1896.1 
 
 THE parting moment has come, and I must say 
 farewell. It is a word that has long been familiar 
 to my lips; it is a word with which, as the years pass, 
 we all become sadly acquainted. Life is full of partings 
 and farewells. It is useless to repine at them : and if 
 now, in the evening twilight of experience, I were 
 asked to name the best of all the virtues, I should de- 
 
 1 Before saying the farewell word the speaker read the following extract 
 from an address by Lord Acton, delivered before the University of Cambridge, 
 England : 
 
 "I shall never again enjoy the privilege of speaking my thoughts to such an 
 audience as this, and on so valued an occasion a lecturer may well be tempted 
 to bethink himself whether he knows of any neglected truth, any cardinal 
 proposition, that might serve as his epigraph, as a last signal, perhaps even as 
 a target. I am not thinking of those shining precepts which are the regis- 
 tered property of every school; that is to say : learn as much by writing as by 
 reading; do not be content with the best books, seek side-lights from the 
 others; have no favorites ; keep men and things apart; beware of the prestige 
 of great names ; trust only authorities that you have tested ; be more severe to 
 ideas than to actions ; do not overlook the strength of the bad cause or the 
 weakness of the good; never be surprised by the crumbling of an idol or the 
 disclosure of a skeleton ; judge talent by high-water mark, and character by 
 low ; expect demoralization more from power than from cupidity ; problems 
 are often more instructive than periods. . . . Most of this, I suppose, is un- 
 disputed. But the weight of authority is against me when I implore you never 
 to debase the moral currency or lower the standards of rectitude ; to suffer no 
 man and no cause to escape the undjring penalty which history has the mission 
 to inflict on wrong, but to try others by the final maxim that governs our 
 lives." 
 
140 % Wtmf^ of HaureK. 
 
 clare that they are a calm acceptance of fate and a 
 cheerful endurance of fortune, whatever comes. 
 
 New duties await you. New scenes will open be- 
 fore you. Try to make others happy. Try to diffuse 
 happiness at every step. True success is in the mo- 
 ment. Remember that you are as much in eternity 
 now as you will be ever, and therefore let your plans 
 of excellence and achievement be made for to-day and 
 not for to-morrow. Nothing in human life is so sad as 
 the blind propensity of almost all kinds of people 
 to resolve to be something different and better, by and 
 by. Your hour is now, or it is never. 
 
 I request you to take from my hands the diplomas of 
 the academy. They are not only the certificates of 
 your scholarship, but of the delight of your parents, 
 the sympathy of your friends, and the approval of your 
 teachers. Take them, and with every blessing. You 
 will be remembered here ; and we, in turn, hope that 
 we may not be forgotten. Fare you well ! and, in the 
 language of the old Bible: "The Lord watch between 
 thee and me, when we are absent one from another." 
 
RECORD OF NAMES 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD OF NAMES 
 MENTIONED IN THE FOREGOING SPEECHES. 
 
 Aristides - B.C. 468 
 
 Juvenal ' Abt. 60 - 140 A.D. 
 
 St. Columba 521 - 597 
 
 Empress Maud . . , Abt. 1102 - 1 167 
 
 Stephen, King of England 1105 - 1154 
 
 Henry De Blois 1 171 
 
 Henry VI., King of England 1421 - 1471 
 
 Richard III., King of England 1452 - 1485 
 
 Anne, Queen of England, wife of Richard III 1456 - 1484 
 
 Henry VIII., King of England 1491 - 1547 
 
 Edward VI., King of England 1537 - 1553 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney 1554 - 1586 
 
 William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616 
 
 Robert Herrick 1591 - 1674 
 
 Richard Burbage 1629 
 
 John Hampden IS94 - 1643 
 
 John Milton 1608 - 1674 
 
 James Graham, > 
 
 First Marquis of Montrose S ^^^^ ~ ^^5° 
 
 Abraham Cowley 1618 - 1667 
 
 Robert South, D. D 1633 - 1716 
 
 Thomas Betterton 1635 - 1710 
 
 John Graham, of Claverhouse, 1 g _ go 
 
 Viscount Dundee J 
 John Churchill, 1 jg^^ _ ^^^2 
 
 First Duke of Marlborough ^ 
 
 William III., King of England 1650 - 1702 
 
 Anne, Queen of England 1664 - 1714 
 
 Matthew Prior 1664 - 1721 
 
 143 
 
144 3li !l^reatl[j of %awcth 
 
 Robert Wilks 1666 - 1732 
 
 William Congreve 1670 - 1729 
 
 Colley Gibber 1671 - 1757 
 
 Thomas Yalden 1671 - 1736 
 
 Henry St. John, ) 
 
 First Viscount Bolingbroke \ ^^^^ ~ ^^Sl 
 
 Edward Young 1684 - 1765 
 
 Joseph Miller . . 1684 - 1738 
 
 Alexander Pope 1688 - 1744 
 
 Robert Blair 1699 - 1 747 
 
 Henry Fielding 1707 - 1754 
 
 Samuel Johnson . 1 709 - 1 784 
 
 David Hume . . 1711 - 1776 
 
 David Garrick 1 716 - 1 779 
 
 Thomas Gray 1716 - 1771 
 
 Margaret Woffington 1719 - 1760 
 
 Spranger Barry . 1719 - 1777 
 
 Adam Smith 1723 - 1790 
 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds 1723 - 1792 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith 1728 - 1774 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, Rip's great-grandfather 1728 - 1807 
 
 Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797 
 
 Frances Abington 1731 - 1815 
 
 Beilby Porteus 1731 - 1808 
 
 William Cowper 1731 - 1800 
 
 George Washington 1 732 - 1 799 
 
 James Dodd 1 796 
 
 Patrick Henry 1 736 - 1 799 
 
 Edward Gibbon 1737 - 1794 
 
 James Boswell 1 740 - 1 795 
 
 Francis Dominic Toussaint L'Ouverture 1743 - 1803 
 
 Charles Dibdin 1 745 - 1814 
 
 Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 1 749 - 1832 
 
 Robert Ferguson . . 1750 - 1774 
 
 Thomas Wignell 1753?- 1803 
 
 Dugald Stewart 1 753 - 1828 
 
 George Crabbe 1754 - 1832 
 
Mtcott of l^ame^^ 145 
 
 Sarah Siddons 1755 - 1831 
 
 John Philip Kemble 1757 - 1823 
 
 William Gifford 1757 - 1829 
 
 Horatio Nelson, Viscount and Admiral 1758 - 1805 
 
 Mason L. Weems 1759 - 1825 
 
 Robert Burns 1 759 - 1 796 
 
 John Bannister 1760 - 1835 
 
 William Dunlap 1766 - 1839 
 
 John Hodgkinson (Meadowcraft) 1767 - 1805 
 
 William Chapman 1769 - 1839 
 
 Anne Brunton (Mrs. Merry, Mrs. Wignell, Mrs. 
 
 Warren) 1770 - 1805 
 
 William Wordsworth 1770 - 1850 
 
 Sir Walter Scott 1771 - 1832 
 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge. ^772 - 1834 
 
 Robert William EUiston 1774 - 1831 
 
 Joseph Jefferson, Rip's grandfather ^774 - 1832 
 
 Charles Lamb 1775 - 1834 
 
 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775 - 1851 
 
 Charles Kemble 1775 - 1854 
 
 Walter Savage Landor 1 775 - 1864 
 
 Charles James Mathews, the elder 1776 - 1835 
 
 Thomas (Abthorpe) Cooper 1776 - 1849 
 
 George Barthold Niebuhr . , 1776 - 1831 
 
 Charles Mayne Young 1777 - 1856 
 
 Thomas Moore 1779 - 1852 
 
 Lemuel Shaw 1781 - 1861 
 
 Washington Irving 1783 - 1859 
 
 Theron Metcalf 1784 - 1875 
 
 Henry J. Finn 1 785 - 1840 
 
 Thomas De Quincey 1785 - 1859 
 
 Henry Kirke White 1785 - 1806 
 
 Edmund Kean 1 787 - 1833 
 
 John Louis Uhland 1787 - 1862 
 
 Richard Henry Dana , 1787 - 1879 
 
 George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron) 1788 - 1824 
 
 Fitz-Greene Halleck 1790 - 1867 
 
 22 
 
% Wttm of %mtth 
 
 James Buchanan 1 791 - 1868 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 - 1822 
 
 William Charles Macready 1793 - 1873 
 
 Samuel G. Goodrich 1793 ~ ^^^^ 
 
 James William Wallack, the elder 1794 - 1864 
 
 Charles G. Loring 1794 - 1867 
 
 Edward Everett 1794 - 1865 
 
 Joel Parker 1795 - 1875 
 
 George Peabody 1 795 - 1869 
 
 Joseph Rodman Drake 1795 - 1820 
 
 John Keats 1 796 - 1821 
 
 Junius Brutus Booth, the elder 1796 - 1852 
 
 Frederick Henry Yates 1797 - 1842 
 
 Theophilus Parsons 1797 - 1882 
 
 Benjamin F. Hallett 1797 - 1862 
 
 Thomas Hood 1 798 - 1845 
 
 Thomas Barry 1 798 - 1876 
 
 Henry Placide 1799 - 1870 
 
 Rufus Choate 1 799 - 1859 
 
 Sidney Bartlett 1 799 - 1889 
 
 James Henry Hackett 1800 ~ 1871 
 
 J. Hardy Prince 1801 - i86l 
 
 William Evans Burton 1802 - i860 
 
 Charles James Mathews, the younger 1803 - 1879 
 
 Charles B. Parsons 1803 - 1871 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 - 1882 
 
 Joseph Jefferson, Rip's father 1804 - 1842 
 
 Thomas Flynn 1804 - 1849 
 
 Wilham Rufus Blake 1805 - 1863 
 
 Edwin Forrest 1806 - 1872 
 
 James Oakes 1807 - 1878 
 
 Henry Wads worth Longfellow 1807 - 1882 
 
 John G. Whittier 1807 - 1892 
 
 John R. Scott 1808 - 1865 
 
 John Brougham 1808 - 1880 
 
 Alfred Tennyson ' 1809 - 1892 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes .... 1809 - 1894 
 
i^tcottx of l^amc^. 
 
 147 
 
 Henry Giles 1809 - 1882 
 
 John Gibbs Gilbert 1810 - 1889 
 
 George Tyler Bigelow 1810 - 1878 
 
 Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman 1875 
 
 Frances Anne Kemble 181 1 - 1893 
 
 Horace Greeley 181 1 - 1873 
 
 William Makepeace Thackeray 181 1 - 1863 
 
 James Edward Murdoch 181 1 - 1893 
 
 Wendell Phillips 181 1 - 1884 
 
 Charles Sumner 181 1 - 1874 
 
 William Warren 1812 - 1888 
 
 Charles Dickens, the elder 1812 - 1870 
 
 Epes Sargent 1812 - 1880 
 
 John C. Fremont . . 1813 - 1890 
 
 Francis A. Durivage 1814 - 1881 
 
 Henry Clapp, Jr 1814?- 1875 
 
 Andrew Jackson Neafie 1815 - 1892 
 
 Wyzeman Marshall 1815 - 1896 
 
 Charlotte Cushman 1815 - 1876 
 
 Charles Fisher 1816 - 1891 
 
 Edwin L. Davenport 1816 - 1877 
 
 Joseph Proctor 1816 - 1897 
 
 James Anthony Froude 1818 - 1894 
 
 James William Wallack, the younger 1818 - 1873 
 
 Catherine Farren (Mary Anne Russell) 1818 - 1894 
 
 John Johnstone Wallack (Lester Wallack) 1819 - 1888 
 
 Charles Kingsley .... 1819 - 1875 
 
 Hudson Kirby 1819 - 1848 
 
 Edwin Percy Whipple 1819 - 1886 
 
 James Russell Lowell 1819 - 1891 
 
 Rachel (EUzabeth Rachel Felix) 1820 - 1858 
 
 George Eliot (Marian Evans) 1820 - 1881 
 
 Herbert Spencer 1820 
 
 Edward Eddy 1821 - 1875 
 
 Charles T. Congdon 1821 - 1891 
 
 Charles St. Thomas Burke 1822 - 1854 
 
 Stephen Gordon Nash 1822 - 1894 
 
148 % iBrcatfj of %amd* 
 
 Matthew Arnold 1822 - 1888 
 
 Donald G. Mitchell 1822 
 
 John Edmund Owens 1823 - 1886 
 
 Edward F. Keach 1824 - 1863 
 
 Charles Fechter 1824 - 1879 
 
 William Wilkie Collins 1824 - 1889 
 
 Henry Charles Fitzroy Somerset, Duke of Beaufort. 1824 
 
 George William Curtis ... 1824 - 1892 
 
 Richard Henry Stoddard 1825 
 
 Bayard Taylor 1825 - 1878 
 
 Adelaide Ristori 1826 
 
 William Warland Clapp 1826 - 1891 
 
 Charles Bullard Fairbanks , 1827 - 1859 
 
 Curtis Guild 1827 
 
 Ulysses S. Grant 1828 - 1885 
 
 Joseph Jefferson (Rip Van Winkle) . 1829 
 
 Fanny Janauschek 1830 
 
 Julia Dean 1830 - 1868 
 
 Elizabeth Crocker (Mrs. D. P. Bowers) 1830 - 1895 
 
 A. Wallace Thaxter, Jr 1832 - 1864 
 
 Tommaso Salvini 1833 
 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman 1833 
 
 Edwin Thomas Booth 1833 - 1893 
 
 John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Baron Acton. 1834 
 
 Edwin Adams 1834 - 1877 
 
 Erastus Wiman 1834 
 
 Harriet McEwen Kimball 1834 - 
 
 Marie Seebach 1834 - 1897 
 
 Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) 1835 
 
 William Winter 1836 
 
 Lawrence Barrett 1836 - 1891 
 
 John McCullough , 1837 - 1885 
 
 Andrew Carnegie 1837 
 
 Henry Irving 1838 
 
 Augustin Daly 1838 
 
 John Hare (Fairs) 1838 
 
 Francis Bret Harte '. . . . 1839 
 
^Hccotti of l^amcief* 149 
 
 Thomas Hardy 1840 
 
 Joseph F. Daly 1840 
 
 WiUiam Black 1841 
 
 Charles F. Coghlan 1842 
 
 Edward Dowden 1843 
 
 Helena Modjeska (Helena Benda) 1844 
 
 John Foord 1844 
 
 Adelaide Neilson 1846?- 1880 
 
 Ellen Terry 1848 
 
 Sarah Bernhardt 1850 
 
 Ian Maclaren (Rev. John Watson, D. D.) 1850 
 
 Frederick E. Partington 1854 — 
 
 Mary Anderson (Mrs. De Navarro) 1859 
 
 S. R. Crockett 1859 
 
 Ada Rehan l86o 
 
 James M. Barrie ... i860 
 
 Rudyard Kipling 1865 
 
 William Isherwood 1841 
 
 Arthur Winter 1872 - 1886 
 
 The author would express his grateful appreciation of the kind 
 assistance given to him, in his search for authentic dates, by 
 Col. T. Allston Brown, Mr. Douglas Taylor, Mr, Willis Fletcher 
 Johnson, Mr. Francis M. Stanwood, Mr. B. F. Stevens, Mr. 
 Augustin Daly, and Mr. F. E. Partington. — There is scarcely 
 a name in the foregoing Record that has not been, or might 
 not be, the theme of thoughtful essay or pleasing reminiscence. 
 
6 
 

 
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