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JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 AND OTHER ADDRESSES 
 
 ^armt (i. piatt 
 
 THE ARGONAUT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 
 

 To My Friend, 
 
 GENERAL THOMAS H. HUBBARD 
 
 Soldier, Lawyer and Financier, 
 
 I Dedicate This Book. 
 
 I 
 
4^ TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 ^ PAGE 
 
 s;^ John Marshall 7 
 
 !5 Peace on Earth 33 
 
 "Haec Olim Meminisse Juvabit" 37 
 
 , The Light of the World 42 
 
 A Christmas-New Year Talk 46 
 
 The Star of Bethlehem 49 
 
 "The Tempest'' 54 
 
 "Illusions" 59 
 
 Bohemia 65 
 
 "Bohemia" 69 
 
 California 73 
 
 The Grape 78 
 
 A Medical Address 81 
 
 Chauncey M. Depew 91 
 
 Steam and Electricity 95 
 
 The Woman Victoria 100 
 
 The First Rivet 105 
 
 Poets and Poetry 108 
 
 "The Man Behind the Gun" 114 
 
 What Has Art Done for Civilization ? 118 
 
 The Presidents of the United States 127 
 
 American Imperialism 133 
 
 Law and Commerce 145 
 
 From Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate 148 
 
 Thomas Jefferson 156 
 
 William Sproule 160 
 
 Carnegie Libraries 163 
 
 Southern Cooking 166 
 
 An Easter Talk 168 
 
 The University and the State 173 
 
 The War with Spain 177 
 
 Character 198 
 
 Fourth of July Oration 214 
 
 A Political Address 232 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Before the San Francisco fire of April, 1906, I had 
 collected most of my addresses for the purpose of publish- 
 ing them in one volume. This publication was not 
 prompted by any sense of egotism or by any illusion that 
 they would be extensively read. Lord Roseberry has said 
 that people do not read old speeches, and there is much 
 truth in this statement. My desire simply was to give 
 them a local habitation. When this disastrous conflagra- 
 tion destroyed all my possessions, including all my literary 
 and professional work for the past twenty-five years, I 
 felt as if every foot-print that I had made had been oblit- 
 erated, and I immediately endeavored to collect as many 
 as I could of my speeches, for the purpose of carrying 
 out my original intention. Through the kindness of friends 
 and libraries living and situate outside of San Francisco 
 at the time of the fire, I have been able to obtain copies 
 of a few of these speeches, and I republish them in this 
 volume with the hope that, in event of another such fire, 
 one copy of this work may escape destruction. 
 
 Horace G. Platt. 
 
 San Francisco, September 14, 1908. 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 Chief Justice of the United States 
 
 (Delivered Before the Oregon Bar Association at Portland, 
 Oregon, John Marshall Day, February 4, 1901.) 
 
 THE evil that men do is said to live after them, but the 
 good is oft interred with their bones. There are, 
 however, good men as well as bad men who "departing 
 leave behind them footprints on the sands of time," whose 
 good work knows neither death nor dying but lives on 
 through the centuries. To the memory of such a man. Chief 
 Justice Marshall, the bench and bar of this country are 
 assembled to do honor and reverence on this the one hun- 
 dredth anniversary of his elevation to the Supreme Bench. 
 
 The close of a century is suggestive of retrospection, and 
 invites us to revisit its dawning, as does the beginning of a 
 century hurry us on the wings of anticipation to its close. 
 
 The nineteenth century and the Republic were rocked in 
 the same cradle. The two have grown up together, foster 
 brothers, as it were, and they challenge comparison one with 
 the other. The century began its travels on a stage coach; 
 it ends them on limited trains that keep company with the 
 sun as they speed across the continents. It began its corre- 
 spondence with letters that lagged behind the snail ; it ends 
 it with the telephone and telegraph that pace the lightning. 
 It began with the nations whole wide worlds apart ; it ends 
 with earth's remotest regions in neighborly communication, 
 and all the world a whispering gallery. It began with little 
 
8 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 science, less machinery, and no surcease from pain; it ends 
 with science dropping in ripe fruit from the tree of knowl- 
 edge, machinery a wizard doing the work of magic, and 
 pain lulled to sleep by the hypnotism of anaesthetics. 
 
 Equally marvelous has been the development of this 
 Republic, of its government, its resources, and its people. 
 
 One hundred years ago thirteen sparsely settled States 
 fringing the Atlantic constituted the United States of 
 America. Its western boundary was the Mississippi, but its 
 southern line did not extend to the Gulf of Mexico. Today 
 the United States of America consists of forty-five States 
 and four Territories, cemented by blood into a Union one 
 and indivisible, containing a population of eighty millions, 
 and extending from British Columbia to the Gulf of Mex- 
 ico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and including in addi- 
 tion the arctic region of Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, the 
 Antilles, and the Philippines, those tropic isles of the East- 
 ern and Western Seas, in all a great empire, second to none 
 beneath the stars. 
 
 One hundred years ago we were an agricultural people 
 whose exports did not exceed $200,000 a year, and in 
 importance we counted for little among the nations. Today 
 we are an agricultural, a commercial, and a manufacturing 
 people, our annual exports exceed one billion of dollars, 
 and we stand with our back to the wall, with boundless 
 resources and untiring energy, fighting single-handed the 
 battle of prosperity against the world. 
 
 One hundred years ago our country had just started upon 
 its career as a nation. It was a beginner among those that 
 had the experience of ages, it was rich only in possibilities. 
 Today it has behind it the experience of the most wonderful 
 century since time began, and has arrived at man's estate, 
 rich beyond the dreams of its founders. Its people exceed 
 in millions the civilized citizens or subjects of any rival 
 
c 
 
 JOHN MARSHALL 9 
 
 realm or region. Its coffers hold more gold than ever glit- 
 tered in the opiate dreams of any Oriental lord, or than 
 now is stored in any European or Asiatic treasury. Its 
 schoolhouses, flag-surmounted, like blazing beacons, lead 
 more children out of darkness into light than are rescued 
 from ignorance in any other land. Within its borders more 
 homes shelter those of the people who live by the labor of 
 their hands than in any of the countries beyond the seas. 
 The poverty of the old world grinds not its toilers. Its 
 countless acres of waving grain and its snowy fields of 
 cotton feed and clothe more peoples than its own. Its fac- 
 tories threaten with idleness the artisans of the other nations. 
 An American bridge spans the Nile, American locomotives 
 with their cheery whistle break the stillness of Siberian 
 wastes and Asiatic vastness, American dollars are replen- 
 ishing the emptying coffers of Europe, and an American 
 battle-ship is Queen of the Seas. 
 
 One hundred years ago we had a government that was 
 an experiment, based upon a written constitution not yet 
 understood or interpreted. Today we have a government 
 that has stood all the tests a hundred years could devise, a 
 government proven to be of the people, by the people, and 
 for the people, a tower of strength for struggling humanity 
 from whose summit the torch of liberty lights the world, 
 and it is based upon this same written constitution to which 
 John Marshall gave its original interpretation, an interpre- 
 tation that time has strengthened and circumstance affirmed, 
 an interpretation that is as permanent as the constitution 
 itself, an interpretation that was a masterly unfolding of 
 the meaning of the constitution, that "found it paper, and 
 made it power," and to which we are indebted for the pres- 
 ent strength and stability of this government, the present 
 national oneness of this heterogeneous collection of State 
 sovereignties, and the consequent supremacy on the Amer- 
 
10 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 ican continent of the United States. Therefore to this 
 great jurist more than to any other man since Washington 
 do we stand indebted for the greatness and the glory that 
 characterize the United States as the crowning achievement 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 There is no page in our country's history that the life of 
 this great jurist would not adorn. There is no one of our 
 country's builders who can claim more renown. It there- 
 fore becomes us, and must interest and instruct us, to review 
 the events of his historic life, to recall his virtues, recount 
 his achievements, and renew the immortelles upon his grave. 
 I therefore ask your attention while I briefly and reverently 
 attempt his eulogy. 
 
 John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, 
 in the year 1755. He had but little school education, and 
 never attended college but for a short course in law. He 
 served from 1775 to 1779 in the army of the Revolution, 
 and endured the hardships of that terrible winter at Valley 
 Forge. 
 
 It was while he was there fighting for his country that 
 he met Washington and Hamilton. It was amidst the 
 sufferings and dangers of war that there began a lasting 
 friendship and mutual admiration between these three 
 remarkable men, who did so much to start this country 
 aright and give an abiding form to its government. 
 
 In 1780 Marshall was admitted to the bar after a not 
 very extensive course of legal study. In 1782 he was 
 elected to the Legislature of Virginia, and made a member 
 of the Executive Council, though then only twenty-seven 
 years old. Although he served several terms in the Legis- 
 lature, he at the same time rose rapidly at the bar, and was 
 employed in most of the important litigation before the 
 Virginia Court of Appeals. His success can be understood 
 from his style in argument, which may be best described 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 11 
 
 in the words of William Wirt, who thus wrote of him: 
 "Marshall spoke, as he always does, to the judgment merely, 
 and for the simple purpose of convincing. His maxim 
 seems always to have been to 'aim exclusively at strength.' " 
 
 In 1788 he was elected a member of the Virginia con- 
 vention called to consider the proposed Federal constitution. 
 Virginia was the hotbed of those who were opposed to a 
 closer union of the States, whereby it was sought to create 
 a central government that in Federal matters would domi- 
 nate the States. Patrick Henry was the eloquent spokesman 
 of this party in this convention. 
 
 Marshall believed that the two objects in forming a gov- 
 ernment were safety for the people and energy in the admin- 
 istration. He was sore distressed by the weakness of the 
 existing Confederation, and its inefficiency to accomplish 
 either of these objects. "H a system of government were 
 devised by more than human intelligence," said he, "it would 
 not be effectual if the means were not adequate to the 
 power." 
 
 Washington had strongly urged "an indissoluble Union 
 of the States under one Federal head" as one of the four 
 things essential to the well-being, to the existence of the 
 United States as an independent nation, as one of the pillars 
 on which the glorious fabric of our independence and 
 national character must be supported." Marshall thor- 
 oughly sympathized with his great chief in this regard. He 
 agreed with Washington that it was a solecism in politics 
 that we should confederate as a nation and yet be afraid 
 to give the rulers of that nation sufficient power to order 
 and direct it. He therefore strongly favored the establish- 
 ment of a national government with power to accomplish 
 national purposes, and he urged the ratification of the con- 
 stitution. The majority of the people of his State were 
 opposed to it. They preferred the supremacy of the States 
 
12 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 to the supremacy of the Union. He was warned by his 
 friends that he would be defeated unless he came out against 
 ratification, but he replied with the courage that ever char- 
 acterized him that if elected he would be a determined 
 advocate for its adoption. He was elected, and combated 
 with matchless ability the eloquence of Patrick Henry. 
 
 In 1795 he was again and against his wishes returned to 
 the Legislature. In fact, on the day of his election, and 
 after he himself had voted and had gone about his business, 
 a poll was opened for him and without his knowledge he 
 was elected. 
 
 The administration of Washington was then almost over- 
 whelmed by a wave of unpopularity. The French Min- 
 ister was inciting the people against England. Popular 
 feeling in favor of France was almost at a white heat. 
 Washington's proclamation of neutrality in the war between 
 France and England, and his treaty of commerce with Eng- 
 land, called the Jay treaty, were strongly and bitterly con- 
 demned in Legislatures, in the newspapers, and at public 
 meetings. Marshall was personally popular in Virginia. 
 He was admired for his ability and respected for his integ- 
 rity. It would have been easy for him to go with the major- 
 ity of his fellow-citizens. Warm friends urged him to take 
 this course. But he was as distinguished for his courage 
 as for his capacity. When his judgment had decided he 
 knew no turning back. He, therefore, not only in the Legis- 
 lature supported the President with all his energy and 
 ability, but, after a mass meeting in Richmond, presided 
 over by Chancellor Wythe, had denounced the Jay treaty 
 as insulting to the dignity, dangerous to the security, and 
 repugnant to the constitution of the United States, he called 
 a public meeting of the citizens, and succeeded in having 
 resolutions carried approving the conduct of the adminis- 
 tration, and admitting that it was acting within its consti- 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 13 
 
 tutional rights. Some one has well said of this event, ''With 
 rare courage at a public meeting at Richmond he defended 
 the wisdom and policy of the administration, and his argu- 
 ment as to its constitutionality anticipated the judgment 
 of the world." 
 
 For this course he was denounced as an aristocrat and 
 as an enemy of a republican form of government. But 
 these denunciations could not disturb his composure, nor 
 prevent the growth of his reputation as a constitutional 
 lawyer. 
 
 His speech in the Legislature that the constitutional pro- 
 vision giving to Congress the right to regulate commerce 
 did not take from the executive the power, with the advice 
 of the Senate, to negotiate and conclude a treaty of com- 
 merce, not only won him national fame, but settled this 
 much disputed constitutional question for all time. 
 
 Soon thereafter Washington offered him the Attorney- 
 Generalship and also the French Mission, both of which he 
 declined, though he did subsequently go with Pinckney and 
 Gerry to France as a Commissioner to settle the strained 
 relations, verging on hostility, then existing between the 
 two countries. 
 
 This mission resulted in nothing except to increase Mar- 
 shall's fame by reason of his very able and dignified corre- 
 spondence with Talleyrand, which, in the opinion of Patrick 
 Henry, raised the American public in their own esteem. 
 
 In 1799, at the earnest solicitation of Washington, unwill- 
 ingly but unselfishly and loyally, and in the face of an 
 almost certain defeat, he again breasted the waves of popu- 
 lar disapproval, and entered the race for Congress. His 
 election was a triumph won only by great courage, backed 
 by his rapidly growing -reputation. Although a new mem- 
 ber, he immediately took rank as one of the leaders upon 
 all constitutional questions, and in the matter of the sur- 
 
14 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 render of Jonathan Robbins by the President to England 
 upon a charge of murder committed upon a British man- 
 of-war, he delivered an argument that drew the line between 
 the executive and judiciary departments so clearly as to 
 have the effect of a judicial construction of the constitution, 
 an argument so profound, so complete, so convincing that, 
 though not delivered in court, it has been considered worthy 
 of preservation in the Reports of the Supreme Court. Free 
 from any effort at rhetoric, oratory, or display, it reads like 
 a judicial opinion, calm, intellectual, decisive of the point 
 in dispute. In this instance Marshall again displayed 
 that courage that always supported him when a constitu- 
 tional question arose, the proper construction of which was 
 the unpopular one. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the American people at 
 that time were but little used to governmental restraint, 
 and were less disposed towards any action of the Federal 
 Government that did not harmonize with the passions and 
 prejudices of the hour. Washington's proclamation of neu- 
 trality and the Jay treaty were unpopular because the people 
 were in sympathy with France, and because they preferred 
 that Congress should have the sole power to take such steps. 
 Adams's surrender of Jonathan Robbins was unpopular 
 because it was a compliance with a demand from England, 
 and the people thought that the courts had the sole power to 
 settle such a question. But in all of these matters Marshall 
 considered neither popular approval nor disapproval, and 
 his wonderful analytical mind, his intuitive perception of 
 the true meaning of the constitution, his impartial mental 
 temperament, enabled him to so correctly mark out the 
 jurisdictions of the three departments of the government 
 as prescribed in the constitution that his opponents, m the 
 words of Gallatin, who had been selected to reply to him 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 15 
 
 in the Robbins matter, pronounced his arguments unan- 
 swerable. 
 
 Before his term as Congressman was finished Adams 
 offered him a Supreme Court Judgeship, which he declined, 
 and then appointed him successively Secretary of War and 
 Secretary of State. The latter office he filled until January 
 31, 1801, when he was appointed Chief Justice, taking his 
 seat on February 4 of the same year. 
 
 He was then forty-six years of age. What a contrast his 
 career then beginning was to be to that of his great French 
 contemporary, Napoleon Bonaparte, who, a few years later, 
 when also forty-six years of age, finished a career that like 
 a meteor had dazzled the world both by the empyrean height 
 its starry course pursued and by the brilliancy of its light, 
 that destroyed all it illumined! 
 
 One hundred years ago these two men were leaders of 
 the two peoples that were then attracting the attention of 
 the world by their struggles for the rights of man. One 
 sought his own glory, the other only the people's good. One 
 fell from the throne he had erected upon the liberty of his 
 country at the age when the other took his seat as Chief 
 Justice of the highest court of his land, where for over a 
 third of a century he guarded the people's government from 
 the assaults of its enemies. 
 
 When the recording angel shall call the roll of the great 
 men of the ages, those men whose minds shone with the 
 light of genius and whose lives glowed with the Prome- 
 thean fire, not to the one who sought to scale the stars 
 upon a pyramid of crushed humanity, but to the one who 
 helped humanity itself to reach the stars will come the glad 
 tidings, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou 
 into the joy of thy Lord." 
 
 John Quincy Adams said that if his father had done 
 nothing else to deserve the approbation of his country and 
 
16 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 posterity, he might proudly claim it for the single act of 
 making John Marshall Chief Justice; and posterity 
 exclaims, "Amen." 
 
 William Pinckney said that "He was born to be Chief 
 Justice of any country into which Providence should have 
 cast him," and every lawyer of the land echoes this state- 
 ment. 
 
 Bryce, in his "American Commonwealth," has truly said 
 that he was so singularly fitted for the office of Chief Jus- 
 tice, and rendered such incomparable services in it, that 
 the Americans have been wont to regard him as a special 
 gift of favoring Providence. 
 
 Story said of him: "He was a great man, he would 
 have been deemed a great man in any age, and of all ages, 
 he was one of those to whom centuries alone give birth, 
 standing out like beacon lights on the loftiest eminences 
 to guide, admonish, and instruct future generations as well 
 as the present." 
 
 When Marshall became Chief Justice practically nothing 
 had been done by the courts in construing the constitution. 
 There had been but two decisions by the Supreme Court 
 upon constitutional questions. During his incumbency of 
 thirty-four years there were fifty-one such decisions ren- 
 dered by this court, in thirty-four of which he wrote the 
 opinions, and in all but one of which his was the controlling 
 mind. In but one of these he was overruled, the case of 
 Ogden vs. Saunders, wherein he wrote a dissenting opinion 
 against the power of the States to pass bankruptcy laws. 
 
 The originality of his decisions may be best understood 
 by bearing in mind that a written constitution, created by 
 the people and capable of being altered or repealed only 
 by the people, controlling and not controlled by the Legis- 
 lature, was at that time a new thing in the science of gov- 
 ernment. The bench and bar of that day had known only 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 17 
 
 the English constitution, which Parliament could change 
 at will. They were now called upon to construe a written 
 constitution, from which the Executive, Legislative, and 
 Judiciary departments alike derived their powers, and which 
 measured out as it created all their rights. This charter 
 was like an unexplored country, unmapped, unsurveyed, 
 undeveloped. 
 
 The prevailing tendency of that revolutionary period was 
 to make the Legislative Department supreme. The oppos- 
 ing tendency, as voiced by such creative men as Hamilton, 
 was to strengthen the Executive Department against the 
 encroachments of the Legislature. Such a situation was, 
 in the language of Senator Daniel, of Virginia, without a 
 precedent in history, and has no parallel. The occasion 
 demanded a judge who could, without fear and without 
 reproach, construe this instrument, blaze out the paths 
 each department must tread, and measure out the power 
 each must exercise. This judge had no precedents to fol- 
 low. His only guide was the letter of the law, his only 
 inspiration its spirit, his only resource great wisdom 
 unclouded by passion or prejudice. 
 
 Marshall was such a man. He did not need precedents. 
 His mind seemed sufficient unto itself. The meaning lay 
 to him in things themselves, and not in what others said 
 about them. Therefore his opinions are almost free from 
 the citation of authorities, from quotations or illustrations. 
 As the artist can see the perfect image within the block of 
 unhewn marble, so Marshall could see the meaning of the 
 constitution in the unexplained writing. 
 
 Said Justice Story : "When I examine a question, I go 
 from headland to headland, from case to case; Marshall 
 had a compass, put to sea, and went directly to his result." 
 
 He excelled in the power of stating a case so clearly that 
 his statements were arguments. He possessed a marvelous 
 
18 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 grasp of principle, a power of logical reasoning that 
 amounted to mathematical demonstration, a miraculous 
 insight that went straight to the ultimate fact, and a courage 
 that allowed no interference with the pursuit of truth. In 
 his development of the law as he understood it, and he 
 instinctively knew what the law was, he recognized neither 
 rank nor power, neither rich nor poor, neither favor nor 
 disfavor, neither Republican nor Federalist, and, as has 
 been well said, "he taught angry Presidents and partisan 
 Legislatures to bow to the majesty of the law." 
 
 Of him the Charleston Bar said: "His fame has justified 
 the wisdom of the constitution, and reconciled the jealousy 
 of freedom to the independence of the judiciary." 
 
 His greatest work was in judicially defining the jurisdic- 
 tion of the three Departments of Government as prescribed 
 in the constitution. He had mapped out his course in this 
 regard in his arguments in the Legislature, at public meet- 
 ings, and in Congress. Upon the bench he clothed these 
 arguments with judicial authority, and in Marbury vs. Mad- 
 ison he did this with remarkable force and effect. His 
 opinion in this case may be deemed to be as great a docu- 
 ment as the Bill of Rights, as far-reaching as the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, as essential to the healthy develop- 
 ment of our government under the constitution as the 
 constitution itself, as one of the great bulwarks of govern- 
 ment under law against personal or popular government, 
 as a searchlight casting its rays from the dome of the 
 Temple of Justice upon the government, and, like the mod- 
 ern X-ray, disclosing the orderly arrangement, the distinct 
 and separate existence, and the prescribed duties of all its 
 parts, and the pre-eminence of the constitution over all. 
 In this opinion Marshall, with infinite tact, but with the 
 clearness of the noonday sun, disclosed not only the path 
 along which Presidential authority may travel without let 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 19 
 
 or hindrance, except that of conscience and its own discre- 
 tion, but also the path along which the Presidential steps 
 are controlled by law as rigidly as those of the humblest 
 official. In this opinion he revealed to the world how surely 
 and securely the law protects the rights of the citizens. In 
 this opinion he judicially proclaimed the supremacy of law 
 over President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. In this 
 opinion there was first announced to the world the doctrine 
 that the judiciary could declare void a law enacted by 
 Congress and approved by the President if it contravened 
 the constitution. Without this power in the Supreme Court 
 the Republic must have foundered on the rocks of execu- 
 tive usurpation or the shoals of legislative tyranny. 
 
 It is impracticable to enumerate the many great consti- 
 tutional questions that came before him for settlement, and 
 that he settled for all time, but it may be interesting to 
 note a few as illustrative of the importance of his labors 
 in strengthening the government, and in protecting the 
 rights of the individual. 
 
 One of the most valuable safeguards to the rights of the 
 individual is the constitutional provision prohibiting a State 
 from passing any law impairing the obligation of a contract. 
 The wisdom of placing in the constitution this restraint 
 upon the States will never cease to be a matter of congratu- 
 lation to all the people. But at the time of the formation 
 of the Union and thereafter the States claimed to be omnipo- 
 tent in local matters, to be free to enact any legislation 
 thereon, and recognized no power in the Federal govern- 
 ment to annul their laws. 
 
 In a case arising out of a Georgia statute Marshall had 
 the first opportunity to construe this provision, and he held 
 therein that a State law granting lands was a contract, that 
 a subsequent law rescinding this grant impaired the obliga- 
 tion of this contract, and was therefore in contravention of 
 
20 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 the constitution and void, and that the Supreme Court had 
 the power to declare State laws as well as Federal laws 
 void w^hen they contravened the Federal constitution. 
 
 This same ruling was followed by him in the celebrated 
 Dartmouth College case, wherein he held that a charter of a 
 corporation was a contract which a State could not impair. 
 His opinion in this case is admitted to be the most thorough 
 and elaborate exposition of the constitutional sanctity of 
 contracts to be found in the books. This decision, said 
 Chancellor Kent, "did more than any other single act pro- 
 ceeding from the authority of the United States to throw 
 an impregnable barrier around all rights and franchises 
 derived from the government, and to give solidity and 
 inviolability to the literary, charitable, religious, and com- 
 mercial institutions of the country." 
 
 Owing to this decision all State constitutions now provide 
 that all corporation charters are taken subject to the right 
 of the State to alter or repeal them. 
 
 The States were made very jealous of their sovereign 
 rights by these decisions, but these were not all. There must 
 be some final arbiter as to the meaning of the constitution, 
 and Marshall held that the Federal Supreme Court must 
 be this arbiter, that the constitution has provided this 
 tribunal for the final construction of itself, and the laws and 
 treaties made thereunder, and that this power can not be 
 exercised in the last resort by the courts of every State of 
 the nation. He therefore held that the Supreme Court 
 could set aside the judgment of a State court in cases 
 involving a construction of the constitution of the United 
 States or the laws of Congress, and that State Legislatures 
 can not determine the jurisdiction of the courts of the 
 Union or annul their judgments or destroy rights acquired 
 thereunder. 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 21 
 
 In one case that came before the Chief Justice the Fed- 
 eral government and a State government were squarely 
 arraigned against each other. The State of Maryland 
 claimed the right to tax the Bank of the United States 
 doing business within its borders. The Federal government 
 denied this right on the part of the State, whereupon the 
 State denied the constitutional right of the Federal govern- 
 ment to charter a bank. Here was a clash of sovereign- 
 ties. The constitution was apparently silent upon both ques- 
 tions. Marshall held in a masterly opinion that the creation 
 of the bank was a constitutional exercise of the powers of 
 the general government, and that State legislation taxing 
 the bank was contrary to the constitution; that it was an 
 invasion of Federal sovereignty, which must be supreme 
 where it exists at all. 
 
 The last of his constitutional decisions which I shall 
 notice was of such far-reaching consequence that without it 
 the Union must have fallen apart. The State of New York 
 had granted to certain parties an exclusive right to navigate 
 all the waters of the State by vessels moved by steam. This 
 grant had been sustained by all the State courts, even by 
 so great a jurist as Chancellor Kent. The Chief Justice 
 perceived that the assertion of this right, on the part of a 
 State, struck right at the power conferred by the constitu- 
 tion on Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations 
 or among the several States, and was in conflict with the 
 Acts of Congress which authorized vessels employed in the 
 coasting trade to navigate the waters of every State, and 
 he held the grant was repugnant to the constitution and 
 void. 
 
 Suppose the decision of Chancellor Kent had been 
 affirmed ! There would have been a barrier at the mouth 
 of every river, and commerce would have been so crippled 
 as to destroy the Union. 
 
22 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 Chancellor Kent was a great lawyer, his opinions were of 
 high authority. They were backed by the public opinion 
 of the States as well as by his great reputation. But Mar- 
 shall was more far-seeing than Kent. Though he appre- 
 ciated the great weight of the opinion of those who main- 
 tained this alleged right of the States, he did not allow this 
 to affect that independence of judgment that ever distin- 
 guished him. He said: "It is supported by great names — 
 by names which have all the titles to consideration that 
 virtue, intelligence, and office can bestow. No tribunal can 
 approach the decision of this question without feeling a 
 just and real respect for that opinion which is sustained 
 by such authority; but it is the province of this court, 
 while it respects, not to bow to it implicitly ; and the judges 
 must exercise, in the examination of the subject, that under- 
 standing which Providence has bestowed upon them, with 
 that independence which the people of the United States 
 expect from this Department of Government." 
 
 These questions so decided by Marshall now appear too 
 simple to be disputed. But this idea arises from the fact 
 that the present generation has grown up to look upon them 
 as self-evident constructions of the constitution. 
 
 In Marshall's day, however, they involved the existence 
 of the Union as a strong, independent, self-protecting, effi- 
 cient government, and they aroused in their settlement all 
 the learning, eloquence, and industry of such lawyers as 
 Wirt, Webster, Pinckney, Luther Martin, and others as able. 
 
 Marshall, it is true, was a Federalist, but not in the sense 
 that Hamilton was. He was not a liberal constructionist, 
 as was Hamilton, nor was he a strict constructionist, as was 
 Jefferson. He believed that the constitution must be care- 
 fully examined to ascertain if any particular power was 
 therein given, that upon him who asserted the existence of 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 23 
 
 the power rested the burden of proof, but that if such power 
 was established the constitution gave all those incidental 
 powers which are necessary to its complete and efficient 
 execution. 
 
 With great wisdom, with great common sense, he found 
 the constitutional provision that Congress may make all laws 
 which shall be necessary or proper for carrying into execu- 
 tion the powers vested in the Government of the United 
 States, a cornucopia from which could be poured whatever 
 was needed to effectuate a constitutional power. "Let the 
 end be legitimate," said he; "let it be within the scope of 
 the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which 
 are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit 
 of the constitution, are constitutional." Thereby he made 
 the constitution an instrument that did not, like a strait- 
 jacket, dwarf a growing, enterprising, expanding people, 
 but that has grown with the people, and always along the 
 lines of its original design. 
 
 Realizing that the constitution was the sheet anchor of 
 the government, that like the government it was "framed 
 for ages to come and was designed to approach immortality 
 as nearly as human institutions can approach it," he based 
 his constructions upon a patriotism so broad, a logic so 
 inexorable, a wisdom so profound, and a prescience so far- 
 reaching that they remain today our mainstay and our guide, 
 as applicable as when rendered, and give promise to our 
 hopes of their anticipated immortality. 
 
 We do not say that without Marshall the Union would 
 certainly have been dissolved by the centrifugal forces that 
 fought for what they called the rights of the States, but 
 we do say that Marshall's decisions accomplished the pur- 
 pose expressed in the opening lines of the constitution, to 
 wit, "The formation of a more perfect union," and that 
 at that formative period of our Government he was equal 
 
24 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 to his great opportunity to bring about a more perfect union 
 of the States. 
 
 "The people made the constitution, and the people can 
 unmake it," said he. "It is the creature of their own will, 
 and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irre- 
 sistible power to make or unmake resides only in the body 
 of the people, not in any subdivision of them. The attempt 
 of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought 
 to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated 
 the power of repelling it." This doctrine was the cen- 
 tripetal force that welded the many parts called States 
 into the homogeneous whole called the Union; this was 
 the doctrine that made the Federal government supreme 
 and independent in all matters delegated to it by the con- 
 stitution, without which independence from State interfer- 
 ence there could not have been the more perfect Union 
 designed by the fathers. 
 
 The especial characteristic of Marshall to which I desire 
 to call attention, apart from his great wisdom, was his great 
 courage. Many judges are learned and able. Most judges 
 are honest. Not so many have the courage of their convic- 
 tions. Many are intimidated by the necessity of courting 
 popular favor because of their need of popular approval 
 when they seek re-election. Some seek popular approval and 
 mistake the reputation of the moment for the fame that 
 comes hereafter and goes not away. Not all appreciate the 
 words of Mansfield, who said, while trying the case of Rex 
 vs. Wilkes: 'T wish popularity, but it is that popularity 
 which follows, not that which is run after. It is that 
 popularity which sooner or later never fails to do justice to 
 the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I will not do 
 that which my conscience tells me is wrong upon this occa- 
 sion to gain the huzzas of thousands or the daily praise 
 of all the papers which come from the press. I will not 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 25 
 
 avoid what I think is right though it should draw on me 
 the whole artillery of libels, all that falsehood and malice 
 can invent or the credulity of a deluded populace can 
 swallow." 
 
 Marshal was such a man and such a judge. I have shown 
 that he was such a man before he became Chief Justice. As 
 Chief Justice he was equally so. 
 
 In the Burr trial there was much to influence a weak 
 judge. Burr's hands were red with the blood of Hamilton, 
 whom Marshall had loved and respected and whose death 
 he felt was a great loss to the country. The President 
 desired and did all that he decently could to secure a con- 
 viction. The people believed Burr guilty and demanded 
 his life. So strong was this feeling on the part both of the 
 Administration and the public that upon Burr's release the 
 United States Attorney exclaimed: "Marshall has stepped 
 in between Burr and death." The President did not hesi- 
 tate to intimate that his acquittal was due to Marshall's 
 Federalist inclinations, and the mob burned the Chief Jus- 
 tice in effigy. 
 
 But neither the calumnies that the present voiced or that 
 could be expected of the future deterred Marshall from 
 deciding as the law prescribed. Said he to the jury, in 
 reference to the public clamor : "That this court dares 
 not usurp power is most true. That this court dares not 
 shrink from its duty is not less true. No man is desirous 
 of becoming the peculiar subject of calumny. No man, 
 might he let the bitter cup pass from him without self- 
 reproach, would drain it to the bottom. But if he have no 
 choice in the case, if there be no alternative presented to 
 him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium of those 
 who are denominated the world, he merits the contempt 
 as well as the indignation of his country who can hesitate 
 which to embrace." 
 
26 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 On another occasion he said: "In the argument we have 
 been admonished of the jealousy with which the States of 
 the Union view a revising power intrusted by the consti- 
 tution and laws of the United States to this tribunal. To 
 observations of this character the answer uniformly given 
 has been that the course of the Judicial Department is 
 marked out by law. We must tread the direct and narrow 
 path prescribed for us. As this court has never grasped 
 at ungranted jurisdiction, so will it never, we trust, shrink 
 from the exercise of that which is conferred upon us." 
 
 Marshall's conscientious appreciation of judicial duty 
 was nowhere more apparent than in the matter of the issuing 
 of a subpoena to President Jefferson in the Burr trial. After 
 laying as his foundation the statement that "In the pro- 
 vision of the constitution and of the statute which give to 
 the accused a right to the compulsory process of the court, 
 there is no exception whatever," he said: "It can not be 
 denied that to issue a subpoena to a person filling the exalted 
 station of Chief Magistrate is a duty which would be dis- 
 pensed with much more cheerfully than it would be per- 
 formed! But if it be a duty the court can have no choice 
 in the case," and he issued the subpoena, adding the state- 
 ment that "whatever difference may exist with respect to 
 the power to compel the same obedience to the process as 
 if it had been directed to a private citizen, there exists no 
 difference with respect to the right to obtain it." 
 
 "The Judicial Department," said he, near the close of his 
 life, in the Virginia Constitutional Convention, "comes 
 home in its effects to every man's fireside; it passes on his 
 property, his reputation, his life, his all. Is it not to the 
 last degree important that the judge should be rendered 
 perfectly and completely independent, with nothing to con- 
 trol him but God and his conscience? I have always 
 thought, from my earliest youth till now, that the greatest 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 27 
 
 scourge an angry heaven ever inflicted upon an ungrateful 
 and a sinning people was an ignorant, a corrupt, or a 
 dependent judiciary." 
 
 In these days M^hen the press can by daily abuse and 
 crimination prevent the re-election of judges whose deci- 
 sions have been honestly rendered, when aggregated capital 
 or aggregated labor can secure the defeat of a judge who 
 has neither usurped power nor shrunk from his duty, but 
 has simply taken the course marked out by law, it is small 
 wonder that an elected judiciary is not always independent, 
 without fear and without reproach. To our endless glory 
 and good fortune, Marshall was independent of official 
 favor or popular prejudice or journalistic lampooning. We 
 believe, however, that none of these would have affected 
 his decisions even had Jefferson had the power of removing 
 him, or had the voters had the opportunity of defeating him 
 at the polls. 
 
 We believe that during the century just opening, with 
 the fever of concentration burning in the veins of both 
 capital and labor, the former desiring to accumulate dollars 
 and the latter desiring to share them, with the labor trust 
 controlling the votes and the industrial trusts controlling the 
 dollars, the need of an independent judiciary will become 
 more and more a pressing necessity. On both sides there 
 is right. On each side there is often wrong. Each should 
 have equal justice. But this even-handed justice must come 
 from an independent judiciary, and this independence can 
 be secured only by a life or a long tenure of office and by 
 ample compensation. 
 
 It has been said by an orator, in speaking of Marshall, 
 that the test of greatness is great ability coupled with great 
 opportunity greatly employed. This country will always 
 produce men of great ability and it will always furnish 
 
28 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 great opportunities. These, to be greatly employed upon 
 the bench, must be coupled with great independence. 
 
 Marshall as an individual was simple in habits, kind in 
 disposition, dignified in deportment, courteous and consid- 
 erate towards others, and in thought, in speech, and in con- 
 duct ever chivalrous towards women. Of his parents he 
 always spoke with great reverence and filial piety, and for 
 his wife he had a love that grew stronger with the years. 
 If it be true that man's ruling passion manifests itself at 
 death, then love of wife and parents was his ruling passion, 
 for a few days before his death he wrote the following 
 simple inscription for his tomb: 
 
 "John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Mar 
 shall, was born on the 24th day of September, 1755 ; 
 intermarried with Mary Ambler the 3d of January, 
 1783; departed this Hfe. . . .day of , 18. ." 
 
 Jefferson also wrote his own epitaph, but it was of a dif- 
 ferent kind. This great Virginian wrote the following: 
 "Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute 
 of Virginia for religious freedom, and founder of the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia." Marshall could justly have written 
 as his epitaph, instead of the above simple little statement, 
 the words: "If you would see my monument, behold your 
 constitution," for he has been well called the second maker 
 of the constitution, its great expounder, the father of con- 
 stitutional law. 
 
 His opponents would have made the constitution a rope 
 of sand. His decisions made it a band of steel that not 
 even a civil war could break asunder. 
 
 Under him, in the words of a distinguished foreigner, 
 the Supreme Court became the living voice of the consti- 
 tution, the conscience of the people, the guarantee of the 
 minority. 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 29 
 
 Upon the death of Washington his was the voice to 
 utter of him on the floor of Congress those memorable 
 words, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of 
 his countrymen." The American people will ever associate 
 Marshall with Washington in sacred and grateful memory. 
 He was ever the able and fearless defender of Washington, 
 and as Chief Justice took up the work where the first Presi- 
 dent laid it down, and carried it on in the spirit of him who 
 began it. It was therefore most fit that he should have 
 been the first chairman of the committee appointed to erect 
 a monument to Washington. The shaft erected by this 
 committee in its simplicity and height well portrays the 
 character of Washington. But the real monument of both 
 Washington and Marshall, more imperishable than brass 
 or sculptured marble, is this constitutional government that 
 has stood the strain of a civil war, the greater strain of 
 accumulated wealth and vast territorial expansion, and 
 which starts the new century with great burdens, new respon- 
 sibilities, and unlimited temptations, and with the promise 
 of another century's growth along the lines so clearly 
 marked out by John Marshall, 
 
 We can well attribute to him the credit of building for 
 all time. Though the number of States has increased from 
 thirteen to forty-five, and our territory has expanded from 
 the Mississippi to the Pacific, and thence northerly to the 
 land that is lit by the Aurora Borealis, and southerly and 
 westerly to the islands of the tropic seas in whose midnight 
 skies glitters resplendent in starry outline God's symbol of 
 hope, the Southern Cross, expansion has not weakened the 
 influence of the Federal government in the remotest States 
 nor lessened their loyalty to the Union. Though a network 
 of railroads intersects the land in all directions, like living 
 veins pulsating with the hot blood of competition, almost 
 obliterating State lines, and though commercial corporations 
 
30 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 and labor unions ramify the country irrespective of political 
 divisions, we are still tenacious of our State sovereignties. 
 Though we have wars beyond the seas, and foreign compli- 
 cations are increasing as our foreign trade grows larger, 
 and innumerable new problems in politics and economics 
 are daily arising from our rapid internal and external 
 growth, we are still loyal to our traditions, undismayed by 
 the difficulties of the present, hopeful of the future, and 
 above all still wedded to the constitution as Marshall con- 
 strued it, and time but the impression stronger makes as 
 streams their channels deeper wear. 
 
 We gratefully appreciate his breathing into this consti- 
 tution the breath of a vigorous life, his developing this 
 constitution along such lines of healthy growth that each 
 member of our Union has been individually stimulated, yet 
 kept in harmony with the others and in subjection to all, 
 whereby there has been produced a constitutional govern- 
 ment under which any number of States and Territories 
 can live, each in distinct existence but as a united whole, 
 as diverse as the waves and yet as united as the sea, capable 
 of any expansion, impossible of disruption, powerful because 
 of the individuality of its parts and the solidity of its 
 harmonious whole. 
 
 Therefore, today, all over this land, in the capital of 
 the Old Dominion where his labors began, at the capital 
 of the nation where his labors ended, in Philadelphia where 
 hangs old Liberty Bell that was rent in tolling his funeral 
 knell, in all the marts of commerce that border the Atlantic, 
 in the cities of the Great Lakes where throbs the nation's 
 heart, along the wide rolling Mississippi hastening to the 
 sea, at the city of the Golden Gate where the Occident 
 meets the Orient in a sunset greeting, and here in this 
 metropolis of the north, we do reverence to him as one of 
 the greatest Americans. 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 31 
 
 Therefore, today, in every court in the land lawyers 
 suspend their labors and litigants halt in their contentions 
 to listen only to the voice of his eulogist, while Justice 
 opens her eyes to behold the glory of her most illustrious 
 ministrant. 
 
 Gentlemen of the bench and bar, the fame of lawyers, 
 however learned and eloquent they may be, is ephemeral. 
 The reputation of judges is but little less evanescent. Their 
 glory is in laws honestly administered, in justice impartially 
 awarded. To the soldier and to the statesman is it more fre- 
 quently given to pitch his tent on Fame's eternal camping 
 ground, to be honored with a niche in the Pantheon of the 
 great. Few even of these inscribe their names so high that 
 they are not obscured by the accumulated dust of a century. 
 Ihe legal profession can therefore take pride in the fact 
 that of all the gerat and good men gone, of the immortal 
 few who were not born to die, none stands today higher in 
 the respect and reverence of the American people than that 
 able lawyer and matchless judge, John Marshall, the great 
 Chief Justice. His renown is the richest inheritance of the 
 American Bar. Above all the high places where the judges 
 sit his name should be written in letters of gold where the 
 sunlight may illumine and the dust not obscure, to ever 
 encourage the judge to be brave and the lawyer to be true. 
 
 Early yesterday morning, as my train followed a narrow 
 stream, winding its way to the valley through a mountain 
 defile, where the pine trees had a silvery sheen in their 
 garments of snow, suddenly there loomed up before me a 
 peak o'ertopping all the rest, its snowy crest bright with 
 sunshine. It reminded me of Chief Justice Marshall. The 
 stream was the Republic, winding its then narrow way 
 towards its present broad expanse, and high up on the lofty 
 pinnacle of the Supreme Bench, towering above all, was 
 the venerable Chief Justice — his white hairs illumined by 
 
32 JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 the sunlight of genius — a tall man, sun-crowned — like that 
 peak, catching the first rays of the morning sun, to hold 
 them as a lamp to guide his countrymen out of darkness 
 into light. 
 
 With this I close my humble tribute to the memory of 
 Chief Justice Marshall. This is the immortelle that in your 
 name I place upon his tomb. In honoring him we have 
 honored ourselves. 
 
 May the constitution as he construed it continue to be 
 for another century our pillar of cloud by day and pillar 
 of fire by night, so that when another hundred years has 
 gone by, this people, still under this constitution, may again 
 take pleasure and pride in gratefully honoring the name 
 of John Marshall. 
 
PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN 
 
 (Delivered at the Christmas High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, 
 December 30, 1893.) 
 
 THROUGHOUT the world, in every clime, in the 
 Tropics where the devout read in the Southern Cross 
 God's star-writ message of hope, in the frozen North where 
 in the Aurora Borealis the religious behold the prismatic 
 sheen of the Almighty's throne, in the East and West 
 where holy men see in the rainbow the sun-illumined arch 
 that supports the heaven of their belief, in lofty cathedrals 
 lit by the soft light that streams through stain-glass win- 
 dows, memorials to the wealth of the dead, and in humble 
 chapels whose bare walls and uncushioned seats bespeak 
 the poverty of the living, on Christmas morning. Anno 
 Domini, 1893, priests in costly chasubles and preachers in 
 threadbare coats, and surpliced choirs and choirs unsur- 
 pliced, accompanied by the music of organs grand and 
 melodeons poor, raised their voices and sang "On earth 
 peace, good will toward men." 
 
 Was this a hollow mockery? Were the report of the 
 assassin's pistol, the bursting of the fanatic's bomb, and 
 the cannon's roar, the mocking echoes of this sacred song? 
 Do men sincerely wish for peace on earth? 
 
 In Brazil Peixotto and Mello, boasting that they fight for 
 their fellow countrymen, destroy their fellow countrymen 
 and the work of their hands. In another land Spaniard 
 and Moor revive in slaughter their ancient hatred. In 
 Africa the white man civilizes the negro by destroying 
 
34 PEACE ON EARTH, 
 
 him, and French and English bullets send the savage black 
 to the gods of his idolatry. On the continent of Europe 
 neighboring nations vie with one another in displays of 
 military force, and assemble large armies to go through 
 the pantomime of war. France goes into a delirium of joy 
 over the Russian visit, and rejoices in anticipation of bloody 
 victories won by the Cossack and Gaul over the German 
 and Italian. In St. Petersburg and in Honolulu, in the 
 land of almost endless snows, and in the land of the myrtle 
 and the rose, armed sentries keep watchful guard. The 
 God of War keeps Vulcan busy forging thunderbolts, and 
 makes the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters 
 under the earth aid him in the work of death. 
 
 Does all this promise peace and good will? 
 
 While the priests chant, do not eighteen million soldiers 
 stand ready with spear and gun and shot and shell to prove 
 the chant a lie, and can not on every sea swift-sailing 
 Olympias be found — floating leviathans of destruction? 
 
 While the cathedrals ring with this glorious anthem, does 
 not the assassin steal into the home of the great and lay 
 the master low, or with his death-laden bomb convert the 
 church or court, the theater or legislative hall into a charnel 
 house, the explosion startling the world like an alarm of 
 fire at midnight? 
 
 Do the starving and the freezing poor fighting for 
 crumbs in the corridors of Chicago's city hall join in this 
 hallelujah of good will? 
 
 Is the daily newspaper, with its crest an open closet 
 disclosing a skeleton, with its large-lettered announcements 
 of anarchy, riot, murder, and assassination, with its columns 
 of disgusting details of social crimes and misfortunes, with 
 its code of dishonesty and cruelty, with its bad art, bad 
 taste, bad form, and pernicious education — is the daily 
 newspaper a messenger of peace? 
 
GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN 35 
 
 Time will answer these questions and cure these ills. 
 
 And yet, despite all this, or rather because of all this, 
 here in Bohemia, whither come "only those whose hearts 
 are to gentle thoughts inclined," we will raise our voices 
 this Christmas-tide and sing "On earth peace, good will 
 toward men." 
 
 At Christmas time all clouds have a silver lining. Then 
 orange blossoms take the place of widow's weeds ; the music 
 of the dance is substituted for the funeral dirge; plenty 
 drives out poverty; weeping changes into laughter, and 
 sadness into joy; smiles dry up tears; peace interrupts 
 war; and St. Nicholas usurps the throne of Mars. 
 
 At Christmas time our hearts "open to the sesame of love 
 and fair good will," and we wish no man harm. 
 
 At Christmas time men are children, and children are 
 happy. 
 
 Great is St. Nicholas ! His generosity, following the 
 moon and keeping company with the stars, encircles the 
 earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of child- 
 hood's merry laughter, making the bad good, and the good 
 better; softening the hard of heart, and loosening the 
 miser's purse strings; giving surcease to pain, and relief 
 from sorrow; and inspiring us all to exclaim with hope, 
 "On earth peace, good will toward men !" 
 
 Great is St. Nicholas! He gives a jewel to the mother, 
 a toy to the babe, and food to the beggar at the gate. He 
 stills the din of the foundry where men forge guns and 
 build battleships, and hangs o'er its door the mistletoe as 
 a sign of peace. He allures the man of science from the 
 making of a deadlier dynamite and a more powerful pow- 
 der, and rears a Christmas tree in his laboratory as a symbol 
 of good will. In camp and field he hushes the beat of 
 drum and blast of trumpet and tread of marching armies, 
 
36 PEACE ON EARTH, 
 
 and whispers in each soldier's soul, "On earth peace, good 
 will toward men." 
 
 So it has been in the past. "Years upon years ago 
 the heavenly heralds sang peace and good will." So it is 
 in the present. And yet, 'tis nearly nineteen hundred years, 
 and still the peace of the world shrinks behind the files 
 of forced fighters, and war clouds hang ever low and 
 threatening. But there shall be lasting peace beneath a 
 cloudless sky, and all the year be Christmas time. Strike 
 off the chains from the imagination ! Give free rein to 
 fancy! Fly into the future upon the noiseless wings of 
 time, when wars shall be no more; place your ear at 
 Christmas time to the Phonograph of the Ages, and you 
 will hear, attuned to the music of the spheres, "a chant 
 sublime of peace on earth, good will to men." 
 
 "Then peal the bells more loud and deep : 
 God is not dead nor doth he sleep; 
 The wrong shall fail, 
 The right prevail. 
 With peace on earth, good will to men." 
 
 Is the prophecy Utopian? Remember that at Christmas 
 all the world is Utopia, and St. Nicholas is its patron 
 saint. 
 
"HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT." 
 
 (Delivered at the Christmas High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, 
 December 29, 1894.) 
 
 GENTLEMEN of Bohemia, and the strangers within 
 our gates, Welcome ! We have much to offer you 
 this evening, and I bespeak your kind attention. I regret 
 that we are so cramped in our quarters as to crowd you 
 so closely together. This, however, assures me that we 
 are all in touch. 
 
 During the past year you have been compelled to hear 
 me do so much talking that you must be weary of the 
 sound of my voice. I shall, therefore, let you off with a 
 few remarks. 
 
 It is customary for one of our Bohemian artists to paint 
 a cartoon for each Jinks. For this occasion we have this 
 beautiful pastel from the easel of Arthur Matthews. Its 
 conception was an inspiration; its execution was the work 
 of a master. 
 
 Our musical director this evening is an old Bohemian 
 friend, Lewis Schmidt. He is a prince of harmony, and, 
 when he waves his baton, discords take their flight. 
 
 The Low Jinks will be sired by Mr. Charles Josselyn, 
 whose manager is Mr. James M. Hamilton, the ''Actors' 
 Friend." From the posters hung upon our walls, and from 
 the splendid programme which Mr. Josselyn has prepared, 
 I can promise you a very merry conclusion to the even- 
 ing's entertainment. 
 
38 "HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 
 
 As an ancient Roman said, "Haec olim meminisse juva- 
 bit" — "Hereafter it will be pleasant to remember these 
 things." Thus runs the legend upon the escutcheon of a 
 college society to which I belonged when I was getting ready 
 to knock at life's door and demand admittance. It was 
 one of youth's rash prophecies, borrowed from the dead past 
 to give fitting expression to the hopes of the living pres- 
 ent. I have written this prophetic utterance upon the 
 circular of this Christmas Jinks, anticipating its fulfill- 
 ment as confidently as I did when life was younger and I 
 had not even dreamed of Bohemia. 
 
 "Hereafter it will be pleasant to remember these things." 
 True, the mistletoe and the holly, the cedar and the pine 
 that now decorate our halls will wither and fade; the 
 branches of the Christmas tree will droop, unvexed by 
 their rare burdens; the Christmas bells will cease their 
 chiming, and Christmas anthems will die away with the 
 organ's peal; and yet no one would, or will, forget them. 
 
 Bohemia's Christmas always has been, is, and I hope 
 always will be unique as well as interesting. We jest and 
 we jibe, we drink and make merry, and yet, at Christmas- 
 tide, when the eyes of the world, looking back over nine- 
 teen centuries, concentrate upon a lowly manger in the 
 land of Judea, and behold in the birth of Mary's child 
 the advent of the God who should give himself unto death 
 upon the cross in order that the rest of mankind might 
 sin with impunity, when "the angels' song rings every- 
 where, and all the earth is Holy-land," this Club, true to 
 its history, always joins in the general reverence shown 
 the Man of Galilee, tunes its harp to sacred strains, and 
 sings those two sacred songs, Noel and Nazareth. 
 
 Looking back over the records of our High Jinks, I 
 find that the Sires have done honor to nearly every distin- 
 guished man, to almost every theme, sacred or profane. 
 
"HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 39 
 
 Tommy Newcomb talked of Thackeray, Paul Newman of 
 Faust, Harry Edwards of Shakespeare, Frank Newlands 
 of Hood, James Bowman of Tennyson, Judge Wheeler of 
 Scott, Joe Ford of Dickens, Dr. Deane of Holmes, Beverly 
 Cole of Byron, Smyth Clark of Burns, Hugh Burke of 
 Hawthorne, Caspar Schenck of Lamb, Joe Redding of 
 Utopia, and Phelan of the Muses, Judge Boalt of Illusions, 
 and Barbour Lathrop of Dreams, General Barnes of the 
 poets who have sung of war. Uncle George of the poets 
 \vho have sung of the sea, and Fred Somers of An Ideal 
 Bohemia; but it has always been the privilege of the 
 President of the Club to sire the Christmas Jinks and 
 talk of the Christ. 
 
 It matters not, in one sense, whether he was the son of 
 God or of man; whether his crucifixion upon Calvary 
 was the murder of a Divinity or the execution of a crank; 
 whether the birth in the manger, the death on the cross, 
 the ascension from the mount were parts of a divine plan 
 for the redemption of man, or fictions of the human brain, 
 Christmas is a heritage, come down to us from the cen- 
 turies, wreathed with the smiles of children, opening our 
 purses, illuminating our souls, spanning the chasms of hate 
 with bridges of love, bringing to the level of peace and 
 good-will man and master, bondman and free, filling our 
 hearts with thanksgiving, and voicing our tongues with 
 praise that, through fact or fancy, fanaticism or faith, we 
 have this annual holiday when, just before the drop-curtain 
 of the year falls upon the Play of Time, the Tragedy 
 becomes a Comedy, the good are rewarded and the bad 
 forgiven, the poor are remembered, and the rich are happy, 
 and Love is queen ; that, as the days of disappointment and 
 nights of pain, the hours of anguish and moments of 
 sorrow crowd the calendar of the months going glimmer- 
 ing through the dream of things that were, we have the 
 
40 "HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 
 
 sweet consolation that the passmg year can not close with- 
 out bringing this Christmas-tide, when the hypnotism of 
 love obliterates the ravages of hate, and so inclines our 
 hearts and determines our conduct that we are able to 
 exclaim, "Hereafter it will be pleasant to remember these 
 things." 
 
 And now, my friends, I make this personal application. 
 Nine months ago, in anticipation of Santa Claus, I hung 
 up the stocking of the Presidency. At this Christmas 
 festival I empty its contents before you. The alchemy of 
 Bohemianism, the elixir of good-fellowship has modified all 
 differences, softened all criticisms, eliminated all kicks; 
 and my Christmas gifts are the kind indulgence and hearty 
 good-will of all the members of this Club that we love 
 so much, and which now seems to prosper so well. Here- 
 after it will be pleasant to me to remember these things; 
 and when my days have fallen into the sere and yellow 
 leaf, and life become a memory, it will be my pride and 
 my pleasure to exclaim, as did Stoddard: 
 
 "My dreams, ambitions fine, 
 My youth, my joys divine, 
 My fasts, my feasts, my wine, 
 Were thine, Bohemia." 
 
 May this Club's Christmas holidays always come and 
 go undimmed by the shadow of a cross ! As at its Mid- 
 summer Jinks it cremates its cares, at its Christmas Jinks 
 may it always forget them! And at Christmas, "when 
 shepherds watch their flocks by night," when 
 
 "The bells of the ages ring, 
 And the little children sing 
 For the lifting of the yoke, 
 For the giving to the poor, 
 For that all-excelling art, 
 
"HAEC OLIM MEMINISSE JUVABIT" 41 
 
 The building of the heart, 
 For the sure and lasting good 
 Of a common brotherhood," 
 
 let us always write above our door in flaming letters of 
 holly berries the inscription on the sun-dial found in the 
 Garden of the Gods, "Nullas horas nisi serenas numero" — 
 "No hours I count but happy ones" — for such hereafter 
 it will be pleasant to recall. 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 (Delivered at the Christmas High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, 
 December i8, 1897.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT and Sire, Brother Bohemians: 
 The woof of life is a strange intermingling of threads 
 spun from sunshine and from shadow. Nowhere is this 
 more apparent than in this Club, where the moralist and 
 the minstrel, the poet and the punster, the judge and the 
 jester, receive each in quick succession due attention and 
 applause. 
 
 Although at a later hour this evening mirth and wit and 
 revelry will here hold high carnival, "Noel" has just been 
 sung, and our souls, charmed by the singer's voice, have 
 risen to the spirit of the words and the music of this sacred 
 song. While your ears are thus attuned and your minds 
 so inclined, I shall try to pitch my few remarks in the 
 same sacred key. 
 
 In the beginning, God said let there be light in the 
 heavens. But this was a material, physical light, to guide 
 our corporal feet along their devious pathways from the 
 cradle to the grave. What light has he set in the heavens 
 to dispel the darkness of the soul, to cause tears to sparkle 
 like dewdrops in the sunhsine, to make life itself luminous? 
 What is the Light of the World, whose Sun has no setting? 
 
 Is it Art? Art has been busy for centuries in beautifying 
 the world and in teaching man to appreciate the perfection 
 of God's handiwork. And yet, though its light may help 
 to illumine man's condition, it has produced too often a 
 mirage whose waters are but the sands of the desert and 
 whose castles are in the air. 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 43 
 
 Is it Science? Its light burns most brilliantly only to 
 increase the depth of its shadows, dazzling the eye but 
 not warming the heart. 
 
 Is it Wealth? Though gold may feed the hungry, 
 clothe the naked, and house the shelterless; equip armies, 
 build navies, conquer kingdoms, and command science and 
 art to fill its coffers and decorate its palaces; though to 
 the eager eye of the Klondiker the aurora borealis may 
 pale its ineffectual fire before the glitter of nuggets in the 
 frozen north; though gold may seem to be a sun by day 
 and a meteor by night, it is but a will-o'-the-wisp whose 
 light is a fatal illusion, fading into Cimmerian darkness 
 when one's feet are stiunbling and danger is near. 
 
 Is it Liberty? The Caesars and Napoleons of the past 
 have too frequently snuffed out its flickering flame to allow 
 its light to be an abiding hope to suffering humanity. 
 
 Is it Religion? Go read your Bibles and Korans ! Recall 
 the persecutions, inquisitions, and massacres in which priests 
 have incited to death and destruction by the sign of the cross 
 as well as the crescent. Was it the religion of those gods 
 whose awful vengeance human sacrifice alone could appease ? 
 Was it the religion that on the Nile found expression in the 
 mysteries of Isis, or in Greece in the mysteries of Eleusis? 
 Was it the religion proclaimed on Mount Sinai 'mid thun- 
 der and lightning, and whose God was Jehovah, or was 
 it that which sacrificed to Jupiter on Mount Olympus? 
 Was it the religion of Zoroaster, whence came the wisdom 
 of the Magi? Is it the religion of Islam, born of Moham- 
 med's zeal and established by Mohammed's sword? Is it 
 the religion of Buddha, in which there is neither prayer 
 nor praise, neither supplication nor thanksgiving, neither 
 bended knee nor upraised hand, which teaches that life 
 
44 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 is but a succession of existences, self-upholding or self- 
 debasing, and Nirvana a haven of "sinless, stirless rest" 
 where "the aching craze to live ends, and life glides life- 
 less to nameless quiet, nameless joy," disappearing like a 
 "dewdrop sinking into a shining sea"? Or is it the religion 
 of Jesus Christ, whose God listens to prayer and invites 
 to praise, and whose heaven is a home of eternal peace 
 where life begins its immortality? 
 
 Is it Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, or Chris- 
 tianity? 
 
 No, it is none of these. The Light of the World never 
 shone in India, Arabia, or Judea alone. To it all the world 
 is Palestine. It is and must be omni-radiant, and this 
 neither Art, nor Science, nor Gold is — no, nor Liberty or 
 Religion either, whose lights have often gone out quenched 
 in blood. The Light of the World is Love, and it sheds 
 its radiance into life's darkest corners, brightening their 
 atmosphere of gloom, and giving to night the promise of 
 dawn, and has done so from the earliest moment of that 
 initial day when life began. 
 
 The Light of the World is Love, and it illumines the 
 hearts of men and shows how self is softened by sacrifice. 
 
 The Light of the World is Love, and it dispels the 
 clouds that often veil the sun of happiness and the star 
 of hope, and enables blind despair to see the path that 
 leads to life's fulfillment. 
 
 The Light of the World is Love, and by the magic of 
 its shining plenty fills many a board that had lacked a 
 crust of bread, a downy couch pillows many a head that 
 had tossed on bed of straw, and poverty becomes a partner 
 of prosperity. 
 
 As all these flaming worlds revolve in space, tied all 
 together and held in place by the invisible bonds of attrac- 
 tion that unite in one great central sun whence come all 
 
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 45 
 
 light and life, so do all human souls pursue their appointed 
 courses, tied all together by the invisible bonds of love that 
 centre in the heart of the great Father of all and which 
 Christians believe are guided thither by the hands of him 
 who died on Calvary, and v/hose birth is celebrated at this 
 Christmas festival. 
 
 Though all the nations do not acknowledge Christ as 
 himself the Light of the World, yet all must admit him 
 worthy to be the divine attendant, God-appointed, to keep 
 alive the sacred flame in the lamp whose light is Love. 
 Therefore it is of him that at this season, in Christian 
 lands, the people, both young and old, high and low, rich 
 and poor, those who wear a crown of gold, and those 
 who wear a crown of thorns, to the accompaniment of the 
 bells in every cross-tipped steeple and of the organs in 
 every cathedral choir, exultantly sing "Hosannah to the 
 Son of David, Hosannah in the Highest" — and all because 
 Christ loved much and taught us that God is Love. 
 
A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK 
 
 (Delivered at the Christmas Dinner of the Bohemian Club, New 
 Year's Eve, i8g8.) 
 
 FELLOW-BOHEMIANS: It was a novel idea to give a 
 Christmas dinner at the birth of the new year. The two 
 occasions are not only different ; they are opposites. The 
 one concerns divinity and eternity, the other time and 
 humanity. The one sees the cross upon its horizon, the 
 other hopes for a. crown. The one is the season when to 
 give is a pleasure ; the other, when to receive is an expecta- 
 tion. The two combined are extremely suggestive. Would 
 that my tongue could utter the thoughts they suggest to me ! 
 
 At this moment, when memory is chained to the depart- 
 ing year by mingled links of successes and failures, victo- 
 ries and defeats, rejoicings and repinings, thanksgivings 
 and supplications, smiles and tears, heartaches and lovers' 
 whisperings, orange-blossoms and cypress-boughs, cradles 
 and new-made graves, and 1898 is going glimmering through 
 the dream of things that were, its pathway lit by the light 
 of other days, one becomes reminiscent and fain would 
 exclaim: ''Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your 
 flight." 
 
 At this moment, when memory is garlanded by hope, and 
 hope is reaching out with eager hands to grasp the year 
 now dawning, and anticipation, outstripping expectation, 
 and paced by ambition, speeds along the rainbow path of 
 promise to golden fulfillment, one would fain also exclaim, 
 "Hasten, oh, hasten. Time, in your flight !" 
 
A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK 47 
 
 At this moment of such conflicting emotions, when the 
 mind wanders from pleasures past to joys to come, and from 
 honors to be gained to laurels worn and won, let us solve 
 the doubt by letting go of the yesterdays we can not hold, 
 by looking only toward the tomorrows we needs must face, 
 and by joining in sincerest welcome to the future that comes 
 apace. 
 
 At this moment, when Christmas carols, sung anew to the 
 accompaniment of New- Year's bells, glorify the birth of 
 this new year, the youngest born child of Time, the heir 
 of all the years before and since Christ was born, let us 
 imagine that our hearts are belfries pointing to the skies, 
 and that in each the bells in joyous chorus are ringing out 
 a New- Year's carol of peace and prosperity to all who 
 dwell beneath the stars. 
 
 If such be the outcome of our thoughts this evening, 
 then will the magic of true philosophy have entered our 
 lives, and started us aright as path-finders through the unex- 
 plored days of 1899, each one to his own El Dorado. 
 
 And now that, after the storm and stress of war, white- 
 winged Peace, like the dove of old, has returned bearing 
 the olive-branch to intertwine with the mistletoe in Spanish 
 and American homes alike, and in the islands of the eastern 
 and western seas, and at this Christmas-tide all the Chris- 
 tian nations again can join in the chorus the angels sing, 
 "Peace on earth, good will to men," may this nation at the 
 opening of its new-born, battle-christened career prove itself 
 a safe path-finder through the days of the year this night 
 beginning; may this path lead to its El Dorado, the hap- 
 piness of its people, and the leadership of the nations in 
 the cause of man's hiunanity to man, and may its sun by 
 day and its pillar of fire by night through all the coming 
 years be the torch that liberty holds to light the world ! 
 Then will all mankind acclaim that every American soldier 
 
48 
 
 A CHRISTMAS-NEW YEAR TALK 
 
 and sailor who gave his life for his flag in the Spanish- 
 American War of 1898 nobly died, whereby millions may 
 nobly live. ^ 
 
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 
 
 (Delivered at the High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, Decem- 
 ber 22, igoo.) 
 
 [The theme was the meeting of the three wise men as narrated 
 in "Ben Hur," adapted to the occasion. The scene is the tent of a 
 Sheik in the desert. A Hindoo, an Egyptian, and a Greek enter, 
 and tell each the story of his faith, and the revelation as to the 
 birth of Christ. The Greek speaks this speech.] 
 
 M 
 
 OST Reverend and Wise Sheik: 
 
 "From the land of Delphi am I come, 
 Where seated on the centre of the world 
 His oracles Apollo to mankind 
 Of yore disclosed, ever chanting of events 
 To come." 
 
 From the prince to the peasant, all alike ever wanted to 
 know what would follow the setting of the sun. 
 
 In this insatiable longing to anticipate the slow^ march 
 of time, to peep behind the curtain of the future and know 
 what of good or ill tomorrow holds for our weal or woe, 
 to unlock the gates of Fate, and tread before our time the 
 pathways of the gods; in this impatience with the present, 
 this curiosity as to the future, lie man's surest promise of 
 life hereafter, the cause of his unrest, the mainspring of 
 his ambition, the inspiration of his highest aspirations 
 towards eternity. 
 
 In my youth I believed in all the gods that the fertile 
 fancy of my people could create. I found gods in stones, 
 
50 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 
 
 goddesses in the running brooks, and divinity in every- 
 thing. "God was in the sea and sky — He lived in light 
 and rode in storm." 
 
 From the foam of ocean's crests we fashioned Aphrodite, 
 that earth might share with heaven in the worship of the 
 beautiful. Artists out of marble carved her form divine, 
 and to her altars were raised whence leaped the sacred 
 flame, and men worshiped at her shrine and called her 
 Love, "for there is than Love no holier name," and thus 
 addressed her: 
 
 "Thou art the love celestial, seeking still 
 The soul beneath the form ; 
 The unseen beauty that doth faintly gleam 
 In stars, and flowers, and waters where they roll ; 
 The unheard music whose faint echoes, even. 
 Make whosoever hears a homesick soul 
 Thereafter, until he follows it to heaven." 
 
 But Aphrodite was but one of those we worshiped. In 
 gentle zephyrs we heard the love sighs of Aeolus, while 
 in the bowlings of the wind we, trembling, listened to the 
 storm-god's anger. 
 
 Lovers, walking hand-clasped beneath the starry skies, 
 plighted anew their faith at sight of Argus keeping sleep- 
 less vigil over lo as she sailed her lunar course throughout 
 the stilly night. 
 
 In the laurel we beheld the trembling Daphne, and read 
 therein the story of Beauty's flight and Love's immortal 
 adoration. 
 
 In the mist of the mountain, in the spray of the river, in 
 the bubble of the fountain, divinity stood revealed, and 
 the rainbow was the blush of the goddess of showers from 
 the ardent kissing of the Sun. 
 
 In the echo men recognized the voice of the gods of 
 the hills and rocks and resounding caves. But alas, these 
 
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 51 
 
 gods but repeated the questions they were asked, and therein 
 lay the disappointment of our theology. 
 
 Mankind outgrows the mythic fancies sung to it in its 
 youth, and so I outgrew my mythology. As I advanced 
 in years and thought, and imagination and hope gave place 
 to reason and doubt, I tired of fancy, and longed for the 
 ultimate fact. Had I a soul? Was this soul immortal? 
 Were all my gods foredestined to the tomb? Was the but- 
 terfly, whose gossamer wings, illumined with sunshine, 
 glowing resplendent with the radiance of many flowers, the 
 divinity of a summer garden, or was it the fluttering emblem 
 of the soul, or was it but a beauteous creature of daylight 
 and of death? 
 
 These and many other questions perplexed and puzzled 
 me, and I studied the philosophers. To Socrates I went 
 for light and guidance. Him the Oracle had proclaimed 
 the wisest man of Greece. Plato was to me his interpreter. 
 I was told that feeling and fancy are false guides, the fire- 
 flies of the night of thought; that knowledge alone is 
 virtue, and ignorance is the cardinal sin, and that if man 
 knew the right he could not the wrong pursue. I was 
 taught that wisdom and truth are above wealth and honor 
 and reputation ; that from virtue comes every good to man ; 
 that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or 
 death, and that he and his are not neglected by the gods; 
 but I was left in doubt as to the immortality of the soul. 
 
 Was death a state of nothingness and utter unconscious- 
 ness, or was it a migration of the soul from this world 
 to another? 
 
 Socrates solved not the problem of the soul. Said he 
 to his judges, just before he drank the poisoned draught, 
 "The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways 
 — I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only 
 knows." 
 
52 THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 
 
 From Socrates and his disciples, Plato and Aristotle, I 
 turned to Epicurus, and I was told that the death of the 
 body is the end of the soul, and the end of our hopes 
 no less than of our fears. 
 
 Said Epicurus : 
 
 "Ah, mark those pearls of sunrise! Fast and free 
 Upon the waves they are dancing. Souls shall be 
 Things that outlast their bodies, when each spark 
 Outlasts its wave, each wave outlasts the sea. 
 
 "Flakes of the water, on the waters cease. 
 Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these. 
 Atoms to atoms — weariness to rest — 
 Ashes to ashes — hopes and fears to peace!" 
 
 This was the philosophy of the finite, a creed rounded 
 by the cradle and the grave, the negation of immortality, 
 the doctrine of the endless, starless, dreamless night of the 
 soul. 
 
 From this strangling of hope, this quenching of thirst for 
 the waters of the Pierian spring, I recoiled in protest and 
 in disappointment. If this were true, then what fools we 
 had been to kill great Pan, and Olympus to dethrone ; then 
 in vain had Apollo broken his lyre, unstrung his bow, and 
 ceased to illumine the heavens with his shafts of light ; then 
 had Phoebus from his car been hurled only this earth to 
 darkness doom; then truly had all our gods become Niobes, 
 and the winds and the rains were their sighs and tears. 
 
 And yet, with my Pantheon in ruins, the idols of my 
 youth heaps of broken marble, the voices of the winds and 
 trees and running streams no more eloquent of deity, God- 
 head banished from the world, and my soul without a future, 
 I turned again, with relief, to the voice of Epicurus: 
 
 "Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well, 
 Rest, rest. There is no God, no gods." 
 
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM 53 
 
 Then it was that in the lonely watches of the night I 
 heard a new voice say: "Get thee up, gird thy loins, and 
 into the land of Judea make thy journey. There arrived, 
 thy guide shall be a star. Follow it until it halts above 
 a lowly stable. There in a manger will be born of a virgin 
 the only Son of the one God, the Redeemer of mankind, 
 come to teach the immortality of the soul, the resurrection 
 of the body, the life to come, and that the grave is but 
 the gateway to heaven to those who believe in the one God, 
 and in His only begotten Son." 
 
 Here was the answer instead of the echoed question. 
 
 Therefore, O Sheik, in my search for truth I have crossed 
 the sea to this consecrated land, my heart rejuvenated with 
 the new birth of hope, my soul's confidence in its immor- 
 tality restored by this promise, my mind ready to accept this 
 new faith. Let us journey to Bethlehem; thitherward 
 beckons God's messenger of light. 
 
"THE TEMPEST' 
 
 (Delivered at a Shakspearean Breakfast given to Frederick 
 
 Warde by W. Greer Harrison, Bohemian 
 
 Club, February lo, 1895.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : This beautiful table, loaded with 
 meat and drink, and garnished with flowers — this 
 room decorated with the work of artists and resplendent 
 with light — this large company of cultured and jovial Bohe- 
 mians, do honor to your generous hospitality; and the sub- 
 ject to which you have requested us all to direct our 
 thoughts bespeaks your good literary taste, and is a deserved 
 compliment to your distinguished guests, Messrs. Warde 
 and James, whose proud and successful claim to public 
 favor is largely based upon their magnificent and artistic 
 productions of the Tragedies of Shakspeare. 
 
 Our theme is Shakspeare; Shakspeare's theme — a poet 
 thus defines it : 
 
 "Whate'er we know, whate'er we dream, 
 All things that are, all things that seem, . 
 All that in Nature's Academe 
 Her graduates learn 
 Was Shakspeare's theme." 
 
 In none of his immortal plays did the genius of this 
 great dramatist shine more brilliantly than in "The Tem- 
 pest," wherein he epitomized himself in the magician's role 
 of Prospero. I beg leave to ask your attention to a few 
 thoughts suggested by this beautiful idyl of the sea. 
 
 A king and suite were returning to Naples from the 
 
"THE TEMPEST" 55 
 
 Afric shores, whither they had journeyed to give in mar- 
 riage an Italian princess to the lord of Tunis. A storm 
 overtook them. The winds tore the royal sails, the waves 
 rolled mountains high and threatened to overwhelm the 
 royal ship. It was a time when strong hands and brave 
 hearts were needed to fight the ocean in its angriest mood, 
 and combat the winds in their wildest fury. It was the 
 moment of the Storm King's rule, when His Majesty of 
 the winds and waves and thunder-laden clouds, his sceptre 
 the lightning's flash, brooked no rivalship, human or divine, 
 blotting out even the stars with his besom of destruction. 
 At such a time manhood asserts its leadership, and so-called 
 royal hearts oft quail beneath the kingly ermine. The 
 ship trembled, the thunder pealed, the lightning flashed 
 as if it would burn the tattered sails upon the masts, and 
 the frightened monarch, forgetting his usual tone of com- 
 mand, in suppliant voice pleaded: "Good Boatswain, have 
 care! Where's the Master? Play the men!" 
 
 "I pray you, keep below!" yelled the Boatswain, as he 
 battled with the storm. 
 
 "Where's the Master, Boatswain?" begged one of the 
 shivering nobles. 
 
 "Do you not hear him?" shouted he whom danger had 
 for the moment made the king. "You mar our labor; keep 
 your cabins; you do assist the storm." 
 
 "Nay, good, be patient!" came back the pleading reply; 
 whereupon this man of the people, this common sailor, 
 rising in the fullness of his courage and strength to the 
 grandeur of the occasion, and indignant at their interrup- 
 tion, replied, in tones of command: "When the sea is. 
 Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of King?'' 
 
 At this brave utterance the listening spirits of the air, 
 sent forth by Prospero's magic wand, must have cried 
 "Bravo !" and He who rules the heavens and the earth, 
 
56 "THE TEMPEST" 
 
 whose sceptre sways o'er land and sea, and whose kingdom 
 extends o'er all the worlds that revolve in space, must have 
 exclaimed, ''Bravely said!" Nothing more eloquent ever 
 fell from mortal lips, or stirred listening multitudes to loud- 
 est applause. The Tribunes of the people from this humble 
 mariner could take profitable example. 
 
 Shakspeare could not only be eloquent, he could also be 
 tender. With a master's skill he played upon the human 
 heart, arousing at will every passion that makes or mars 
 humanity. 
 
 We admire and marvel at the men his genius created ; we 
 love the women his fancy painted. 
 
 We picture Viola as she described Olivia, 
 
 "'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
 Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on:" 
 
 and every lover for centuries since thus has idealized his 
 heart's Viola. 
 
 We can hear Cordelia's voice, ''ever soft, gentle, and low," 
 and we weep sympathetic tears as we read that tender 
 description of her: 
 
 "You have seen 
 Sunshine and rain at once ; her smiles and tears 
 Were like a better day : Those happy smiles, 
 That played on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know 
 What guests were in her eyes ; which parted thence, 
 As pearls from diamonds dropped." 
 
 We wander at evening 'neath Italian skies, and remem- 
 ber that Juliet's 
 
 "Eye in heaven 
 Would through the airy region stream so bright, 
 That birds would sing, and think it were not night." 
 
 But, above them all, more than Rosalind or Juliet, Des- 
 demona or Imogen, Viola or Ophelia, Cordelia or Isabella, 
 Shakspeare loved Miranda. He created her as beautiful 
 
"THE TEMPEST" 57 
 
 as the morning, as pure as an angel, and upon the unwrit- 
 ten tablet of her soul the first word he penciled was love. 
 There was more magic in her eye than in Prospero's 
 wand, and we do not wonder that Ferdinand, listening 
 to the mysterious music of the invisible singer, on first 
 beholding her, should exclaim, "Most sure, the goddess on 
 whom these airs attend," and that forthwith he worshiped 
 her. Read all the romances of all the ages, and now^here 
 will you find another so eloquent a declaration of love as 
 that in which he thus addressed her: 
 
 "Admired Miranda! 
 Indeed the top of admiration ! Worth 
 What's dearest to the world ! Full many a lady 
 I have eyed with best regard, and many a time 
 The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage 
 Brought my too diligent ear ; for several virtues 
 Have I liked several women ; never any 
 With so full soul, but some defect in her 
 Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, 
 And put it to the foil ; but you, O you. 
 So perfect and so peerless, are created 
 Of every creature's best!" 
 
 How beautiful her reply, as she offered herself to him 
 as guilelessly as does the rose when at morn she lifts her 
 dewey lips to be kissed by the sun: 
 
 "Hence, bashful cunning. 
 And prompt me, plain and holy innocence ! 
 1 am your wife, if you will marry me ; 
 If not, I'll die your maid," 
 
 Is not such a picture a strange one in a tempest? Did 
 not Shakspeare intend her to be the rainbow after the 
 storm? 
 
 Should a tempest shipwreck any of us, may some good 
 Prospero wave his magic wand o'er our misfortunes, as 
 
^^ "THE TEMPEST" 
 
 I 
 
 B 
 
'ILLUSIONS" 
 
 (Delivered at a Dinner at the Bohemian Club, April 17, 1^97, 
 
 celebrating the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Club and 
 
 the Eightieth Birthday of George T. Bromley.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: Among the many paintings that 
 adorn our walls one of the most interesting is the 
 portrait of Emperor Norton, an old character who was 
 some years ago a familiar figure on our streets. Robert 
 Louis Stevenson in his story entitled "The Wrecker" thus 
 refers to him and to San Francisco : 
 
 "In what other city would a harmless madman who sup- 
 posed himself the emperor of the two Americas have been 
 so fostered and encouraged? Where else would even the 
 people of the streets have respected the poor soul's illu- 
 sions?" 
 
 The explanation of this circumstance is found in the 
 fact that the career of this old man characterized an era 
 of illusions in California. People had been and were still 
 rushing to this State, believing it the long sought El Dorado 
 of their hopes, where the manna of wealth fell in showers 
 of gold. California at that time was itself an illusion. A 
 mysterious land, separated from the rest of the world on 
 one side by a range of mountains whose snowy peaks chill 
 the clouds and on the other by the sea into whose multitud- 
 inous waters sink the sky at the point where the eye quits 
 seeing, it seemed a country for which God had done every- 
 thing. Poets sang of it as the land 
 
60 "ILLUSIONS" 
 
 "Where summers never cease 
 Their sunny psalm of light and peace, 
 Whose moonlight, poured for years untold, 
 Has drifted down in dust of gold. 
 Whose morning splendors fallen in showers. 
 Leave ceaseless sunrise in her flowers." 
 
 I can imagine that it was then described in glowing 
 terms as the daughter of the setting sun, "a fair vestal 
 throned by the West," around her brow a wreath of orange 
 blossoms, over her head a bower of roses, at her feet a 
 carpet of wild flowers, in her eye the blue of the violet, 
 and in her hair a golden sheen; her dowry cattle upon a 
 thousand hills, rivers flowing over sands of gold, moun- 
 tains ribbed with wealth untold, vales where grow the 
 clustering vine, myriad casks of purple wine, boundless 
 fields of v^aving grain, coffers filled with countless gain. 
 
 At that time a man without an illusion had no place in 
 our midst, and generally returned to the abandoned farms 
 of New England. It was during that period, and just 
 twenty-five years ago, that this Club was founded, the corner- 
 stone of its temple being the illusion of the owl, and the 
 columns of its portico being those four illusions — Art, Let- 
 ters, Music, and the Drama. On its portals was inscribed 
 "Good-fellowship," at its shrine was worshiped the beau- 
 tiful, and it was named Bohemia. Upon its outer wall it 
 hung out a banner bearing this strange device: "Weaving 
 spiders come not here." Where else but in this land of 
 illusions could such a club have sprung into existence, 
 and so grown and strengthened as to survive the change 
 of circumstance that the years have wrought on its sur- 
 roundings? 
 
 These reflections suggest some thoughts to which I ask 
 your attention. 
 
"ILLUSIONS" 61 
 
 Illusion is the rainbow path of promise along which we 
 follow hope to the not always mythical bag of gold. It is 
 the sun whose rays light us on the way to the ideal. It is 
 the atmosphere that gives to the real a beauty that it does 
 not possess. Without it art would not exist, music would 
 be meaningless, letters would fill no pages, and the curtain 
 would never rise upon the mimic stage. The artist paints 
 what he feels, and his picture is not to us what it is, but 
 what it seems. The orator and novelist appeal to the soul's 
 aspirations and epitomize only its dreams. The musician 
 transports us on wings of harmony to Elysian fields whose 
 presiding spirit is unreality. The actor openly acknowl- 
 edges that his world is that of the make-believe. 
 The illusions of life are its inspirations. 
 It is in the illusions of youth that life's ambitions are 
 born. It is with the illusions of the heart that love's fires 
 are kept burning. It is from the illusions of the mind that 
 genius culls the flowers of fancy to garland this world 
 of fact. 
 
 It was through the illusion of beauty that 
 "There fell a vision to Praxitiles ; 
 Watching thro' drowsy lids the loitering seas 
 That lay caressing with white arms of foam 
 The sleeping marge of his Ionian home, 
 He saw great Aphrodite standing near, 
 Knew her, at last, the beautiful he had sought 
 With life-long passion, and in love and fear 
 Into unsullied stone the vision wrought." 
 
 It was the illusion of love that caused Anthony to barter 
 fame and fortune, conquest and coronet, Rome, the world, 
 for a wanton's smiles, and linked together for all time 
 the names of Anthony and Cleopatra in the greatest love 
 story of the ages. 
 
 It was the same illusion that diverted Dante's thoughts 
 from the Divine Comedy to the sad-eyed Beatrix, immortal- 
 
62 "ILLUSIONS" 
 
 ized Laura with the pen of Petrarch, and wiped out the 
 hate of the Montagues and the Capulets with the sacrifice 
 of Romeo and Juliet. 
 
 It is the illusion of youth and beauty that orange blos- 
 soms will never fade, and that their perfume will ever scent 
 the future with sweet remembrances, and it is this illusion 
 alone that keeps wedding bells a-ringing. 
 
 It was the illusion of superstition that inspired the 
 peasant maid of Donremy to hear in the chiming of the 
 church bells the voices of angels calling her to lead the 
 Dauphin to Rheims to be crowned, whereby was the fulfill- 
 ment had of an ancient prophecy that a virgin should 
 rescue and redeem France, and thus was the name of Joan 
 of Arc spoken by the muse of history into the phonograph 
 of time, the whispering gallery of the centuries. 
 
 Though it is the illusion of faith that shocked humanity 
 by the massacre of the Armenians, and today hurls Chris- 
 tian and Moslem at each other's throats, endangering the 
 peace of two continents, it is the same illusion that robs 
 death of its sting and the grave of its victory, and makes 
 the crown of thorns the glory of those who die in the 
 Lord, and to the followers of the Prophet pictures heaven 
 as a period of perpetual youth companioned by dark-eyed 
 maidens whose home is in the hollow of a pearl. 
 
 Though it is the illusion of patriotism that has devas- 
 tated Cuba and Crete, it is the same illusion that leads 
 Maceo to a hero's grave, crowning his name with match- 
 less fame, and that will yet pluck the gem of the Antilles 
 from the blood-stained crown of Spain; that has rekindled 
 in Greece that spirit that fought at Marathon, and is now 
 impelling Greeks, at the call of Pallas Athene, to hasten 
 from earth's remotest corners, from the Golden Gate to 
 the "gate of the mid-world's sea," to fight, and, if need 
 be, to die for their native land. 
 
"ILLUSIONS" 63 
 
 Though it was the illusion of liberty, equality, and fra- 
 ternity that cut off the heads of a king and a queen and 
 deluged a land with noble blood that Napoleon might 
 rear his empire of the sword upon the liberties of France, 
 it was this same illusion that founded our great Republic, 
 and afterwards rent it asunder with fratricidal strife that 
 it might become a united nation with no longer a North 
 or a South, and no longer a slave beneath its flag. 
 
 But enough of instances ! These are sufficient to satisfy 
 us that though illusion may be a will-o'-the-wisp, leading 
 us often by its false light to disappointment and defeat, 
 it at least leads us somewhere, onward if not always 
 upward; that though it may be a mirage covering the 
 desert with mythical waters and building marble cities out 
 of clouds, yet it revives drooping energies and rekindles 
 flagging hopes, and at least postpones the end that we 
 must inevitably find somewhere. 
 
 Let us, therefore, cherish our illusions and envy old 
 Emperor Norton. His illusion was respected and never 
 dispelled. He fancied himself a monarch, and never knew 
 that his kingdom was but the baseless fabric of a dream. 
 How much more fortunate he was than Napoleon, who 
 believed that his star would guide him to universal sov- 
 ereignty, and died a lonely prisoner on the isle of St. 
 Helena, bewailing his lost illusion. 
 
 Let us envy this Club ! It has no lost illusions. It still 
 worships the owl, cheers the orator, applauds the musician, 
 encourages the artist, believes in good-fellowship, and clings 
 to its banner with its proclamation against weaving spiders. 
 Above all these it cherishes one special illusion. It believes 
 that Uncle George is an old man because the years have 
 come and gone for him some eighty times, frosting his 
 locks and making slow his steps. May it for many years 
 hug this illusion to its breast, for its arms thereby more 
 
64 "ILLUSIONS" 
 
 closely enfold him in loving care and tenderness.. The 
 fact is that he really is a young man, rejuvenated by a 
 cheerfulness and amiability that grow with his years, and 
 that make him dearer and dearer to us in this club of 
 illusions. 
 
BOHEMIA 
 
 (Delivered in the Redivoods at the Midsummer Jinks of the 
 
 Bohemian Club, July 23, 1898. The theme of the Jinks 
 
 zvas "Days of Long Ago." The speaker 
 
 appeared as a Greek scholar of the first 
 
 century of the Christian Era.) 
 
 WHERE is Bohemia? What is Bohemia? These 
 questions will go querying down the ages, and 
 answers will be diverse, contradictory, and erroneous, accord- 
 ing to the temperament, knowledge, and prejudices of the 
 answerers. To millions Bohemia will ever be a distant 
 country, known only by report, and this report too fre- 
 quently a false and malicious one. Too often has my 
 blood boiled when I have heard the wineshops of Athens 
 spoken of as Bohemia's only favorite haunts. Too often 
 has my heart bled when I have heard it said that life in 
 Bohemia means only idleness by day and revelry by night. 
 People who so speak have drunk only of the froth, and 
 missed the flavor of the wine beneath. 
 
 To me Bohemia is a land where truth triumphs over 
 falsehood; where beauty brightens life, and ugliness is 
 pain; where culture breeds refinement, and ignorance is 
 disgrace ; and where art elevates man's ambitions and ideal- 
 izes his inspirations. To me Bohemia is a condition of 
 life wherein man attains his highest level in the worship 
 of the true, the beautiful, and the good. 
 
 Bohemianism is both a conscious and unconscious appre- 
 ciation of the ideal. It ennobles and refines, and lifts man's 
 
66 BOHEMIA 
 
 gaze from the sod to the sun. Out of Bohemia men stoop 
 because of their perpetual digging in the earth for gold. 
 In Bohemia they stand erect that they may better see the 
 stars. 
 
 Bohemia is everywhere. Though, like the earth, it has 
 its pits and its peaks, its deep canyons always in the 
 shadow, and its broad uplands always in the sunshine, its 
 dismal swamps where death ever lurks, and its bright val- 
 leys where life ever blooms resplendent, its waters of Lethe 
 and its immortelles, yet, like life, its evolution is ever 
 upward, its aim is perfection, and its hereafter the accom- 
 plishment thereof. 
 
 The true children of Bohemia are artists and all who 
 worship art though ever so humbly, poets and all whose 
 souls keep rythmic step with the pulse of humanity, musi- 
 cians and all whose ears revel in the harmonies of the 
 universe, and every soldier who fights for an ideal, whether 
 it be a flag or a fancy. 
 
 The true children of Bohemia build our temples, adorn 
 them with statues, and place laurel wreaths on the sculp- 
 tor's brow, strike the lyre and charm the world with song, 
 dip their brushes in rainbow tints and give expression to 
 Art, lecture in the porticos, write in the libraries, and 
 speak on the rostrums — and just as true children of 
 Bohemia are all those also who follow, learn from, sym- 
 pathize with, and appreciate these. 
 
 In Bohemia Genius is the Sun, the God of its idolatry, 
 and Bohemians all are Fire-worshipers. 
 
 Bohemia is the Republic of Brains, wherein any creation 
 of the intellect is a certain passport to preferment, and 
 where merit never fails of recognition. 
 
BOHEMIA 67 
 
 Therefore I love Bohemia, and with one of our poets* 
 I exclaim, 
 
 "I'd rather live in Bohemia than in any other land; 
 For only there are the values true ; 
 And the laurels gathered in all men's view. 
 The prizes of traffic and state are won 
 By shrewdness of force or by deeds undone; 
 But fame is sweeter without the feud, 
 And the wise of Bohemia are never shrewd. 
 Here, pilgrims stream with a faith sublime 
 From every class and clime and time, 
 Aspiring only to be enrolled 
 
 With the names that are writ in the book of gold ; 
 And each one bears in mind or hand 
 A palm of the dear Bohemian land : 
 The scholar first, with his book— a youth 
 Aflame with the glory of harvested truth; 
 A girl with a picture, a man with a play, 
 A boy with a wolf he has modeled in clay; 
 A smith with a marvelous hilt and sword, 
 A player, a king, a ploughman, a lord— 
 And the player is king when the door is past, 
 The ploughman is crowned, and the lord is last ! 
 I'd rather fail in Bohemia than win in another land ; 
 There are no titles inherited there. 
 No hoard or hope for the brainless heir ; 
 No guilded dullard native born 
 To stare at his fellow with leaden scorn: 
 Bohemia has none but adopted sons ; 
 Its limits, where Fancy's bright stream runs ; 
 Its honors, not garnered for thrift or trade, 
 But for beauty and truth men's souls have made." 
 
 Down the centuries before my prophetic gaze stretches 
 the ever lengthening procession of Bohemians, all traveling 
 the paths now trodden by Homer and Sophocles, Apelles, 
 Phidias and Praxitiles, Socrates and Demosthenes, Plato 
 
 *(A pardonable anachronism. The lines are by John Boyle O'Reilly.) 
 
68 BOHEMIA 
 
 and Aristotle. This procession will be interrupted, as it 
 can march only by the light of day. There will come a 
 long night whose darkness shall be unlit by light of single 
 star, and then a new day shall dawn whose sun shall 
 know no setting, and sculpture and painting and music 
 and song and philosophy and poetry and letters and science 
 shall make the whole world Bohemia, and all the children 
 of the sons of men will be Bohemians. 
 
 In a land beyond the setting sun, not yet by great Jove 
 created, a new people shall be born, and, inheritors of 
 Greek art and culture, they shall kneel at the shrine of 
 the beautiful, and their souls by music shall be swayed. 
 They shall assemble in a temple not built by hands, col- 
 umned by trees and roofed by heaven's star-gemmed dome, 
 o'er whose portal they shall inscribe "Bohemia," and o'er 
 its altar "Truth and Beauty" all shall read, and humanity 
 shall be its divinity. This to me the gods foretell. 
 
"BOHEMIA" 
 
 (Delivered at the dedication of the new Jinks Room of the 
 Bohemian Club, October 28,. 1899.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: I am asked to speak of "Bohemia 
 of the Future." I must necessarily be brief, as we 
 can see but a little of the future, and that dimly. Our 
 foresight is limited, and can consume but little time in the 
 telling. 
 
 It is a maxim that all things come to him who waits, 
 and this evening we so believe. Long have we waited for 
 the coming of this occasion. In our dreams only have we 
 imagined Jinks free from asphyxiation and from draughts 
 winged with colds. Although the medical profession much 
 affects this Club, we have not for years had a so-called 
 "Doctors' " Jinks, because the Doctors claimed them all 
 as their own. But their day has gone with the badly venti- 
 lated, overcrowded rooms, and this Club will henceforth 
 breathe fresh air. At last, in this our waking hour, our 
 dream has come true, and we Ex-Presidents, adorned like 
 so many Solomons in all their glory, and shining only by 
 the light of other days, are gathered together as a syndi- 
 cate of Has Beens, a motley group of those who did not, 
 to do honor to the President who did, to celebrate his 
 achievement, this fulfillment of our hopes, the dedication 
 of this handsome Jinks Room. Here the Owl will have 
 full plenty room to wide-spread her wings, but without any 
 desire to take her flight. 
 
70 "BOHEMIA" 
 
 This occasion, this spacious theater, all this splendor, is 
 not only a cause for rejoicing, but is suggestive of some 
 serious reflections, and more than all, the query, 'What 
 Constitutes Bohemia?" 
 
 Bohemianism may find a contented home within the 
 narrow confines of a cottage, or it may be to the manner 
 born in marble halls. It may be twin brother to poverty, 
 or it may chum with wealth. It may thrive on hope while 
 pinched with hunger, or it still may hope, though it wax 
 fat on milk and honey. 
 
 The heroes of Bohemia may be clad in rags or dressed 
 in purple and fine linen, and it matters not. They would 
 not be its heroes if it did matter. 
 
 Bohemia has the witchcraft of contracting or expand- 
 ing to its surroundings, and is independent of material 
 environment. 
 
 Bohemianism is the emotional side of life. It is the 
 soul manifesting itself in the infinite varieties of genius, 
 finding expression here in rhythmic lines, there in melo- 
 dious song; here in words that burn, there in harmonies 
 that exalt ; here in the living canvas, there in the breath- 
 ing marble. Its magician's wand is alike the pen or pencil, 
 the brush or baton. Its heritage is genius, its life-blood 
 is appreciation, its daily food is good companionship. It 
 is the human aspect of humanity. 
 
 The religion of Bohemia is the worship of the beautiful, 
 and to its altar come with equal welcome those who kneel 
 in voiceless prayer and they who voice their holy zeal with 
 brilliancy and with power. No temple can be too grand, 
 no chapel too humble, for its shrine. Bohemia is Bohemia 
 for a' that. 
 
 Your programme speaks of Bohemia of the past, Bohemia 
 of the present, Bohemia of the future. There can be no 
 
"BOHEMIA" 71 
 
 such classification. Bohemia ever was, is, and always must 
 be the same. Bohemians change, not Bohemia. 
 
 There have been in this Club in the past Bohemians 
 whom it was a privilege to meet and who have left "a 
 wholesome memory" behind them, some whose names fame 
 has made immortal, and some whose only Pantheon is the 
 heart of every one who knew them. 
 
 There are amongst us at the present Bohemians who are 
 faithful to the traditions of this Club, and who not 
 unworthily bear aloft the Banner of the Owl. 
 
 There will be in the future those to take our places 
 who will be men of high ideals, and who will cherish their 
 inheritance. Neither the past nor the present has exhausted 
 the wit or wisdom of this community. 
 
 This Club will therefore live. But to live up to its 
 opportunities it must be true to its name. It must always 
 tend with watchful care the lamp whose flame giveth warmth 
 and light, but burneth not. It must never forget the 
 beggar at its gates, nor bow down before the seats of the 
 mighty. It must always cultivate the simplicity of child- 
 hood, the faith of womanhood, the strength of manhood. 
 It must ever prize books and pictures, songs and symphonies, 
 more than gold or precious stones. If it so lives, if these 
 be ever its Ten Commandments, then this material growth 
 and prosperity will inure to its advancement, and, like our 
 country, it may expand and expand, and the world will 
 be the better therefor. 
 
 How shall I typify the "Spirit of Bohemia"? Upon 
 the canvas of your imagination what picture shall I paint 
 that will mean to you Bohemia? I will dip my brush in 
 the rainbow, or, mayhap, the sunset sky, from sweetest 
 memories I will recall the fairest face, and I will paint 
 the picture of a beautiful woman, just descended from the 
 clouds, daughter of the roseate dawn, in her eyes the light 
 
72 "BOHEMIA" 
 
 of morning hope inspiring, around her sable locks a wreath 
 of holly giving promise of festivity. I will picture her 
 standing a-tiptoe on the green earth, and you will instantly 
 exclaim "Bohemia!" — because in your minds will be the 
 thought that where woman treads flowers grow, and such is 
 Bohemia's mission, to cultivate the flowers of art and poetry 
 and music and letters, to make living joyous, to make life 
 beautiful. 
 
 Lo, the picture ! Behold ! 
 
 [Here was unveiled a painting by Theodore Wores, entitled 
 "Bohemia Victrix."] 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 (Delivered at a Jinks given by the Bohemian Club, May 15, 1901, 
 to President McKinley and his Cabinet.) 
 
 SIRE AND Gentlemen : Among the interesting stories 
 that flowed from the pen of the author of "The Luck 
 of Roaring Camp" is "The Legend of Monte del Diablo." 
 Before the Gringo came, so runs this legend, a Spanish 
 priest left the Mission of San Pablo to explore the sur- 
 rounding country, and, mayhap, establish another station 
 of the cross where the heathen could find salvation. He 
 bent his steps towards a neighboring mountain, since called 
 Mt. Diablo, and made its difficult ascent. Arrived at the 
 top he encountered an elderly Hidalgo, whom he divined 
 to be his Satanic Majesty in disguise. 
 
 After a few moments' conversation, the Hidalgo said to 
 the priest, "Look to the West," and at the waving of his 
 plumed hat the fog melted away, leaving clear the land- 
 scape of the distant ocean, the bay, the rivers, the mountain 
 defiles, and the rolling plains yellow with grain as if car- 
 peted with cloth of gold. The good father looked, and 
 he beheld long cavalcades of cavaliers defiling from every 
 ravine and canyon, all marching towards the sea, where 
 stately caravels awaited them; and above these marching 
 hosts and from the masts of these caravels glittered the 
 cross of Santiago and the royal banners of Castile and 
 Aragon. As the priest was gazing at this strange spectacle 
 the Hidalgo said : "Thou hast beheld, Sir priest, the depart- 
 
74 CALIFORNIA 
 
 ing footprints of adventurous Castile. Thou hast seen the 
 declining glory of old Spain. The scepter she hath wrested 
 from the heathen is fast dropping from her decrepit and 
 failing grasp. The soil she hath acquired shall be lost to 
 her irrevocably." 
 
 The old churchman raised his priestly hand in benedic- 
 tion, and exclaimed: "Farewell, ye gallant cavaliers and 
 Christian soldiers ! Farewell thou, Nunes de Balboa ! Thou, 
 Alonzo de Ojeda! and thou most venerable Las Casas !" 
 
 "Now look to the East," said the Hidalgo, and the 
 father beheld advancing through the passes of the snowy 
 mountains a strange host, all with the blue eyes and flaxen 
 hair of a Saxon race, and at their head waved a tri-colored 
 banner of red, white, and blue, inscribed with no religious 
 symbol, but only star-bespangled. 
 
 "Behold," said the Hidalgo, "the future rulers of this 
 land, and of distant islands where Spain now holds sway." 
 
 Mr. President, such is the legend; such we know now 
 is also history. The Anglo-Saxon came to this land of the 
 Spaniard, and founded a State, and he called this State by 
 its Spanish name, California ; and fifty-one years ago Cali- 
 fornia knocked at the door of the Union, and asked for 
 admission into the sisterhood of States. Like Minerva, 
 born full grown from the brain of Jove, California was 
 born fully equipped as a State. Her letter of credentials 
 was her constitution, wherein she pledged herself to freedom. 
 
 She came "neither as a supplicant nor with the arro- 
 gance of presumption, but simply that she might be per- 
 mitted to reap the common benefits, share the common ills, 
 and promote the common welfare as one of the United 
 States of America." 
 
 Standing without the portal, to her astonished ear there 
 came from within mutterings of dissension. With alarm 
 she heard the giants of the land forecasting the dissolution 
 
CALIFORNIA 75 
 
 of the Union if she were admitted with her constitution 
 prohibiting slavery. Desirous of enlisting under the banner 
 of freedom, she was dismayed to hear that her enlistment 
 was opposed because of her self-dedication to the cause of 
 liberty. 
 
 Nay, more! Imagine her surprise when she heard the 
 great Webster, the expounder of the constitution and cham- 
 pion of the Union, whose fame, like England's drum-beat, 
 encircled the world, thus describe her to the Senate of the 
 United States : 
 
 "California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their forma- 
 tion and scenery. They are composed of vast ranges of 
 mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep 
 valleys. The sides of these mountains are entirely barren, 
 their tops capped by perennial snow. There may be in 
 California, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable 
 land." 
 
 Gentlemen, now that you have traversed our fertile val- 
 leys, wandered through our orange groves, marveled at the 
 giants of our forests, thanked God anew for the beauty of 
 our fields carpeted with flowers, and the chromatic glory 
 of our floral tapestry, and beheld a Garden of Eden so 
 full of apples that there is no temptation to partake thereof, 
 a Garden of Eden so fair that there would have been no 
 fall of man if Adam and Eve had had the good fortune 
 to dwell therein ; now that you have beheld this golden 
 land by the sunset sea to which Nature has been so boun- 
 tiful, you can appreciate how great the transition from 
 1850 to 1901, from the administration of Taylor to that 
 of McKinley, and how distant San Francisco was from 
 Washington in those days when so great a senator as Web- 
 ster could so mis-describe California. 
 
 But, to return to the days of 1850, when California stood 
 at the Senate door impatiently listening to the storm that 
 
n CALIFORNIA 
 
 her application had aroused. Imagine her delight, after 
 Webster's remarkable utterances, in hearing another voice, 
 like silver chiming amidst discordant brass, the voice of 
 one whose patriotism was anchored firmly in the Union's 
 strength, whose statesmanship was as broad as the conti- 
 nent, and whose faith in our future was the inspiration of 
 prophecy, the voice of Seward predicting the westward and 
 wonderful growth of the Republic, and thus pleading in 
 her behalf: 
 
 ''Let California come in. Every new State, whether she 
 come from the East or from the West — every new State, 
 coming from whatever part of the continent she may — is 
 always welcome. But California, that comes from the 
 clime where the West dies away into the rising East — 
 California, which bounds at once the empire and the con- 
 tinent — California, the youthful Queen of the Pacific, in 
 her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold — is doubly 
 welcome." 
 
 In the Congressional Globe this speech is entitled "Cali- 
 fornia, Union, and Freedom." We like this title, though 
 we would have written it "Freedom, Union, and Califor- 
 nia." But, however phrased, the words are rightly joined. 
 The winds that sweep o'er California's hills and dales, per- 
 fumed by the incense of blossoming trees and flowering 
 plants, never bore to listening ears the clanking of a bond- 
 man's chains. 
 
 Such is her love for the Union that she has supplemented 
 the verdict of Appomattox with a declaration in her Bill 
 of Rights that "The State of California is an inseparable 
 part of the American Union." 
 
 Thanks to the independence that Jefferson penned and 
 Washington accomplished ! Thanks to this Union that 
 Washington inaugurated, and Marshall consummated, and 
 Lincoln and Grant made indissoluble, and that under the 
 
CALIFORNIA 11 
 
 wise leadership of William McKinley has so expanded in 
 territory and increased in might and majesty as to attract 
 the wonder and arouse the anxiety of the nations ! Thanks 
 to the flag of this Union in whose empyrean all the States 
 as stars are fixed eternally, like pearls in a sapphire setting, 
 this State of California looks forward to a glorious destiny. 
 
 The star of her destiny is the morning star of the new- 
 born century. O'er the Golden Gate it glitters, diademmin:^ 
 this youthful Queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, 
 gorgeously inlaid with gold. 
 
 Though California must ever bound the continent, she 
 will never again bound the empire, for our flag will never 
 retire from those islands of the Eastern seas where fate 
 and valor planted it, and where wisdom and valor have 
 maintained it. 
 
THE GRAPE: ITS USES, JUICES, AND ABUSES 
 
 (Delivered at a High Jinks of the Bohemian Club, October, igoo. 
 William Sproule, Sire.) 
 
 MR. SIRE : "The Grape : Its Juices, Uses, and Abuses," 
 is not only a very alliterative theme, but is also very 
 fruitful, and suggests liberal treating. It affords many 
 opportunities for oratory, poetry, and wit; but these oppor- 
 tunities knock not at my door. They are frightened away 
 by the watering-cart they see standing there. 
 
 Did my purse and my gout permit the daily gratification 
 of my appetite for dusty, cobwebby bottles of Lafite, I could 
 write a thesis to prove that the use of the juice becomes 
 an abuse except in the hands of a master. As it is, I must 
 walk by the light of other nights, and draw upon my 
 memory for my headaches. If one would thoroughly 
 appreciate the grape, he must himself tread the wine-press, 
 and with reverent feet press out the juice whose use or 
 abuse will give wings to fancy, or feet of lead to fact. 
 Fate wills that each one must himself tread the wine-press, 
 and from the grapes of his own vineyard press the juice 
 whose use will give inspiration to aspiration, and whose 
 abuse may bring fascination, but will surely bring degra- 
 dation. 
 
 On gently sloping hills, in nestling vales, kissed by the 
 sun, begemmed with the dew, and caressed by the rustling 
 leaves, grows the enpurpling grape. 
 
 In every cluster is remembrance and forgetfulness, hope 
 and regret, anticipation and disappointment, love and hate, 
 
THE GRAPE 79 
 
 ambition and despair, courage and fear, the fleetness of the 
 deer and the sloth of the snail, the eagle's instinct to rise, 
 man's readiness to fall. 
 
 Into its juice the magician dips his wand, and lo ! there 
 appear "elves of the hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves, 
 and those that on the sand with printless foot chase the 
 ebbing Neptune." 
 
 Into its juice the artist dips his brush, and the moth 
 becomes as iridescent as the butterfly, leaden skies as pris- 
 matic as the Aurora Borealis, a cloudy morning so beauti- 
 ful as to wake the singing of the lark. 
 
 Into its juice the poet dips his pen, and the rhythm of 
 our hearts and the music of our souls make life melodious. 
 
 Its juice the orator quaffs, and thoughts that live and 
 words that burn in eloquence wring plaudits from the 
 stars. 
 
 Oh, the juice of the grape ! 
 
 It is diplomacy, and statesmen avoid the shedding of 
 good blood by the drinking of good wine. 
 
 It is business, and money-kings coin ducats out of the 
 bubbles of sparkling wine. 
 
 It is fellowship, and friendship is born of a bottle of 
 wine. 
 
 It is passion, and the flower of love blooms in blushing 
 beauty when sprinkled with wine. 
 
 It is surcease from pain, relief from sorrow, rest from 
 labor, triumph's reward. 
 
 It is the chariot of fancy, and its path is the rainbow. 
 
 It is the Pegasus of genius, and its wings are aglow with 
 the lightning. 
 
 It is the fairy godmother of hope, and it neglects no 
 Cinderella. 
 
 It is sunlight and moonlight distilled in purple. 
 
80 THE GRAPE 
 
 It is the water of the Pierian Spring, sparkling with the 
 breath of angels. 
 
 It is the eternal today of beauty, pleasure, and fruition, 
 the certain tomorrow of delicious anticipation. 
 
 It is childhood's laughter, manhood's cheers; it is lovers' 
 midnight kissing. 
 
 It is the elixir of inexhaustible desire, the one taste of 
 nature that makes the whole world kin. 
 
 Its flowers never fade, its perfumes never die, its music 
 lingers forever as in the pearly galleries of a shell. 
 
 Abuse it, and on your hearthstone will coil the dragon 
 of despair, and want and woe will your companions be, 
 and — but why dream of pain when you may be awake to 
 pleasure? Tonight we will think of the grape and its 
 juices and uses only. Its abuses we may think of tomorrow; 
 but not if we bear in mind these lines from Horace : 
 
 "O, Varus mine, 
 
 Plant thou the vine 
 Within this kindly soil of Tiber; 
 
 Nor temporal woes, 
 
 Nor spiritual, knows 
 The man who's a discreet imbiber." 
 
A MEDICAL ADDRESS 
 
 (Delivered at the Commencement Exercises of Cooper Medical 
 College, San Francisco, December 5, 1895.) 
 
 LADIES AND Gentlemen: Dr. Gushing has just told 
 you that patients will deceive you as to their troubles. 
 We lawyers find that clients treat us in the same way. There 
 is, however, a slight difference in the results. If a patient 
 lies to his doctor, he goes to the cemetery. If a client lies 
 to his attorney, he either goes to jail or he goes broke. 
 
 It is a very difficult task for a lawyer to address a body 
 of medical men. He feels not qualified to talk to them 
 upon their own themes, and would like to lure them on to 
 mutual ground, where he has a more equal opportunity. 
 He would prefer to talk to them when they are on the 
 witness stand. 
 
 In considering this occasion, I endeavored to attune my 
 mind to ideas of more or less absorbing interest to physi- 
 cians. I took up the work of the well-known Dr. Max 
 Nordau, entitled ''Degeneration." I had not read many 
 pages before I discovered that I was a mystic, an imbecile, 
 an incurable degenerate, and that I must fall into line 
 with degenerate musicians like Wagner, degenerate artists 
 like Millais, degenerate novelists like Victor Hugo and 
 Tolstoi, degenerate writers like Ruskin, et id genus omne. 
 I therefore laid the book aside, with a feeling of commis- 
 eration for the loneliness of Nordau in this degenerate 
 world. 
 
82 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 
 
 I then began to peruse the medical journals, but soon 
 abandoned this attempt. Had I persisted further in this 
 direction I should have had, in imagination, every disease 
 that flesh is afflicted with, besides being amazed that the 
 human race is not extinct. That men and women can 
 read these periodicals, especially late at night when there 
 is naught stirring to suggest health and life, and continue 
 to be sound in mind and body, bespeaks an absence of 
 nerves and a superabundance of nerve. 
 
 These journals tended to confuse rather than to enlighten 
 me. Are the organs of the human body and are physio- 
 logic processes so horrible that they can not be described 
 with English names, but can be spoken of only in the 
 Greek and Latin tongues? Must living organs go to dead 
 languages for their names? Is not the English language 
 — a language that sufficed Shakspeare to run the gamut 
 of humanity — comprehensive enough to supply a name for 
 every nerve, organ, and bone in the human body, as well 
 as to every experience of the human soul? I am told that 
 medical students become proficient in these Greek and 
 Latin terms and phrases, and yet some of them spell 
 "germs" with a "j," put two "ss" in ''asleep," and thicken 
 "skin" by adding an extra "n." We laymen would say 
 in English that they have simply a "bad spell." They 
 would be satisfied with nothing shorter than "orthograpa- 
 resis," which means "paresis in spelling" if it means any- 
 thing. 
 
 I read about la grippe. One doctor recommended qui- 
 nine; another protested against its use, and described this 
 disease as arising from the presence of a microorganism, 
 and this microorganism develops a ptomaine, and this pto- 
 maine affects the ganglionic system. I concluded that if 
 it was half that bad, it was not surprising that doctors 
 
A MEDICAL ADDRESS 83 
 
 should differ in the treatment of such a calamity, what- 
 ever it was. 
 
 From the grip I turned to a disquisition upon the heart. 
 I thought I knew something about this organ; that its 
 chief purpose was to add luster to a maiden's eyes and 
 color to her cheeks; to drive young men to extravagance 
 in candy, flowers, and precious stones; and, generally, to 
 interfere with the sleep and digestion of young people. I 
 was mistaken. The heart devotes its working hours to 
 the cultivation of myocarditis, and in its leisure moments 
 amuses itself with pericarditis. I shuddered when I real- 
 ized that a young girl's heart could attend to all this and 
 still have time to keep men guessing. 
 
 Apart, however, from the foregoing considerations, 
 these journals were interesting to me. One article that 
 I recall discussed the pleasing subject of surgery. The 
 author mentioned that one of the earliest surgical operations 
 recorded in history occurred in the Garden of Eden, when 
 Adam had a rib extracted. I drew from this incident 
 the moral that man should never go to sleep in a garden 
 without first counting his ribs. Adam forgot to do this, 
 slept soundly, lost a rib, and woke up in the bosom of 
 his family. Thus came the "old woman," the product of 
 surgery. How came the "new woman," and of what is 
 she the product? If surgery will not claim her, man will 
 be equally modest. 
 
 Another article that I read treated most interestingly and 
 learnedly the theory of "suggestion." The writer proved 
 conclusively that bread-pills are a sure cure, if taken with 
 faith in the doctor, and with the belief that he is prescrib- 
 ing something else. He showed how patients recover when 
 the physician they trust tells them they are better, thus 
 illustrating the truth of the Savior's saying to the woman 
 he healed, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." He dem- 
 
84 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 
 
 onstrated how mind can suggest to mind, and how physical 
 conditions can be created, modified, or exterminated by 
 suggestion alone. 
 
 My appearance here this evening is a proof of this 
 writer's theory. One of this learned Faculty, Dr. Clinton 
 Cushing, hypnotized me. This address is a suggestion of 
 his. As in "Trilby," the voice alone is mine, the ideas 
 belong to this Doctor Svengali. I must, therefore, rely 
 for the success of this talk upon your faith in him, hoping 
 that he has suggested to you that it will be better than it 
 sounds; and further, I hope that you will take it, believ- 
 ing that it is what he has suggested, and that you are not 
 as badly bored as you have a right to be. 
 
 Acting upon this delusion, I shall venture to ask your 
 attention for a very few moments to some desultory remarks 
 upon the learned profession we honor this evening. I have 
 been seriously advised by two of my medical friends not 
 to praise their profession, but to criticise it, to run the 
 lancet in deeply, and not to bother about the use of an 
 anaesthetic — to "roast" the doctors. It is needless to tell 
 you that Doctor Svengali suggested the opposite course, 
 and I must do as he wishes. Besides, misery makes us 
 acquainted with strange bed-fellows, and a "fellow-feeling 
 makes us wondrous kind." Lawyers and doctors are equally 
 abused by the world at large. I therefore feel that the 
 two professions should stand together, even to mutual 
 admiration. I will praise you, hoping for similar treat- 
 ment when it comes your turn. Seriously speaking, how- 
 ever, if I exalt the medical profession, I do so that these 
 graduates may appreciate more keenly the grave duties and 
 labors they are undertaking in entering its ranks. 
 
 The lamentations of pessimistic writers to the contrary, 
 the world is moving along lines of progress. In nothing 
 is this progress more apparent and more beneficial to 
 
A MEDICAL ADDRESS 85 
 
 humanity than in medicine and surgery. In the early life 
 of all peoples the priest and the physician were one, and 
 the sign of the barber indicated also the abode of the 
 surgeon. As civilization has grown with the centuries, the 
 priest has remained content with faith, while the physician 
 has increased his store of knowledge, and the Evil Spirit 
 that the former would exorcise by prayers and incantations 
 has become the bacillus that the latter exterminates by 
 another bacillus. The Doctor of Medicine is no longer 
 the partner of the Doctor of Divinity, nor does the surgeon 
 any longer divide his time between the operating table and 
 the barber's chair. 
 
 Franklin brought down the lightning from the clouds, 
 Morse dispatched it as a winged messenger of good tidings 
 to all the nations, and Edison, Tesla, and others have further 
 tamed this great destroyer until it has become a torch-bearer, 
 decorator, and beast of burden. Great are these men of 
 science. By the wires that cross the continents, and by 
 the cables that span the seas, they have annihilated space 
 and time and have made the antipodes close neighbors. 
 With the electric light they have illumined the world and 
 made daytime almost continuous. Through electricity as a 
 motive power they have almost hushed forever the jingle 
 of the horse-car bells, are substituting the force of falling 
 waters for the heat of fiery furnaces, and now threaten to 
 harness Niagara to forge-hammers in Buffalo and to sewing- 
 machines in Chicago, and to make the whistle of the loco- 
 motive a mere occasional echo of the age of steam. 
 Through the phonograph they preserve the sound of a voice 
 that is dead, and enable yesterday to hold converse with 
 tomorrow. By the telautograph they promise to infuse 
 into the hand that holds the pen in San Francisco the 
 magical power of writing a letter in New York. By means 
 of the telephone they have made the whole world a 
 
86 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 
 
 whispering-gallery. While they have been performing these 
 miracles, astronomers, holding their nightly vigils, have 
 timed the motions of the stars, mapped their courses, and 
 in the laboratory of the skies analyzed them into their com- 
 ponent parts. 
 
 But greater than these men are those other men of science, 
 those physicians, practicing their healing art in every city, 
 town, and village, whose genius has expended itself in 
 lengthening life by preventing and by conquering disease. 
 The mad dog, rushing through the crowded streets, no 
 longer leaves a trail of death behind him. The serpent 
 no longer revenges, with murderous fangs, the curse that 
 has made him crawl forever upon his belly in the dust. 
 Medical science has cures for such poisons. Aye, more : 
 it can give surcease from pain, deaden physical nature to 
 the surgeon's knife, and lull to slumber those who formerly 
 had to lie awake all night and could not go to sleep at morn. 
 Beneath its magic touch "suffering sighs itself to sleep and 
 dreams." It can now unlock the jaws that formerly death 
 alone could open; render an attack of smallpox no longer 
 necessarily a sentence of death ; say to the dread diphtheria, 
 "thou shalt not be a slayer of the innocents" ; and to the 
 cholera, that unwelcome visitor from foreign lands, knock- 
 ing at our doors for admission, "Thus far shalt thou come, 
 and no farther; thou canst not enter here." 
 
 The physician is gradually erasing the word "incurable" 
 from his vocabulary, and stands no longer aghast and help- 
 less before many diseases formerly thought fatal. He fears 
 not to cut where drugs are without avail, and therefore 
 countless human beings owe health and happiness to modern 
 surgery. I am told that modern bacteriological researches 
 have revolutionized surgery, and that the surgeon can now 
 go almost anywhere in the human body, so long as he keeps 
 everything clean and aseptic, remembering that there are 
 
A MEDICAL ADDRESS 87 
 
 occasions when "cleanliness is better than godliness." Verily, 
 and without boasting, can he exclaim, "Mortality alone 
 defies me; age alone can conquer me." 
 
 Today the world is singing anew the praises of Napoleon. 
 Art and letters are intent on carving his name still deeper 
 on the adamantine pyramid of Fame. The hero-worshipers 
 of the nineteenth century are regilding the letters that spell 
 the name "Bonaparte," and are hanging fresh wreaths of 
 immortelles on the tomb beneath the glittering dome of the 
 Invalides. Fire-worshipers, all of us, we kneel, blinded 
 by the light of a meteor shooting through the heavens, that 
 dazzles with its brilliancy and blasts with its heat, like a 
 conflagration that destroys while it illumines. 
 
 Think of the armies that followed and of the armies that 
 fought Napoleon, whose whitening bones made a Golgotha 
 of Europe from Paris to Moscow ; count, if you can, the 
 victims of this great Frenchman's ambition, and compare 
 them with the beneficiaries of the genius of that other great 
 Frenchman, that eminent physician and scientist, whose dead 
 body the President of France, as chief mourner of the 
 nation, recently followed from the Pasteur Institute to the 
 Cathedral of Notre Dame. Of him it has been eloquently 
 said: "Dr. Pasteur was a great man. His was a life worth 
 living, contributing to general biology the demonstration of 
 the part that bacteria play, not only in pathological and 
 physiological processes, but in the wider drama of evolu- 
 tion ; to physicians, many a suggestive lesson in the etiology 
 of diseases, and a series of bold experiments in preventive 
 and curative inoculation; and to the surgeon, a stable 
 foundation for antiseptic treatment. If all the armies of 
 the world were to be massed together, their number would 
 not equal the number of lives that have been saved by the 
 aid of Dr. Pasteur's discoveries." 
 
88 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 
 
 Napoleon's followers pointed to their scars, their maimed 
 bodies, and their medals, and cried, "Vive Napoleon!" Pas- 
 teur's followers point to sick beds abandoned and crutches 
 thrown away, to health and strength restored, and to hope 
 revived, and, reveling in the very luxury of living, cry, 
 "Vive Pasteur!" 
 
 Greater is he that buildeth a college or foundeth a hos- 
 pital than he that conquereth a city. I would rather have 
 founded the Pasteur Institute, and have discovered a cure 
 for hydrophobia, than to have held the bridge at Lodi, and 
 excelled both Caesar and Alexander in the art of war. I 
 would rather have been the founder of the Woman's PIos- 
 pital of the State of New York, have become the foremost 
 surgeon of my country and of the world, and sleep in death 
 beneath a monument erected in recognition of my services 
 in the cause of science and mankind, than to have w^on the 
 battle of Waterloo or worn the laurels that Childe Harold 
 brought to England's greatest poet. I would rather have 
 been Dr. J. Marion Sims than Wellington or Byron. I 
 would rather have been the founder of this Medical Col- 
 lege and Hospital, upon whose walls is inscribed this 
 legend, "Erected by Levi Cooper Lane, physician and sur- 
 geon, with money earned in his profession, and dedicated 
 to suffering humanity and the healing art," than to be hon- 
 ored with a tomb in Westminster Abbey and have Shak- 
 speare write mine epitaph. Dr. Lane, standing in this 
 building, can exclaim as did Sir Christopher Wren beneath 
 the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral : ''Si meum monumcntum 
 mderes, circumspice" — "If you would behold my monument, 
 look around you." 
 
 Great and noble is your calling, O men of medicine and 
 surgery ! In ancient days the gladiators looked up from 
 the sands of the arena and cried out, ''0, Caesar, nos mori- 
 turi te salutamus," but they cried out in vain. Caesar stayed 
 
A MEDICAL ADDRESS 89 
 
 not the fatal combat, and death followed the thrust of 
 the sword. In modern days the sick and the suffering, 
 struggling with disease, look up from their beds of pain 
 and exclaim, ''Oj, Doctor, nos morituri te salutamus!" but 
 they exclaim not in vain. Your skill and science stay the 
 unequal combat, and, like the Divine Physician, you reply, 
 "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." 
 
 When I recall the many hospitals in every land where 
 the poor and needy receive the benefit of your advice and 
 skill without cost and without price; when I realize that 
 you give freely to Lazarus that for which Dives so will- 
 ingly pays; that there are none so poor or lowly who can 
 not, at this and other hospitals, have, for the asking, the 
 attendance of the greatest of you, I bethink me of the 
 Scriptures wherein it is written: "Then shall the King 
 say unto them at his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my 
 Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
 foundation of the world: Inasmuch as ye have done it 
 unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done 
 it unto me." 
 
 Gentlemen of the Medical Profession, both you of the 
 Faculty of this College, eminent as professors and practi- 
 tioners, and you, young ladies and gentlemen, just begin- 
 ning your careers, I am glad to have had this opportunity 
 of addressing you. From the abundance of my heart my 
 mouth speaketh. I say unto you, and to you, ladies and 
 gentlemen. Let the doctor magnify his office. To him we 
 make confessions we withhold from the priest. In him 
 we place a confidence we give not to the lawyer. He is 
 our first acquaintance on our appearance in this world. 
 Afterward, during the daily contest with the ills that flesh 
 is heir to, it is he who points to healthy ways and steers 
 us often safely between many a Scylla and Charybdis of 
 disease and death. At last, when we are about to depart 
 
90 A MEDICAL ADDRESS 
 
 this life, it is his kindly hand that holds the lantern to 
 guide our tottering feet through the Valley of the Shadow 
 of Death. His is the ear that first catches our natal cry, 
 and last receives our dying sigh. The faithful sentinel 
 at the door of the unknowable and at the gate of the 
 unknown, birth and death his sentry-posts, his position 
 entitles him to our respect for the responsibility he assumes, 
 and to our affection for the kindly duties he performs. We 
 often abuse and criticise him, and we do not always pay 
 him; but we can not do without him, and we love him, 
 for he comes to us, like the Angel of Mercy, "with healing 
 in his wings." 
 
 Let us, then, ever bear in mind these words of the ancient 
 Hebrew: "My son, in thy sickness be not negligent, but 
 pray unto the Lord, and He will make thee whole. Leave 
 off from sin, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy 
 heart from all wickedness. Give a sweet savor, and a 
 memorial of fine flour, and a fat offering; then give place 
 to the physician, for the Lord hath created him. Let him 
 not go from thee, for thou hast need of him." 
 
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 (Delivered at a Banquet given to Chauneey M. Depew by the 
 Union League Club of San Francisco, April 4, 1896.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen: When Mr. 
 Depew began to talk about protection, I felt like the 
 farmer when the strange guest said to him, during a lag 
 in the conversation, "Now, a few words about the tariff." 
 I was inclined not to listen. I have, however, in the last 
 hour or so become a believer in protection; for if ever a 
 man needed protection I need it now, and I need it badly. 
 
 In the language of the Senator from Mr. Depew's own 
 State, "I am a Democrat"; but there is only one of me, 
 while there are about one hundred and fifty of you. My 
 loneliness is, however, very much alleviated by the consola- 
 tion that we Democrats are united this evening, while there 
 seems to be quite a want of unanimity in your ranks, both 
 in regard to candidates and measures. This gives me 
 renewed hope for Democratic success, if it is still true 
 that in union there is strength. And yet, I am not on this 
 account so proud or so puffed up with vain glory that I 
 can not dine with you and gladly contribute my mite in 
 doing honor to this occasion. 
 
 In listening to the eloquent and rather biting Repub- 
 lican speeches that have been delivered this evening, I feel 
 that I am the typical American spoken of by Bryce in his 
 "American Commonwealth" — I can applaud a good speech, 
 though I do not believe a thing the speaker says. 
 
92 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 We Democrats regret that there are some differences 
 amongst you as to who is the best man in your party to 
 be the next victim to Democratic infallibility and invinci- 
 bility, because we know of so many Republicans eminently 
 fitted by nature and experience to fill this role, with entire 
 satisfaction to our party. We promise him, whoever he 
 shall be, a magnificent funeral, and that our hymn of 
 triumph shall be his funeral dirge. Verily, this shall come 
 to pass, though he be New York's son, or Ohio's son, or 
 Alli-son, and with all the "Chaunceys" apparently on his 
 side. In this connection, let me say to you, somewhat in 
 the words of the Bard of Avon, 
 
 "Whilst like puffed and reckless partisans, 
 Yourselves the primrose path of politics tread, 
 Pray, wreck not your own Reed." 
 
 I am glad to have this opportunity of hearing Mr. Depew. 
 In order to be good and ready for this occasion, I have 
 recently read all his speeches, from the one delivered to 
 applauding steamboats, in honor of Bartholdi's genius and 
 France's generosity, to the one spoken at the dedicatory 
 exercises of the World's Fair, whose success was phenom- 
 enal, although it had been predicted by him that it could 
 not succeed unless held in the metropolis of the nation. 
 I have learned from these speeches much of American his- 
 tory and something of every other subject. I know these 
 speeches by heart. If Mr. Depew has his cathode ray 
 with him, he can turn it full upon me and read every 
 speech he ever published. The perusal may be depressing 
 to him, but it will do him good. He will unflinchingly 
 resolve to cut down his chestnut tree as soon as he returns 
 home. 
 
 Dogberry has said that comparisons are odorous, but Mr. 
 Depew will pardon me if, after this course in ancient and 
 modern history, I compare him to one of the New York 
 
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 93 
 
 sky-scrapers. He is tall, sun-crowned; but he is built 
 up by piling one story on top of another. But, gentlemen, 
 he is like one of the sky-scrapers in another respect, he 
 rises above the level of his surroundings. He himself, in 
 speaking of another, has said : "The man who rises above 
 the level in our metropolitan life becomes at once conspic- 
 uous." I add to this : "He who stays above this level becomes 
 immortal; and Chauncey Depew has stayed there." 
 
 I have been introduced as the President of the Bohemian 
 Club, a club that exchanges courtesies with the Lotus Club, 
 of which Mr. Depew is a member. I, therefore, take this 
 occasion to officially regret that my club did not have the 
 honor and pleasure of entertaining Mr. Depew, and that 
 he has been compelled to forego the distinction of being 
 the guest of the Bohemian Club. This club is like Mr. 
 Depew : there is but one of the kind in the world. It has 
 entertained many men of great renown. It has dined 
 Tomaso Salvini, Edwin Booth, and Henry Irving, those 
 three of the world's greatest tragedians, whose transcend- 
 ent dramatic genius found fittest expression only in Shak- 
 speare's immortal plays. Its hospitality did not forget 
 Joseph Jefferson, whose pathos and humor brought smiles 
 and tears, like sunshine and rain at once. Amongst its 
 guests have been Kalakaua, whose kingdom lay in summer 
 seas, like emeralds set in sapphires; Hancock, who fought 
 soldiers more successfully than he did politicians; George 
 Augustus Sala, who elevated newspaper reporting to be one 
 of the learned professions; Henry M. Stanley, the most 
 fearless and renowned of explorers, who has not added to 
 his fame by changing his nationality; Sir Edwin Arnold, 
 whose genius illumined the night of poesy, not only with 
 the "Light of Asia," but also with the "Light of the 
 World" ; Ysaye, who touched his violin and nations stood 
 entranced; and a host of others distinguished in art, let- 
 
94 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 
 
 ters, music, and song. Such is the roll of honor of 
 Bohemia's hospitality. It would have rejoiced with exceed- 
 ing joy to add thereto the name of that lawyer, statesman, 
 and railroad president, noted equally for his legal ability, 
 his forensic ability, his business ability, his sociability, and 
 his amiability; of the most distinguished American; of 
 an orator whose reputation for eloquence has so filled this 
 land that every city with feelings of pride now styles its 
 most gifted speaker a "Chauncey Depew." 
 
 Sir, you are quoted as having asked a reporter at Los 
 Angeles why everything in the West was for sale. There 
 are two things in California that are not for sale — our 
 welcome and our hospitality. These, sir, are without price, 
 and can not be purchased with all the wealth of Ormus 
 or of Ind. We give them once to the stranger within 
 our gates. We give them twice to the stranger who has 
 become a friend; and that man we are glad to make our 
 friend to whom, as you have so truly said: "Life is one 
 perpetual enjoyment, in expanding opportunities, in enjoy- 
 able pursuits, and in steadfast friends," and who, when past 
 the meridian of life, can say, "After all, the best things 
 in this world are its friendships and its opportunities." To 
 such a one, and, sir, thou art the man, we say: 
 
 "Of itself our Garden shuts its gate 
 On him that's hard, cold, uncompassionate, 
 But opens wide its alleys green and still 
 To Sesame of Love and Fair Goodwill." 
 
 Thou, sir, hast the Open Sesame — use it when and as often 
 as thou desirest. 
 
'STEAM AND ELECTRICITY, THE ANNIHILA- 
 TORS OF SPACE AND TIME" 
 
 (Delivered at a dinner given by Mr. Huntington in San Fran- 
 cisco, May 5, iSgy, to the officials of the 
 Southern Pacific Company.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : Rapid transit, both of mind and 
 matter, is the magician of the last quarter of the 
 century, and his two chiefs are the engineer at the throttle 
 and the telegraph operator at his keys. 
 
 During these final years of the nineteenth century a great 
 battle between mighty antagonists is apparently drawing 
 to a close. Steam and Electricity are annihilating Space 
 and Time, making the Antipodes close neighbors, and caus- 
 ing the word "remote" to become obsolete. In fact, the 
 only place that is now remote is Oakland after the last 
 boat. The interior of Siberia and China used to be far 
 away, but the building of the railway across Siberia is 
 daily bringing this country nearer and nearer to us, con- 
 verting this prison into a principality. The extension of 
 this railway across China to Port Arthur and Pekin will 
 bring the Orient within the sphere of the Occident. At 
 the whistle of the locomotive the gates closed by super- 
 stition will stand ajar and the great wall of China will 
 crumble into dust. Before the end of the twentieth century 
 through trains from Paris to Pekin will settle the Chinese 
 question and redraw the political map of Europe and Asia. 
 
 One year ago an electrical exhibition was held in the 
 city of New York to celebrate the opening of the Niagara 
 Falls electrical power enterprise, when Dr. Depew sent a 
 
96 STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 
 
 message round the world. Just about that time I went to 
 the theatre and sat listening to the homely wit and philos- 
 ophy of some simple Athenian tradesmen, to the sighs and 
 vows of some Grecian lovers, to the songs of fairies, and 
 to the airy nothings of Shakspeare's wit that make up 
 "A Midsummer Night's Dream." One sentence particu- 
 larly caught my ear. Oberon was planning revenge upon 
 his queen, Titania, and to Puck he said: 
 
 "The herb I showed thee once, 
 The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, 
 Will make or man or woman madly dote 
 Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
 Fetch me this herb; and be thou here again 
 Ere the leviathan can swim a league." 
 
 To this Puck replied : 
 "I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." 
 
 Shakspeare was not prophesying. His genius ranged 
 almost the gamut of eternity. He remembered all that 
 had been, and seemed able to foretell almost all that would 
 be. No curtain separated to him the past from the pres- 
 ent ; no closed doors concealed the future from his gaze. 
 But, in this instance, he was not of serious intent. He 
 was reveling in the delights of Fairyland, and his pen 
 sported with its improbabilities. Only a fairy could per- 
 form the impossible, and therefore only a fairy could put 
 a girdle round about the world in forty minutes. How 
 Shakspeare's ghost, if he still stalks abroad, must be aston- 
 ished to find this idle boast become a prophecy, and at 
 this New York exhibition Puck's accomplishment repeated 
 by Chauncey Depew, a total stranger both to Puck and 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 Franklin is said to have snatched the lightning from the 
 clouds, and trained it to follow lightning-rod lines of safety 
 to a quiet grave. He taught us that lightning is electricity. 
 
STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 97 
 
 He did not dream, however, that every torrent of rushing 
 waters, every cascade of falling waters, every cataract of 
 roaring waters, was a god that could produce the lightning, 
 whose witchcraft, guided by man along wire and cable, 
 o'er land and sea, should put a girdle of electricity round 
 about the earth in fifty minutes, carrying upon the noise- 
 less wings of the telegraph, with the rapidity of thought, 
 messages of peace and good will to all nations. 
 
 When from the Exposition Hall in New York in the 
 month of May, 1896, Depew's message started upon its 
 tour round the world, when the eloquent words of this 
 American orator, spoken in our English tongue, with the 
 skies their sounding board and all the world their whispering 
 gallery, were instantly heard in every tongue o'er all the 
 earth, crossing and recrossing every continent in their flight, 
 and echoed back in New York in fifty minutes, we might 
 have truly exclaimed : "The sons of man are as one family, 
 and there is but one god, one country, one people." 
 
 A few days ago the States of this Republic sent repre- 
 sentatives by land and the nations of the world sent repre- 
 sentatives by sea to do honor to the hero of Appomattox, 
 who sleeps where rolls the Hudson, the fire of whose mili- 
 tary genius fused these States into the nation that glorifies 
 him today. When he laid down the sword, and war's 
 alarms were heard no more, steam as well as electricity took 
 up his work, and the railroad has since brought so close 
 together distant States and Territories, cities, towns, vil- 
 lages, and sections, has so linked ocean to ocean, and moun- 
 tain to sea, that this country is now solidified, a homogeneous 
 whole. State lines have been obliterated and the doctrine 
 of States' rights has been settled not alone by the sword of 
 Grant, but also by the Columbian Express, the Overland 
 Flyer, and the Sunset Limited. 
 
 What is the greatest blessing of all these miracles of 
 
98 STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 
 
 modern science, the superlative advantage accruing from 
 this annihilation of space and time, the crowning glory of 
 this rapid girdling of the earth? That the voice of the 
 money-changer in the Wall-Street Temple of Wealth may 
 be heard simultaneously in the Chicago Board of Exchange, 
 and his words flashed instantly to the remotest market of 
 the world? That San Francisco, New York, London, St. 
 Petersburg, Pekin may be near neighbors? That this con- 
 federation of States might become the American nation? 
 These are not the greatest blessings these wonders work. 
 This blessing is found in the rapid transmission of thought, 
 bringing every student of science into one laboratory, every 
 philosopher into one sanctum, every scholar into one library, 
 every worshiper into one temple and before one shrine. 
 
 Every gladiator today contests in one arena, every actor 
 appears upon one stage, every teacher has one schoolroom, 
 and that the world, and the spectators, the audience, the 
 pupils are all those that dwell therein. 
 
 It would seem as if man had acquired the attributes of 
 divinity, and was become omnipresent and omniscient. 
 
 Niagara whispered its roaring into the streets of New 
 York, and started on its course an electrical current born 
 of its waters, muscled with their strength, and illumined by 
 their prismatic splendor, and in San Francisco, Augusta, 
 St. Paul, and New Orleans this current found voice in 
 the simultaneous discharge of cannon fired by this one 
 distant gunner. The officials of the Tennessee Centennial 
 wired to Washington the signal that all was ready, and 
 the President of the United States, at his desk in the White 
 House, by the mere pressure of a button, and in the twink- 
 ling of an eye started the wheels to turning at Nashville, 
 and opened the great Southern Exposition. An American 
 athlete won a crown of olive beneath the shadows of the 
 Parthenon, and the plaudits of his countrymen were heard 
 
STEAM AND ELECTRICITY 99 
 
 ere the echoes of the cheers of the Athenians died out 
 mid the ruins of the temple sacred to Minerva. With the 
 same rapidity, I fear, the booming of the Turkish guns will 
 soon echo from the rocky heights of the Acropolis to every 
 land where art is worshiped and love of the beautiful 
 finds lodgment in the soul. The crown of Peter the Great 
 was scarcely placed upon the head of Nicholas, nor had 
 the sun gone down upon the day of his coronation ere all 
 the world was reading of pageantry surpassing aught 
 recorded in the Occident or dreamed of in the Orient. With 
 equal immediateness will the wires soon flash from zone to 
 zone accounts of the Diamond Jubilee of that aged Queen 
 whom every Anglo-Saxon will ever respect as a type of 
 noblest womanhood. Pasteur's genius discovered a cure for 
 hydrophobia, and almost instantly the glad news sped from 
 continent to continent, and a song of thanksgiving went up 
 in every land. 
 
 The wisdom of philosophers, the learning of scholars, the 
 eloquence of orators, the songs of poets, the inventions of 
 scientists, become now the immediate property of all man- 
 kind, and culture disseminates in every land as equally 
 and quickly as do the rays of the sun, making rapid and 
 general the upward progress of all peoples. 
 
 The sufferings of the Cubans fighting for independence, 
 the humiliation and defeat of the Greeks battling for the 
 cross, the sorrows of France over yesterday's terrible holo- 
 caust of so many of her noblest wives, mothers, and daugh- 
 ters whose pitiful death has made all Paris a mausoleum 
 of charred and mangled female loveliness, hung immor- 
 telles o'er every door and crepe on coronets, and draped 
 the tricolor in black, are known instantly in most distant 
 lands and find immediate sympathy in every clime, and 
 this prompt universal sympathy will eventually bring uni- 
 versal friendship, peace on earth, good will among men. 
 
THE WOMAN VICTORIA 
 
 (Delivered at the Diamond Jubilee Banquet, in honor of Her 
 
 Majesty Queen Victoria, Palace Hotel, 
 
 San Francisco, June 21, iSgy.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : It is said that "no man ever rose 
 to the dizzy heights of fame but felt the touch of 
 some good woman's palm." This would seem true of nations 
 as well as individuals, taking England as an example. 
 
 I am requested to speak of Victoria as a woman. It is 
 impossible to speak of her as a woman and not as a ruler, 
 because, from my education, I recognize the two words as 
 synonymous. "Woman in her weakness is yet the strongest 
 force upon the earth. She is the helm of all things human. 
 . . . She rules the world." 
 
 I shall speak of Victoria as queen, as the queen of queens, 
 in whose diadem there glitters a Koh-i-noor plucked from 
 the sands of the river of life, a gem of purest ray serene, 
 the jewel of noblest womanhood. 
 
 There have been many queens of England, queens con- 
 sort and queens regent, and around their names legend 
 and lore, fancy and fact, have twined garlands of romance 
 and woven a web of strangely intermingled threads of 
 fiction and history. Tragedy has marked many of them 
 for her own, and Fate has made them miserable or happy 
 like the rest of the daughters of the children of men, giving 
 wreaths of roses to some and crowns of thorns to others, 
 necklacing the throats of some with pearls and blood- 
 encircling the frail necks of others with the mark of the 
 headsman's axe. 
 
THE WOMAN VICTORIA 101 
 
 From Guenever to Victoria, what a procession of women 
 to whose happiness and prosperity Englishmen throughout 
 the centuries have loyally raised their glasses and drunk 
 "To the Queen!" 
 
 Methinks I can see King Arthur and Launcelot and 
 Sir Gawaine and Sir Bors and Sir Galahad and the rest 
 of those gallant knights when, in the month of May, lo, 
 these many years ago. Queen Guenever "called unto her 
 Knights of the Table Round and gave them warning that 
 early upon the morrow she would ride on maying into the 
 woods and fields beside Westminster." Methinks the sweet- 
 est memory that time brings down from out those early 
 years of England's history is that of the woman Guenever, 
 rather than of Arthur's queen. 
 
 Centuries pass, and I see "a fair vestal throned by the 
 West," the virgin queen, Elizabeth, who for forty-five 
 years held prosperous sway o'er England's destinies, who 
 laid the foundation of England's greatness by building ships 
 instead of hiring them, earning from strangers the title of 
 "Queen of the Seas," who held her sceptre like a man, and 
 governed like a king, and yet who spent much of her time 
 like a woman in receiving, encouraging, and rejecting suit- 
 ors. But whether she was swayed most by the frailties of 
 her mother, poor Anne Boleyn, or by the strength and 
 cruelty of her father, Henry VIII, and though her reign 
 began 'mid pestilence and famine, with a people starving, 
 an empty treasury, a debased coinage, and a kingdom not 
 especially respected abroad, ere she died the wreck of the 
 Spanish Armada strewed her coasts, and England had 
 gained a place of vantage in the front rank of nations from 
 which there has been no step backward. In Elizabeth the 
 queen triumphed over the woman, to England's great 
 advantage. 
 
102 THE WOMAN VICTORIA 
 
 Over two hundred years go by, during which time English 
 armies won at Waterloo and stood guard at St. Helena 
 over him w^hose military genius had almost conquered the 
 world and seemed omnipotent, during which time in this 
 Western world this new American nation arose, born of 
 England's loins, and endowed with English strength and 
 English love of liberty, and there is born in England a 
 royal infant, by name Victoria, who "in her cradle prom- 
 ised upon her land a thousand blessings which time has 
 brought to ripeness," and who has proven herself "a pattern 
 to all princes living with her and all that shall succeed." 
 
 Guenever is remembered only as the woman, and Elizabeth 
 best as the queen, but Victoria will be remembered equally 
 as w^oman and queen. Beginning her reign just after the 
 passage of the "Reform Bill" whereby the great liberty- 
 loving middle class became active governmental factors, she 
 has made these suffragists pillars of the throne and the 
 mainstay of the monarchy, and this she has accomplished 
 as much by the personal loyalty her womanhood has inspired 
 as by the respect her great wisdom has commanded. 
 
 English life is essentially home life, and her home life 
 has pleased her people, and elevated the moral tone of 
 the nation. It has convinced them that an Englishman's 
 home is not only his castle but also a sanctuary wherein 
 the wife and mother is highpriestess, and thereby has won 
 for her the support of the women of her realm, a support 
 that has the enthusiasm of a religion, and that has added 
 to patriotism the homage of personal devotion. 
 
 I consider the English government one of the best that 
 today attempts to guide the destinies of men. It is essen- 
 tially a government of law, of law ably, honestly, impar- 
 tially, surely, quickly administered. It is a government of 
 force, but using only sufficient to preserve order at home 
 and command respect abroad. This government, republican 
 
THE WOMAN VICTORIA 103 
 
 in spirit and monarchial in form, and aptly styled the 
 ''Crowned Republic," owes its present stability more to the 
 woman Victoria than to all its Gladstones and Disraelis. 
 The personal loyalty to the queen as the first and best 
 of English daughters, wives, and mothers, who has made 
 the throne a family hearthstone, runs like a thread of gold 
 from continent to continent, through her kingdoms and 
 colonies of every race and clime, and binds together into 
 one great empire the multitudinous peoples who acknowl- 
 edge English sway. It is love of the woman Victoria that 
 today is the bulwark of England's queen, and, therefore, 
 we say to her, in the beautiful lines of Tennyson, 
 
 "May all love, 
 His love, unseen but felt, o'er-shadow thee, 
 The love of all thy sons encompass thee, 
 The love of all thy daughters cherish thee, 
 The love of all thy people comfort thee, 
 Till God's love set thee at his side again." 
 
 As an American I am glad of the opportunity of saying 
 these things about Victoria. She is queen of Great Britain 
 by inheritance, empress of India through Act of Parlia- 
 ment and the genius of Disraeli, but highest exemplar among 
 women by acknowledgment of the civilized world. 
 
 For sixty years she has been upon the throne, as maiden, 
 wife, mother, and widow, standing ever in the searchlight 
 of modern criticism, sharing her happiness with her people, 
 and in her grief receiving their sympathy (nor did she fail 
 to extend her sympathy to the widows of our martyred 
 presidents when they, like her, were compelled to walk 
 their lonely ways through the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death). During her reign she has seen her people double 
 in number, and her kingdom grow in extent and power 
 and wealth and culture to dimensions beyond ambition's 
 dream. She has seen steam and electricity annihilate space 
 
104 THE WOMAN VICTORIA 
 
 and time, and make immediate the exchange of royal 
 blessings and loyal congratulations between London and 
 earth's remotest corners. She has seen her government 
 complete its change from a personal government to the peo- 
 ple's government, of them and for them, and yet retain its 
 throne. She has seen and helped along a still more impor- 
 tant change, the making of equality before the law a practice 
 instead of a theory. In the eloquent words of another, "She 
 found law dear and she will leave it cheap ; she found it a 
 sealed book, she will leave it a living letter; found it the 
 patrimony of the rich, and will leave it the inheritance of the 
 poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppres- 
 sion, and will leave it the staif of honesty and the shield 
 of innocence." 
 
 "Well done, good and faithful servant," let all her sub- 
 jects say. 
 
 I, therefore, gladly do all honor to Victoria, who to 
 Elizabeth's title, "Queen of the Seas," has added her own, 
 "Mother of Her People." In her honor, and because of 
 the world's appreciation of her womanhood, wifehood, 
 motherhood, queenhood, at this Diamond Jubilee there will 
 encircle the earth, following the sun and keeping company 
 W'ith the hours, one continuous and unbroken acclaim, "God 
 save Queen Victoria." 
 
 Here in California nature joins in this celebration, and 
 in the beauty and perfume of the Victoria Regia now bloom- 
 ing in splendor in Golden Gate Park offers up the incense 
 of the lily to its royal namesake, Victoria Regina. 
 
THE FIRST RIVET 
 
 (Delivered at the Dinner following the Launching of the Battle- 
 ship Wisconsin, Union Iron Works, San Fran- 
 cisco, November 26, 1898.) 
 
 LADIES AND Gentlemen: A year or more ago I 
 was present when the first rivet of the Wisconsin was 
 driven. An Americal Admiral and an American Gen- 
 eral attempted to drive this rivet. It was a very poor 
 attempt, and I should not care to go to sea in her if these 
 two gentlemen had been the only riveters employed. I am, 
 however, assured by the builders that that first-rivet busi- 
 ness was only a fake, and that the rest of the rivets were 
 driven by the same skilled workmen whose honest and dur- 
 able workmanship gave beauty to the San Francisco, fleetness 
 to the Olympia, and to the Oregon beauty, fleetness, strength, 
 and all that goes to make the perfect ship. 
 
 This morning the Wisconsin made her initial plunge under 
 the most favorable auspices. She took the tide at the flood, 
 and that, you know, in the affairs of ships as well as men, 
 leads on to fortune. Furthermore, she was launched in 
 the same waters that first laved the keel of the Oregon, 
 and, bone of the same bone and flesh of the same flesh, as 
 it were, nurtured and reared by the same skillful hands, 
 she must be destined to a great career in following in the 
 wave-steps of her great predecessor. Entering the Amer- 
 ican navy just when this nation has passed the parting of 
 the ways, and has ceased to be a possible and has become 
 an actual Great Power, receiving her baptism in the waters 
 
106 THE FIRST RIVET 
 
 of the Pacific Ocean that is to be the "theatre of the 
 world's great hereafter," the Wisconsin will be rushed into 
 prominence, the prestige of her builders giving her imme- 
 diate rank among the steel-girt leviathans of the deep. 
 
 Before the recent war Captain Mahan wrote "Steam 
 navies have as yet made no history which can be quoted as 
 decisive in its teaching." Were he today to rewrite his 
 book he would say that the American steam navy at Manila 
 and Santiago made history that will for ages be quoted as 
 decisive in its teachings, and in letters of gold upon the 
 pages of this history he would write the names of those 
 two California-built ships, the Olympia and the Oregon, 
 and his prophetic pen would predict equal glory for the 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen of Wisconsin, you have come a 
 long distance to honor the ship that bears the name of 
 your State. But you are not in a strange country, nor in 
 a foreign port. You are at home, and we Californians 
 have but kept your house in readiness for your home- 
 coming. The flag that here is fanned by the breezes of 
 the Pacific is the same that unfurls its silken folds to the 
 winds that blow off Lake Michigan, and, here as there, in 
 its blue sky shines the star Wisconsin, mingling its rays with 
 those of more than forty others to illumine the world with 
 the light of freedom and humanity. 
 
 It was an inspired idea that suggested the names of the 
 States as the names for battleships, and the navy in its 
 battleships so named is typical of a Union invincible and 
 indivisible. The Maine and the Texas, the Illinois and 
 the Kentucky, the Wisconsin and the Alabama, the Massa- 
 chusetts, the Oregon, the Indiana, the Iowa, and the Ohio, 
 named after States of the North and South, are manned 
 indiscriminately by Southron and Northron, who know no 
 section or State, but only their common country, and who 
 
THE FIRST RIVET 107 
 
 make the victories of each ship the glorious heritage of all 
 the States. 
 
 A battleship represents in its name the pride of some 
 particular State, in its officers and men the pride of many 
 States, and in its flag and fortunes the pride of the Nation. 
 The Virginian on the deck of the Wisconsin, the Alabamian 
 on the deck of the Maine, the Wisconsan on the deck of 
 the Texas, forgetting that the State of its nativity was 
 ever at war with the name-state of his ship, remembering 
 only that now all the States are one people, with one flag, 
 one army and one navy, astounds and will ever astound 
 the nations by his courage, skill, seamanship, marksmanship, 
 and by his humanity. 
 
 As the citizen of each State loves not his own State less 
 in today loving more the name Oregon, cheering its every 
 mention, so in the future will he laud and love the name 
 Wisconsin, when the battleship so christened today from 
 the lips of one of Wisconsin's fairest daughters has proven 
 by her prowess that she was not rocked in vain in the 
 cradle where once lay the Oregon. 
 
POETS AND POETRY 
 
 (Delivered at the Unitarian Club Dinner, April 27, 1898, 
 San Francisco. ) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT, Ladies and Gentlemen, Espe- 
 cially Ladies : A very high official of this club 
 cautioned me to bear in mind in preparing my speech that 
 you women wanted to be talked to as if you were men. I 
 promised to bear this in mind, and to act accordingly, but 
 I can not. If there is any merit in what I am about to 
 say, it is because I anticipated, in its preparation, the inspira- 
 tion of your presence. Could I talk to you women as if 
 you were men, there would be no poetry in me, and you 
 would not care to listen to me ; and, when I am so old that 
 I can talk to women as if they were men, then shall I pray 
 to the Lord, Nunc Dimittas, Domine ! 
 
 Among the many things that an orator should know, the 
 most important is to know when to stop. Like a railroad, 
 he should have terminal facilities. I promise you that I 
 am well provided in this respect ; I know when to stop. 
 
 Among the many things that an orator should not do is 
 to begin a speech by talking about himself. This rule I 
 am compelled to violate, owing to the unusualness of my 
 surroundings. I am accustomed to speech-making in 
 Bohemia, where the auditors seek only entertainment, which 
 must either amuse or thrill. This evening I find myself 
 in a more serious company. My colleagues are a learned 
 professor and two reverend clergymen, and I am put for- 
 ward to blaze the way along which they shall tread. I am 
 
POETS AND POETRY 109 
 
 afraid I shall be of no service to them, as I am apt to try 
 to mark the trees too high up, on limbs I can not reach, 
 and overlook their broad trunks that are close at hand. I 
 shall therefore simply endeavor to point to brighter worlds, 
 and let these gentlemen lead the way, myself a willing and 
 humble follower. 
 
 I shall not attempt to philosophize upon poets, or to dis- 
 cuss learnedly the nature or mission of poesy. 
 
 "Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? 
 In far retreats of elemental mind 
 Obscurely comes and goes 
 
 The imperative breath of song, that, as the wind, 
 Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. 
 Demand of lilies wherefore they are white. 
 Extort her crimson secret from the rose, 
 But ask not the Muse that she disclose 
 The meaning of the riddle of her might." 
 
 I shall simply do a little rhapsodizing, string a few pearls 
 upon a slender thread of my own spinning, and talk to you 
 in the very words of the poets, quoting in defense of my 
 plagiarizing these lines from Kipling: 
 
 "When 'Omer smote his blooming lyre, 
 He'd 'eard men sing by land and sea ; 
 
 And what he thought he might acquire, 
 'E went and took, the same as me. 
 
 The market girls and fisherwomen. 
 The shepherds and the sailors, too, 
 
 They 'eard the old songs turn up again, 
 But kept it quiet — same as you ! 
 
 They knew he stole ; 'e knew they knowed, 
 They didn't tell, or make a fuss. 
 
 But winked at 'Omer down the road, 
 And 'e winked back — the same as us." 
 
110 POETS AND POETRY 
 
 Poets are dreamers ; but dreamers are the only ones who 
 
 "Hail the mystic bird that brings 
 News from the inner courts of things, 
 And hear the bubbling of the springs 
 That feed the world." 
 
 Poets are dreamers, but 
 
 "A dreamer Hves forever, 
 And a toiler dies in a day." 
 
 Poets are dreamers, and dreamers are called the useless 
 ones. 
 
 "Useless ? Ay, for measure ; 
 Roses die. 
 But their breath gives pleasure — 
 God knows why." 
 
 The poet's mission is to give pleasure. 
 
 "Poets should not reason ; 
 
 Let them sing ! 
 Argument is treason — 
 Bells should ring. 
 
 He must use deduction 
 
 Who must preach; 
 He may praise instruction 
 
 Who must teach. 
 
 But the poet duly 
 
 Fills his part 
 When the song bursts truly 
 
 From his heart. 
 
 For no purpose springing. 
 
 For no pelf, 
 He must do the singing 
 
 For itself. 
 
 Not in lines austerely 
 
 Let him build ; 
 Not the surface merely 
 
 Let him gild. 
 
POETS AND POETRY 111 
 
 Fearless, uninvited, 
 
 Like a spring, 
 Opal words, inlighted. 
 
 Let him sing." 
 
 The poet's reward is love. 
 
 "Nor cross nor ribbon, but all others high above. 
 Others win these glittering symbols — he has earned 
 the people's love," 
 
 The poet's reward is immortality, and his fame is "self- 
 embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme" : 
 
 "The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer, 
 The grass of yesteryear 
 
 Is dead, the birds depart, the groves decay; 
 Empires dissolve and peoples disappear. 
 
 Song passes not away. 
 Captains and conquerors leave a little dust. 
 
 And kings a dubious legend of their reign. 
 The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust, 
 
 The poet doth remain." 
 
 The Muse at his birth "kisses warm immortality into his 
 lips," he sings for all eternity, and his voice is the "voice 
 of everywhere." 
 
 This is true not only of those great poets who "touch 
 their harps and nations stand entranced," of 
 
 "A Shakespeare flashing 
 
 O'er the whole of man's domain 
 The splendor of his cloudless soul 
 
 And perfect brain ; 
 A Keats to Grecian gods allied, 
 Clasping all Beauty as his bride ; 
 A Shelly soaring, dim-described, 
 
 Above Time's throng, 
 And heavenward hurling, wild and wide, 
 
 His spear of song; 
 A lonely Wordsworth, from the crowd 
 Half hid in light, half veiled in cloud ; 
 A sphere-born Milton, cold and proud." 
 
112 POETS AND POETRY 
 
 It is true of those lowlier ones, who see "what all men 
 see — no more — in heaven and earth," "mere dreamers of the 
 common dreams," "fishes in familiar streams," who "share 
 the transitory gleams that all pursue," but on whose "lips 
 the eternal themes again are new." 
 
 Poetry must be felt, not reasoned out. It should thrill 
 the soul, not disturb the understanding. It is the spirit 
 of divinity voiced by humanity, it is humanity's language 
 of the soul. It is heart-beats expressed in verse, it is soul- 
 throbs resonant in song, it is life crystallized in rhythm. 
 
 "For lo ! Creation's self is one great choir, 
 And what is nature's order but the rhyme 
 Whereto the world keeps time?" 
 
 Poetry is the language of the heart, whereby every pas- 
 sion finds musical expression; Hope tripping lightly in 
 Iambic measure along its lyric pathway to fruition ; Despair 
 dragging heavily in spondeic movement along its epic road 
 to failure; Love flying with verse-winged feet to the object 
 of its adoration; and Patriotism in battle hymns inspiring 
 soldiers to fight and die for their flag, in national anthems 
 rousing the people to the highest pitch of patriotic enthu- 
 siasm, in times like these making manifest to Americans in 
 the singing of "America" and "The Star- Spangled Ban- 
 ner" how much they love their country, and at all times in 
 verse giving to heroism rhythmical immortality. 
 
 Poetry is the language of nature. 
 
 "The poem well the poet knows 
 In ambush lurks where'er he goes, 
 Lisps hidden in each wind that blows. 
 
 Laughs in each wave, 
 Sighs from the bosom of the rose, 
 
 Wails from the grave." 
 
POETS AND POETRY 113 
 
 These are the unsung songs with which nature is musical, 
 and the poet is nature's minstrel. 
 
 "Songs were born before the singer ; like white 
 souls awaiting birth, 
 They abide the chosen bringer of their melody 
 to earth." 
 
 Let all the world reverence the poet ! He comes to us a 
 song-burdened messenger, bringing to us songs hitherto 
 unsung to mortal ears. He has been within the pearly gates 
 and heard the angels sing. He has soared among the stars 
 and listened to the music of the spheres. He has worshiped 
 in nature's star-lit cathedrals, and heard the choir invisible 
 sing the oratorios of wind and wave, the requiems of the 
 forests, the anthems of the seas, the lullabies that soothe 
 to sleep the blushing rose, the golden poppy, and the blue- 
 eyed violet, and the hymns the lark heralds to the morning 
 star. 
 
 Let all the world bow to the poet ! He is, it is true, a 
 slave of beauty, but 
 
 "The eternal slaves of beauty 
 Are the masters of the world." 
 
THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN' 
 
 (Delivered at a dinner given by Mr. Huntington to the ofUcials 
 
 of the Southern Pacific Railroad, San 
 
 Francisco, May 13, 1899.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN and Gentlemen : The Toastmas- 
 ter gave me the choice of subjects between "The 
 Man Behind the Gun" and "The Woman Behind the Man 
 Behind the Gun." I concluded that as the man behind the 
 gun had a full day's job in dodging the bullets of the 
 man in front of the gun, it was taking him at an unfair 
 disadvantage to put a woman behind him, and I therefore 
 eliminated the woman. The White Man's Burden is heavy 
 enough as it is. 
 
 Through all the years since time was young the warrior 
 has been the hero whom mankind has deified, crowned, and 
 most belaureled. The man behind the gun has ever received 
 the people's idolatry, while he who has searched among the 
 heavens and revealed to man some wandering star, or he 
 whose eyes have penetrated into the mysteries of creation 
 and discovered the secret of birth and death, and the kinship 
 of all life, or he whose skill has found an antidote for dis- 
 ease, and given to humanity a conqueror of pain, may walk 
 unheeded along the public highway, unacclaimed by blast of 
 trumpet or beat of drum or the hosannas of the throng; 
 and so it will ever be. 
 
 In this land of ours the places we most delight to honor 
 with monuments of brass and stone are the battlefields 
 where our soldiers fought and fell; the deeds that most 
 inspire our songs and singers are those our soldiers do ; and 
 
"THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN" 115 
 
 it needs no great gift of prophecy to foretell that the names 
 of Washington and Grant and Dewey will be as familiar 
 as household words when those who wrote our laws or sang 
 our songs or sat in our seats of justice will be known only 
 to the learned few. This is because patriotism is the 
 strongest emotion of the human breast, and war alone 
 enkindles it. 
 
 Of all the peoples we are the most warlike, the quickest 
 to resolve ourselves into vast armies, the most indomitable 
 in a determination to conquer when enlisted, the most at 
 home when behind the gun. There have we prospered. 
 
 The man behind the gun cleared this land of savages 
 who would have massacred our ancestors and kept this 
 country a wilderness, and he likewise drove from this land 
 the foreigner who would have enslaved our Revolutionary 
 sires and kept this country a subject land. 
 
 The man behind the gun vanquished in battle the 
 descendants of Cortez, planted our flag in the halls of the 
 Montezumas, and added California to our galaxy of stars. 
 
 The man behind the gun banished slavery from this land, 
 and cemented with his blood these States into a Union 
 indivisible forever. 
 
 The man behind the gun opened the waves to engulf 
 the Spanish Armadas, climbed the heights of El Caney, 
 and waded the swamps of Luzon, and emblazoned the 
 courage and invincibility of the American soldier on glory's 
 proudest heights, planted Freedom's Banner on Morro 
 Castle, rebaptized humanity with the blood of heroes, and 
 on the first day of May, 1898, proclaimed to the world 
 from the cannon's mouth that the United States had arrived 
 at man's estate, had come into its inheritance among the 
 nations, and that henceforth from Manila its voice would 
 be heard throughout the Orient. 
 
116 "THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN" 
 
 Dewey, the immortal, the man behind the gun, has ful- 
 filled prophecy. Thirty years ago Seward predicted that 
 the Pacific Ocean would some day be the chief theatre of 
 the world's great hereafter. This prophecy is in its fulfill- 
 ment, this hereafter is at hand. Its day is dawning, its 
 morning is advancing, and ere its sun has reached its 
 meridian the Pacific Ocean will be the arena on which 
 will be fought and won the struggle for the trade and the 
 empire of the nations. Ages ago, when Greece and Persia 
 fought for mastery at Salamis, when Roman triremes ruled 
 the waves, when Anthony fled from Actium, lured by love 
 to defeat and to death in Cleopatra's arms, when Turkish 
 might was humbled at Lepanto, when Venice was queen 
 of the seas, the Mediterranean centered man's ambitions, 
 hopes, and fears. During the succeeding centuries o'er the 
 Atlantic shone the star of destiny, emblazoning Nelson's 
 fame. But now this star, the Morning Star of the twen- 
 tieth century, bespangles the skies that dome the Pacific 
 Ocean, lighting up with its earliest rays the Golden Gate 
 that opens up our city to its queenship of the future, and 
 gilding with a lustre that ne'er will fade the letters that 
 spell the name of Dewey. 
 
 All hail to the man behind the gun! When money- 
 getting was making selfishness supreme amongst us, subor- 
 dinating public spirit to private gain, deafening our ears 
 to the cause of humanity, and making patriotism a thing 
 for sneer or jest, the report of his gun aroused our patriotic 
 spirit, made us no longer ashamed to stand up and sing 
 aloud the anthem to our flag, revitalized the supremacy of 
 the nation over the individual, and, like England's drum- 
 beat, following the sun and keeping company with the 
 hours, has encircled the earth with one continuous and 
 unbroken acclaim to the power, might, and majesty of this 
 Republic. 
 
"THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN" 117 
 
 We need never fear the man behind the gun. I do not 
 believe that you can ever enlist from the common schools 
 of this country an army from whom any military system 
 or discipline can eradicate that spirit of independence and 
 love of liberty that has made this Republic a power for 
 good among the nations. 
 
 All honor, then, to the man behind the gun ! He deserves 
 to be, above all others, the hero of all mankind, because 
 he offers and too often gives his life for his fellow-beings. 
 In every zone, in every land, his blood has crimsoned sea 
 and sand for the cause he defended. 
 
 "On Fame's eternal camping-ground 
 His silent tents are spread, 
 And Glory guards with solemn round 
 The bivouac of the dead," 
 
 who died behind the gun. 
 
WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 
 
 (Delivered at the twenty-second Annual Dinner of the Chit-Chat 
 Club of San Francisco, November 9, 1896.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, and Gentlemen of the Chit- 
 Chat Club : I feel that I am appearing before you 
 under false pretenses. I have been requested by the Chair- 
 man of your committee to talk to you this evening upon 
 art, upon the supposition, in his mind, that I know some- 
 think about it. I have for years studied law, and I have 
 found the law a very jealous and very exacting mistress. 
 To art I have had but little time to give, and I confess 
 my ignorance in this regard. The only reason that sug- 
 gests itself to me as an explanation of my selection is 
 that I am the President of the San Francisco Art Asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 My theme, I am told, is "What Has Art Done for Civ- 
 ilization?" Rather it should be, "What Has Civilization 
 Done for Art?" Is not art the pictorial, sculpturesque, 
 musical side of civilization? Is civilization possible with- 
 out art? What is civilization? What is art? 
 
 Emerson defines civilization as "a certain degree of prog- 
 ress from the rudest state in which man is found." This 
 progress has traveled along the turnpike of the centuries, 
 up hill and down dale, climbing now over dizzy heights, 
 descending now into deep abysses, trailing now across level, 
 dusky, treeless plains, and again slowly ascending moun- 
 tain ranges till it once more nears the clouds. 
 
WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? HQ 
 
 Art is variously defined. All writers, however, agree that 
 "The purpose of art is the presentation of truth in the 
 form of beauty." 
 
 Some one has said that "The mission of art is to speak 
 to the soul while pleasing the eye." Another has aptly 
 written that "Sculpture, painting, music, literature, taken 
 together, are an expression of the human spirit realizing 
 itself and its surroundings in the language of beauty" — 
 that "Art involves two essential things, skill and beauty, 
 and that there must be in art the evidence of human skill 
 and the formation of a beautiful thing by it." 
 
 Art, therefore, is civilization expressing itself in the love 
 of the beautiful. It idealizes life, and elevates mankind. 
 It is the soul finding expression in the skill of the hand, 
 and in the appreciation of the eye. Ruskin, Taine, or 
 some other has truly said that great art requires all of your 
 soul for its enjoyment, that it quickens the life of the soul, 
 requires you to give yourself to its contemplation, becomes 
 a part of your soul, and remains there an illumining, ele- 
 vating, refining influence, and that "Commerce with the 
 beautiful does not exist only at the moment of seeing or 
 hearing, but that that is the moment of storage." Our 
 minds become picture-galleries or shells within whose 
 sinuous confines sweet harmonies linger. 
 
 Our California poet, Edward Rowland Sill, has thus 
 expressed in verse this last thought : 
 
 "If men but knew the mazes of the brain, 
 And all its crowded pictures, they would need 
 No Louvre or Vatican ; behind our brows 
 Intricate galleries are built, whose walls 
 Are rich with all the splendors of a life." 
 
 Artistic keenness means appreciation of beauty, and 
 appreciation of beauty is the soul's opportunity. 
 
120 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 
 
 What is the standard by which we estimate beauty? I 
 eliminate music, as that would need a lecture by itself. I 
 exclude architecture, as it combines the useful arts with 
 the fine arts, about which latter only I talk this evening. 
 I shall confine myself to sculpture and painting. 
 
 The only standard of beauty is truth, not distorted or 
 modified, but as visible to the soul of the artist. It is 
 nature freed from the trammels of time or circumstance. 
 
 "Art must imitate nature," says Taine; "and when it 
 ceases to do this it declines." But in imitating nature the 
 artist's aim must be not to photograph, but to make mani- 
 fest what is to him the predominating character, the essen- 
 tial condition of being in the object. The faculty of per- 
 ceiving and expressing this essential condition is artistic 
 genius. 
 
 In this endeavor to express this principal quality the 
 artist arrives at the ideal — that is, he removes the obsta- 
 cles that fate or fortune, environment or circumstance, has 
 placed in nature's path, and gives it a chance to perfect 
 itself on the lines of its first intention. This development 
 is beautiful, because it is natural; and you know that it 
 is natural because it is true. 
 
 The ideal is the expression of what the artist feels he 
 sees. The true artist feels that he sees the perfect form 
 through the imperfections that clog nature, as Praxiteles 
 saw the perfect figure of Venus sleeping within the rough- 
 hewn block of marble. The aim of art is to cut away these 
 imperfections, and to strive for the perfect, which must 
 be the beautiful. A work of art must be, therefore, as 
 Taine says, "a representation of an object more perfectly 
 than it is found in nature." It is soulless nature plus 
 soulful man evolved into the ideal. 
 
 Ruskin says that the living power in all the real schools 
 of art is the love of nature; that art followed as such, 
 
WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 121 
 
 and for its own sake, irrespective of the interpretations of 
 nature, is destructive of whatever is best and noblest in 
 humanity; but that so far as it is devoted to the record 
 or interpretation of nature, it is helpful and ennobling. 
 Art culture, therefore, implies not only appreciation of the 
 beautiful, but love of nature. It stimulates us to study 
 God's handiwork, to distinguish the lines of beauty as 
 God made them before man unmade them. It reveals to 
 us the intelligence that guided creation, the skill that worked 
 out creation, the beauty that thus found expression. It 
 discovers to us that nature is perfect, because to have 
 changed it would have made it imperfect. To idealize 
 nature is not to change nature. The artist does not himself 
 improve nature by idealizing it. He simply obeys the 
 inspiration of nature and depicts her perfected in passing 
 through the crucible of his soul. The artist in doing this 
 works as nature wills. 
 
 Love of beauty is therefore love of nature, and love of 
 nature is love of God. By love of God I do not necessa- 
 rily mean religion as commonly understood. I mean the wor- 
 ship and adoration the soul offers up to the Supreme Artist 
 who painted the skies and flecked them not with a cloud 
 that marred their beauty, nor spangled them with stars 
 but to add to the splendid effect of darkness light bepierced 
 — who painted the valleys green, and cast a haze over 
 rugged mountain sides — who varied the dullness of plains 
 with the sheen of running waters, and painted o'er the 
 green of spring with the gold of fall, that man might not 
 tire of monotony, and then made man in His own image. 
 
 The most beautiful form of nature is, therefore, the 
 human form divine, and art was greatest when the 
 human figure rather than human thought occupied most its 
 attention. 
 
 Ruskin says that "All progressive art hitherto has been 
 
122 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 
 
 religious art," and that "Art was never employed on a great 
 scale except in the service of religion." 
 
 I do not altogether agree with him. Religion may have 
 furnished the occasion for the opportunity of art's greatest 
 efforts, but it was not of itself the inspiration of the highest 
 art known in history. 
 
 In ancient Greece art climbed nearest heaven and brought 
 the gods to earth. It was essentially human. Praxiteles 
 in carving his Venus sought to deify humanity by produc- 
 ing a perfect human form — to carve in marble his ideal 
 of woman, if woman were divine — to give to man a type 
 of beauty nature would have produced if, in creating woman, 
 it had not been chained down by mortality. It was not 
 divinity, but humanity, that his artistic soul worshiped. 
 
 In those days man's best efforts were spent in cultivating 
 health and strength, and grace and beauty of form, and 
 athletic skill. Greatest in Greece was he who came off 
 victor at the Olympian games and gave his name to the 
 coming years. Whether Apelles painted beauty of face or 
 depicted on canvas the mysteries of religious worship, we 
 know not. Sculpture alone tells of Grecian art, and it 
 found best expression in that which most interested the 
 people of that time. The artists of that age did as artists 
 of every age must do — they filled mind and heart with the 
 ideas and sentiments of their age. Hence their master idea 
 was "the living, healthy, energetic, active human body, 
 endowed with every athletic and animal aptitude." It was 
 their delight to carve from stone undraped humanity. All 
 of this involved no immodesty, because there was no need 
 for modesty. The human body was not from shame of 
 exposure scrupulously concealed. On the contrary, it would 
 have been almost sacrilege not to have exposed it to uni- 
 versal admiration. It was held to be beautiful when healthy 
 and strong and graceful. The nude did not exist. There 
 
WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 123 
 
 was nakedness, not nudity. Excess of clothing, blushes 
 consequent upon nudity, predominance of lust in the mind 
 in lieu of appreciation of beauty in the eye — these all came 
 when the people deteriorated and men could no longer 
 stand the fatigues of athletic contests. Then Grecian art 
 declined. 
 
 The next great period of art was the Renaissance in 
 Italy in the latter half of the fifteenth and the first half of 
 the sixteenth centuries. Religion was then all-powerful, 
 but it was much colored by human ambition. The Pope's 
 earthly love of pomp and power gave Michael Angelo and 
 Rafael the opportunities their genius craved; and Rafael's 
 "Transfiguration," his Madonnas, his frescoes in the Vat- 
 ican, and Michael Angelo's "Last Judgment," and his fres- 
 coes in the Sistine Chapel, gave assurance to the world that 
 art was not dead, but had risen from the grave to put on 
 immortality. The aristocracy of church and state in Flor- 
 ence, Rome, and Venice at this time was devoted mainly 
 to the pleasures of this world. He ruled who had the 
 strongest arm and keenest blade and bravest heart. Phys- 
 ical health and strength and skill were every man's first care. 
 The perfecting of the human body was one of man's chief 
 aims. The most important acquirement in the art of draw- 
 ing was to make a good drawing of a naked man or woman. 
 Michael Angelo spent several years dissecting human bodies 
 in order to know how to draw them. All the great artists 
 of this period — Michael Angelo, Rafael, Leonardo da Vinci, 
 Correggio, Titian, and after them the Flemish Rubens — 
 strove hardest to paint a perfect human body, because 
 nothing else in nature was so beautiful. They were alike 
 in this common inspiration. They differed only in treat- 
 ment of this common theme. 
 
 In this difference lay their originality. Each depicted 
 humanity as his soul conceived it, as his artistic eye saw it, 
 
124 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 
 
 as his genius told him that nature would have developed it, 
 if man and circumstance had not marred it. No one of 
 them agreed with another, and yet all were correct, each 
 from his own point of view. Had any one of them not 
 been correct, had he attempted to create instead of devoutly 
 copying nature as he felt he saw it, had his ideal not been 
 built upon the real, he would have failed and his name 
 would have been lost in the lapse of centuries. Art was 
 poor and hysterical before the Renaissance, it became poor 
 and unnatural after these great artists had passed away, 
 and for the same cause as in ancient Greece. 
 
 The Venus of Milo and the School of Athens marked 
 the two greatest periods in the history of art. These two 
 masterpieces are beacon-lights of art, visible in the sur- 
 rounding darkness of the centuries, like two distant light- 
 houses in the multitudinous seas. Art in each of these 
 works reached its zenith. 
 
 What did art at its zenith accomplish for civilization? It 
 should have done more then than at any other time. It 
 did not save culture, progress, national health, strength, or 
 glory from decay. On the contrary, it was followed closely 
 in each case by moral, physical, and national decline. It 
 gave to the world at these periods the sublimest expressions 
 of man's idea of the beautiful; it found its inspiration in 
 nature, and in nature its highest type was the human body. 
 It led man to the study of nature in the search for the 
 beautiful; it taught him that God's grandest creation was 
 man, and that health and strength were necessary to his 
 full development. Surely this w^as a good lesson. Civiliza- 
 tion is impossible without it. 
 
 But appreciation of the beautiful is one of the resultants 
 of civilization, not one of its causes. It follows after the 
 struggle for bread is successful, after the contest for wealth 
 is won, after the conflicts of the battlefield are fought out to 
 
WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 125 
 
 victory. It refines, elevates, ennobles man, develops his soul, 
 raises his gaze from the sod to the star. But it can not 
 sustain civilization. If history teaches anything, the glori- 
 fication of art is rather an indication that civilization is 
 reaching its zenith and that the down grade is approaching. 
 It is the light that crowns the summit and illumines man's 
 best condition. Prosperity is not, however, the best school 
 for mankind. Character is built up by struggling to be 
 prosperous. Its most dangerous foe is the attainment of 
 the end desired. 
 
 Are we not more civilized at the end of the nineteenth 
 century than in the fifth century before Christ, or at the 
 end of the fifteenth century after Christ? We are; but 
 we are again fighting for bread, and the hosts of wealth 
 and poverty are watching each other across the battlefield. 
 The craving for the useful almost drives out the love of 
 the beautiful. The eyes of the people are not trained to 
 appreciation of painting or sculpture. Art is not in their 
 souls. There is no public opinion on which art can feed. 
 Uncultured wealth in seeking for culture is trying to build 
 up, to encourage art, and bribe it to decorate its marble 
 halls. But art that can be bribed, that goes for inspira- 
 tion only to the money-bags of Croesus, has no soul. Such 
 is not great art. Nature reveals to it naught of her beauty. 
 Art is, however, imperishable. Nature during certain periods 
 simply withholds but does not throw away the key to her 
 treasures. 
 
 At its own proper hour the love of the beautiful will 
 again fill our lives as of old in Greece and Italy, and will 
 find expression in the genius of some modern Praxiteles, 
 Michael Angelo, or Rafael. 
 
 In the meantime, I would not turn away from the works 
 of the artists of this nineteenth century. They, to some 
 
126 WHAT HAS ART DONE FOR CIVILIZATION? 
 
 extent, draw inspiration from inanimate nature, and so in 
 landscapes give us the highest art of the day. 
 
 But, though this modern art is not as great as that of 
 which I have spoken, it is teaching us what is ugliness; 
 that the frescoes on the walls of our public libraries 
 are as much educators as the books on the shelves; tliat 
 education consists not only in filling the mind with the 
 lore of books, but also in training the eye to a quick per- 
 ception of the beautiful in nature; and that while the 
 intellect may be satisfied to acquire data from photographs 
 of nature, the soul is not content therewith, but must have 
 the impressions that data make on artistic genius. This 
 education in art, this development of love of the beautiful, 
 this cultivation in us of a true appreciation of nature may 
 be the precursor of that artistic condition of civilization 
 when art will rediscover the human form, regardless of 
 sex, when health, strength, athletic grace will be higher 
 marks of beauty than dress or mere facial expression ; when 
 the female figure will be painted because it is beautiful of 
 itself, and not for the passion it inspires; when art will 
 find its highest inspiration where Phidias and Michael 
 Angelo found it. This will be when our civilization is on 
 a different plane, and truth is attractive because it is truth. 
 
 Art is, therefore, an expression of civilization, and 
 expresses only that which for the time is in or of civiliza- 
 tion. The highest art is, therefore, civilization in its most 
 attractive phase, and has as such done much for man. 
 
'THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 
 
 (Delivered at the Banquet of the California Society of the Sons 
 of the American Revolution, February 22, 1902, 
 San Francisco, California.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT, and Brothers of This Distin- 
 guished Order: I am very glad the President began 
 this banquet with reading messages from the Daughters, 
 because, though a bachelor, I am willing to allege upon 
 information and belief that therein lies our sole hope of 
 perpetuation. 
 
 I like these words on the opening page of your pro- 
 gramme : 
 
 "One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, 
 One nation, evermore." 
 
 Those are glorious words. I am a Southerner, and we 
 Southerners henceforth follow the flag, whether the Con- 
 stitution does so or not. 
 
 Carlisle says that great men are profitable company. But 
 there are different kinds of great men. The literature of 
 the past twenty years has been luminous with the history 
 of Napoleon, a man so wonderfully great that we must all 
 believe the truth of his own statement, that centuries must 
 pass before circumstances can combine to produce another 
 such as he. But his greatness is like that of the meteor, 
 that consumes while it illumines; its brilliancy the mani- 
 festation of its own destruction; its course preceded by 
 darkness and followed by death. Such a great man is 
 profitable only as a warning. The men whom this occasion 
 
128 "PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 
 
 suggests are profitable as exemplars. By the lives they 
 led, by the things they did, the world has been the gainer, 
 mankind has been uplifted, and this country guided to its 
 present grandeur and glory. I refer to the Presidents of 
 the United States. Their records are writ in letters of 
 light upon the parchment of the skies, where all may read 
 and admire. 
 
 I have not time to recount them all, to read through this 
 roll of honor. Their names, like household words, even 
 children lisp in schoolroom declamations. Some of them 
 are more familiar to us than others. Jefferson, whose admin- 
 istration began with the century just ended, earned his 
 meed of glory when he penned the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. But fate destined him for more renown, and 
 made him her instrument to disseminate throughout this 
 continent the spirit of independence by extending our 
 domain from Plymouth Rock to where rolls the Oregon, 
 from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 John Adams earned the undying gratitude of his coun- 
 trymen by appointing John Marshall as Chief Justice of 
 the United States Supreme Court. Andrew Jackson is 
 known familiarly as the hero of New Orleans, but his fame 
 is more solidly based upon the fact that he set his iron heel 
 upon nullification, and thereby postponed secession for thirty 
 years. General Grant — what of him? 
 
 "On Fame's eternal camping ground 
 His silent tent is spread, 
 And glory guards with solemn round 
 That bivouac of the dead." 
 
 Of all the Presidents of the past, but one survives. All 
 but one have gone to render an account of their stewardship 
 to Him in whose hands are the destinies of all the nations. 
 But that one need not apprehend his final account. When 
 anarchy stalked abroad along its pathway of ruin and riot. 
 
"PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 129 
 
 and the mob threatened to overthrow law and substitute 
 the reign of the commune, Grover Cleveland suppressed the 
 mob and made them bow to government under the law. 
 When the railroad strikes were suppressed the country knew 
 that there was a great man in the White House. 
 
 But, illustrious as were all these, there were three others, 
 a great presidential trinity, whose names were not born to 
 die, whom the country will ever recognize as three great 
 Presidents. In the providence of God they were given us 
 to lead this country through its three greatest crises. 
 
 It has been said of Washington that there were generals 
 more brilliant and statesmen more profound. Yet it was 
 he who, with soldiers whom the country neither fed nor 
 clothed, vanquished the well-equipped armies of Europe. 
 It was he who achieved our independence, and, in the lan- 
 guage of Marshall, "more than any other agency contrib- 
 uted to founding this wide-spreading empire." Well has 
 it been said of him that though with him the colonies 
 nearly failed, without him they would have had to wait 
 for a more favorable opportunity. These people, then num- 
 bering only three millions, organized into thirteen States, 
 harmonized by his wisdom and controlled by the inspira- 
 tion of his unique personality, founded that more perfect 
 Union that, seventy-one years later, when organized into 
 thirty-three States, with thirty-one millions of people, Abra- 
 ham Lincoln gave his life to save. Washington created 
 this Union; Lincoln preserved it. Washington brought 
 forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty ; 
 Lincoln gave to this nation a new birth of freedom. Because 
 of his wisdom and humanity, his malice toward none and 
 charity toward all, his firmness to do the right as God gave 
 it to him to see it, his fortitude and endurance, his guiding 
 hand in time of trouble, we are able to say today, on this 
 
130 "PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 
 
 one hundred and seventieth anniversary of Washington's 
 birthday, as he said on the field of Gettysburg, "government 
 of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not 
 perish from the earth." 
 
 But what of the third of this trinity? It were eulogy 
 enough to say of him that his election rekindled the fire 
 in a thousand furnaces, started again the wheels to turn- 
 ing, refilled our factories with busy artisans, and made 
 again the hum of industry our national melody. But more 
 than that is William McKinley's due. During his presi- 
 dency he could have said: "This is our day of greatest 
 peril, because it is our day of greatest prosperity." 
 
 Yet, in the midst of this great prosperity, this land 
 stands confronted with the greatest problems. Solve them 
 it must. It can not go backward. Forward it must go, 
 for progress is the rule of national as well as individual life. 
 The trust that withered in Spain's palsied hand is now in our 
 vigorous keeping. The dusky people of the Caribbean isles 
 and the Filipino millions look to us for light and guidance. 
 Shall they look in vain? Shall God's untutored millions 
 share not in our golden largess? Shall we bury this treas- 
 ure, or with this treasure shall we gather increase? We have 
 arrived at man's estate. Shall we live out our manhood 
 within the narrow bounds our boyhood knew? Shall the 
 sun-rimmed horizon of living unto self blind our aspira- 
 tions and limt our endeavors? Shall we take part in the 
 world's affairs, or become a hermit nation, or shall we 
 do our duty in that state of international life unto which 
 it has pleased God to call us? Neither nations nor indi- 
 viduals can live to themselves alone. We are our brothers' 
 keepers. In the great plans of the Almighty we have 
 our part to perform in the working out of civilization. 
 For our part of this great task we have been all our lives 
 
"PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 131 
 
 preparing. With prophetic ink in the sibylline book of 
 fate it has long been written what we have to do. As the 
 drop of rain does not create but only starts the life lying 
 dormant in the grain of wheat, and as the flash of light- 
 ning reveals but does not produce the visions of the night, 
 so the flash of our victorious guns in the war with Spain 
 simply revealed the new responsibilities and duties that had 
 long been in preparation for our young shoulders. I 
 believe that we will be equal to these new responsibilities 
 and successfully bear these new duties to the end. I believe 
 that the path of duty leads to national greatness. I believe 
 that this country will keep pace with the quick step of 
 events; that there will be no turning backward; that we 
 will ever be a leader and exemplar among the nations, and 
 will ever sacredly tend the lamp that liberty holds to light 
 the world. 
 
 Thus could William McKinley have spoken, and truly 
 would he have spoken. Therefore I speak truly when I 
 say that, with unbending shoulders, he so bore these our 
 new burdens, and with patriotism and wisdom he so dis- 
 charged these our new responsibilities, that our day of 
 greatest peril became our day of greatest glory, only sad- 
 dened by his untimely taking off. 
 
 "A man of kindly heart, to kindly deeds disposed, 
 His soul by kindly light was led above the stars." 
 
 When a great man dies, men are apt to despair, and to 
 say, in the words of Homer, "Ulysses has gone upon his 
 travels, and there is no one left in Ithaca to bend his 
 bow." The sentiment is a false one. There is always an 
 arm to bend the bow when there is an arrow to be shot. 
 In the evolution of fate the occasion always produces the 
 man; the work always brings its own doer. And hence 
 came Roosevelt. Young, strenuous, with faith in his 
 
132 "PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 
 
 country's great destiny, opportunity-grasping, with courage 
 for any difficulty her leadership may impose, too young in 
 office for eulogy, yet giving promise of greatness, he takes 
 his place in the line of Presidents, supported by the best 
 wishes of every American who doubts not of his country. 
 
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 (Delivered at the Banquet of the California Society of the Sons 
 of the American Revolution, San Fran- 
 cisco, October 29, 1898.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen: Hundreds of 
 years ago there journeyed from palace to court, from 
 court to church, from the throne to the altar, and from 
 priest to king, a navigator who believed that the world 
 was much larger than Roman Emperor or Vandal Chief 
 or Spanish Monarch had ever dreamed, and that there were 
 undiscovered lands rich in silver and gold that had never 
 paid tribute to Rome, Constantinople, or Madrid. This 
 man was Columbus, and in Spanish ships he crossed the 
 trackless seas, and revealed this continent to an astonished 
 world. Such veneration have we always shown for the 
 name of this navigator, that, in 1893, we gave his name 
 to that white city by the lake where all the children of 
 the sons of men, from Greenland's icy mountains to Afric's 
 burning sands, and from the wave-washed islands of many 
 seas, gathered in friendly competition much that was best 
 and most beautiful and useful in art and science and skill 
 and trade and agriculture and manufacture, and we entitled 
 it the Columbian Exposition, and to it not only were there 
 sent from Spain truthful reproductions of those famous 
 ships that brought Columbus to these shores, but also there 
 came as the honored guests of this government royal rep- 
 resentatives of that government that started Columbus on 
 his inspired voyage. And yet, in 1898, after a lapse of 
 only five years, these two nations have been at war, and 
 
134 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 the big guns that in 1893 were but instruments of cour- 
 tesy, and thundered only in friendly salutations, became 
 engines of death, and belched forth missiles carrying 
 destruction to Spanish ships. 
 
 For years the nations of Europe have been making the 
 seas populous with their floating leviathans of war, while 
 they have made the land resonant with the roll of drum, 
 blast of trumpet, and tread of marching armies. Their 
 ever watchful sentinels have been for years standing guard 
 with bayonets crossed o'er national boundaries, while their 
 mobilized fleets have given constant warning to neighboring 
 thrones. 
 
 "At every bastioned frontier, every State, 
 Suspicion, sworded, standing by the gate." 
 
 During these years all our ways were ways of pleasant- 
 ness, and all our paths were paths of peace, and this republic 
 gazed with wonder, unmixed with alarm, at these mighty 
 armaments, while its people's shoulders, unbent by military 
 burdens, stooped only in thriftful toil, and wealth filled 
 their coffers that needed no soldier guard. 
 
 During this time the United States maintained an army 
 and built a navy in no way commensurate with its resources, 
 and, as we now discover, insufficient for its needs, appar- 
 ently oblivious of the need of either. 
 
 Therefore today in this land, to which war seemed most 
 remote, the call to arms rang out with all the suddenness 
 of an alarm of fire at midnight, and we can hardly yet 
 realize that from counting-room and college hall and schol- 
 ar's desk and workman's bench our citizens by the hundred 
 thousand rushed to enlist beneath the stars and stripes to 
 fight a foreign foe upon foreign soil, that war has come 
 and gone, and a new day of peace has dawned, disclosing 
 the stars and stripes floating over the islands of the Eastern 
 and Western seas where but lately the red and yellow 
 
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 135 
 
 flag of Spain marked the death-bed of Spain's colonial 
 power. 
 
 Why did we go into a war that we knew would, and that 
 has, cost us millions in money and the lives of many of 
 our brave soldiers and seamen? For territorial conquest? 
 For this nearly all the other nations are now battling, or 
 on the eve thereof. England is fighting a pathway for 
 civilization up the Nile, leaving opportunities for English 
 colonization in the wake of her victorious armies. France 
 and England are almost locking horns in their scramble 
 for territory in Western and Central Africa. Germany and 
 England are both ambitious for aggrandizement in Southern 
 Africa. Russia, Germany, England, and France are jeal- 
 ously watching one another in their preliminary steps for 
 parceling out China. 
 
 We took upon our shoulders the burden of battle, we 
 assumed the cost of carnage, we were prepared to wear 
 crepe for our kindred killed, because we had determined 
 to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in the name 
 of humanity, in the name of civilization, we had ordered 
 Spain to leave Cuba. 
 
 We entered into a war out of which we expected that 
 there should come to us only the sufferings of those who 
 fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, only 
 sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having ended 
 misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of duty 
 done and protection to the weak maintained. We fought 
 to carry out the principle upon which this government was 
 founded, namely, the uplifting of the weak and the resist- 
 ing of the strong. Never before, since the crusades, has 
 a nation embarked in such an unselfish adventure. 
 
 We went to war with Spain, and we taught her by the 
 lesson of shot and shell that American gunners, backed 
 by the impulse of freedom to enslaved and suffering human- 
 
136 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 ity, are invincible; that a new day has dawned for the 
 Antilles and the Philippines, and its sun is the torch that 
 liberty holds to light the world. 
 
 Over the victims of Spanish misrule floated the buzzard, 
 and the eagle winged its flight and drove this vulture from 
 the islands of the seas. 
 
 After war developed, however humanitarian its inception, 
 destiny, that shapes our ends, opened her Pandora's box, 
 and out rushed a score of causative events that have driven 
 us into the international world, into the company of the 
 nations, where that nation will win that has the power 
 and that one will hold that can. From a potential we must 
 now become an actual great power, and upon the camera 
 of the future we must cast one of the largest shadows or 
 none at all. 
 
 Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- 
 form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the 
 workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomor- 
 row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the 
 inevitable, towards which the unerring and irresistible mag- 
 net of fate hurries the nations. 
 
 Yesterday we were hedged in by a Chinese wall of Amer- 
 ican isolation, and deaf, blind, and heedless of the world 
 without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of our true 
 place among the nations nor secured its advantages. Yes- 
 terday's tomorrow finds that wall razed by the magic bat- 
 tering ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched the Cuban 
 and Philippine expeditions. No longer can our Ship of 
 State keep within sight of the shores of an inland lake, 
 but henceforth it must navigate the open sea. Upon this 
 sea there are other ships, some large and powerful, others 
 weak and small. With some of them we must in time 
 come in conflict, with others we must sail in friendly com- 
 panionship. If coming events have cast their shadows 
 
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 137 
 
 before, and the friendly and unfriendly utterances concern- 
 ing us that were heard but yesterday in Europe are prophetic 
 of future international relations, there is a certain mighty 
 Ship of State with which ours may eventually combine into 
 an armada that shall rule the seas. 
 
 The time has come when we have colonial possessions 
 beyond the seas, when our position is such that we are forced 
 to be on the commission in whose keeping is the peace of 
 the world. 
 
 This policy is called "Imperialism," and we are told that 
 it means an abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine and of 
 the policy of the Father of his Country. Washington's 
 farewell address and Monroe's message are held up to us 
 as the sheet anchors of our Ship of State, the infallible 
 guides fate has given us to follow for all time, the breaking 
 away from which will certainly bring national destruction. 
 
 Washington and Monroe were wise in their day and 
 generation, but their day is not forever. 
 
 At the beginning of our history our national existence 
 depended upon our isolation. It was then the custom of 
 the great powers to trade small possessions as if they were 
 jack-knives. In this way the Dutch colony of New York 
 was acquired by England, and in this way the latter country 
 traded Havana for the Floridas. The Europe that Richelieu 
 had distributed so as to balance the nations Napoleon redis- 
 tributed, drawing national boundaries along the compass 
 lines of his ambition. After Napoleon the Holy Alliance 
 grasped the dice-box of the kingdoms, and began to throw 
 new combinations upon the green table of the nations. Its 
 openly avowed aim was to suppress freedom, rivet anew 
 the people's chains, and reburnish crowns whose luster had 
 grown dim, and this policy was about to be applied to 
 the restoration of Spain's dominion over her revolted colo- 
 nies on this continent. Then it was that Monroe supple- 
 
138 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 merited Washington's farewell address with his celebrated 
 message. 
 
 Washington feared that the powers of Europe would be 
 continually, as John Adams said, maneuvering to work us 
 into their real or imaginary balances of power, to make us 
 a makeweight candle in weighing out their pounds. Monroe 
 feared that our national independence would be endangered 
 by allowing the Holy Alliance to bring any part of this con- 
 tinent under its baneful influence, and make liberty here 
 subservient to the greed and ambition of kings. Therefore 
 the farewell address and the message crystallized as the 
 foreign policy of this country the determination not to 
 entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe, not to allow 
 the European powers to meddle in American affairs, not to 
 permit these powers to transfer their American possessions 
 from one to the other, and to withdraw this continent 
 from European colonization. "The address," said Jefferson, 
 "made us a nation; the message set the compass and pointed 
 the course which we were to steer through the ocean of 
 time opening to us." But Jefferson was also pre-eminently 
 convinced that the constitution pointed the course which 
 we were to steer through the ocean of time opening to 
 us, and yet he did not hesitate to deviate, as he believed, 
 from this course in purchasing Louisana, justifying himself 
 by the necessities of the situation, and by the conviction 
 that constitutions and policies were made for countries and 
 not countries for constitutions and policies. 
 
 Nothing in this so-called imperialism, however, is in 
 conflict with either the address or the message. We do 
 not propose to take a hand in the political game in Europe. 
 The dual alliance of Muscovite and Gaul, the triple alliance 
 of Austrian, German, and Italian, and England in her 
 all-sufficient individuality, may do with their own affairs 
 as they please, and look on unblushingly while Mussulmen 
 
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 139 
 
 murder Christians, and Turkey dismembers Greece, and the 
 United States will only point to the grave of its sons who 
 died for humanity in Cuba, and to freedom's banner crown- 
 ing Morro Castle, and will say to mankind: "Look on 
 this picture and then on that." 
 
 We still adhere to the Monroe doctrine, and still assert 
 that "the American continents, by the free and independent 
 condition which they have assumed and maintain, are hence- 
 forth not to be considered as subjects for future coloniza- 
 tion by any European powers," and that "we should consider 
 any attempt on their part to extend their system to any 
 portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and 
 safety." We still stand ready to prevent any European 
 power from doing what France attempted in Mexico, or 
 England in Venezuela. 
 
 If, however, it still be maintained that the present policy 
 is a departure from the policy of Washington and Monroe, 
 then so let it be. Our hand is to the plow; we must fol- 
 low the furrow to the end. The wind is off shore, and 
 we must take advantage of the breeze, steering our course 
 by the star of our destiny. No longer shall dead hands 
 extend their fleshless fingers from century-old graves like 
 skeleton guides to point the living present to any inexorable 
 course. 
 
 If it be imperialism to favor territorial expansion, then 
 imperialism began with Jefferson, who purchased Louisiana 
 and favored the annexation of Cuba. It continued with 
 Munroe, who partly purchased and partly seized Florida. 
 It was characteristic of all who, by conquest and treaty, 
 extended our domain from Salt Lake to the Golden Gate, 
 and from the Rio Grande to Mt. Shasta. It includes among 
 its votaries Andrew Johnson, who brought beneath our flag 
 the land that is lit by the Aurora Borealis, and makes 
 an imperialist of Ulysses S. Grant, who would have illu- 
 
140 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 mined our galaxy of stars with the Southern Cross that 
 brightens the skies o'er San Domingo. 
 
 We are told again that the new imperialism leads to 
 the acquisition of territory away from this continent, to 
 the annexation of islands that we can not govern as colo- 
 nies, nor admit into the Union as States, nor endow with' 
 universal suffrage, nor populate with our people, but which 
 we must nevertheless defend with our army and navy, and 
 that this will demoralize our government, compel a large 
 standing army and navy, increase our taxes, and bring us 
 into conflict with other nations; that it sounds the knell 
 of the republic and inaugurates the reign of the plutocrat 
 and military autocrat. 
 
 If all this be true, it is unfortunate, as the Antilles, the 
 Hawaiian Islands, and part, if not all, of the Philippines 
 are already practically annexed. We can not give them 
 back, and it would seem to be wisdom to seek how best 
 to bear these new responsibilities that we can not avoid, 
 rather than to waste our time in endeavoring to escape 
 the inevitable. 
 
 But all this gloomy foreboding is not true prophecy. 
 We can govern these possessions as colonies; we are not 
 compelled ever to admit them as States; and it is not 
 necessary that we populate them with our own people. For 
 ages their population will not be fitted for statehood, if 
 they can ever so become. We can carry to them law, order, 
 and education; we can free them from the tyranny of 
 church and caste ; we can make freedom attractive to them 
 by exemplifying its bcHiefits, and we can thereby further 
 and promote the cause of civilization. But we need not 
 repeat the mistakes of our own history, and with Utopian 
 blindness extend to them the right of suffrage, and we will 
 not demoralize our government by refusing so to do. 
 
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 141 
 
 That we must increase our army and navy is true, and 
 also is it true that thereby our taxes will be increased. 
 
 Our standing army should be increased. For years we 
 must in our island possessions sustain the law with visible 
 force until confidence is bred of justice, and the husband- 
 man learns that he will reap what he sows, unmolested 
 by native brigand or governmental bandit. Furthermore, 
 our own land is full today of physical wrecks, and every 
 encampment recently occupied by our army is fringed with 
 the graves of our soldiers, all the victims of a policy that 
 dwarfed our army at the bidding of the millionaire who 
 feared the tax-gatherer, and of the Socialist who feared 
 the preserver of law and order. Pay more for a living 
 army, and you will pay less in pensions for dead or invalided 
 soldiers. Imperialism will be a benefactor if it thus enables 
 us, by increasing our military system both in numbers and 
 efficiency, better to take care of those who offer their lives 
 for their country. 
 
 Our navy also should be increased. The great contest 
 of the future is to be for commercial existence, commercial 
 extension, commercial supremacy. The battleship must keep 
 open the course of the merchantman. Trade must live by 
 the aggressiveness that is behind it, or it must perish. 
 
 Germany, with practically no colonies and no coast line, 
 and with already a powerful navy afloat, has appropriated 
 $118,000,000 for new ships to be finished in 1904; France, 
 with few colonies, has appropriated $160,000,000 for new 
 ships to increase her present large armament ; Russia has 
 appropriated $46,000,000 for the same purpose. Every one 
 of these men-of-war will be launched with its prow pointed 
 to the Orient and the Tropics, where these nations hope to 
 gain and build up trade by the acquisition of territory, and 
 to keep this trade to themselves by closing to others the 
 doors through which it comes and goes. 
 
142 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 By treaty we have the right of admission to the Chinese 
 market upon the terms of entire equality with every other 
 nation. And yet we have allowed Talien-Wan to be ceded 
 to Russia, and Kiao-Chou to Germany, without safeguard- 
 ing this right. A sufficient safeguard will be the immediate 
 ability to enforce it. We must not allow it to be impaired. 
 Already the products of our fields and mines and factories 
 have grown beyond our own consumption. Last year our 
 domestic exports exceeded those of 1894 by $100,000,000, 
 or 77 per cent. Much of this goes to China. Our loco- 
 motives are whistling at the gates of Peking. Mongolian 
 bloomers bestride American bicycles, and American type- 
 writers print Chinese characters in the counting-rooms of 
 Canton. Shall this trade continue and grow? Are we to 
 hold our own in the Orient? Are all Oriental doors to 
 be kept open to our ships and merchants? 
 
 In the keen competition of the immediate future for the 
 vast trade of the Orient, where the flower of civilization is 
 just budding, we must be in a position to demand and 
 exact our share, or we will lose it. We must match Port 
 Arthur and Kiao-Chou with Manila. 
 
 Behind courage there must be strength. Behind great 
 national interests there must be immediate and sufficient 
 protection known of all men. We have courage, but behind 
 it little strength immediately available. We have great 
 national interests, but it is now known of all men that the 
 protection behind them, though possible, is remote. Neither 
 in the Atlantic nor in the Pacific had we six months ago 
 a spot where an American ship could coal as of right. 
 Within six months the God of Battles has planted our flag 
 upon islands in the Atlantic and unfurled it upon islands 
 in the distant Pacific, and a friendly people have unfolded 
 it where the waters break on Honolulu's coral reef. There 
 
AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 143 
 
 it will remain as long as American courage backs up Amer- 
 ican genius upon the decks of an American man-of-war. 
 
 With the Antilles protecting the eastern end of the Nica- 
 ragua Canal, and the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines 
 as strategic and distributing points in the Pacific, we will 
 be prepared to keep all trade courses and doors open to 
 ourselves, and, if necessary, to cooperate with Great Britain, 
 who at present is fighting single-handed for the "open door" 
 in the Orient. 
 
 In this policy England's course runs with ours. May 
 they always run together. In the eloquent words of our 
 recent Embassador to the Court of St. James: "These two 
 peoples are bound by ties they did not forge and that they 
 can not break; they are joint ministers in the same sacred 
 mission of freedom and progress, charged by the imposition 
 of irresistible hands with duties they can not evade." 
 
 Thirty years ago Secretary Seward said: "The Pacific 
 Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond 
 will become the chief theater of events in the world's great 
 hereafter." This prophecy is in its fulfillment. This here- 
 after is dawning, its morning is at hand. Before its sun 
 nears the meridian this ocean will have become the inter- 
 national arena in which the empires will struggle for the 
 trade of the world. The two great combatants will be the 
 Slav and the Anglo-Saxon. The Slav is young in accom- 
 plishments, but mighty in possibilities and limitless in 
 resources. The Anglo-Saxon is today in the prime of a 
 healthy, vigorous manhood. He has behind him the glo- 
 rious record of centuries of noble achievements. He has 
 been the King Arthur at the round table of civilization. 
 
 It was the Anglo-Saxon race that shattered Spain's world- 
 spreading empire, curbed the ambition of Philip the Second, 
 crushed his armada, and checked the growth of absolutism 
 and ecclesiasticism. It was the Anglo-Saxon race, more 
 
144 AMERICAN IMPERIALISM 
 
 than the snows of Russia, that vanquished Napoleon, pre- 
 vented the triumph of personal Imperialism, and stood 
 guard at St. Helena over the military genius of all the 
 ages. It is the Anglo-Saxon race that is **the pioneer of 
 progress and the stubborn defender of liberty," and that 
 gave mankind civil liberty, whereby authority and law are 
 harnessed together to the chariot of modern civilization; 
 and it is this Anglo-Saxon race from which we are sprung. 
 "We, too, are heirs of Runnymede, and Shakespeare's fame 
 and Cromwell's deeds are not alone our mother's." If we 
 are to help this race continue on in its apparently divinely 
 appointed path, and do our duty in this new sphere of 
 national and international life in which it has pleased God 
 to put us, we must start out upon our new career with no 
 uncertain tread, meeting our new obligations as fearlessly, 
 resolutely, and successfully as our revolutionary fathers met 
 theirs when they founded this Republic. 
 
 I believe that we will be equal to our opportunities and 
 faithful to our stewardship, and that, though "the Republic 
 has on her shoulders the mantle of empire, and has taken 
 the sceptre of empire in her hands, and has set upon her 
 own head the crown of empire," she will ever remain a 
 government of the people, by the people, and for the peo- 
 ple, ever heedful of the cause of humanity, ever watchful 
 of the liberties of her people, better equipped to attend to 
 her people's needs, and her imperialism will be only a 
 broader democracy. 
 
LAW AND COMMERCE 
 
 (Delivered} at a Dinner given by the Merchants and Manufac- 
 turers of San Francisco to Charles M. Hays, the new Pres- 
 ident of the Southern Pacific Company, January i8, 1901.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN and Gentlemen : I am terrified at 
 being called upon to talk about commerce, as I know 
 nothing about the subject. I am heartbroken in being 
 asked to talk law to so many possible clients with no fee 
 in sight. My only consolation is that a layman generally 
 pays very dearly for law that he gets for nothing, and this 
 is not so much of an Irish bull as it sounds. I hope, how- 
 ever, that the two, law and commerce, will always be linked 
 together ; that is, I hope that commerce will never get 
 out of law, for lawyers must live. A poet (probably Gold- 
 smith) well and truthfully said: 
 
 "Merchants and railroad men may flourish or may fade, 
 A breath can make them as a breath has made, 
 But a bold lawyer, the country's pride, 
 When once destroyed can never be supplied." 
 
 This poet, as you see, anticipated our hosts of this even- 
 ing in bringing merchants and railroad men together. They 
 should be together. Like the lion and the lamb, they should 
 lie down together. As to which one will get up outside of 
 the other I can only say that I would suggest David 
 Harum's advice, "Do unto the other man as he would do 
 unto you, but do it first." 
 
 You men of commerce have as your guest this evening 
 a new railroad man, who has been for several years absent 
 
146 LAW AND COMMERCE 
 
 from his native land doing missionary work among the 
 heathen, and I am reliably informed that he is one of the 
 few missionaries in foreign lands that recently did not have 
 to get out in a hurry. He tells me that he left no broken 
 china behind him. 
 
 Mr. Hays has returned to this country for his country's 
 good, and I am informed by him that this country never 
 ceased to be his country, and that he came back every 
 year to vote for McKinley. I think that a good patriot 
 and a good railroad man is a very good combination, the 
 equal of a good man of commerce, and almost as good as 
 a lawyer. Speaking, therefore, about law and commerce, 
 I congratulate this city upon the acquisition of such a 
 citizen. He has a great opportunity. May he be equal to 
 it ! While he is becoming acquainted with us, with our 
 ways, with our coast, and with the great properites com- 
 mitted to his care, give him encouragement rather than 
 criticism, bearing in mind the inscription that not many 
 years ago was usually suspended over the band at a miners' 
 ball: "Do not shoot the musicians, they are doing the best 
 they know how." 
 
 I know of no position upon this Coast, either in law or 
 commerce, that carries with it as onerous duties, as great 
 responsibilities both to the public and to the individual, as 
 the presidency of the Southern Pacific. Through his com- 
 pany he must come in many shapes and knock at many doors 
 and pay tribute to and take tribute from all our industries. 
 He is the great evangel of transportation on this Coast, 
 and as nothing has contributed more than improvement in 
 transportation to make the nineteenth century the greatest 
 of all centuries, bringing nations and states nearer together, 
 making possible a more general enjoyment of the necessi- 
 ties, comforts, and luxuries of life, and giving to want 
 more of the largess of wealth, so as a manager of trans- 
 
LAW AND COMMERCE ' 147 
 
 portation he has a great work to do hi keeping up this 
 improvement and in helping to make the twentieth century 
 an equal contributor to the world's advancement. 
 
 In this connection I desire to say that nothing more 
 distinctly characterizes the wonderful creative, executive, 
 and financial ability, the tremendous grasp of innumerable 
 details, the persistence, energy, and courage of the late 
 C. P. Huntington than the fact that the great duties that 
 Mr. Hays is about to undertake as president of the South- 
 ern Pacific are but a part of those that Mr. Huntington 
 bore with unstooping shoulders to a ripe old age. Many 
 hands are required to bear the burden his two hands bore 
 alone. Sucn men are the builders of nations. 
 
 Now, my friends, speaking of law and commerce, may 
 you have much of both ! May your lawyers flourish and 
 your merchants thrive! The opening century comes full of 
 promise to this country and this Coast. Your city fronts 
 the Orient. The star of empire, the morning star of the 
 twentieth century, now domes the Pacific and lights with its 
 earliest rays the Golden Gate that opens up to this metrop- 
 olis its queenship of the future. May naught dim its luster 
 but the smoke of myriad locomotives and myriad steam- 
 ships and myriad factories, rising o'er your bay and city 
 like clouds of incense to your commercial greatness ! May 
 all the prosperity that can be produced by a fertile soil, 
 mines rich in silver and gold, a mild climate, an industrious 
 people, grand harbors, great opportunities, and a flag that 
 honors and protects, be yours ! May the new century keep 
 its promise to the ear and break it not to hope, and may 
 you ever congratulate yourselves both on your law and 
 your commerce, for ill fares the land, to hastening ills a 
 prey, where commerce accumulates and lawyers decay. 
 
FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO THE GOLDEN GATE 
 
 (Delivered at the Annual Dinner of the New England Society 
 
 of New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York, 
 
 December 22, 1903.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen: When Patrick 
 Henry heard of Bunker Hill, he sent word to Mas- 
 sachusetts : *T am not a Virginian; I am an American." 
 When I received the kind invitation of your Vice-President 
 to attend this annual gathering of the New England 
 Society of New York, I said: "I am not a Californian; 
 I am an American." Therefore, like Patrick Henry, I 
 accepted the New England invitation. 
 
 Steam and electricity have so annihilated space and time, 
 and brought so close together the Atlantic and Pacific, that 
 their roarings almost commingle in one diapason* of the 
 waves; while commerce and a new spirit of nationality 
 have so nearly obliterated State and sectional lines, and 
 we are all so tied and bound together, so near to one 
 another — neighbors, though whole wide leagues apart — that 
 we realize as never before that statehood pales before 
 Americanhood ; that the greatest birthright of every one 
 of us, whether he hails from New England's rocky coast, 
 the everglades of Florida, or the orange groves of Cali- 
 fornia, is that he is an American, and that Americans are 
 one people, with one tongue, one flag, one country indi- 
 visible forever. 
 
 It is this spirit that makes every one of us of all the 
 forty-five States feel that he is no longer a stranger in 
 
FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 149 
 
 any part of this American continent over which float the 
 Stars and Stripes, however distant he may be from the place 
 of his nativity. 
 
 Therefore, though I have journeyed over mountains high 
 and rivers broad and plains of almost boundless reach to 
 attend this feast, and though my home lies beyond the 
 horizon's dip, I am no stranger among you, but one of 
 you, glad and proud to assist in honoring the memory of 
 the Pilgrim Fathers. As we Americans say, "We, too, are 
 heirs of Runnymede, and Shakespeare's fame and Crom- 
 well's deeds are not alone old England's," so we Califor- 
 nians say, "We, too, are heirs of Plymouth Rock, and the 
 Mayflower's fame and the Pilgrims' deeds are not alone 
 New England's." 
 
 The sentiment to which you have asked me to respond, 
 "From Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate," is a grand 
 one, more suited for an epic poem of Homeric propor- 
 tions than for an after-dinner brief oration. Ulysses com- 
 passed not so much in all his fabled wanderings. 
 
 The sentiment begins with the sowing of the seed, it 
 ends with the reaping of the harvest. It begins with hope 
 born of faith, it ends with fulfillment produced by destiny. 
 The poet would make it read, 
 
 "From the New England manse, with its mosses, 
 To the CaHfornia mission, with its crosses." 
 
 My surroundings this evening suggest that it might be 
 paraphrased, "From the cabin of the Mayflower to the 
 banquet hall of the Waldorf-Astoria," or "From pinching 
 poverty to wondrous wealth as great as that of Ormus or 
 of Ind." 
 
 If, when John Carver landed from the Mayflower with 
 his little band of poorly fed and poorly clad Puritans, he 
 could have foreseen this room of splendor, this luxurious 
 
150 FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 
 
 table, these wines, the silks and satins and precious stones our 
 fair guests adorn, he would have immediately re-embarked 
 and sailed back to Leyden, for to him there was no doubt- 
 ing that 
 
 'Til fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
 Where wealth accumulates, and men decay," 
 
 We are glad he had no such revelation, for we know that 
 wealth may accumulate, and yet men not decay. 
 
 Every generation is apt to think those burdens the 
 heaviest its shoulders have to bear, those dangers the most 
 perilous its courage has to brave, those responsibilities the 
 greatest it has to face. 
 
 When Abraham Lincoln was invited by this honorable 
 society to attend its annual reunion in 1864, he replied: 
 "The work of the Plymouth emigrants was the glory of 
 their age. While we reverence their memory, let us not 
 forget how vastly greater is our opportunity." 
 
 The Puritans bore burdens and dared dangers that would 
 have crushed most people, but they had very little oppor- 
 tunity save the opportunity of failing. With no warmth 
 against the cold save the fire of faith that burned upon 
 the hearthstones of their hearts; with famine imminent 
 and death their daily visitant ; with no resources save 
 strong arms, courage, and high resolve; few in number 
 and poor in purse, they began the building of an empire 
 whose foundations were the rights of man, and they built 
 upon the Rock of Ages. "They were men (coequal with 
 their fate) who did great things, unconscious they were 
 great." Little did they dream what the morrow would 
 bring forth. Surely Destiny works in a mysterious way 
 its wonders to perform, and rarely reveals in advance what 
 is forging in the workshop of fate. 
 
FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 151 
 
 When Lincoln came the corner-stone had been laid, the 
 building had progressed far in its construction. The expe- 
 rience of its founders was a guide for its completion. 
 
 Let us not forget how vastly greater was our strength 
 in 1864 than theirs in 1620. We had the opportunity and 
 the power of forever silencing in our republic the clank- 
 ing of a bondsman's chains, of proving to the world that 
 the States whom God had joined together no man could 
 cast asunder, of demonstrating to the attentive nations that 
 this government of the people, for the people, and by the 
 people should not perish from the earth. 
 
 Let us not forget how still vastly greater than in 1864 
 is our strength as well as our opportunity in 1902. The 
 temple is completed, and from its dome Liberty holds a 
 torch to light the world. 
 
 For thousands of years the world has been growing 
 toward this consummation, the dedication of this great 
 work, the coming to manhood of the American republic, 
 the supremacy among the nations of this government of 
 the people. 
 
 For nearly three centuries we have been on our way 
 from Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate. 
 
 What a transcontinental procession! Not at all times 
 a peaceful one, nor always one of triumph, the sword and 
 the gun oft supplanting the olive branch, and wayside 
 graves like monumental urns marking many a stage along 
 this life journey of a nation. 
 
 First comes John Carver with his little band, their only 
 charts and guides the Bible and the Bill of Rights they 
 drew up in the cabin of the Mayflower. Down through more 
 than one hundred and fifty years this procession slowly 
 moves in safe obscurity, growing like a mountain stream 
 into a river by the commingling of its waters with those 
 of many tributaries. At last, out of the darkness of colo- 
 
152 FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 
 
 nial life it emerges into the faint light of a nation's dawn- 
 ing. There are now many captains of many bands, but 
 with difficulty held together. George Washington and 
 Alexander Hamilton and John Adams lead, and behind 
 them march abreast the Puritan and the Cavalier, to whom 
 alike the guns at Bunker Hill were a call to arms. They 
 fight the great fight for national independence, and then 
 this procession, now a nation, laurel crowned, resumes its 
 march with Washington, the Virginian, at its head. From 
 the Atlantic it advances, crossing rivers, climbing moun- 
 tains, ever following the sun. Before it forests fall, and 
 behind it golden fields mark the fertility of its footfall. 
 Cities, towns, and hamlets note its resting places, in every 
 one of which the church and the schoolhouse show the 
 impress of the Puritan. 
 
 New leaders appear — Marshall from Virginia, and Web- 
 ster from Masaschusetts — holding aloft the Ark of the 
 constitution, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of 
 fire by night, leading the nation along the only highway 
 whereon it could cross the continent. 
 
 Half the journey is made. The Puritan hundred has 
 grown into the nation's millions, the thirteen colonies into 
 many States. Suddenly the guns of Fort Sumter call a 
 halt. The nation threatens to break in two, the procession 
 to part asunder, when, lo, from out the ranks there steps 
 "a tall man, sun-crowned, one who rises above the fog 
 and smoke of public station," Abraham Lincoln, under 
 whose leadership the nation, no longer half-slave and half- 
 free, but wholly free, reunites, never to divide again, and 
 the procession moves on, never to halt again until it reaches 
 the Golden Gate, where stands guard California, "the 
 youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of silver gor- 
 geously inlaid with gold,", in her eyes that light of prophecy 
 that unrolled the future as a scroll to Seward, when he 
 
FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 153 
 
 predicted that the Pacific Ocean would one day be the 
 chief theatre of the world's great hereafter. That day has 
 dawned. Its morning star, the star of empire, is now 
 rising above the horizon that rims the Pacific, and its first 
 rays illmnine the Golden Gate. 
 
 Was our journey ended at this portal of the sunset sea? 
 For a while we thought so. But God disposes, and the 
 end was not yet. Suddenly, like an alarm of fire at mid- 
 night, the explosion of the Maine called us to arms, and 
 we took upon our shoulders the burden of battle for the 
 right of others to live and, like ourselves, be free; we sent 
 our army for the first time from this continent to invade 
 a foreign land, planted our flag upon the islands of the 
 Orient seas, and brought them nearer to Plymouth Rock. 
 
 The sentiment of my discourse now reads, "From Plym- 
 outh Rock to Manila Bay, and not a step backward." 
 
 So far we have overcome all difficulties, surmounted all 
 obstacles. This is our hour of greatness, our hour of 
 greatest power, and, therefore, our hour of greatest peril. 
 This is our hour of greatest opportunity. 
 
 The Republic therefore needs our prayers as much as 
 it deserves our praises, our watchful care, our caution, 
 our utmost zeal and strenuous endeavor as much as our 
 most unbounded admiration. But yesterday with bowed 
 head and bended knee, before humble altars and gilded 
 shrines, in chapels and cathedrals, with grateful hearts, 
 we offered up thanksgiving for God's unparalleled gen- 
 erosity during the year now closing. May He have given 
 as bountifully of His wisdom as of His wealth ! 
 
 The seat of wealth and power that once found lodg- 
 ment within the walls of Carthage, thence beneath the 
 eagle's wings made Rome its home, thence to Constanti- 
 nople traveled, and thence to Venice, where it lingered a 
 
154 FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 
 
 while, and then guarded by the lion dwelt in London, 
 again finds safe shelter beneath the eagle's wings. 
 
 And yet, at this moment of prosperity, our country stands 
 confronted by the gravest problems. Solve them it must. 
 It can not stand still. Forward it must go, or to decay 
 be doomed, as progress is the immutable law both of indi- 
 vidual and national life. 
 
 The trust that withered in Spain's palsied hands is now 
 in our vigorous keeping. The dusky peoples of the Carib- 
 bean and Hawaiian Isles and the Filipino millions look 
 to us for light and guidance. Shall they look in vain? 
 Shall God's untutored millions share not in our golden 
 largess? Shall we bury our treasure, or with this treasure 
 shall we gather increase? We have arrived at man's estate. 
 Shall we live out our manhood in the narrow bounds 
 our boyhood knew? Shall the sun-rimmed horizon of liv- 
 ing unto self blind our aspirations and limit our endeavors? 
 Shall we take no part in the world's affairs, and become 
 a hermit nation? 
 
 Neither individuals nor nations can live to themselves 
 alone. We are our brothers' keepers. This nation in the 
 great plans of the Almighty has its duty to perform in 
 the working out of civilization. For its part of this great 
 task it has been its whole life preparing. With prophetic 
 ink in the sibylline book of fate there has long been writ- 
 ten what it has to do. As the drop of rain starts but 
 does not create the life lying dormant in the grain of 
 wheat, as the flash of lightning reveals but does not pro- 
 duce the visions of the night, so the flash of our victorious 
 guns in the war with Spain simply revealed the new bur- 
 dens and responsibilities that had been for years in prep- 
 aration for our young shoulders. 
 
 Shall we profit by this opportunity? Shall we be true 
 to the memory of those we honor this evening? Shall we 
 
FROM PLYMOUTH ROCK TO GOLDEN GATE 155 
 
 allow prosperity to destroy that strength of will and spirit 
 of liberty that survived the hunger and the cold and the 
 suffering of the winter of 1620 on the bleak New England 
 coast? Shall w^e prove that wealth may accumulate, and 
 yet men not decay? We are men of mighty days; shall 
 we be equal to our days? 
 
 I believe that we will continue to be equal to any oppor- 
 tunity fate has in store for us, that we will bear our 
 burdens and responsibilities with unbending shoulders suc- 
 cessfully to the end, that we will do our duty in this new 
 state of international life into which it has pleased God 
 to place us, and that we will be faithful to our stewardship 
 both beneath the rising and the setting sun. 
 
 I believe that not in vain have we journeyed from 
 Plymouth Rock to the Golden Gate, peopling a continent 
 with a vast, a mighty, a God-fearing, a liberty-loving, and 
 a prosperous people, and establishing and perpetuating as 
 an example to the nations and a benediction to mankind 
 government based solely upon the rights of man. 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 (Delivered at a dinner given by the Alumni to President Alder- 
 man of the University of Virginia, San 
 Francisco, April, 1906.) 
 
 MANY years ago, in a very old city of the dead, in 
 old Virginia, I read on a modest shaft the following 
 impressive epitaph: "Author of the Declaration of Amer- 
 ican Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious 
 Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia," and 
 I knew, as I read, that I stood by the grave of one who 
 had achieved immortality by making mortality more bear- 
 able to his fellow man. 
 
 On July 4, 1893, I was visiting my old home, Petersburg, 
 Virginia, and I noticed that there was no celebration, no 
 beating of drums, nor blowing of horns, no waving of 
 flags, nor marching of troops, and I exclaimed to a friend : 
 "Why this silence! This should not be. This day, of all 
 the days, is Virginia's day, when every other State must 
 salute her. On this day the Old Dominion has the right of 
 the line. This is the birthday of American independ- 
 ence, celebrated in every clime and on every sea, proclaimed 
 in prose and sung in song wherever freedom blesses the 
 children of men, and Virginia, above all others, should 
 celebrate it with hallelujas and hosannas from the rising 
 of the sun to the going down of the same, and cover with 
 flowers that grave on Monticello's slope where sleeps her 
 immortal son, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Dec- 
 laration of Independence." 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 157 
 
 Proud, as I am, of being a citizen of California, this 
 land "where summers never cease their endless chant of 
 light and peace, whose moonlight poured for years untold 
 has drifted down in dust of gold, whose morning splendor, 
 fallen in showers, leaves ceaseless sunrise in her flowers," 
 I envy the man born in that State that gave to the union 
 Washington, Jefferson, and Marshall, one the father of 
 his country, one the father of the constitution, one the 
 father of the University of Virginia. 
 
 Were I a Virginian, it would cause me to hold my head 
 a little high to know that he also was a Virginian who 
 without a beacon, without a chart, but with unwavering 
 eye and steady hand, guided his country safe through dark- 
 ness and through storm to the fulfillment of that proclama- 
 tion of freedom that was penned by the hand of another 
 Virginian, who with Washington, Madison, Monroe, and 
 Tyler, entitled Virginia to be called the mother of Pres- 
 idents. 
 
 Were I a Virginian, my pride would know no bounds 
 when I recalled that it was another Virginian who by his 
 decisions secured the perpetuity of this Union, and made 
 the constitution a band of steel instead of leaving it a 
 rope of sand, who by his judicial statesmanship made the 
 constitution the corner-stone of an empire boundless in its 
 capacity for growth, made it possible for an American 
 citizen to cross the continent from Plymouth Rock to the 
 Golden Gate and always beneath the protecting aegis of 
 the one flag that claims the glad reverence of Massachu- 
 setts, Virginia, and California alike, and is cheered with 
 equal enthusiasm at Harvard, Charlottesville, and Berkeley. 
 
 Washington, Marshall, and Jeiferson were "tall men, sun- 
 crowned, men who rose above the fog and smoke of public 
 station," and we here this evening feel that it has been 
 a great privilege to have studied at the college that Jeffer- 
 
158 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 son founded, and that bears the name of the State that 
 produced these three men. All three builded better than 
 they knew. Jefferson, when he made the Louisiana pur- 
 chase, did not anticipate that his successors would cross the 
 Rockies and join to the sisterhood of States California, 
 "the youthful queen of the Pacific, with her robes of silver 
 inlined with gold," nor did he dream that, in less than a 
 century after his University opened her doors, one of her 
 graduates would be the honored Chief Justice of a great 
 commonwealth fronting the Orient, or that her president 
 should in a distant clime, "where the West melts away 
 into the rising East," proclaim to his fellow-countrymen 
 the glory justly due to the father of the University of 
 Virginia. 
 
 Jefferson helped greatly to make possible this expansion, 
 not merely because he believed in the people, in govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, and for the people, but 
 because he believed in the education of the people, and 
 worked towards that end; because he believed that govern- 
 ment by the people must be by an educated people, that 
 there must be not only primary education for the many, 
 but higher education for the few "to form the statesmen, 
 legislators, and judges on whom public prosperity and indi- 
 vidual happiness so much depend," because he believed that 
 "nothing more than education advances the prosperity, the 
 power, and the happiness of a nation." 
 
 By their works -ye shall know men. Sir Christopher 
 Wren, standing beneath the dome of St. Paul's, exclaimed, 
 "Si monumentum videres, circumspice." Thomas Jefferson, 
 standing beneath the dome of the rotunda of the Univer- 
 sity of Virginia, could as truthfully have said, ''Si monu- 
 mentum videres, circumspice." Great as is his reputation 
 as Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, and President 
 of the United States, greater will be his title to fame as 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 159 
 
 father of the University of Virginia. From its halls have 
 come and will continue to come many statesmen, legislators, 
 and judges to keep this people worthy of the independence 
 Jefferson proclaimed. 
 
 All hail to the University ! It is a light set upon a hill, 
 and for ages it will shine as one of the brightest beacon 
 lights of culture, whose rays shall dim the stars that sparkle 
 o'er Atlantic and Pacific seas and all the lands 'twixt 
 Monticello and where burns the Southern Cross. 
 
WILLIAM SPROULE 
 
 (Delivered at a farewell dinner to William Sproule at Pacific 
 Union Club, San Francisco, September 6, 1906.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN : When I see this magnificent ban- 
 quet, these lights, this brilliant room, these distin- 
 guished guests, and look at the guest in whose honor this 
 is done, I realize that God is good to the Irish. 
 
 This is the most difficult speech I have ever attempted. 
 There are many men for whom it is a pleasure to make 
 a farewell speech. One would willingly sit up all night in 
 its preparation, if one were sure that such men would really 
 go. But this is not so when it is one's dearest friend that is 
 leaving. Then it is that you realize that it is not true that 
 from the abundance of the heart one speaketh. Lovers 
 speak but little when their hearts have most abundance. 
 
 When Sproule told me that he was about to be mar- 
 ried, I felt that I could not forgive him for abandoning 
 me, until I saw his bride, and then I envied him. Now 
 that he is taking both bride and himself away to make a 
 distant city his permanent home, my loss is irreparable, 
 my grief inconsolable. 
 
 A poet has spoken of California as "the State that guards 
 the dying day, whose burning tear, the evening star, drops 
 silently to the waves afar." 
 
 California, alas ! has had cause to drop many a burning 
 tear during this year of our Lord, 1906, and now she 
 must shed another burning tear, scalding hot from the fur- 
 nace of her afflictions, when Sproule leaves. But her face 
 
WILLIAM SPROULE 161 
 
 will be like a brighter day, sunshine and rain at once, a 
 rain of tears for herself o'er the loss of so gifted a son 
 of her adoption, the sunshine of her smiles for his unpar- 
 alleled success. 
 
 San Francisco lies in ashes at our feet, her palaces, her 
 temples, and her marts shapeless masses of stone and brick 
 and twisted iron, her columns crumbling in the dust, her 
 church spires no longer pointing to the skies, her great- 
 ness a memory, her future a hope, her greatest need men, 
 "tall men, sun-crowned, men who rise above the fog and 
 smoke of public station, men who can live and dare not 
 lie." Such a man is William Sproule, and he is leaving 
 San Francisco. Did I love him less, I would selfishly beg 
 him to stay. But the sacrifice on his part would be too 
 great. He goes to fulfill his destiny, and, if the past and 
 present be prophetic of the future, we are confident of 
 the brilliance of that fulfillment. 
 
 You all know his history, his rise from an humble clerk- 
 ship to the high and responsible position of freight traffic 
 manager of the Southern Pacific. You have read this his- 
 tory in the daily papers, and you share his pride in it. 
 Sproule tells me confidentially that he has read it so often 
 that he is beginning to believe it himself, and that now 
 when he hears of the death of a very great man, he finds 
 that he does not feel very well himself. 
 
 But, seriously speaking, he may well be proud. He has 
 had great opportunities, he has been equal to his oppor- 
 tunities, and that is greatness. He came here a foreigner, 
 poor and friendless. He leaves here known, respected, 
 admired, loved, and honored by the community. No one 
 ever came here more unknown or with fewer friends. No 
 one has ever left here better known or with more or truer 
 friends. 
 
162 WILLIAM SPROULE 
 
 Versatile in talents, strong in character, firm in purpose, 
 and complete in performance, it will require more than 
 one man to be his successor, and the big men of New 
 York will take notice when this young Lochinvar comes 
 out from the West. 
 
 May health, happiness, and high esteem continue to illu- 
 minate his climbing fortunes, and may kindly circumstance 
 lead his footsteps often back to the Golden Gate, where 
 many warm hearts will ever extend him glad welcome. 
 
CARNEGIE LIBRARIES 
 
 (Delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Carnegie 
 Library, Pacific Grove, November g, 1907.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, Ladies and Gentlemen : I deem 
 it a privilege to be invited to take part in these 
 proceedings, to be so honored by Pacific Grove. I con- 
 gratulate you on your city. You can look back with satis- 
 faction on your past; you can contemplate with pride your 
 present ; you can look forward with confidence to your 
 future, assured of the fulfillment of your fondest hopes 
 and highest ambitions; you can justifiably hang on your 
 outer wall a banner bearing the announcement, "Watch Us 
 Grow." 
 
 I regret that I have no address worthy of this occasion, 
 and must beg you to be content with a few desultory 
 remarks. 
 
 It has been the fashion to declaim against the money 
 of millionaires as "tainted money." This was, of course, 
 before the present financial stringency, when at least some 
 money was visible to the naked eye. If this stringency 
 continues much longer, I am afraid it will be difficult for 
 most of us to even recognize money at sight, much less to 
 distinguish between the tainted and untainted coin. 
 
 But, as I have said, it has been the fashion to declaim 
 against money as tainted money, because the owner of it 
 has accumulated too much of it. If it be true that money 
 becomes tainted when too much of it is accumulated in 
 
164 CARNEGIE LIBRARIES 
 
 the same exchequer, I know of no better way of removing 
 the taint than by devoting it to some great public purpose. 
 
 The University of Chicago loses none of its splendid 
 opportunities for educating the youth of the Middle West 
 because of the fact that the money that has built it up and 
 afforded it its great educational facilities was a part of 
 the Rockefeller millions. The Stanford University is no 
 less a benefaction of incalculable value to the youth of the 
 Pacific Coast because its foundation and support are the 
 dollars that came from the railroad coffers. 
 
 And so, the libraries that adorn countless towns in many 
 climes and serve as beacon lights of culture to so many 
 nations, let their light shine before men no less brilliantly 
 because they are the gifts of a millionaire, who, by his 
 broadminded philanthropy, has immortalized the name of 
 Carnegie. 
 
 Men climb to dizzy heights of fame by many different 
 ladders. By many means have men achieved immortality. 
 For many reasons have men's names been enrolled in the 
 Hall of the Immortals. The upward paths of some, like 
 Caesar and Napoleon, may be traced by footprints stained 
 with blood; of others, like Lincoln and Washington, by 
 the wise government the one founded and the other secured, 
 rather than by the victories they won ; and of Andrew Car- 
 negie by the multiplicity and magnitude of his gifts to 
 science, to letters, and to education. He has made possible 
 the collection of books in every town where the English 
 language is spoken. 
 
 Books are our best, our wisest, and most faithful com- 
 panions. They instruct, they entertain, and they console 
 us. Books, like searchlights, penetrate the darkness of the 
 past and supplement our fading memories. Like the noon- 
 day sun, they illumine the present, and make our limited 
 field of vision almost boundless as Omniscience. They are 
 
CARNEGIE LIBRARIES 165 
 
 bridges that span the centuries, bringing the remotest times 
 near neighbors to the present. They annihilate space and 
 time, and make our libraries whispering galleries wherein 
 the faintest voice from the most distant place and time 
 can reach the dullest ear. 
 
 By books alone can man preserve the sayings and the 
 songs of the singers and the seers of all the yester-years. 
 
 Like a garden without flowers, like a night without stars, 
 would be a land without books. 
 
 Libraries are orchestras, and they play for us all the 
 symphonies; they are choirs, and they sing for us the 
 world s do.xologies. 
 
 Libraries are tix^JLvrifS- and therein are performed al' 
 earth's tragedies and life's comedies. 
 
 Libraries are laboratories wherein science works out her 
 miracles; they are observatories, and therein men find their 
 answers in the stars. 
 
 Libraries are pantheons where every soul may solace seek, 
 and every worshiper his God may find, from the Christian 
 Jesus to the Chinese Joss; they are schools where every 
 pupil may his lesson learn. 
 
 Libraries are storehouses wherein men store the wisdom 
 and the experience of the ages. Destroy them, and all 
 our yesterdays might as well have never been. 
 
 I know that there is a different theory from the above, 
 for a poet has said that a civilized man can live without 
 books, but that civilized man can not live without cooks. 
 This is not true. Many a civilized man would have lived 
 longer but for his cook. I therefore stick to my eulogy. 
 
 All praise then, and honor, and gratitude to the founder 
 of this library, Andrew Carnegie. 
 
SOUTHERN COOKING 
 
 (Delivered at a dinner given by Thomas H. Williams, 
 San Francisco, March, 1908.) 
 
 WE WERE invited here this evening to partake of 
 some Southern cooking. The invitation created an 
 appetite. As a theme for a speech Southern cooking is 
 an inspiraiior.. It is worthy of -lie genius of a Shake- 
 speare, of the eloquence of a Cicero, and of the pen of a 
 Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote, as you know, that civilized man 
 can live without books, but that he can not possibly live 
 without Southern cooks and Southern cooking. 
 
 It has nourished many great men — Presidents, generals, 
 and jurists, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Madison, Mon- 
 roe, Marshall, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, the statesman 
 who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the President 
 and general who gave to this government the possibility 
 of its then beginning, the judge who by his construction 
 of the constitution secured to this government perpetuity. 
 
 It has nourished a brave and gallant people, one not 
 always wisely brave, but always assuredly so. 
 
 When their war for secession was over, their battles 
 fought and lost, their armies broken and scattered, their 
 leaders dead or captives, and their conquered banner but 
 a funeral shroud, a party of ragged and barefooted Con- 
 federates were slowly trudging home, discussing as they 
 went the feasibility of migrating to some new country to 
 rebuild their shattered fortunes, when one of them remarked : 
 "You fellows can do as you like, but I am going home, 
 
SOUTHERN COOKING 167 
 
 kiss my wife, plant a crop, and if the Yanks fool with me, 
 I'll lick 'em again." 
 
 Only Southern cooking could have produced such men, 
 such 3. people. 
 
 I do not f 01 get t^^e glories of a New England boiled 
 dinner. I know that it is responsible for the Boston lea 
 Party and Bunker Hill, that it is one of the corner-stones 
 of the republic, that upon it are founded the church, the 
 schoolhouse, and the town meeting, and that but for its 
 sustaining power Webster would not have achieved immor- 
 tality, and yet it pales its ineffectual indigestibility before 
 that trinity of Southern cooking, those chef-d'oeuvres of a 
 Southern kitchen, sweet potatoes, corn bread, and o'possum. 
 
 I rejoice that the Southern men were so few, or this 
 union might have been divided. Southern cooking been con- 
 traband in California, and we would have missed this enjoy- 
 able evening, this sumptuous banquet, this bounteous hos- 
 pitality. 
 
 All glory, then, to Southern cooking, all gratitude to 
 the host of this Southern feast. 
 
AN EASTER TALK 
 
 (Delivered at a literary and musieal entertainment for the benefit 
 
 of Maria Kip Orphanage, San Francisco, at 
 
 the residence of W. F. Goad.) 
 
 LADIES AND Gentlemen: The change from the fair 
 maidens who just sang so sweetly to the man who 
 is about to address you is rather abrupt. It could not 
 possibly have been more so, unless either one of my two 
 colleagues had taken my place. I was about to say that 
 the change reminded me of the hooting of an owl following 
 the singing of the lark; but I can not flatter myself with 
 even the appearance of wisdom, as a fellow-Bohemian, at 
 the Christmas jinks, recently told me, after hearing me 
 speak, that I did not look clever. 
 
 This is my first appearance in a variety entertainment 
 of this kind. Two other members of this troupe, and who 
 do this kind of specialty business, are waiting just outside 
 of the stage door of this theatre. They are playing it 
 rather low down on me, and are ready to fold their tents 
 and steal away if they see me thrown out. If, when 
 I finish, you feel that you can not stand anything more, 
 you would do well to leave. I would, however, advise 
 you to remain, as I do not think that either of these gen- 
 tlemen, with all their talent, can do worse than I am doing. 
 When they speak you will see suspended over the stage the 
 notice: "Do not shoot the performers; they are doing 
 the best they know how !" As for me, I throw myself 
 on your mercy. 
 
AN EASTER TALK 169 
 
 You are met together, at the price of one dollar per 
 head, for charity. I beesech you to devote one dollar's 
 worth of it to me. 
 
 It is said that anything, moral or immoral, good or bad, 
 goes if charity is its ostensible purpose, as charity covers 
 a multitude of sins. Let me have the benefit of this cov- 
 ering. In search for an idea I have in vain laid bare my 
 mind — cut my mental dress low, as it were. Let your 
 charity extend to mental as well as physical decollete. In 
 society the one needs a covering as much as the other. 
 
 On Sunday last, had you asked of the little ones of the 
 world the meaning of Easter, they would have answered 
 that it was that particular time of the year set apart for 
 staining eggs. Thus is the entire Christian scheme of salva- 
 tion reduced to a child's sport, and the faith of all Mayfair 
 that the death of the Savior had enabled it to sin with 
 impunity found to be resting upon an eggshell. 
 
 Were that egg to sniash, and you had each one to rely 
 for salvation upon your own sacrifices, I do not think that 
 any one of you would ever forgive the hen for her poor 
 workmanship. 
 
 If the Lenten season, with its fasting and penance and 
 prayer, had not cleansed your consciences free from all 
 sin, I would hesitate before thus disclosing to you how 
 slight is the foundation for a faith that is so unselfish on 
 your part. 
 
 If, however, the egg can be used to suggest the weakness 
 of an old faith, it is also utilized to illustrate the strength 
 of a new faith called evolution. We were recently told 
 by Professor Le Conte that the whole doctrine of evolution 
 is found in the egg. But here again we find ourselves 
 in trouble. We know what is to be evolved from the egg. 
 We know that there will come a hen who will lay other 
 eggs and cackle to her neighbors much thereover; or, may- 
 
170 AN EASTER TALK 
 
 hap, a rooster who, in plumage gay that should not be 
 his, will crow with exceeding pride over another's achieve- 
 ments. But we do not know whence came the first egg, 
 what hen laid it, or who laid the hen. 
 
 Away, however, with these doubts. This Easter season 
 is a time not for doubt, but for hope's fruition, when nature 
 fulfills its promise in every budding plant and flowering 
 tree, and offers up the perfumes of spring as the incense 
 of its gratitude, teaching that from seeming death new 
 life may come. 
 
 I am not here to preach a sermon. My reverend father 
 has always attended to that part of the business, using 
 me, probably, as a terrible example. But I can not refrain 
 from saying, while in this train of thought, that the object 
 of this particular charity whose cause we are trying to 
 assist, to wit : the care of motherless and fatherless chil- 
 dren, helps to faith, and suggests that sentiment which must 
 have been uttered by every god who is a god, ** Suffer the 
 little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for 
 of such is the kingdom of heaven." In behalf of them 
 I am willing to forego even that small portion of your 
 charity that a few moments ago I desired for myself. 
 
 Theirs is the true religion, a faith born of love, by love 
 sustained; its altar a mother's breast, its shrine a mother's 
 heart, its song of praise a mother's benediction, its sweetest 
 music her lullaby. She is the high priestess of their religion, 
 the goddess of their idolatry. 
 
 Children love without the need of hope, they trust with- 
 out thought of questioning, they gather the rose not knowing 
 of the thorn or of the serpent underneath. To them there 
 is no tree of good and evil, and the Garden of Eden is 
 still their playground. To them there is no resurrection, 
 because they know not of the crucifixion. To their eyes 
 the crown appears without the shadow of the cross behind 
 
AN EASTER TALK 171 
 
 it. To them time and space are not. The past without a 
 beginning and the future without an ending they encom- 
 pass within the narrow limits of the present, while the 
 sun and moon are within their reach, and their tiny hands 
 stretch out to pluck a star as a jewel for their beloved. 
 To them all things are possible. They wave the magic 
 wand of love and grasp the infinite. To them dreams are 
 real, and Dreamland lies just beyond the sunset. Do you 
 not believe it ? Then listen to Little Boy Blue : 
 
 "O mother, my love, if you'll give me your hand, 
 
 And go where I ask you to wander, 
 I will lead you away to a beautiful land — 
 
 The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder. 
 We'll walk in a sweet posie-garden out there. 
 
 Where moonlight and starlight are streaming. 
 And the flowers and the birds are filling the air 
 
 With the fragrance and music of dreaming. 
 
 There'll be no little tired-out boy to undress. 
 
 No questions or cares to perplex you. 
 There'll be no little bruises or bumps to caress. 
 
 No patching of stockings to vex you ; 
 For I'll rock you away on a silver-dew stream. 
 
 And sing you asleep when you are weary. 
 And no one shall know of our beautiful dream 
 
 But you and your own little dearie. 
 
 And when I am tired I'll nestle my head 
 
 In the bosom that's soothed me so often, 
 And the wide-awake stars shall sing, in my stead, 
 
 A song which our dreaming shall soften ; 
 So, mother, my love, let me take your dear hand, 
 
 And away through the starlight we'll wander — 
 Away through the mist to the beautiful land — 
 
 The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder.* 
 
 *Eugene Field's "Mother and Child." 
 
172 AN EASTER TALK 
 
 When, therefore, the mother dies, and the child's altar 
 loses its priestess, the shrine of his idolatry is robbed of its 
 divinity, and the walls of his temple fall about his feet 
 like broken toys, and the present seems a starless midnight 
 beneath whose horizon no Easter morning awaits expectant 
 the resurrection of the Lord, childhood's loss moves heaven 
 and earth to tenderest sympathy, and its weeping touches 
 every heart above and beneath the stars. Help, then, the 
 orphans! you will not lose thereby, but will lay up treas- 
 ures, for the Son of God has said: "Inasmuch as you have 
 done it unto one of the least of these little ones, you have 
 done it unto me." 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 
 
 (Delivered at the Commencement-Day exercises of the University 
 of California, May 17, 1893.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT: By calling on me at this moment 
 you have shown that you know my weakness. I like 
 to follow a woman. But, in this regard, I am in the 
 fashion here at Berkeley, as the whole college this year 
 follows a woman, the fair young medalist. I wish to say, 
 however, that I am compelled to differ from this young 
 lady in her theory of life. Her theme today was "Discon- 
 tent, a Factor of Progress." Her rule does not always hold 
 good. If she and the other young women graduates are 
 factors in progress, and they are very fair ones, I boldly 
 proclaim that there is no discontent in ?ne. My condition 
 passes beyond content into realms of bliss. 
 
 Today, for the first time since I was old enough to know 
 better^ I proudly admit that I am a bachelor. I did not 
 know that a bachelor could be so interesting and fair to 
 look upon until I beheld this forenoon the new accessions 
 to our ranks. It seems rather odd to call a woman a 
 bachelor. I am perfectly willing, however, to surrender 
 my title to any one of them, and will lay down my arms 
 to her who will hold out hers. I am, therefore, glad to 
 be here. This university is doing a grand work. Nature 
 made woman a thing of beauty. This university, in open- 
 ing its doors to woman and awarding her its highest honors, 
 is making her a thing of thought. The better equipped 
 women are mentally, the more cultivation men must acquire. 
 
174 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 
 
 This makes me keenly regret that I did not secure a wife 
 before this broader education made women more discrimi- 
 nating in the selection of a husband. 
 
 But, apart from these considerations, I am glad to be 
 with you today, because I delight in college associations. I 
 like the atmosphere of university life. I believe in univer- 
 sity education. I believe that the education of the many 
 springs from the higher education of the few. I believe 
 that the common schools of America find their inspiration 
 in and spring from the universities, as do the rivers from 
 mountain lakes high up near the clouds. I believe in sus- 
 taining most liberally all universities, and most especially 
 this one, because it is the university of the State of 
 California. 
 
 Love of culture and a due appreciation of university edu- 
 cation attract my good wishes for the success of every col- 
 lege. But love of my State, my pride in her greatness, 
 and my hopes for her future enlist all my interest, energy, 
 and ambition in helping in the building up to a position 
 worthy of California that institution of which all Califor- 
 nians should be the most proud, the State university. 
 
 Every college man regards with reverence, affection, and 
 pride his alma mater. Its memory recalls the ambitions, 
 the aspirations, the struggles, and the friendships of his 
 early manhood. If, however, you associate with his alma 
 mater the name of his State, you add a patriotic glow to 
 his college enthusiasm, and patriotism stimulates culture. 
 
 My alma mater is the university of Virginia. I know 
 the feeling that exists in the Old Dominion in this con- 
 nection. Every Virginian who has attended that university 
 regards her diploma as if it were a patent of nobility, and 
 loves the university more because he loves his State so 
 much. 
 
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 175 
 
 This feeling I would foster and stimulate in California 
 towards the university of California, and I appeal to 
 regents, professors, and alumni especially in this regard. 
 You have your hand on the plow, follow the furrow to the 
 end. 
 
 You, regents, hold in your keeping a sacred trust, you 
 have assimied a heavy responsibility, you will be held to 
 a strict accountability. The people of this State are at 
 last wide awake to the great importance of your duties. 
 Continue to devote to your task an attention as unselfish 
 as it is conscientious, as intelligent as it is earnest, and 
 the regency of this university will be, as it should be, the 
 highest honor a citizen can receive, a certificate that he 
 is a patriot, a gentleman, and a scholar. 
 
 You, professors, are the real helmsmen of the Ship of 
 State. In every counting room, professional office, and pub- 
 lic position in this State your influence must prevail more 
 and more as your graduates increase in number. Magnify 
 your office. 
 
 You, alumni, have the power to magnify this university. 
 Bear in mind that the stronger and better equipped your 
 university becomes, the stronger and better equipped will 
 your State be, and the more reason will you have for being 
 proud of both. 
 
 State pride is the vital spirit of State prosperity, and 
 we all know what abundant reasons we have for our pride 
 in California. Her destiny is a glorious one. The imag- 
 ination almost runs wild when one attempts to recall how 
 nature has blessed her. The republic has been called "A 
 Sisterhood of States." In this sisterhood there is none 
 fairer than California, the daughter of the setting sun, a 
 "Fair Vestal throned by the West." Around her brow a 
 wreath of orange blossoms, o'er her head a bower of roses, 
 beneath her feet a carpet of wild flowers, in her eyes the 
 
176 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE STATE 
 
 blue of the violet, and in her hair a golden sheen. That 
 graceful poet who once lived among you and who sang 
 so sweetly, in whose verse is the freshness of the morning, 
 the quiet of the evening, and the soft light of the rising 
 sun, Edward Rowland Sill, felt California's charm and 
 tuned his harp to sing her praises. He described her as 
 
 "The land that guards the dying day, 
 Whose burning tear, the evening star, 
 Drops softly to the waves afar ; 
 The land where summers never cease 
 Their sunny chant of life and peace; 
 Whose moonlight, poured for years untold. 
 Has drifted down in dust of gold : 
 Whose morning splendors, fallen in showers. 
 Leave ceaseless sunrise in her flowers. 
 ******** 
 
 "O wondrous gift, in goodness given. 
 Each hour anew our eyes to greet. 
 An earth so fair — so close to heaven 
 'Twas trodden by the Master's feet." 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 (Delivered at Reno, Nevada, before the State University, 
 June 2, i8g8.) 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT, Gentlemen of the Faculty, 
 Young Ladies and Gentlemen of the Graduat- 
 ing Class : I know of no more responsible task, nor one 
 that should receive more serious attention, than that of 
 addressing a class of graduates, young men and women 
 who have reached the parting of the roads where the trav- 
 eler must make the correct choice or go astray; who have 
 before them their first real problem, whose correct solution 
 must determine their lot in life ; who have reached the 
 end of playtime, whose aftermath is work which must result 
 ill or well as it is wisely or unwisely performed; who 
 must no longer make mistakes ; who must now make their 
 choice, knowing that "whoever chooses must choose aright. 
 Wrong choice carries its own destruction" ; and who must 
 be told that "earth bears no balsam for mistakes." Bearing 
 all this in mind, I would like to develop these thoughts 
 along a line personal to yourselves. But there is today one 
 question that above all others demands consideration, and 
 therefore I have determined to talk to you upon the moment- 
 ous problem that recently confronted this nation, and to 
 endeavor to help you to the conclusion, if you have not 
 already reached it, that the President and Congress have 
 attempted the only solution that was possible under the 
 circumstances, and that would leave us still worthy of the 
 
178 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 sacred trust of protection to the weak which God has always 
 imposed upon the strong. 
 
 I feel that I can in no other way so forcibly impress 
 upon you the grave importance of right judgment and the 
 fatality of wrong judgment, the necessity of honestly, fear- 
 lessly, and wisely solving the great problems of life, and 
 the disasters that follow their wrong solution. 
 
 I would have you now and always seek first to find rea- 
 sons for believing your country to be in the right, rather 
 than to hasten (as do too many) to prove that she is in 
 the wrong : I would have your first impulse patriotic rather 
 than critical. While every true American is for his country, 
 right or wrong, yet how much more strenuously is he her 
 supporter, if he believes that she is in the right ! A nation, 
 like an individual, must choose aright. 
 
 When the news of the Maine disaster shocked the nation 
 and electrified seventy millions of freemen, and Congress, 
 the South joining hands with the North, by unanimous 
 vote, appropriated fifty millions to the country's needs; 
 when the President's call for volunteers was responded to 
 instantly alike in New Orleans and in Boston, and the 
 Rebel yell mingled in patriotic chorus with the Federal 
 cheer; when the grandson of Grant enlisted upon the staff 
 of the nephew of Robert E. Lee, and the gray and the 
 blue blended into the red, white, and blue; when Balti- 
 more welcomed with Southern hospitality the celebrated 
 Sixth Massachusetts Regiment which in 1861 it had mobbed 
 with Southern hate, giving it flowers and cheers in place 
 of stones and jeers, hugs and kisses in place of kicks and 
 hisses, and upon Baltimore's banner was engraved **For our 
 country and humanity : Baltimore and Boston clasp hands. 
 May the memory of 1861 be effaced by the welcome of 
 1898"; when the South consecrated its allegiance to our 
 one flag with the death of one of her sons, Ensign Bagley, 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 179 
 
 the war's first victim, and with his blood sealed the reunion 
 of the States, I felt that only a great and just cause was 
 worthy of such manifestation of the absolute and eternal 
 oneness and indissolubility of our Union, and that the 
 war was not a mistake, and was worth all its cost. When 
 the sailor Meek uttered, as he died aboard the ill-fated 
 Winslow, "Tell them I died like a man," I felt that such 
 a man should not be sacrificed but in a holy and just war, 
 and I believe that the cause for which he died is worthy 
 of the sacrifice. I hope that you will in your cool judg- 
 ment as well as in your glowing patriotism fully agree 
 with me. 
 
 Hundreds of years ago there journeyed from palace to 
 court, from court to church, from the throne to the altar, 
 and from priest to king, a navigator who believed that the 
 world was much larger than Roman emperor or vandal 
 chief or Spanish monarch had ever dreamed, and that 
 there were undiscovered lands rich in silver and gold that 
 had never paid tribute to Rome, Constantinople, or Madrid. 
 This man was Columbus, and in Spanish ships he crossed 
 the trackless seas, and revealed this continent to an aston- 
 ished world. Such veneration have we always shown for 
 the name of this navigator that in 1893 we gave his name 
 to that White City by the Lake where all the children of 
 the sons of men, from Greenland's icy mountains to Afric's 
 burning sands, and from the wave-washed islands of many 
 seas, gathered in friendly competition much that was best 
 and most beautiful and useful in art and science and skill 
 and trade and agriculture and manufacture, and we entitled 
 it the Columbian Exposition, and to it not only were there 
 sent from Spain truthful reproductions of those famous ships 
 that brought Columbus to these shores, but also there came 
 as the honored guests of this government royal representa- 
 tives of that government that started Columbus on his 
 
180 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 inspired voyage. And yet in 1898, after a lapse of only 
 five years, these two nations are at war, and the big guns 
 that then were but instruments of courtesy, and thundered 
 only in friendly salutations, now are become engines of 
 death, and belch forth missiles carrying destruction to 
 American and Spanish ships. 
 
 For years the nations of Europe have been making the 
 seas populous with their floating leviathans of w^ar, while 
 they have made the land resonant with the roll of drum, 
 blast of trumpet, and tread of marching armies. Their 
 ever watchful sentinels have been for years standing guard 
 with bayonets crossed o'er national boundaries, while their 
 mobilized fleets have given constant w^arning to neighbor- 
 ing thrones. "At every bastioned frontier, every State, Sus- 
 picion, sworded, standing by the gate." 
 
 During these years all our ways have been ways of pleas- 
 antness, and all our paths have been paths of peace, and 
 this republic has gazed with wonder, unmixed with alarm, 
 at these mighty armaments, while its people's shoulders, 
 unbent by military burdens, have stooped only in thriftful 
 toil, and wealth has filled their coffers that needed no 
 soldier guard. 
 
 During this time the United States has maintained an 
 army and built a navy in no way commensurate with its 
 resources, and, as we now discover, insufficient for its needs, 
 apparently oblivious of the need of either. 
 
 Therefore today in this land, to which war seemed most 
 remote, the call to arms rang out with all the suddenness 
 of an alarm of fire at midnight, and we can hardly realize 
 that from counting room and college hall and scholar's 
 desk and workman's bench our citizens have rushed to enlist 
 beneath the stars and stripes to fight a foreign foe upon 
 foreign soil, and that the flag flying from nearly every 
 housetop means war and not a holiday. 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 181 
 
 For the first time the army and navy of the United 
 States leave this continent to invade a foreign land. Never 
 shall I forget the day when the California and other regi- 
 ments embarked for Manila. There was cheering, singing, 
 booming of guns, and waving of flags, and there were 
 mothers and wives whose hearts were heavy and whose eyes 
 were lusterless with tears that would flow. Never shall I 
 forget the succeeding day when those three ships in stately 
 procession steamed along the city front and out through 
 the Golden Gate towards the Orient. The flags dipped a 
 parting salute, from a thousand housetops good-byes were 
 wafted to those departing heroes, from loving lips went 
 the sad adieu, "Good luck to those who see the end, good- 
 bye to those who fall." Why were these sons and fathers 
 and brothers and lovers leaving home in this martial array? 
 For territorial conquest? No! For this nearly all the 
 other nations are now battling, or on the eve thereof. Eng- 
 land is fighting a pathway for civilization up the Nile, and 
 leaving opportunities for English colonization in the wake 
 of her victorious armies. France and England are almost 
 locking horns in their scramble for territory in Western 
 and Central Africa. Germany and England are both ambi- 
 tious for aggrandizement in Southern Africa. Russia, Ger- 
 many, and England are jealously watching one another in 
 their preliminary steps for parceling out China. But the 
 United States has hitherto refrained from acquiring terri- 
 tory beyond this continent, and has pledged itself not to 
 appropriate Cuba by means of this war. Should other Span- 
 ish possessions be taken by us, as some have been, it will be 
 as an incident of the war, not as its cause or inspiration. 
 
 Do we seek more power? No! Of what benefit would 
 more power be to us, holding, as we do, that government 
 exists not for its own aggrandizement, but only for the 
 
182 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 benefit of the individual citizen, who wants not power, 
 but liberty, happiness, and competence. 
 
 Then why have we gone into a war that must cost us 
 millions in money and the lives of many of our brave sol- 
 diers and seamen? 
 
 Possibly it might be answered that Cuba has been a 
 nuisance, that we will no longer have a nuisance next door, 
 and that we have determined to abate this nuisance. But 
 such was not, though it could have been our motive. 
 
 We have taken upon our shoulders the burden of battle, 
 we have assumed the cost of carnage, we are prepared to 
 wear crape for our kindred killed, because we have deter- 
 mined to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in 
 the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, we have 
 ordered Spain to leave Cuba. 
 
 We have entered into a war out of which we could expect 
 that there should come to us only the sufferings of those 
 who fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, 
 only sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having 
 ended misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of 
 duty done and protection to the weak maintained. We are 
 fighting to carry out the principle upon which this govern- 
 ment was founded, namely, the unlifting of the weak, and 
 the resisting of the strong. Never before since the crusades 
 has a nation embarked in such an unselfish adventure. 
 
 We have heretofore been engaged in several wars. We 
 have fought for our own liberty and independence; to 
 maintain the sacredness of our flag upon the seas; to add 
 Texas and California to our national domain; and to pre- 
 serve this union. But this war is not for ourselves, but 
 only for the right of others to live, and like ourselves to 
 be free. 
 
 Ex-President Harrison recently said: "Our foes now are 
 not, thank God, those of our own household. That was a 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 183 
 
 war for the life of the union, this is a war for humanity. 
 That for ourselves; this for the oppressed of another race. 
 We could not escape this conflict. Spanish rule had become 
 effete. We dare not say that we have God's commission 
 to deliver the oppressed the world around. To the distant 
 Armenians we could only send the succor of a faith that 
 overcomes death and the alleviations which the nurse and 
 the commissary can give. 
 
 "But the oppressed Cubans and their starving women and 
 children are knocking at our doors; their cries penetrate 
 our slumbers. They are closely tvithin what we have defined 
 to be the sphere of American influence. We have said 'To 
 us, not to Europe,' and we can not shirk the responsibility 
 and the danger of this old and settled American policy. 
 We have as a nation toward Cuba the same high commis- 
 sion which every brave-hearted man has to strike down the 
 ruffian who in his presence beats a woman or child and 
 will not desist. For what, if not for this, does God make 
 a man or a nation strong?" 
 
 "The mission of this country," says Richard Olney, lately 
 Secretary of State, "if it has a mission, as I verily believe 
 it has, is not merely to pose, but to act — and, while always 
 governing itself by the rules of prudence and common 
 sense, and making its own special interests the first and 
 paramount objects of its care, to forego no fitting oppor- 
 tunity to further the progress of civilization practically as 
 well as theoretically, by timely deeds, as well as by elo- 
 quent words. There is such a thing for a nation as a 
 'splendid isolation,' as when for a worthy cause, for its 
 own independence or dignity or vital interests it unshrink- 
 ingly opposes itself to a hostile world. But isolation that 
 is nothing but a shirking of the responsibilities of high 
 place and great power is simply ignominious." 
 
184 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 Before the first gun was fired many of us were irreso- 
 lute and full of doubt as to the necessity or justice of the 
 war. As a nation we are said to be very irresolute and 
 very full of doubt up to the point when we wake the 
 "drumming guns that have no doubt," after which there 
 is no more irresolution till the last shot is fired. But, as 
 there were some who continued to denounce President Cleve- 
 land long after even the British Prime Minister had admit- 
 ted that this government in the Venezuela matter was act- 
 ing within its right and according to its traditions, so there 
 are some of us who still challenge the necessity of this 
 war. Fortunately those who so think are in the minority, 
 and probably have no flags as yet flying over their homes 
 and offices. Such a patriot, whose heart is not in the 
 struggle, would never have made the name of Dewey rival 
 that of Nelson in immortality. 
 
 I wish your patriotism and mine to be able to hold up 
 its head and challenge the justification of mankind for its 
 zeal in this fight. Thrice is he armed who knows his 
 cause is just. 
 
 Cuba was discovered in 1492 by Columbus on his first 
 voyage, and was almost immediately colonized by the 
 Spaniards in their peculiar manner, to wit, by exterminat- 
 ing the natives, causing a native chief to exclaim to the 
 missionaries of the Cross: *Tf there are Spaniards in 
 heaven, I prefer to go to hell." After four hundred years 
 of Spanish rule in Cuba, aptly named the "Gem of the 
 Antilles," the paradise of the Tropics, fertile in soil beyond 
 all compare, rich in all mineral wealth, and capable of 
 great commercial development, is today a political, agri- 
 cultural, commercial, and financial wreck, whose most act- 
 ive business and trade is that of grave-digging, and where 
 there is neither "peace nor war, but desolation and distress, 
 misery and starvation." Less in area than the State of 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 185 
 
 New York and with a smaller population than the city 
 of New York, it pays its Governor- General a salary as 
 large as that received by the President of the United States, 
 and is burdened with a debt of $300,000,000, incurred by 
 its alien rulers mostly to feed fat a host of foreign officials, 
 and in crushing the liberties of its people. 
 
 Since 1777 the supreme power in this island has been 
 bestowed upon a Governor- General, who has been invested 
 with the absolute power of the commandant of a city dur- 
 ing the time of siege. 
 
 Since that time office, power, patronage, distinction, and 
 rank in their native land have been denied to all Cubans, 
 and since that time race hatred, **a mountain of hate and 
 a sea of blood," between the blacks and the Creoles on 
 the one side and the Spaniards on the other has been the 
 cause of Cuba's troubles, whereby this poor land, once 
 called "the ever faithful isle," has been torn and rent 
 asunder until today it is a shambles and a pesthouse. 
 
 One insurrection has followed close upon another, the 
 cry of liberty bursting from the dying lips of a captured 
 rebel leader, being instantly caught up by some successor. 
 
 There was an insurrection in 1829, another in 1848 
 lasting three years, another in 1855, another in 1868 last- 
 ing ten years, and another in 1895 now waging. 
 
 During all this period Spain has been not only a poor 
 mother to Cuba, but a bad neighbor to us. 
 
 The Cuban question is not a new one to us. For a 
 century it has with varying intensity demanded our con- 
 sideration. From Jefferson to Buchanan eight of our Presi- 
 dents have advocated the annexation of Cuba. In 1809 
 Jefferson prophesied its annexation, and in 1823 John 
 Quincy Adams repeated this prophecy. From time to time 
 we have apprehended its acquisition by some other Euro- 
 pean power, and we have repeatedly announced that we 
 
186 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 would not allow this island to pass from Spain to any 
 other power. 
 
 The probability that the Holy Alliance and King Ferdi- 
 nand might make Cuba the base of operations against 
 these revolted South American provinces led to the mes- 
 sage of President Monroe, in 1823, which was the official 
 announcement of what is known as the Monroe Doctrine, 
 to wit, that we will not allow the acquisition by force of 
 any part of this continent (including Cuba) by any Euro- 
 pean government. 
 
 In 1825, when the South American countries had revolted, 
 and Spain was endeavoring to drown the cause of freedom 
 and the hatred of oppression in the blood of the oppressed, 
 Henry Clay said: "If war should continue between Spain 
 and the new republics, and Cuba should become the object 
 and the theatre of it, its fortunes have such a connection 
 with these United States that they could not be indifferent 
 spectators, and the possible contingencies of such a pro- 
 tracted war might bring upon this government of the 
 United States duties and obligations the performance of 
 which, however painful, they might not be at liberty to 
 decline." 
 
 In 1825 John Quincy Adams suggested to Spain an 
 indirect purchase of Cuba by the United States. In 1848 
 President Buchanan revived this idea of purchase and in 
 1853 President Pierce renewed it. 
 
 In 1854 the United States Ministers to England, France, 
 and Spain jointly protested to the powers of Europe that 
 the possession of Cuba by a foreign country was a menace 
 to the peace of the United States, and proposed that Spain 
 should be offered the alternative of taking two hundred 
 millions of dollars for her sovereignty over Cuba or have 
 it taken from her by force. 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 187 
 
 In 1869 Secretary Fish protested against Valmaceda's 
 brutal warfare against the Cubans, and added that this 
 government could not admit the indefinite protraction of 
 such barbarities. 
 
 President Grant, during the insurrection of 1868 to 1878, 
 in vain offered his mediation for the purpose of effecting 
 the peaceful separation of Cuba from Spain, and in 1875 
 intimated that the United States might have to intervene 
 in order to stop the loss and misery in Cuba. 
 
 In 1873 we came to the verge of war over the execution 
 by the Spanish officials of the captain and fifty-three of 
 the crew of the Virginius, an American steamer, loaded 
 with supplies and ammunition for the insurgents. 
 
 In 1896 President Cleveland said: 
 
 "The spectacle of the utter ruin of an adjoining coun- 
 try, by nature one of the most fertile and charming on 
 the whole globe, would engage the serious attention of the 
 United States in any circumstances. It should be added 
 that it can not be reasonably assumed that the hitherto 
 expectant attitude of the United States will be indefi- 
 nitely maintained. * * * By the course of events we may 
 be drawn into such an unusual and unprecedented condition 
 as will fix a limit to our patient waiting for Spain to end the 
 contest. When the inability of Spain to deal successfully 
 with the insurgents has become manifest, and it is demon- 
 strated that her sovereignty is extinct in Cuba for all pur- 
 poses of its rightful existence, and when a hopeless struggle 
 for its re-establishment has degenerated into a strife which 
 means nothing more than the useless sacrifice of human life 
 and the utter destruction of the very subject matter of the 
 conflict, a sitaution will be presented in which our obliga- 
 tions to the sovereignty of Spain will be superseded by higher 
 obligations which we can hardly hesitate to recognize and 
 discharge." 
 
188 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 President Cleveland offered mediation, and Spain replied 
 that there was no effectual way to pacify Cuba unless it 
 should begin with the actual submission of the insurgents 
 to the mother country. Too well had a century's expe- 
 rience of cruelty, oppression, extortion, bad faith, and 
 tyranny the most crushing taught the Cubans what submis- 
 sion to such a mother meant, too well did they know that 
 there was poison on such a mother's lips, and that her 
 embrace was death. There was consequently no submis- 
 sion, no pacification, but, instead, the driving of 400,000 
 people, the women and children, the old and helpless, the 
 sick and infirm, all who would not or could not fight under 
 either banner, into vile pens to starve and die, and the 
 laying waste of the homes they had occupied, until the 
 dead by the hundred thousands filled these shambles, putre- 
 fying proofs of Spanish honor, Spanish pride, Spanish 
 cruelty, and Spanish incompetency to govern Cuba. Wey- 
 lerism added new terrors to inhumanity. 
 
 You know what President McKinley has said of this 
 policy of devastation and concentration : 
 
 'Tt has utterly failed as a war measure. It was not 
 civilized warfare. It was extermination. Against this 
 abuse of the rights of war I have felt constrained on 
 repeated occasions to enter the firm and earnest protest 
 of this government. 
 
 "The long trial has proved that the object for which 
 Spain has waged the war can not be attained. The fire 
 of insurrection may flame or may smolder with varying 
 seasons, but it has not been and it is plain that it can not 
 be extinguished by present methods. The only hope of 
 relief and repose from a condition which can not longer 
 be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the 
 name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf 
 of endangered American interests which give us the right 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 189 
 
 and the duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must 
 stop." 
 
 Then came the blowing up of the Maine, and the kill- 
 ing of two hundred and fifty-six American seamen in 
 Havana harbor, and Spain's practical response, "What are 
 you going to do about it?" Then war was declared because 
 it was unavoidable, peace and war being not always of our 
 own choosing. 
 
 This government of the people, by the people, and for 
 the people could no longer sit idly by and see a neigh- 
 boring people destroyed by a tyrant because, forsooth, his 
 sovereignty was imperiled by their struggle to be free. 
 
 This Christian, human, civilized people could no longer 
 listen to the sounds of suffering that every wind brought 
 from Cuba, and could no longer witness scenes of cruelty 
 surpassing the Inquisition, and not lift a hand to help, 
 because, forsooth, a tyrant's honor would be thereby 
 offended. 
 
 This government, which had spent two millions in trying 
 to stop filibustering, could no longer expend its revenues 
 in helping Spain to continue its tyranny and cruelty; it 
 could no longer have the administration of its internal 
 affairs disturbed by this constant obtrusion of a question 
 that Spain could not settle and which the conscience of 
 our people demanded should be settled. 
 
 This government and this people could not forget or 
 forgive the treachery or the criminal incompetence that 
 destroyed the Maine. 
 
 We had in vain tried diplomacy. We had long listened 
 to the promises that the Spaniards knew they could not 
 keep, to proposals of reform that they knew they did not 
 intend to grant. "We were dealing with a power whose 
 methods have discredited her in the realms of truth and 
 justice, a power which has never lifted its heel from the 
 
190 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 neck of a subjugated people until compelled by force," a 
 power that could not treat the insurgent Cubans with 
 humanity because it could not understand humanity towards 
 an insurgent. 
 
 Therefore we are at war with Spain, and we propose 
 to teach her by the lesson of shot and shell that Amer- 
 ican gunners backed by the impulse of freedom to enslaved 
 and suffering humanity are invincible, that a new day has 
 dawned for Cuba, and its sun is the torch that liberty holds 
 to light the world, a torch whose flame it is our sacred 
 duty to keep burning. 
 
 Over the victims of Spanish misrule floats the buzzard, 
 and the eagle has winged its flight to drive this vulture 
 from the Antilles. 
 
 For centuries Spain commanded the attention of the civ- 
 ilized world and the tribute of many nations. Her armies 
 spread her power by land, and by sea her vessels carried 
 her flag to many distant climes. By conquest and discovery 
 she rivaled ancient Rome in greatness. In the sixteenth 
 century Philip the Second had upon the continent of Europe 
 no antagonist worthy of his steel. His army was the largest 
 and best disciplined in the world, his fleet were more 
 numerous than that of any other power. Upon his brow 
 he could place the royal crowns of Spain, Portugal, Naples, 
 and Sicily, and the ducal coronets of Milan and the Neth- 
 erlands. In Africa and in Asia his domain extended, while 
 in America he was head of an empire Caesar would have 
 envied. Since the downfall of the Roman Empire no such 
 preponderating power has existed in the world. 
 
 Today she again attracts the attention of the civilized 
 world, but this time by her dying groans rather than her 
 shouts of victory, by the smoke of the smouldering ashes 
 of her grandeur rather than the glare of the camp fires 
 of her conquering armies, by the cries of the helpless vie- 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 191 
 
 tims of her cruelty and intolerance rather than by the hal- 
 lelujahs of a free and prosperous people. 
 
 For centuries possessing ports in many lands, colonies in 
 every clime, and subject islands in many seas, today, at 
 the close of this century, from her crown drop all her 
 ocean jewels, and neither East nor Western Ind will longer 
 do her obeisance. 
 
 In the sixteenth century, when Boabdil, the last of the 
 Moors, pausing in his retreat before the victorious Span- 
 iards, looked down from an eminence, since called the Hill 
 of Tears, for a last glimpse of the beautiful Alhambra, 
 and wept, his royal mother reproached him for bewailing 
 as a woman the kingdom he had not defended as a man. 
 At the close of this century, as the last Spanish sovereign 
 to rule over any part of this Western World weeps that 
 the gem of the Antilles will never again glisten in the 
 Spanish crown, and that the Spanish flag will no longer 
 wave over the islands of the Eastern or Western sea, well 
 may her royal son reproach her for bewailing as his mother 
 the lands she had not protected as a queen, well may the 
 Angel of Mercy reproach her for bewailing in her Spanish 
 pride the million of subjects to whom her government 
 had been merciless. 
 
 The last Moorish sovereign looked back upon a land 
 where his ancestors had ruled with tolerance, and where 
 the Alhambra remained, a monument of Moorish art and 
 genius to challenge the admiration of mankind as long 
 as love of the beautiful holds sway in human souls. The 
 last of the Spanish sovereigns to rule in Cuba looks back 
 upon a land where she and her predecessors had ruled with 
 savage intolerance, and where the Reconcentrado barracks 
 will remain, monuments of Spanish brutality, at the descrip- 
 tion of which mankind will shudder as long as one touch 
 of nature makes the whole world kin. 
 
192 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 Let crowned heads waste their sympathy upon this royal 
 mother and son for the impending loss of a throne that 
 does not deserve to stand. We, recalling the Moors whom 
 the occupants of this throne centuries ago massacred, the 
 Jews whom they pitilessly drove into helpless exile, the 
 Protestant martyrs whom they burned at the stake, the 
 natives of South America whom by millions upon millions, 
 by whole races and nations, they remorselessly exterminated, 
 and the Cubans whom the present queen has starved into 
 the submission that comes with death, recalling the fact that 
 for every one of the 200,000 soldiers the queen has sent 
 into Cuba one Cuban man, woman, or child has died from 
 starvation, or disease engendered thereby, that, though 
 Spain has claimed sovereignty over the Philippines for four 
 hundred years, she has conferred the blessing of civiliza- 
 tion and Christianity upon only a small part thereof, neg- 
 lecting and abusing her stewardship, we have sympathy only 
 for the colonists upon whom the blighting shadow of this 
 throne has so long fallen so fatally. 
 
 The history of Spain has been the history of exagger- 
 ated pride, overwhelming intolerance, and extreme cruelty, 
 illuminated by the torch of Torquemada, while across it 
 like a bar sinister runs a trail of blood from the cham- 
 bers of the Inquisition. 
 
 Earth bears no balsam for mistakes, whether they are 
 committed by individuals or by nations, and Spain's mis- 
 takes have left her shorn of her rich colonies, with a bank- 
 rupt treasury, a ruined credit, a tottering throne, an illiterate 
 population, and anarchy threatening her social existence. 
 In her political philosophy the king, the noble, was every- 
 thing, the people nothing. "Her heavy throne, ringed by 
 swords and rich with titled show, is based on fettered mis- 
 ery below." She chose the wrong road, and wrong choice 
 has worked her destruction. The fate of all the empires 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 193 
 
 that have preceded her on this road to national decay 
 awaits her. She is a dying empire. 
 
 "Why died the empires? Like the forest trees 
 Did nature doom them? Or did slow disease 
 Assail their roots and poison all their springs? 
 The old-time story answers; nobles, kings 
 Have made and been the State, their names alone 
 Its history holds ; its wealth, its wars their own : 
 Their wanton will could raise, enrich, condemn. 
 The toiling millions lived and died for them." 
 
 For Spain the handwriting is on the wall. Her doom 
 is sealed. It was long ago written in prophetic ink on 
 sybilline leaves that we would be God's chosen messengers 
 of his vengeance upon her for her sins. "A hideous skele- 
 ton among living nations, a warning spectacle to the world, 
 if her punishment had not overtaken her, men would have 
 said 'there is no retribution, there is no God.' " 
 
 I have stated that we have entered upon this war solely 
 to put a stop to man's inhumanity to man in the Island 
 of Cuba, expressly disavowing any design of territorial 
 acquisition as to this island. Other things may have 
 whetted our zeal, but they would not alone have caused 
 war. But now that war has developed, destiny, that shapes 
 our ends, hew them as we will, has opened her Pandora's 
 box, and out has rushed a score of causative events that 
 are leading and driving us into the international world, 
 into the company of the nations, where that nation will 
 win that has the power, and that one will hold that can. 
 From a potential we must now become an actual great 
 power, and upon the camera of the future we must cast 
 one of the largest shadows or none at all. 
 
 Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- 
 form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the 
 workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomor- 
 
194 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the 
 inevitable, towards which the unerring and irresistible mag- 
 net of fate hurries the nations. 
 
 Yesterday we were hedged in by the Chinese wall of 
 American isolation, and deaf, blind, and heedless of the 
 world without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of 
 our true place among the nations nor secured its advant- 
 ages. Yesterday's tomorrow finds that wall razed by the 
 magic battering ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched 
 the Philippine expeditions. No longer can our Ship of 
 State keep within sight of the shores of an inland lake, 
 but henceforth it must navigate the open sea. Upon this 
 sea there are other ships, some large and powerful, others 
 weak and small. With some of them we must in time 
 come in conflict, with others we must sail in friendly com- 
 panionship. If coming events have cast their shadows 
 before, and the friendly and unfriendly utterances concern- 
 ing us that are heard today in Europe are prophetic of 
 future international relations, there is a certain mighty ship 
 of State with which ours must eventually combine into 
 an armada that shall rule the seas. 
 
 If all this be not merely fancy, and the time shall come 
 when with colonial possessions beyond the seas, with our 
 Atlantic and Pacific Coasts tied more closely together by 
 the Panama Canal, and with our flag floating over as 
 large a navy as our political and commercial interests 
 require, we are compelled to disregard Washington's fare- 
 well address, and to form a foreign alliance, then, as Mr. 
 Chamberlain recently said of the United States, I say of 
 England : 
 
 "There is a powerful and generous nation, using our 
 language, bred of our race and having interests identical 
 with ours. I would go so far as to say that, terrible as 
 war may be, even war itself would be cheaply purchased 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 195 
 
 if, in a great and noble cause, the Stars and Stripes and 
 the Union Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon 
 alliance." 
 
 With the exception of England, none of the European 
 nations give us credit for our real motives in this war. 
 To most of them we are an impertinent, obtrusive, bully- 
 ing, menacing, grasping people, not content with all of 
 America, but ambitious of intruding into Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa. Not only have they misconstrued our motives, but 
 they have also doubted our courage and skill in battle, 
 thinking us simply a nation of shopkeepers. Dewey's gun- 
 ning has shattered this ill-disguised contempt of us, it has 
 shown them, to use the words of a typical Yankee, that if 
 we can slaughter our pigs in peace we can also slaughter 
 our enemies in war, it has proven that, though in this land 
 wealth has accumulated, men have not decayed, and that 
 victory upon the waves is still the birthright of American 
 seamen. 
 
 By England alone are we entirely understood, and but 
 for her recent firm stand Austria, Italy, France, Germany, 
 and Portugal would most probably have attempted forcibly 
 to stay our arms. This appreciation and friendly conduct 
 have brought much closer together these two branches of 
 the Anglo-Saxon race, whose laws and institutions are in 
 a great measure the same, who "of all the great powers 
 are the only two in whose national life freedom, in any 
 real sense, has made her home," who "are the only two 
 who have not by choice been bound in the frightful chains 
 of that military madness which has turned the European 
 continent into a camp," who "are both very cordially 
 detested and very bitterly envied by most of the military 
 powers," and of whom Jefferson said in 1825 : "These 
 two nations holding cordially together have nothing to fear 
 from the united world. They will be the models for the 
 
196 THE WAR WITH SPAIN 
 
 regeneration of man, the sources from which representative 
 government is to flow over the earth." 
 
 It was the Anglo-Saxon race that shattered Spain's 
 world-spreading empire, curbed the ambition of Philip the 
 Second, crushed his Armada, and made England mistress 
 of the seas. It was the Anglo-Saxon race, more than the 
 snows of Russia, that vanquished Napoleon, prevented the 
 triumph of personal imperialism, and stood guard at St. 
 Helena over the military genius of all ages. It is the 
 Anglo-Saxon race that is "the pioneer of progress and 
 the stubborn defenders of liberty" ; it is the Anglo-Saxon 
 race that gave to mankind civil liberty, whereby authority 
 and law are harnessed together to the chariot of modern civ- 
 ilization ; and it is this Anglo-Saxon race from which we are 
 sprung. In our religious proclivities, in our system of laws, 
 and in our literature we are as Anglo-Saxon as the British. 
 ''We, too, are heirs of Runnymede, and Shakespeare's fame 
 and Cromwell's deed are not alone our mother's." We are 
 Anglo-Saxon in the men who today are the controlling ele- 
 ment in our population, who lead and represent us, and we 
 propose in the near future that the nations of the earth shall 
 respect our guns and gunners as much as they do those of 
 our English cousins, and that we as well as England shall 
 henceforth be recognized as much for our strength as for 
 our trade. 
 
 In the keen competition of the immediate future for the 
 vast trade of the Orient, where the flower of civilization is 
 just budding, we must be in a position to demand and 
 exact our share, or we will lose it. We must match Port 
 Arthur, Wei-a-Wei, and Keao Chou with Manila. 
 
 When the Panama Canal is completed, as in the near 
 future it must be, at either end our sentinels must stand 
 guard, and our flag must have a resting place on some of 
 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN 197 
 
 the islands that command the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of 
 Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean. 
 
 Behind courage there must be strength. Behind great 
 national interests there must be immediate and sufficient 
 protection known of all men. We have courage, but behind 
 it little strength immediately available. We have great 
 national interests, but it is now known of all men that the 
 protection behind them is possible, but remote. Neither in 
 the Atlantic, Pacific, nor in the Orient have we a spot 
 where an American ship can coal as of right. If we would 
 be as independent as we can be powerful, all this should 
 be changed. 
 
 The God of Battles has planted our flag upon islands 
 in the distant Pacific. He will soon unfurl it upon islands 
 in the Atlantic. A friendly people may soon unfold it 
 where the waters break on Honolulu's coral reefs. From 
 now on, wherever it is raised, except in Cuba, it is raised to 
 stay, and there it will remain as long as American courage 
 backs up American genius upon the decks of an American 
 man-of-war. 
 
 "Earth bears no balsam for mistakes." "Whoever chooses 
 must choose aright." God grant that the American people 
 have chosen aright, that they have made no mistake in 
 fighting this battle for humanity, and that its effect upon 
 our future may redound to the glory of our country, and 
 to the dissemination and perpetuation of popular govern- 
 ment throughout the world. 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 (Delivered at the University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, 
 September ii, 1908.) 
 
 YOUNG Ladies and Gentlemen, Students of the 
 University of Nevada : I hope that the young ladies 
 will not feel that, in the remarks I shall present to you, 
 I am overlooking them. Apparently I shall be addressing 
 only the young men, because I shall confine myself, for 
 brevity, to the use of the personal pronoun "he," instead 
 of using the phrase "he or she." Though my experience 
 has been nothing to speak of, and my information only 
 hearsay, yet I am convinced that "he" always embraces 
 "she." Therefore, for all of you is my speech intended. 
 
 Just a little over ten years ago I had the pleasure of 
 addressing the students of this university. It was at the 
 commencement exercises in June, 1898. A most memorable 
 incident marked the occasion. The war with Spain had just 
 begun, a wave of patriotism was sweeping over the country, 
 and flag-raising was the order of the day. A new flag was 
 to be raised on your campus. The judge of this district 
 delivered a very eloquent address. The flag was made fast 
 to the halyards and hoisted. There was a dead calm, and 
 the flag, as it slowly ascended, clung listlessly to the pole, as 
 if it felt no concern in what was taking place. The crowd 
 looked on in silence. Instantly, however, when it had 
 reached the top of the pole, and the cannon began to boom 
 and the band to play in its honor, it seemed to awake to its 
 position, its might, majesty, and dominion. I imagine that 
 
CHARACTER 199 
 
 it called upon the winds for their obeisance, for imme- 
 diately out of the heavens they came, and, borne upon 
 their noiseless wings, it was unfurled in all its starry splen- 
 dor of red, white, and blue. It was the most inspiring 
 sight our eyes had ever seen, and from every throat cheers 
 rang out in patriotic applause. Then it was that a lady 
 standing at my side exclaimed, "God knows when the 
 wind should blow." 
 
 While this was occurring the Oregon was flying this 
 flag on its famous voyage around Cape Horn that ended 
 in victory over the Spanish armada at Santiago. Recently 
 sixteen battleships, each one vastly superior to the Oregon, 
 have borne it on a voyage of peace from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific, and are now carrying it around the world, 
 receiving for it the admiration and hospitable greeting of 
 applauding nations. 
 
 Since June, 1898, one more star has appeared upon its 
 firmament of blue, upon this flag of ours we so proudly 
 proclaim the Star-Spangled Banner. 
 
 Love and respect that flag! Let your manhood and 
 womanhood be worthy of its protecting folds ! 
 
 It may be admitted as a truism that scholarship is not 
 an end, but only a means to an end, and that that end is 
 correct living; that a college education that simply stores 
 the mind with knowledge has failed in its purpose; and 
 that knowledge is valuable only when it is the handmaiden 
 to character. I speak of character apart from success, as 
 something more valuable than success. It is that quality 
 that enables a man to stand the test of a great emergency, 
 as did many of the buildings in San Francisco during the 
 earthquake of April, 1906, while others, grander, taller, 
 and more conspicuous in the world's eye, crumbled and 
 fell. It is that quality without which a man can not 
 acquire the entire confidence of any one. It is made up 
 
200 CHARACTER 
 
 of humility, self-understanding, strength, courage, honor, 
 and devotion to duty. 
 
 Without it genius is a will-o'-the-wisp leading to disas- 
 ter. With it genius is a pillar of cloud by day and a 
 pillar of fire by night, a sure guide to safety and success. 
 
 The main purpose, therefore, of each one of you is to 
 develop character, and in this you will have succeeded if 
 in after life it can be said of you, as has been said of 
 Grover Cleveland: 
 
 "He stood like a soldier at his post, with no 
 thought but the performance of his duty, and 
 with very little hope of reward except that which 
 came from his own conscience." 
 
 Grover Cleveland is one of the world's admitted heroes, 
 and this because he labored with no thought but the per- 
 formance of his duty. It is this spirit that fills the world 
 with numberless heroes, recognized and unrecognized. 
 
 Recently in New York, in a baseball game between two 
 of the leading clubs, the pitcher of one of the clubs pitched 
 a remarkable game and won a victory for his club, while 
 his baby at home was dying. Never before had he dem- 
 onstrated such ability. He was absolute master of the ball. 
 It obeyed his wish to the slightest curve. It magically 
 approached the plate, moving upward or downward at his 
 bidding, completely baffling the greatest batters in the 
 opposing club. They could not unravel his curves, and his 
 club won a great victory. Then, while thousands of people 
 were wildly cheering his great pitching, he went to his 
 dressing-room, collapsed, and wept like a baby, and rushed 
 to the railroad station to board a train for the bedside of 
 his dying child in Pennsylvania. 
 
 He was simply a baseball player, his name unknown to 
 fame, and yet, had he been a slayer of thousands in the 
 
CHARACTER 201 
 
 game of war, where powder backs the balls, and victory 
 by its cruelty humanity appalls, no greater hero would he 
 be. He had done his duty for duty's sake, and sacrificed 
 himself, and this is heroism equally on the ballfield as on 
 the battlefield. 
 
 Dickens somewhere speaks of a quiet nook in a country 
 churchyard, where the daisies bloom on the bosoms of the 
 dead. I know of a quiet nook in a country graveyard 
 where pine-burrs cover the bosoms of the dead, and pine 
 trees point in solemn mien the pathway of the soul from 
 the sod to the sun. Some years ago, while aimlessly wan- 
 dering through this city of the dead, then long abandoned, 
 I noticed a tombstone bearing the following inscription : 
 "Brave, gifted, generous, and faithful, he 
 closed a Hfe of usefulness and purity by a 
 death of honor," 
 
 Impressed with the beauty of such an epitaph, I sought 
 the name of the hero so obscurely buried. On the oppo- 
 site side of the shaft I noted the following words: 
 "No, leave me here, I might put you in peril." 
 
 These were his last words, when, wounded, he was 
 offered assistance from the field. Upon the third side was 
 written the following : 
 
 "Henry Meredith, 
 
 Born 
 
 in Hanover County, 
 
 State of Virginia, 
 
 on the 14th day of August, 
 
 A. D. 1826, 
 
 Died 
 
 in battle, at Pyramid Lake, 
 
 in Utah Territory, 
 
 on the 13th day of May, 
 
 A. D. 1860." 
 
 Inquiring in Nevada City, where this cemetery is situ- 
 ated, I learned that Meredith, while leading a company of 
 
202 CHARACTER 
 
 volunteers against the Indians near Pyramid Lake in Utah, 
 in 1860, had been ambushed and wounded. The quota- 
 tion upon his tomb was the expression of his unselfish soul. 
 He knew that they could not save him, but would risk 
 their lives by remaining with him. He stood like a soldier 
 at his post, with no thought but the performance of his 
 duty and the safety of his comrades by the sacrifice of 
 himself. He was in every sense a hero, though today quite 
 unheralded. 
 
 This humble monument and this almost forgotten grave 
 teach us one of life's bitterest and yet one of its best 
 lessons. 
 
 To be buried in some pantheon erected by a nation to 
 its illustrious dead, to be enrolled in some temple of fame 
 as one of those who were not born to die, to have one's 
 name carved high up, above the fog and smoke and dust 
 of daily life, where the sunlight of glory forever illumines ; 
 to be sung of in song, and read of in story — these are 
 thought to be life's greatest inspirations to successful 
 endeavor. Such a reward is considered the bag of gold 
 at the end of the rainbow-path of promise. 
 
 To die upon the firing line, facing the foe and holding 
 on to the flag, and yet to have one's name omitted from 
 the rostra; to risk one's life or give it in the performance 
 of duty; to live a life of usefulness and purity and die 
 a death of honor, and yet be buried in a quiet nook in an 
 obscure country graveyard, far from the madding crowd, 
 where one is soon forgot, would seem to be but a poor 
 reward for heroic living or heroic dying, and might well 
 justify the exclamation: 
 
 "111 hath it ended that was well begun, 
 Into the shadow and out of the sun." 
 
 And yet, to come to such a desperate conclusion would be 
 
CHARACTER 203 
 
 to read wrong the lesson of life, to misinterpret its true 
 inspiration. 
 
 The grandest pantheon, the sublimest temple of fame, is 
 not one built by human hands. It has one great architect, 
 but builders as countless as the sands of the sea or the 
 dew-drops of the dawn. It is constructed of sacrifice as 
 well as of success; of brave failures as well as of success- 
 ful endeavors; of battles nobly fought, though not always 
 won; of good deeds and kind intentions; of pure lives 
 and honest ones; of faith maintained and confidence 
 unabused; of honor unstained, and of charity that vaunteth 
 not itself. Its corner-stone is the Rock of Ages. Fire 
 can not consume it, nor earthquakes overthrow it. It has 
 tablets for all the world's heroes, for the many that lie 
 obscurely buried and are by men forgot, no less than for 
 those whom a Westminster entombs and whom none forget. 
 No one worthy to be enrolled therein has lived in vain. 
 
 If we read life's lesson aright, we learn that man's 
 noblest incentive is not other men's praise or the world's 
 applause, but his own approval, and that that can come only 
 from the consciousness of duty done for duty's sake. The 
 task performed, its own reward must bring. 
 
 Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago Lord Mansfield 
 gave most eloquent utterance to this idea. John Wilkes 
 had been outlawed and banished, and had returned and 
 applied for a reversal of the judgment of outlawry. The 
 matter came on before Lord Mansfield sitting in the Court 
 of Kings Bench. The king bitterly opposed the reversal, 
 and the court room was filled with Wilkes' enemies, who 
 even threatened the life of the Chief Justice. But the 
 latter, facing this angry mob, and indifferent to a monarch's 
 frown, granted Wilkes's petition, and then addressed the 
 mob in these words: "I wish popularity, but it is that 
 popularity which follows, not that which is run after. It 
 
204 CHARACTER 
 
 is that popularity which sooner or later never fails to do 
 justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means. I 
 will not do that which my conscience tells me is wrong 
 upon this occasion to gain the huzzas of thousands or the 
 daily praise of all the papers which come from the press." 
 
 Strive not, then, primarily for applause, but for the 
 accomplishment of the undertaking before you; live only 
 for results by labor accomplished and with honor achieved; 
 let the permanence of your work be more precious to you 
 than your glory as a worker; subordinate self to attain- 
 ment; fix your gaze upon your task and not upon your 
 mirror; fight for a cause, and not merely for victory, and 
 not only will the world be the better for your living, but 
 you will hear the angels sing : "Well done, good and faith- 
 ful servant, enter into the joy of thy king." 
 
 It has been said that, if there is one place above another 
 where a man should be sure of acquiring habits of the 
 strictest honesty, it is a college. "The valuable thing 
 which a university should give a student is the ideal of 
 truth as the supreme object of human endeavor." Pos- 
 sessed of such an ideal, he can not fail in duty. 
 
 Recently two members of the squad of Harvard oars- 
 men, including one of the 'varsity eight, were suspended 
 from the university and could not row. The news was 
 received with something like consternation by those who 
 were eager for a Harvard victory, and multitudinous were 
 the requests for leniency. Even President Roosevelt peti- 
 tioned for their reinstatement. The grand old president of 
 Harvard, however, uninfluenced by power or place, loving 
 honor more than a college victory, did not know what 
 pressure was nor compromise with wrong, and replied to 
 the President of the United States in these memorable 
 words: "Each man did a dishonorable thing. A keen and 
 sure sense of honor being the finest result of college life, 
 
CHARACTER 205 
 
 I think the college and graduates should condemn effect- 
 ively dishonorable conduct." 
 
 At the University of Virginia the students have acquired 
 habits of such strict honesty that cheating at examination 
 is considered an act that no gentleman would commit, and 
 they themselves compel a fellow-student who cheats to 
 leave college. In the language of President Elliott, they 
 thus very effectively condemn dishonorable conduct. 
 
 I hope that you emulate in this the University of Virginia 
 and have adopted as your rule of conduct, "No gentleman 
 will cheat at examinations." 
 
 It matters not whether you cheat in your examinations 
 at college, or in your business in after life. In either case 
 you attempt to obtain under false pretenses that to which 
 you are not entitled, in either case you do a dishonorable 
 act, in either case you cease to be a gentleman. 
 
 Bear in mind that it is the first falsehood that is the 
 push that starts you downhill. It is so hard to stop the 
 descent and climb back. Facilis descensus, difficilis ascensus. 
 It is so hard after the first falsehood to hold up your 
 head and look yourself in the face. 
 
 As you can never fearlessly meet the gaze of the man 
 who knows you have cheated, so you can never hold up the 
 mirror and fearlessly meet your own gaze when once you 
 have cheated. Be honest in your examinations, and you 
 will be a student unafraid of any one. 
 
 The student who cheats cheapens the diploma of his 
 alma mater. A diploma, when honestly obtained, is a 
 certificate of merit, but when dishonestly obtained it is a 
 badge of shame. 
 
 As a notable example of those who had a keen and 
 sure sense of honor, I need only mention the name of 
 John W. Mackay, whose statue adorns and honors this 
 university, and of whom an orator said, at the recent unveil- 
 
206 CHARACTER 
 
 ing of this statue: "He never lied or cheated, or under 
 any subtle pretense of any kind deprived another of what 
 was rightfully his." 
 
 Mr. Mackay's life is a striking instance of that life 
 about which I have spoken and that I would have you lead. 
 He never sought the limelight of public approbation. He 
 seemed to care little for the world's applause. He rose 
 from poverty to plenty by doing his duty in that state 
 of life in which it pleased God to put him. He was able, 
 industrious, honest, and kind. 
 
 I remember an instance concerning him in connection 
 with the death of that well-known Bohemian and poet, 
 Daniel O'Connell. On the day of the announcement in 
 the press of O'Connell's death, I received a message from 
 Mr. Mackay requesting me to come to his office in the 
 Nevada Block in San Francisco. Upon arriving there he 
 handed me a check drawn to my order for one thousand 
 dollars, and directed me to cash it and send the money to 
 O'Connell's widow, at the same time strictly enjoining me 
 from letting her know the name of the donor. He had 
 known and helped O'Connell in the old bonanza days in 
 Virginia City; he knew that he never had much money; 
 he supposed that his family were left destitute, and he 
 wanted to help the poor and needy without any desire for 
 gratitude or to establish a reputation for philanthropy, but 
 merely because he wanted to be kind. 
 
 As a notable example of those who had a keen and 
 sure sense of duty I mention again the name of Grover 
 Cleveland. He had the instinct of duty regardless of glory, 
 and in this respect was like the sailors in Nelson's fleet who, 
 when the Admiral's famous message, "England expects every 
 man to do his duty," was delivered to them, muttered "Duty ! 
 We've always done it. Why not?" 
 
CHARACTER 207 
 
 Just before the expiration of Cleveland's last term of 
 office he said to a friend, who wished to publish a defense 
 of his administration: "In a few hours I shall cease to be 
 President. The people seem to have deserted me, and I 
 would advise you to withhold this publication. Since I 
 have done my duty as I saw it, I feel that I need no 
 defense." 
 
 At another time a prominent Democrat said to him: "If 
 you attempt to stand above your party you will find your- 
 self in the cold before you are through with it" ; to which 
 he replied: "Yes, people who occupy high altitudes are 
 often in the cold. As for me, I shall do right as God 
 gives me to see the right, and let the consequences rest 
 with Him." He did not accept Meredith's aphorism: 
 ''Expediency is man's wisdom. Doing right is God's." On 
 the contrary, he believed that doing right was man's wis- 
 dom as well as God's. 
 
 A eulogist has truthfully written of him: "The honors 
 and trappings of office were nothing to him, the obliga- 
 tions and duties of office were everything to him. He 
 accepted an issue as it was presented to him, and chose his 
 part without considering his own fortunes." His election 
 was the triumph of character, his fame its eulogy. 
 
 America has produced many men gifted with genius and 
 with a sure and keen sense of honor, and inspired by zeal 
 for the performance of duty, but undazzled by the pros- 
 pect of personal power. The greatest of these was Wash- 
 ington. Never a seeker for place, he never hesitated to 
 obey his country's call, and ever served her with a patience, 
 patriotism, and prowess that neither adversity nor calumny 
 discouraged, nor did lust for power ever divert him from 
 the singleness of his purpose, the performance of his duty, 
 or his noble self-neglect. 
 
208 CHARACTER 
 
 Alexander Hamilton's genius for statescraft made him the 
 interpreter of the Federal idea that was the corner-stone 
 of the Union, but it was Washington's character that upheld 
 Hamilton at every crisis of the struggle and without which 
 Hamilton could not have welded the victorious colonies into 
 a more perfect union. 
 
 There may have been statesmen more profound and gen- 
 erals more brilliant in achievement than Washington, but 
 no one of a loftier character, and therefore a recent English 
 historian has written of him that he was a man whom it 
 lias never been possible to praise beyond its merits. 
 
 Lincoln was most like Washington in unselfish devotion 
 to duty, never swerving from the path that conscience 
 prompted and humanity dictated, unruffled by calumny, 
 undismayed by defeat, untempted by ambition, unspoiled 
 by the possession of imperial power. 
 
 This was his golden rule of life: 'T am not bound to 
 win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to suc- 
 ceed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have." Mem- 
 orize this rule thus worded: 'T am not bound to win, but 
 I am bound to be true. Knowing the right, I must not the 
 wrong pursue." 
 
 Chief Justice Marshall was America's greatest jurist, 
 great not only as the expounder of the constitution, but 
 as its most fearless judge. To him more than to any other 
 do we owe our present form of government. When Aaron 
 Burr was on trial before him for treason, his hands red 
 with the blood of Alexander Hamilton, whom Marshall 
 loved, the people throughout the country demanding his 
 conviction, and the President of the United States using 
 all the influence of his high office to bring about the 
 same result, the Chief Justice charged the jury to acquit, 
 and thus referred to all this outside pressure: "That this 
 court dares not usurp power is most. true. That this court 
 
CHARACTER 209 
 
 dares not shrink from its duty is not less true. No man 
 is desirous of becoming the peculiar subject of calumny. 
 No man, might he let the bitter cup pass from him without 
 self-reproach, would drain it to the bottom. But if he 
 has no choice in the case, if there is no alternative pre- 
 sented to him but a dereliction of duty or the opprobrium 
 of those who are denominated the world, he merits the 
 contempt as well as the indignation of his country who 
 can hesitate which to embrace." 
 
 Grant, Lee, and Stonewall Jackson are three other Amer- 
 ican heroes whose memory is "hallowed in the minds of 
 their countrymen not so much by their victories as by their 
 unfailing honesty and steadfast regard for duty," the last 
 mentioned of whom, Stonewall Jackson, said, "What is 
 life without honor? Degradation is worse than death." 
 Well might he have added, "There is no curse so terrible 
 as that which lights a bosom fire for him who gives away 
 his honor." 
 
 Grant, Lee, and Jackson illustrate well the point of my 
 story. The first was a conqueror, the others followed a 
 conquered banner. Yet the world still debates their respect- 
 ive merits and leaves undecided the question of supremacy. 
 Monumental brass and scriptured marble alike attest the 
 greatness of each. In North and South is glowing tribute 
 paid to victor and to vanquished, and their fame is the 
 common heritage of us all. This is because each in char- 
 acter stood high, and, surpassed by none, was the other's 
 peer. 
 
 These men all had high ideals and lived up to them. 
 They hitched their chariots to the stars and drove by the 
 light of their stellar steeds. 
 
 Students of this university, these college years are but 
 the practice-innings for the real game of life that is to 
 be played, but the initial training for the battle of life 
 
210 CHARACTER 
 
 that is to be fought, but the first steps in the journey 
 toward the goal of fulfilment. Make no mistakes ! "Earth 
 bears no balsam for mistakes." Let the men I have men- 
 tioned be your guides. Have high ideals. "Strike upwards, 
 even if you strike at the stars." Any one of you may 
 become a captain- general of industry, controlling the des- 
 tinies of many men and the investment of many millions, 
 or a captain-general of war and have your bones entombed 
 where rolls the Hudson, or a captain-general of the sea 
 and sail a mighty fleet of battleships from West to Eastern 
 Ind, with all the nations wondering. Any one of you may 
 become one of the world's greatest orators and by the sole 
 magic of your eloquence nominate yourself for the presi- 
 dency, or one of its greatest poets and, like Byron, touch 
 your harp while nations stand entranced, or one of its 
 greatest dramatists and, like Shakespeare, make the world 
 your stage and all humanity your theme, or one of its 
 greatest jurists and, like John Marshall, make your fame 
 a beacon light in the domain of the law, or one of its 
 greatest statesmen and, like Alexander Hamilton, make the 
 strength of your government a monument to your partici- 
 pation therein. Any one of you may become one of the 
 world's greatest engineers and harness the mountain torrents 
 to drive the wheels of industry, or conserve the waste waters 
 to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. Any one of you 
 may become a great astronomer and wrest their secrets from 
 the stars. Any one of you may be the man who sets the 
 mark for which his fellow-men shall strive. But, if you 
 do not attain to any of these high pinnacles, you can by 
 high character, correct living, and unflagging devotion to 
 duty contribute to man's uplifting. 
 
 No one of you may become, like Napoleon, a human 
 meteor dashing across the skies, blinding by its glare and 
 destroying by its heat, but every one of you may become, 
 
CHARACTER 211 
 
 as it were, a ray of the sun, helping to bring light where 
 there was darkness, warmth where there was cold, life 
 where there was seeming death, and all together consti- 
 tuting the sun, whence all blessings flow. 
 
 Bear in mind that no general ever alone won a battle. 
 It is to the common soldier who holds the bridge that 
 the victory is often due. It is the private soldiers who 
 form the firing line. It is the man behind the gun who is 
 the bulwark of the flag. In the history of Rome it took 
 twenty centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. 
 
 I would not advise you, as Cardinal Wolsely advised 
 Cromwell, to fling away ambition, because that was the 
 advice of one who, though he "had trod the ways of glory," 
 yet "had ventured, like little wanton boys that swim on 
 bladders, far beyond his depth," and had robbed his land 
 to enrich himself, and who fell because of his own base- 
 ness. I would, on the contrary, stimulate in you ambition, 
 not that by which the angels fell, but that which makes 
 gods of men. 
 
 To fling away ambition because, when centered all on 
 self, like Sampson, it pulls down upon your head the tem- 
 ple it forced you to build, would be like abandoning steam 
 because when ill applied it destroys him who would con- 
 trol it. 
 
 Be ambitious "to do justice for truth's sake and your 
 conscience, to be just and fear not, to love yourself last !" 
 
 Be ambitious to thine own self to be true, to build up 
 character so that when the supreme moment comes you 
 will be available. Supreme moments are the exclusive 
 opportunities of men of character. 
 
 Therefore I say unto you, though you remain all your life 
 a private in the ranks, be until death the captain of your 
 soul ! Keep the faith, be true ! Act well your part, there 
 all the honor lies ! Be good because you abhor the bad, pure 
 
212 CHARACTER 
 
 because you shrink from impurity ! Show kindness because 
 unkindness is repellant to you ! Help the helpless because 
 such is the duty of the strong ! Lead the blind because 
 such is the mission of those who can see ! Be industrious 
 because idleness degrades ! Live clean lives for cleanli- 
 ness's sake ! Tell the truth for truth's sake ! Love honor 
 for honor's sake ! Work for work's sake, and "work while 
 it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work." 
 Do your duty for duty's sake, and remember that, though 
 a man without a sense of duty may possibly be brave, no 
 man controlled by a sense of duty can be a coward ! 
 Remember that by each arm, however weak, there is a 
 bow to be bent and an arrow to be shot ! Train your arm 
 and eye that you may shoot true, thinking only of the 
 target ! Remember that every one has his work to do ! 
 Apply your every energy to the task in hand, thinking only 
 of its accomplishment ! Remember that the work is greater 
 than the worker ! Follow your calling with humility as you 
 w^orship at your altar with reverence ! Remember that to 
 every one some opportunity comes ! Be equal to your 
 opportunity, for therein greatness lies. Remember that to 
 every one life is w^orth living, if he but live it worthily, 
 and he must live it worthily if he lives it to his own 
 approval. This he will have done if, upon the tombstone 
 over his grave, even though it be in a quiet nook in a 
 country graveyard, where pine-burrs cover the bosom of 
 the dead, this epitaph be carved : 
 
 "He fought a good fight, he never lied 
 or cheated, he closed a life of usefulness 
 and purity by a death of honor." 
 
 Let me commend to you the advice given by the great 
 Pasteur, towards the end of his illustrious career, to his 
 pupils: "Whether your efforts are favored by life or not. 
 
CHARACTER 213 
 
 be able to say when you are near the great goal : 'I have 
 done what I could.' " 
 
 "Who is the happy warrior? Who is he 
 That every man in arms should wish to be? 
 It is the generous spirit who, when brought 
 Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
 Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought; 
 Whose high endeavors are an inward light. 
 That makes the path before him always bright ; 
 
 ****** H< * :|-- 
 
 "Who, if he rise to station of command, 
 
 Rises by open means, and there will stand 
 
 On honorable terms, or else retire ; 
 
 ********* 
 " 'Tis the man who, lifted high, 
 
 Conspicuous object in a nation's eye. 
 
 Or left unthought of, in obscurity — 
 
 Who, with a toward or untoward lot. 
 
 Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not — 
 
 Plays, in the many games of life, that one 
 
 Where what he most doth value must be won ; 
 
 ********* 
 
 Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth 
 
 Forever, and to noble deeds give birth. 
 
 Or he must go to dust without his fame. 
 
 And leave a dead, unprofitable name — 
 
 Finds comfort in himself and in his cause ; 
 
 And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws 
 
 His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause — 
 
 This is the happy warrior ; this is he 
 
 Whom every man in arms should wish to be." 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 (Delivered at Sacramento, July 4, 1900.) 
 
 LADIES AND Gentlemen: Abraham Lincoln said: 
 "We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves 
 of all the good done in the progress of time, of how it was 
 done, and who did it, and how we are historically connected 
 with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor 
 with ourselves; we feel more attached, the one and the 
 other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. 
 In every way we are better men in the age and race and 
 country in which we live, for these celebrations." 
 
 Every year, on the Fourth of July, the people of the 
 United States of America take stock of themselves. 
 
 On this annual occasion they look about themselves, and 
 take stock of the rest of the world. 
 
 On this day, as each year rolls round, they make good 
 resolutions for the future, and reread the Declaration of 
 Independence, a document which Jefferson penned in a few 
 moments, but which the civilized world was more than 
 eighteen centuries in producing. 
 
 Therefore, today in the closing year of the nineteenth 
 century, we again take stock of ourselves and our neigh- 
 bors, again read the Declaration of Independence, and, in 
 the sight of God and man, again resolve to preserve untar- 
 nished our heritage of freedom, to ever maintain this a 
 government of the people, by the people, and for the people, 
 and, keeping in mind the glorious traditions of the closing 
 century, to so live that our descendants may find in our 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 215 
 
 lives traditions just as glorious, to so live that when the 
 twentieth century, just dawning, has itself become history, 
 our wisdom, our loyalty, and our patriotism shall be revered 
 as we revere the wisdom, loyalty, and patriotism of those 
 who more than one hundred years ago made good the 
 Declaration of Independence. 
 
 Within the past year the Czar of Russia invited all the 
 nations to confer together in order that there might be 
 henceforth and forever peace on earth, good will among 
 men, in order that the nations might dwell together in 
 brotherly love, the sword be turned into the plowshare 
 and the pruning hook, and war's dread alarms no longer 
 interrupt the harmonies of peace. And yet, ere time could 
 dry the ink in which were writ the proceedings of this 
 conference. Englishmen and Boers in South Africa were 
 crimsoning many a battlefield with their blood, and Eng- 
 land's victories were establishing her suzerainty from Cairo 
 to Capetown ; American soldiers in the islands of the 
 Orient were planting the seeds of American civilization 
 and watering them with their blood; and in China the 
 first guns were fired in the death struggle that is inevitable 
 between the decadent and destructive civilization of the 
 Orient and the progressive and regenerating civilization of 
 the Occident. Towards the Celestial Empire, whose four 
 hundred millions are just waking from their sleep of cen- 
 turies, point now the prows of the battleships of the nations, 
 and it is a consummation devoutly wished for although 
 almost past being hoped for that they fight not one with 
 another. 
 
 Everywhere armies are growing, and increasing navies 
 fret every sea with their rapidly multiplying leviathans of 
 war. 
 
 Everywhere the nations are fortifying their shores, sharp- 
 ening their swords, and filling their arsenals with shot and 
 
216 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 shell and powder as powerful as man's explosive genius 
 can concoct. 
 
 "At every bastioned frontier, every state, Suspicion, 
 sworded, standing by the gate." 
 
 What is the cause of all these warlike preparations? 
 
 Why in the. midst of peace do the nations prepare for war? 
 
 The answer is that the nations of Europe must expand 
 into Asia and Africa, or some must perish. The struggle 
 is for supremacy of trade, for new markets and new fields 
 of industry, and in this struggle every nation wdll take that 
 has the power and every one will hold that can. 
 
 England in Egypt is not merely the conqueror of the 
 Mahdi. Her victories under Kitchener would be needless 
 butcheries were they not the means whereby English cap- 
 ital and English enterprise may find fruitful opportunity 
 in increasing the fertility, the industries, the trade, and the 
 prosperity of the land of the Nile. 
 
 England in South Africa would be waging a war entirely 
 one of conquest were it not that her success is intended 
 to and w^ill produce greater opportunities for the crowded 
 industries of Europe. 
 
 Russia, Germany, Italy, France, England, and Japan 
 long since practically invaded China and seized each one 
 a landing place upon her soil, not for conquest, but as a 
 post of vantage whence each may strive to secure its share 
 of the fabulous trade the future will build up in the 
 Orient. 
 
 The increasing sharpness of the competition among the 
 nations for existence, for trade extension, for trade suprem- 
 acy, and especially for the trade of China's millions, is 
 the underlying cause for the armament of the nations. 
 
 Among these competing nations the one that is causing 
 the greatest anxiety to its fellows, the one that is forging 
 ahead of the others, the one most courted and most feared, 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 217 
 
 the one predestined to be the banker of the world and the 
 arbiter of its destinies, is the United States of America. 
 
 We are building locomotives for railroads in Europe, 
 Asia, and Africa, we are building bridges to span the Nile 
 and mining machinery for the Transvaal, we are selling 
 ironware in Birmingham, carpets in Kidderminster, watch 
 cases in Geneva, and bicycles for every road in Europe. 
 
 In this keen rivalry among the nations for mastery in 
 commerce we are bringing sweat to the brows of them all, 
 we and they alike recognizing that the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion and of the survival of the fittest applies equally to 
 nations and to individuals. We believe that we will prove 
 to be the fittest. 
 
 The sharp competition which we are forcing upon Euro- 
 pean nations has already been made the subject of official 
 investigation, both in England and Germany, and their 
 trade reports do not hesitate to state that it is no longer 
 the competition of the "United States against the indi- 
 vidual nations, but of the combined European countries 
 against the United States." 
 
 In 1830 the United States had only 5.4 per cent of the 
 world's commerce. By 1897 this percentage has increased 
 to 9.7, while in the meantime the percentages of Great 
 Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, respectively, have 
 decreased. 
 
 The value of the annual product of the manufacturing 
 industries of Great Britain is only 44 per cent, of Germany 
 only 35 per cent, and of France only 30 per cent of that 
 of the United States. 
 
 We can supply our domestic market by running our fac- 
 tories only eight months of the year, and, therefore, we 
 must sell abroad one-third of our products. 
 
 During the fiscal year ending in June, 1899, our for- 
 eign products for the first time crossed the $2,000,000,000 
 
218 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 mark, and our exports exceeded our imports by over 
 $500,000,000. 
 
 Our people are prosperous, and there is work for all that 
 seek employment. Our farmers are paying their mortgages, 
 and capital finds ready investment. Our flag is respected 
 at home and abroad. And yet, at this moment of pros- 
 perity, we stand at the parting of the ways. We have 
 arrived at man's estate. What shall our manhood be? 
 Shall we choose the road that leads to the uplands, that 
 will utilize our manhood and make it great and glorious ; 
 or shall we select that path whose down grade needs 
 neither struggle nor courage to travel and whose terminal 
 is the low land of sloth and decay? Upon our choice 
 depends the history of the next century. 
 
 During the spring of the year 1898 we went to war with 
 Spain, and from counting room and college hall and schol- 
 ar's desk and workman's bench our citizens rushed to enlist 
 beneath the Stars and Stripes to fight a foreign foe upon 
 foreign soil. 
 
 For the first time the army and navy of the United 
 States left this continent to invade a foreign land. 
 
 We took upon our shoulders the burden of battle, we 
 assimied the cost of carnage, we were prepared to wear 
 crape for our kindred killed, because we had determined 
 to wage war for humanity's sake alone, because in the 
 name of humanity, in the name of civilization, we had 
 ordered Spain to leave Cuba. 
 
 We entered into a war out of which we expected that 
 there would come to us only the suffering of those who 
 fall in battle, and the grief of loved ones at home, only 
 sacrifices and burdens, and the satisfaction of having ended 
 misery and misrule in a neighboring land, and of duty 
 done and protection to the weak maintained. We fought 
 to carry out the principle upon which this government was 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 219 
 
 founded, namely, the uplifting of the weak, and the resist- 
 ing of the strong. Never before since the crusades has a 
 nation embarked on such an unselfish adventure. 
 
 Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to per- 
 form, and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the 
 workshop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomor- 
 row waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the 
 inevitable towards which the unerring and irresistible mag- 
 net of fate hurries the nations. 
 
 Yesterday we were hedged in by a Chinese wall of 
 American isolation. Deaf, blind, and heedless of the world 
 without, we neither accepted the responsibilities of our true 
 place among the nations nor secured its advantages. Yes- 
 terday's tomorrow finds that wall razed by the magic batter- 
 ing ram of destiny, and o'er its ruins marched the Cuban, 
 Porto Rican, and Philippine expeditions. 
 
 Two years ago, on the first of May, Dewey's destruc- 
 tion of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay made us an Oriental 
 power. Two years ago on the fourth day of July Samp- 
 son's and Schley's destruction of the Spanish fleet at San- 
 tiago made the Antilles a part of the American continent. 
 
 When the war ended our flag floated over Porto Rico 
 and the Philippines Islands as American territory, and over 
 Cuba in trust for freedom and good government. 
 
 Shall our flag remain where fate and valor planted it, 
 shall we retain these islands, shall we give them up, what 
 are our duties to the peoples of these islands and to our- 
 selves, are the great questions that today much and most 
 concern this country and upon which our statesmen are 
 divided irrespective of party. They are questions most 
 opportune upon this particular occasion, and I shall discuss 
 them briefly from what I consider the true American 
 standpoint. 
 
220 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 On the Fourth of July, if upon no other occasion, an 
 American should be an optimist. Upon this Fourth of 
 July in particular an American should find a silver lining 
 to every cloud. 
 
 Upon this Fourth of July I am an optimist, and my 
 imagination, born in sound reason and inspired by hope, 
 carries me forv^ard along the rainbow path of promise to 
 a glorious future for my country. 
 
 We are told that we should haul down our flag from 
 Morro Castle and leave Cuba, and that in staying there 
 we are breaking faith with the people of this island. I 
 do not believe that the American people ever will break 
 faith with any one. We gave our bond and sealed it with 
 our blood that when we had driven Spain from Cuba we 
 would establish there a stable government, and that then 
 Cuba should be free and independent to follow her own 
 destiny. This promise we made while all the listening 
 nations marveled, and this promise we are trying to fulfill. 
 Whatever may be the future of this queen of the Antilles, 
 whether she attempts to go it alone, as an island republic 
 or, like Hawaii, seek the protection of the American flag, 
 we all know that her choice will be freely made, and that 
 this choice will be made by a Cuba ruled by law, disci- 
 plined by order, and blessed with the plentitude of peace. 
 
 As a result of this war we find ourselves with colonial 
 possessions beyond the seas, and in such a position that 
 we are forced to be on the commission in whose keeping 
 is the peace of the world. A recognition of these facts 
 and the adoption of a policy demanded by the logic of events 
 is called "imperialism," and we are told that it means an 
 abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine and of the policy 
 of the Father of His Country. Washington's farewell 
 address and Monroe's message are held up to us as the 
 sheet anchors of our ship of state, the infallible guides 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 221 
 
 fate has given us to follow for all time, the breaking away 
 from which will certainly bring national destruction. 
 
 At the beginning of our history our national existence 
 depended upon our national isolation. It was then the 
 custom for the great powers to trade small possessions as 
 if they were jack-knives. In this way the Dutch colony 
 of New York was acquired by England, and in this way 
 the latter country traded Havana for the Floridas. The 
 Europe that Richelieu had distributed so as to balance 
 the nations Napoleon redistributed, drawing national bound- 
 aries along the compass lines of his own ambition. After 
 Napoleon the Holy Alliance grasped the dice-box of the 
 kingdoms, and began to throw new combinations upon the 
 green table of the nations. Its openly avowed aim was to 
 suppress freedom, rivet anew the people's chains, and 
 reburnish crowns whose luster had grown dim, and this 
 policy was about to be applied to the restoration of Spain's 
 dominion over her revolted colonies on this continent. Then 
 it was that Monroe supplemented Washington's farewell 
 address with his celebrated message. 
 
 Washington feared that the powers of Europe would be 
 continually maneuvering to work us into their real or imag- 
 inary balances of power, to make us a make-weight candle 
 in weighing out their pounds. Monroe feared that our 
 national independence would be endangered by allowing 
 the Holy Alliance to bring any part of this continent under 
 its baneful influence, and make liberty here subservient to 
 the greed and ambition of kings. Therefore, the farewell 
 address and the message crystallized as the foreign policy 
 of this country the determination not to entangle ourselves 
 in the broils of Europe, not to allow the European powers 
 to meddle in American affairs, not to permit these powers 
 to transfer their American possessions from one to another, 
 and to withdraw this continent from European colonization. 
 
222 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 "The address," said Jefferson, "made us a nation; the mes- 
 sage set the compass and pointed the course which we were 
 to steer through the ocean of time opening to us." 
 
 We still adhere to the Monroe Doctrine, and still assert 
 that "the American continents, by the free and independent 
 condition which they have assumed and maintain, are hence- 
 forth not to be considered as subjects for foreign coloniza- 
 tion by any European powers," and that "we should con- 
 sider any attempt on their part to extend their system to 
 any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace 
 and safety." We still stand ready to prevent any Euro- 
 pean power from doing what France attempted in Mexico 
 or England in Venezuela. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine was never more alive than it is 
 today, and when our delegates to the Peace Congress at 
 The Hague signed the arbitration agreement there they 
 annexed as a condition to their assent the provision that 
 the European governments could not intervene in Amer- 
 ican affairs. 
 
 If, however, it still be maintained that the present policy 
 is a departure from the policy of Washington and Monroe, 
 then so let it be. Our hand is to the plow ; we must fol- 
 low the furrow to the end. The wind is off shore, and 
 we must take advantage of the breeze, steering our course 
 by the star of our destiny. No longer shall dead hands 
 extend their fleshless fingers from century-old graves like 
 skeleton guides to point the living present to any inexorable 
 course. 
 
 We are told again that the new imperialism leads to 
 the acquisition of territory away from this continent, to 
 the annexation of tropical islands that we can not govern 
 as colonies, nor admit into the union as States, nor endow 
 w^ith universal suffrage, nor populate with our people, but 
 which we must nevertheless defend with our army and 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 223 
 
 navy, and thereby increase our taxes; that to retain the 
 Philippine Islands is to govern them without their con- 
 sent; that this sounds the knell of the republic, and 
 inaugurates the reign of the plutocrat and military autocrat. 
 
 If all this be true, it is unfortunate, as the Philippines 
 are ours by conquest and by purchase. We can not give 
 them back, and it would seem to be wisdom to seek how 
 best to bear those responsibilities that we can not avoid, 
 rather than to waste our time in endeavoring to escape 
 the inevitable. 
 
 But none of these prophecies of evil will be realized. 
 Calamity howlers have predicted the downfall of the repub- 
 lic upon every similar occasion in the history of the country. 
 When in 1803 Jeiferson purchased the great Louisiana 
 Territory it was claimed that this accession threatened at 
 no distant day the subversion of the union, and when in 
 1848 we purchased from Mexico the land we now inhabit, 
 Daniel Webster proclaimed that this acquisition was an 
 outrage upon the constitution. 
 
 The objection that we can not acquire or govern terri- 
 tory without the consent of the governed has the same 
 historical inspiration. This, like many other objections, 
 both to the war and its results, springs from that spirit of 
 antagonism to any change that has always characterized 
 the Silurians in every department of life, the spirit that 
 made possible the French Revolution, that opposed the 
 American Revolution and would have continued British 
 tyranny in America, that cost Spain her colonies, that 
 always faces toward the past and would make all the 
 tomorrows but repetitions of yesterdays! 
 
 Did we ask the consent of the inhabitants of Louisiana 
 or of the Floridas when we purchased these lands? Did 
 we consult the wishes of the people of New Mexico and 
 California when we purchased these lands from Mexico? 
 
224 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 Is there any difference in principle between the suppression 
 of the insurrection in New Mexico and California and in 
 the Philippines in 1899 and 1900? Have we ever obtained 
 the consent of the natives of Hawaii or of the Alaska 
 Indians to be governed from Washington? Louisiana was 
 inhabited by many nationalities and native tribes, both 
 numerous and warlike. There were 30,000 whites in the 
 Territory. We annexed them without their consent, and 
 we governed them by a military government in which they 
 had no part. In no respect were the people consulted as 
 to their government. The same was true as to all the 
 Northwest Territory that includes what is now Ohio and 
 the adjoining States. All this was done by the men who 
 signed the Declaration of Independence, or who were their 
 immediate successors. 
 
 These men were all practical men. They knew that 
 no popular government can stand long or accomplish much 
 for the good of the governed that is not carefully adjusted 
 to the conditions and intelligence of the people who are 
 to live under it. They, therefore, acquired territory with- 
 out consulting the inhabitants and gave them that govern- 
 ment that in their opinion was best suited to their needs, 
 never stopping to ask how far the government so created 
 derived its just powers from the consent of the governed. 
 They met the condition that confronted them, and their 
 justification is the government they bequeathed to us. 
 
 We must follow the same common-sense policy. In 
 determining the question as to the form of government 
 to be given to the people of Porto Rico and the Philip- 
 pines we must bear in mind that the vast majority of 
 them are unable to read or write; that they have had no 
 experience in any real self-government, or any really hon- 
 est government, but have been for centuries under the 
 dominion of arbitrary power; that in all their experience 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 225 
 
 and traditions law and freedom have been ideas which were 
 not associated with each other, but opposed to each other. 
 We must bear in mind that a people who are in this con- 
 dition, who have never acquired any real understanding 
 of the way to conduct a popular government, who have 
 never learned the fundamental and essential lesson of obe- 
 dience to the decision of the majority, would lapse into 
 anarchy or fall under oligarchy if entrusted now with 
 self-government. We would be committing a crime, an 
 outrage upon these people and upon the civilized world, 
 we would be recreant to our trust if we did not train these 
 people in the art of government before allowing them to 
 govern themselves. 
 
 "The people of these islands have acquired the moral 
 right to be treated by the United States in accordance 
 with the underlying principles of justice and freedom which 
 we have declared in our constitution, and which are the 
 essential safeguards of every individual against the powers 
 of any government, because they are essential limitations 
 inherent in the very existence of our government." They 
 are entitled to demand that they shall not be deprived of 
 life, liberty, or property without due process of law, that 
 private property shall not be taken for public use without 
 compensation, that no law shall be passed impairing the 
 obligation of contracts or freedom of religious worship, 
 that all men shall be equal before the law, because we 
 have declared that these rights belong to all men, because 
 there is an implied contract between our government and 
 every one under its dominion that these rights shall be 
 respected and enforced, because observance of them is part 
 of the nature of our government. I do not think that any 
 of you doubt but that Congress in the exercise of its con- 
 stitutional power to make all needful rules and regulations 
 
226 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 respecting the territory belonging to the United States 
 will hold itself sacredly bound by these limitations. 
 
 It will take years to eradicate from our island posses- 
 sions the evil effect of centuries of Spanish misrule. For 
 years we must in the Philippines sustain the law with vis- 
 ible force until confidence is bred of justice, and the hus- 
 bandman learns that he will reap what he sows, unmo- 
 lested by native brigand or governmental bandit. This 
 will require a standing army as large as is now provided 
 by law. A great hue and cry is raised against a large 
 standing army, and from the pages of history are culled 
 the bloody records that standing armies have imprinted 
 there of their onslaughts upon the lives and liberties of 
 the people. History, like the Bible, can be used to prove 
 any crime or virtue that human fears or hopes may con- 
 ceive. But history is but an incomplete and an inaccurate 
 narrative of the past. It tells nothing of the living present. 
 It is for today and tomorrow that we are now planning 
 and legislating. The people of this century and the next 
 are to produce the soldiers for our army. This army will 
 be of the same warp and woof as the people whom it is 
 feared they will oppress. They will be American citizens, 
 as an American does not cease to be an American citizen 
 when he becomes an American soldier. Does any one 
 seriously believe that from the common schools of this 
 country there can be enlisted an army from whom any 
 military system, life, or discipline can eradicate tltat intelli- 
 gence, manhood, independence, and love of liberty that has 
 made the United States the land of the free? Does any 
 one believe that the people that dared in their infancy to 
 battle with England and wrested from her unwilling hands 
 independence and sovereignty, that has extended the bound- 
 aries of this republic from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
 across arid plains, over snow-clad mountains and in the 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 227 
 
 face of hostile savages, that stopped not at the ocean's 
 bounds, but brought within our domain islands in the sunset 
 sea, that fought and won the War of the Rebellion and 
 the War with Spain, that has built up this government as 
 a tower of strength for struggling humanity from whose 
 summit liberty lights the world, that has planted a school- 
 house upon every hill and on each schoolhouse has unfurled 
 its flag, does any one believe that the descendants of those 
 that fought at Bunker Hill or Gettysburg or Santiago have 
 aught to fear for their liberties from a standing army 
 organized from their midst? If there be such a man, then 
 I pity him, and I would not trust him on the firing line. 
 
 Be assured, therefore, my fellow citizens, that you have 
 not wandered away from the paths your fathers trod, that 
 your government has not changed from a republic to an 
 empire, that the Declaration of Independence is today as 
 much as ever your guiding cloud by day and pillar of fire 
 by night. In acquiring and governing the Philippines you 
 follow the example not only of the men who founded this 
 republic, but also of those who saved it. The Southern 
 states attempted to break up this union. They withdrew 
 their consent to be governed by the union. They wanted 
 to sacrifice the union to save slavery. Upon the principle 
 that all governments derive their just powers from the 
 consent of the governed they based their right to secede. 
 The Federal government determined to preserve the union, 
 to sacrifice slavery to save the union, to keep the union 
 intact with or without their consent. Thanks be to the 
 God of our country that this was said and done, and that 
 no mere declaration of words was allowed to break up 
 this greatest of nations. 
 
 The American people have for over a century been grow- 
 ing in power and wealth and righteousness. They have 
 expanded in territory, increased in wealth, multiplied in 
 
228 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 numbers, developed in power, and held fast to popular 
 government. Ever vigilant and vv^atchful of their own 
 interests, they have poured out their blood and treasure 
 in defense of the rights of others. I do not believe that 
 all of a sudden, in the twinkling of an eye, they have 
 changed in character, purpose and ambition, courage and 
 determination. I do not believe that a people who began 
 a war to rescue the Cubans from oppression can end it 
 by oppressing the Filipinos. I do not believe that we will 
 establish in the Philippines a government different in prin- 
 ciple from our own, though different in form. I believe 
 that we will give them law, order, and education; that 
 we will free them from the tyranny of both native and 
 foreigner, and that we will make freedom attractive to 
 them by exemplifying its benefits. I believe that, as Presi- 
 dent McKinley has said, we will by our treatment of the 
 Filipinos lead them to feel that it is their liberty and not 
 our power, their welfare and not our gain, that we seek 
 to enhance, and that as our flag has never waved over any 
 community save in blessing, they will acknowledge that it 
 has not lost its gift of benediction by its world-wide journey 
 to their shores. 
 
 Great nations must bear great burdens. That is what 
 makes them great. Our nation did not seek this Oriental 
 burden. It was thrust upon us by circumstances that we 
 did not expect and could not control. But we have this 
 burden to bear, this responsibility to fulfill, this duty to 
 perform. We have never yet shrunk from a danger, neg- 
 lected an obligation, or failed in a task. We will not 
 close the century with an act of cowardice or an admission 
 of incompetency. 
 
 In advocating the retention of the Philippines every 
 American can hold up his head, look the world in the 
 face, and feel conscious of the nobility of the duty he has 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 229 
 
 set himself to perform; and that person is only a vain 
 prophet of evil who says that therefor he will ever have 
 cause to hang his head. 
 
 Especially in California are the people interested in this 
 Philippine question. Our shores are washed by the same 
 sea that breaks upon the coast of Asia. The commercial 
 possibilities are, however, tempting and dazzling to this 
 entire country. Our share of this commerce is growing 
 by leaps and bounds. In cotton goods alone are exports 
 to China increased from 35,000,000 yards in 1893 to 221,- 
 000,000 in 1899. In two years our exports to the Phil- 
 ippine Islands have increased from $200,000 to $2,500,000. 
 With England, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan holding 
 posts of vantage and spheres of influence in China we, with- 
 out Manila, would have in time become beggars for the 
 crumbs that fell from their tables. With Manila and the 
 Philippines as ours we demand and secure from them the 
 "open door" for all, and we are in position to do our 
 share in preventing China from closing it against all, and 
 in the rescue and protection of the foreign ministers in 
 China. We have never taken by force or diplomacy any 
 of the ports of China, and as the new master of Manila 
 we do not want or seek or need any part of her territory. 
 We would prefer that the Chinese Empire should remain 
 intact, and under the sole dominion of the Emperor of 
 China, and we will do everything possible to the accom- 
 plishing of this result. But we will also do everything 
 possible to protect our national representatives both from 
 personal and official injury and insult, and also all our citi- 
 zens living or traveling in China, and, therefore, when the 
 safety and liberty of our ambassador to Pekin became 
 endangered, our marines joined the relief expedition under 
 General Seymour and were among the first to enter Tien 
 Tsin, the Oregon sailed with her "round-the-Horn" gait 
 
230 FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 
 
 from Hongkong to Taku, a regiment of United States 
 infantry hastened from Manila to rescue their countrymen, 
 General Chaffee started across the Pacific to fight his way 
 to Pekin, if necessary, as he fought his way up the heights 
 of San Juan and El Caney, and we are preparing to send, 
 if necessary, more regiments and ships to teach China that 
 no one can affront us with impunity. 
 
 It is hoped that this trouble will soon be over, and 
 that China, with or without outside assistance, will speedily 
 have peace within her borders, and be able to insure the 
 safety of the stranger within her gates. But, if this hope 
 be not fulfilled, you may rest assured that the civilizing of 
 the Orient can not be permanently stopped, that China 
 can never again close her doors to the peaceful invasion 
 of the traders of the Orient. 
 
 You may also be assured that if the United States is 
 compelled, in conjunction with the allied powers, to do 
 further battle in China, in protection of its people's rights 
 or punishment of their wrongs, the American soldier, fight- 
 ing side by side with the soldiers of Europe, will make 
 manifest to the world the superiority of his disciplined 
 individualism over their machine-drilled battalions, and add 
 another laurel to the chaplet that crowns our boys in blue. 
 
 In what a humiliating position would we have been in 
 this sudden outbreak if those boys in blue had not been 
 nearer to the scene of action than San Francisco? 
 
 Thirty years ago Seward predicted that the Pacific Ocean 
 would some day be the chief theater of the world's great 
 hereafter. This prophecy is in its fulfillment, this here- 
 after is at hand, its day is dawning, its morning is advanc- 
 ing, and ere the sun has reached its meridian the Pacific 
 Ocean will be the arena on which will be fought and won 
 the struggle for the trade and the supremacy of the nations. 
 Ages ago when Greece and Persia fought for the mastery 
 
FOURTH OF JULY ORATION 231 
 
 at Salamis, when Roman triremes ruled the waves, when 
 Anthony, lured by Cleopatra, fled from Actium, when Turk- 
 ish might was humbled at Lepanto, when Venice was 
 queen of the seas, the Mediterranean centered man's ambi- 
 tions, hopes, and fears. During the succeeding centuries 
 o'er the Atlantic shone the star of destiny emblazoning 
 Nelson's fame. But now this star, the morning star of the 
 twentieth century, bespangles the skies that dome the Pacific 
 Ocean and lights up with its earliest rays the Golden Gate 
 that opens up to our metropolis its queenship of the future. 
 
 With a chain of coaling stations and home ports stretch- 
 ing across the Pacific, linking together San Francisco, Pago- 
 Pago in the Samoan Islands, Honolulu in the Hawaiian 
 Islands, Guam in the Ladrones, and Manila in the Phil- 
 ippines, this ocean becomes an American sea, policed by 
 our cruisers, over which in ever increasing numbers will 
 sail the ships bearing our growing commerce with the 
 Orient. 
 
 Under such circumstances the twentieth century comes 
 full of promise for the United States, and particularly for 
 California. 
 
 Therefore, my fellow citizens, we can look with pride 
 upon our past, with satisfaction of duty done upon our 
 present, with hope upon our future. True to our traditions, 
 ever watchful of our liberties and of the rights of others 
 committed to our care, loyal to our flag and all that it 
 represents, confident that in the future we will not change 
 in sturdiness of character and uprightness of purpose, but 
 will continue to grow in wealth and power so that as our 
 tasks so shall our strength be, feeling that we will ever 
 be a light set upon a hill, an exemplar and leader among 
 nations, we have every reason and right on this anniver- 
 sary of our independence to be proud of our country, our 
 flag, and ourselves. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 (Delivered at Metropolitan Temple, San Francisco, Friday 
 evening, October 3, 1900.) 
 
 LADIES AND Gentlemen : All my life I have been a 
 Democrat. After mature reflection I have determined 
 to publicly change my political affiliation, and this evening 
 I make this public confession of the faith that is in me. 
 
 I am opposing the Democratic party because it is now 
 radical, revolutionary, impractical, and populistic, and 
 because its present aspirations are a menace to the welfare 
 of the country. 
 
 I am supporting the Republican party because it is con- 
 servative, practical, progressive, and creative, and because 
 its success at this election is necessary to the continuance 
 of prosperity. 
 
 I am leaving the Democratic party because that party 
 has dethroned Jefferson, the man of thought, the statesman, 
 the philosopher, who believed in sound money and territo- 
 rial expansion, and has enthroned Bryan, a man of words, 
 who mistakes epigrams for ideas, rhetoric for philosophy, 
 declamation for wisdom, personal ambition for patriotism, 
 and a dishonest dollar for an honest one. 
 
 I am entering this campaign against the Democratic party 
 because it has nominated for the presidency a man who, 
 as the old Democratic war horse, Henry Watterson, said 
 only two years ago: "He is not the material of which the 
 people of the United States have ever made a President, 
 nor of which any party has ever before made a candidate," 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 233 
 
 because his speeches tend to disturb the peace and order 
 of the State by their appeals to class distinctions that do 
 not exist and to an antagonism between capital and labor 
 that can not obtain in this country as at present organized; 
 and because he is not honest with the American people. 
 
 I am entering this campaign on behalf of the Republican 
 party because its candidate for the presidency has as Presi- 
 dent proved himself to be a skillful pilot to our ship of 
 state in stormy seas, has shown himself to be one whom 
 sudden emergencies can not confuse, nor great problems 
 overcome, during whose wise administration the country has 
 been blessed with prosperity and crowned with national 
 glory, and whose continuance in office for the next four 
 years is a guarantee to our hopes of their anticipated 
 fulfillment. 
 
 Four years ago the country was startled by the utter- 
 ances of the Democratic National Convention as embodied 
 in the Chicago platform. At no prior time in its history 
 had the United States been in so deplorable a condition. An 
 industrial depression covered the land like a pall. For 
 several years the unemployed had been growing in num- 
 bers, in want, and in despair. Factories were empty, fur- 
 naces were cold, and mills had ceased to grind. Banks 
 were closing their doors, and depositors were losing their 
 savings. Railroads could not pay their interest, and were 
 passing into the hands of receivers. The only armies that 
 paraded the land were disorderly mobs of idle working- 
 men. Strikers in most every department of labor threat- 
 ened the stability of the government. Neighbors were 
 friends or foes as want or wealth united or divided them. 
 
 It was after several years of these growing evils, and 
 at a time of general gloom and discontent, when the growl- 
 ings of hunger were becoming ominous, and lean hands 
 were threatening to take by force or stealth the bread they 
 
234 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 had no opportunity to earn, that three political national 
 conventions assembled to nominate candidates for the 
 presidency. 
 
 The Democrats, denouncing with bitterness Grover Cleve- 
 land, the only Democrat who had led them to success since 
 1856, and who was in integrity of character, nobility of 
 purpose, in fearlessness and fortitude, one of the greatest 
 Americans, and the natural enemy of the Altgelds and 
 Bryans and Tillmans, read him out of the party, and with 
 him Thomas Jefferson, threw all their teachings after them, 
 and installed in their stead the Boy Orator from the Platte, 
 William Jennings Bryan, who mistook Bryanism for popu- 
 lism, and called it Democracy. They sent him abroad as 
 a Populistic aspirant for the presidency, and authorized 
 him to preach class distinction, to stir up bitterness on the 
 part of the many who had not against the few who then 
 had; to cry out against the fortunate, the frugal, the pru- 
 dent, the successful ; to put a premium on failure and a 
 discount on success; to threaten the independence of the 
 judiciary; to invite the people to financial disorder and 
 certain bankruptcy; to contradict every doctrine of econom- 
 ics and to endeavor to bring about a financial impossi- 
 bility — the stability of the double standard of gold and 
 silver at a fixed arbitrary ratio of sixteen to one, independ- 
 ently of every other nation. 
 
 The silver convention, with like Populistic passion, was 
 also captured by the rhetoric of this man's cross of gold. 
 
 The Republicans answered all this political and financial 
 madness with a platform that stood for sound, honest money, 
 for an independent judiciary, for protection to American 
 industries, for union and not for disunion, for peace and 
 prosperity, and not for disaster and dissension, and upon 
 this platform they placed William McKinley. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 235 
 
 Bryan predicted that the going out of his jack-o'-lantern 
 would leave the world in utter darkness, impenetrable even 
 by the flame that liberty holds aloft to light the world. 
 
 McKinley predicted that Republican success would mean 
 prosperity in place of poverty, work instead of violence for 
 idle hands, wealth at home, honor and respect abroad. 
 
 McKinley was elected, and all the fog and dust of Bryan- 
 ism disappeared, and this country stepped out of the shadow 
 and into the sun. 
 
 It was because I believed that this would be the result 
 that in 1896 I voted for McKinley. It is because I believe 
 that the election of Bryan on the rechristened Chicago 
 platform would undo much of McKinley's good work, 
 would disturb business, arrest enterprise, and suspend the 
 labor of thousands; it is because of McKinley's policy of 
 honor, and because of Bryan's proposed policy of dishonor, 
 that I shall again vote for McKinley. 
 
 The paramount issue in this campaign is Bryanism, and 
 Bryanism means political dishonesty, political inexperience, 
 political bad judgment, and the domination of personal 
 opinion influenced by fanaticism over the wisdom of states- 
 men and the experience of a century of struggle and growth. 
 As the Democratic party has indorsed Bryanism, I am 
 opposed to the Democratic party. 
 
 In this campaign we have an unusual opportunity of 
 comparing the two candidates by the promises made by 
 McKinley four years ago and their fulfillment, and by the 
 predictions made then by Bryan and their non-fulfillment. 
 
 A very gifted American orator once delivered a lecture 
 which he entitled ''The Mistakes of Moses." This evening 
 I propose to speak of the "Mistakes of Bryan." 
 
 We all know that hindsight is more reliable than fore- 
 sight, and that it is easier to be a historian than a prophet, 
 yet we also know that there always must be prophets, lead- 
 
236 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 ers, guides, whose duty it is to point the way, and whose 
 skill to guide must be in proportion to their ability to 
 profit by their own experience or the experience of others. 
 Of what availeth the lessons of yesterday if they help us 
 not in meeting the inevitable tomorrow? 
 
 Judged by this standard, Mr. Bryan has shown himself 
 little adapted to lead or guide the people. In 1896 he 
 did not point out a road for us to travel that would not 
 have led to disaster, and every road that he designated as 
 dangerous has led the people in safety to the land of pros- 
 perity they so eagerly and so long had sought. In the lan- 
 guage of President McKinley, "The prophet of evil no 
 longer commands confidence, because he has been proved 
 to be a false prophet." 
 
 FOREIGN TRADE. 
 
 In the campaign of 1896 Bryan made the following 
 prophecy: *Tf McKinley and the Republican party are 
 successful and put in power for the next four years, wages 
 will be decreased, hard times will come upon us, mort- 
 gages on our homes will be foreclosed by the money-lenders, 
 shops and factories will close. We will export no goods, 
 and we will import from foreign lands all the goods we 
 use. Thus will ruin come, and misery will be with us." 
 
 During the past four years have we been able to sell 
 our products abroad? Today we can supply our domestic 
 market with manufactures by running our factories only 
 eight months of the year, for our productive power has 
 increased in forty years threefold, while our population has 
 increased only one hundred and forty-two per cent, and 
 we must therefore export one-third of our total manufac- 
 tures or close down our factories for the remaining four 
 months. The economic policy that keeps our mills run- 
 ning during the entire twelve months should therefore meet 
 with the people's approval. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 237 
 
 I submit that the Republican party has kept the facto- 
 ries running for a full period of twelve months through 
 an economic policy based on protection to American indus- 
 tries and on an honest dollar. 
 
 In 1892, under the McKinley tariff, our exports for the 
 first time passed the billion-dollar mark. In 1893, the first 
 year of Cleveland's administration, under the depressing 
 effect of threatened free trade, our exports were $180,- 
 000,000 less than in 1892. In 1895, when the Wilson 
 Democratic tariff was in full operation, our exports were 
 $222,000,000 less than in 1892. In 1897, the first year 
 of McKinley's administration, under the encouraging 
 influence of the promise of protection and the assurance of 
 financial honesty, our exports again touched the billion- 
 dollar mark, making a gain of over $200,000,000. 
 
 During the last two years of Cleveland's last term, and 
 under the Wilson Democratic tariff, our exports exceeded 
 our imports only $180,000,000. During the last two years 
 of McKinley's administration, and under the Dingley Repub- 
 lican tariff, our exports exceeded our imports more than 
 $1,000,000,000. 
 
 In other words we sold to foreigners $894,000,000 more 
 of products during McKinley's last two years, and under 
 Republican tariff, than we did under Cleveland's last two 
 years and under a Democratic tariff, and this is sufficient 
 reason for the smoke coming out of every smoke-stack and 
 for the scarcity of labor. 
 
 At the end of the Harrison administration the balance 
 of trade in our favor was $212,000,000. At the end of 
 Cleveland's administration the balance had decreased to 
 $102,000,000. At the end of McKinley's administration 
 this balance will exceed $544,000,000. 
 
 These figures include all our exports, of both manufac- 
 tures and raw goods, and they are very comforting. Much 
 
238 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 more comforting, however, because they concern more of 
 our people, and more strongly refuting Bryan's prediction 
 that under the gold standard we can not sell our products 
 abroad at remunerative prices, are the following figures as 
 to manufactures alone: 
 
 In 1896, under Cleveland, we paid to foreigners for 
 manufactures $333,000,000, and sold to them manufactures 
 only to the amount of $288,000,000, leaving a balance 
 against us of $105,000,000. In 1897, under McKinley, 
 we paid out for manufactures $27,000,000 less and received 
 $49,000,000 more than in 1896, leaving a balance against 
 us of only $27,000,000. 
 
 In 1898 we received more for manufactures than we 
 paid out, leaving a balance in our favor of $60,000,000, 
 and in 1899 this balance was increased to $80,000,000. 
 In 1900 we are exporting every day more than $1,000,000 
 of the products of our factories, and we are not losing 
 money on the goods. 
 
 To sum up these statistics : During McKinley's admin- 
 istration our excess of exports over imports has been over 
 five times as much as it was during the one hundred and 
 six years prior thereto— $383,028,497 against $2,028,884— 
 and yet, according to Bryan, protection has slain its thou- 
 sands and the gold standard its tens of thousands. 
 
 Such has been the outcome of Bryan's predictions. He 
 predicted the downward course of wheat if silver continued 
 to fall, and yet we all remember how wheat began to rise 
 soon after the defeat of the free coinage of silver. 
 
 When Bryan was nominated in 1896 wheat was 65 cents 
 a bushel, silver was 69 cents an ounce. Six months there- 
 after wheat was $1.04 and silver was 65 cents. In May, 
 1898, wheat was $1.30 and silver was 56^ cents. At the 
 date of Bryan's second nomination wheat was 50 per cent 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 239 
 
 higher and silver 12 per cent lower than at the date of 
 his first nomination. 
 
 GOLD STANDARD. 
 
 The following are some of Bryan's mistakes as to the 
 gold standard : 
 
 At Newton, la., on August 10, 1896, he used the follow- 
 ing language: "The law upon which we base our fight is 
 as sure as the law of gravitation. If we have a gold standard 
 prices are as certain to fall as the stone which is thrown 
 into the air." 
 
 In his acceptance of the Democratic nomination at New 
 York, in 1896, he said: "A gold standard dissolves all 
 enterprise and paralyzes industry. A gold standard is ruin- 
 ous to merchants and manufacturers. Salvation of business 
 occupations depends on business conditions, and the gold 
 standard both lessens the amount and threatens the perma- 
 nency of those salaries." A gold standard has compelled 
 the American people to pay an increasing tribute to the 
 creditor nations of the world." "Savings-bank depositors 
 know that under a gold standard there is increasing danger 
 that they will lose their deposits because of the inability of 
 the banks to collect their assets; and they will further 
 know that, if the gold standard is to continue indefinitely, 
 they may be compelled to withdraw their deposits in order 
 to pay living expenses." 
 
 At Minneapolis, Minn., he said: "The gold standard 
 means dearer money; dearer money means cheaper prop- 
 erty; cheaper property means harder times; harder times 
 mean more people out of work; more people out of work 
 means more people destitute; more people destitute means 
 more people desperate ; more people desperate means more 
 crime." 
 
 We have now a gold standard, and have practically had 
 it since McKinley's election. Have prices fallen as com- 
 
240 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 pared with Cleveland's administration? Did the election 
 of McKinley discourage enterprise and paralyze industry? 
 Have times been harder than before McKinley's election? 
 Are we paying an increasing tribute to foreign nations? 
 Are savings-bank depositors withdrawing their deposits to 
 pay living expenses? Let us see. 
 
 As to prices. — On October 1, 1897, six months after 
 McKinley became President, prices had risen 2 per cent, 
 and in July, 1899, they had risen 11 per cent. 
 
 In 1896 the highest price of wheat in New York was 
 68 cents a bushel; in 1900 it was 92 1^ cents. In like 
 manner, corn was 30 cents, now 47 cents; oats 23 cents, 
 now 28 cents; lard was 3^^ cents, now 6.9 cents; beef 
 was $9 a barrel, now $12; Ohio XX wool was 17 cents, 
 now 30^/2 cents. In the one article of live-stock prices have 
 so risen that the farmers today can sell out for $501,444,474 
 more than they could have obtained in 1896. 
 
 As to labor. — In 1898 and 1899, Samuel Gompers, presi- 
 dent of the American Federation of Labor, made his reports 
 as to the condition of the laboring men: 
 
 In January, 1898, within less than a year after the 
 inauguration of President McKinley, he said in a published 
 article: "That terrible period for the wage-earners of this 
 country which began in 1893, and which has left behind 
 it such a record of horror, hunger, and misery, practically 
 ended with the dawn of the year 1897. Wages had been 
 steadily forced down from 1893 till towards the end of 
 1895, and it was variously estimated that between two mil- 
 lion and two and a half million wage-earners were unem- 
 ployed." 
 
 In December, 1899, he said in his report to the conven- 
 tion of the American Federation of Labor: "The revival 
 of industry which we have witnessed within the past year 
 is one for general congratulation, and it should be our pur- 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 241 
 
 pose to endeavor to prolong this era of more general employ- 
 ment and industrial activity. In this effort no power is 
 so potent as organized labor, if we but follow a right and 
 practical course. It is beyond question that the wages of 
 the organized workers have been increased, and in many 
 instances the hours of labor either reduced or at least 
 maintained." 
 
 Mr. Gompers could also have said that the true friend 
 of the wage-earner is he who opens a factory where a man 
 may earn his living by the sweat of his face, independence 
 waiting on strength and opportunity and not on any man's 
 favor, and that that man, though he speak with the elo- 
 quence of Paul, is a wage-earner's enemy who, in place 
 of a factory, opens a soup-house where hunger waits upon 
 generosity and independence gives place to gratitude ! 
 
 As to savings banks. — Instead of the depositors in savings 
 banks withdrawing their deposits, we find that the number 
 of depositors increased 622,324 in three years under McKin- 
 ley, and the amount of deposits increased $419,000,000. 
 
 In the State of New York alone there has been an increase 
 of 103,168 depositors in savings banks in the past year. 
 These depositors know of Bryan's prophecies in this regard, 
 and also of his threats, and while remembering the failure 
 of his prophecies they will see that he is not put in a posi- 
 tion to carry out his threats of restoring the free and unlim- 
 ited coinage of silver at 16 to 1, and thus cut their dollars 
 in two, and force them to draw them out in order to pay 
 living expenses. 
 
 As to commercial failures. — Bryan said in his 1896 speech 
 of acceptance: "It is only necessary to note the increasing 
 number of failures in order to know that a gold standard 
 is ruinous to merchants and manufacturers." 
 
 Note the following list of commercial failures in the 
 United States : 1896,15,088; 1898,12,186; 1899,9,710. 
 
242 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 The total sum of the failures in 1899 was $41,000,000 
 less than in 1898, $137,000,000 less than in 1896. 
 The failures under Harrison amounted to $114,000,000, 
 under Cleveland to $226,000,000, under McKinley to only 
 $91,000,000. 
 
 As to foreign tribute. — The gold standard, instead of 
 increasing our tribute to foreigners, seems to have less- 
 ened it. 
 
 Not only are we now able to pay our foreign debts at 
 the rate of over $800,000,000 a year, such being the annual 
 balance in our favor, but in the past eighteen months we 
 have loaned money to other nations — $3,000,000 to the city 
 of Montreal, $10,000,000 to Russia, $26,000,000 to Eng- 
 land, $10,000,000 to Sweden, and $25,000,000 to Germany. 
 
 As to scarcity of money. — On March 14, 1900, we finally 
 established by law the gold standard, that monometalism 
 which the Chicago platform, rechristened at Kansas City, 
 stated "has locked fast the prosperity of an industrial people 
 in the paralysis of hard times." 
 
 If this is true, this lock must have been broken, for 
 this country has so completely emerged from hard times 
 that today its manufactures exceed those of England, France, 
 and Germany combined; it is exporting annually $500,- 
 000,000 more than it imports; its farmers can not get 
 enough men to harvest their crops; its railroads can not 
 get cars enough to carry the freight ; its savings banks are 
 so swamped with deposits that they do not know where 
 to invest them, and its credit is so good that between the 
 passage of this gold-standard law on March 14 and June 
 
 1 it refunded over $285,000,000 of its 3-per-cent, 4-per- 
 cent, and 5-per-cent bonds, with its bonds bearing only 
 
 2 per cent at par, and thus saved over $7,000,000 in inter- 
 est, while English consols, that have always been consid- 
 ered the best securities on the market, and which were 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 243 
 
 bearing 2^ per cent interest, were two points below par. 
 Instead of our prosperity being locked fast in the paralysis 
 of hard times, we are furnishing food and products to for- 
 eign consumers at a good profit, we are lending them money 
 at fair interest with which to pay their bills to us, and we 
 have so much money to invest that even in the present 
 unparalleled expansion of business we can't find ways enough 
 at home of salting down our profits. 
 
 Bryan predicted in 1896 that the successful opposition 
 to the free coinage of silver at the arbitrary ratio of 16 
 to 1 would make money scarce, and that there would be 
 no addition to the currency without free coinage of silver 
 at 16 to 1, and yet since the defeat of free coinage the 
 total amount of money in the country has increased over 
 $500,000,000 (from $1,509,725,200 to $2,060,525,463), the 
 total amount of gold and gold certificates has increased over 
 $300,000,000 (from $498,449,242 to $814,063,155), and the 
 per capita of money has increased from 21.10 to $25. 
 
 It is true that the production of gold during the last 
 four years has been very large, in 1899 the United States 
 alone producing $72,500,000 and the world at large pro- 
 ducing $312,307,819, and to this increased production alone 
 Bryan attributes our prosperity and the increase of money 
 in circulation. He overlooks the fact that this gold has 
 stayed in this country to pay for our increasing exports, 
 and that this gold has remained here because there is no 
 longer any fear of the 50-cent silver dollar. 
 
 He overlooks the fact that under the free coinage of 
 silver at 16 to 1 this gold would have left this country as 
 fast as it was produced or came in. 
 
 During the campaign of 1896, because of Bryan's proph- 
 ecies of evil, because of his free-silver fallacies, because 
 of hard times, because of commercial, agricultural, and 
 financial depression, because of the fear of Bryan's election, 
 
244 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 gold was at a premium. It was withdrawn from circula- 
 tion, withheld from investment, and locked up in the deposit 
 vaults or sent abroad. You could not borrow money on 
 anything, not even on real estate. 
 
 During this campaign in the midst of good times, of 
 commercial, agricultural, and financial prosperity, because 
 of the success of the Republican policy of protection and 
 honest money, and because there is no possibility of Bryan's 
 election, gold is not in hiding, but is seeking investment, 
 and is so plentiful that we are loaning money to the rest 
 of the world, and our treasury has today the greatest gold 
 stock of the world. The most important factor showing our 
 great prosperity is the fact that in 1897, 1898, and 1899 
 the large merchandise balance was attended by considerable 
 gold imports, but in the past twelve months, with the stock 
 of gold in the United States unusually large, America has 
 left abroad the whole of the large favorable trade balance, 
 and has also sent abroad a considerable amount of gold. 
 
 During Cleveland's administration American securities 
 held abroad were thrown upon the market because of the 
 fear of the adoption of free coinage in this country and 
 of our paying our bonds in 50-cent silver dollars, and Cleve- 
 land had to borrow gold to bolster up American credit. At 
 the end of McKinley's administration American credit is 
 so good that its 2-per-cent bonds sell at par. 
 
 Mr. Bryan has shown himself unfit for the high office 
 of President, not only because the logic of events has proved 
 the fallacy of all his opinions, but because he stubbornly 
 refuses to be convinced of his error, and places his self- 
 created infallibility above the truth itself. The Democratic 
 portion of his partisans were willing to admit that the free 
 coinage of silver was not again worth fighting for and 
 would not be acceptable to the people, and yet, with the 
 history of the immediate past, with the living present, nay, 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 245 
 
 with the history of the Democratic party before him, he 
 forced them to again declare this absurdity as a principle of 
 Democracy. He must know that all attempts to fix a legal 
 ratio at any rate differing from the commercial ratio have 
 proved disastrous when coupled with the free and unlimited 
 coinage of the inferior metal. He must know that a very 
 small variation of the commercial ratio from the coinage 
 ratio, even a variation of one cent, is sufficient to expel 
 the superior metal from the country and disturb all busi- 
 ness. He must know this, because this is not a new ques- 
 tion, because Jefferson and Jackson and all the great found- 
 ers of the Democratic party knew and admitted it. When 
 the first United States coinage act was passed, it provided 
 for the free coinage of gold and silver at a ratio of 15 to 1, 
 but this act could not make the two metals circulate together, 
 as the ratio was not correct, and discriminated against gold, 
 and consequently gold was exported. In 1834 the ratio 
 was changed to 16 to 1, a discrimination against silver, 
 and silver was driven out. The true ratio at that time 
 was somewhere between 15 to 1 and 16 to 1. But small 
 as was the variation in either case from the commercial 
 ratio of the two metals, it was sufficient to drive out of 
 circulation the metal whose commercial value was discrim- 
 inated against. 
 
 Today the commercial ratio is 32 to 1. How much more 
 disastrous would therefore be the free and unlimited coinage 
 of silver at the coinage ratio of 16 to 1? 
 
 The result in 1834 was that the Democratic financiers 
 of that time admitted that "the fluctuations in the value 
 of gold and silver can not be controlled" and a committee 
 from the Democratic Congress reported in February, 1834, 
 "that there are inherent and incurable defects in the system 
 which regulates the standard of value in both gold and 
 silver; its instability as a measure on contracts and its 
 
246 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 mutability as the practical currency of a particular nation 
 are serious imperfections, whilst the impossibility of main- 
 taining both metals in concurrent, simultaneous, or promis- 
 cuous circulation appears to be clearly ascertained; that 
 the standard being fixed in one metal is the nearest approach 
 to invariableness, and precludes the necessity of further 
 legislative interference." 
 
 This report is good monetary philosophy today, and has 
 been adopted by all the nations except China, Corea, Persia, 
 Siam, Mexico, and some of the smaller republics of Central 
 and South America. It is the philosophy of the nations 
 that do 95 per cent of the world's commerce. 
 
 A country on a double basis of gold and silver, with the 
 free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1, 
 necessarily will become a country with a silver basis alone, 
 as witness Mexico and China. A country with a double 
 basis of gold and silver, with a limited coinage of silver 
 at the ratio of 16 to 1, is on a gold basis, and it gets its 
 share of the world's gold which its proportion of the world's 
 business brings to it. 
 
 We have the satisfaction of knowing that of all the 
 nations the United States attracts and holds the largest 
 stock of gold because the volume of its business transactions 
 exceeds that of any other nation. We have also the satis- 
 faction of knowing that its every paper or silver dollar is 
 exchangeable at par in ordinary business transactions for 
 gold at the same nominal value. We are doing business 
 on this basis, and to our great enrichment. We have given 
 our pledge to the world that the word "dollar" in every 
 American contract or obligation means a dollar in gold or 
 the actual equivalent thereof. We have said to the laborer 
 that a dollar's wage means one hundred cents in gold. 
 
 To violate this pledge to laborer, investor, creditor, 
 whether foreign or domestic, would be an act of dishonor. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 247 
 
 I feel that the American people understand this question 
 and appreciate it, and that "they hold their financial honor 
 as sacred as their flag, and can be relied on to guard it 
 with the same sacred vigilance." 
 
 But let us look the danger full in the face. There are 
 some $700,000,000 of United States bonds payable in coin. 
 They were sold for gold coin and upon the implied under- 
 standing that they will be paid in gold coin, principal and 
 interest. Mr. Bryan could order the interest to be paid in 
 silver, and he would order it to be paid in silver. 
 
 It is claimed that the payees could take their silver to 
 the treasury and have it redeemed in gold. It is claimed 
 that under the present currency law free silver is impossible. 
 It is claimed that any weakness in this law can be cured 
 by the present Congress after Bryan's election and before 
 his inauguration. But all this could not remedy the evil 
 of his election. 
 
 The election of Bryan would be accompanied by the 
 election of a Democratic House of Representatives, and the 
 State legislatures would make the Senate Democratic in 
 ^901. 
 
 Industry, commerce, and enterprise are based on credit, 
 and credit is based on confidence, and when confidence is 
 destroyed credit dies, and confidence would be destroyed by 
 the election of Bryan — pledged to destroy the gold stand- 
 ard; pledged to act independently of all other nations in 
 establishing our financial policy ; pledged to take the United 
 States from the front rank of the nations that do 95 per 
 cent of the world's business and place it with those that 
 now do only 5 per cent ; pledged to substitute free trade 
 for protection ; pledged to unsettle everything, to introduce 
 confusion where now is order, uncertainty where now is 
 certainty, the silence of idleness where now is heard the 
 busy hum of industry, the crowded soup-house for the full 
 
248 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 dinner-pail, to place an Altgeld on the supreme bench, a 
 Tillman in the cabinet, to turn over to Aguinaldo, with 
 his pockets lined with the traitor's gold and his hands red 
 with the blood of our soldiers, the trust we agreed in 
 sight of God and man faithfully ourselves to fulfill. 
 
 The American people know that the payment of one 
 set of coupons in silver would be an earnest of what is 
 to come, that it would therefore jeopardize the credit of 
 this government and this people, that immediately loans 
 would become difficult, investments would stop, payments 
 would be enforced, manufacturing would be suspended or 
 curtailed, and idle workingmen would curse the cry of 
 imperialism that was used to blind them to the real dangers 
 of Bryanism. 
 
 The last Democratic convention selected the Fourth of 
 July as its date of meeting, and endeavored to bring about 
 the nomination of Mr. Bryan upon that day in order that 
 he might appropriate as his own special platform the Dec- 
 laration of Independence. He, however, did not then fully 
 appreciate this opportunity, but preferred to build his plat- 
 form with his owm well-worn plank of 16 to 1, and he 
 threatened to decline to lead the grand old party to another 
 defeat unless this silver heresy was again declared to be 
 the shibboleth of the party. He would not be a candidate 
 upon a platform that did not declare in favor of 16 to 1, 
 and yet he became a candidate upon the platform that 
 subordinated it to imperialism, and declared the latter the 
 paramount issue of the campaign. 
 
 The controlling spirit of giving this paramountcy to 
 imperialism was Richard Croker, boss of Tammany and boss 
 of the ice trust, a trust that included among its stockhold- 
 ers most of the leading Bryanite, pro-silver, anti-trust Dem- 
 ocratic officials of New York, a trust that raised the price 
 of ice and shut off all 5 -cent purchases during one of the 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 249 
 
 hottest summers New York ever had, and thus made it hot 
 for the poor, whom Mr. Bryan thinks Providence placed 
 under his special care. Mr. Croker, in his worry over his 
 ice troubles, precipitated by Roosevelt, evidently for 
 got a published statement of his in which he said: "I 
 believe in holding whatever we have gained by annexation, 
 purchase, or war. . . If the great country west of the 
 Rocky Mountains were filled with wild Indians, how long 
 would it take us to suppress them and make them respect 
 our laws and constitution? The same thing applies to the 
 Philippines and other countries that may fall into our hands 
 by the providence of peace and war." 
 
 The leading newspaper supporting this paramount issue 
 is the San Francisco Examiner. It evidently has forgotten 
 that on April 27, 1899, it said: "We trust that Mr. Bryan 
 will yet range himself in line with the national aspirations 
 for expansion. . . The popular instinct of a nation can 
 not be changed in sixteen months, nor can a creature of 
 expediency be converted into a statesman by an appeal to 
 the truths of history. Mr. Bryan may think he is close 
 to the people, and that his silly talk about 'imperialism' 
 moves them, but he will soon find out that the Americans 
 are as much in favor of expansion today as they were when 
 they applauded the acquisition of Louisiana Territory by 
 that noted imperialist, Thomas Jefferson." 
 
 On the ninth of August Mr. Bryan journeyed to Indian- 
 apolis to be formally notified of his nomination by the 
 Democratic convention. The notification was made in a 
 public park, whither he was escorted by brass bands and 
 uniformed clubs, and where thousands assembled to hear 
 him sound the key-note of his campaign. He was expected 
 to open the Democratic campaign and to give to all Demo- 
 cratic orators their political cue. His address was carefully 
 prepared and read from manuscript. It filled columns in 
 
250 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 the newspapers, and yet there was scarcely one word in 
 it about the people of this country or their intersets. The 
 Filipinos centered all his attention, and the American work- 
 man's crown of thorns and cross of gold were forgotten 
 for the more absorbing troubles of the Malays. Not even 
 the disfranchised negro of the South was remembered by 
 this man whose convention met on the fourth day of July. 
 His tears would flow for the distant brown man but not 
 for the black man at home. 
 
 I can readily understand that Mr. Bryan appreciated the 
 fact that the American people do not need his solicitude, 
 and that therefore he must go far from home to find some 
 one over whom to lament, just as he went far from his own 
 home to receive the notification of his nomination. 
 
 He seems, however, to have forgotten his letter of accept- 
 ance of his nomination in 1896, wherein he said "until the 
 money question is fully and finally settled the American 
 people will not consent to the consideration of any other 
 important question," for he still claims that the money 
 question is not settled, or he thinks that the American 
 people have forgotten it. He will find that the American 
 people will never consider the money question as settled until 
 he ceases to be a menace to the financial stability of the 
 country, and that they will consider him to be such a menace 
 until he retracts the following statement made by him in 
 1896, to wit: "If there is any one who believes that a gold 
 standard is a good thing, or that it must be maintained, I 
 ask him not to cast his vote for me, for I promise him it will 
 not be maintained in the country longer than I am able to 
 get rid of it." 
 
 Mr. Bryan will find that the American people know that 
 his cry of imperialism, the calling it the paramount issue 
 of the campaign, is but a mask to cover his purpose to 
 establish the free coinage of silver, a mask to cover his 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 251 
 
 purpose to bring in free trade, a mask to cover his purpose 
 to overthrow the banking system, a mask to cover an attack 
 on the Supreme Court, and a purpose to reorganize it if 
 he can get the opportunity. 
 
 Some one has well said that this talk of imperialism is 
 like the rattle of a snake that hurts nobody, but that free 
 silver is the poisoned fang in the head of the reptile that 
 is dangerous. 
 
 But what of imperialism? Mr. Bryan enlisted in the 
 war against Spain not as a private, but as a colonel. 
 The war ended but with no additional laurels on Colo- 
 nel Bryan's brow, and he looked around for an oppor- 
 tunity to get into the procession. The band-wagon with 
 Mr. McKinley, and Roosevelt, and Dewey, and Sampson, 
 and Schley, and Shafter, and Wood, and Lawson, and 
 Chaffee, and McArthur aboard had gone by, but there 
 was still a chance to get in at the head of the second divi- 
 sion, which he hoped would be remembered best because 
 it would be seen last. The treaty of Paris acknowledging 
 the independence of Cuba and ceding to us Porto Rico, 
 Guam, and the Philippines was before the Senate for rati- 
 fication. There was danger of its defeat. The leading 
 Democratic papers were bursting from expansion. The hour 
 of the great coup had come, and Mr. Bryan was the man 
 for the hour. Here was a chance to become marshal of 
 the second division of the parade. To see the opportunity 
 was to grasp it, and the Nebraska colonel doffed his uni- 
 form and hied him, at his own request, to Washington to 
 save the treaty. According to his ambition his duty was 
 in Washington. Before the vote was taken on the treaty 
 the Filipinos had succeeded in bringing about a clash of 
 arms with the American army, and while the vote was being 
 taken they were shooting at our flag and our soldiers. 
 That should have been Mr. Bryan's signal for opposing the 
 
252 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 treaty if he was then in favor of an immediate promise 
 of independence to the Filipinos. He knew that the treaty 
 ceded Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands absolutely to 
 the United States; that it provided that the United States 
 should pay $20,000,000 for the Philippine Islands; that 
 the independence of Cuba was guaranteed, and not the 
 independence of either Porto Rico or the Philippines, but 
 that, on the contrary, it was provided that "the civil rights 
 and political status of the native inhabitants of the terri- 
 tories hereby ceded to the United States shall be determined 
 by the Congress." 
 
 He knew that we could not, with any pride or self- 
 respect, adopt the treaty and thereby accept sovereignty, and 
 then yield this sovereignty to those firing on our flag. He 
 knew that we must and that we would put down the insur- 
 rection before we would talk of the independence of the 
 insurgents. He knew that we had never voluntarily given 
 independence to the native inhabitants of any territory ever 
 acquired by us, and that none could force us to give that 
 which we had determined it was our right to control. 
 Knowing all this, he still advocated, and, more than any 
 other man, secured the ratification of the treaty. Without 
 his aid it would have been defeated. When, therefore, he 
 says that "that party is responsible for the shedding of 
 American blood in the Philippines that was responsible for 
 a treaty that made free men of Cubans and tried to make 
 vassals of the Filipinos," the people will point their finger 
 at him and exclaim, "Thou art the man!" 
 
 Now he says that he advocated the adoption of the treaty 
 in order that we might assume the task of giving independ- 
 ence to the Filipinos. If Aguinaldo had not attacked our 
 soldiers, if he had not attempted to drive us out of the 
 islands by shot and shell and fire and massacre, who knows 
 what would have been done by us? We give nothing under 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 253 
 
 fire. No, Mr. Bryan, there was but one course for Mr. 
 McKinley to take after Aguinaldo had fired on our flag, 
 and the Senate had so ratified the treaty, and that course 
 he took, and is now pursuing, and the American people 
 will cry out in no uncertain tone : "Well done, good and 
 faithful servant." 
 
 In further explanation of his advocacy of this treaty, 
 Mr. Bryan said: "I believe that we are now in a better 
 position to wage a successful contest against imperialism 
 than we would have been had the treaty been rejected. 
 With the treaty ratified, a clean-cut issue is presented 
 between a government by consent and a government by force, 
 and imperialism must bear the responsibility for all that 
 happens until the question is settled." 
 
 This sounds as if Mr. Bryan was then setting up a man 
 of straw in order to knock him down, and that he advo- 
 cated the ratification of the treaty in order to make an 
 imperialist of the President and then attack him for his 
 imperialism, for there certainly could have been no charge 
 of taking the islands if we did not take them. The balance 
 of his explanation is just as flimsy. He said: "If the treaty 
 had been rejected the opponents of imperialism would have 
 been held responsible for any international complications 
 which might have arisen before the ratification of another 
 treaty." 
 
 How could thees complications have concerned this coun- 
 try? If we did not want the Philippines, if we declined 
 to have them, what business was it of ours what became 
 of them or who took them or who fought over them? 
 
 So much for Mr. Bryan's explanation of his reasons for 
 advocating the ratification of the treaty. Now, as to his 
 remedy for this Philippine trouble, he said: "If elected, 
 I shall convene Congress in extraordinary session as soon 
 as I am inaugurated, and recommend an immediate declara- 
 
254 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 tion of the nation's purpose — first, to establish a stable form 
 of government in the Philippine Islands, just as we are 
 now establishing a stable form of government in the island 
 of Cuba; second, to give independence to the Filipinos, 
 just as we have promised to give independence to the 
 Cubans; third, to protect the Filipinos from outside inter- 
 ference while they work out their destiny, just as we have 
 protected the republics of Central and South America, and 
 are, by the Monroe Doctrine, pledged to protect Cuba." 
 
 The anti-imperialists first demanded that we drop the 
 Philippines like a hot potato, and run home. A noted 
 college president said that on some dark night we should 
 steal out as quietly as we stole in. Now, they say that 
 we should not steal out, but that we should stay there, 
 and do three things, to wit : ( 1 ) Establish a stable form 
 of government ; ( 2 ) Give them independence ; ( 3 ) Protect 
 them from outside interference. 
 
 McKinley has twice replied to this proposition. In his 
 last annual message he said: "The suggestion has been 
 made that we could renounce our authority over the islands, 
 and, giving them independence, could retain a protectorate 
 over them. This proposition will not be found, I am sure, 
 worthy of your serious attention. Such an arrangement 
 would involve, at the outset, a cruel breach of faith. It 
 would place the peaceable and loyal majority, who ask 
 nothing better than to accept our authority, at the mercy 
 of the minority of armed insurgents. . . It would make 
 us responsible for the acts of the insurgent leaders and give 
 us no power to control them. It could charge us with a 
 task of protecting them against each other and defending 
 them against any foreign power with which they chose to 
 quarrel. In short, it would take from the Congress of the 
 United States the power of declaring war and vest that 
 tremendous prerogative in the Tagal leader of the hour. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 255 
 
 It does not seem desirable that I should recommend at this 
 time a separate and final form of government for those 
 islands. When peace should be restored, it shall be the 
 duty of Congress to construct a plan of government which 
 shall establish and maintain peace and order in the Phil- 
 ippines." 
 
 In his letter of acceptance he states the proposition with 
 a clearness and terseness that must satisfy the American 
 people : 
 
 "In short, the proposition of those opposed to us is to 
 continue all the obligations in the Philippines which now 
 rest upon the government, only changing the relation from 
 principal, which now exists, to that of surety. Our respon- 
 sibility is to remain, but our power is to be diminished. 
 Our obligation is to be no less, but our title is to be surren- 
 dered to another power, which is without experience or 
 training, or the ability to maintain a stable government at 
 home, and absolutely helpless to perform its international 
 obligations with the rest of the world. To this we are 
 opposed. We should not yield our title while our obliga- 
 tions last." 
 
 If the Filipinos are to be independent they may prefer 
 and will have the right to select their own protector. They 
 may order us to keep our Monroe Doctrine at home. We 
 certainly are under no moral or other obligations to pro- 
 tect an independent people living on the other side of the 
 world, and we have better use for our money. The Monroe 
 Doctrine has to be stretched to cover America. It will not 
 stand an Oriental expansion. 
 
 McKinley is now endeavoring to establish a stable form 
 of government in these islands, and would have progressed 
 much further in his task but for the conduct of Mr. Bryan 
 and his friends. But, if we are to be controlled in this task 
 by the doctrine of the "consent of the governed," as inter- 
 
256 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 preted by Mr. Bryan and his parties, what form of govern- 
 ment would we establish under Mr. Bryan's leadership? 
 We can not very consistently spend twenty millions for the 
 privilege, and many more millions in establishing any other 
 than a Republican form of government. But suppose the 
 Filipinos want a dictatorship, such as Aguinaldo proclaimed, 
 or a monarchy, or an oligarchy; or suppose the Tagalogs, 
 who mmiber 1,500,000, want one form, and the Visayans, 
 who number 2,500,000, another, and the Moros another, and 
 the Ilocanos another ! If we can give them only that form 
 of government to which they consent, what a hollow mock- 
 ery it would be to say to them: "Choose your government; 
 your consent is a prerequisite to any action on our part, 
 but you must choose a republic, as we must give you some 
 form of government, and we can not establish any other 
 without destroying our own." 
 
 Whose consent shall we obtain? There is no Philippine 
 people, as we use the term. We have already the consent 
 of the Visayans in Negros, of the Moros in Sulu, and of 
 a majority of the Tagalogs in Luzon. 
 
 Mr. Bryan knows as well as does the President that the 
 insurgents under Aguinaldo constitute a minority not only 
 of the Filipinos, but also of the Tagalogs. The reports of 
 the two commissions and of the military commanders are 
 unanimous in stating that the majority of the people are 
 friendly to this government. 
 
 The President, therefore, very pertinently says in his let- 
 ter of acceptance : "We are asked to transfer our sovereignty 
 to a small minority in the islands without consulting the 
 majority, and to abandon the largest portion of the popu- 
 lation, which has been loyal to us, to the cruelties of the 
 guerrilla insurgent bands. More than this, we are asked 
 to protect this minority in establishing a government, and 
 to this end repress all opposition of the majority. We are 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 257 
 
 required to set up a stable government in the interest of 
 those who have assailed our sovereignty and fired on our 
 soldiers, and then to maintain it at any cost or sacrifice 
 against its enemies within and against those having ambi- 
 tious designs without. The American people will not make 
 the murderers of our soldiers the agents of the republic to 
 convey the blessings of liberty and order to the Philippines. 
 They will not make them the builders of the new common- 
 wealth. What, then, is the real issue on this subject? 
 Whether it is paramount to any other or not, it is whether 
 we shall be responsible for the government of the Philip- 
 pines with the sovereignty and authority which enables us 
 to guide them to regulated liberty, law, safety, and progress, 
 or whether we shall be responsible for the forcible and 
 arbitrary government of a minority without sovereignty 
 and authority on our part, and only the embarrassment of 
 a protectorate which draws us into their troubles without 
 the power of preventing them." 
 
 The President could have said: "A minority headed by 
 Aguinaldo, who sold his country and his right to live therein 
 for Spanish gold, who planned and ordered the massacre 
 of every American soldier and civilian and every other for- 
 eigner in Manila, including women and children." 
 
 This minority is encouraged to continue the insurrection 
 by the course taken by the Democratic party and by the 
 utterances of Mr. Bryan. This is proved by the report 
 of the last commission, by the reports of our generals, and 
 by the Filipinos themselves. 
 
 The present commission, headed by Judge Taft, an anti- 
 expansionist, and containing on its board Mr. Wright, a 
 Democrat, and Professor Moses, of our university, whom 
 we all know, recently reported as follows: "Disturbances 
 in parts of the islands, kept up and avowed by insurgent 
 proclamation and orders to influence election, do not show 
 
258 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 an unfriendly attitude of a majority of the people of the 
 provinces where they occur. . . Uncertainty as to the 
 future policy of the United States and the defenselessness 
 of the people without arms largely prevent them from aid- 
 ing the Americans in suppressing outrages. . . It is con- 
 ceded by all but the men in arms, and is implied in their 
 proclamations, that if the election confirms the present 
 policy the remnant of the insurrection will disappear within 
 sixty days by the surrender of the leader and the fading 
 out of the rank and file." 
 
 On this point, listen to the following letter very recently 
 written by a young Virginia soldier in the Philippines to 
 his parents: ''The anti-expansionists at home have simply 
 ruined all prospects of any probable termination of troubles 
 here, at least until after the election. They have discour- 
 aged our men and encouraged our enemies. Even admit- 
 ting soundness in their views, they are guilty of the highest 
 treason, and hundreds of deaths must of necessity be laid 
 at their door. The natives have the greatest confidence in 
 Bryan, and they don't hesitate to tell us that as soon as 
 he is elected the soldiers will all be sent away and they 
 will run things to suit themselves. 
 
 "I was down at Calamba a few days ago and saw a large 
 picture of Bryan stuck on a native's hut. They all firmly 
 believe he will be elected in November, and they also believe 
 that the anti-expansionists are largely in the majority in 
 the United States. The natives have always been accus- 
 tomed to living under a most despotic form of government, 
 and for any one to criticise or disagree with the methods 
 of the reigning powers meant no less than instant death and 
 confiscation of all property, and so they reason that if 
 Bryan's party was not stronger than the reigning power in 
 the United States it would be impossible for the party 
 to exist. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 259 
 
 "It makes me weary every time I see in one of the papers 
 from the States where some 'anti' is shooting off his head 
 about these poor down-trodden people over here, and how 
 they are being imposed upon by the Americans, and yet 
 these people who are doing all the talking don't know any 
 more about the condition of affairs in the islands than I 
 do about preaching a sermon. In the first place, they are 
 better off now than they ever were in their lives before, 
 have m.ore liberty and more to eat, and are making more 
 money. The natives make in a day now more than they 
 made in a week before. When farmers raise a crop, as 
 they do now, they do not give half of it to the church 
 and the other half to the government, as they did formerly, 
 and starve themselves. They can carry their goods to mar- 
 ket and not be robbed before they get there by ladrones. 
 
 **The majority of us will be glad when we can return 
 to civil life. We are all tired of it, but we can not leave 
 until there is a change in the situation. In the meantime 
 we need encouragement, instead of being branded as mur- 
 derers, robbers, and desperadoes. I don't believe you will 
 find a man in the service here who would be willing to give 
 up the islands. It keeps a fellow guessing. I don't know 
 what to make of it. I have been a Democrat all my life 
 and was always a great admirer of Mr. Bryan, but I can 
 not for the life of me see how a man can conscientiously 
 be a follower of Bryan and fight under the stars and stripes 
 at the same time." 
 
 Very strong testimony in support of our accusation 
 against Mr. Bryan is the following extract from a letter 
 from a Filipino to Aguinaldo, and found among Aguinaldo's 
 papers captured by us. It counsels Aguinaldo to peace, 
 and says : "We are in error, and yet we persist in that 
 error, impelled by those who dream of a triumph of a party 
 which is today in the minority in the United States, without 
 
260 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 perceiving that this party is also American, and that they 
 are not going to give us our independence out of hand as 
 a matter of sentiment at the expense of the honor of 
 America, and in spite of the grave responsibility, both 
 international and domestic, contracted under the treaty of 
 Paris. Others dream that because part of the press of 
 Europe copies from the American anti-imperialist papers 
 the criticisms of that party against the government of 
 President McKinley, a European intervention in our favor 
 is to take place, without reflecting that the treaty of Paris 
 was made before all the civilized world, and with its assent." 
 
 Here is a note of honor that Mr. Bryan seems to have 
 missed. We have solemnly by treaty guaranteed to the 
 Spanish subjects remaining in the Philippines protection in 
 their property, their business, their persons, and their 
 religion. 
 
 Suppose we turn over these islands to Aguinaldo, as we 
 must under the Bryan theory, if he and his followers refuse 
 their consent to any government we may establish, and it 
 is a certainty that he will never consent, will the man who 
 attempted to massacre these people while we were in Manila 
 forego his butchery after we have departed? Verily, Carl 
 Schurz was right in saying in 1896 that the election of 
 Bryan would be at the price of national honor, which has 
 never been forfeited. All our promises are equally bind- 
 ing, whether contained in a bond or a treaty. The man 
 who would disregard one would disregard the other. Bryan 
 would disregard both. He will never have an opportunity 
 to disregard either. 
 
 In his Indianapolis speech, Mr. Bryan said: ''The Repub- 
 lican party today is responsible for every drop of blood 
 drawn from an American soldier in the Philippine Islands 
 or drawn by an American soldier." 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 261 
 
 In these distant islands, not many months ago, there 
 died on the firing-line at the head of his troops, as brilliant, 
 as gallant a soldier, as brave a man, as true a patriot as 
 ever a nation called a hero, and this people and genera- 
 tions yet unborn will honor the fame and name of Lawton. 
 This is what he said a few days before he was killed on 
 the field of battle by a Filipino bullet : "If I am shot by 
 a Filipino bullet, it might as well come from one of my 
 own men, because I know that the continuance of fighting 
 here is due to reports sent out from America." 
 
 Who tells the truth, the man at the front or the man in 
 the rear? 
 
 Which will the American people believe? The man who 
 gave his life for his country, or the man who gives only 
 his jaw, and cares not how many of our soldiers' lives are 
 sacrificed upon the altar of his selfish ambition? 
 
 I would commend to his thoughtful consideration the 
 following statement made by the New York Journal before 
 the ratification of the treaty: 
 
 "President McKinley's proclamation to the people of the 
 Philippines through General Otis ought to secure their 
 hearty cooperation in our work of regeneration. The Presi- 
 dent promises them all they hoped to win in their revolt 
 against Spain. President McKinley promises that civil and 
 municipal government shall be carried on as far as prac- 
 ticable by officers chosen from the inhabitants of the 
 islands, and if, in performing this work of civilization, 
 American blood should be shed, the position of our anti- 
 expansionists would not be enviable. The first shot fired 
 against the American flag would make domestic opposition 
 to the measures of our government overt treason." 
 
 Think of that, Mr. Bryan! 
 
 Mr. Bryan is very fond of quoting from the speeches of 
 Abraham Lincoln. I would suggest to him that when he 
 
262 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 calls the suppression of the Filipino insurrection an unholy 
 and unjust war, knowing that his words will reach alike 
 the ear of the Filipino rebel and of the American soldier, 
 as they scan each other along the barrels of their loaded 
 rifles, he recall the following appropriate remarks of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, aimed at such orators as he: 
 
 "He who dissuades one man from volunteering, and 
 induces one soldier to desert, weakens the cause as much 
 as he who kills an American soldier in battle. Must I shoot 
 a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, while I must not 
 touch a hair of a wily agitator, who induces him to desert? 
 This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a 
 father, a mother, or friend into a public meeting and there 
 working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to write the 
 soldier-boy that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked 
 administration of a contemptible government. I think that, 
 in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy is 
 not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy." 
 
 Senator Pettigrew, of South Dakota, has been a very 
 bitter opponent of the President in his Philippine policy, 
 and is now an advocate of Bryan's election and his own. 
 One of these fathers to whom Lincoln referred recently 
 wrote the following letter to the Senator, in reply to his 
 appeal for aid in this campaign. I commend this letter 
 to Mr. Bryan's consideration. It is as follows: 
 
 "You ask for the active assistance of your friends to over- 
 come the efforts of the Republicans to defeat you. Your 
 friends are mostly in the islands of Luzon, and one of my 
 sons is now suffering from the tortures of a Mauser bullet 
 sent into his chest by one of them. Your boasted friends 
 are the enemies of our country, and are thriving on the 
 encouragement and support derived from you as Senator 
 from South Dakota. I had two sons in the Philippine 
 rebellion, and your political consort, Judge Moore, prayed 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 263 
 
 that the god of battles would strengthen the arms of their 
 opponents that they might drive these sons and their com- 
 rades into the sea. This sentiment you have countenanced 
 and encouraged by your every public act, and it is because 
 of your having thus countenanced and encouraged such 
 treason that the rebellion in the Philippines still hangs on." 
 
 I commend to these battle-scarred sons and to their 
 fathers and mothers the following slur upon the American 
 soldiers recently uttered by Mr. Bryan. In a recent speech 
 at Chicago Mr. Bryan is reported to have spoken as fol- 
 lows: *Tf 100,000 soldiers are permitted to walk about in 
 idleness where one soldier would do, what are we com- 
 ing to?" 
 
 The fact is that of these 100,000 soldiers one-third are 
 regulars and the remaining two-thirds are practically volun- 
 teers whose enlistment is only for one year longer. Have 
 they been or are they now walking about in idleness where 
 one soldier would do? Have General Wood and his men 
 been idle in Cuba? Were Otis and Lawton and Funston 
 and MacArthur and their brave boys idle in Luzon? Were 
 Liscum and the Ninth Infantry idle at Tien-Tsin? Has 
 Chaffee been idling away his time on a pleasure trip from 
 Tien-Tsin to Pekin? 
 
 Is it harder work to lecture at Chautauqua clubs, talk 
 at country fairs, and orate from the rear end of a Pullman 
 car than to cleanse the Cuban Augean stable of the accumu- 
 lated filth of centuries of Spanish misrule, and fight yellow 
 fever? Is it pleasanter to listen to the whiz of a Mauser 
 bullet than to the applause of a listening throng? Is it 
 as dangerous and exhausting to make a political campaign 
 as, beneath a tropic sun or in tropic rains, in dust and 
 mud, climbing mountains and fording rivers, to face death 
 in open battle or secret ambush or in slow, wasting fever 
 that our country's flag may be victorious in our distant 
 
264 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 possessions, that our country's ambassador may be rescued 
 from ignominious death? Are the graves of our soldiers 
 in Cuba, Luzon, and China the resting places of men who 
 died walking about in idleness? 
 
 " 'Walking around in idleness,' 
 Wherever the flag is assailed, 
 Meeting the foe with idle might 
 
 That never yet has failed. 
 Lawton, and Lisciim, and Logan, too, 
 
 Capron — the list is long — 
 Went to their death in 'idleness,' 
 And their 'idleness' was wrong. 
 
 "Grant and Sherman and Sheridan — 
 
 Why should we call the roll? 
 They idled away in the idle fight — 
 
 In fights that stirred the soul. 
 'Walking round in idleness,' 
 
 Braving the leaden hail; 
 What is the glow of a nation's pride? 
 
 Is that but an idle tale? 
 
 " 'Walking around in idleness,' 
 
 Over the Pekin road; 
 Scorched and worn by the galling sun, 
 
 Lugging an idle load. 
 Fighting with idle energy. 
 
 Cheering with idle breath — 
 Thinking, with idle love, of home, 
 
 And dying with idle death." 
 
 Verily, he jests at scars who never felt a wound. Let 
 every American resent this slur upon the nation's heroes. 
 
 Mr. Bryan, in quoting very often from speeches of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, would make it appear that he is attempting 
 to follow in the footsteps of the martyred President. In 
 this regard President McKinley very pertinently says: "If 
 our opponents would practice as well as preach the doc- 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 265 
 
 Irines of Abraham Lincoln, there would be no fear for the 
 r-afety of our institutions at home or their rightful influence 
 in any territory over which our flag floats." In this regard 
 Prt-irident McKinley can very appropriately refer Mr. Bryan 
 to Lincoln's first inaugural address, wherein he said : "The 
 power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and 
 possess the property and places belonging to the govern- 
 ment." Bryan's footsteps point in an opposite direction. 
 He has pledged himself, if elected, to call an extra session 
 of Congress to give up some of the territory of the United 
 States. But Mr. Bryan does not preach the doctrines of 
 Lincoln. He garbles Lincoln's utterances and gives them 
 a meaning Lincoln never intended, and therefore I do not 
 think him honest. In his quotation from Lincoln in his 
 Labor Day speech at Chicago, he made it appear that Lin- 
 coln apprehended that an attempt would be made to place 
 the dollar above the man, and that thereby the liberties 
 of the people would be destroyed by capital. The quotation 
 reads as if taken bodily from Lincoln's first annual message 
 to Congress. Instead, it is made up of disconnected sen- 
 tences taken here and there from a message that was dis- 
 cussing the monarchial tendencies of the slave States, was 
 contrasting the slave labor in the South and the hired 
 laborer in the North, the hopelessness of the former and 
 the independence and helpfulness of the latter, but which 
 in no way was colored by such demoralizing rhetoric as 
 that which Bryan attempted to give it. 
 
 Lincoln was the last man to attempt to mount ambition's 
 ladder upon rungs made of class dissension and internecine 
 strife. He recognized the catholicity of labor, the respect 
 due to honest toil, the independence of labor and capital, 
 the protection due to employer and employee alike, and he 
 voiced this sentiment in that part of this message which 
 Mr. Bryan omitted to quote. He said: "Labor is prior to 
 
266 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of 
 labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first 
 existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much 
 the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are 
 as worthy of protection as other rights." 
 
 Lincoln was essentially a man of the people, and his 
 great human heart had room in it for all his countrymen, 
 rich and poor alike, and his mission was to sow far and wide 
 with liberal hand the seeds of fellowship and brotherhood, 
 and not of envy, hatred, and uncharitableness. 
 
 Mr. Bryan was therefore dishonest in so using Lincoln's 
 great name to fan the flame of discord between wage-earners 
 and wage-payers. This dishonesty was again apparent in 
 a subsequent speech wherein he said: "If he is a wage- 
 earner, and you do not know how soon he may be even if 
 he is not now, is he safe when he is liable to be deprived 
 of trial by jury through the system known as government 
 by injunction?" 
 
 Mr. Bryan is a lawyer. He knows the constitution of 
 the United States and of every State. He knows that the 
 right of trial by jury is guaranteed in every constitution 
 drawn by the Anglo-Saxon race since Magna Charta, and 
 that no human power desires to or can take it away from 
 the humblest pauper that begs for alms upon our public 
 streets. 
 
 He knows that no man under the American government 
 is liable to be deprived of trial by jury through govern- 
 ment by injunction, or by anything else except by the 
 anarchy he, Bryan, is inciting. He knows the province of 
 the writ of injunction, to wit : to prevent the doing or con- 
 tinuing of an act that would cause damage that no court 
 of law in its usual course can redress, such as the infringe- 
 ment of a patent right, of a copyright, of a trade-mark, 
 the polluting or shutting off of water, the commission of 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 267 
 
 waste, the conspiring of tradesmen or manufacturers or rail- 
 roads in violation of the interstate commerce act, or of 
 striking laborers to prevent by force commerce by rail 
 between the States or the transportation of the mails. He 
 knows that this preventative remedy has been applied alike 
 to employer and employee, that it broke up the combination 
 of railroads to control traffic between the Missouri and the 
 Pacific, and the combination of coal dealers in this city 
 to keep up the price of coal, as well as the combination 
 of Debs and his associates to stop the running of trains. 
 He knows that it is a contempt of court to disobey its writs, 
 whether of injunction or otherwise; that courts must have 
 the summary power to mete out immediate punishment for 
 such disobedience; that without such power courts might 
 as well close their doors and the judicial ermine give place 
 to the red coat of anarchy, the wool-sack to the guillotine. 
 He knows that the railroad officials and coal dealers would 
 have been punished by fine and imprisonment if they had 
 disobeyed the injunctions issued against them. He knows 
 that the striking workingmen denied the mandates of the 
 courts and were punished solely for such disobedience, as 
 the courts have done under the wisest judges since English 
 law was known; and he knows that such punishments have 
 not in the least impaired to any man the right of trial 
 by jury. 
 
 I say, therefore, that in the above utterance he was dis- 
 honest with the people, and sowed the wind from w^hich 
 they may reap the whirlwind, and therein he wandered as 
 far from the path that Lincoln trod as did the path of 
 Robespierre diverge from that of Washington. 
 
 It is not improbable that Mr. Bryan, owing to his appar- 
 ent familiarity with the career of Lincoln, has copied his 
 diatribes against McKinley from those uttered in 1864 
 against Lincoln. The same charges of imperialism that 
 
268 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 are now made against McKinley were then made against 
 Lincoln. The Indianapolis Sentinel, that is now attacking 
 McKinley, attacked Lincoln in 1864, as follows: 
 
 "Shall we profit by the teachings of history, and even 
 by our own experience, or continue a policy that must end 
 in the overthrow of one of the best governments that the 
 world ever saw, and of civil liberty? . . . Have not the 
 people daily evidence that Abraham Lincoln is assuming 
 despotic power? More than eighteen hundred years ago 
 Rome was governed by three men at the end of that repub- 
 lic. One was Caesar. They were all of noble blood. And 
 we, too, have our triumvirate — Lincoln, Stanton, Halleck. 
 Should Mr. Lincoln be re-elected, the revolution will be 
 accomplished. This will be no longer a republic of the 
 United States, but a consolidated empire." 
 
 In 1864 the Democratic national platform proclaimed 
 that during Lincoln's first administration, under the pretense 
 of a military necessity of a war power higher than the 
 constitution, the constitution itself had been disregarded in 
 every part, and public liberty and private rights alike trod- 
 den down. 
 
 These charges were made all over the North, and yet, 
 notwithstanding, Lincoln was re-elected, the union was 
 saved, constitutional liberty was sustained and strength- 
 ened, and Lincoln's name became a household word, his 
 statues in marble or bronze grace every city in the land, 
 and his fame is and ever will be enshrined in the hearts 
 of his countrymen as one of their most priceless heritages. 
 
 In 1868 the Democratic national platform contained the 
 startling accusation against the Republican party that under 
 its repeated assaults the pillars of the government are rock- 
 ing on their base, and, should it succeed in November 
 next and inaugurate its President, we will meet as a sub- 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 269 
 
 ject and conquered people amid the ruins of liberty and 
 the scattered fragments of the constitution. 
 
 General Grant was the President here referred to. The 
 people of the North knew that he had been the battering- 
 ram that had demolished the wall the South had built to 
 divide the Union. The people of the South knew that he 
 was as noble toward a conquered foe as he was great as an 
 opposing one. The people of the entire country, therefore, 
 notwithstanding this prophecy, twice elected and inaugurated 
 as their President the hero of Appomattox. Then came 
 Hays and Garfield and Cleveland and Harrison and Cleve- 
 land again and McKinley, and we have not yet met "as 
 a subject and conquered people amid the ruins of liberty 
 and the scattered fragments of the constitution," but are, 
 on the contrary, giving liberty and good government, law, 
 order, and protection to those who for centuries have them- 
 selves been subject and conquered people. 
 
 I would suggest to Mr. Bryan that when he talks of 
 this people losing their liberties, he add to his quotations 
 from Lincoln the following remark of Lincoln's : "There 
 is no fear of the people losing their liberties. We all know 
 ihat to be the cry of demagogues, and none but the ignorant 
 will listen to it." 
 
 This cry of imperialism is purely a bogey man that should 
 scare no man. Not a thing done in Cuba, Porto Rico, or 
 the Philippines is in any way imperialistic. Vast powers 
 have been necessarily exercised by the President in all of 
 these islands, and yet a great Democratic leader. Senator 
 Morgan, recently said of him : 
 
 "His conduct in the government of our newly acquired 
 insular possessions does not justify the suspicion that, per- 
 sonally, he demands these vast powers for his own aggran- 
 dizement or for any imperial purpose. His conduct in the 
 exercise of almost imperial sway in these islands has estab- 
 
270 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 lished before the whole world the great fact that an Amer- 
 ican President, inspired with the self-control and self- 
 abnegation which is enjoined by our constitution and is 
 taught by the spirit of our government, is superior to the 
 temptations of unlawful and unhallowed ambitions." 
 
 This encomium on McKinley is not only true of him 
 today, but will also be true of him four years from now, 
 when he is nearing the close of his second presidential term. 
 
 In short, if it be imperialism to favor territorial expan- 
 sion, then imperialism has been characteristic of every Pres- 
 ident who by conquest or treaty has expanded our domain 
 from the Mississippi to the Golden Gate and from the Rio 
 Grande to Alaska. It includes among its votaries Jefferson 
 and Jackson, Adams and Monroe, Polk and Pierce, Andrew 
 Johnson, who brought beneath our flag the land that is lit 
 by the aurora borealis, and Ulysses S. Grant, who would 
 have illuminated our galaxy of stars with the Southern 
 Cross that brightens the skies o'er San Domingo. 
 
 There is nothing new, much less imperialistic, in any of 
 the events that have followed upon our war with Spain. 
 
 From the moment when the Puritans landed upon Plym- 
 outh Rock to the ratification of the treaty of Paris w^e have 
 never asked the consent of the people of any territory that 
 we have acquired, whether by purchase or conquest. Our 
 own government was not established by the consent of all 
 the governed. The colonists came with patents to lands 
 that made no mention of the inhabitants thereof, and whom 
 they did not consult, except at the point of a dagger or 
 over the barrel of a gun. These colonists in the course of 
 time established this government and adopted this consti- 
 tution, announcing a Declaration of Independence that pro- 
 claimed that governments derive their powers from the 
 consent of the governed, and yet they did not permit the 
 Indians and negroes, both free and slave, or those who 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 271 
 
 were disqualified by poverty from voting, constituting alto- 
 gether one-fourth of the population, to give or refuse their 
 consent, any more than the Southern people today give the 
 disfranchised negro a voice in the government, although 
 they applaud to the skies Bryan's rodomontados against 
 McKinley for governing the Filipinos without their consent. 
 
 After the formation of the union several of the States 
 ceded to the Federal government what is known as the 
 "Northwest Territory," and which now constitutes the States 
 of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. As 
 the ceding States had never obtained the consent of the 
 natives to be governed by them, they did not consult them 
 in giving them a new ruler. 
 
 Rogers and Clark conquered for us the Illinois country 
 and carried our boundaries to the Mississippi on the west 
 and the Great Lakes on the north, but we did not ask the 
 consent of the French inhabitants of that region. 
 
 The next, and the greatest of all our expansions, was 
 the Louisiana purchase. There is no word in the treaty 
 about the consent of the governed, nor in the resolutions 
 of Congress which gave Jefferson the power to rule over 
 the vast region, nor in the act organizing the territorial 
 government, which was to be the creation of the executive 
 power. Yet there were 30,000 white men settled at the 
 mouth of the Mississippi and in its neighborhood who had 
 no good will to this government, and whose rights were 
 never consulted at all by the nations which decided their 
 fate, and who protested against the government imposed 
 upon them. 
 
 A few years passed, and, in 1819, we bought Florida 
 from Spain without the consent of the governed, and this 
 crime against the Declaration of Independence was perpe- 
 trated by John Quincy Adams and James Monroe. 
 
272 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 Next came Texas. Was the consent of the Mexicans 
 who lived in that great region asked by us or any one? 
 Then came the Mexican War and the treaty of Guadalupe- 
 Hidalgo, whereby we acquired New Mexico, California, and 
 Arizona. There were many Mexicans within this territory. 
 We never asked their consent. On the contrary, they made 
 bloody opposition. There was an insurrection in New Mex- 
 ico in which many officials, including the governor, were 
 massacred, and there were some small fights in California, 
 but we put them down with the sword. 
 
 Next came the Gadsden purchase of 45,000 square miles, 
 whereby we bought territory with the people on it, and 
 nobody was consulted except the governments of the United 
 States and Mexico. 
 
 Next came the purchase of Alaska with the people in it, 
 and it never occurred to any one to ask their consent. Jef- 
 ferson, Monroe, Polk, Pierce, and Andrew Jackson were 
 the Democratic Presidents who were guilty of imperialism, 
 as defined by Mr. Bryan, in acquiring these lands without 
 consulting the inhabitants thereof. 
 
 We might ask the shades of these Democratic Presidents 
 in the language of Mr. Bryan's Indianapolis speech: ''Did 
 we purchase the people? If not, did we secure title for 
 them? Were they thrown in with the land?" They would 
 refer us for answer to the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, which has said that "On the transfer of territory 
 by treaty the relations of the inhabitants with their former 
 sovereign are dissolved, and new relations are created 
 between them and the government which has acquired their 
 territory. The same act which transfers their country trans- 
 fers the allegiance of those who remain in it." 
 
 Mr. Bryan knows this to be settled law, and his state- 
 ment, therefore, was another instance in which he was dis- 
 honest with the American people. 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 273 
 
 Democratic Presidents not only annexed contiguous ter- 
 ritory, but they endeavored to acquire non-contiguous terri- 
 tory. Jefferson wanted Cuba; Polk undertook to annex it, 
 and offered Spain $100,000,000 for it; Pierce was willing 
 to add $30,000,000 to this; Buchanan three times recom- 
 mended to Congress its acquisition; and the Democratic 
 conventions of 1860 resolved in favor of its annexation, 
 but nothing was said by these officials in their letters or 
 messages about the people of Cuba, or about their wishes, 
 or whether its acquisition would be by the "consent of the 
 governed." 
 
 Andrew Jackson negotiated a treaty with Denmark for 
 the cession of the Danish West Indies, and, before him, 
 President Pierce negotiated a treaty with the King of the 
 Hawaiian Islands for their acquisition, but objected to the 
 acceptance of the Hawaiian Territory coupled with any 
 agreement which would require its admission as a State of 
 the Union, an objection that would shock the modern 
 Democrat. 
 
 The Democrats of the past not only annexed every foot 
 of the terirtory that we have annexed on this continent, 
 and attempted to annex non-contiguous territory without 
 consulting the inhabitants thereof, but they also governed 
 these people without obtaining their consent and independ- 
 ently of the constitution. 
 
 In 1803, in providing for the government of the Louisiana 
 Territory, Congress vested all military, civil, and judicial 
 powers in such person or persons, and to be exercised in 
 such manner as the President of the United States should 
 direct, and Jefferson exercised this power in accordance 
 with the general principles of the constitution; but there 
 was no consultation with the inhabitants, no participation 
 in their government accorded them, and no rights assured 
 to them except "the free enjoyment of their liberty, prop- 
 
274 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 erty, and religion," For this Jefferson was called an "impe- 
 rialist" and accused of establishing a despotic government. 
 
 In 1819 Congress vested the same power in President 
 Monroe, and he acted as Jefferson did. 
 
 But, say the Bryanites, "We acquired all our previous 
 territory with the intention to occupy the soil with our 
 own people and eventually to admit it into the Union as a 
 State. 
 
 New Mexico and Arizona were acquired in 1848 with 
 a promise of statehood, and this promise has not yet been 
 kept, though over fifty years have gone by. Alaska was 
 acquired in 1867 under no such promise, and she has just 
 obtained local government. Its admission as a territory, 
 and the admission of Arizona and New Mexico as States, 
 depend solely upon the will of Congress. In the meantime 
 we have given Porto Rico a more independent government 
 than we even gave to any of the territories. We have 
 treated them more generously. The other territories we 
 tax to support a government in which they are denied 
 representation. To Porto Rico we have given every dol- 
 lar we have taken by tariff or taxation, and we are 
 ready to treat the Philippines in the same manner. But, 
 independent of all this, what is the difference in principle 
 between imposing government upon New Mexico against 
 the consent of the people and treating the Filipinos in the 
 same way? Did the fact that we intended to occupy New 
 Mexico with our own people, and that we expected in due 
 course of time to admit it into the Union, justify us in impos- 
 ing upon the New Mexicans a government against which 
 they rebelled, if all governments derive their just powers 
 only from the consent of the governed? Has the fact that 
 we did not so treat them, that we put down their rebellion 
 with the sword, that after a lapse of over half a century 
 we have not kept our promise as to statehood, imperialized 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 275 
 
 our government? Is there a single fundamental principle 
 of our constitution, except trial by jury, that we have not 
 extended to both Porto Rico and the Philippines? There 
 is none. There is no distinction in our conduct in the two 
 acquisitions. The policy we adopted at the start we still 
 continue. 
 
 This policy now condemned by William Jennings Bryan 
 as imperialism was inaugurated by the men who made the 
 constitution — by Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of 
 Independence. These men were practical men. They knew 
 that no popular government can stand long or accomplish 
 much for the good of the governed that is not carefully 
 adjusted to the conditions and intelligence of the people 
 who are to live under it. They therefore acquired terri- 
 tory without consulting the inhabitants, and gave them that 
 government that in their opinion was best suited for their 
 needs, never stopping to ask how far the government so 
 created derived its just powers from the consent of the 
 governed. They met the conditions that confronted them, 
 and their justification is the government they bequeathed 
 to us. 
 
 We must follow the same common-sense policy. In deter- 
 mining the question as to the form of government to be 
 given to the people of Porto Rico and the Philippines we 
 must bear in mind that the vast majority of them are 
 unable to read or write ', that they have no experience in 
 any real self-government or any really honest government, 
 but have been for centuries under the dominion of arbitrary 
 power ; that in all their experience and traditions law and 
 freedom have been ideas which were not associated with 
 each other, but opposed to each other. We must bear in 
 mind that a people who are in this condition, who have 
 never acquired any real understanding of the way to con- 
 duct a popular government, who have never learned the 
 
276 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 fundamental and essential lesson of obedience to the deci- 
 sion of the majority, would lapse into anarchy or fall under 
 an oligarchy if intrusted now with self-government. We 
 would be committing a crime, an outrage upon these peo- 
 ple, and upon the civilized world, we would be recreant to 
 our trust, if we did not train these people in the art of 
 government before allowing them to govern themselves. 
 
 The people of these islands have acquired the moral right 
 to be treated by the United States in accordance with the 
 underlying principles of justice and freedom which we have 
 declared in our constitution, and which are the essential 
 safeguards of every individual against the powers of any 
 government, because they are essential limitations inherent 
 in the very existence of our government. "They are enti- 
 tled to demand that they shall not be deprived of life, 
 liberty, or property without due process of law, that pri- 
 vate property shall not be taken for public use without com- 
 pensation, that no law shall be passed impairing the obliga- 
 tion of contracts or freedom of religious worship, that all 
 men shall be equal before the law, because there is an 
 implied contract between our government and every one 
 under its dominion that these rights shall be respected and 
 enforced, because observance of them is a part of the nature 
 of our government." I do not think that any of you doubt 
 but that Congress, in the exercise of its constitutional 
 power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting 
 the territory belonging to the United States, will hold itself 
 sacredly bound by these limitations. 
 
 It will take time to eradicate from our island possessions 
 the evil effects of centuries of Spanish misrule. For some 
 time we must in the Philippines sustain the law with visible 
 force until confidence is bred of justice, and the husband- 
 man learns that he will reap what he sows, unmolested by 
 native brigand or governmental bandit. This will require 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 277 
 
 a standing army. A great hue and cry is raised against a 
 large standing army, and from the pages of history are 
 culled the bloody records that standing armies have 
 imprinted there of their onslaughts upon the lives and lib- 
 erties of the people. History, like the Bible, can be used 
 to prove any crime or virtue that human fears and hopes 
 may conceive. But history is an incomplete and inaccurate 
 narrative even of the past. It tells nothing of the living 
 present. It is for today and tomorrow that we are now 
 planning and legislating. The people of this century and 
 the next are to produce the soldiers of our army. This 
 army will be of the same warp and woof as the people 
 whom it is feared they will oppress. They will be American 
 citizens, as an American does not cease to be an American 
 citizen when he becomes an American soldier. Does any 
 one seriously believe that from the common schools of this 
 country there can be enlisted an army from whom any 
 miltary system, life, or discipline can eradicate that intelli- 
 gence, manhood, independence, and love of liberty that has 
 made the United States the land of the free? Does any 
 one believe that the people that dared in their infancy to 
 battle with England and wrested from her unwilling hands 
 independence and sovereignty, that has extended the bound- 
 aries of this republic from the Atlantic to the Pacific across 
 arid plains, over snowclad mountains, and in the face of 
 hostile savages, that stopped not at ocean's bounds, but 
 brought within our domain islands in the sunset sea, that 
 fought and won the War of the Rebellion, and the war 
 with Spain, that has built up this government as a tower 
 of strength for struggling humanity, from whose summit 
 liberty lights the world, that has planted a school-house 
 upon every hill and on each school-house unfurled its flag — 
 does any one believe that the descendants of those who 
 fought at Bunker Hill, or Gettysburg, or Santiago have 
 
278 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 aught to fear for their liberties from a standing army organ- 
 ized in our midst? If there be such a man, then I pity 
 him, and I would not trust him on the firing line. Be 
 assured, therefore, my fellow-citizens, that in your Philip- 
 pine policy you have not wandered away from the paths 
 your fathers trod, that your government has not changed 
 from a republic to an empire, that the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence is today as much as ever your guiding cloud by 
 day and pillar of fire by night. In acquiring and govern- 
 ing the Philippines you follow the example not only of 
 the men who founded this republic, but also of those who 
 saved it. The Southern States attempted to break up this 
 Union. They withdrew their consent to be governed by 
 the Union. They wanted to sacrifice the Union to save 
 slavery. Upon the principle that all governments derive 
 their just powers from the consent of the governed they 
 based their right to secede. The Federal government deter- 
 mined to preserve the Union, to sacrifice slavery to save 
 the Union, to keep the Union intact with or without their 
 consent. Thanks be to the God of our country that this 
 was said and done, and that no mere declaration of words 
 was allowed to break up this greatest of nations. 
 
 And no mere declaration of words is going to induce 
 this country to believe that all our Presidents from Wash- 
 ington to McKinley have been imperialists, and that Bryan 
 is our promised Messiah. No mere declaration of words 
 is going to induce us to become the Don Quixote of the 
 nations instead of the benefactor of mankind, to substi- 
 tute Aguinaldo for McKinley in the regeneration of the 
 Philippine Islands. The American people have for over 
 a century been growing in power and wealth and right- 
 eousness. They have expanded in territory, increased in 
 wealth, multiplied in numbers, developed in power, and 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 279 
 
 held fast to popular government. Ever vigilant and watch- 
 ful of their own interests, they have poured out their blood 
 and treasure in defense of the rights of others. I do not 
 believe that all of a sudden, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 they have changed in character, purpose, ambition, courage, 
 and determination. I do not believe that a people who 
 began a war to rescue the Cubans from oppression can end 
 it by oppressing the Filipinos. I do not believe that we 
 will establish in the Philippines a government different in 
 principle from our own, though different in form. 
 
 I believe that we will show them how to govern under 
 law, that we will teach them that office is a public trust, 
 power a shield for justice and not a weapon of personal 
 prowess, and public moneys a means of public benefaction 
 and not of personal aggrandizement. I believe that under 
 the aegis of our flag law and order will drive out anarchy 
 and brigandage, industry and education eradicate vagabond- 
 age and illiteracy, sanitation drive out disease, and that 
 from the acorn of American civilization sown by us in these 
 islands there will grow a mighty oak of self-government, 
 whose branches will shelter them and their descendants 
 henceforth and forever. 
 
 I believe that, as President McKinley has said, we will 
 by our treatment of the Filipinos lead them to feel that it 
 is their liberty and not our power, their welfare and not 
 our gain, that we seek to enhance, and that, as our flag 
 has never waved over any community save in blessing, they 
 will acknowledge that it has not lost the gift of benedic- 
 tion by its world-wide journey to their shores. 
 
 Owing in a large measure, as we have seen, to the policy 
 of the Republican party, our people are prosperous, and 
 there is work for all that seek employment. Our farmers 
 are paying their mortgages and capital finds ready invest- 
 ment. Our flag is respected at home and abroad. And 
 
280 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 yet, at this moment of prosperity, we stand at the parting 
 of the ways. We have arrived at man's estate. What shall 
 our manhood be? Shall we choose the road that leads to 
 the uplands, that will utilize our manhood and make it 
 great and glorious, or shall we select that path whose down 
 grade needs neither struggle nor courage to travel, and 
 whose terminal is the lowland of sloth and decay? Upon 
 this choice depends the history of our next century. 
 
 Under the continued wise leadership of William McKin- 
 ley we will choose the right path. He is one of the three 
 great presidents whose names will be remembered through- 
 out all time, and whose administrations will mark the three 
 great epochs in the history of this nation. 
 
 Washington brought order out of chaos, united the dis- 
 united pioneers of freedom, and laid plumb and true the 
 corner-stone of the grandest political edifice ever reared by 
 the hand of man, this temple of liberty sheltering for all 
 time government of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people. 
 
 Lincoln unlocked the manacles of the slave, made the 
 bondman free, and cemented these diverse sovereignties into 
 a union one and indivisible, now and forever. 
 
 McKinley loosed the American eagle that it might wing 
 its flight and drive the Spanish vulture from the islands 
 of the sea, opened the door through which this nation will 
 march to a grandeur yet unknown, and proclaimed to the 
 listening nations that the United States has its rightful 
 place on the right of the line of the world powers, and that 
 its flag, alike in the Orient and the Occident — its red, white, 
 and blue flashing equally in the light of the setting and 
 the rising sun — means everywhere the lightening of men's 
 burdens, the lifting up of God's people. 
 
 It is said of McKinley, as it was said of Lincoln, that 
 he holds his ear close to the ground, keeping step to the 
 
A POLITICAL ADDRESS 281 
 
 rhythm of the people's tread. This is a grand rhythm, 
 second to none but that to which the stars keep time; it is 
 the rhythm of every national anthem that e'er led warring 
 hosts to battle or moved them to praise and thanksgiving. 
 Inspired by its music, Lincoln saved the Union, leaving at 
 his death one flag floating over the United States. Inspired 
 by its music, McKinley enlarged this nation, maintained 
 its flag in distant lands where fate and valor planted it, 
 and boldly and confidently asks, "Who shall haul it down?" 
 
 Neither individuals nor nations can live to themselves 
 alone. We are our brothers' keepers. This nation in the 
 great plans of the Almighty, in the economy of mankind, 
 has its duty to perform in the working out of civilization. 
 For its part of this great task it has been its whole life 
 preparing. On May 1, 1898, its hour was at hand, and 
 in prophetic ink in the sibylline book of fate it had long 
 been written what it then should do. As a drop of rain 
 starts but does not create the life lying dormant in the grain 
 of wheat, as a flash of lightning reveals but does ont produce 
 the visions of the night, so the battle of Manila did not 
 itself create a new burden nor impose a new responsibility. 
 They had been for years preparing, and the flash of Dewey's 
 guns simply revealed them. 
 
 Destiny works in a mysterious way its wonders to perform, 
 and rarely reveals in advance what is forging in the work- 
 shop of fate. Behind the curtain of the future tomorrow 
 waits, holding in its hands the unexpected and the inevit- 
 able, towards which the unerring and irresistible magnet of 
 fate hurries the nations. This nation did not anticipate 
 the outcome of its war with Spain. The Antilles and not 
 the Philippines centered its attention. The liberating of 
 the Cubans and not the civilizing of the Filipinos was 
 the duty we undertook, the burden we assumed. 
 
 Likewise, neither Washington, Lincoln, nor McKinley 
 
282 A POLITICAL ADDRESS 
 
 anticipated the great things they were to do nor the respon- 
 sibilities they were to assume, nor did they dream of the 
 opportunities that were to knock at their doors. But each 
 one proved himself to be a well-chosen child of destiny 
 in being equal to his opportunity when it came, to be a 
 "man of mighty days," and equal to the days. 
 
 My fellow-citizens, I believe that we will be true to our 
 traditions, ever watchful of our liberties and of the rights 
 of others committed to our care, loyal to our flag and all 
 that it represents. I am confident that in the future we 
 will not change in sturdiness of character or uprightness 
 of purpose, but will continue to grow in wealth and power 
 so that as our tasks so shall our strength be, and that we 
 will ever be a light set upon a hill, an exemplar and a 
 leader among the nations. 
 
 I believe that we will be equal to our new opportunities, 
 that we will do our duty in this new sphere of national 
 and international life in which it has pleased God to place 
 us, and that, under the leadership of William McKinley, 
 we will continue in our new career with no uncertain tread, 
 meeting our new obligations as fearlessly, resolutely, and 
 successfully as our revolutionary fathers met theirs when 
 they founded this republic. 
 
 Great nations must bear great burdens. This is what 
 makes them great. Our nation did not consciously seek this 
 Oriental burden. But we have this burden to bear, this 
 responsibility to fulfill, this duty to perform. We have 
 never shrunk from a danger, neglected an obligation, or 
 failed in a task. We will not close this century with an 
 act of cowardice or an admission of incompetency. 
 
 Go to the polls and vote for McKinley. There can be 
 and will be no imperialism, and so thinks every one who 
 has confidence in the virtue, capacity, high purpose, and 
 good faith of the American people. 
 
 32 88 ^ 
 
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