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^ SPEECHES 
 
 OF 
 
 Wendell Phillips Stafford 
 
 1913 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 ARTHUR F. STONE 
 
 ST. JOHNSBURY. VERMONT 
 
 ^^V^^. 
 

 COPYRIGHT 1913 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR F. STONK 
 
 DEC 26 1913 
 
 THE PRESS OF THE CALEDONIAN COMPANY 
 
 St. Johnsbury, Vermont 
 
 
To the Memory of my Father 
 
 FRANK STAFFORD 
 
 Without whose training and encouragement I 
 should never have attempted public sp>ecch. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Sons in Exile 
 
 1 
 
 A Free Library and its Uses 
 
 3 
 
 Lincoln and His Times 
 
 23 
 
 The Lawyer 
 
 40 
 
 IsraeFs Ideal of Justice 
 
 61 
 
 At Grant's Tomb : a Decoration Address 
 
 65 
 
 One of tke Fourth Estate : Crosby Stuart 
 
 
 Noyes 
 
 70 
 
 The New Despotism 
 
 74 
 
 A City without Citizens 
 
 82 
 
 Robert Burns : a Poet for the World 
 
 103 
 
 Lake Champlain in History 
 
 133 
 
 Thomas Bartlett: An Old-Time Advocate 
 
 145 
 
 \^ ho Did Sin — This Man or His Parents ? 
 
 154 
 
Whittier : A Quaker who Became a Martial 
 
 Poet 
 
 159 
 
 The Measure of a Man 
 
 186 
 
 The Puritan Ideal 
 
 191 
 
 On the Armenian Massacre 
 
 202 
 
 A Philanthropist 
 
 213 
 
 The Old Commoner: Thaddeus Stevens 
 
 217 
 
 A Capital of Capitals: The Future of 
 
 
 Washington 
 
 254 
 
 Four Brothers : A Grave in Arlington 
 
 258 
 
 The Negro and the Nation 
 
 264 
 
 Russia and the Jews 
 
 271 
 
 The Making of Vermont 
 
 277 
 
 The State and its Criminals 
 
 308 
 
 Ann Story : A Woman who Helped to Found 
 
 a State 314 
 
 Wendell Phillips : The Tribune of the People 327 
 
SPEECHES 
 
SONS IN EXILE 
 
 From an Address before the Brooklyn Society of Vermonters 
 
 at Pouch Gallery, Brooklyn, N. Y., 
 
 March 27, 1909. 
 
 The sons and daughters of Vermont, no matter 
 where their lot is cast, return to her with steps that 
 never waver. Or if their feet are bound in other 
 paths their thoughts are pilgrims to her dark-green 
 hills. We never know how dear she is until we leave 
 her. And as we learn to count our years by scores 
 instead of one by one, we turn to her more fondly 
 still because she keeps the memories of childhood. 
 Often, as we sit reading by the winter fire, her 
 summer landscape floats across the page; and even 
 as we go about our work a vision often comes before 
 our eyes, — the hillside orchard, the red farm-house 
 hiding in the trees. But most of all when we are 
 gathered as we are tonight, when hundreds answer 
 to the same deep thrill, when all are lifted by a 
 common pride in her great past, — then most of all 
 that vision of our mountain State becomes a real 
 presence. And, oh, how beautiful she seems ! 
 
 We know tonight the drifted snows lie deep within 
 her borders — the winter still is there. But in a few 
 weeks more, we know, the lazy, loitering spring 
 will come that way with gifts that will make rich 
 amends for all her tardiness. She will turn the wil- 
 low-wands to gold along the stream-sides. She will 
 
sprinkle all the meadow-lands with cowslips, and 
 weave into the carpet of the woods the mayflower and 
 anemone. She will kindle the tops of all the maples 
 with little flaming leaves and burning buds. She will 
 set Killington and Camel's Hump and Mansfield 
 against a sky as blue as Italy's. She will let all the 
 rivers take up again their solemn hymns where they 
 left off, and let all the boisterous brooks come tumb- 
 ling and laughing down the ledges. She will creep up 
 all the valleys and ravines with verdure, and lay a 
 tender light on all the hill-tops, and make green the 
 graves of those that loved us in the days that were. 
 
 Dear little State! not dearer for your loveliness 
 than for the memory of those that sleep within your 
 bosom, the strong and tender hearts of other days. 
 You, too, history has touched with splendor, and, for 
 the brave deeds of your sons, has given you a place 
 among the hardy and heroic all around the world. "We 
 who are gathered here tonight are gathered in your 
 honor, and the name we take upon our lips is yours. 
 
A FREE LIBRARY AND ITS USES 
 
 An Address delivered at the Dedication of the Aldrich 
 
 Public Library in Barre, Vermont, Tuesday, 
 
 September 22, 1908. 
 
 Fellow Citizens: 
 
 The invitation that came to me from the trustees 
 of the Aldrich fund to be present and make an 
 address on this occasion was, indeed, a very kindly 
 and welcome call. And yet I am bound to 
 acknowledge, if I may do it without giving offense, 
 that a more enticing call, and one that my heart could 
 not resist, came to me, not from the Barre of today, 
 but from the Barre of thirty-five or forty years ago. 
 Your invitation, sirs, had a strange conjuring pow- 
 er. It weakened voices that have long been silent. It 
 called back figures that have long since fled. It 
 suggested scenes that human eyes will never look upon 
 again. The wand of the enchanter was waved above 
 your noisy, bustling city, and all its obtruding blocks 
 of business disappeared. In places where, if we went 
 out today, we should only find a screaming engine or a 
 groaning derrick, I kept my old appointments with 
 the shy and happy woodland gods. Most of you, 
 I fear, would need an introduction to the quiet valley 
 that I saw. Your network of busy streets shrank back 
 to a single sleepy road, with plain white houses 
 along either side, with gardens growing to the fence 
 and hollyhocks and peonies by the door. I walked 
 
 3 
 
that street again, or, rather, ran along it, as a bare- 
 foot boy is apt to do, looking for Will Lane to go 
 a-fishing under Fuller's bridge. 
 
 The old familiar faces were all present. I could 
 see Judge Harvey Tilden behind his milk white horse, 
 sitting bolt upright, as a judge should always do, and 
 making, as it seemed to me, a kind of triumphal 
 progress down the street. Nathan Morse was on his 
 cobbler's bench, and Tailor Rice was sitting in his 
 window. Jule Smalley, in his barn door, was engaged 
 in a highly dramatic dialogue with himself. Anjie 
 Jackman was runiinating as he walked. Carlos Car- 
 penter, his thin lips quivering with sarcastic fun, was 
 giving some unlucky citizen a nickname he would 
 carry to his grave. Sail Pratt, in faded sunbonnet and 
 bulging crinoline, was trudging through the village 
 with a dozen frightened but fascinated children at 
 her heels. In the fork-shop under the hill the trip 
 hammers were keeping up their boisterous rivalry. 
 The grist mill at Twing Village was all a-rumble with 
 a mellow roar, and all as fragrant as a lily in bloom 
 with the fine white dust of wheat. Enos Fuller was 
 busy at the foundry. The Whitcomb Brothers of that 
 generation were absorbed with their water-wheels and 
 flumes. Alf. Lane was putting up somebody's new 
 house. Carl Hall was following his dusty drove to 
 market. Orange Fifield was whipping up his horse 
 to reach his namesake town by night-fall. Deacon 
 Gale was keeping his benevolent patrol in the interest 
 of school discipline and morals. Gospel Village, true 
 to the implications of its name, was heavy with the 
 slumber of the just ; and the woolen factory at Jockey 
 Hollow was slowly falling to decay. Ah ! that was the 
 
village I saw, back in the peaceful days before the 
 deluge — the deluge of population and prosperity that 
 has come upon Barre. I could see it all again. There 
 was the hillside pasture where we drove the cows. 
 Here was the unmown common where we came to 
 play. Up yonder stood the academy, behind imposing 
 pillars, where, at the belfry summons, the boys and 
 girls of long ago were hurrying in and out. At the 
 far end of the village stood the rival institution, then 
 very new, whose many twinkling lights at night-time 
 gave it the appearance of a chandelier, and led to a 
 parody upon its name, — the "Goddard Seminary" 
 being changed to the ''Godless Luminary" — a name, 
 which, in spite of its irreverence, secretly tickled the 
 ears of the orthodox. Carl Benedict's anvil was ring- 
 ing where French 's block now stands, and a cluster of 
 young faces by the door were watching the showers 
 and meteors of flying sparks, trying to look as if they 
 were not expecting the pennies they knew his kindness 
 could not long withhold. Ira Harrington, gathering 
 up his reins, was just starting back to the quarry, 
 having, for the fortieth time, confidently maintained 
 against all skeptics, that a dazzling future for Barre 
 lay hidden in Millstone Mountain's granite seams. 
 And just then, in a whirlwind of dust, the yellow 
 stage-coach dashed up from Montpelier, with Alf, 
 Downing, fortunately sober, on the box. 
 
 I suspect there was no great reading matter in 
 the mail-bag that was flung to the sidewalk as they 
 stopped. There may have been a Harper's, a 
 Scribner's, and possibly, for Parson Tenny, an Atlan- 
 tic; and ''Uncle Jake," it was whispered, had 
 periodicals from foreign lands. However, there were 
 
newspapers enough to furnish ammunition for the 
 political warfare waged in summer evenings on the 
 post office steps and around the cracked and redden- 
 ing stove at the old checkered store late into winter 
 nights. But the only collection of books for the public 
 I ever heard of in those days was the one in the post 
 office, jealously guarded by Stillman Wood. It was, 
 in the beginning, it seems to me, an agricultural 
 library, and was particularly rich in works on natural 
 history, freely and startlingly illustrated. In its 
 palmy days it mast have numbered fifty or seventy-five 
 volumes. At any rate, I recognized in it a prodigious 
 improvement on the Sunday School library where I 
 had sought mental nourishment, and hailed it mth 
 excited interest. When I was old enough to attend 
 the academy myself, I saw some books in a tall case 
 that stood on the stage in the hall where the school 
 assembled. But the glass doors were always kept 
 locked, and the approach was guarded by a cross- 
 legged stone idol from India. I never saw a book 
 taken from, its shelves, and the only one I read through 
 the pane by its title was an expurgated edition of 
 Byron. As a boy, of course, I much preferred my 
 own poor copy, unabridged. There were probably no 
 private libraries worth naming outside the lawyers', 
 the doctor's and Mr. Spaul ding's. Yet it was an 
 intelligent community, self-respecting and exceedingly 
 democratic. The snob was quite unknown. The only 
 individual I ever heard of who was too proud to carry 
 home his own bundle was put to shame by the richest 
 man in the village, Leonard Keith, who offered to 
 carry it for him. Altogether, it was a comfortable 
 quiet valley, nearly answering to Longfellow's 
 description of Grand Pre: 
 
 ' 6 
 
"There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in 
 abundance." 
 
 It is natural that this should be a day of con- 
 gratulation and rejoicing. At last Barre is to have 
 a library worthy of its needs. The cares and labors of 
 many years are to be rewarded. Large hopes for 
 the future are to be awakened and encouraged. It is 
 fitting to remember on this day the generous foresight 
 of Mr. Aldrich, whose gift made all that has followed 
 possible. It is fitting to acknowledge the liberal 
 provision by the city, of the perfect site where the 
 building stands. It is proper to commemorate the 
 work of the various societies, which, like tributary 
 streams, have emptied their channels to swell the 
 volume of this larger enterprise. It is eminently 
 fitting to recall with praise the faithful and efficient 
 service of the trustees on whose shoulders the burden 
 of responsibility was cast. Gratitude for all that 
 has been accomplished, confidence in all that shall be 
 achieved — these are the sentiments natural to the 
 occasion. I would not introduce a discordant note 
 into such a harmony. But there is a use to be made 
 of the hour, better than any of these, and I invite your 
 considerate attention to the question that forces itself 
 again and again upon my mind: What can a public 
 library do for this community? It may prove a 
 blessing; it may prove of little or no value; it may 
 even turn out to be a positive hindrance to the highest 
 welfare of those whom it should serve; and all this 
 will depend upon how it is conducted by its managers, 
 and how it is made use of by the citizens. Herbert 
 Spencer, accounted by many the greatest philosopher 
 of our age, left as the ripe fruit of his reflection, 
 
the opinion that free libraries are of no real benefit 
 to the world. **Why should we have free libraries," 
 he asked, ' ' any more than free bakeries ? Knowledge 
 should not be free any more than bread is free. ' ' His 
 reason was, if I understand him, that what costs 
 nothing is worth nothing. Men do not appreciate 
 what is thrust upon them. Moreover, his observation 
 had led him to believe that such libraries were 
 occupied almost wholly with the circulating of poor 
 fiction, and were places where men gathered to turn 
 over worthless newspapers and amuse themselves with 
 funny pictures. These are grave objections and we 
 shall do best if we meet them gravely. 
 
 Ruskin has somewhere a contemptuous word for 
 a community that is content to thumb its literature in 
 the dirty pages of a circulating library. I have a 
 cultivated friend who makes it an invariable rule 
 never to read a book that he does not own. "If it 
 isn't worth buying, it isn't worth reading," is his 
 maxim. How many times it has been shown that the 
 books which have done most for mankind are few in 
 number and easily within the reach of all! The 
 Hebrew scriptures, that have fed the religious life 
 and molded the serious thought of the western world 
 for twenty centuries — if you cannot afford to buy 
 them, the colporteur will supply you and be glad. 
 The greatest dramatist that ever pictured human 
 passion — ^you may have all that he produced for the 
 price of a vaudeville performance. Burns, for less 
 than his ''sair-won penny-fee," will sing you such 
 songs of love and labor as men had never heard until 
 he came. You can buy the Data of Ethics for the cost 
 of a good smoke. Darwin will give you, almost for 
 
 8 
 
the asking, the results of his lifelong searching for 
 the origin of man. Let us have done with pretenses. 
 You can take the wages of a week's average labor, 
 and make your own a library of the brightest, wisest, 
 mightiest books the world has ever seen. And, beyond 
 all that, it cannot be disputed that we should do well 
 to give our days and nights to these. Why should we 
 run here and there for the opinions of petty minds, 
 when here are the deliverances of undying wisdom at 
 our very doors ? Let us have more of the great books 
 we are ahvays talking about but never read — less of 
 the little books we read but have no desire to talk 
 about. Let a man range widely as he may, he will 
 come back at last 
 
 "To learn that all the sages said 
 Was in the Book his mother read." 
 
 Librarians have told us that eighty per cent, 
 of the books taken out are works of fiction and most 
 of these not of the highest grade. Science, biography, 
 travel, history, philosophy, poetry, and all the other 
 books aside from fiction, constitute a bare twenty per 
 cent, of the volumes actually used. What a showing ! 
 Not to speak scornfully of fiction, but always 
 recognizing its high claim on our attention, who 
 would care to think that the future of this institution 
 would have no better record to disclose? Surely it 
 was not for this that Leonard Aldrich left his 
 carefully husbanded estate. It was not in the 
 contemplation of such results that the trustees and 
 other helpers of this enterprise have given it their 
 earnest thought and effort. For one, I do not hesitate 
 to say that if I believed it could look for no better 
 
 9 
 
record I should have no heart in the day's exercises, 
 and should not be here. I am here because, for one 
 thing, I wish to register my conviction that an insti- 
 tution of this character may become a radiating 
 center, a very dynamo of intellectual power in the 
 community. 
 
 New ideas have come to be accepted touching 
 the management of libraries and the true functions 
 of their keepers. The ideal librarian is no longer a 
 watch dog suspiciously defending his charge, but a 
 teacher, a helper, a wise, judicious counsellor and 
 friend. Books must be where they can be handled 
 by readers without the constant interference of any- 
 one in charge, where they can be taken down and put 
 back without summoning an attendant. It may be 
 necessary to keep eyes on watch for the dishonest. 
 It may result in the loss of many books in the 
 course of the year. It miay make it necessary to 
 restrict such freedom, after a time, so as to exclude 
 the untrustworthy. But of this I am sure, that, for 
 the most profitable use of a library, free and easy 
 access to the shelves is indispensable. One may wash 
 to take down a hundred books in the examination of 
 his subject. He may wish to barely look into a book. 
 A glance may tell him what he wants to know or 
 tell him the book is not what he needs. He may 
 wish to read in it for five minutes or an hour. He must 
 be allowed, in certain departments, at least, to browse 
 about at his will. I have used libraries, or tried to 
 do so, under both systems. I have been chilled by 
 the warning, ''No books to be taken from any shelf 
 or returned to it except by the librarian or assistant ; ' ' 
 and I have spent some of the happiest and most 
 
 10 
 
productive hours of my life where I had only to put 
 out my hand to make acquaintance with the authors 
 of all times, A bookseller, I imagine, would have 
 but poor success if he should not permit his customers 
 to look between the leaves ; and a librarian 's business, 
 if not to tempt us to buy books, is to tempt us 
 to read them. Charles Sumner was not only an 
 orator and a statesman; he was also a scholar, and 
 one of the most learned men of his day. It was 
 his custom to spend hours in libraries, merely run- 
 ning through book after book — taking them do\\Ti, 
 glancing at their contents, reading a page here and 
 there, and returning them to their places. Of course 
 he read a multitude of books with care and 
 deliberation — from cover to cover — but by the 
 other method he acquainted himself with thous- 
 ands he could never read in full. When the time 
 came he knew where to go to find his subject treated. 
 There are all sorts of books and they are to be used 
 in all sorts of ways. As nearly as possible, ha\dng 
 due regard to the rights of all, a public library 
 should be to each user as free and convenient as 
 if it were his o^ti. Then the librarian, or someone 
 connected with the library should make it his 
 business to stimulate reading on fruitful and inter- 
 esting line^. The ideal arrangement would be to 
 have a librarian who himself could lecture acceptably, 
 from time to time opening up new subjects, arresting 
 the attention of readers, arousing their curiosity 
 and then showing them where it may be satisfied. 
 If the librarian himself cannot fulfill this function, 
 there should be every year a series of lectures, 
 delivered in the library or elsewhere, but always in 
 
 11 
 
connection with its work and with a view to invite 
 the largest use of it. Classes should be formed for 
 the study of timely topics. Here in Barre you have 
 a cosmopolitan population, drawn here by the hope 
 of bettering their condition from almost every quarter 
 of the globe. They will be interested in every variety 
 of subject. They must be encouraged to look upon 
 this library as a means of education especially adapted 
 to their needs, a true university of the people. Some 
 of them will be deeply interested in sociology, bring- 
 ing with them conceptions of government and law 
 fundamentally different from ours. Above all, let 
 such subjects be dealt with by able speakers, with 
 opportunity to question and reply. A library here 
 ought to include the best and soundest as well as the 
 freshest books upon those subjects. It ought not 
 to shut out those of more radical leaning, only those 
 which strike at the foundation of all government 
 and counsel crime. If this library does the work 
 it ought to do, it will become a center of fermentation, 
 keeping the wits of men active, training their minds 
 to play freely over many subjects, counteracting 
 intolerance, broadening views, and deepening sympa- 
 thies, and leading to a general agreement upon 
 essential and fundamental truths, while encouraging 
 the widest freedom of opinion where variety of 
 view is consistent with the safety of the state and 
 those deeper interests that pertain to all. It must 
 be liberal in its attitude and spirit, ready to welcome 
 all sorts and conditions of men. Any man or woman 
 of clean hands and decent demeanor ought always 
 to find welcome. Until he has been found to 
 have abused its trust and confidence no one should 
 
 12 
 
be debarred. Better a few more dollars spent for 
 watchmen, better a few books lost by theft, than 
 that the feeling should go abroad among those 
 who most need the influence of books that their 
 presence is not welcome because some of their number 
 have shown themselves ungrateful. It is precisely 
 among those where books are most likely to be lost 
 and where their coming may seem to be least appre- 
 ciated, that the best results will be secured. Out of 
 the new blood that has flowed to you from other 
 shores may come the quickest and finest intellects 
 of the next generation. Blood, Like the soil itself, 
 gets worn out by too much cultivation. It is only 
 three generations, so it has been said, from shirt- 
 sleeves to shirtsleeves. It is the child of lusty 
 physical inheritance, now for the first time feeling 
 the influence of education and refinement, who is 
 always startling the staid and jaded world with some 
 fresh proof of genius. It is especially these keen 
 and alert young minds that a library like this is 
 for. They should be made to feel that it is theirs. 
 Thoy should find here the books that will give them 
 the true answers to their eager questions, ofl'er them 
 the broadest outlook upon life, acquaint them with 
 the priceless stores of the world's learning, "the best 
 that has been thought and said in the world," books 
 that will inspire them with ambition to serve their 
 country and their felloAvmen. 
 
 There is another service a library like this can 
 render. It can draw attention to the ripe old books 
 that lie neglected year by year. So many newspapers, 
 so many magazines, so many ''latest novels," the 
 press is pouring out, we forget the old true friends 
 
 13 
 
that comforted the generations before us and ought 
 to comfort ours and many more. It will not be 
 enough that these fine old books are here. They 
 must be exploited. The library must be active, not 
 passive. A library will not run itself any more than 
 a railroad or a quarry. Ways and means must be de- 
 vised to draw attention to these classic and deathless 
 pages. Here again I laiow of no better way than 
 by inducing some master of letters to come to you 
 from time to time, now one and now another, to 
 reveal to you the wealth that lies hidden in your 
 walls. Make such lectures the event of the year. 
 Let the papers give them prominence, and let the 
 people know when they are coming. Let a lecture 
 on Tennyson or Dante be almost as important in 
 their columns as a prize fight or a scandal ! 
 
 Naturally there will be many here who mil take 
 a deep interest in science and invention. Why not 
 bring here now and then those who can speak with 
 authority upon these themes? Will not some gener- 
 ous purse be found to supply the means as time goes 
 on? Will not someone be moved to provide a fund 
 for prizes to be awarded the young readers of this 
 library who produce the best essays on given subjects? 
 This library ought to become a perfect hive of in- 
 dustry. Men, women, children, — all ages and occu- 
 pations, should be coming and going like bees among 
 the clover. It ought to be the intellectual exchange 
 of Barre. Is it too much to expect? Let us take 
 courage from today's achievement. Here on her 
 granite mountain for a throne, materialism sits 
 crowned and sceptered. Where on the face of the 
 globe would you look for a community more entirely 
 
 14 
 
devoted to her service? And yet here we have today 
 a proof that mind is more than money, ideas are more 
 than granite, education and refinement are more 
 prized than machinery or acres. The man who gave 
 his fortune to found this library was not himself 
 a bookish man. His gift is all the more significant 
 and welcome. It was the tribute of a practical man 
 to the practical value of books. I can see him still 
 as he appeared to my boyish eyes, a huge, rotund 
 figure moving along the street, the very embodiment 
 of honest, sound unbudging common sense. He was 
 no sentimentalist, no dreamer; but he had gone 
 through the world with his eyes open, and he had 
 the sagacity to discern that in the years to come 
 Barre would need such a fountain of intellectual 
 life as I have endeavored to describe, and, as far as 
 his means would go, he provided for it. It will be 
 for others to see that his purpose is carried out, 
 his example followed. He was not deceived. He 
 knew that there would be thousands in Barre w^ho 
 would never enter the door of his library, who, passing 
 by, would look upon it as an altar to an unknown 
 god. He knew that day after day it would stand in 
 the corner of the market place, like wisdom, cry- 
 ing aloud in the streets, to the sordid hurrying 
 throngs that would give no heed. He knew that 
 night after night men would go by its peaceful 
 portals to the crowded, noisy dens of vice and de- 
 bauchery. He knew that of the many hundreds who 
 would come to look or read, only a small proportion 
 would choose what was worthiest of their thought. 
 But he had insight enough to know that there were 
 others who would find these walls a shrine. He 
 
 15 
 
knew that boys would come here to be quickened to 
 honorable service. He knew that old men would find 
 here serene and tranquil hours. He knew that busy- 
 men would pause to gain an hour of broader reading. 
 Children would get here their first glimpse of the 
 world's inestimable stores, and breathe-in reverence 
 for the great of old. And he knew that here and 
 there some chosen spirit would arise, perhaps where 
 least expected, to display a kindred genius with the 
 authors for whom he gave this home. He knew as 
 well as Spencer that men are not apt to value what 
 is free; but he was wiser than Spencer, and in this 
 action he was more like God, who knows that men will 
 spurn the best he offers, yet spreads his bounteous 
 blessings wide for all. When Jesus uttered the weight- 
 iest condemnation that ever fell upon the ears of men, 
 he did not promise them the torments of the damned ; 
 he did not speak of pain or torture, tearing limb 
 from limb, nor of the fire that burns and 
 none shall quench it. He only said, "He that loves 
 houses or lands or father or mother or wife or children 
 more than me — is not worthy of me!'' There is 
 nothing to surpass that sentence. That is what every 
 work of genius says to the unappreciating world. 
 The man who prefers a comic picture to Raphael's 
 Madonna only declares that he is not worthy of her. 
 He who would rather read his yellow journal than 
 the immortal words of Emerson or Plato merely 
 testifies that he is not worthy of them; and the men 
 who will pass by the glorious treasures of this library 
 to the piling up of treasures of the world that perishes 
 will write upon their foreheads plain for all to read, 
 ''I was not worthy of them." But to those who 
 
 16 
 
enter and linger here how sweet will be the happiness 
 — how ample the reward! 
 
 Here (let the tumult rage!) 
 
 Toil need not be all toll nor grief all tears; 
 Here youth may win the tranquil light of age, 
 
 And age forget its years. 
 
 ''He who can read and write and cipher," said 
 a teacher, ''holds in his hands the keys of the king- 
 dom. ' ' And if you will stop to think of it, is it not 
 so? When education has once delivered those keys 
 into our hands, it has throwTi upon us the responsi- 
 bility of deciding whether — and what — we will possess 
 and rule. We may use the keys or not at our 
 pleasure. We may only jingle them in men's ears. 
 We may use them to enter some petty province. 
 Or we may push on our victorious invasion like 
 Alexander, but with the unconcerned assurance that 
 whatever reahiis we rule we shall never have cause 
 to weep for want of other worlds to conquer. The 
 possibilities are boundless. 
 
 To read and w^rite and cipher. The teacher 
 was speaking with eyes upon the fature. He might 
 have beet spealdng with eyes upon the past ; and then 
 those keys would have appeared to him as trophies, 
 the splendid symbols of achievement won by un- 
 counted ages of human effort. To read! But some- 
 thing must be written before there can be anything 
 to read; and so the two must have come together, 
 the setting down of some sign or symbol of thought 
 by one, to be taken in and comprehended by another. 
 By what age-long and laborious processes was this 
 simple fact achieved, that man could communicate 
 
 17 
 
his meaning to those far distant or to those that should 
 come after, without the intervention of the spoken 
 word? In what strange and crude attempts it had 
 its orgin, — by the piling of one rude stone upon 
 another to commemorate some great event; by the 
 carving of grotesque hieroglyphics on the rocks and 
 tombs, by the drawing of coarse pictures on the skins 
 of animals or the bark of trees, and last of all by 
 letters! Who is not awed when he thinks upon it? 
 Who wonders that Cadmus was sometimes ac- 
 counted a god ? 
 
 All that man has ever done or tried to do, all that 
 he has thought or dreamed or felt, all that he has 
 learned, by painful groping, of this universal house 
 in which he lives, has been embedded or enshrined 
 in books. Whispered traditions of the antique world 
 that lingered in the ears of early man till he had 
 learned the art of writing; legends hoary with the 
 grave-dust of incalculable time; impressions on his 
 primeval consciousness, which countless years could 
 not efface, of catastrophes that moved his solid world 
 from its foundation, — deluges that swept away his 
 mighty tribes like insects; simple adventures that 
 shook his untaught heart with fear, when nature's 
 friendliest, most familiar powers were weird and 
 unexplained, — when the ocean rolled an insurmount- 
 able barrier before his feet, or hid itself in mists 
 and awed him with the terrors of a world unseen; 
 vestiges of peoples that lived and reigned and passed 
 from sight and left no chronicles; fierce iliads of his 
 long-forgotten wars, and odyssies of his first strange 
 wanderings around fearful shores; migrations that 
 unpeopled continents; battles in which whole nations 
 
 18 
 
disappeared; temples where unheard-of gods were 
 worshiped; palaces and pyramids, the homes and 
 tombs of unremembered kings; traces of man's first 
 weak fumbling efforts to save some fragments of the 
 wisdom he had gained for generations that should 
 follow; myth and memory commingled, fact and 
 fable interfused ; little by little some believable report, 
 some faint, far semblance of the thing that was ; and 
 then at last the Adde unfolding regions of historic 
 truth ! For all these teachings we must go to books. 
 But not for these alone ! The seers and poets — those who 
 have heard the notes of music from another realm; 
 sensitive spirits, to whom the beauty of the world 
 was a positive pain, on whose hearts the hills have 
 laid the spell of their religious silence, over whose 
 eyes the sea has woven the glamour and ever-chang- 
 ing cliarm of her sweet sorcery — these have 
 bequeathed to us their souls in books; — and they 
 to whom the hidden secrets of the heart were like an 
 open scroll, whose intuitions touched the source of 
 things, whose voices so accorded wdth the song of 
 Fate that they could teach us all we need to know 
 of life and death and destiny! Thank God, thank 
 God for books ! 
 
 What possibilities of learning and enlightenment 
 will be presented in this library ! Think how many 
 departments of life it will embrace. Here will be the 
 history of man from the first ''syllable of recorded 
 time." What an impressive spectacle the history 
 of the world presents, the mixed and wondrous 
 pageantry of human life! How the contemplation 
 of it teaches us modesty in our claims for ourselves, 
 our country and our time! Why should we take 
 
 19 
 
ourselves so seriously when ages upon ages have 
 passed with the same interests and hopes as ours, 
 attended by the same sweet joys, the same bitter 
 disappointments? We see at last that the world is 
 not run on our account, that the race is one great 
 living whole and we but smallest parts of it. We 
 find it easier to accept the profound saying of the 
 imperial stoic, that "Nothing is good for the bee 
 that is not good for the hive. ' ' The study of history 
 is not chiefly to teach us names and dates and hap- 
 penings, but to subdue our spirits, — to lead us to 
 appreciate our true position in the scheme of things. 
 So too of science. The more we ponder its pages 
 the more childlike we become, — the more deeply im- 
 pressed with the inviolability of law. We feel for 
 ourselves the infrangible links that bind causes to 
 effects. We grow rational, amenable to the commands 
 of nature. We cease to think that we must have 
 our own way, and recognize the everlasting necessity 
 of obedience. Travel and exploration teach us how in- 
 finitely varied are the customs and standards of 
 men; how all have been molded by their surround- 
 ings; how in the same circumstances we should have 
 been as they. We compare ourselves with others. 
 We grow skeptical of our own superiority. We 
 suspect we may learn something even from those 
 we have been accustomed to despise. Even more obvi- 
 ously and directly do the masterpieces of poetry, phil- 
 osophy and fiction lead our minds to the acceptance of 
 true and just ideas concerning ourselves and our 
 place and duty in the world. Not only do we grow 
 humble in the presence of works of genius w^hich we 
 must instantly acknowledge we can never rival or 
 
 20 
 
approach, but the sublime ideas which they inculcate, 
 the truth concerning responsibility and destiny, the 
 connection between character and fate, the moral 
 meaning of the universe as it reveals itself to the ap- 
 prehension of the human soul, — all these reflections 
 tend to make us men and women who can live 
 together and work together for common ends, with 
 common aspirations and ideals. It is because a library 
 may have this effect on a conununity that the dedication 
 of it becomes a civic event of the first magnitude, worthy 
 to draw men together from the absorbing tasks of 
 life, and worthy to call the highest officers of city 
 and state to signalize and honor the occasion. 
 
 ''Blessed are the poor in spirit," said the wisest 
 teacher that ever spoke. And if these shelves of books 
 have any mission, it is to fulfill that beatitude in 
 the lives of their readers. "When men lose their 
 narrow-minded confidence that their personal views 
 must necessarily be right; when they enlarge the 
 borders of their minds for the reception of other 
 men's ideas; when they recognize the supremacy 
 of truth, and take for their motto, "Not authority 
 for truth, but truth for authority;" when they be- 
 come charitable and tolerant towards their neighbors, 
 hospitable to new conceptions, watchful for self 
 improvement, ready to sink their private interests 
 in the common good; then they become the material 
 out of which a great and lasting nation may be built. 
 This is the use of books, — not to make scholars, but 
 to make citizens; not to make book- worms, but to 
 make men; not to increase the pride of learning, 
 but to foster that fine humility of spirit which is 
 the first condition to the fulfillment of all whole- 
 
 21 
 
some ideals of knowledge and power. If the library 
 we dedicate with so much pride and hopefulness 
 today shall some day justify that hopefulness and 
 pride, it vnll be because, by fostering that spirit, it 
 ministered to those ideals. 
 
 22 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS TIMES 
 
 A Centennial Address delivered before the Lawmen' Club of 
 Buffalo, N. r., February 13, 1909. 
 
 We are met in memory of a great man and a great 
 epoch. It is impossible to appreciate the one unless 
 we understand the other. It is always an impressive 
 sight when an idea takes possession of the millions and 
 'Snelds the living mass as if it were its soul." We 
 seem to watch the very working of the invisible 
 Power that brings all things to pass. You may find 
 no moral code in nature, no sign that she cares for 
 man; you may regard the material universe as mov- 
 ing on its eternal, way in sublime indifference to our 
 brief concerns ; but there is still a universe of thought 
 in which we live and move and have our being, and 
 here ideas come forth at times like gods, shaping the 
 destiny of the race. 
 
 In fact, the only world we are sure of is the 
 world of ideas. It is only principles that never pass 
 away. You can never make a history out of a column 
 of figures. It is not an account book — it is an epic. 
 It is a tale of heroism. It is a chant of victory. 
 The divinity of man is the open secret of history. 
 There never was an age so dark but the soul of 
 some man blazed in the darkness like a star. 
 
 The land we love was born of a sublime faith 
 in human nature. It was born of the conviction 
 that man had become of age, that he had been under 
 
 23 
 
guardians long enough, and that ^4t is safe to trust 
 a man with all the rights Grod gave him. ' * Despotism 
 said: Man is weak, he must be tended. Democracy 
 replied: Man is strong, he can stand alone. Despot- 
 ism said: Man is mean, he must be watched. Dem- 
 ocracy replied : Man is noble, he may be trusted. 
 
 The state is not made out of men. It is made out 
 of man. It is made out of his faith, his aspiration, 
 his courage, his devotion. It is man himself magni- 
 fied, transfigured. The nation has a being of its own. It 
 has its own conscience and its own ideal. We do not 
 make our ideals — our ideals make us. America did 
 not chose the great doctrine of equal rights; that 
 immortal truth chose America. It has molded her 
 from beginning; it will mold her unto the end, or, 
 if it cannot, it will cast her off with the wreckage and 
 refuse of the past and take up some other nation 
 that is worthy. 
 
 ''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 
 all men are created equal, — that governments derive 
 their just powers from the consent cf the governed." 
 That pledge was given in the hour of danger. It 
 was coupled with an appeal "to the supreme 
 Judge of the world for the rectitude of our inten- 
 tions." It became a part of the consciousness of the 
 nation. Independence was won — the peril was passed 
 — should the vow be kept? But side by side with 
 that stood another question : Should we continue to be 
 a nation at all, or should the old confederation fall 
 to pieces? Slavery was here. Men thought it could 
 not last, but it was here. We could not have a 
 Union at all unless slavery was protected. That 
 was the price. The price was paid. If you plant 
 
 24 
 
an acorn in a vase, the acorn will die or else the vase 
 will crack. We planted the Declaration in the 
 Constitution. One was the real life of the people, 
 the other was the form of government we had 
 adopted. They were utterly inconsistent. The Dec- 
 laration was freedom, the Constitution was slavery. 
 The Declaration was duty, the Constitution was con- 
 venience. The collision between them made the whole 
 tragedy of our first century. The coming of war 
 was as certain as fate. 
 
 There were three factors. Here was slavery. 
 It was not more strongly entrenched in the feudalism 
 of the South than in the money interest and bigoted 
 opinion of the North. It allied itself with the 
 doctrine of Calhoun. It called to its aid that brilliant 
 political leadership that had its way at Washington 
 for sixty years. That was the first factor. Here was 
 nationality, — reverence for the Constitution. It was 
 not stronger in the North itself than in some sections 
 of the South. It had its embodiment in Webster. 
 It found its noblest voice in his ''massive and sono- 
 rous'' speech. It was a vast flood of patriotic 
 sentiment. It began far back in the depths of our 
 history and rose year by year with the gathering 
 strength of a splendid and aspiring people until it 
 poured its resistless tide across the continent. It 
 held the Union so dear that it defended slavery itself 
 for the sake of the Union, even while it abhoiTed it 
 in its heart. That was the second factor. But there 
 was a third. It was abolitionism. It was the 
 Declaration of Independence incarnate. It was the 
 old irreconcilable conscience of New England, fear- 
 ing not the face of man, ready to see the Union 
 
 25 
 
dissolved, yes, even demanding its dissolution that 
 freedom might have way. It began, obscure and 
 despised, ''the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 make straight in the desert a highway for our 
 Go'd!" In the whole history of human thought 
 there is nothing more thrilling and dramatic than 
 the sight of abolitionism, that fierce flame of the 
 spirit, piercing the inert mass, burning unquenchabiy 
 through thirty years, until it had divided North 
 from South, and brought them together with the 
 crash of civil war, in the midst of which slavery 
 itself went down to its own place It ought to be 
 enough to teach us once for all that ideals of right 
 and duty once aroused play with the dead weight 
 of selfish opposition as the cyclone plays with a hand- 
 ful of mthered leaves. 
 
 Lincoln's election was the doom of slavery. 
 South Carolina was right when she read it so. It 
 did not mean, as some pretended, that slavery would 
 be interfered with in the States. But it did mean 
 that slavery would not gain another foot of soil — 
 the territories would be free. It did mean that the 
 government at Washington, which for two genera- 
 tions had obeyed the voice of the slave power, would 
 obey that voice no longer: the scepter had departed 
 from that Judah and the lawgiver from between 
 his feet. It did mean that, hemmed in on every 
 side by liberty, slavery would eventually die, as the 
 statesmen of the elder day expected and intended 
 that it should. 
 
 "When the war began men thought the issue 
 was union; but they were deceived. The real issue 
 was freedom. The war could never have been won 
 
 26 
 
upon the issue of union. Lincoln was captain and 
 his duty was to save the ship — to save it or go down 
 with it. He was lashed to the mast. He was bound 
 to the Constitution — the Constitution as it was. 
 In his view he had no right to abolish slavery if 
 he could, unless it became necessary in order to save 
 the Union. That was man's side. But from God's 
 side it W'as the other way. It was slavery that had 
 to be got rid of. If the Union could do it, it could 
 live ; if not, it would have to die. So when the people 
 were ready to support emancipation they were ready 
 to win — not before. Lincoln's preendnent fitness for 
 his part lay in this, that he was a perfect type of 
 the great body of the people on the Union side. Both 
 hated slavery; both were set as the hills against the 
 further spread of it ; but neither could see any con- 
 stitutional way to interfere with its existence in 
 the states. Both traveled the same road of thought 
 and feeling; both saw at the same instant when the 
 time had come to act. As a mere matter of law it 
 might have answered to have set the slaves free in 
 the seceding states as soon as it became necessary 
 to take up arms at all. But for the president to 
 have done so then would have been w^orse than use- 
 less for the people would not have ratified his act. 
 The border states, themselves slave holders, would 
 have followed their sisters into the Confederacy and 
 the Union cause would have been lost. There was 
 nothing but to wait until the country saw that 
 emancipation was demanded, not only as nn {ict of 
 justice but also as a military measure But when 
 at last the proclamation came, how it strenerthened 
 the hands of the North ! The South was brave, 
 
 27 
 
energetic, sagacious; but she had written it in her 
 constitution that human slavery should never cease 
 nor be abolished in any part of her domain. As 
 long as she was fighting with an antagonist who like- 
 wise defended slavery the odds were not unequal. 
 But when she found herself facing an opponent 
 pledged to freedom, what sagacity, what energy, 
 what gallantry could enable her to win? From that 
 moment she fought against the stars in their courses. 
 Holmes sang of the conflict — 
 
 *' *Tis the old slave-god battling for his crown, 
 And Freedom fighting with her visor down." 
 
 And so it was at first. But from the moment of 
 emancipation all that was changed, — it was Freedom 
 fighting with her visor up, and the terrific beauty 
 of her face was worth a thousand armies. 
 
 The love of Union and the love of liberty — 
 when these two joined hands once more no wonder 
 they swept all before them. You can gauge the 
 strength of Niagara, you can w^eigh the fall of a 
 planet, you can measure the speed of the whirlwind, 
 but you can never calculate the unprisoned power 
 of moral sentiment. 
 
 It was not men who were fighting: it was ideas. 
 It was a narrow dogma of state rights against the 
 grand ideal of national sovereignty. But it was more 
 than that. It was feudalism against freedom. It 
 was the middle ages against the nineteenth century. 
 It was a land where labor was despised against a 
 land where labor was enthroned. It was rank and 
 caste against the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 It is a mistake to imagine that the main course 
 
 28 
 
of human events can be turned aside even by as 
 great a man as Lincoln. A power was at work in 
 whose mighty hands Lincoln himself was nothing 
 but a tool. It was the power that has been working 
 here from the beginning. It was the power that will be 
 working here when you and I are gone. It was the 
 power whose purpose is that all men shall be free. 
 To show you that I have not advanced a hand's 
 breadth beyond the position held by the man whose 
 birth we celebrate, I might quote from speech after 
 speech of his, but let me read instead this letter, less 
 well known, which tells its own story : 
 
 Springfield, 111., April 6, 1859. 
 To H. L. Pierce and Others: 
 
 Gentlemen: — Your kind note inviting me to attend 
 a festival in Boston, on the 28th instant, in honor ot 
 the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. 
 My engagements are such that I cannot come. 
 
 Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two 
 great political parties were first formed in this country, 
 that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them and 
 Boston the headquarters of the other it is both curious 
 and interesting that those supposed to descend politically 
 from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be 
 celebrating his birthday in their own original seat and 
 empire, while those claiming political descent from him 
 have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere. 
 
 Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party formed 
 upon the supposed superior devotion to the personal 
 rights of men, holding the rights of property to be 
 secondary only and greatly inferior, and assuming that 
 the so-called democracy of today ara the Jefferson, and 
 their opponents the anti-Jefferson party, it will be 
 equally interesting to note how completely the two have 
 changed hands as to the principles upon which they 
 were originally supposed to be divided. The Democracy 
 
 29 
 
of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely 
 nothing, when in conflict with another man's right 
 of property; Republicans, on the contrary, are for both 
 the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the 
 man before the dollar. 
 
 I remember being very much amused at seeing 
 two partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight with 
 their great-coats on, which fight, after a long and rather 
 harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself 
 out of his own coat and into that of the other. If 
 the two leading parties of this day are really identical 
 with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams they 
 have performed the same feat as the two drunken men. 
 
 But, soberly, it is no child play to save the principles 
 of JefEerson from total overthrow in this nation. One 
 would state with great confidence that he could convince 
 any sane child that the simple propositions of Euclid 
 are true, but nevertheless he would fail, utterly, with 
 one who should deny the definitions and axioms. 
 
 The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and 
 axioms of free society, and yet they are denied and 
 evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly 
 calls them "glittering generalities." Another bluntly 
 calls them "self-evident lies." And others insidiously 
 argue that they apply to "superior races." These ex- 
 pressions, differing in form, are identical in object 
 and effect — the supplanting the principles of free gov- 
 ernment and restoring those of classification, caste 
 and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of 
 crowned heads plotting against the people. They are 
 the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning des- 
 potism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate 
 us. This is a world of compensation; and he who would 
 be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those 
 who deny freedom to others deserve it not for them- 
 selves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All 
 honor to Jefferson — to the man who, in the concrete 
 pressure of a strugle for national independence by a 
 single people, had the coolness, forecast and sagacity 
 
 30 
 
to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an 
 abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and 
 so embalm it there that today and in all coming daya 
 it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very 
 harbingers of reappearing tryanny and oppression. 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 A. LINCOLN 
 
 I do not pretend that the Declaration has been 
 fully realized in the life of this people. I admit that 
 in large regions of the land today political equality 
 is still an empty name. But the end is not yet. 
 In the long pilgrimage of liberty what is forty years * 
 It is only a watch in the night. Political equality 
 is absolute and eternal justice, and justice is the will 
 of God — it cannot fail. All men are equally bound 
 to obey the law? Then all men have an equal right 
 to say what the law shall be — all men, rich and poor, 
 high and low, learned and ignorant, good and bad, 
 white and black — all men. There is no half-way house 
 between despotism and democracy. If intelligence 
 would be safe, let it give ignorance the light. If 
 virtue would be safe, let it lift vice to its own 
 level. If wealth would be safe, let it treat poverty 
 with justice. When God made His world He made 
 democracy inevitable. 
 
 The people have never had a government before. 
 Is it strange that they flock to it from all corners 
 of the earth? Nobody pretends it is perfect. No- 
 body knows better than the people themselves how 
 inefficient it sometimes proves. Yet they love it be- 
 cause they know it is theirs. Upon their faultiest 
 institution the}^ look wdth the irrepressible pride 
 Touchstone acknowledged when he presented Audrey : 
 
 31 
 
''An ill-favored thing, but my own!*' If you doubt 
 the genuineness of their attachment wait until free 
 government is assailed again, and you shall see the 
 old Vesuvius once more in action. They may seem 
 to hold their privileges lightly, but if you want to 
 know whether they are really regarded, try to take 
 the least of them away ! If all you want is a smooth- 
 running machine, absolute monarchy is the best that 
 ever was devised. But if you want the pulse-beat 
 of intelligent loyalty in every movement you must 
 build your government out of the brains and hearts 
 of all the people. And that takes time; that means 
 education; it means blunders and embarassment ; but 
 meanwhile you secure a state that cannot be over- 
 thrown, and every inch once gained is gained forever. 
 Fisher Ames said that a monarchy is a man-of-war, 
 beautiful in motion, irresistible when under way, but 
 a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom: while 
 a democracy is a raft — always in trouble — ^your feet 
 always wet, but nothing can sink her. We have built 
 on the sound judgment, the incorruptible integrity 
 of men in the mass. Life and liberty have yet found 
 no citadel so safe as the conscience of twelve men 
 drawn from the body of the people. Our safety 
 lies neither at the top nor at the bottom, but in 
 that great body of sober industry that lies between. 
 These are the people. They are not rich enough to 
 be afraid of an income tax nor poor enough to run 
 after socialism for the promise of its loaves and fishes. 
 They are not wise enough to look down on the 
 Declaration of Independence nor foolish enough to 
 believe the Millennium is coming next week on 
 Thursday. They know that this government of 
 
 32 
 
theirs, poor and imperfect as it is, stands for all 
 that has been achieved thus far in the world-old 
 struggle for liberty under law. They are not to be 
 terrorized by labor nor overawed by capital, and they 
 will pulverize union and trust in the same mortar 
 if they ever become convinced that individual liberty 
 is actually in peril. 
 
 It is not for us to know the times or the seasons 
 which the Father of all things has kept in His own 
 hands, but of this we may be sure: the race that 
 hails from Runnymede and Bunker Hill is not go- 
 ing to lie down under any form of tyranny. It 
 will not take back the Declaration of Independence. 
 That sublime document was written long ago in the 
 blood of the Revolution. It had to be written once 
 more in the blood of the Civil War. God grant, 
 it need never be written again in color so costly, 
 but if the need should arise, then, as once and twice 
 before, it shall be done ! 
 
 We need not shut our eyes to the follies and 
 abuses of our time. We cannot deny that public 
 life is here and there corrupt. We know that trusts 
 are now and then betrayed. But these signs are 
 superficial and we believe they are transient. The 
 heart of the nation is sound. Its instincts and in- 
 tentions are honest and wholesome; and it is the 
 real character of a people, not its occasional slips and 
 falls, that determines its fate. These things are but 
 the froth and scum — they are only the driftwood 
 and noisome weeds that gather in the eddies and 
 cumber and defile the river's banks. Out in mid- 
 stream the great, free, clear current of national life 
 sweeps on to its destiny. Only get near enough to 
 
 33 
 
see and feel the tremendous current of our national 
 life and purpose, — the obstacles in its course, even 
 the lofty landmarks upon its shores, sink into in- 
 significance. You feel only the majestic stream of 
 Anglo-Saxon liberty, proceeding from its far-off 
 sources in the German forests, gathering force from 
 Runny mede, from Naseby, from our own great Rev- 
 olution and sweeping onward to its shining goal — 
 to that bright ocean of universal brotherhood and 
 peace which is one day to surround the world. Faith- 
 less indeed must that man be whose study of the 
 great ages and examples of his race permits him to 
 doubt whether the guiding is from above. I believe 
 in the capacity of the American people to solve every 
 problem its duty brings before it. For every great 
 hour the great man is bom. Out of the loins of the 
 nation shall spring every son of strength she needs. 
 To 1775 came Washington, and to 1861 — to the hour 
 of futile voices and failing arms, came the incom- 
 parable statesman whose deathless fame has brought 
 us here today. 
 
 The time is holy: it belongs to memory and to 
 love. A hundred years ago the man was born whose 
 name is music in all hearts that love their country 
 or their kind. We cannot speak of him in 
 measured terms. For other men we weigh our words 
 and with a scrupulous hand we count the tribute of 
 our praise, but not for him. Good measure, pressed 
 down, shaken together and running over do men 
 give into his bosom, for as he measured unto others 
 it is measured to him again. Fame lets her trumpet fall 
 to pay him the more tender homage of her tears; 
 
 34 
 
and Love kneels down and breaks her box of costly 
 ointment for his feet. 
 
 Today we think of all that came to pass between 
 his birth of penury and his death of pain. We 
 see the poor log cabin in the clearing where his eyes 
 first met the light of day. And then we see 
 that fated room in Tenth Street where hands shak- 
 ing with horror have brought him in to die. We 
 see it suddenly crowded with officers of state, and 
 in the first deep hush of death we hear the solemn 
 words of Stanton, *'Now he belongs to the ages." 
 
 And then we ask "How did he come to be? 
 What were the forces that took up that low-born 
 child and as with plastic fingers molded him into 
 the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen?" 
 For what is it to conquer kingdoms and compel 
 the wills of men to yield to yours? What is that 
 to the thing he did? — winning the reason and the 
 heart of millions until, as the meek flock follows the 
 faithful shepherd, the nation was ready to follow 
 his rod and staff into the valley of the shadow of 
 death, fearing no evil! 
 
 "Whence did he come?" we ask; and the ques- 
 tioned years answer us in pictures. 
 
 They show us a half -clad boy in the red flare of 
 his pine torch, reading — ^painfully spelling out the 
 pages of his borrowed book. We look again, and now 
 there is a tall young woodsman driving the shivering 
 wedges into the walnut logs or meeting the best 
 muscle of the prairie in the wrestler's ring. 
 
 The scene changes, and now we are watching 
 a long-limbed boatman on the bosom of a mighty 
 river, piloting his flat, ungainly craft through golden 
 
 35 
 
days and under the still stars mare than a thousand 
 miles to market. We see him wandering in the 
 crescent city of the far, far south. We find him 
 leaning in the corner of the auction-place where 
 trembling families are bought and sold. Husband is 
 torn from wife, mother from child, before his eyes. 
 We mark the speechless anguish furrowing his face 
 as the full meaning of the brutal system sinks into 
 his soul. 
 
 Again the scene changes ; and now he is at home 
 among the neighbors, taking his kind part in all 
 their plain affairs. We hear their jokes, their stories, 
 their debates. We follow as they take him up in 
 proud and loving hands and push him out into the 
 world, their champion and leader. 
 
 Now he is studying law. With clear eyes and 
 unspoiled brain he is mastering the few great books 
 that hold the garnered msdom of the race. We see 
 him ponder earnestly and long, teachable as a child, 
 open as the day, tenderly in love mth what is right. 
 
 He is standing up in court, defending the cause 
 he gave his heart to. We see the revelation come 
 that he is wrong. His client has deceived him. The 
 case is rotten at the core. His huge strength fails. 
 We see him sink into his chair and hang his head, 
 unable to contend against the truth. 
 
 We watch him as he goes along the street, awk- 
 ward, ill-clad, a laugh-provoking, laughter-loving 
 giant, with the shadow of all human sorrow haunting 
 his deep eyes. ''Old Abe, old honest Abe," we hear 
 men say; and something seems to catch us in the 
 throat. 
 
 Once more the scene changes; and now we see 
 
 36 
 
this raw-boned hewer of fence-rails, this ring-master 
 of rude country wit and sport, the center of ten 
 thousand earnest faces where he is matching 
 himself against the most powerful debater of his time. 
 We see him hold his own. We hear his statement 
 of the question, clear as day, the laugh that greets 
 the unanswerable story, the reason that goes home 
 to every heart. We feel the unbound majesty of 
 manhood as the towering form is lifted with the in- 
 spiration of his lofty theme. 
 
 The eyes of the nation are upon him now. The 
 plain folk are beginning to understand him — they 
 are taking the true measure of the man. With 
 the deliberate emphasis of fate we hear him say: 
 "A house divided against itself cannot stand. This 
 nation cannot endure permanently half slave and 
 half free." Once more we follow as the common 
 people lift him high in proud and loving hands. 
 They have placed him in the presidential chair. 
 Heaven help him now, for he is wrestling with 
 problems the darkest and most dangerous soldier or 
 statesman ever had to solve! Untrained in war, yet 
 set amidst the greatest civil war the world has 
 known, and charged with its support and guidance. 
 We see him contending with hatred and deceit in 
 foreign councils, with contusion in the congress, 
 with jealousy in the cabinet, with weakness and folly 
 in the field, with plots and counterplots on every 
 hand, bending under such a load of grief and care 
 as few have ever borne. We hail him as he comes tri- 
 umphant out of all ; and even then, while he is gather- 
 ing North and South, like two death-wounded sons, in- 
 to his lo^ang arms, we see his head fall forward on his 
 
 37 
 
breast. The victim has been offered up — the great, 
 kind life is closed. 
 
 The years are true. That was the road he came 
 by: those were the forces that fashioned the strong 
 nature for its fearful task. But is that all? The 
 same road was traveled by his fellows ; the same forces 
 were at work on them. How did it come to pass there 
 was no other like him? The secret of his coming still 
 remains unsolved. When all is pondered we can only 
 say that out of those eternal depths of being that gave 
 us Alfred, Milton, Cromwell, Washington, he also 
 came, in answer to our need. 
 
 Men marvel at the power with which he spoke, 
 but the reason is as obvious as the summer sun. His 
 speech had the first quality of greatness — it was true. 
 It had the second quality of greatness — ^it was clear. 
 It had the third quality of greatness — it was earnest. 
 The three graces of eloquence are these, and sister 
 they have none. Clearness and truth go naked, but 
 earneslness puts on the rainbow-robe of imagination. 
 When feeling is intense it clothes itself in figures. So 
 it was with him. In moments of profound emotion he 
 had the gift of tongues and uttered himself in 
 parables. Once in the speech at Springfield, once 
 in each of the inaugurals and in all he said upon 
 the field of Gettysburg, he rose to the sublime plane 
 of Hebrew scripture, and spoke for all time as the 
 inspired prophet of his people. 
 
 Most wonderful, most fortunate of men ! You 
 saved a nation and you freed a race. God put the 
 pen into your band and said "Strike out of this 
 people 's law that foul word. Slavery, and write instead 
 the word whose every letter is a sun. Liberty!" And 
 
 38 
 
you obeyed Him. All hearts shall hold you dear. All 
 tongues shall call you blessed. And while the mighty 
 prairies that gave you to the nation shall unroll for 
 the glad eyes of men the green of seedtime and the 
 harvest gold your memory shall not fail ; but millions 
 of your countrymen will say, as we say now, ' ' Thank 
 God for our great Lincoln ! ' ' 
 
 39 
 
THE LAWYER 
 
 Given before the Bar Associations of Vermont, South Caro^ 
 
 Una and West Virginia, as well as at various 
 
 other Legal Gatherings, 
 
 I want to speak to you for a little while about the 
 lawyer. Not about lawyers in general, nor about 
 any lawyer in particular, but about the law}-er, — 
 the ideal of our profession. I suppose even la^vyers 
 may be permitted to have an ideal. As we speak 
 of the philosopher, the mathematician, the inventor, 
 I presume we may speak of the lawyer. If the 
 perfect lawyer has never really existed, neither has the 
 perfect artist, musician, or statesman. It is one of 
 the proofs of man's essential greatness that he has 
 never satisfied himself in any direction. Yon re- 
 member Emerson's pregnant inquiry, ''Man com- 
 plains that his life is mean; but how did he find out 
 that it is mean?" After all it is we ourselves who 
 erect the standard we fall short of. It is only out 
 of our own mouths that we can be condemned. 
 
 The ideal lawyer must be adequately endowed 
 by nature, fully informed by study, perfectly dis- 
 ciplined by practice, open-eyed to his opportunity, 
 and loyal to his trust. 
 
 There are lawyers by nature just as there are poets 
 by nature. They are endowed with two great gifts; 
 one is intellectual, the other moral. One is the power 
 to perceive the true relations of things, and the other 
 
 40 
 
\ 
 
 is the disposition to see justice done. This ability 
 to see the true relations in which things stand to each 
 other — what is it but common sense inagnified ? And 
 who will not admit that common sense is always a 
 gift of nature? If you know of any college that 
 can confer an honest degree in common sense, let 
 me know — I want to send my boy there. It can't 
 be done. If he was born w4th it the school will 
 give it breadth and power. If he \^as born mtliout 
 it the school will only make the deficiency conspicu- 
 ous. The Spaniards have a proverb, ' ' A fool is never 
 a great fool until he knows Latin." We have all 
 seen lawyers who would have been stronger if they 
 had relied more on their reason and less on their 
 reading. Even on the bench I have known men who 
 would have been better judges if they had been poorer 
 lawyers. When all is said it is mother- wit that runs 
 the world. Probably you laughed awhile ago, as I 
 did, over that story in the Law Review concerning 
 a famous jurist who was fording a little brook in 
 his chaise and trying to wet the dry wheels by 
 backing again and again into the stream, and find- 
 ing that each time he wet only the same part of the 
 circumference. An old darkey observing his efforts 
 ventured to help him by turning the wheel round 
 and round in the water until the felloe and spokes 
 were all wet. '*I never thought of that," said the 
 absent-minded judge. He must have been greatly 
 consoled by the reply: *'0h, well, some folks just 
 nat'lly has mo' sense than others, anyhow." 
 
 How often we have occasion to return to that 
 profound saying of Bacon, ''Books teach not their 
 own use, but that is a wisdom without them and 
 
 41 
 
above them won by observation/' It was common 
 sense that made the law, and it is eomm.on sense that 
 must apply it. In the war between our states a 
 Massachusetts regiment was to be transported by 
 train. The locomotive had broken down. ''Is there 
 any man here that knows how to mend this engine?" 
 asked the Colonel. A private stepped out of the 
 ranks and patted the machine, sajdng, ''I ought to; 
 I made her." That is what happens when the real 
 lawyer puts his hand to the law. Some of the best 
 lawyers were never admitted to the bar. More than 
 once I have been consulted by some country m.agis- 
 trate, some backwoods justice of the peace, constable, 
 or plain farmer, who has sho^vn such a clear percep- 
 tion of principles, such a firm grasp of the situation, 
 that I have felt like saying, "Why do you come to 
 me for counsel? It is I that should learn of you." 
 Of course, there are some questions that depend for 
 their solution upon technical learning; but they are 
 not a large proportion. Barring these, I believe it is 
 possible to state any correct judgment in terms 
 that will satisfy the common mind I always dis- 
 trust a decision that cannot be made intelligible to 
 the ordinary understanding. When Marshall was de- 
 livering one of his subtile, far-reaching opinions a 
 political opponent whispered to his companion, "It's 
 wrong, all wrong." "Yes," replied his colleague, 
 "but the man does not live that can point out 
 wherein it is wrong." I do not pretend to say that 
 the criticism was just in that instance. I don't re- 
 member what the instance was. But when that is 
 the impression left upon a fair and candid mind, — 
 a feeling that the argument may be right, but that 
 
 42 
 
the result is wrong, — the probability is that the opin- 
 ion is wrong. If it is not wrong there has been a failure 
 to put it on the true ground. Luke P. Poland, of 
 Vermont, was one of the best judges and legislators 
 we ever had. A neighbor of his, not a lawyer, had 
 been elected justice of the peace. The judge said 
 to him, ''I will give you a little advice. You will 
 get along well enough if you never give any reason 
 for your decisions. You are a pretty sensible fellow, 
 and nine times out of ten your judgments will be 
 right, but if you try to tell why, the chances are 
 3^ou will make yourself ridiculous." The true texts 
 are those that shine by their own light. The sound 
 judgment has a way of justifying itself even to the 
 man in the street. It is the business of learning to 
 make itself plain to the unlearned. Greatness can 
 afford to be simple; and the highest wisdom uses the 
 homeliest language. It is weakness and uncertainty 
 that take refuge in obscure phrases. Have I not 
 read of some sort of fish that secures its escape from 
 its enemy by diffusing an inky substance through 
 the water? Read the great judgments of Mansfield, 
 of Marshall, of Gibson, of Shaw. How they com- 
 mend themselves to the unsophisticated reason ! Take 
 one of Ben Franklin's sayings, one of ^sop's fables, 
 one of liincoln's stories — how they find their way to 
 the hearts and understandings of the masses! 
 Choate uesd to say that Webster's words passed 
 current like coin among the people. So do the plain- 
 dealing words of Theodore Roosevelt today. Law 
 is not something technical, something that smells 
 of the lamp and belongs to the closet. Law is noth- 
 ing stable, nothing desirable unless it is the sifted 
 
and garnered common sense of the race. You need 
 never tremble for that kind of law. It is a tub that 
 can stand on its own bottom. A code that can be 
 understood and apppreciated only by a class or a 
 profession may fail, but a law that makes its appeal 
 to the good sense and honest instincts of men at 
 large can never fail. For a sound legal judgment 
 is moral as well as mental. It is not enough to see 
 things as they are: the great la^vyer sees how they 
 ought to be. His love of justice is as strong as his 
 perception of truth is keen. It has been said, ''Love 
 is our highest word and the sjmonym of God. ' ' But 
 if that be so, then the next highest word is justice. 
 ''For justice all place a temple and all season sum- 
 mer!" What other excuse can government give for 
 its existence than this — "to establish justice?" So 
 it is that a good lawyer must have the qualities that 
 go to the making of a good judge. He cannot con- 
 duct his case msely nor advise his client safely 
 unless he can foresee with reasonable accuracy how 
 the court will be obliged to treat it w^hen it comes 
 before it. The best counsel is he who best anticipates 
 the court's decision. You cannot make a good judge 
 out of intellect alone. He must have a heart that 
 can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 
 His blood must be red. Let him be pure and 
 righteous as he may, but through his heart must 
 throb the quick, warm currents of humanity. And 
 above all he must love justice. He must long to see 
 the right prevail. So must the lawyer — ^^ilie lawyer," 
 I mean. He must be great enough to exult in his own 
 defeat when he finds that he ought to be defeated. 
 Lawyers do not like to be beaten; judges do not like 
 
 44 
 
to be reversed. But a judge who \\'ill not rejoice 
 to see his own \\Tong judgment set aside — he 
 may be great in learning and high in place, but the 
 least in the kingdom of justice is greater than he. 
 The law is a Spartan mistress, liard indeed and 
 jealous enough, yet not ^vdthout a certain high and 
 austere beauty of her own. It is not altogether a 
 question of abilit}^ — the question of fitness for this 
 or that profession: it is quite as much a question 
 of temper, of disposition. When Othello is summoned 
 from the bridal bed to undertake the Turkish wars, 
 you remember he exclaims : 
 
 "The tyrant custom, most grave senators, 
 Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war 
 My thrice-driven bed of down. 1 recognize 
 A natural and prompt alacrity 
 I find in hardness." 
 
 He found in it something akin to his own nature 
 and welcomed it so. There is a temper, admirable, 
 too, in its way and the parent of admirable w^ork, 
 which is not the temper of the law. Many a man has 
 found it so when too late. ^lany another has found 
 it so before it was too late and has left the law 
 for his owTi proper calling. James Russell Lowell 
 was one of these. He well represents a large class 
 whose temper is literary, dreamy, poetic, rather than 
 forensic. They had the native parts. Lowell himself 
 had a lazy strength which, when he chose to put it 
 forth, worked wonders. "The Vision of Sir Launfal" 
 was \VTitten at a heat, at one sitting. But such 
 phenomenal activity was followed by long periods 
 of indolent repose in which the brooding genius 
 nourished itself for another flight. We may doubt 
 
 45 
 
if such minds are capable of that continuous and 
 exacting discipline of which we are now speaking. 
 It is not that the imagination serves no purpose in 
 the lawyer's career. It may serve him mightily, but 
 it must serve and not rule. It must be the horses, 
 not the driver. It has been said that the artist is 
 out of place in the law. I cannot subscribe to that. I 
 believe all genuine work must be done in the spirit of 
 the artist. The difference is not that one kind of work 
 is art and the other mere drudgery; the difference is 
 in the style of art and the main purpose of it. There 
 is little learning, little culture, there are few graces 
 and few accomplishments which may not serve the 
 advocate at times and serve him well. But they are 
 only aids to his main purpose. His main purpose is 
 to make the most of his cause ; and any learning, any 
 rhetoric, any eloquence, however admirable in itself, 
 which does not help him to that end, is not art, because 
 it violates the first canon of all art, w^hich requires 
 unity and the subordination of every detail to the 
 dominant idea. "When the advocate has made the 
 most of his cause he has succeeded, as a workman, 
 whether the cause be won or lost. In the same way, 
 speaking broadly, the main purpose of the lawyer 
 must be to make of himself the best lawyer it is 
 possible for him to become. When he is taken pos- 
 session of by the desire to do that he finds that to 
 realize his ideal demands as much of him as it ever 
 did of the Spartan. I do not say lie may not have 
 a sort of success without it. If nature has given him 
 a sturdy stomach and a normal brain, if fortune 
 shall affbrd him an average chance among his fellows, 
 he may have a shuffling sort of success and even win 
 
 46 
 
a respectability of income and of place without tliis 
 hardship; but if that be the goal of his ambition 
 let him rest assured he will never be ranked by his 
 fellow lawyers as a lawyer; he will never find hira- 
 self leading in emergencies, never be waited for at 
 the council-board nor dreaded in the battle of debate. 
 In the first place, the realization of his ideal 
 will call upon him for a body strong and sound and 
 clean. I do not say he cannot succeed without it. 
 I say he cannot make of himself the best lawyer pos- 
 sible, without it. I do not forget how numerous have 
 been the proofs that a strong will and a persistent 
 purpose may overcome all physical defects, that men 
 of feeble frame have wielded the power of giants. 
 I do not forget how numerous have been those other 
 proofs that genius may do wonders even when the 
 body is trampled upon, abused, made drunken. I 
 do not forget that the alternate excitement and ex- 
 haustion of the la^vyer's life constitute peculiar 
 temptations, and that many of the best have fallen, — 
 that many of the ablest have dragged this lengthening 
 chain along the path of their success. But the truth 
 remains that he who would do his best must have a 
 body strong and sound and clean. And whatever 
 may have been the case in former days, the leaders 
 of the bar todaj^ are mostly of this class. Intemper- 
 ance was once almost the badge of our profession. 
 It has come to be exceptional. The man who would 
 lead realizes that he is like an athlete training for 
 his finest effort. He knows that he has contests be- 
 fore him that will task him to the uttermost. He 
 knows that he will have rivals who have turned 
 their backs on every such temptation, and that all 
 
 47 
 
the difference between success and failure in the most 
 important cause may turn some day on such advantage 
 between him and his opponent. He knows that it 
 is msdom to cast off every impediment, as that 
 Lacedaemonian youth in the foot race at Olympia 
 finally threw aside his girdle itself and ran naked to 
 the goal. Indeed, I do not know the career in life 
 where physical endurance counts for more than here. 
 The great contests of the forum sometimes become 
 physical almost as much as mental. Hour after hour 
 may pass in strenuous exertion, in constant watch- 
 fulness, in alert readiness, in slow, painful pursuit, 
 and the fate of the case may hang on another hour 
 of unflagging effort. Then endurance tells; then 
 training tells; then the temperate life tells. The man 
 who can go through such a day and then if need 
 be go not to his bed but to his office and spend night 
 there and come to court at morning armed cap-a-pe 
 and fresh for the final struggle, has a superiority over 
 his weaker adversary, who may be othermse his peer, 
 which it would be difficult to overrate. 
 
 Then, again, the realization of his ideal will 
 demand of him a patience and minuteness of labor 
 which few are willing to endure. He must learn to 
 love drudgery, for nine-tenths of his employment will 
 be what the world calls that. I used to think a lawyer 
 was a man who spent his time making fine speeches 
 in court. The years have taught me my mistake. I 
 now see that a lawyer is a man who spends his days 
 in drudgery nobody else is willing to submit to, that 
 when the hour of doubt and difficulty comes he may 
 have a sensible word to offer when no one else knows 
 what to say. His admired effort is **the perfect 
 
 48 
 
flower of Ms correction." It is hiving knowledge; 
 it is acquiring skill ; it is training, disciplining, chast- 
 ening every faculty into unwavering obedience. It 
 is nothing peculiar to our profession. MacDonald 
 defined the religious gift of grace as *'the lovely 
 result of forgotten toil;" and that is true of all per- 
 fection. It may be essential to our enjoyment of the 
 finished product that we shut our eyes to the process, 
 but not when we are inquiring how the masterpiece 
 came to be. The most impressive picture of the 
 oi'ator's power I can recall is that which Landor 
 gave us in the imaginary conversation between Dem- 
 osthenes and a contemporary. The prince of ad- 
 vocates is talking of his past career, and as his memory 
 goes back to the triumphant moments of his life, he 
 exclaims : ' ' I have seen the day, Eubulides, when the 
 most august of cities had but one voice within her 
 walls; and when the stranger paused at the silence 
 of her gateways and said, ' Demosthenes is speaking in 
 the assembly of the people.' " But that is only half 
 the lesson. The picture mil mislead us wholly un- 
 less we set beside it that earlier one of the ill-shaped, 
 thick-tongued, stammering youth, rehearsing with 
 pebbles in his mouth, rehearsing while he raced against 
 the wind, rehearsing in the thunders of the sea, in 
 his dungeon underground, in his legal contests with 
 his guardians, — developing and subduing every 
 faculty of mind and body until it obeyed the slight- 
 est dictate of his art. 
 
 But, as I said, the law is not all speech making. 
 Look at what the practitioner must have at his com- 
 mand. There is the vast and venerable body of the 
 common law of England, the basis of our law. There 
 
 49 
 
lie the explanations of our present code ; there lie the 
 fundamental principles which are to guide him, or 
 give him his bearing, in almost every change; there 
 is the source and fountain of our American con- 
 ceptions of property and law. And here, too, "a 
 little learning is a dangerous thing." There is the 
 constitution of his state, by which every act of the 
 legislature must be tested. This he must know as 
 if by heart. There is the Federal constitution to 
 which every state law must yield — to which every 
 state constitution must, if necessary, bend. This 
 must be familiar to him as his name. Then there are 
 the acts of Congress, the statutes of his own state 
 assembly, changing year by year, the decisions of 
 courts of last resort deciding novel cases, an ever- 
 increasing mass to analyse, to know as best he can, — 
 the vital part of it. In the mere gathering of in- 
 formation what limit is there but the limit of his 
 strength? In the mere matter of selection — what to 
 slight, Avhat to study carefully — see what discrimina- 
 tion is required. Who wonders that we grow be- 
 wildered? When a law student asked Gen. Butler 
 what book he should read first, the bluff old pirate 
 swept his arm toward his crowded shelves and cried: 
 *'0h — , pitch in anywhere; you can't expect to know 
 anything for a f cav years, anyhow ! ' ' When we watch 
 the vast flood pouring past us we realize that discrim- 
 ination is becoming all the time more necessary — 
 all the time more difficult. Who will have the courage 
 to contend against it? Here is where the philoso- 
 phic temper tells. Here is opportunity for him who 
 is not to be cowed by obstacles, nor bewildered by 
 labyrinths, nor fooled by shams, nor imposed upon 
 
 50 
 
by hollow reputations, — who can separate the grain 
 from chaff, who can follow the thread of a legal prin- 
 ciple through every devious winding to the light 
 of day. 
 
 How many-sided an active trial lawj^er must 
 become in the course of years ! Hardly a department 
 of business or a phase of social life that he does not 
 touch. Wlio can wonder at the prominence the pro- 
 fession holds in public life when he remembers that 
 it touches life at more points than any other. Then, 
 again, the faculties developed are tlie very ones which 
 in the contests of life give men advantage over their 
 fellows. To say nothing further of that breadth and 
 fullness of knowledge which it gathers day by day, 
 that perfect knowledge of human nature, the dis- 
 cipline itself, — that mastery of all one's power, which 
 it imparts, is enough to account for its pre-eminence. 
 
 "What is more dramatic than an earnest trial? 
 Here is human life contracted to the limits of a play, 
 and yet not a play, but the reality itself. You know 
 how vShakespeare in the historical plays crowds events 
 that happened years apart into the limits of a week 
 to give his drama unity, intensity, and dramatic 
 power — how the Greek drama confines the action to 
 a single day, and yet shows the unfolding fates of 
 years within that day. So in the court room you 
 have human life in miniature — a drama going on be- 
 fore your eyes — no libretto in your hand to tell you 
 how it is coming out — every step a surprise — its cli- 
 maxes all real — the issues of life and death often to 
 be found in a moment, sometimes in a single word. 
 
 The court room is a battlefield and calls for 
 no Flodden Field or Gettysburg calls for 
 
 51 
 
more. In th'fe exigencies of a trial the coward 
 goes to the rear — no matter how learned a coward 
 he may be. To learn to think upon his feet, to delib- 
 erate and decide in the very heat of strife, to meet 
 apparent ruin with a smile, never to lose his poise, 
 to be the perfect master of himself in every crisis of 
 his case, — all this his art demands. No jury will try 
 to carry through a case they see the lawyer has lost 
 heart in. 
 
 His ideal grows stricter, more severe, as years go 
 by until no superfluity is tolerable. So in all art. 
 In youth, Venus and Adonis — in age, Hamlet. So all 
 art grows severe as it grows perfect — even with 
 painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, but especi- 
 ally with orators, and most of all with the master of 
 that severest type of oratory, the advocate in court. 
 No ornament now for the sake of ornament, no weapon 
 to be despised however rude that will bring victory. 
 "If you knew how precious freedom is, you would 
 defend it with axes,'^ said the Spartans to the Great 
 King 's satrap when he ridiculed their arms. What op- 
 portunity for genuine eloquence ! — the clean-cut state- 
 ment, the shrewd analysis, cunning to track the lie back 
 to its lair, courage to transfix it when it is found, 
 illustration like a burst of sunlight in a darkened 
 room, the witty story, the touch of pathos, the passion- 
 ate appeal! 
 
 To me the peculiar glory of the lawyer 's career is 
 that its power increases with increasing years. The 
 great lawyer is greatest at the last. His highest ability 
 begins when men in other walks of life have passed 
 their usefulness. Three score and ten is young for the 
 ideal lawyer. Now comes the cumulative force of all 
 
 52 
 
his years of knowledge, training, and resource. There 
 was Sidney Bartlett, leader of Suffolk County Bar at 
 ninety years. Holmes called him ''the lion of the law," 
 and wrote : 
 
 "How Court Street trembles when lie leaves his den 
 Clad in the pomp of four score years and ten!" 
 
 There was Henry W. Paine, once leader of the 
 same great bar, who left his practice at eighty-four. 
 He was an old man when he used to stand in court 
 and lay down the law with his simple ipse dixit, rarely 
 citing book, and rarely asked to cite it. There was one 
 exception, however, and it called forth from him the 
 finest of court repartees. He was arguing before 
 Judge Gray, afterwards of the Federal Supreme 
 Court, who, always more of a lawyer than a courtier, 
 broke in upon him with, ''Mr. Paine, that is not the 
 law." "It was the law," replied the perfect courtier, 
 "until Your Honor just spoke." When you entered the 
 Supreme Court chamber a few years ago, you saw 
 upon the bench a figure worthy to remind you of 
 Tennyson's description of Homer: 
 
 And there the Ionian father of the rest, 
 A million wrinkles carved his skin; 
 
 A hundred winters snowed upon his breast, 
 From cheek and throat and chin, 
 
 — Stephen J. Field, fit representative of his long- 
 lived, manly race. This is, indeed, in Browning's fine 
 phrase: "The last of life for which the first was 
 made." To every young man who has any aspiration 
 at all life comes in the same guises which it put on 
 before the Trojan shepherd. The three goddesses 
 appear. The love of pleasure, sensuous, beautiful — 
 
 53 
 
so Aphrodite came. It also comes in guise of greater 
 dignity, more alluring, too, to minds of manly 
 temper, and speaks to him of wealth and influence. 
 So Here came to Paris. 
 
 "Still she spake on, and still she spake of power, 
 Which in all action is the end of all." 
 
 One other form she comes in, nobler still. Wisdom 
 herself, Athene; 
 
 "Self -reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; 
 These three alone lead life to sovereign power." 
 
 But there is a graver consideration. There is a 
 larger sense in wMch life itself is only another name 
 for opportunity. I should have wasted the hour you 
 lend me tonight if I should close without bringing my 
 subject to the test of this thought also. We all recognize 
 the sordidness of the view that looks upon any occu- 
 pation solely as bread winning, or as a way to get 
 rich. But the thoughtful man might ask: "After all 
 your fine talk of information, discipline, education 
 even in its broadest sense, — cui bono? Is this all? Is 
 this, then, the chief end of man, to be educated? If 
 so, the universe is made to revolve about my indi- 
 vidual soul for a center — a philosophy as unworthy 
 of my belief as that old petty theory of the heavens, 
 which made the earth the center of all things in^jfead 
 of recognizing it as the infinitesimal speck it is, follow- 
 ing in the wake of titanic suns and systems. I can- 
 not accept that philosophy." Well, neither can I. I 
 agree : It is beneficent acti\dty which is the chief end 
 of man, — that, mth the eternal happiness which 
 keeps it company. We can never be at peace with 
 ourselves, never possess that happiness which, as 
 
 54 
 
Matthew Arnold put it, comes from the conscious- 
 ness of hitting the mark, if we fail to fulfill the prime 
 purpose of existence, which is to live in and for tlie 
 life of humanity — not the struggling, sordid humanity 
 of today alone, but the triumphant, glorified human- 
 ity which is to be, on earth. 
 
 What is a lawyer's part in life thus looked upon? 
 A very small part some people would say. There is 
 a notion that a lawyer's very business is inconsist- 
 ent with any such view. I used to hear a minister 
 laugh about a pious member of his flock who was 
 accustomed to make earnest prayer for a friend of 
 his, a lawyer, that he might become a Christian, 
 always adding with a dubious sigh, "Oh, Lord, if it 
 be possible for a lawyer to be a Christian!" If 
 Tolstoi is right the lawyer's life does run counter to 
 Christian ethics at every step. So does the judge's, 
 the soldier's, the policeman's, the law-maker's, every 
 man's who helps to hold up existing governmental 
 order. I bow to the sincerity and consistency of 
 those w^ho thus read and ohey the Sermon on the 
 Mount, but I take it we do not so interpret it; and 
 if the social order is to be maintained, as necessary 
 in some sort and the best we could get so far, if the 
 practical work before lies in slowly remolding it to 
 better ideals and uses, then the lawyer's opportunity 
 is indeed unrivaled. I know the tendency is for him 
 to grow conservative, — distrusting, fearing change. 
 I blush to own that law reforms have not alw^ays nor 
 often had their birth in lawyers' brains. They have 
 come, like almost all reforms, from below, in the 
 upheaval of crushed and outraged masses. 
 
 Then, again, see how wealth almost monopolizes 
 
 55 
 
legal talent. A moment's reflection will suffice for 
 you to name a score of lawyers of commanding powers 
 in the pay of enormous corporations^ — one moment. 
 Now take five and count over for me half as many 
 of equal force and fame who represent the people 
 in their life-long struggle with these vast and over- 
 shadowing interests. Let a young man at the bar 
 display great ability , — instantly he is clapped under 
 a retainer. When Chatham made his first speech in 
 the House of Commons, Walpole exclaimed: "We 
 must muzzle that terrible Cornet of Horse," and sent 
 a henchman to bribe him. Happily for England and 
 America, too, Walpole had no bribe large enough 
 to make a gag for those terrible lips. Unfortunately, 
 the Chathams have not always been so hard to muzzle. 
 Nor is it strange. The retainer is not a bribe. It is 
 jan honest fee. I do not impugn the motives of those 
 who take it when it comes. It is a flattering, insidi- 
 ous prize. I know wealth must have brains to serve it, 
 and is entitled to such service. I am not arraigning 
 wealth. My lamentation is that there should not be more 
 to hear the call to the other side, to stand as champions 
 of the people unfettered by any such alliance. The 
 questions we must meet hereafter relate to wealth 
 and especially to the framing of laws which may 
 regulate the distribution of it. Should all our lawyers 
 be retained by wealth? How can we lessen the 
 inequalities of life and not impair the principles of 
 property and law? That is the problem that con- 
 fronts us. How can wealth be forced to pay its share 
 of taxes? How shall we give the poor man's child 
 an even chance in life ? How get for him who toils a 
 few free hours of sunlight with his family, an hour 
 
 56 
 
or two each day to cultivate his mind? How see to 
 it that these ponderous, soulless machines, to which 
 indeed we owe so much, do not become in the end 
 very Juggernauts, crushing manhood, womanhood, 
 and childhood to the earth? How shall we counter- 
 act with wholesome, hopeful laws the blind despair- 
 ing efforts of the giant whose hundred hands may soon 
 find swords to fight with ? These are the questions that 
 face us. How shall we ever answer them Avith safety if 
 every man, as soon as he has mastered law enough to 
 be of any use, forsakes the poor and strikes hands 
 with the rich? 
 
 Thomas Erskine went into Lord Mansfield's 
 court one morning penniless, as the obscure associate 
 of eminent counsel, who thought their case beyond 
 hope, not worth a struggle. He rose unexpectedly, 
 and in the face of his Lordship's reproof dragged 
 the real author of the iniquity into court and by 
 sheer force of his audacious eloquence transfixed him 
 there. His case was won, and he went out an hour 
 later, his place and fame secure, receiving retainer 
 after retainer as he made his way out of the hall — 
 the most sudden and dramatic instance of forensic 
 success on record. Years afterwards when some one 
 asked him how he dared to face Lord Mansfield with 
 such boldness on a point where he was clearly out of 
 order, he replied : ' ' I seemed to feel my children tug- 
 ging at my robe, and saying, 'Now, father, is the time 
 to get us bread.' " I know how very strong such 
 tugging is, but I have sometimes thought that advo- 
 cates might feel the hands of innumerable children 
 tugging at their robes if they had hearts to heed 
 them. ' 
 
 57 
 
If I seem to make too high and severe a test 
 for our profession — ^if you say this is not the common 
 view — ^you will at least admit that if the lawyer does 
 not lift the burden from his fellow men, it is not for 
 lack of many a golden opportunity. It may be in 
 the future as in the past that the helpers of mankind 
 must come from other walks of life, — that the burden 
 of reform shall be laid on the shoulders that are wil- 
 ling, rather than on the shoulders that are able, to 
 bear; but one thing is sure: There never was a time 
 when the lawyer might wield such power as in the 
 fifty years before us. For in those years, as all men see, 
 the foundations of the state are to be searched as with 
 candles. Every principle of polity is to be challenged 
 and overhauled, and the ceaseless question will be 
 asked, What ails the social order? "Why in a world 
 of plenty, in a land the garden of the world, under 
 a government of the people, by the people, for the 
 people, is it possible that one man should spoil in 
 luxury while another may starve beside him for the 
 lack of work ? If the men whose daily life has taught 
 them to expound and apply the rules of reason, of 
 government, and law, — if they will keep their Leads 
 clear and their hearts warm to deserve and win the 
 confidence of their fellows, what helpful part may 
 they not take in solving these dark problems? Only 
 let not all hold the retainer of capital. Let a few 
 stand for the numberless clientage of the poor. 
 
 You will say I have idealized the profession. I 
 confess it. I could not labor in it unless I did. What- 
 ever one's profession may be, let him idealize it. If I 
 had but one word of counsel to give it would be that. 
 Clothe it with the richest imagery; surround it with 
 
 58 
 
the noblest names, the proudest associations. 16 you 
 were an artist you would think of Phidias, and 
 Raphael, and Michael Angelo. If you were a preacher 
 you would think of Savonarola, and Whitefield, and 
 Bossuet, and Brooks. If you are a lawyer think of 
 Marshall, and AVebster, of Erskine, and Coke, of 
 Selden, Ulpian, Demosthenes. These, not the huck- 
 sters and shysters of the day, stand for your art. Lift 
 it to the level of your highest thought ; dignify it by 
 your noblest effort; then if you fail to fulfill your 
 ideal your very failure might be success for one who 
 strove less nobly. 
 
 "Build as thou wilt and as thy light is given; 
 Then if at last the airy structure fall, 
 Dissolve and vanish, take thyself no shame; 
 They fail, and they alone, who have not striven." 
 
 The lawyer leaves a short-lived fame. His eases, 
 which taxed his strength and drained his very blood, 
 are mostly of passing interest and soon forgotten. 
 There was Dexter, of whom Webster said : ' ' His very 
 statement was argument, his inference seemed demon- 
 stration." He hardly lives now beyond that single 
 sentence of Webster's eulogium.. There was Jere- 
 miah Mason, the giant of Webster's day, to whose 
 rivalry Webster himself attributed his development, 
 a rivalry that held the god-like Daniel to his utmost 
 effort, and made him often say : * ' The laurels of Milt- 
 iades will not let me sleep." It was Mason, you may 
 remember, who argued the Dartmouth College case 
 in the State Court of New Hampshire, and so argued 
 it that when Webster presented it again in the United 
 States Supreme Court in that world-famous speech, 
 
 59 
 
he could only plough through again, and did, the 
 same furrow that Ma&on's share had run in. This was 
 the man whom old lawyers still speak of as the great- 
 est New England ever had. I doubt if many of you 
 ever heard of him before. And yet he did a man's 
 work and fills a man's place in the world's forgotten 
 history. Choate himself has left little more than an 
 actor's tradition. The race of fame is not always to 
 the swift nor its battle to the strong. How pathetic 
 the thought of that innumerable nameless multitude 
 who have done the world's rough work! Other men 
 labored and we have entered into their labors. We 
 cannot even thank them for it. That may be our 
 lot, and doubtless will. It is only a question of time 
 at best when we shall be forgotten. You go out per- 
 haps under a starry night. Above you ride the 
 heavenly host. You see the bright majestic stars, the 
 splendid constellations. Perhaps you know their 
 names — Jupiter, Saturn, Orion, the Pleiades. You 
 think they shed the light upon your path, and so they 
 do, but not the whole. Astronomers will tell you that 
 one-fourth of all that blended radiance falls from 
 stars too small for you to see. They seem to have 
 no place in heaven. They have no name on earth. And 
 yet they help to light you on your way. Not one of 
 us may ever become a bright, particular star in the 
 heaven of fame. But we may all join the invisible 
 host that shed their kindly light upon the paths of 
 men. 
 
 60 
 
ISRAEL'S IDEAL OF JUSTICE 
 
 A Response to that Toast, at a Banquet of the B'naiB'rith 
 in Washington, D. C, April 6 J 910. 
 
 I wish to say a few words tonight about the 
 contribution Israel has made to the world's ideal of 
 justice. Justice is undoubtedly the dearest interest 
 that men possess. There is only one tiling more 
 important than to get justice, and that is to do justice. 
 The race that has done most to elevate and widen 
 the world's sense of justice has rendered it the 
 greatest ser^dce And let me say at once that the 
 reading and reflection of a lifetime have led me to 
 believe that that supreme distinction must be accorded 
 to the Jew. 
 
 What is justice? Certainly it is not that thing 
 which in a childish and partial view some men mistake 
 for justice, — the deserved punishment of guilt, or 
 the reward of merit. Rather let us say it is that 
 harmonious adjustment of all relations that comes 
 of a keen and controlling sense of what is right. 
 Justice is a universal concept. It is not in conflict 
 with mercy. Mercy is only another name for justice. 
 It is only another expression of the same infinite and 
 divine face. If we ever think of mercy and justice 
 as warring with each other it is only because our view 
 is too narrow and contracted. Take it in a court of 
 justice. It is never a question whether mercj^ shall 
 be shown. Mercy ought always to be shown. The 
 
 61 
 
question is how shall it be shown, and to whom 
 shall it be shown, to the one or to the many, to the 
 guilty or to the innocent, to the murderer or to him 
 who may be his next victim if he shall go free, to the 
 individual sufferer or to that great number who may 
 be restrained by his example? And even to the 
 offender some measure of punishment may be the 
 truest mercy. 
 
 Now it is the glory of the Jew that he clearly 
 perceived this universal quality of justice. That 
 unrivalled gift of spiritual insight that enabled him 
 to stand in the crowded pantheon of pagan gods, 
 unbewildered by their subtlety, unenamored of their 
 beauty, and proclaim the everlasting truth that God 
 is one, — ^that same gift enabled him to see that God's 
 character is one and perfectly consistent. He bowed 
 down and said, ''Our God is a consuming fire,' and 
 then lifted up his face in childlike confidence and 
 said, ' ' His mercy endureth forever. ' ' He saw that the 
 two truths were not really two but one. He thought 
 of God as a king who wraps creation round him like 
 a garment, and yet he felt him to be a father who 
 leans down to catch the lowest whisper of his child. 
 And his idea of God was one and the same with his 
 idea of justice. Other peoples have pictured justice as 
 an angel standing beside the throne, waiting with the 
 glittering, unsheathed sword of vengeance, or holding 
 before her blindfolded eyes the poised and pendent 
 balance. The Hebrew went beyond all that. With 
 the boldness of the seer he cried, ''Justice and judg- 
 ment are the habitation of Thy throne," as much as 
 to say, God 's very throne is built upon his justice, and 
 if God himself could fall away from justice he would 
 
in that same moment fall away from power. When 
 has thought soared to a more daring height, or clothed 
 itself in language more magnificent? Compare that 
 sublime conception of the Jew with the vacillating 
 deities of Olympus, — creations of the most brilliant 
 intellect the world has ever known. 
 
 And then he saw that justice was eternal. All 
 things about him were in flux. Races might come and 
 go, empires might rise and fall, but what was right 
 yesterday was right today and would be right tomor- 
 row. There he took his stand. The earth might shake 
 and tremble, the mountains might skip like young 
 rams, but justice would never fail him, and under- 
 neath him were the everlasting arms. God gave him 
 to see, through the things that are ever changing, 
 the things that never change. 
 
 And one thing more he saw, — saw it with a clear- 
 ness of vision never granted to any other, and held to 
 it with a courage as stubborn as ever stood against the 
 tide of battle — he saw that no matter what the op- 
 position, no matter what the persecution, no matter 
 what the apparent power of the oppressor, 
 justice was sure to triumph in the end. That 
 is the vision and the faith that have made 
 his record glorious. Those are the ^vings of 
 song. That is the burning coal of prophecy. The 
 reign of the Messiah, what is it after all but the final 
 the permanent establishment of justice? That is the 
 glorious future that is dramng to itself the hearts of 
 men ; and towards it all eyes are turning. Thousands 
 of years ago the Hebrew saw it and proclaimed its 
 coming. When all the world around lay buried in 
 sleep and darkness he stood upon the mountain sum- 
 
 63 
 
mit and caught the earliest ray of the ascending dawn. 
 In prayer and psalm and prophecy, in the matchless 
 splendor of oriental speech, he delivered liis message 
 and taught the world his truth — ^justice universal, 
 eternal, triumphant. 
 
 No people was ever oppressed like tliis people. 
 No people was ever so persecuted, so trodden upon, so 
 prostrate; yet non^ has triumphed so magnificently. 
 Israel's ideal of Justice has taken permanent posses- 
 sion of the human mind. Torn asunder by faction, 
 driven from his country, scattered to the four winds 
 of heaven, scourged up and down the highways of 
 the world, stretched upon the rack, burned at the 
 stake, massacred by the hundred-thousand, a wanderer 
 friendless and homeless through the centuries, de- 
 spised by the world he was liberating from its idols, 
 Israel has stamped his ideal of justice upon the human 
 consciousness itself, and lives in every upward move- 
 ment of the race. I do not forget — though for the 
 moment I may seem to do so — I do not forget what 
 other races have contributed to the common store, — 
 Athens and Italy their sense of beauty, Sparta and 
 Rome their love of discipline and order, Gaul and 
 Germany their zeal for liberty, England and America 
 the ever-blessed union of liberty under law ; I do not 
 forget what your own gifted race has wrought in other 
 ways — in war and state-craft, in music, art, poetry, 
 science, history, philosophy — but, compared with the 
 meaning and majesty of this achievement, every other 
 work you have accomplished, every triumph of every 
 other people sinks into insignificance. Give up every 
 other claim to the world's gratitude before you sur- 
 render this : The world owes its conception of justice 
 to the Jew. 
 
 64 
 
AT GRANTS TOMB: A DECORATION 
 DAY ADDRESS 
 
 Passages from an Address delivered at Grant's Tomb, River- 
 side Drive, New York, on the invitation of U. S. Grant 
 Post, No. 327, Department of N Y. G. A. R„ 
 May 30, 1906. 
 
 The bitterest of Southern statesmen informed tiie 
 House of Representatives that his section looked upon 
 the Federal bond only as a matter of convenience. 
 ^ * There is no magic in this word Union ! ' ' he declared. 
 That was in 1824, and for over a generation Ran- 
 dolph's fellow skeptics took the sneer for truth. The 
 first cannon-shot against Fort Sumter taught them 
 their mistake. There was magic in the word Union, 
 and under the spell of it they saw the whole North 
 bristle with bayonets and billow with banners, while a 
 million men made ready to march down to the Gulf. It 
 was a war between the old and the new — the past and 
 the present — a war of civilizations and a war of 
 worlds. And so it was, that a conquest of arms would 
 have been a fruitless victory without the conquest of 
 ideas. But freedom has triumphed: slavery is gone 
 and not a voice is raised to call it back. Nationality 
 has triumphed: today this flag is kissed by all the 
 breezes of the South. 
 
 Those were the two great trophies of the war — 
 freedom and nationality. That was the splendid spoil 
 our heroes brought back from the crimson fields to 
 
 65 
 
hang forever in the dome of fame and shine untar- 
 nished by the envious years. The dead are mightily 
 avenged in the adoption of their principles. Do you 
 not hear them calling from their graves under the 
 cypress and the drooping vines? ''Let all unkind- 
 ness be forgotten now. This reunited country is our 
 monument. The triumph of our cause is all the cro^vn 
 we need. Give up all things for peace — all things but 
 one — all things except the beautiful and everlasting 
 truth for which we died ! ' * 
 
 There was no personal rancor between the brave 
 men who fought the question out. The issues were 
 too vast and terrible for that. Wlio uttered those 
 large words of golden charity, "Let us have peace?" 
 Was it not the most dread and dogged fighter of all? 
 It was the same man who said: ''I will provide no 
 transports for the retreat of my forces across this 
 river. If I wdn I shall not need them, and if 1 am 
 beaten a log will be enough to take my army back." 
 No wonder the Confederacy trembled when it learned 
 that the North had finally gathered up all the reins of 
 battle and placed them in those unrelenting hands. 
 That was the same man, gentle as a knight of old, who 
 handed back Lee's beautiful sword when he surrender- 
 ed it, and told the Southern soldier-boys to keep their 
 horses because they would need them for the Spring 
 plowing. 
 
 And yet when the war began what was he ? A man 
 who had made a failure of life and was cutting and 
 hauling firewood for the kitchens of St. Louis. When 
 democracy was in danger she stooped among her 
 failures, and out of that material molded the greatest 
 general of the age. It was as if she had said: *'I will 
 
 66 
 
teach the world for all time that free government can 
 produce its own defenders out of the undreamed great- 
 ness of common manhood!" Europe said: ''Your 
 real trouble will come when the war is over and you 
 undertake to disband these enormous armies." Dem- 
 ocracy said : * ' I will show you. ' ' She uttered the one 
 word peace, and her armies melted away as the snow 
 does in the Spring. These men were great and did 
 great things because they trusted in great principles. 
 Men have always been greatest when their need was 
 greatest. They have done most when they have be- 
 lieved most. Doubt begets failure — belief is the father 
 of deeds. 
 
 These are the days — these are tlie object-lessons 
 that quicken patriotic life and make the future safe. 
 From some altar which the service of this day has 
 kindled the angel of patriotism ma}^ snatch the live 
 ember that can still touch cold, impassive lips with 
 the old deathless fire. Perhaps this very day some 
 leader of the time to come may hear his call. This 
 very day the armies of the future may be mustered 
 in. For in how many places all over this wide land 
 these sad, proud ceremonies are now going on! We 
 see them one and all. We see them in the shadow of 
 heroic tombs like this where we are gathered. We see 
 them in solemn sleeping-places on the banks of lordly 
 rivers where many thousands rest upon their arms. 
 We see them on old cruel battlefields where the young 
 summer laughs aloud, and vine and verdure make the 
 record of the strife appear as false and idle as a half- 
 remembered dream. We see them in villages and 
 towns alive with banners, and in thronged thorough- 
 fares of mighty cities where hurrying men of alien 
 
 67 
 
race and unfamiliar speech stare at the passing 
 column as if they gazed upon a pageant of the past. 
 We see them in the most pathetic parts of all, — ^in 
 little humble burial-places scattered along the prairies 
 or hidden away among the lonely hills. We watch 
 them one by one. We see the proud procession going 
 forth, — men in the noon of life, young men with quick 
 and eager pulse, their brows still bright with the 
 sweet dews of dawn, and children from their full 
 hands dropping flowers — and at the heart of each we 
 see a dwindled company of white-haired men whose 
 ardent youth was touched to greatness by their time's 
 great call. Who dreams that he can weigh wdth 
 words the value of observances like these ? God pity 
 us if we believe that all the bills and bonds in the 
 banks of this imperial city constitute an asset half as 
 dear ! 
 
 When this day began to be observed it was only 
 a day set apart for decorating the graves of those who 
 perished in the Civil War. Year by year it has grown 
 in meaning and in scope until it has come to be the 
 All Souls Day of the nation. It now aims to guard 
 and keep alive the memory of all who at any time 
 or in any place have laid down their lives for the 
 great republic. To all who by their death have magni- 
 fied her, to all her servants departed this life in her 
 faith and fear, the time is consecrated. To one and 
 all. There is none so long dead as to be forgotten. 
 There is none so far away as to be out of mind. There 
 is none so humble as to be overlooked. There is none 
 so mighty or renowned as not to receive an added 
 dignity and grace from the spirit of the hour. From 
 1775 to 1906, — from the sunny lawn at Lexington 
 
to the dank jungle of the South Pacific, — there is not 
 one who parted with sweet life in the belief that he 
 was serving her but has his part in her memory and 
 gratitude today. Today she tenderly recalls not only 
 all who wore her colors in camp and field, but all who 
 for her welfare gave up health or friends or quiet 
 hours, — all who in selfish times were ready to forego 
 the rewards of office, even the good will of their 
 fellow-men, not because they loved these less but 
 because they loved her more, — willing to endure 
 shame and persecution if only they might make her 
 law worthy of obedience and her raiment white as 
 snow. Time, that touches all things with mellowing 
 hands, has softened the recollections of old contests, 
 and while bearing to oblivion much that was held 
 dear lends grandeur and luster to all that still 
 remains. It is not her land nor her arms nor her gold 
 that constitutes the true wealth of the nation : it is her 
 sacred and heroic memories. And this is the day when 
 she is making up her jewels. Well may she remember 
 this returning day to keep it holy. No greed, no am- 
 bition, can poison the life of a people if in every 
 year it will keep sacred one such day. 
 
 69 
 
ONE OF THE FOURTH ESTATE : CROSBY 
 STUART NOYES 
 
 A Eulogy at a Memorial Meeting in the New National 
 Theatre, Washington, D. C, Sunday, April 5, 1908. 
 
 Mr. President, as you are well aware, it is quite 
 against my personal inclination that I am taking more 
 than a silent part in these observances. Not that I am 
 not always glad to pay my tribute to a public bene- 
 factor, but that I feel incompetent, from lack of per- 
 sonal acquaintance, to speak of him as he deserves. 
 Yet I could not well refuse, because I hold that an 
 invitation of this character, and coming from the 
 source it does, should be to any true citizen equivalent 
 to a command. Fortunately there are many here who 
 knew him well, and what I have to say has been 
 verified already. 
 
 What a character it is that has been drawn 
 for us in the last few weeks by those who knew him 
 from young manhood to old age! To begin with, a 
 farmer's boy, too frail to follow the plow, but with 
 a rich gift of expression — a love of letters joined to 
 a keen zest for life; a bright sense of humor playing 
 over austere principles, as sunlight plays over the 
 mountain crags. Then, in the full strength of 
 years, courage without headiness, independence with- 
 out rancor. Critical of imperfection, yet always 
 quicker to see good than evil. No petty spite, no 
 personal animosity — always reserving the divine 
 
 70 
 
faculty of hate for giant wrongs and oppressions, 
 the only objects worthy of its terrible aim. Modest, 
 unassuming, ready to lend an ear to any complaint 
 however humble, to champion any honest cause how- 
 ever feeble. Bold yet conservative, shrewd and 
 capable in business, broadminded and far-sighted in 
 civic affairs, staunch in time of trial, steady against 
 assault; never stepping needlessly into the gaze of 
 men, yet influencing their thought and conduct in 
 a thousand unobtrusive ways; a quiet moldcr of 
 opinion; a doer of deeds and yet a dreamer of 
 dreams; with a faith and pride in Washington that 
 amounted to a passion; full of plans to reclaim her 
 waste places and preserve her scenes of natural 
 beauty for the generations that are to come. A philan- 
 thropy that knew no color, claSvS or creed, and a 
 personal charm that opened hostile doors like the 
 touch of magic and turned enemies into friends! 
 Such is the picture, so fine and nobly rounded that 
 if it were not vouched for by those whose word is 
 above question and who know whereof they speak, 
 we might hesitate to accept it as the truth. 
 
 Yet we do accept it ; and I, as a son of that 
 New England that sent him forth, point to him with 
 special pride as a shining example of what her sturdy 
 stock has done for American ideals in every quarter 
 of the land. 
 
 What a complete and wholly satisfying life 
 it was! Not without its obstacles and adversities, bat 
 developing the quiet strength that could surmount 
 them all. Walking from Philadelphia to Washington, 
 except for an offered ride, which he laughingly said 
 turned out to be harder than walking; beginning 
 
 71 
 
with less than two dollars in a strange city ; throwing- 
 himself at once into the life and interests of the place ; 
 following with eager eyes of youth the portentous 
 events that led up to and brought on the war ; study- 
 ing and describing the statesmen and leaders of the 
 period; listening to "Webster, to Calhoun, to Clay; 
 watching and participating in the struggles and 
 passions, the defeats and victories of that great con- 
 flict out of which our true national consciousness 
 was to have its birth; knowing the friendship of 
 Lincoln; recei^dng the confidence of Stanton; and, 
 when peace was restored, taking his seat in that 
 editorial chair which he made a sort of throne ; main- 
 taining there during forty years the best traditions 
 of that older journalism which had Bryant and 
 Bowles and Greeley for its exemplars; storing his 
 mind with study ; correcting his opinions by the safer 
 schooling of affairs; traveling in many lands and 
 bringing back the treasures of remote ages and 
 strange peoples to beautify his home; giving himself 
 unstintedly for the good of his time and the eleva- 
 tion of the city of his care, and finding himself year 
 by year more secure in the love and veneration of his 
 fellows — surely that was a life worth living, and the 
 memory of it is a priceless heritage to leave his sons. 
 To me, sir, there is something peculiarly impres- 
 sive and inspiring in a scene like this — a city calling 
 her sons and daughters together to review the life 
 and recount the services of one of the truest and 
 noblest of her citizens, to weigh the pure gold of his 
 character, and leave the garland of gratitude upon 
 his grave. It is, indeed, good for us to be here. 
 He may not know what we are saying of him here 
 
 72 
 
today; yet in that long, laborious life may he not 
 sometimes have been cheered and strengthened by 
 the foreknowledge that this hour would come? He 
 must have known that he had deserved well of 
 Washington and that Washington would set the seal 
 of her approval on his work w^ien it was done. He 
 was, in the truest and best sense of the expression, a 
 public man. He had lived in the general eye, and 
 when he saw his end approaching he recognized and 
 provided for the right he knew his fellow citizens 
 would claim, to have a part in his funeral. That 
 tribute of their love and reverence was duly paid; 
 and now, not in the fresh pain of grief or the first 
 sense of loss, but in the calm and quiet hour of 
 grateful recollection, the city summons us to say 
 for him the final, fitting word. Foi* sixty years he 
 held her welfare and her honor dear. In her day 
 of small things he was faithful and in the day of 
 her greatness he was proud. In the night of gloom 
 he did not forsake her, and in the morning of 
 splendor he was with her and rejoiced. All his 
 care and labor was to make her paths prosperous and 
 peaceful, her homes pure, her people happy, her 
 apparel glorious and her habitation beautiful to be- 
 hold. We believe that all he lived to see was only 
 the beginning, the faint far-off beginning, of her com- 
 ing day's magnificence. He is gone, but he will not 
 be forgotten. As time goes on, other sons no less 
 gifted and devoted will be born of her womb or be 
 beckoned to her side; but whatever other names she 
 may inscribe in after years upon her broad escutcheon, 
 she will never erase the name of Crosby Stuart Noyes. 
 
 73 
 
THE NEW DESPOTISM 
 
 A Speech at the Dinner to the Federal Judges under the 
 Auspices of the New York County Lawyers* Asso- 
 ciation, February 17, 1912. 
 
 My native State, in its Bill of Rights, declares 
 that the safety of free government will be found 
 in "a frequent recurrence to fundamental princi- 
 ples." In the few moments allotted me tonight I 
 wish to examine the judicial recall in the light of 
 those principles. 
 
 We have built our institutions on the proposi- 
 tion that the people have the right to rule. Their 
 will is made known through the suffrage. And 
 when opinions differ, as they usually do, the major- 
 ity must govern. But that is not the whole of the 
 proposition. If it were, there would be no safeguard 
 whatever for the rights of the minority. The 
 majority might appropriate their property. It 
 might reduce them to slavery. It might even take 
 away their lives. The proposition takes for granted, 
 then, certain guaranties for the protection of the 
 minority. And what are these? They are those 
 elementary rights which no majority, however large, 
 may ever violate. They have been recognized in 
 constitutions and bills of rights, but they were not 
 created by them. They inhere in free government 
 itself, for human freedom is impossible without them. 
 Among these rights there is none miore important 
 
 74 
 
than this: That no citizen shall be deprived of his 
 liberty or property except by the judgment oi the 
 law and after a trial before an independent and im- 
 partial tribunal. We have now come to the keystone 
 of the arch. It is this: The majority of the legal 
 voters cannot constitute itself this tribunal. If it 
 can, it still holds the property and lives of the minor- 
 ity in its hands, subject to its mere will and pleasure, 
 for there is no one who can call it to account. 
 
 The cases that may come before the tribunal 
 are of two classes. First, those between individuals 
 merely; second, those in which one of the parties 
 is in fact, if not in name, the people themselves, or 
 the popular majority. By far the most important 
 and most trying cases will be those of the second 
 class, in which it is contended that some fundamental 
 right of the individual or the minority is being 
 violated. The violation will be attempted under the 
 form of law, and thus the real party upon ono side 
 is the people or the popular majority, whose will 
 has here found expression in the form of law. In such 
 cases how is the independence and impartiality of 
 the tribunal to be secured? How except by re- 
 mo^dng it as far as possible from dictation by either 
 party? Let it be remembered that the tribunal, the 
 court, has been created and its members chosen by 
 one of the parties to the controversy, namely, the 
 people. Clearly, then, the only security the other 
 party can have is this: That the tribunal, once it is 
 created and its members chosen, shall be permitted 
 to decide without further interference. If it is to 
 be checked and overawed by one of the parties, if, 
 the moment it decides the case against that party, 
 
 75 
 
its power is to be taken from it and bestowed upon 
 others, then it is the party that decides the case, 
 not the tribunal. 
 
 Let us inquire whether this reasoning fits the 
 facts of the present time. Take but one example. 
 A popular majority, through the Legislature elected 
 by it, or more directly by the initiative and referen- 
 dum, enacts a statute requiring railroads to carry 
 passengers for one cent a mile. A test case comes 
 before the court. The railroad insists that the act 
 robs it of its property and the court so holds. There- 
 upon the same popular majority votes the judges 
 out of office and elects to fill their places judges 
 who will reverse the decision. Has not the popular 
 majority constituted itself the court? May a man 
 be the judge in his own case? 
 
 Let us test the measure by another fundamental 
 principle. A despot makes the law and also decides 
 whether the particular case comes within the law. 
 Or he may just as well dispense mth the law, since 
 no one can question his decision that the case conies 
 within it. On the other hand, in a free government 
 one body makes the law, the general rule, while 
 another body decides whether the particular case 
 falls within the rule. Thus the citizen is protected. 
 We call it keeping the legislative and judicial de- 
 partments separate. In a despotism they are united. 
 In a free government they are separate. Now if 
 the popular majority not only makes the law, but 
 also decides whether a given case falls witliin it, 
 then the legislative and judicial powers are united 
 in the same body and the government ceases to be 
 free and becomes a despotism. 
 
 76 
 
If it be objected that the argument proves too 
 much, since by this reasoning the rule should be 
 once a judge always a judge, my answer is two- 
 fold. First, I hold with Hamilton that the judicial 
 tenure ought to be nothing less than during good 
 behavior. Second, if the judges are to be elected 
 for limited terms, those terms should be at least of 
 such a length that the judge's re-election should 
 not depend upon his decision of some particular 
 case or question, but upon his general worthiness 
 to be a judge. 
 
 The argument for the recall assumes that judges 
 are only agents of the majority, and easily reaches 
 the conclusion that when the agent fails to satisfy 
 his principal he may rightly be recalled. The 
 fallacy in the argument is in the assumption that 
 the judge is an agent. He is not an agent in any 
 proper sense of that word. He is not the agent 
 of either party to a cause. He is not even the 
 agent of both parties. If his duty were to trade 
 and compromise between them he might be considered 
 the agent of both. But that is not his duty. His 
 duty is to decide. It is not for him to please, nor 
 to seek to please, either party. It is for him to 
 decide the question between them as law and justice 
 requires. 
 
 But some one will say: ''The Constitution with 
 its guaranties was adopted by the popular majority. 
 Can you not trust it to abide by the work of its 
 own hands?" Sir, I believe in the people, but I 
 should not wish to see even the Bill of Rights sub- 
 jected to the chances of every popular election. The 
 making of a constitution is a work of momentous 
 
 77 
 
import. Statutes stand for what the people think 
 from year to year. Constitutions stand for what they 
 think from generation to generation. When a 
 change in the organic law is proposed; when society 
 has been stirred to its depths by the interest excited; 
 when the strongest intellects of the time have spent 
 their powers upon the question; when it has been 
 debated in all its bearings ; and when the people con- 
 scious of the tremendous issues involved have solemn- 
 ly weighed and decided for themselves and their post- 
 erity, I am willing to leave the question in their hands. 
 But what resemblance has that to the proceedings we 
 are discussing now? Another thing. "When a con- 
 stitution is to be adopted or amended the question sub- 
 mitted is in its nature general. It is a law. But 
 when a controversy arises before a court it is con- 
 crete, and the question is apt to be whether the case 
 falls within the law. Perhaps no one would be ready 
 to propose that the Constitution should be changed, 
 and yet a multitude may wish to have it decided 
 that the party is not entitled to the protection of 
 the Constitution in the case at bar. Now that is a 
 question which a popular assembly is not adapted 
 to try, nor qualified to decide. It is necessarily 
 a question for a court. 
 
 If judicial opinions are to be reviewed at popu- 
 lar elections, why should not judges be instructed 
 beforehand how to decide questions that are certain 
 to arise? They would be saved the possibility of 
 making a mistake. If that is not to be done the 
 greatest jurist will be the one who shows himself 
 most expert and nimble in keeping on the side of 
 the majority. 
 
 78 
 
When the king asked Lord Coke how he would 
 decide a certain question if it came before him he 
 replied: "When that case arises I will decide it as 
 shall befit a judge." History has recorded the 
 answer with a proud smile. When democracy asks 
 that question of her judges shall they answer with 
 less dignity and self-respect than the chief justice 
 of the Stuarts? When Prince Hal struck the lord 
 chief justice on the bench and went to jail for it, 
 the king shed happy tears that he had a judge who 
 dared administer the law even to the heir apparent, 
 and that he had a son who in his sober second 
 thought accepted the judgment of the law. Has 
 free America in the twentieth century less reverence 
 for law than the House of Lancaster had five hundred 
 years ago? In one respect the Roman tribunes per- 
 formed for the Romian people the office that our 
 judges do for us — they had the power to veto laws 
 that struck at fundamental rights. You remember 
 that when the plebs were advised to do away with 
 tribunes by those whose purpose had been thwarted 
 by them, the tribunes recalled the people to their 
 senses with a fable. Once upon a time, they said 
 the wolves advised the sheep to get rid of their 
 watch dogs, because they interfered with the sheep 
 going where they pleased and were really the only 
 obstacle to a perfect understanding between the 
 forest and the fold! When afterward the people 
 did give up their tribunes, they lost their liberty, 
 and they never regained it till they got them back. 
 Your watch dog may annoy the sheep when they wish 
 to go astray — he may even nip one of them now and 
 then as he tries to bring them back — but let the flock 
 
 79 
 
think twice before they exchange the watch dog for 
 the wolf. In that terrible indictment against George 
 III which Thomas Jefferson drew in the Declaration 
 of Independence, two of the heaviest counts were 
 these: 
 
 * ' He has obstructed the Administration of 
 Justice by refusing his Assent to laws for establishing 
 Judiciary Powers. 
 
 ''He has made Judges dependent on his Will 
 alone, for the Tenure of their Offices and the 
 Amount and Payment of their Salaries. ' ' 
 
 Are we prepared to accept another George III 
 in the shape of a popular majority? 
 
 Our day has witnessed the first widespread and 
 determined effort to secure the establishment of a 
 permanent international court. The world's con- 
 fidence in courts has become so deeply rooted that we 
 have reason to hope that the end of war is in sight. 
 Is it not remarkable that our day should have wit- 
 nessed also a serious and calculated effort to abolish 
 courts altogether? That two such propositions 
 should have been the birth of the same time will be 
 one of the marvels of history. 
 
 The proposal to recall judges for unpopular de- 
 cisions is nothing less than a proposal to abolish 
 courts. To abolish courts is to abolish freedom. 
 However innocent the motives of those who propose 
 this measure, no deadlier blow was ever aimed at the 
 heart of human liberty than this. The people have 
 only to understand it to reject it. They are not 
 ready to throw away the fruits of their long labors 
 and unnumbered battles, labors endured and battles 
 waged for this very thing, that under the broad 
 
 80 
 
shield of a sacred and inviolable justice the weakest 
 or most hated might rest secure in their liberty, their 
 property, their lives. They will discover the tyrant 
 under this flattering disguise. And in the end they 
 will consign to obloquy the names of those who 
 would have tempted them to their destruction. 
 
 81 
 
A CITY WITHOUT CITIZENS 
 
 A Speech at the Dinner to the President of the United States, 
 
 Given by the Residents of IVashington, under the AuS' 
 
 pices of the Board of Trade and the Chamber of 
 
 Commerce, at the New Willard Hotel in 
 
 Washington, May 8, 1909. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, the President of the United 
 States, Members of the Committee and Fellow 
 Guests: — I pledge you in a sentiment that is al- 
 most a prayer — **May this prove a fortunate day 
 for the District of Columbia!" Without doubt the 
 people of the District look upon the occasion that 
 has drawn us here as a most happy augury. The 
 chief magistrate of the nation, not more respected 
 than beloved, has signified his willingness to sit at 
 their board, to break their bread and taste their salt. 
 It is a proof of interest and kindness that has touched 
 all hearts. We who are seated around these tables 
 are only a handful out of many thousands who in 
 thought and sympathy are with us at this feafit. 
 Presidents have come and gone, doing their duty by 
 the District as they saw it, but in the press and throng 
 of larger duties too often prevented from giving to 
 local matters the attention they deserved. N^ver be- 
 fore has a President, at the very beginning of his term, 
 thus held out the hand of friendship to our people. 
 Our President has seen much of Washington. But 
 more than that he has traveled far and wide; he 
 
 82 
 
has studied the capitals of other countries, their 
 institutions and their laws. And thus he adds to 
 the true promptings of a generous heart the wisdom 
 of a ripe experience. Those are the qualities that are 
 needed here and now. It is the hour for a statesman. 
 The population of the District has increased so 
 rapidly, it is growing so in wealth and beauty, the 
 greatness of its future is already so assured, that 
 the time has come, when the true relations between 
 the District and the nation must be clearly conceived 
 and accurately defined, and when an ideal must be 
 formed for the District of Columbia — an ideal to be 
 worked for through generations, true enough and 
 grand enough to claim the attention and the devotion 
 of all the land. 
 
 The men who made the constitution were absolute- 
 ly certain of one thing, and that was that this federal 
 government must have a home of its own. ''Over 
 such district," the Constitution, in so many words, 
 declares, "the Congress shall exercise exclusive leg- 
 islation in all cases whatsoever." So far as general 
 legislation is concerned there is no power in Congress 
 to delegate this authority. It must legislate itself. 
 "When it attempted once to bestow upon a terri- 
 torial legislature for the district the authority to 
 make general laws, the court declared the attempt 
 unconstitutional and vain. The utmost it can do in 
 this direction is to authorize the enactment of local 
 regulations. No attempt to legislate for Washington 
 will be worth the making unless it is made in the 
 same spirit in which the founders worked. It was 
 said of an Eastern temple, "It was designed by Titans 
 and finished by jewelers." The tribute is capable of 
 
 83 
 
a double meaning. A great work should be grandly 
 conceived and then executed with minutest pains. 
 We wish as much for Washington. But the jeweler 
 must not meddle with the architect's design. If he does 
 men may say: ''It was planned by Titans, it was 
 finished by pygmies. ' ' Less than half a century 
 had elapsed from the founding of the capital before 
 a Congress was found pusillanimous enough to sur- 
 render and cede back thirty square miles of federal 
 soil ; and the noble patrimony the nation had received 
 from The Father of his Country was broken in two, 
 and the Virginia portion cast away. Our task to- 
 night is to put the Washington of our day to the 
 test of the great principles that controlled the founders 
 of our government, to view the work they left us in 
 the light of all that has developed since, and to plan 
 for the future as men of their vision would have 
 planned in our surroundings. 
 
 What do we mean when we say the District of 
 Columbia ? There are at least three meanings in 
 which the expression may be accurately used. It 
 may mean the mere territory, the seventy square 
 miles of land and water. It may mean the municipal 
 corporation which has been created by the act of 
 Congress. It may mean the political community, 
 which may be called, and by the Suprem^e Court has 
 been repeatedly called, for certain purposes, a state. 
 In this third sense it is not a mere municipal cor- 
 poration but is filled with the sovereignty of the 
 United States of America. It is of the utmost 
 importance to distinguish between these meanings, 
 especially between the second and the third, if we 
 would keep our thinking clear. Let us take a moment 
 
 84 
 
to trace this distinction in the transactions of a cen- 
 tury. 
 
 When the United States, in 1800, took posses- 
 sion of this territory it found local self-government 
 here. For two generations it left it undisturbed. 
 "Prior to 1871," said Mr. Justice Bradley, in a case 
 before the court of last resort, "the government of 
 the United States, except so far as the protection of 
 its OAvn public buildings and property was concerned, 
 took no part in the local government. The officers 
 of the departments, even the President himself, ex- 
 ercised no local authority in city affairs." In 1871 
 the Congress created here a new government, expressly 
 "for municipal purposes." It had its governor and 
 its legislature — the latter, of course, elected by the 
 people. It had also a board of public works, whose 
 members, including the governor as its head, were 
 appointed by the President and Senate. This board 
 laid out the mOney raised in taxes and assessed the 
 owners benefited by improvements. The court held 
 that its acts were binding on the District, and that, 
 in spite of its appointment by the President, it was 
 only a branch of the municipal government. Thus 
 matters remained until 1874, when Congress tore 
 down all it had previously done and started new. The 
 Governor and the board of public works were abol- 
 ished, and the power which they had exercised was 
 entrusted to a commission of three, to be appointed by 
 the President and Senate. Four years later, in 1878, 
 the new arrangement was made permanent. Never- 
 theless the contention was made before the Supreme 
 Court of the United States that the effect of the new 
 act was to destroy the District of Columbia as a mun- 
 
 85 
 
icipal corporation, except in name, and to make 
 it nothing more than a department of the national 
 government. The contention was ruled down. The 
 fact that its officers w^ere appointed by the President, 
 said the court, did not make the District of Columbia 
 any less a municipal body corporate. Recognizing 
 the general desirableness of local self-government, it 
 held that the principle of representative government 
 was legally satisfied when the appointment of local 
 officers was made by other officers who themselves 
 had been elected by the people, saying: ''The people 
 are the recognized source of all authority, and to 
 this authority it must come at last, whether im- 
 mediately or by a circuitous process." Whether a 
 flaw is to be found in this reasoning as applied to 
 the situation before the court, inasmuch as the people 
 of the District of Columbia, the people to be governed, 
 never did have a share in electing the President and 
 Senate, who were the appointing officers, I will not 
 stop here to inquire; for my present purpose is to 
 point out the separation that has always been 
 recognized between the District of Columbia, as a 
 mere municipal corporation, and the District of 
 Columbia as a quasi state. 
 
 There is only one sovereign in the District of 
 Columbia. Indeed, in respect to sovereignty the sit- 
 uation is precisely the same as if there were no other 
 domain affected by the central government, — as if 
 all its functions were performed here. Wliy, then, 
 it may be asked, should there be such a municipal- 
 ity as the District of Columbia at all ? Wliy should 
 not the general government take direct control, and 
 adminster all tlie affairs of the District through its 
 
 86 
 
own bureaus? It would not be so easy to answer 
 that question if two facts were other than they are. 
 First, if there were no citizens of the United States 
 except those who live in the District; second, if 
 the district elected the national officers. But there 
 are 350,000 people here, and there are some ninety 
 millions outside, and all are citizens of the United 
 States; and the 350,000 who live here have some in- 
 terests which they do not hold in common with the 
 ninety millions who live outside. It is, in part at 
 least, for the recognition and protection of these 
 separate and peculiar interests that a municipal gov- 
 ernment exists and is required. All the more is it 
 needed by reason of the fact that there is no suffrage. 
 Let us picture what might be. The streets and 
 public works might all be put under the War Depart- 
 ment, the public health under the Surgeon-General, 
 the charities made a bureau in the Department of 
 Commerce and Labor, or perhaps of the Interior, 
 and the schools turned over to the Commissioner of 
 Education. And so it might go on until the local 
 government was completely bureaucratic, — until the 
 rod of national administration, turned serpent, had 
 swallowed up all the little rods of local administra- 
 tion and was left alone upon the floor. In the mean- 
 time the city, growing by leaps and bounds, has 
 doubled and trebled its present population, and we 
 have here a million people, without a word to say, 
 in theory or in fact, directly or indirectly, about 
 the streets they walk, the water they drink, the 
 light they burn, or the education of their children 
 — everything done for them, and done by officers in 
 whose selection they had no voice, and who have 
 
 87 
 
been selected with no particular reference to their 
 opinions or their needs. To some of us that is not 
 a pleasing spectacle. 
 
 Certainly we must not forget that this is a nat- 
 ional city. There is little risk of that. But there 
 are institutions, many and important, which are not 
 national in their aim or character. They are exactly 
 such institutions as the same numerical population 
 would require were this not the nation 's capital. Thai 
 is true of the institutions of charity and punishment. 
 We should need to have schools, recording offices, 
 post offices and courts; we should need streets and 
 bridges, and a thousand things besides, by reason 
 of the fact that we are a city. Institutions that 
 answer the needs of the community merely as a com- 
 munity, without reference to the national government 
 — should not these be treated as local institutions? 
 Should they not be administered as a part of the muni- 
 cipal government and officered by men identified with 
 the district? 
 
 Those courts of the District which deal not ex- 
 clusively with local controversies but in large measure 
 with disputes to which the nation is a party may 
 perhaps be fairly made up, one-half, of miembers 
 drawn from the locality, and one-half from tlie nation 
 at large. This seems the miore appropriate inasmuch 
 as those who hold these offices hold them daring 
 good behavior, and when they come here come 
 hoping to behave well enough to remain through 
 life. But many offices relate exclusively to this com- 
 munity, at least as much so as the offices of any 
 community can be said to relate to itself alone, and 
 why should not these be filled by local citizens? 
 
 88 
 
Even if there should be no statute thus restricting 
 the selection, ought not such a course to be pursued 
 as a permanent policy? Why should the people of 
 the district have their deeds recorded by a man from 
 California? Why should Washington be the only 
 city in the land that cannot have a postmaster ap- 
 pointed from among its citizens ? If we are to keep up 
 the form of municipal government at all, does not a 
 fair consistency demand that we should treat it as 
 municipal, — as existing, among other purposes, to 
 care for all that is peculiar and local in the inter- 
 ests and needs of the community? Will it not be 
 wisdom to treat it so? Let us not forget that there 
 are thousands upon thousands here w^ho have no 
 other abiding place. Their roots have struck deep 
 into the soil. They love their city with all the nation- 
 al pride we share with them and with that tender 
 sentiment which we call, ' ' the love of home, ' ' besides. 
 Is it wise to treat them as aliens in the house of their 
 fathers? Others have lived here till all ties with 
 other places are dissolved ; and they expect that their 
 children will live here when they are gone. These 
 people, so completely and irrevocably identified with 
 the place, constitute an element not wisely to be over- 
 looked when one is considering how local affairs may 
 be most prudently and loyally administered. 
 
 Who knows? Perhaps we have come already 
 to the parting of the ways. Little by little the local 
 hold is lost. Here a hospital is drawn under the 
 control of a department. There the jail slips out 
 of the hands of the district into the hands of the 
 attorney general. Now it is proposed that the schools 
 be placed under a bureau; and now, that the city 
 
shall be officered on the principles of efficiency alone, 
 — by any one who can be found who is most com- 
 petent, though he never saw Washington before. It 
 would be something to assume that among 350,000 
 such as we find gathered here, not a single man could 
 be found, capable of conducting the business of the 
 city. But if it should be conjectured that in some 
 far off place a commissioner might be found somewhat 
 more efficient, would that difference in efficiency 
 make up for the sacrifice of one more bond — some- 
 times it seems as if it were the last — ^between the 
 government and the locality? The problem of city 
 government is not altogether, I venture to think, a 
 matter of perfecting the machinery. Men are not 
 altogether machines. They have sentiments, they have 
 hearts. And if there had not been sentiment and 
 heart as well as brain, there would be today no 
 Washington. As far as the municipal government 
 is concerned, the people of the district seem to have 
 settled down to the arrangement that there should 
 be no suffrage. They accept it very much as Lord 
 Dundreary's brother Sam accepted his embarrass- 
 ment in being bom, and especially in being bom 
 bald-headed. ''You see — Sam — he wasn't consulted 
 — and there he was — and it was too late to do any- 
 thing about it." But suffrage or no suffrage in 
 municipal affairs has nothing to do with the princi- 
 ple of which I speak. I believe it should be the 
 policy of the government, alongside of the national 
 spirit that inspires all hearts, to foster and 
 perpetuate a sturdy local patriotism,, a local and 
 peculiar civic pride, — and, to this end, that all such 
 institutions as are purely local in their character 
 
 90 
 
should be scrupulously retained under the district 
 government, and that all offices of this kind should 
 be filled by those who have becojme residents of 
 Washington for good and all. 
 
 Sir, I am not inclined to discuss tonight the 
 various proposed changes in the constitution of the 
 city government. These concern a possible increase 
 of efficiency in the municipal machine. In what I 
 am yet to say I prefer to dwell upon a broader 
 question. But no one ought to refer to the form of 
 government that has given shape to our affairs since 
 1874 mthout doing justice to the splendid advances 
 that have been made under its direction. In 1878 
 the plan was adopted of raising upon the ratable 
 property here a tax of one and one-half per cent and of 
 matching that with an equal amount from the national 
 treasury. Up to that time the district had carried 
 the burden, year by year, almost or quite alone, and 
 was sinking under a debt of many millions. Uuder 
 the new arrangement Washington has sprung to her 
 feet. Parks have been laid out, avenues extended, 
 bridges constructed, public buildings erected, grade 
 crossings abolished, railway terminals improved, a 
 magnificient new station built, the sewage and water 
 systems practically made over, millions upon millions 
 spent towards making the city in health and beauty 
 what it ought to be. Meantime absolute fidelity in 
 the discharge of duties, no stain or hint of corruption, 
 scarely a dishonest transaction even charged. Sure- 
 ly that is record for any city to cherish and for those 
 who have had a share in making it to look back upon 
 with pride. 
 
 Some forbidding obstacles have been encountered 
 
 91 
 
and are met with still. One is, the being compelled 
 to pay for permanent improvements out of the cur- 
 rent income. What other city is expected to pay 
 for its great works, to last for generations, out of its 
 ordinary receipts, meanwhile taking it out of its 
 schools and scrimping its legitimate expenses? Any 
 other city would raise the money on bonds and pay 
 them a little at a time. Washington need not be 
 bonded, since the national treasury can supply it 
 with the loan and let it be paid back at a reasonable 
 rate; but the principle is sound. It is enforced by 
 the late Secretary of the Treasury in his able report 
 for 1908, where he sets forth with great lucidity 
 the need of a national budget to bring about an ad- 
 justment between disbursements and receipts, with 
 a rigid separation between expenditures for the or- 
 dinary service of the government and those for per- 
 manent public works, the latter to be met by bond 
 issues. 
 
 But there are obstacles of graver import, and 
 they constitute defects radical and without remedy 
 in the present relation between nation and district. 
 They can be removed only by a change in that re- 
 lation itself. We shall all agree that to legislate 
 wisely requires two things, first, a lively interest 
 in the object of legislation, second, a clear intelli- 
 gence touching the subject in hand. There being 
 no representati^'e from the district itself in either 
 branch of congress, it becomes necessary to commit 
 the interests of the district, and the interests of the 
 nation in the district, to hands unfamiliar with the 
 subject and without any lively interest therein. 
 The congress as a whole cannot be expected to supply 
 
 92 
 
these requisites. No one pretends it does. It is en- 
 gaged upon a thousand subjects, many of which ap- 
 pear to its members to be vastly more important 
 than any that concerns the district. We cannot wonder 
 at it — it is in the nature of things tJiat it should be 
 so. The step logically required by this condition is 
 next taken. A committee in the house and a com- 
 mittee in the senate are especially charged with these 
 affairs. Not that their word is accepted as final. 
 If it were, some difficulties would be escaped. But in 
 the end their report must run the gauntlet of the 
 whole house or senate. Here ignorance of district 
 affairs has often shown itself so egregious and glar- 
 ing that it could excite nothing but laughter if tears 
 were not often a fitter recognition of the folly. And 
 when that occurs there is no representative for the 
 district to meet the ignorant unfounded claim; 
 350,000 people are voiceless in that hall. The com- 
 mittees cannot meet the emergency. To expect it 
 would be to expect more than mortal men can do. 
 Who are the members of the committees? Are they 
 senators and representatives set apart for this work 
 and free to devote themselves entirely to such busi- 
 ness? By no means. They have their own con- 
 stituents to serve, and they have, besides, their share 
 of responsibility for the general legislation, like all 
 their fellow menibers. They are appointed; they 
 do the best they can; and if they give sufficient 
 time to our affairs to understand our problems, they 
 run the risk of losing their seats entirely by being 
 thought at home to have neglected their own states 
 or districts. I am credibly informed that the risk 
 has turned into a certainty in more instances than 
 
 93 
 
one. But, more than that, the membership of 
 house and senate changes and the membership of 
 the committees changes with it. Hardly has a mem- 
 ber become reasonably acquainted with our subject 
 when he is called away, another takes his place, and 
 the whole process of education must be begun again. 
 
 That is the radical and incurable defect of the 
 present system. Keep your three commissioners if 
 you will, or substitute for them a single head, improve 
 the machinery of municipal administration all you 
 can, until it runs with the regularity of a Swiss 
 watch — you have not touched the trouble. What is 
 needed is, two men in the house and one man in 
 the senate, — real live men, men who have lived long 
 in the District of Columbia and belong to her, men 
 who know her need and her capacity, who know the 
 history and condition of her institutions, her chari- 
 ties, her prisons, the views and aspirations of her 
 people, men who are proud of their connection with 
 her and proud that to her soil has been committed 
 the ark of civil and religious liberty. What we need 
 is members of these bodies, with the prestige that be- 
 longs to members, not figure-heads, not lobbyists, not 
 delegates, but a mjember of the senate and two mem- 
 bers of the house, able, enlightened, informed, fit to 
 represent the will and judgment of 350,000 citizens 
 gathered within these bounds. 
 
 But that requires an amendment of the con- 
 stitution! So it does. An amendment in strict ac- 
 cord with the principles of the constitution, made 
 necessary by the changed conditions of a hundred 
 and twenty years, made unavoidable and inevitable 
 by the changes that will take place in the fifty or one 
 
 94 
 
hundred years to come. Do you imagine that when 
 a million or fiften hundred thousand shall be 
 swarming in our borders they will be the only people 
 in this broad domain to have no hand in the govern- 
 ment of this magnificent republic, no word in the 
 election of its president, no tongue in the national 
 assembly? When a million men are here, when thej' 
 ask why they alone can have no part in a repub- 
 lican form of government, do you imagine the}^ will 
 call it a suflBcient answer to be told, "Because you 
 live in Washington. If you lived in the poorest \'illage 
 in the land, you might, but not while you live 
 here." Bear in mind I am not speaking of muni- 
 cipal suffrage. I am speaking of the simpie 
 of a million American citizens to have a share — less 
 than one-hundredth part it would be — in the legis- 
 lation tliat concerns their country and its capital. 
 Suppose they have no more right than the same 
 number of people who live anywhere else in the 
 United States. Have they not as much? And that 
 is all the right of which I speak. 
 
 But I hear it said, ''The people of the District 
 do not care for suffrage." Well, all I can say to that 
 is this. If the people of the District of Columbia 
 do not really care to have a part in the government 
 of this splendid countrj^, they do not deserve to have 
 it, and nobody need fear it will be thrust upon 
 them. But I cannot believe that statement. 
 
 **Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry?" 
 
 I cannot believe that the human heart has changed. 
 I cannot believe that principles have lost their power. 
 I cannot believe that the deep instincts that built 
 
 95 
 
up this wonderful fabric of free government have 
 died out here in the very seat of its majesty, 
 and that here alone the "bright consummate flower'* 
 of liberty has gone to seed. There is no doubt that 
 they need quickening. There is no doubt that they 
 have sunk into the torpor of faculties disused. But 
 hold before their eyes the hope of that which I am 
 now describing and you shall see whether self-respect 
 and the desire for self-government are dead. 
 
 Sir, if I had it in my power tonight, to dispose 
 of this matter as I would, do you know what I would 
 do? I would not change the constitution. I would 
 not give the people of the district suffrage. What I 
 would do is this. I would set to their dry hearts 
 the flame of that old Promethean torch, the love of 
 liberty. I would fill them with divine unrest at their 
 condition. I would set beside that condition a 
 picture of the dignity and power they might enjoy 
 as real citizens of their country. I would move them 
 first to desire and then to demand their portion of 
 our heritage. I would nerve them to toil for it and 
 fight for it through years of bitter opposition — and 
 then at last, when the agitation had created a new 
 Washington — when four hundred or five hundred 
 thousand people were calling as with one mighty 
 voice for the great prize of representative govern- 
 ment — then — then I would bestow it on them. And, 
 sir, I believe that is exactly what the god of timie 
 will do. 
 
 A city of the dumb! Mr. Chairman, I have 
 heard you speak of a little village on an island off 
 the New England coast, inhabited entirely by deaf 
 mutes. They live unto themselves. They marry and 
 
 96 
 
intermarry and rear children who are dumb as they. 
 They go about their task but speak no word. The 
 busy hum of life goes on around them; the shuttles 
 of the world's activities fly to and fro; but into the 
 growing web they weave no strand. Sir, I will not 
 extend the parallel. It is too obvious and too pain- 
 ful to be drawn. But that is not the Washington 
 that shall be. Only let the agitation begin. Let 
 it start iiere tonight. Why not make the occasion 
 historic? Let every true son of Washington, native 
 or adopted, go out from this feast strengthened and 
 heartened for a long enlistment. Let him know for 
 once in his life the glory of being possessed by a 
 grand idea — the sublime enthusiasm of being lost in 
 absolute devotion to a great cause. Let them meet 
 and join hands and stir one another's hearts, quicken 
 one another's minds and sustain one another's 
 courage. Let it go on. It will meet with opposition ; 
 it will meet with ridicule; it will meet with censure; 
 it will take years, it may take many — but it can have 
 but one possible outcome if the sons of Washington 
 are worthy of the name they bear. 
 
 Again I say I am not speaking now of municipal 
 suffrage at all. Let the present arrangement, or 
 some improved substitute for it, be continued if you 
 please. What has that to do with the broad and 
 fundamental fact that the hundreds of thousands here 
 should have their due and proportionate represen- 
 tation in the National Assembly — should have the 
 same right that other citizens enjoy of giving their 
 votes in the election of the chief magistrate oi the 
 republic? The Republic! It is not alone for the 
 District of Columbia that I bring the proposition 
 
 97 
 
forward. The interests of the nation would be served 
 as well. They would be served, first of all, by the 
 increased efficiency and propriety of the laws that 
 would be enacted; in the next place by the fact that 
 the members from) the district, being familiar with 
 the local situation and serving on the local committees, 
 would relieve the members from other states of much 
 of their present burden, leaving them freer to per- 
 form the duties for which they were specially selected. 
 Further, it would serve the nation by adding to the 
 congress men of weight and influence in national 
 concerns. We should have here a constituency pe- 
 culiarly rich in material for representatives. But, 
 more perhaps than all the rest, the change would 
 serve the interests of the whole nation by recognizing 
 the grand principle of representative government 
 here, in the most conspicuous position in the country, 
 where hitherto it has been cast aside. Men could 
 no longer point the finger of scorn at us and say: 
 ''Washington gives the lie to your pretensions. 
 Look! In the very seat of national greatness you 
 acknowledge by your acts that your form of govern- 
 ment is a failure." Until we are honest enough and 
 brave enough to live up to our principles we shall 
 deserve all our troubles, and, sir, from the bottom 
 of my heart I do believe that the greatest troubles 
 we have spring from this very fact, that we have 
 turned our back upon those principles. We shall 
 never find peace or safety until we return to them 
 again. 
 
 Shall we say we fear the suffrages of ignorance 
 and vice — the ignorance and vice that we ourselves 
 are to blame for — that could not last a generation 
 
 98 
 
if we did our duty by our fellow men? Shame on 
 the race or the community that holds in its hands the 
 wealth of the continent and carries in its brains the 
 accumulated culture of the centuries and yet re- 
 fuses to lift that ignorance and vice to the level of 
 enlightenment and ^^rtue. Tear down your shacks 
 and shanties. Let in the sun upon your noisome 
 alleys. Build decent habitations for the poor to dwell 
 in. Make your prisons moral hospitals instead of 
 breeding cells for crime. Spread education broadcast 
 in the streets. Let us do the work of Christians at 
 our doors before we admit that our fathers were fools 
 and that democratic government is all a dark mistake. 
 Never until the men of wealth and education have 
 spent their last surplus dollar, and exhausted the in- 
 genuity of their brains, in the effort to make their fel- 
 low men worthy to be sharers in the government, 
 never until then will they have a right to hide behind 
 an excuse like that. I admit that an ignorant and 
 degraded class armed with the ballot is a menace to 
 the safety of the state ; but I deny that it is a greater 
 menace in the end than that same class robbed of 
 its rights, thrust do^vn into the dark, and left as no 
 longer requiring to be regarded or assisted because 
 no longer having any part in the affairs of state. 
 Strip men of the ballot and you take away from so- 
 ciety the most powerful inducement that can prompt 
 selfish human nature to educate and elevate its help- 
 less and its poor. We must find fault with the 
 Creator if we wish to complain that wealth, virtue and 
 culture cannot he safe in the neighborhood of poverty, 
 ignorance and vice. He means that it shall be so. 
 He sees Blagden's Alley as well as Dupont Circle, 
 
 99 
 
and he has made it certain by the laws of nature, 
 by every wind that breathes across the city, by every 
 tiny insect that takes its unregarded flight from 
 home to hom:e, that Dupont Circle shall not be safe 
 while Blagden's Alley is rotting with disease and 
 filth. The very laws of nature are democratic. It is 
 just the same in government. A community that has 
 the poAver to lift ignorance and vice to its own level, 
 and will not stretch out its hand to do it, deserves 
 to be endangered by ignorance and vice ; and Eternal 
 Justice will see to it that it is so. We cannot escape 
 our duties — let us face them, then, like men. 
 
 If Franklin or Jefferson were here today and saw 
 this mighty population with no voice in its affairs, 
 he would lay his finger, like a wise physician, on the 
 body politic and say, "Here — here is where you are 
 ailing. Have faith in the principles that brought us 
 through." Let us take up the stitch our fathers 
 dropped. Let us apply to our situation the rules of 
 government they applied to theirs. If you should say 
 to Jefferson, "Why should we be disturbed? Will 
 it give us more interest on our money?" Jefferson 
 would answer you, "That I cannot tell, but this I 
 know, that 'the man who loves freedom for anything 
 but freedom's self was made to be a slave.' " Even 
 if we should fail, men would write over our graves 
 the profound saying of Guizot, "The struggle itself 
 supplied in some measure the place of liberty." But 
 we cannot fail. Is this an hour to doubt or question 
 the principles of free government ? Now, when those 
 principles, encouraged by their success upon this 
 continent, are shaking every throne upon the globe? 
 When on the shores of the Bosphorus Young Turkey 
 
 100 
 
is making good its claim to constitutional government ? 
 When Persia is starting from her revery and old 
 China is turning from the slumber of four thousand 
 years ? Now, when in the islands of the soutli Pacific 
 we ourselves are reaching out a hand to lead a 
 strange race into the ordered paths of Anglo Saxon 
 freedom? Let the sons of Washington beware lest 
 the little brown men of the Philippines enter the 
 kingdom of representative government before them. 
 If the people of Columbia prefer to take their ease, 
 no rude reformer will disturb their rest. But when 
 we have passed away men mil describe us as the 
 dying patriarch in his prophetic vision pictured the 
 most degenerate of his tribes: "Issachar is a strong 
 ass couching down between two burdens : and he saw 
 that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant ; 
 and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant 
 unto tribute." 
 
 Sir, the danger to this country, lies not, as we 
 sometimes think, in the poor immigrant who flees 
 to us from far, still smarting from the lash of tyranny, 
 — ignorant and low-minded though he be. The prize 
 of citizenship will appeal to him. He will clutch it 
 and hold it fast as "the immediate jewel of his soul." 
 The danger lies in him who, "like the base Judean, 
 throws a pearl away richer than all his tribe ' ' — in the 
 man who will share the blessings of liberty without 
 bearing its burdens — in the man who is willing that 
 impudence and theft shall sit in the seat of power, 
 so long as he is left free to pile up his millions, or 
 scatter them like a lord on the playground of 
 Europe. 
 
 The capital of the United States — what is it? 
 
 101 
 
It is not marble palaces nor lofty domes nor splendid 
 obelisks. If it is anything, it typifies a great idea. 
 The deepest word that was ever uttered to interpret 
 that idea was wrung from lips that trembled between 
 hope and despair upon the field of Gettysburg — "of 
 the people, for the people, by the people." Can 
 Washington typify that idea while it stands as it 
 does today? It cannot be. It must be changed. It 
 will be changed. The time will surely come when 
 he who stands in the shadow of these majestic 
 structures, and of the prouder ones that shall arise, 
 will have no cause to hang his head for shame at any 
 violation of our principles, but wdll feel that here, 
 here more truly than anywhere else on the face of the 
 whole earth, he is standing in their august and visible 
 presence. 
 
 And now, Mr. President, at the end as at the be- 
 ginning we turn to you — ^not to express the hope that 
 you may discharge the new duties with clearer sight 
 or firmer fidelity than you discharged the old, for 
 that would be impossible, but that in your more exalt- 
 ed station you may find a wider field for your bene- 
 ficent endeavors, cheered, as you will be, by the per- 
 sonal love of millions of your fellows and supported 
 by the unwavering faith of all America. 
 
 102 
 
ROBERT BURNS: A POET FOR THE 
 WORLD. 
 
 An Address Delivered at the Unveiling of the Burns Monu- 
 ment in Barre, Vermont, July 2/, 1899. 
 
 One hundred and three years ago this very day 
 Robert Burns lay dying in Dumfries. Thank God, 
 there have been few sadder deaths than that. His 
 four little sons had been brought in from a neighbor's 
 house to hear his parting words. In the next room 
 his wife, his ''bonnie Jean," dearer to his wayward 
 heart than he himself had ever known, lay waiting her 
 hour in childbed. Poverty sat upon his hearthstone, 
 and his last words were mingled with curses for the 
 cruel legal agent whose threatening letter had tor- 
 tured and embittered his dying hours. His country 
 had praised and petted and then had shunned and 
 neglected him, and he had been his o\vn worst enemy, 
 until now in a rude tenement, surrounded with all 
 the circumstances of misery, poor, heart-broken and 
 abandoned, he was passing away from life. Thus 
 was being fulfilled at last the very prophecy he had 
 uttered in verse one bright spring morning ten years 
 before, ''following his plow along the mountain-side," 
 and musing over the ''wee, modest, crimson-tipped 
 flower" his share had crushed and buried: 
 
 103 
 
Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, 
 That fate is thine — no distant date; 
 Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate. 
 
 Full on thy bloom. 
 Till, crushed beneath the furrow's weight, 
 
 Shall be thy doom. 
 
 Outside in the streets men were gathered in 
 hushed groups waiting the news that he was dead, 
 half conscious that the greatest of Scotchmen had 
 been living in their midst. Whatever they may have 
 thought, we know today that the young man who 
 lay dying there that morning, too poor to pay his 
 debts, was leaving to his country the richest her- 
 itage she ever possessed, or perhaps ever would 
 possess, — ^leaving his country-men a name and fame 
 that would be their strongest bond, that would be 
 their pride and boast wherever the scattered clans 
 should be foregathered, in lands beyond the sea and in 
 a century unborn ! 
 
 "We have proof before us; for here today upon 
 a foreign shore, thousands of miles from the scene 
 of all his sorrows and joys, among mountains beauti- 
 ful as his own Scotland's, but which his eye or fancy 
 never saw, men of his blood, whose fathers' fathers' 
 fathers may have seen his face, have raised to him, 
 from the eternal granite of these hills, a shape of 
 beauty and of power, to testify forever of Scotia's 
 undying loyalty and love. 
 
 It was difficult for his neighbors a hundred years 
 ago to realize his greatness. They saw him at his 
 common tasks, day by day, and knew the passions 
 and weaknesses that marked him for a man — and he 
 was indeed humanest of the human. Tliey had not be- 
 
 104 
 
fore their eyes the image of Bums that we behold 
 today, the glorious bard whose fame has been grow- 
 ing through the century, the figure that walks the 
 fields of song in immortal youth and steps out to us 
 from the pages of other poets wearing the brightest 
 WT.'eaths of praise that can be woven out of words. 
 They onl}^ saw the man. Today the diflSculty is 
 reversed — we only see the poet; and what we covet 
 most today is that nearer, more familiar sight. We 
 wish to know the poet, but we wish to know the man 
 as well, feeling sure that as our conception of the 
 poet has exalted and idealized the man they saw and 
 knew, so their sight and knowledge of the man, if we 
 could only share it, would warm and humanize our 
 conception of the bard. This is our delightful task 
 today — to form, if possible, one whole, true, admiring 
 yet unflattering conception of Robert Burns. 
 
 One thing we must not forget, and that is that 
 Burns never looked upon himself as we look upon him. 
 He never dreamed of the immortality of fame unt-o 
 which he was born. He never wrote for us, for the 
 unknown future. He never wrote for a great unseen 
 public even of his own time. The modest, manly 
 words with which he prefaced his poems when he 
 printed them, show clearly how humble his ambition 
 was. To liimself he was but the Aryshire bard; and 
 it was an accident that he published at all. Penni- 
 less and hiding from arrest, he was persuaded by 
 friends that a small edition of his songs might yield 
 him a profit and help him on his way to the West 
 Indies. So the Kilmarnock edition came out, six hund- 
 red copies <'rom an obscure country press. The unpre- 
 tentious little book contained, among the rest, that 
 
 105 
 
perfect love song. It was upon a Lummas Night, The 
 Twa Dogs. The Mouse, The Mountain Daisy, and The 
 Cotter's Saturday Night. No such body of verse 
 had come to light since the age of Elizabeth. We 
 know what a sensation it made. The whole course of 
 the poet's life w^as turned. The venture brought him 
 in three hundred dollars, and took him up to Edin- 
 burgh and made him the lion of the hour. But 
 the remarkable thing is that scarcely one of these 
 w^onderful productions had been written to be printed 
 at all. They had eased his own morbid or passion- 
 ate hours ; they had passed from hand to hand among 
 his friends; and that was all he had ever expected. 
 And, when you think of it, what were the subjects 
 of his verse? Merely his own experiences, his own 
 loves and hates, or some incident that set him mor- 
 alizing or stirred the deeper and finer forces of his 
 nature. Look at his poem to the mouse. As he 
 walks behind the plough one day the share turns up 
 a mouse's nest and the ''wee, sleekit, cow'rin, 
 tim'rous, beastie" scurries away across the field. 
 Now what shall Rob do ? Go to the house and sharp- 
 en the quill and write a great poem to be read a 
 century afterwards? Pish! It never enters his 
 head. He only calls back the lout who is running 
 after the mouse to kill it, asking him what harm the 
 mouse has ever done him, and then, as he steadies 
 the plough, he falls a-talking to himself. 
 
 Crooning to a body's sel' 
 Does weel eneugh. 
 
 We owe it to no vanity or care of his that we 
 are permitted today to overhear him. We owe it 
 
 106 
 
to that larger providence which somehow or other 
 does manage to preserve to the world the world's 
 richest things: 
 
 I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
 Has broken nature's social union, 
 And justifies that ill opinion 
 
 Which makes thee startle 
 At me, thy poor earth-born companion 
 
 And fellow-mortal! 
 
 Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste, 
 And weary winter comin' fast, 
 And cozie here, beneath the blast, 
 
 Thou thought to dwell, 
 Till, crash! the cruel coulter past 
 
 Out through thy cell. 
 
 But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane 
 
 In proving foresight may be vain; 
 
 The best -laid schemes o' mice and men 
 
 Gang aft a gley, 
 And lea'e us nought but grief and pain 
 
 For promised joy. 
 
 How close and human it all is, and nearer, more 
 pathetic still, when the mouse's sad case minds him 
 of his own : 
 
 Still thou art blest, compared wi' me! 
 The present only toucheth thee: 
 But, och! I backward cast my e'e 
 
 On prospects drear! 
 And forward, though I canna see, 
 
 I guess and fear. 
 
 In The Twa Dogs he makes his own collie and 
 some nobleman's New Foundland keep up an imagin- 
 ary conversation on the life and manners of the high 
 and low. But literature cannot show a sharper, 
 
 107 
 
shrewder, merrier commentary on the characters and 
 fortunes of the rich and poor. The peasant life is here 
 pictured. Burns 's dog admits that their lot is hard, 
 but there is a brighter side, for 
 
 — whyles twalpennie worth o' nappy- 
 Can mak' the bodies unco happy; 
 They lay aside their private cares. 
 To mind the Kirk and State affairs.. 
 
 liove blinks. Wit slaps and social Mirth, 
 Forgets there's Care upo' the earth. 
 
 Then it is the New Foundland's turn, and he 
 proceeds to lay bare the vices and follies of the great : 
 
 At operas and plays parading, 
 Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading; 
 
 They mak' a tour, and tak' a whirl. 
 To learn bon ton and see the worl'. 
 
 Burns was sometimes taken to task by his high- 
 born patrons, for choosing such homely subjects. 
 Thank goodness, he never paid any heed to them. 
 He sat one day behind a fine lady in church. She 
 had a louse on her bonnet. The louse is there still — 
 it always will be. The world will never get over 
 laughing at it and wishing 
 
 O wad some power the giftie gie us 
 To see oursel's as ithers see us! 
 
 That poem has pricked more bubbles of vanity 
 than all the preachers that ever stood in pulpits. 
 And yet, do not imagine Burns wrote it to teach 
 a great moral lesson. I feel certain he wrote it out 
 of pure mischief. There was almost as much truth 
 as mockery in that disclaimer of his: 
 
 108 
 
For me, an aim I never fash; 
 I rhyme for fun. 
 
 But now turn to his love songs. How warm 
 and thrilling they are. Why? Because he \vrote 
 them for his mistress, not, as the poet does now, for 
 his magazine. 
 
 Yestreen, when to the trembling string 
 The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
 To thee my fancy took its wing — 
 I sat, but neither heard nor saw: 
 Though this was fair, and that was braw, 
 And yon the toast of all the town, 
 I sighed, and said, amang them a'. 
 Ye are na Mary .Morrison. 
 
 Then there is that little drama, The Jolly 
 Beggars. Critics have called it the most finished and 
 perfect of the poet's works. Sir Walter Scott pro- 
 nounced it unsurpassed of its kind in the whole range 
 of English poetry. Yet Burns gave away the only copy 
 he possessed, and actually forgot that he had ever 
 written it. How did he come to write it in the first 
 place? ''Poosie Nansie's" was a low-down public 
 house in IMauchline village, the resort of thieves and 
 beggars. Burns, with two companions, passing that 
 way one late autumn evening, were attracted by the 
 sounds of revelry witliin. They entered and were 
 rapturously welcomed by the ''merry core of randie, 
 gangrel bodies," drinking, carousing, singing, in the 
 full swing of their rough debauch. The poet took it 
 all in, went home and made a word-picture of the 
 scene, drew every character to the life, and put into 
 their mouths the raciest songs that have ever ex- 
 pressed the sentiments of the outcast, railing against 
 the powers that be : 
 
 109 
 
Life is all a variorum, 
 We regard not how it goes; 
 Let them cant about decorum 
 Who have characters to lose. 
 A fig for those by laws protected. 
 Liberty's a glorious feast; 
 Courts for cowards were erected. 
 Churches built to please the priest. 
 
 YoTi see how even beggary and thievedom could 
 grow poetic under his touch, the touch of the same 
 hand, too, that pictured the Cotter's Saturday night. 
 And even the Cotter's Saturday Night we owe to 
 the simplest of causes. It was composed in a mood 
 of reverence induced by the peculiar solemnity with 
 which Bums's father conducted their own family 
 worship. Such was the origin of that unfading 
 picture. Burns did not know that it was immortal — 
 He only felt that it was true. 
 
 Most of his poetry was only another form of his 
 conversation. It dealt with the sam'e topics, and was 
 addressed to the same persons. His brightest and 
 pithiest words are often to be found in those rhyming 
 epistles he sent his friends. One year he made his 
 tax inventory in verse. It offers still a half -humor- 
 ous, half-sorrowful picture of his poverty. Some of 
 the poems, — and some of the best, too, — bristle all 
 over with the names of his neighbors. So it is, for 
 instance, in The Twa Herds, otherwise called The 
 Holy Tulyie, all about a shameful quarrel between 
 two ministers over their parish boundary. It was 
 never printed while Burns lived. It was handed 
 about and laughed over among the unregenerate for 
 the slaps of wit and stings of sarcasm, all, unhappily, 
 too well deserved. It was exactly as if a great genius 
 
 110 
 
should drop do\^Tl here in our midst, take a hand in 
 all our quarrels, ridicule our weaknesses, avenge him- 
 self upon us for our slights, and draw with merciless 
 fidelity the characters we meet day by day upon the 
 street. The most conspicuous example of all this is 
 probably Holy Willie's Prayer, — by common consent 
 the most terrible satire in the English language. It 
 was only a piece that Burns set going the rounds in 
 Mauchline to gratify his grudge against a hypocrite, 
 who no doubt had rejoiced to see Burns sitting on 
 the penitent's stool in the kirk, and who had had 
 Burns 's friend, Gavin Hamilton, hauled up in the 
 same place for getting in his potatoes on the Sabbath. 
 It was written solely for the men and v.omen who 
 knew and despised William Fisher; but the whole 
 world has read it. It was nothing but a neighborhood 
 skit; and yet Calvinism itself has met with no such 
 arraignment as in the literal statement of its doctrine 
 in that blood-curdling first stanza: 
 
 O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 
 Wha, as it pleases best thysel'. 
 Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, 
 
 A' for Thy glory. 
 And no for ony guid or ill 
 
 They've done afore Thee! 
 
 After Bums came back from Edinburgh, a Lon- 
 don paper offered him fifty pounds a year if he would 
 send it a poem now and then. He refused. Yet he 
 needed the money, and his family needed it. He had 
 a foolish scruple against writing for pay; but he 
 would fill the countryside with songs and satires and 
 epitaphs and witty epistles — just for fun. The fact 
 is, that everything he wrote that was really original, 
 
 111 
 
really excellent, and that shines by its own light to- 
 day, was not only the fruit of something that deeply 
 touched his own life, but was written to be read 
 by the men and women he knew. And so far from 
 being strange, that was the very pivot of his power, 
 the very secret of his success. If he had written for 
 the world, not even Mauchline would have read him ; 
 but w±en he wrote so that Mauchline had to read 
 him, he enchained the attention of the world. The 
 w^hole thing lies there in a nut-shell: he knew his 
 subject, and he knew his hearers. He had perfect 
 mastery of his theme and perfect sympathy with his 
 audience. Now stop and tell me if those are not 
 the conditions of achievement in every branch of 
 art. Is not the great painter the man who knows 
 what he is painting and whom he is painting for, and 
 makes his picture an appeal to these people? Is 
 not the great orator the man who knows his subject 
 to the core, and knows his audience to the core ? And 
 the poet whose wit and wisdom become part of the 
 world's precious store, whose phrases become house- 
 hold words, whose songs thrill in the hearts of soldiers 
 and live on the lips of lovers— he is not the poet 
 who shuns his fellowmen and polishes his lines for 
 posterity, but the man who laughs and cries with 
 them, and lives and works and suffers at their side. 
 Poetry is an intense expression of the individual life. 
 Nearness is power. You cannot get too close to 
 your subject, nor too close to the hearts that you 
 would touch and the lives that you would move. 
 
 Burns knew well enough how to write the smooth, 
 elegant English verses that had been fashionable be- 
 fore him. He did write them at times, in some fit 
 
 112 
 
of weakness, or when he hadn't anything in particu- 
 lar to say. I presume you can find forty such among 
 his poems. But there isn't one of them that would 
 have kept his name alive ten years. He was writing 
 of something he knew nothing about, and writing for 
 people he cared nothing about; and the result is that 
 nobody cares about Avhat he wrote. Now if Burns 
 had received that fine university education which 
 so many people think it was his great misfortune 
 to have lacked, the chances are that all of his poetry 
 would have been of this elegant, good- for-no thing 
 order. It is not when he tries to be fine that he is 
 eloquent ; it is when he lets himself go, m the dialect. 
 The English of the schools was like a foreign tongue 
 to him. He had to learn it; but the dialect he 
 never had to learn. He spoke it before he knew 
 what learning meant — he drew it in with his breath. 
 Macaulay said truly that no man ever wrote an im- 
 mortal work in any language except the one he 
 heard about his cradle. These are the words in which 
 thought kindles into flame. It is in moments of 
 tremendous excitement that the finest poetic expres- 
 sions have birth, and in those moments the soul 
 always speaks in the tongue of its childhood — all other 
 language is forgotten. You may give a Scotchman 
 all the culture of the schools, until his ordinary con- 
 versation shall not betray his race; but the first 
 excitement will betray him. Let him get angry, and 
 if he swears he'll swear in Scotch. When he falls 
 in love, he'll woo in Scotch. When he tells a thrill- 
 ing story, he'll tell it in Scotch; and if he gets 
 "fou and unco happy," he'll sing in Scotch. Read 
 Tarn O'Shanter. Burns composed it all in one win- 
 
 113 
 
ter's day. His wife saw him walking back and forth 
 by the river side, swinging his arms, slapping his 
 thighs, and laughing as if he would burst. Then he 
 came in and wrote it down. Part of it is easy 
 enough for English readers, but when he warms to 
 his story we need a glossary at every line. Recall 
 his description of the witches' dance as Tam saw it 
 through the ruined windows of the old haunted kirk : 
 
 As Tammie glower'd, amazed and curious, 
 
 The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: 
 
 The piper loud and louder blew, 
 
 The dancers quick and quicker flew, 
 
 They reel'd, they set, they crossed, they cleekit 
 
 Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, 
 
 And coost her duddies to the wark, 
 
 And linket at it in her sark! 
 
 How was it when he spoke with the deepest 
 pathos and his heart became a fountain of tears? 
 
 We twa hae run about the braes. 
 
 And pu'd the go wans fine; 
 But we've wandered mony a weary foot 
 
 Sin' auld lang syne. 
 
 We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn 
 
 Frae morning sun till dine; 
 But seas between us braid hae roar'd 
 
 Sin' auld lang syne. 
 
 And here's a hand, my trusty fiere. 
 
 And gie's a hand o' thine; 
 And we'll tak' a right guid willie-waught 
 
 For auld lang syne. 
 
 His merriment, too, went the same gait: 
 114 
 
Oh, Willie brewed a peck o' maut, 
 And Rob and Allan came to pree; 
 
 Three blither hearts, that lee-lang night. 
 Ye wadna find in Christendie. i 
 
 We are na fou, we're nae that fou, 
 But just a drappie in our e'e; 
 
 The cock may craw, the day may daw. 
 And aye we'll taste the barley-bree. 
 
 Hear him in his tenderest mood : 
 
 John Anderson, my jo, John, 
 
 When we were first acquent 
 Your locks were like the raven, 
 
 Your bonny brow was brent; 
 But now your brow is held, John, 
 
 Your locks are like the snaw; 
 But blessings on your frosty pow, 
 
 John Anderson, my jo. 
 
 John Anderson, my jo, John, 
 
 We clamb the hill thegither. 
 And mony a canty day, John, 
 
 We've had wi' ane anither; 
 Now we maun totter down, John, 
 
 But hand in hand we'll go; 
 And sleep thegither at the foot, 
 
 John Anderson, my jo. 
 
 Or in his frankest confession. 
 
 I lo'e her mysel', but darena weel tell. 
 My poverty keeps me in awe, man, 
 
 For making o' rhymes, and working at times. 
 Does little or naething at a', man. 
 
 Yet I wadna choose to let her refuse. 
 
 Nor hae't in her power to say na, man; 
 
 For though I be poor, unnoticed, obscure, 
 My stomach's as proud as them a', man. 
 
 115 
 
Or when lie stood upon the field of Bannock- 
 burn and felt the blood of his race leaping in every 
 pulse: 
 
 Scots, wha hae wi* Wallace bled, 
 Scots, wham Bruce has often led. 
 Welcome to your gory bed. 
 Or to victory! 
 
 Wha will be a traitor knave? 
 Wha can fill a coward's grave? 
 Wha sae base as be a slave? 
 Let him turn and flee! 
 
 Wha for Scotland's king and law, 
 Freedom's sword will strongly draw; 
 Freeman stand, or freeman fa', 
 Let him follow me! 
 
 Lay the proud usurper low! 
 Tyrants fall in every foe! 
 Liberty's in every blow! 
 Let us do or die! 
 
 But I must have quoted enough, and more than 
 enough, to remind you that his raciest narrative, his 
 keenest mt, his bitterest satire, his brightest fun, 
 his tenderest passion, his deepest pathos, and his 
 noblest eloquence, all found expression in that ver- 
 nacular, that speech of the people, which was the 
 birthright of every Scotchman, however lowly born. 
 
 Now Barns could have received no education 
 that would have given him a mightier command of 
 this tongue — to him at once a harp and a sword. 
 Perfect knowledge of his subject, perfect sympathy 
 with his audience, perfect mastery of his instrument 
 — and for not one of these gifts or acquirements was 
 
 116 
 
lie indebted to any school or university. But let us 
 not make the common and silly mistake of calling him 
 uneducated. He was well educated, thoroughly edu- 
 cated, for the great place he was to nil. No other 
 training would have answered. The mills have been 
 running in Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge for 
 centuries. Whj^ haven't they turned out a few 
 Burnses ? They have given us many a man of learn- 
 ing, they have polished and adorned many a man of 
 genius, but they have never given us a single poet of 
 the people. There is only one school that can produce 
 him, and that is the school of hardship, privation and 
 daily toil that Burns attended. 
 
 He had one gift generally considered to be rare 
 among poets, but of priceless value any^.vhere. I 
 mean great, rugged, common sense. "With all his 
 fooling, bantering and dreaming, he never over- 
 stepped this bound. You can point out many things 
 that are coarse, that ought never to have been Avritten ; 
 but you cannot lay your finger on a single line and 
 say, it is silly. There is that substratum of good 
 sense under everything he T\TOte. This cannot be 
 said of all poets, nor, indeed, of all great poets. 
 "Wordsworth wrote mucl^that is good, and a little 
 that can never die. Manj^ who judge wisely in such 
 matters rank him third among English poets — 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth — but Wordsworth 
 cannot bear this test. "When he was proposed for 
 Poet Laureate, a member of parliament recited some 
 of the weakest of his writings, and then asked, amid 
 the jeers and sneers of the House, whether a man 
 who could be guilty of such stuff as that was fit to 
 be the Laureate of England! He could never have 
 
 117 
 
done that with Burns. We may laugh ivitk Burns, 
 we never laugh at him. You might strip him of all 
 his poetic gift, and still have left a man of ability and 
 brains. 
 
 He had likewise the gift of leadership, of 
 magnetism, of eloquence. Women loved him at sight ; 
 children hung about his knees ; and men followed him 
 like children. When it was kno^vn that he was at 
 the tavern, farmers forsook the fields, work in the 
 village was laid aside, and if he would talk the crowd 
 would hang upon his lips till morning. And it was 
 not the peasantry alone who admired him. Men and 
 women of the best birth and breeding in Edinburgh 
 testified that his conversation was even more wonder- 
 ful than his poetry. This awkward ploughman was 
 transformed in the presence of beauty. He could 
 greet a lady wdth the grace of a knight. "Sic an e'e 
 in his head ! ' ' was a common exclamation among those 
 who saw him. His countenance beamed with intelli- 
 gence and his smile was as winning as a child's. Who 
 wonders that women loved him! Over his rugged 
 and manly strength was thrown the charm of wit, 
 the grace of speech, and that indefinable suggestion 
 of greatness. Here was that rare blending of sweet- 
 ness and strength which captivates the heart and 
 leads men where it will. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, when he was a boy, met Bums 
 one day in Edinburgh. They were showing the poet 
 a picture. There were some lines of verse beneath it. 
 The picture touched Burns deeply and he inquired 
 who wrote the lines. No one present could answer, 
 until the shy boy ventured to whisper the author's 
 name. Scott said he could never forget the eyes 
 
 118 
 
Burns turned upon him, eyes ''the most glorious he 
 ever saw," as he said, "My boy, it is no coimnon 
 course of reading that has taught you this." How 
 impressive and suggestive a meeting! Neither knew 
 the other's greatness, nor indeed his own. Neitlier 
 could guess how their names would be linked together 
 forever in the world's memory and love. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, himself one of Scotland's 
 greatest, who studied Burns \vell and wrote the 
 noblest prose tribute that has ever been laid upon his 
 grave, declared that if Burns 's fortune had led him 
 into parliament he would have proved a greater Mira- 
 beau. There is no doubt that he was an uncrowned 
 king, a born leader of men. 
 
 But over and above all this he bore the rare, 
 mysterious, magnificent endowment of poetic genius. 
 This was his crown. Here the aspiring nature burst 
 into flame. The rarest and most splendid gift God 
 ever bestows upon the world is a great poet. Wlien 
 Burns was born that winter day in the old clay big- 
 ging that his father built, his coming was unheralded 
 by sign or prophecy — no angels are singing in the 
 fields, no "star-led wizards haste with odors sweet," 
 — yet if the world had ever had the wit to welcome 
 its richest blessings, it might have knelt there in 
 reverence and awe. Scotland would never be the 
 same again. The earth itself would never seem the 
 same, but love would be more sweet, and home more 
 precious, and toil less hard, manhood would be more 
 free and sacred, and life itself a richer, happier 
 thing, because of the wee bit bairn that saw the light 
 that day. 
 
 We see now that it was Nature's purpose to 
 
 119 
 
make a poet, and that she took the surest means. She 
 took the best blood of Scotland, peasant blood pure 
 and undefiled, that had flowed for hundreds of years 
 close to the kindly earth, — gave him a father of 
 mature and hardened manhood, a young mother with 
 a glad, warm heart — a father of rigid virtue, ardent 
 piety, but independent spirit and almost ungovern- 
 able temper, — a mother of poetic soul, responsive to 
 every appeal of beauty, and so smitten with the love 
 of song that she went about her work crooning the 
 old Scotch airs, day after day, while bearing her baby 
 in the womb. ''When a man is born,'' said Emerson, 
 * ' the gate of gifts is shut behind him. ' ' Why, Nature 
 had made sure that Burns should be a poet before 
 ever he was born. 
 
 Yes, and having made sure of that, she knew 
 better than to let him be born in any place less poetic 
 than a bigging — and a clay one at that. She even saw 
 to it that the gable should fall down, and let a ''blast 
 o' Janwar' win' blow hansel in on Robin." It was 
 the only way. How should a man be the poet of the 
 poor and not be poor himself? Tradition says that 
 Burns's father, riding in haste that morning for the 
 doctor, met at the river side an old woman who went 
 back with him to the cottage and acted as midwife. 
 This was the fortune-teller who figures in the song 
 sung today at the unveiling of the statue : 
 
 The gossip keekit in his loof. 
 Quo' she, wha lives will see the proof. 
 This waly hoy will be nae coof, 
 I think we'll ca' him Robin. 
 
 120 
 
He'll hae misfortunes great an' sma*, 
 But aye a heart aboon them, a'; 
 He'll be a credit till us a' 
 
 We'll a' be proud o' Robin. 
 
 Was not this the same old woman who taught 
 him afterwards the folk-lore of the countryside, 
 filling his young imagination with elves and ghaists 
 and witches and warlocks, and all the rest of the un- 
 earthly crew? At this distance she seems not unlike 
 the Scottish Muse herself; and had Burns been born 
 in legendary times, who doubts that the gossip his 
 father met so opportunely on the river bank would 
 have turned out to be the goddess, indeed, traveling 
 in disguise to minister at the birth of her favorite 
 son? 
 
 Fate not only saw to it that he should be born 
 poor ; she kept him poor. What a pathetic life it was ! 
 Over him through boyhood and youth hung the heaw 
 cloud of his genius — the brooding and melancholy 
 mind — ^not quick, gay, light-hearted like his brother 
 Gilbert — rather slow, rather dull, wearing on his face 
 a look of sadness or of pain. Out of that same cloud 
 the lightnings of fancy and humor were to flash and 
 play, and the thunder-voice of heroic language was 
 to roll. Meanwhile he was staggering under the 
 weight of self-knowledge. He sat alone, he walked 
 apart, he murmured to himself, and felt the dawnings 
 of that mighty wit that is "to madness near allied." 
 The world that others saw Avas not his world. He 
 lived in that ideal realm which his reading, his reflec- 
 tion, the songs and tales that fell from the lips of his 
 mother or the granny, had conjured up around him. 
 He was a poet. 
 
 121 
 
His father was determined that his boys should 
 be well taught. And when a Scotchman is determined 
 it is time for fate to yield. To this end he sacrificed 
 everything. He would not send them out to work, 
 however much he needed "the sair-won penny-fee." 
 He kept them at home and taught them all he knew — 
 taught them out of his scanty book-lore, out of the 
 richer wisdom of life's experience, and the priceless 
 store of moral and spiritual truth. Then he paid, out 
 of his hard toil, the best teacher he could find, that 
 they might have the learning he had never known. 
 In all biography there is no more touching 
 example of parental care and sacrifice than that of 
 "William Burns. He died before his son arrived at 
 fame, but he lives forever in The Cotter's Saturday 
 Night : 
 
 The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, 
 
 The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride: 
 
 His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 
 
 ****** 
 
 And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air. 
 ****** 
 
 The priest-like father reads the sacred page, 
 
 ****** 
 
 Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King, 
 
 The saint, the father, and the husband prays: 
 
 Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing, 
 
 That thus they all shall meet in future days: 
 
 ****** 
 
 From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs. 
 That makes her loved at home, revered abroad. 
 Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
 *'An honest man's the noblest work of Grod!" 
 
 In rugged grandeur of character, self-denial, 
 obedience to duty, brave, patient, suffering, majestic 
 
 122 
 
manhood, William Burns towers above his wayward 
 and gifted son as much as that son himself towers in 
 greatness of intellect above the common people around 
 him. Oh, Robert ! Robert ! if you had only had your 
 father's character — his unbending will, his flawless 
 rectitude — set as the eternal hills for what he saw 
 was right — we should not shed today the bitter tear 
 of shame and disappointment over you, even in the 
 hour of gratitude and glory. For there is something 
 sweeter than song, more enchanting than the poetic 
 vision, more admirable than the richest gifts of 
 thought and speech that can be lavished on the child 
 of man. It is character — it is self-denial — it is self 
 restraint — not passion but patience — love that will 
 not seek its own, but can suffer and be strong — 
 justice that will not waver though the heavens should 
 fall ! 
 
 Burns did inherit much from his father. From 
 him he took his proud and independent spirit, his 
 temper, hard to curb, his stern integrity, his vigorous 
 understanding, his penetrating judgment of men, and 
 we know not how mtuch of those volcanic physical 
 passions that made the upheaval and wreck of his 
 life. From his mother he took his milder and gentler 
 gifts, — the dreamy mood — every sense an avenue for 
 the approach of beauty — a heart for laughter and 
 for tears. It was a wonderful comingling. Yes, it 
 was that rare, miraculous, perilous mixture, a man 
 of genius. And this marvellously, delicately endowed 
 mortal, what does fate do with him? Why, she makes 
 him a ploughboy, of course. If there had been any 
 occupation more common, more humble, more of the 
 earth earthy, doubtless she would have made him 
 
 123 
 
that. For this man was born to be the interpreter of 
 beauty to the humblest; and the mingling of qualities 
 that went to make his soul was not more remarkable 
 than the circumstances that were to mold his life, that 
 were to waken and disappoint his powers, to warm 
 and chill his heart, to make him feel the whole pathos 
 of human fate, to suffer and sing and triumph and 
 fall and perish — and then to live in the splendor of 
 immortal youth. No poet was ever made without 
 suffering. The birth of song, like the birth of man 
 himself, is a birth of agony. Every gift enters by the 
 gate of pain. How well Burns knew! 
 
 The real trouble for Burns began when he was 
 old enough to fall in love. Some men never reach this 
 age. Some reach it very early and never get by it: 
 and that was the case with Burns. It seems they 
 had a custom of giving to each lad in harvest work 
 a lassie for a partner. A thrifty Scotch notion, that ! 
 They knew well enough how the lad's pride would 
 make him work. "Will anything make a boy or man 
 work like the admiration of a woman — especially if 
 it be the woman? Well, that is the way it began 
 with Robert. He had ' ' a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lassie* ' 
 for a partner, and of course he made her a sang. 
 He could do it while he worked. That is where he 
 did most of his singing. One day he was stooking 
 grain in friendly rivalry with a neighbor lad. ''I'm 
 even with you today, Rob," said his comrade at 
 night. ''Na, na," he answered, ''For I made a sang 
 while I stookit." He was overworked in youth, and 
 carried to his grave in face and figure the traces of 
 that toil. When the writing-master came to thr 
 village, Robert went one week and Gilbert next— 
 
 124 
 
for they could not aiford to pay two fees, nor could 
 the farm spare both the boys at once. 
 
 He was always in love. I never counted up tUe 
 number of those to whom his love poems are addressed. 
 Some, no doubt, were verses of compliment, but not 
 many. It is easy to tell which. 
 
 Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; 
 
 Ae farewell, alas, forever! 
 
 ********* 
 
 ,Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 Kever met — or never parted. 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 
 
 Men do not write such verses as those for the 
 sake of politeness. They come out of the depths. Of 
 the divine passion of love it was wisely written, "All 
 other pleasures are not worth its pains." Bums 
 put the poignant truth into one peerless stanza: 
 Although thou maun never be mine, 
 
 Although even hope is denied, 
 'Tis sweeter for thee despairing 
 Than aught in the world beside. 
 
 I shall not repeat the sad story of his failings. 
 You know it all; how he sat on the penitent's stool 
 for "sonsie, smirking,, dear-bought Bess" — ^how 
 bonnie Jean was brought to sorrow for his sake 
 — how he would have given her all that he could then 
 give, his name, but her father spurned the offer and 
 dealt his pride the deepest wound he ever felt — how, 
 afterwards, when prosperity and fame had come, and 
 Jean came to his home, he failed to keep the happy 
 resolve of his song : 
 
 I ha'e a wife of my ane, 
 
 I'll care for naebody. 
 
 125 
 
No flowers of verse, not even those that he could 
 scatter, could make his wayward and disloyal course 
 beautiful. But in the heaven of his dark and cloudy 
 life one love shines like a star — his Highland Mary. 
 He found her at a time when every tie that had 
 bound him to others seemed to have been broken, 
 without his fault or against his will. Jean herself 
 appeared to have forsaken him. He had won a little 
 fame and gold by the publication of his poems, and 
 was almost ready to cross the sea in search of a 
 happier future. It was then they met and loved, 
 when both were young and free and full of hope, and 
 life seemed all before them. He loved her with an 
 intensity of pure devotion before which all the other 
 passions of his life turn pale ; and she gave him back 
 the unspeakable wealth of her maiden heart, sweet 
 as a flower and pure as the dew of the morning. Fol- 
 lowing the beautiful superstition of the country' folk, 
 they stood, one on each side of a little mountain 
 brook, holding the Bible between them, to add a sanc- 
 tity to their vows, and pledged themselves eternally 
 to one another. It is the purest, sweetest, saddest 
 passage in the poet's history. Death claimed his 
 Mary — he never saw her again — but he never forgot 
 that hour ! 
 
 Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 
 
 The castle o' Montgomery, 
 
 Green be your woods, and fair your flowers. 
 Your waters never drumlie! 
 
 There simmer first unfauld her robes, 
 And there the langest tarry! 
 
 For there t took the last fareweel 
 O' my sweet Highland Mary. 
 
 The return of that day was always sacred: 
 126 
 
Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, 
 That lov'st to greet the early morn. 
 
 Again thou us'herest in the day 
 
 My Mary from my soui was torn. 
 
 That sacred hour can I forget? 
 
 Can I forget the hallowed grove, 
 Where by the winding Ayr we met. 
 
 To live one day of parting love? 
 
 Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, 
 And fondly broods with miser care! 
 
 Time but the impression stronger makes, 
 As streams their channels deeper wear. 
 
 Ah, this was the real Burns, for this was Burns at 
 his best — and this is the Burns that will live in the 
 world's regard — not the libertine, but the lover of 
 Highland Mary. 
 
 Who knows what his life might have been under 
 happier stars? He died at thirty-seven. Perhaps 
 if he had lived the manly strength of his nature 
 would have seized the reins at last. Perhaps he might 
 have fulfilled his own witty prophecy in his Address 
 to the Deil: 
 
 And now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin', 
 
 A certain bardie's rantin', drinkin', 
 
 Somt luckless hour will send him, linkin'. 
 
 To your black pit; 
 But, faith, he'll turn a corner, jinkin'. 
 
 And cheat you yet. 
 
 It is hard to think of one as lost whose heart 
 acknowledges a touch of pity for the devil himself : 
 
 But fare you weel, Auld Nickie-ben! 
 Oh, wad ye tak' a thought an' men'! 
 Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 
 
 127 
 
still hae a stake — 
 I'm wae to think upo' yon den 
 Ev'n for your sake! 
 
 No doubt drink played a large part in his un- 
 doing. A better inscription for a punch-bowl than 
 any Burns ever wrote are those lines of the Japanese 
 adage : 
 
 First the man takes a drink — 
 Then the drink takes a drink — 
 Then the drink takes the man. 
 
 And yet with all his sprees he cannot have been 
 the sot he is sometimes pictured. The work he left 
 behind him vindicates him from that charge. All his 
 life he worked hard with his hands — hard as the toil- 
 ing men about him, and yet he left a mass of writings 
 that were enough to have filled his days had he done 
 nothing else. Surely we have no right to forget that 
 he lived in a time when drinking was a universal 
 custom, and when drunkenness itself was not frowned 
 upon as it is today. Law had thrown no guards 
 around the weak — temptation was on every side, and 
 public sentiment had not learned to look upon the 
 habit as the destroyer of men's peace. But neither 
 must we forget that one of the gravest counts in that 
 terrible indictment against drink that the sure and 
 solemn years are framing, is the early and tragic 
 death of Robert Burns. 
 
 That he was really made of manly stuff is plain 
 from the way in which he bore his popularity. When 
 the publication of his poems brought him fame and 
 took him to Edinburgh, his head was not turned. He 
 met it gladly, but gravely, unafraid and unfooled. He 
 foresaw that the tide of interest in him would turn 
 
 128 
 
and ebb, and that he would go back to the plough. 
 He never ducked or bowed low, never in any presence 
 concealed his opinions, but spoke out at the great 
 man's table as he did at the Mauchline tavern. And 
 when he returned to the farm, it was not in the spirit 
 of wounded, disappointed vanity, but with a hearty 
 preference for the country life. He had one burning 
 ambition, and that was, to be a bard worthy of Scot- 
 land. He died and never knew how splendidly he 
 had succeeded. Oh, if he could only have knowTi! It 
 is the old lamentation. If Shakespeare could only 
 have known! If Columbus could only have knowTi! 
 "One soweth and another reapeth." 
 
 His last years looked terribly like failure. The 
 Government made him an exciseman, — a small salary 
 and very hard work. His fame brought him visitors, 
 who ate up his substance and wasted his time. He 
 would not turn his poetic faculty into gold, and so 
 he grew discouraged and drank hard, until he was 
 shunned by the friends of other days, and finally, 
 when a gay party was going on in Dumfries, an 
 acquaintance met him in the shadow, on the deserted 
 side of the street, and Burns quoted to him the Avords 
 of the old ballad: 
 
 His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
 
 His old ane looked better than mony ane's new; 
 
 But now he lets wear ony way it will hing; 
 
 And casts himself dowie upon the corn bing. 
 
 What did this unhappy man leave "us? To 
 speak only of supreme excellence, he left us the best 
 satire in the language — Holy Willie's Prayer; the 
 best tale in verse — Tam O'Shanter; the best descrip- 
 tion of Scottish life and character — The Cotter's Sat- 
 
 129 
 
urday Night; the best drinking song — Auld Lang 
 Syne; the best battle ode — Bannockburn; and the 
 best love songs, perhaps, in any language. This was 
 the man who toiled like a day-laborer all his life, 
 owed nothing to the schools, and died at thirty-seven. 
 Thank God, it is not for us to judge ; it is for us only 
 to be grateful. 
 
 Then gently scan your brother man, 
 
 Still gentler sister woman; 
 Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human: 
 One point must still be greatly dark, 
 
 The moving why they do it: 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 How far perhaps they rue it. 
 
 "What is our debt to Bums? Not merely the 
 verse he left us, although that debt is great indeed. 
 He redeemed common life from its vulgarity. He 
 dignified labor; he made home sweeter, and love more 
 precious, and threw over this workaday world an im- 
 m/ortal charm. Burns stands for that spirit of manly 
 independence which was the very breath of life in the 
 nostrils of the New World. He was the great demo- 
 crat of Europe. He walked the strait paths of that 
 feudal land in the spirit of the new age — absolutely 
 free — and hailed afar the coming of a brighter day. 
 He felt the terrible inequalities of the human lot: 
 
 Not but I hae a richer share 
 
 Than mony ithers, 
 But why should one man better fare 
 
 And all men brithers? 
 
 This is the question that staggers us today, and 
 will continue to trouble every noble and tender heart, 
 until the great levelling processes of liberty shall have 
 
 130 
 
done their perfect work. He taught us the true value 
 of manhood: 
 
 Is. there for honest poverty, 
 
 That hangs his head, and a' that? 
 The coward slave, we pass him by, 
 
 We dare be poor for a' that! 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Our toils obscure and a' that; 
 The rank is but the guinea's stamp. 
 
 The man's the gowd lor a' that. 
 
 He has imparted to us his own serene faith in the 
 coming of the better time: 
 
 Then let us pray that come it may — 
 
 As come it will for a' that — 
 That sense and worth o'er a' the earth, 
 
 May bear the gree, and a' that; 
 For a' that, and a' that. 
 
 It's comin' yet, for a' that, 
 That man to man, the warld o'er. 
 
 Shall brothers be for a' that! 
 
 If, somewhere in the other world, that unseen 
 land which may be nearer than we think, this great 
 soul is looking down upon our doings here today, 
 believe me, nothing in it all has touched him more than 
 that his form was wrapped about in the stars and 
 stripes, the glorious ensign of the young republic he 
 welcomed and saluted from across the sea ! 
 
 You, men of his own race, who cherish his fame, 
 and out of the love and sacrifice of loyal hearts have 
 reared this monument to his memory — you shall be 
 better Americans for being true Scotchmen. You have 
 cast in your lot with us, in a land dedicated to the 
 very principle for which Burns sang his earnest song. 
 We have a great task before us still, and you must 
 
 131 
 
help us. We must see that the sublime ideal of our 
 fathers is realized better, year by year, in a wide and 
 wider spread of those blessings of liberty which they 
 intended to secure for themselves and their posterity. 
 The stream of national life must be the richer for your 
 coming. Bring us of your thrift, your energy, your 
 loyalty; we need them all. But bring us your finer 
 gift, bring us your poet, too. lie is too great for 
 Scotland — ^he belongs to the world at large. We will 
 teach our children to stand before his statue and say 
 with yours: This is Robert Burns, the great peasant 
 ploughman — ^the most rarely gifted son of the Scot- 
 tish race — the sweetest singer of the common joys and 
 sorrows of mankind the world has ever heard. 
 
 132 
 
LAKE CHAMPLAIN IN HISTORY. 
 
 An Address delivered at Isle La Motte, July 9, 1909; at 
 
 the Tercentenary Celebration of the Discovery 
 
 of Lake Champlain. 
 
 Your Excellencies, Fellow Citizens and Friends : 
 When I was in Buffalo last winter Senator Hill 
 took me to see the home of the Historical Society. It 
 stands at the old crossing of the Indian trails. Over 
 one of its arches runs a legend in the dialect of the 
 Senecas: Neh-Ko, Ga-Gis-Dah-Yen-Duk — Other coun- 
 cil-fires were here before ours. I was thinking of that 
 legend as I sat here today and thinking how few were 
 the places over all the earth where some such words 
 might not with truth be written, if we could only 
 know all that has gone before; for 
 
 "All that tread 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 That slumber in its bosom." 
 
 But such thoughts are overpowering. They make 
 the life of man seem insignificant. Let us turn at 
 once to more congenial themes. 
 
 Sixteen Hundred and Nine is a year well worth 
 remembering even without the reason that has brought 
 us here. That was the year when Kepler gave the 
 world The New Astronomy with the first and second 
 of his three great laws. Galileo was constructing his 
 telescope, with which, a few months later, he dis- 
 covered the satellites of Jupiter. Hendrick Hudson 
 
 133 
 
was sailing up the noble river tliat was ever after- 
 ward to bear his name. Two years before, the London 
 Co. had planted Jamestown. It was only six years 
 from the death of Queen Elizabeth. It was only a 
 year to the death of Henry of Navarre. The world 
 was ringing mth great names and great achievements. 
 The soul of man was putting out its wings. 
 
 When Champlain passed the place where we now 
 stand, he was 42 years old, — at the prime of life, in 
 the full flower of his strength. For a dozen years 
 he had followed the sea, as his father had done before 
 him. He had been born in one of its ports on the 
 shore of France. He had seen Spain and Mexico, 
 Panama and the West Indies. He had crossed and 
 re-crossed the Atlantic. He had cruised and mapped 
 the New England coast, sailed up the broad St. 
 Lawrence, and only the year before had laid the 
 foundations of Quebec. Much lay behind him but at 
 least as much before. He was yet to make many 
 voyages, to explore the Ottawa, to discover two of the 
 Great Lakes — Ontario and Huron — and to stand in 
 the place of his King as Governor of Canada. He be • 
 longed to that great breed of men the age brought 
 forth abundantly, — a scholar and a soldier. He knew 
 how to act as well as think; he could fight as well 
 as pray. He had courage to push out into the wilder- 
 ness, and science to make clear his course, and 
 languag'e to record for after times what he had 
 seen and done, — a hand firm on the tiller of state, a 
 heart devoted to the cross. It would be hard to find a 
 better type of the France of his day, — able, ambitious, 
 devout, — grasping for King and church at the best 
 the new world had to offer. 
 
 134 
 
He had a Frenchman's love of beauty and these 
 lovely islands took his eye. AYe \nll not doubt today 
 that he stopped here. How could he have passed by 
 this emerald gem set in the sapphire sea ? Low islands 
 he says he saw, beautiful ANith meadows and the 
 noblest trees, ranged over b}^ the fawn and stag and 
 fallow-deer. His words are no riddles to us. These 
 are the very islands that he saw, and they charm our 
 eyes today as they did his 300 years ago. The guides 
 told him they had once been inhabited by Indians but 
 the merciless wars that raged between the northern 
 and the southern tribes had driven them away. They 
 lay upon the war path, right in the track of carnage. 
 Caniaderigarunte the natives called it — the gateway. 
 It was indeed the very gate through which the tides 
 of ancient Indian battle ebbed and flowed, — the fairest 
 spot on earth, almost, and yet the most exposed and 
 perilous. The coming of the white man was not the 
 coming of peace but rather the coming of more deadly 
 war. Here, where the red man's council fires had 
 burned, the white man's fort was built, — the first 
 TN^thin the boundaries that embrace Vermont, and, in 
 the shelter of the fort, the earliest Christian chapel. 
 In 1665 or '66 the fort was built by Captain De La 
 Motte and the first mass was said. That is the simple 
 story, but think how much it means. The pale-face 
 did bring war, war tliat was to sweep native races to 
 their doom, war, even T\ith his own kind, ruthless and 
 insatiable. But he brought with him also the holy, 
 blessed truths that will yet overcome all hearts and 
 make all war impossible. Fort St. Anne was burned 
 by the French themselves but five years later. It was 
 only a halting hesitating step, a foot thrust out into 
 
 135 
 
the wild and then withdrawn; yet it marked the be- 
 ginning of a movement in this valley that was to be 
 continued for a century, — a determined but unsuc- 
 cessful effort to plant the banner of the fleur-de-lis 
 in the very heart of New England. Here the two 
 proudest nations of the old world were to have their 
 final grapple for the fairest portion of the new. As 
 it had been before the white man came so was it still 
 to be, — the valley of beauty was the highway of war. 
 The basin of the St. Lawrence was peopled by the 
 French. The coast of the Atlantic from Cape Breton 
 to the south was peopled by their hated rivals. That 
 was enough. Here ran the unpeopled passage-way 
 between the two, and for a hundred years none but a 
 fool would have built a home beyond the shelter of 
 a fort in all these fertile acres. Swanton had a half- 
 breed settlement, perhaps, from 1700 to 1760. Over 
 there on Windmill Point in Alburg, in 1780, the 
 French tried hard to keep a foothold, but it was soon 
 abandoned. The same year or the next they began 
 their southern Gibraltar at Crown Point in Fort St. 
 Frederick; and there and at Chimney Point on the 
 eastern shore, a musket-shot away, a little French vil- 
 lage sprang up and flourished for 25 or 30 years. But 
 that is all the tale. The rest is the story of fortifica- 
 tions built, abandoned or destroyed, rebuilt, retaken 
 or given to the flames, — like old Fort Carillon that 
 afterwards became Ticonderoga. 
 
 In 1757 the greatest man in England took the 
 reins and in two years the French dream of North 
 American dominion had dissolved. William Pitt was 
 master. Quebec was taken. Crown Point and Ticon- 
 deroga were in English hands, and the red horrors 
 
 136 
 
of 150 years were to be thenceforward but a thrilling 
 fireside tale. 
 
 The legends of that ghastly time lie all around 
 us; and memories of the later wars that swept the 
 lake are thick as leaves of summer and colored like 
 the leaves of autumn with glory and romance. We 
 have only to reach out our hands to take them. For 
 seven days now the conjurer's wand has been waved 
 over this lovely valley calling the dead to life. We 
 have gone through the wicket gate of old Fort Ti step 
 for step T^dtli Allen. We have seen Arnold, still wear- 
 ing the rose of his loyalty uncankered bj^ the worm 
 of treason. We have fought ^^dth him his desperate 
 fight at Valcour and leaped mth him from his flaming 
 bowsprit at Panton. We have watched the British 
 fleet weigh anchor off this shore and move southward 
 to its doom at the hands of the invincible Macdon- 
 ough. Memorial and procession, speech and song and 
 pageant have taken up the threads of ancient, half- 
 forgotten life, and made the glowing pattern live 
 anew. Again we see the plumed and painted savage 
 on the trail, the settler working mth his flint-lock in 
 the hollow of his arm, the highlander in his plaid, 
 the hireling Hessian in his scarlet coat, the colonist in 
 his deer skin or his buff and blue, the French and 
 British regulars who wear upon their breasts the 
 trophies of world-famous battles over-sea. And as we 
 look we seem to see the gathering of the nations, not 
 now for war but for the beginning of a new era under 
 happier skies. 
 
 Three hundred years. It sounds like eternity 
 in the ears of a child. And yet four mortal lives, and 
 those not very long, might compass it. There must be 
 
 137 
 
many living in the world today whose great-grand- 
 fathers could have remembered 1609. In the long 
 march of the world's progress it is less than a watch 
 in the night. There have been periods of three hun- 
 dred years that signified nothing in the life of man. 
 They came and went like waves upon the beach, 
 leaving no mark behind them. But the three hundred 
 years that lies behind us in our thought today has 
 filled the earth with marvels. Even the physical as- 
 pect of the earth has been transformed. In 1609 the 
 Western Hemisphere was scarcely pricked by the ex- 
 plorer, and see it now! Africa was a desert and a 
 jungle. It is swarming now with eager nations. Asia 
 was a mystery and a dream, a fabulous, enchanted 
 palace whose gold and ivory portals western feet wer(3 
 not to pass. Its doors are open now and east and 
 west are mingling. Three centuries ago the Pacific 
 was a sail-less sea. Now on its opposing shores the 
 eastern and western worlds stand face to face and 
 the struggles and rivalries of the coming age will be 
 upon its bosom. Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, 
 the Central and South American Republics — what 
 were these? They were not even names three cen- 
 turies ago. Even Europe, that has sent her millions 
 to all quarters of the globe, has, herself, increased 
 enormously in numbers. In the 19tli century alone 
 her population more than doubled. 
 
 We seem standing in the presence of a miracle. 
 And yet all these changes are as nothing to the 
 changes that have come to pass in the life of man 
 through the discoveries of science. Modern science — 
 practical modern science — began with Francis Bacon, 
 and he did not publish his Novum Organum until 
 
 138 
 
1620 — less than three centuries a^o. He taught men 
 to invent by teaching them how to study nature, and 
 died in consequence of an experiment. Following 
 the path he pointed out and turning their backs on 
 the barren speculation of the ancients, men have made 
 existence on this planet a comfort and a joy to 
 millions where it was once a gift hardly to be ac- 
 cepted. For it is not merely that we make a thousand 
 miles today as quickly and more easily than our 
 ancestors could make ten or twenty. It is not that 
 we speak with each other across continents, and flash 
 our thought and feeling under the deep sea, or make 
 the waves of air bear messages from one world to the 
 other. It is not that the wealth of the east is brought 
 to the door of the west and the product of the west is 
 poured out upon the threshold of the east. This is 
 not the true and solid ground for our rejoicing; but 
 that by all these means and many others the life of 
 common men upon the globe has been made some- 
 thing better. The fat years now are able to help out 
 the lean. India in her famine may now be fed by 
 Kansas in her plenty. Earthshaken Sicily may 
 perhaps find hope and succor in a battleship that 
 flies the stars and stripes. Multitudes, not here and 
 there a solitary man, may feel the broadening in- 
 fluence of travel. All may know what all the rest 
 are doing. And that means confidence. It means 
 the end of ignorant mistrust and fear and so it 
 means the end of half the cause of war. Once all 
 peoples were strangers to each other, and stranger 
 was another name for enemy. And so it is that all 
 the rest science has done for men is almost nothing 
 to the blessing it has brought about in this, that we 
 
 139 
 
are nearer to a world-wide union, to that happy time 
 the noble hearted Burns foretold ' ' when man to man 
 the world o'er shall brothers be for a' that." 
 
 Then see how the forms of government have 
 changed since Champlain visited this island. Feud- 
 alism was indeed already doomed. It was singing 
 its swan song by the lips of Shakespeare. A new 
 spirit had passed over Europe. It was to take genera- 
 tions to throw off the yoke. It is not yet thrown off 
 entirely. But there was not a single free government 
 in the world three hundred years ago. There was 
 not a single nation that recognized the obvious fact 
 that I have no more right to govern you than you 
 have to govern me, — that every one who is expected 
 to obey the law has a right to be heard in saying 
 what that law shall be. I say there was not a single 
 state in the world 300 years ago that had the sense 
 or justice to admit that simple truth — not even 
 with respect to its men, to say nothing of its women. 
 Now we have advanced so far that many governments 
 do admit in theory or in practice that their just powers 
 are derived entirely from the governed. Wiiat a 
 gain is that ! A year before the date we are observ- 
 ing John Milton was born in London. His life spans 
 the English Revolution, the highest achievement, the 
 crowning glory of the English race. A century later 
 came our own brave struggle for independence. And 
 that was not at bottom a struggle between Great 
 Britain and the colonies, but a grapple Detween Whig 
 and Tory, a conflict that was going on on both sides 
 of the Atlantic. Then came the French Revolution 
 freeing France, and Europe, too, from the intolerable 
 tyranny of the past, and destined to open the prison 
 
 140 
 
door for every people. And the French Revolution 
 was in large part a consequence of our own. Look 
 about the world today. See how the principles of 
 free government, encouraged by their success upon 
 this continent, are shaking every throne upon the 
 globe. Look at Russia travailing in the throes of her 
 new birth of freedom. See Young Turkey on the 
 shores of the Bosporus making good its claim to 
 constitutional government. See Persia awaking from 
 her revery and old China turning from the slumber 
 of four thousand years. We marvel at the changes 
 that have come to pass in the appearance of the 
 earth since 1609. We marvel still more at the changes 
 in the life of man through the wizardry of science. 
 But here is a marvel that cheapens both of these, — 
 the coming of the common man into his own. The 
 reign of the common people has begun. The fact 
 of deepest import in this wonderful era is not Dis- 
 covery nor Developement, no, not even Science. It 
 is Democracy, — man shaking off the fetters that have 
 bound him in all ages and standing erect and free 
 as God would have him stand. Really that is ali 
 there is. The mere increase of numbers, the ifiere 
 spreading of mankind through distant lands, that 
 is, in itself, no rational ground for our rejoicing. 
 Even the revelations of science would not justify our 
 joy if they meant nothing more than a new might 
 in the hands of the old masters. What we exult in 
 is the tremendous fact that now for the first time 
 in the history of the world the whole race moves 
 together. Intelligence is so diffused and freedom is 
 so general that every addition to knowledge or to 
 power is an addition to a common store and all men 
 
 141 
 
are made richer. That was not so in other times. 
 There was great learning then, but it was kept in 
 some close cult, like that of the priests in Egypt. 
 There was transcendent art but it was for the few, 
 not for the many. Nero held the supreme artist of 
 his age a prisoner for life to decorate his private 
 palace, the famous House of Gold. Science was 
 carried far in individual cases. The chemist and 
 artisan of the ancient day wrought miracles whose 
 secret modern times have not discovered. But their 
 skill and cunning perished with them for it was not, 
 as ours is, the possession of the race. The art and 
 learning of the antique world, except, perhaps, the 
 learning and the art of Greece, carried the seeds 
 of decay in its own bosom in this very fact, that it 
 did not trust the people — it did not give itself unto 
 the world. Our art and science does, and so it lives 
 and grows and ever will. For the way to call the 
 heaven-born genius forth is to give the opportunity 
 of culture and enlightenment to all. Educate the 
 millions, and while you are making of the millions 
 better men and safer citizens, you are making sure 
 of that half dozen really master minds among them 
 whose contributions to the common stock of the 
 world's power and knowledge will recompense a 
 hundred fold the outlay you have lavished upon all. 
 Edison was a poor, uncultivated boy; yet he found 
 his opportunity because he lived in a time and land 
 where opportunity is universal. What is the chance 
 that he would have come to light in the middle 
 ages? Look at Orville and Wilbur Wright leading 
 the world to the dominion of the air. Quiet, obscure 
 men — they would have gone unnoticed to their graves 
 
 142 
 
if it had not been for freedom and the common school. 
 These are the returning harvest of the seed our fathers 
 sowed. Trust the people, make education common 
 as the street, and you shall reap your reward in the 
 steamboat and the telegraph, in Eiiiiersons and 
 Lincolns, in Marconi and St. Gaudens. 
 
 We cannot claim that in the realm of art, letters 
 and philosophy we have outstript the past. Lest 
 we should wax too proud it may be well to acknowledge 
 here and now that the masterpieces of poetry, paint- 
 ing and sculpture, the deepest broodings of the human 
 spirit over the riddles of destiny, are still to be looked 
 for back of 1609. But there never was before so 
 wide a knowledge of the truth, such capacity for the 
 appreciation of the beautiful in the world at large, 
 so vast and fit an audience for the poet and the seer. 
 And if the product of the last three centuries has 
 not put the past to shame it has been noble and in- 
 spiring, and filled to overflowing with a love of man 
 that is worth all the selfish splendors of the past. 
 No great writer any longer sneers, as even Shake- 
 speare sometimes did, at the man below him. There 
 is no longer any poetry in that. The world-poeia 
 bears the title of the Son of Man. 
 
 And so we have come back in the end to the 
 point that we set out from, to the chapel and the mass. 
 For it is not clearer to our eyes that summer follows 
 spring than that the beneficent changes we have traced 
 today with gratitude and joy have followed from 
 the teachings of the Man of Galilee. It was He who 
 taught us the divinity of man — all the rest flows from 
 that — the unsuspected majesty of human nature. 
 That is why man may not be enslaved. That is 
 
 143 
 
why he shall not be left forever in ignorance or 
 poverty or shame. We come back at last, through the 
 things that are ever changing, to the things that 
 never change. It is as though we had been sitting 
 here in the shadow of the old fort and listening to 
 the chanting of the priests in that first Christian 
 service — and then there had broken in upon the music 
 the rattle of muskets, the yell of the savage, the 
 scream of the victim, the shouting of seamen, the 
 thunder of cannon, the noise of the tempest, the pipes 
 of the clansmen, the song of the pioneer, the long, 
 reverbera^ting whistle of the steamer, the rumble 
 and roar of the approaching train, the hum of industry 
 through all the valley, the Babel of multitudes that 
 come and go — and then again silence had fallen, and 
 we heard the sweet and solemn chant still going on, 
 and caught the words, ^'Deposuit potentes de sede et 
 exalt avit Inimiles/' Ah yes! He has put down the 
 mighty from their seat and has exalted them of low 
 degree. After all, that is the only reality — the rest 
 is all a dream. 
 
 144 
 
THOMAS BARTLETT: AN OLD-TIME 
 ADVOCATE. 
 
 An article published in the Green Bag, February 1896. 
 
 The fame of a unique advocate lingers among the 
 fading traditions of the Vermont Bar. Through all 
 this country-side, where he was known, Thomas 
 Bartlett is still ''a name to conjure with." 
 
 He was born June 18, 1808, studied law with 
 Isaac Fletcher in Lyndon, Vermont, practised in this 
 section for forty years or so, was sent to Congress in 
 1851, and died September 12, 1876. Meagre as this 
 statement is, it will be enough for our purpose. Even 
 these dates will have no interest for most of those 
 who read these pages. If anything about him can 
 hold their attention it will be a delineation of the 
 orator himself. And a remiarkable orator he certainly 
 was. Deficient in early education, with many and 
 gross faults of style when judged by the purest 
 standards, there is yet no doubt that, as a jury advo- 
 cate, he spoke at all times effectively, and often witn 
 genuine eloquence and power. He had precisely the 
 make-up of an orator. Large-hearted, generous, sensi- 
 tive, sympathetic, impulsive, woman-like in tender- 
 ness, leonine in anger — laughter and tears alike at his 
 command, and as for language — well, he had kissed 
 the blarney stone. Witli happier fortune, with 
 severer training, with firmer self-control, he might 
 have been, unless all reports about him are false, 
 
 145 
 
among the greatest orators that ever spoke. In the 
 first place he had those physical advantages which 
 Wendell Phillips used to say, in speaking of O'Con- 
 nell, are "half the battle." Of royal height, (six 
 feet four, I think), nobly proportioned, with grave 
 and striking features, with a halting step and a palsied 
 arm, infirmities v/hich, as he managed them, really 
 increased the impressiveness of his bearing, — he had 
 only to '^ address himself to motion like as he would 
 speak" to find his audience half won already in 
 interest and sympathy. And then, when he did speak, 
 a voice of unsurpassed strength, depth and richness 
 did the rest. Fluent to a fault, almost, yet carefully 
 discriminating in the choice of words, he poured be- 
 fore his hearers, often unlettered though they Avere, 
 his wealth of diction, imagery, allusion, heedless of 
 any fear that it might prove beyond their compre- 
 hension. This does not mean that he did not gauge 
 his argument to his hearers. He did. Before a back 
 district jury, in some justice's court, he could be 
 a match in coarseness for Swift or Smollett, or Rabe- 
 lais himself. Nothing was too malodorous for his 
 use, if it was really of use. But he never forgot 
 that men often admire what they possess the least of, 
 — that in a speech fine language and lofty sentiment 
 may appeal strikingly to those wlio Imve formed 
 but a slender acquaintance with either in every-day 
 life, and he rarely failed to flatter his listeners with 
 a liberal supply of both. 
 
 How many make the opposite mistake! When 
 a New Hampshire politician rose to address the little 
 town of Carroll in that state, and being the worse 
 for liquor, began, "Fellow citizens, I have rosen" — 
 
 146 
 
then stopped, dimly conscious that something was 
 \^Tong, his colleague on the platform whispered i)n- 
 patiently, ''Damn it, Jake, go on. Rosen's good 
 enough for Carroll;" and he went on. That was not 
 Bartlett's idea. He would rather have endorsed 
 Rufus Choate's reply to the critic who asked him 
 how he could expect a commonplace jury to appreci- 
 ate his rhetoric. ''They appreciate which side it's 
 on," said Choate, " and that's enough." As -^Ith 
 Choate, too, the study of language was his delight. 
 He would turn the pages of a dictionary by the hour. 
 He came to Isaac Fletcher's office at Lyndon 
 Corner one morning to study law, — the greenest, 
 gawkiest lad in all these parts. With a few years 
 of district schooling behind Mm, and a term or two 
 in the Academy, he was to be from henceforth, in 
 education, a law unto himself. What wonder that 
 he never endured the rigorous discipline that makes 
 a reasoner, never became a thorough lawyer. He 
 had that laz^^, moody strength which, after each great 
 effort, lapses into long periods of indolent repose 
 wherein the brooding genius nourishes itself for 
 another flight. On idle summer days he would sit 
 from morning till night before his office door, steeped 
 in the mellow sunshine, oblivious to all that passed 
 around him. And yet he loved his books, — knew his 
 Blackstone well and could plant his feet, at need, on 
 the solid foundations of the law. It seems to have 
 been a favorite device with him to give an unimportant 
 case interest and dignity by clearly identifying it 
 with some "fundamental principle," which, as he 
 would proclaim in sounding phrase, "underlies the 
 whole fabric of jurisprudence, — the \dndication of 
 
 147 
 
which has twice deluged England with blood and more 
 recently our own fair land in fraternal gore." We 
 shall be apt to smile at the Buzfuzzian period. Per- 
 haps his rival smiled, too, but he did so at his peril. 
 It did its work. It impressed the imagination of his 
 jury and tempted them to turn from, the confusion 
 of claims and counter claims they hardly under- 
 stood back to a broad and simple truth where the 
 mind felt that it could rest in safety. His style 
 must often have been pompous, grandiloquent. Yet 
 no one could more deftly prick an overblown bubble for 
 an opponent. I think it was Stoddard B. Colby, an 
 accomplished advocate of that day, who once sat down 
 after an impressive appeal which left the jury on the 
 verge of tears. Bartlett rose and began in funereal 
 tones, mth impeturbable gravity: ''Dearly beloved 
 brethren, let us continue these solemn services by 
 reading a brief portion of the original WTit." The 
 strain was too intense, the spell was snapped and 
 tears gave way to laughter. This faculty of reducing 
 his antagonist 's position to absurdity, by saying ' ' such 
 a simple thing in such a solemn way," was character- 
 istic, and often did him yeoman service. Ossian Ray, 
 then a young lawyer, was summing up a case of 
 assult and battery against Bartlett 's client. In an 
 unhappy moment he declared, ''We do not demand 
 an exorbitant sum. We do not ask for a million 
 dollars. ' ' The defendant sat within the bar, shabbily 
 dressed, unkempt, a picture of poverty. Bartlett rose 
 slowly to reply. "I knew my Brother Ray as a boy. 
 He was a generous, noble-spirited lad. He has grown 
 to be a generous, magnanimous man. He says he does 
 not demand a million dollars of my client. I am 
 
 148 
 
glad and grateful that he does not. For it* he slionld 
 demand it, and you, gentlemen of the jury, should 
 render a verdict for that amount, and my client 
 should be compelled to pay it, he would be reduced 
 to comparative proverty ; it would seriously impair his 
 annual rents and profits." All this spoken vith a 
 dignified courtesy, no curl of the lips, no twinkle in 
 the eye, not a suggestion in voice or countenance that 
 he was conscious of any incongruity whatever between 
 his ragged client and this stately acknowledgment. 
 The effect may be imagined; it can hardly be de- 
 scribed. 
 
 If he was not a power in Congress his case was 
 not the first proof that eminence at the bar is no 
 guaranty of success in a deliberative body. Perhaps 
 he was not specially fitted to succeed there. But the 
 reason why he failed, to start ^^dth, lies in this story. 
 The 4th of July, 1851, was a gala day in Saint Johns- 
 bury. There was a big tent and Bartlett was to be 
 one of the speakers. "Was to be," for nobody was. 
 A crowd of Dartmouth College students came up from 
 Hanover, and, stationed A^dth tin horns at the opposite 
 end of the pa^dlion, dro'^Tied with their noisy rivalry 
 every voice that tried to make itself heard, even 
 the lion roar of Bartlett. The chagrined orator 
 published an angry letter reproving the scamps, and 
 the scamps replied in a superior effort, holding up 
 to ridicule the lawyer's well-knoA\Ti weaknesses and 
 pompous mannerisms. When Bartlett took his seat 
 in Congress he found himself already introduced to 
 his fellow members by the irresponsible hoodlums, 
 who had seen to it that a copy of their reply should 
 be lying on every desk. His vulnerable point was 
 
 149 
 
exposed, and when, later in the session, he rose to 
 speak, he laid himself open to a sharp thrust from 
 Polk of Tennessee. Warming as he went on, he began 
 to soar, and finally declared in majestic tones, "Sir, 
 were it not for the rules of the House, I would pour 
 upon the opponents of this measure the phials of my 
 wrath." Polk leaped to his feet, and intimating that 
 fun was coming; moved "that the rules be suspended, 
 and the gentleman permitted to pour.'' To pour 
 under such circumstances was impossible even for 
 Bartlett, and he sat do^^^l discomfited. 
 
 His chief failing was intemperance; and this 
 reminds me of his best witticism, which had this fail- 
 ing for its subject. Like many other Democrats he 
 became a Republican in the sixties. Being called out 
 at a political meeting to make his first speech from 
 his changed standpoint, he was too tipsy to stand with- 
 out help, but steadying himself, he thus placated his 
 audience: "Fellow citizens, I was born in Demo- 
 cracy, I was nursed in Democracy, reared in Demo- 
 cracy; I have lived in Democracy all my days, and 
 some of its pernicious and damnable habits and prac- 
 tices still cling to me — as you can see." Thereupon 
 he launched into one of his finest efforts. 
 
 Nobody could tell a story better. He had a 
 Lincoln-like aptness in illustration. Once he tried 
 a damage case against a circus, which travelled under 
 the name of Sears and Company, for so negligently 
 putting up its seats that the plaintiff fell and was 
 injured. The defendants claimed that the circus 
 belonged to Mr. Faxon of Liverpool, and that he alone 
 was responsible. ''Gentlemen of the jury," said the 
 advocate, "I have a dog, and a mean cur he is, too. 
 
 150 
 
He kills your sheep. You call on me for damages. 
 I say, 'Oh, no. The cur wears my name on hi^ 
 collar. He comes when I whistle; he goes when I 
 say ''ste-boy. " But the dog belongs to Mr. Faxon of 
 Liverpool.' " 
 
 No wonder he held the common people in his 
 hand. He was one of them. When the news got 
 out that Uncle Tom was to ' ' plead a case, ' ' the court- 
 house was soon filled. He was sometimes accused 
 of turning his back on the jury-box to tickle the 
 outer benches. The criticism was a shallow one. He 
 never forgot the panel. But lie knew better than to 
 ignore the larger jury that sat by. He understood 
 how contagious sympathy is, and running his eye 
 along the rows of responsive faces outside the bar, 
 he read the feelings of the more guarded jurymen 
 before him. There were years when to retain Bartlett 
 in a jary case was considered tantamount to victory 
 — that is, if he should prove to be himself when the 
 day of the trial came, which was not always the 
 fact, for reasons before explained. I suspect the 
 courthouse is still a more dramatic place in the coun- 
 try than in the city. Everj^ case is more or less of 
 a play anywhere, but here the draw,aUs personae are 
 better known. It was even more truly so in his day. 
 There was msmy a "celebrated cause.'' Neighbors 
 gathered to watch its course and nudge each other 
 at evers^ home thrust of witness or counsel. Every- 
 })ody knew everybody. For a quarter of a century 
 Tom Bartlett was the star actor in these familiar 
 and exciting dramas. In one of them the defendant 
 was a poor mdow, and the plaintiff a rich man with 
 a reputation for hard-fistedness. The plaintift' seemed 
 
 151 
 
to have the law on his side, but it looked like perse- 
 cution. Bartlett assisted for the defense. When 
 he reached the climax of his appeal to the jury he 
 turned suddenly upon his colleague. "I am here 
 at the solicitation of my young brother, serving with- 
 out scrip and mthout price. I told him I would 
 make no charge. I reconsider. I will charge, and he 
 must now promise to repay. "When mjy shattered 
 form shall be lying in the grave, and my wife shall 
 be set upon by legal robbers, and he is standing by 
 with warm heart and large experience, let him come 
 to her defence as I have struggled to defend his client 
 here today. Dale, will you do it?" ''I will," the 
 young man answered, as he grasped the outstretched 
 hand amid the breathless silence of the astonished 
 court room. It was the finishing touch. The jury 
 melted, and so did the plaintiff's case. 
 
 How unlike our own must have been the at- 
 mosphere of courts where such a scene was possible. 
 If the advocate should return could he repeat his 
 former triumphs? Hardly. At least not with the 
 same training and equipment. I suppose it is not 
 to be regretted that the day of such successes has 
 gone by, that business now is done like business, 
 that law and fact are coming to weigh more and more 
 and rhetoric and pathos less and less. And yet it 
 will be long before those who loved to witness such 
 thrilling episodes under the old regime will cease to 
 sigh over the prosy trials of today. For still the 
 old men who gather in the court rooms of these 
 counties measure each new advocate against the 
 shadow of this man's passing fame, and when, as still 
 may sometimies happen, a little breeze of eloquence 
 
 152 
 
blows through the drowsy precincts of the court, they 
 turn to one another and remark, ''That's not so bad, 
 neighbor, after all," and, "N.o. That sounds a little 
 mite like Thomas Bartlett. ' ' 
 
WHO DID SIN— THIS MAN OR HIS 
 PARENTS? 
 
 An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Incorporators of 
 
 the Washington Home for Foundlings, December, 
 
 1912. 
 
 "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which 
 was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, 
 saying. Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
 that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither 
 hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the 
 works of God should be made manifest in him, ' ' And 
 He gavt him sight. The disciples' question was spec- 
 ulative: the IMaster's reply was practical. The ques 
 tion implied that other men might stand apart and 
 let the afflicted bear the consequences of sin. The 
 answer implied that afflictions are opportunities for 
 good men to do the works of God. Men are not to 
 seek in the causes of other men's afflictions an excuse 
 for their own hard-heartedness. But if we relieve sin 
 from the rigor of its consequences shall we not en- 
 courage sin? So thought the heirs of Joshua Pierce 
 when they attempted to defeat their ancestor's gen- 
 erous gift. ''A hospital for foundlings," so they 
 argued, ''tends to evil and ought not to be supported." 
 What answer did the Supreme Court make to that 
 contention ? Here is what they said : 
 
 ''Hospitals for foundlings existed in the 
 Roman Empire. They increased when 
 
 154 
 
Christianity triumphed. They exist in all 
 countries of Europe, and tliey exist in this 
 country. There are no beneficiaries more 
 needing protection, care, and kindness, none 
 more blameless, and there are none who have 
 stronger claims, than these waifs, helpless 
 and abandoned upon the sea of life. ' ' 
 In these words we seem to hear an echo of the 
 Voice that said, ''I must work the works of Him that 
 sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man 
 can work. As long as I am in the world I am the 
 Light of the World." And He spat upon the ground 
 and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 
 I have not inquired what form of religion Joshua 
 Pierce professed. The institution he founded does 
 not bear the name of any sect. Even if he had never 
 gone to church I think we should have preferred 
 his society to that of his heirs, no matter how orthodox 
 they may have been ; for this work of his shows clearly 
 that he had come close to the heart of Him who 
 took the little children in his arms and blessed them. 
 It was in 1869 that Joshua Pierce died, leaving 
 a will which gave fourteen lots on Fifteenth street to 
 trustees, to be turned over by them to a corporation, 
 when the same should be legally established, and to be 
 used as a site for a hospital for foundlings. The 
 devise was attacked by the heirs, with General Ben- 
 jamin F. Butler as their counsel. It was defended 
 by Walter S. Cox, Esq., afterwards a distinguished 
 judge of the Supreme Court of our District. The 
 case was won for the charity in the District Court and 
 the judgment was affirmed in the Supreme Court of 
 the United States without a dissenting voice. But 
 
 155 ' 
 
the lawsuit had dragged on for several years. It 
 was 1877 before the will was finally established. 
 Then the noble men and women of that day who saw 
 the opportunity for good that was presented set to 
 work to raise money for a building. They secured 
 forty thousand dollars and built the Home. But 
 this had taken ten years mjore, and it was not until 
 1887 that its doors were opened. During the twenty- 
 five years that have succeeded there have come in 
 over its threshold hundreds of these little cast-aways, 
 to find shelter, warmth and comiort, skillful care 
 and tender nursing, and to go out again, not to the 
 cold doorstep or the vacant lot, but to hom^es that made 
 them welcome and to which they brought a compen- 
 sating joy. Cautiously and prudently their homes 
 have been selected, where they have been received, 
 not as apprenticed servants, not as step-children, but 
 as adopted sons and daughters, under the sanction of 
 the court, and taking with their adoption the inherit- 
 able blood. 
 
 This work has owed much of its success to those 
 generous and gracious women, the Board of Lady 
 Vistors and the Pierce Guild, who have found ways 
 and means to supplement the insufficient revenues of 
 the Home and furnish comforts and conveniences which 
 the directors have been unable to supply. Year by 
 year the Government, too, has lent its aid, first by a 
 lump sum appropriated annually, and, since the crea- 
 tion of the Board of Charities, by a certain sum that 
 is paid for each child that is entered through the 
 approval of that Board. About one-third of the cost 
 of maintenance is thus provided by payments from 
 the Government, and a considerably larger number of 
 
 156 
 
children could be received and cared for with great 
 advantage to the income of the Home if only more 
 frequent assignments to the Home could be secured. 
 Some revenue is received also from poor parents, un- 
 mlling to part with their children, who are permitted 
 to enter them in the Home for temporary care. But 
 the increased cost of living has borne hard upon the 
 Home, and it is sadly in need of funds. Its affairs 
 are directed by a Board of Incorporators. An in- 
 corporator is anybody who is willing to give five dollars 
 a year. You are all eligible. Our doctrine of election 
 is that which was vouched for by Henry Ward 
 Beecher: ''The elect are those that will, the non-elect 
 are these that won't." We urge you tonight to make 
 your calling and election sure. We need you. The 
 Home needs you The little ones are reaching out 
 their hands. If 3^ou have never visited the Home, 
 please do. On Fifteenth street, between R and S. 
 You will see the name over the door, The Washington 
 Home for Foundlings. Go in and see what kind 
 hearts and skillful hands have been able to do, even 
 with the insufficient means at their command, to turn 
 misery into happiness and to make that happiness, in 
 turn, minister to the happiness of others by bringing 
 the light of children's faces into childless homes. Go 
 and see the little ones for yourselves. See what is 
 being done for them. Think of what their lives may 
 be both to themselves and to others, and then tliink 
 of what their lives must have been if, in the shape 
 of this blessed institution, the Son of Man had not 
 passed by. They come, feeble and sick ofttimes. 
 Here, tended with expert skill and tireless devotion, 
 by nurses and a medical staff generous and humane, 
 
 157 
 
the death rate among them has been reduced year by 
 year until its smallness is a matter of surprise to 
 all. Education, strictly, does not come within the 
 scope of such a home, yet for those who remain to 
 such an age as needs it a kindergarten is provided. 
 But before that age is reached the effort of their bene- 
 factors is to find for them a home — a real, true home. 
 We are now approaching the Christmas season, when 
 of all seasons in the year the home seems dearest to 
 us — to us who have a home. For us the hearth-fire 
 burns. Shall it not burn for these little ones as well? 
 In one of those charming epistles of hospitality 
 which the poet Horace sent his friends from the Sabine 
 farm this phrase occurs: Tibi splendet focus. 
 
 For thee the hearth-fire shineth! So he sang 
 Who halved with Virgil the Augustan crown. 
 
 And if the million splendors that upsprang 
 
 From sacked and flaming cities have died down. 
 
 Smile, gentle Sabine, for your little ray 
 
 Of Roman firelight reaches us today. 
 
 The hearth-fires are the beacons of the race; 
 
 From age to age their happy light is passed. 
 By such as kindly burned the King shall trace 
 
 The course of His own coming at the last. 
 And this shall be the sign that He is come, 
 That even His poorest child has found a home. 
 
 158 
 
WHITTIER : A QUAKER WHO BECAME 
 A MARTIAL POET 
 
 A Centennial Address, at the Friends' Meeting House in 
 Washington, D. C, December 17, 1907. 
 
 "Oh, for a knight like Bayard, 
 
 Without reproach or fear; 
 My light glove on his casque of steel, 
 
 My love-knot on his spear! 
 
 Oh, for the white plume floating 
 
 Sad Zutphen's field above — 
 The lion heart in battle. 
 
 The woman's heart in love! 
 
 Oh, that man once more were manly. 
 Woman's pride, and not her scorn: 
 
 That once more the pale young mother 
 Dared to boast, A man is born!" 
 
 One hundred years ago today a pale young 
 mother might have made that boast with perfect 
 truth if God had lifted for her eyes the curtain of 
 the century. 
 
 Nature seems to delight in antithesis. She must 
 have been in her most ironical mood when she pre- 
 pared to bring forth from that quiet Quaker house- 
 hold the greatest war-bard of the age. For Wliittier 
 was the laureate of the greatest moral conflict, cul- 
 minating in the greatest martial conflict, the world 
 has ever seen. He was the ansAver to his o^ti fiery 
 question : 
 
 159 
 
•'Where's the man for Massachusetts? 
 Where's the voice to speak her free? 
 Where's the hand to light up bon-fires from her 
 mountains to the sea?" 
 
 Frail as a girl, he carried a heart that throbbed 
 as if it had been the battle-drum of his generation. 
 Shy in bearing and hestitating in speech, he was the 
 most eloquent voice of his day. "Gentlest of the 
 Sons of Thunder" — so Gail Hamilton addressed himi; 
 and there was never a truer title; for gentle though 
 he was, he was a Son of Thunder. Even in appear- 
 ance there was a hint of something martial — tall, 
 erect, with straight black brows and, underneath, 
 those eyes, dark and "glowing like anthracite coal," 
 eyes almost as glorious as his kinsman's, Daniel Webs- 
 ter. The Quaker coat was buttoned around a breast 
 as brave as Bayard's. His face, grave and serious 
 as a psalm, would break into a smile of indescribable 
 sweetness, where lights and shadows chased each other 
 to and fro. "Worn with suffering, weary with loss of 
 sleep, and weighed down with the gloomy sense of 
 his own imperfections, he nevertheless had a droll 
 and quiet humor that always kept him sane. He 
 devoted the best part of his life to the destruction 
 of the peculiar institution of the South, and, unlike 
 somte other Northern poets, refused to omit from his 
 completed works his anti-slavery poems ; yet he is to- 
 day the most popular of Northern poets in the South. 
 He always preferred a worship utterly devoid of cere- 
 monial; he launched the fiercest phillipic of his cen- 
 tury against the Pope ; and yet his verse is sprinkled 
 with poetic appreciations of the beautiful rites of 
 the mother church, and he himself declared that the 
 
 160 
 
creeds which separated Christians were notliing more 
 to him than spiders' webs. Always frail and often 
 ill, facing death again and again, he yet outlived 
 nearly all of his contemporaries and died at the great 
 age of eighty-four, A^erifying the witty prescription 
 of Dr. Holmes that to be sure of a long life one ought 
 to be born with an incurable disease. "We deprecate 
 pain and yet nothing is more certain than that suffer- 
 ing made him the saint he was. "I was born," he 
 said, 'SAnthout an atom of patience in my compos- 
 ition. I have tried to manufacture it as it was 
 needed. ' ' Critics have lamented that his great poetic 
 gift should have been spent on reformjs instead of 
 being dedicated to some purely artistic work; and 
 yet the candid student of Whittier's life closes the 
 book with the unclouded assurance that but for the 
 new birth that came to Whittier in the cause of anti- 
 slavery he never w^ould have been a poet at all. That 
 call to the help of the slave and his own feeble 
 health — those two things are all that saved him from 
 passing into history as an accomplished politician. 
 
 We are not here tonight to pay our debt to 
 Whittier but only to acknowledge it. The mighty 
 struggle of which he was a part came to its inevitable 
 close and passed into history. No one will ever be 
 able to read of it without reading of him. 
 
 For nearly thirty years after the downfall of 
 slavery he lived to write on many another theme, ful- 
 filling the wdsh he had expressed even while singing 
 that severer strain: 
 
 "Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong, 
 I leave the green and pleasant paths of song! 
 More dear to me some song of private worth, 
 
 161 
 
Some homely idyl of my native North, 
 Some summer pastoral of her inland vales, 
 Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales." 
 
 But, portrayer of New England life, as he was, 
 mmistrel of her Aveird and wondrous legendry, sing- 
 er of her beaury and her strength, poet of nature and 
 of man, of field and wood, of hill and ocean, and 
 likewise of the human soul, — faithful painter, gentle, 
 loving mystic, artist and saint in one, — he was some- 
 thing beyond all this. He was a prophet of the liv- 
 ing God ! The fire that burned in Daniel and Ezekiel 
 burned in him. His lips were touched with a coal 
 from o3' the same altar. "Woe is me," he cried, 
 ' ' that my mother bore me a m'an of strife and conten- 
 tion!" 
 
 No man can draw a true portrait of Whittier 
 without painting it against the dark and awful 
 background of human slavery. With the help of 
 climate and economic conditions the North had sloughed 
 off that horrible institution while it had fastened 
 itself with close and closer hold upon the South. But 
 Northern business was bound up with slavery and 
 cotton was king. When men began to agitate for the 
 abolition of slavery it was all their lives were worth. 
 Free speech itself was at stake. Mobs ruled every 
 Northern city. Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, 
 the building in which Whittier, then editing the 
 "Pennsylvania Freeman," had his office, was burned 
 to the ground in a pro-slavery riot on the day of its 
 dedication. In Boston Garrison was dragged through 
 the streets with a rope around his body and lodged in 
 jail to save his life. Whittier himself was repeatedly 
 mobbed, pelted with rotten eggs, and once stoned 
 
 162 
 
through the streets of Concord in New Hampshire. 
 Here in Washington, Dr. Crandall lay in jail until his 
 health was ruined, for lending to a brother physican 
 a copy of Whittier's pamphlet, ''Justice and Exped- 
 iency." Court and Congress, school and college, the 
 market, the pulpit, the press, the so-called patriot- 
 ism and respectability of the day, were all against 
 them. Anti-slavery was the sedition of the streets. 
 It was in such a time that the gentle Quaker, child 
 of the Muses, born to the serene life of the scholar 
 and loving, as he feared, too well, the praise and good 
 will of his fellow-men, took his place with the outcast 
 and the despised. No wonder that he said, ''Anti- 
 slavery owes me nothing. It made me what I am." 
 
 "No common wrong provoked his zeal; 
 The silken gauntlet that is thrown 
 In such a quarrel rings like steel." 
 
 Whittier wrote hundreds of poems before he gave 
 himself to the cause of the slave, yet not one of them 
 is reckoned today as of the slightest literary merit. He 
 was himself ashamed of them. In his completed 
 works, if they are included at all, they are relegated 
 to the appendix, and only serve to measure the vast 
 difference between the versifier and the poet. The 
 fact is, that the greatness of "Whittier lay in the 
 depth and earnestness of his moral nature. He 
 was not primarily an artist. No one knew it better 
 than he. "That last verse is a little long," he would 
 admit, ' ' but it expresses exactly what I want to say. ' ' 
 ' ' Did you : itend the alliteration in that title ? ' ' asked 
 an admirer. "I never in my life gave a thought to 
 such a matter," was the unaffected answer. P"'or 
 
 163 
 
years he pondered the history of the banished 
 Acadians, thinking to make of it a poem. At last, 
 Longfellow made it immortal in ''Evangeline." "I 
 am glad Longfellow did it," said Whittier. ''I should 
 have spoiled the artistic effect by giving vent to my 
 indignation over the injustice." His rhymes are 
 often imperfect, but there is a sweet accord of right 
 and reason that reconciles the heart. There is a 
 fervor in his verse that makes the lamest line leap 
 like a deer. 
 
 How shall we account for Whittier? Where 
 did he get the qualities that made him great? He 
 had a father who never wasted breath — so his son 
 declared — tall, strongly built, quick as a cat, prompt 
 and decisive in word and deed, an uncompromising 
 Quaker, lending small sympathy to his boy's love 
 of letters. He had a mother, loveliest and saintliest 
 of women, whose native refinement, dignified bearing 
 and benign expression impressed and charmed all who 
 knew her — fair in face, with dark expressive eyes — 
 for fifty years the guide, counsellor and friend of her 
 illustrious son. Then he had a sister, Elizabeth, whom 
 Colonel Higginson pronounced a wonder among 
 women — younger than Grireenleaf by eight years, his 
 pet in childhood, his closest literary friend in mature 
 life, the sharer of every enthusiasm and every danger, 
 — who often 
 
 "tuned his song 
 
 To sweeter music by her delicate ear." 
 
 ''No one can truly estimate the long celibate life 
 of the poet," said Higginson, "without bearing in 
 mind that he had at his own fireside the concentrated 
 wit and sympathy of all womankind in that one 
 
 164 
 
sister." There was his brother Matthew, five years 
 younger, yet stronger, quicker, more alert, taking the 
 lead in work and play. Greenleaf himself was by no 
 means precocious. He could never remember any- 
 thing that happened back of the time when he was 
 six years old. Dreamy, imaginative, apt to fall into 
 what his Uncle Moses called a "stood" — especially 
 when Uncle Moses was telling his marvelous tales of 
 the wild animals he had met. (Let us not think of 
 him as a fakir ! ) There was Aunt Mercy, — 
 
 "The sweetest woman ever Fate, 
 Perverse denied a household mate," 
 
 whose own life had not been without its touch of 
 tragedy and romance. 
 
 These made the family circle; these with the 
 schoolmaster, when the course of boarding round 
 brought him to "hold at the fire his favored place." 
 There was little companionship of books in those 
 first years. Thirty would number all. But those he 
 knew by heart, especially the Bible and the lives of 
 holy men. And there was the great beautiful, ever- 
 beckoning world of nature outside with its changing 
 seasons and all the glories of the sky. How he loved 
 it! How affluent he was in such possessions! 
 
 "I was rich in flowers and trees, 
 Humming-birds and honey-bees;' 
 For my sport the squirrel played. 
 Plied the snouted mole his spade; 
 For my taste the blackberry cone 
 Purpled over hedge and stone; 
 Laughed the brook for my delight 
 Through the day and through the night. 
 Whispering at the garden wall. 
 Talked with me from fall to fall." 
 
 165 
 
You see, the powers that were bent on making 
 him a poet were already at their work. No sect, how 
 ever narrow and ascetic, could stifle in such a boy the 
 love of beauty. Whittier, true to the faith of his 
 fathers, always protested against modern innovations 
 in the worship of the Society of Friends. He opposed 
 the introduction of music, saying, ''Two hundred 
 years of silence lias taken all the sing out of 
 Quakers." But it had not taken all the sing out of 
 this Quaker, as you see. Royally fed and becomingly 
 served he was too, the young Sybarite — not at all 
 after the Quaker fashion. Never was found anything 
 quite up to it afterwards: 
 
 "Oh, for festal dainties spread 
 Like my bowl of milk and bread! 
 Pewter spoon and bowl of wood 
 On the door-stone gray and rude." 
 
 The men who settled the North Atlantic coast 
 were a long time finding out that they could not 
 live in the new England as they had in the old. They 
 spent a couple of hundred years trying to toughen 
 themselves, their children and their cattle instead of 
 stopping up the cracks and putting on warm clothes. 
 We shall never know how much of Whittier 's ill- 
 health was chargeable to such exposure. He thought 
 a great deal of it was. The snow drifted across 
 his bed in winter; he went without flannels, he rode 
 for miles without an overcoat to meeting and there 
 sat in a sort of cold storage v^dth the elders. By the 
 time he was fifteen he had reached his full height 
 and soon after he broke dowTi his constitution, his 
 nephew and biographer informs us, by over-taxing 
 his young strength at the plow and flail. Yet even 
 
 166 
 
the hard, stiff lines of life taught him self-reliance, 
 self-devotion; and every homely feature of his toil- 
 some occupation, takes on a sort of glory in the im- 
 mortal picture he has painted of the New England 
 homestead and fireside circle when it found itself 
 snow-bound : 
 
 "Shut in from all the world without, 
 We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
 Content to let the north-wind roar 
 In baffled rage at pane and door. 
 While the red logs before us beat 
 The frost-line back with tropic heat." 
 
 One day the schoolmaster brought to the home 
 circle a copy of Burns. He read the poems and 
 interpreted the dialect. Greenleaf sat spell-bound 
 in his corner and when the reading was over he was 
 found to be in his "stood." Observing his interest 
 the master left the book with him, and what the 
 Scotch poet became to him thereafter, why should 
 I try to tell when Whittier has told it in such words as 
 these, written long years afterwards "on receiving a 
 sprig of heather?" 
 
 "I call to mind the summer day, 
 
 The early harvest mowing, 
 The sky with sun and clouds at play. 
 
 And flowers with breezes blowing. 
 
 How oft that day, with fond delay, 
 
 I sought the maple's shadow, 
 And sang with Burns the hours away 
 
 Forgetful of the meadow! 
 
 Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 
 
 I heard the squirrels leaping; 
 The good dog listened while I read, 
 
 And wagged his tail in keeping. 
 
 167 
 
New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 
 
 New glory over woman; 
 And daily life and duty seemed 
 
 No longer poor and common. 
 
 O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 
 
 I saw the Man uprising; 
 No longer common or unclean, 
 
 The child of God's baptizing!" 
 
 That poem, I think, gives us the truest insight 
 into the poet's education we shall ever get. For, we 
 all know, it is in such moments of over-mastering 
 love and admiration that the mind is drawn out, or 
 as we call it, educated. So Emerson confessed that a 
 few stolen hours with stray books, read under the 
 lid of his desk at the Latin School, had yielded him 
 more treasure than all the studies in the curriculum. 
 But it was more than education, it was almost con- 
 version. It taught him the true meaning of life; 
 it taught him the reverence due to woman and the 
 sacredness of man. Thenceforth he could never look 
 complacently upon any deed, law or institution that 
 tended to degrade a fellow man. 
 
 He had a good start on that road already. In 
 after years, when what called itself religion, was 
 trying to save the Union by justifying slavery, he 
 used to say with quiet sarcasm, "My father was an 
 old-fashioned Democrat and really believed in the 
 Preamble to the Bill of Rights and the Declaration 
 of Independence. It was never my privilege to hear 
 a pro-slavery sermon, and I grew up in blissful igno- 
 rance of the Gospel according to Parson Adams. ' ' At 
 school, the reading book was plentifully sprinkled 
 with anti-slavery prose and poetry. It w^as the 
 
 168 
 
common district school. Whittier never went to any 
 other until he was nineteen, and only went to this a 
 part of each year ; and even then he went, as he said, 
 to schoolmasters, who, with only two exceptions, 
 were unfit for the position. Yet even that lowly in- 
 stitution he has immortalized in verse which the 
 severest critic of his day admitted to be a perfect 
 poem : 
 
 "Still sits the school-house by the road, 
 A ragged beggar sleeping; 
 
 Around it still the sumachs grow, 
 And blackberry-vines are creeping." 
 
 He sat on the shoemaker's bench making slippers 
 until he had money enough to take a term or two 
 in the Academy. He taught school a single term and 
 by that time he had learned to write so well that 
 he was able to conduct a newspaper. But before that 
 he fell in with Garrison. 
 
 It came about in this way. His sister, unknown to 
 him, had sent some of his verses to Garrison who was 
 then editing a paper at Newburyport. "What children 
 they all were! Garrison himself was only twenty- 
 one and Whittier was but nineteen. The poem was 
 printed in the next issue. Whittier was at work 
 with his father beside the road, laying a stone wall, 
 when the mail carrier, going by, tossed the paper at 
 his feet. He opened it and in a sort of stupor saw 
 his name and verses. Again and again he opened and 
 stared at it until his fatlier sharply called him to 
 his work. Yet though he stared at it so often and 
 so long, he has assured us that he did not really read 
 a word. Soon after that. Garrison came out to see 
 him, and the bare-footed youth stole in at the back 
 
 169 
 
door to put on his shoes before facing his visitor. Ah ! 
 but that was a great meeting ! Two boys, but one of 
 them destined to be the moral leader of his age and 
 the other the laureate of human freedom. If Garri- 
 son had never done anything more than to bring 
 John Greenleaf Whittier to the side of the slave, he 
 could have given a good account of his life. But 
 "Whittier did not really espouse abolition until 1833, 
 and this was 1826. Still that was the beginning of 
 a friendship, perhaps the most important in Whittier 's 
 life, which, in spite of every difference of opinion, 
 remained unbroken to the last. Do you wish to be 
 reminded of Whittier 's regard for Garrison? 
 
 "I love thee with a brother's love, 
 
 I feel my pulses thrill. 
 To mark thy spirit soar above 
 
 The cloud of human ill." 
 
 Nearly fifty years later, when Garrison was laid 
 in his grave, he took up the strain once more: 
 
 "The storm and peril overpast. 
 The hounding hatred shamed and still, 
 
 Go, soul of freedom! take at last 
 The place which thou alone canst fill." 
 
 So, then, the influences that molded Whittier 's 
 life and character were such as these. A pure and 
 hardy strain; a life close to the soil; a creed that 
 counted wealth, fame, learning itself, as of small 
 moment to the spirit's life; a stern, high-minded 
 father, a noble spiritual-minded mother, refined and 
 loving sisters; tasks beyond a boy's green strength; 
 the gift of a poet's eye, a poet's ear, a poet's heart; 
 surroundings fitted to touch and train eye, ear and 
 heart to poet uses ; while yet a boy, falling in love with 
 
 170 
 
Robert Burns, the very prince of poets; and being 
 brought at manhood face to face with the ]\Iartin 
 Luther of his age, to catch the glow of his great 
 spirit and be consecrated body and soul to a righteous, 
 unpopular cause — fired with all the enthusiasms for 
 humanity! Yes, these are the things of which we 
 must take note when we try to account for Whittier. 
 
 In 1832 Whittier was twenty-five years old. He 
 thought he had turned his back on poetry; he had 
 made up his mind to become a prominent politician. 
 He said, "I have knocked Pegasus on the head, as a 
 tanner does his bark-mill donkey when he is past 
 service." He had taken a hand in editing several 
 political journals; he had had a taste of power and 
 it had gone to his head. If you want to see what sort 
 of party leader he would have made, read the advice 
 he gave for preventing an election in his Congression- 
 al district until he himself should be of age to go to 
 Congress! It was present applause he coveted in 
 those days, not the far-off voice of fame. *'Who 
 would ask a niche in that temple where the dead alone 
 are crowned ? I would not choose between a nettle and 
 a rose to grow upon my grave." Those were his 
 words then. But when he was an old man he laid 
 his hand on a boy's head and said, *'My lad, if thou 
 Avouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular 
 but noble cause." 
 
 It was in the spring of 1833 that Whittier ' ' came 
 out." It was then he wrote his great pamphlet, 
 ''Justice and Expediency," and paid the best part 
 of a year's earnings to get it printed — five hundred 
 copies. That was when he crossed The Rubicon; that 
 was when he burned his ships behind him. 
 
 171 
 
He didn't do it in a flurry of excitement either. 
 His biographer tells us that he counted the cost with 
 Quaker coolness. In many sleepless nights he faced 
 the consequences. He knew he was throwing aw^ay 
 the last hope of political distinction and turning his 
 back on the rewards of letters. But he did it ; and he 
 did it with a thoroughness worthj^ of his blood and 
 breeding. In that pamphlet he covered the whole 
 ground and fortified every position. It was bold 
 to the point of rashness. It attacked the African 
 Colonization Society. The president of that Society 
 was Henry Clay, Whittier's political idol. The Whig 
 leaders were its chief promoters. The church treated 
 it as one of the Christian missions and took up col- 
 lections for its support. "Whittier tore the mask from 
 the humbug and showed that it was nothing but an aid 
 to slavery — a way of getting rid of free negroes 
 who made the slaves uneasy and sometimes helped 
 them to escape. Lewis Tappan paid for an extra edi- 
 tion of five thousand. Great journals took it up and 
 sent it* far and wide. How it was regarded in th e South 
 is shown by the fact already referred to that for lend- 
 ing it to a brother physician Dr. Crandall was ar- 
 rested, flung into the old Washington city prison, and 
 finally set free only to die from the effects of his 
 imprisonment. 
 
 Now come the years of bitter want, of pinching 
 poverty. Now the frugal habits of his early life stand 
 him in good stead. Unable to read or write beyond 
 a half hour at a time without severe pain, utterly 
 unable to bear the strain of two hours continuous 
 application, he can do a little bookkeeping; he can 
 write an editorial now and then, and thus wdth the 
 
 172 
 
sympathy and help of liis mother and sister, he 
 keeps the wolf from the door. But the poems which 
 roused the sleeping conscience of the nation and 
 finally brought him the richest crown of fame, — 
 those brought him no bread in those days. His father 
 died. Greenleaf was too feeble to carry on the farm, 
 and so, in 1836, they sold the old homestead and 
 bought a small cottage in Amesbury, a few miles away ; 
 and here for fifty-six years, the remainder of his life, 
 he made his home. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1833 that he had sent 
 forth his pamphlet. In December of the same year 
 the anti-slavery convention met in Philadelphia. 
 Wliittier w^as too poor to go, but a friend finally 
 supplied the means, and Whittier's name appears up- 
 on the declaration that was there adopted. "All 
 
 felt, ' ' said he, ' ' the responsibility of the occasion 
 
 The shadow and forecast of a lifelong struggle rested 
 upon every countenance." That was the solemn set- 
 ting of the seal. Whittier always looked back upon 
 it as his surest title to the gratitude of m^ankind. 
 It was after he had risen to world-wide fame that 
 he wrote those memorable words: "I am not insensi- 
 ble to literary reputation. I love, perhaps too w^ell, 
 the praise and good-will of my fellowmen. But I 
 set a higher value on my name as appended to the 
 anti-slavery declaration of 1833 than on the title-page 
 of any book." 
 
 Now he begins to learn the difference between 
 piety and morality. After a mob at Newburyport, 
 when the speakers were pelted with all sorts of un- 
 savory missiles and the meeting broken up, he turned 
 to an Orthodox minister, one of the few of that 
 
 173 
 
day who stood by them, and said, ''I am surprised 
 that we should be disturbed in a quiet Puritan city 
 like Newburyport. I have lived near it for years 
 and thought it was a pious city." The aged minis- 
 ter laying his hand on Whittier's slioulder said, 
 ^' Young man, when you are as old as I am, you will 
 understand that it is easier to be pious than it is 
 to be good." Whittier was learning to classify men 
 and institutions by a new principle. "Anti-slavery 
 is going on well, ' ' said he, ' ' in spite of mobs, Andover 
 Seminary and rum." 
 
 As time went on the abolitionists separated into 
 two camps — those who believed in political activity un- 
 der the existing Constitution and those who did not. 
 The latter wing was led by Garrison, who aimed at 
 nothing less than a dissolution of the Union, spuming 
 the old Constitution, by reason of its pro-slavery 
 compromises, as " a covenant with death and an agree- 
 ment with hell." Whittier believed in making the 
 best of the Constitution as it was. He was a born 
 politician. He realized, perhaps better than Garri- 
 son, the tremendous force of Union sentiment. He 
 said, "The moral and political power required for 
 dissolving the Union could far more easily abolish 
 every vestige of slavery." So, he made use of every 
 political weapon he could lay his hands on. Gifted 
 with a sagacity as rare as Lincoln's, he turned to 
 account every chance he saw to elect anti-slavery 
 candidates of either party in his district and state. 
 He stood behind John Quincy Adams in his great 
 contest for the right of petition. He wrung pledges 
 from reluctant Congressmen to present anti-slavery 
 petitions, and, when they showed signs of weakening, 
 
 174 
 
faced them with the prospect of defeat in the next 
 election. Though in a minority party, and that a 
 small one, he swung the power he wielded from side 
 to side Avith telling effect as the interests of freedom 
 could be promoted. In 1835 he sat for Haverhill in 
 the legislature of Massachusetts. In 1836 he was 
 elected the second time but was too ill to take his 
 seat. For many years he was a familiar figure about 
 the lobby of the State House, whenever his presence 
 would aid the cause he had at heart. Wendell Phillips 
 said, he was ''a superb hand at lobbying." He 
 never worked for personal ends but he put to use 
 his shrewd judgment of men, his keen insight into 
 human motives, and attacked the consciences of public 
 men by the line of least resistance. He never hesi- 
 tated to gain a step for liberty by appealing to the 
 selfish ambition of statesmen who could not be reached 
 by loftier appeals. 
 
 So effectually did he handle his forces that in 
 1837, when Van Buren in his inaugural had announced 
 that he would oppose every attempt to abolish slavery 
 in the District of Columbia, and the Boston papers 
 of both parties joined hands to defeat all legisla- 
 tive resolutions on the subject, Whittier and his little 
 band carried House and Senate, almost without a 
 dissenting vote, against the press and President. It 
 was then that he told Rantoul the secret of abolition 
 successes. "No party in the country," he said, ''is 
 so well organized as theirs. Asking nothing for 
 themselves and contending only for principles under 
 the impulse of duty, there is nothing but harmony 
 and unison among them. So long as they remain thus 
 they are invincible.'* 
 
 175 
 
He (lid not believe in dividing the ranks by in- 
 troducing other issues. Agreeing entirely \\ith Gar- 
 rison that women should vote and hold office, he 
 yet counselled against forcing the issue upon anti- 
 slavery conventions and thereby driving away those 
 who were not ready for the enfranchisement of women. 
 He was willing to work with any sincere friend of 
 the slave, whatever his views might be on other ques- 
 tions. His own society, the Friends, did not satisfy 
 his ideals in its attitude towards slavery and he did not 
 hesitate to rebuke it; yet he would not turn his back 
 on Quakerism. It has been well said that the abol- 
 ition movement needed just such a balance-wheel as 
 Whittier proved to be. For one thing, he had a broad 
 charity for every honest difference of opinion. In 
 every church and party he found men he loved. He 
 hated slavery ; he never hated the slave-holder. When 
 the Civil War was in sight he urged that compensa- 
 tion be tendered to any slave State that would enter 
 on the work of emancipation. He thought the North 
 should show itself ready to make every financial sacri- 
 fice for such an end. All his life he numbered among 
 his personal friends not only apologists for slavery, 
 but slave-holders themselves. He was amjong the very 
 first to hail the genius of the Carolinian poet, Timrod ; 
 and Paul H. Hayne was counted among his intimate 
 friends; although both wrote fiery lyrics against the 
 North. When the war was over and Charles Sumner 
 proposed that the national banners should not longer 
 be inscribed with the names of battles of the Civil 
 War, in which they had been carried — battles that 
 had been fought between fellow citizens of a re-united 
 republic — and Massachusetts, in legislature, cen- 
 
 176 
 
sured her great senator for his magnanimous act, 
 "Whittier came to his side with all his old time fervor, 
 and stood there with all his old time constancy, never 
 resting until he had secured the repeal of the obnox- 
 ious resolution. That was a single instance of the 
 spirit he always showed. 
 
 Can we not see how this very absence of personal 
 malignity doubled and redoubled the weight of his 
 terrible invective? Barren of every suggestion of 
 petty spite, his moral judgment came like a verit- 
 able Thus Saith the Lord. How plain it appears now, 
 as we look back upon it, that everything in his life had 
 really been preparing him to be the prophet of his 
 people. He spoke the language of the common folk, 
 for he was one of them; He was distinctively the 
 poet of the people. Holmes was more witty; Bryant 
 more massive and sonorous; Longfellow more refined 
 and graceful; Lowell more brilliant and versatile; 
 and Emerson, as Whittier himself declared, now and 
 then sent a stray shaft above them all; yet none of 
 them ever crept quite so near the popular heart. 
 Somehow, the people felt that Whittier was all their 
 own. Even the fact that he did not go to college 
 was, I doubt not, a positive advantage in the work 
 he was set apart to do. His imagery was drawn from 
 the Bible. His illustrations were taken from the toils 
 and amusements of the farmers, the fishermen, the 
 tradesmen to whom his winged words were sent. 
 What simplicity of style! What directness of state- 
 ment ! What energj^ of appeal ! What homely and 
 yet at times what sublime eloquence! Remember, 
 these poems were written for the multitude. The 
 canvas was painted for the public square. The man 
 
 177 
 
who was swinging the sledge, the mam who was 
 hoisting the sail, the man who was making his slow 
 way across the prairie — these were the consciences he 
 sought to rouse. It needed words ringing and robust. 
 He might have said to himself what he said to Ronge, 
 
 "Strike home, strong-^hearted man! Down to the root 
 Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel! 
 Thy work is to hew down. In God's name, then. 
 Put nerve into thy task!" 
 
 And so he did. 
 
 I wish the hour permitted to quote more liber- 
 ally than is possible from his ''Voices of Freedom." 
 But, as it is, one or two must speak for all. George 
 Latimer was arrested in Boston without a warrant, 
 as an alleged fugitive from slavery, on the mere re- 
 quest of a man from Norfolk, Virginia, claiming to 
 be his master. The case caused great excitement South 
 and North. Sixty thousand citizens of Massachusetts 
 petitioned Congress for laws and Constitutional 
 amendments to relieve free states from joining in 
 slave hunts and from all complicity with the hated 
 institution. On the other hand, citizens of Virginia 
 met in convention and threatened to make war on 
 Massachusetts if she failed to send back their slaves. 
 It was at the height of this storm of popular fury 
 that Whittier sent forth his lyric, ''Massachusetts 
 to Virginia." 
 
 Whittier was too just not to acknowledge — he 
 did acknowledge over and over again —that the hands 
 of I he North were by no means clean in the miatter of 
 slavery. In the strongest figure ever used to describe 
 the true meaning of the Civil War he stated the 
 case as it was. To get the full force of the tremend- 
 
 178 
 
ous metaphor we must call to mind the scene in Our 
 Savior's life to which he alludes, — when the demon 
 was cast out and tore his victim as he left him so 
 that he fell down as one dead : 
 
 "What if the cast-out spirit tear 
 
 The nation in his going? 
 We who have shared the guilt must share 
 
 The pang of his o'erthrowing." 
 
 Kansas was the storm center in 1857 and '58. 
 Douglas' doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty had caught 
 the popular whim, and whether Kansas should be a 
 free state or a slave state was to be decided by the men 
 who should settle there. Accordingly thousands upon 
 thousands of northern men streamed across the Miss- 
 issippi Valley into the new state chanting Whittier's 
 majestic h^onn : 
 
 "We cross the prairie as of old 
 The pilgrims crossed the sea, 
 
 To make the West, as they the East, 
 The homestead of the free!" 
 
 Well, it was bleeding Kansas in those days. The 
 massacre of unarmed and unoffending men at the 
 hands of border ruffians from Missouri in the ' ' Marsh 
 of the Swan" called out a lyric from Whittier un- 
 equalled perhaps even among his o^vn for its inten- 
 sity of suppressed emotion. I quote only the first 
 stanza and the last: 
 
 "A blush as of roses 
 
 Where rose never grew! 
 Great drops on the bunch-grass, 
 
 But not of the dew! 
 
 179 
 
On the lintels of Kansas 
 
 That blood shall not dry; 
 Henceforth the Bad Angel 
 
 Shall harmless go by; 
 Henceforth to the sunset, 
 
 Unchecked on her way. 
 Shall Liberty follow 
 
 The march of the day." 
 
 Millions were learning to listen lor his call. Our 
 debt to Whittier is that the gift of verse becani;e 
 in his hand not a lute but a trumpet — not a toy but 
 a weapon. "I feel more like a wild Berserker," he 
 confessed, ''than like a carpet ministrel with my 
 singing robes about me." He blew a blast longer, 
 louder, more compelling than the one Roland blew 
 at Roncesvalles. 
 
 Courage! What is the courage that inspires a 
 soldier to brave death, cheered on by comrades, and 
 beckoned by the laurelled hand of victory — what is 
 that to the courage it takes to defy the supposed cul- 
 ture and character of the whole community — to take a 
 position that makes you the laugliing-stock of the 
 street and leads your best friends to think you a fool ! 
 Quaker as he was, Whittier was a born fighter. He 
 felt the joy of battle. When Richard Hinton was in- 
 troduced to him as the man who witii the aid of a good 
 Winchester had helped to make Kansas a free state, 
 Whittier laid his hand gently on Hinton 's shoulder 
 and asked : " So thee believes in fighting for liberty ? ' ' 
 ''Yes," he replied. "Well, then," said Whittier, his 
 dark eyes flashing, "if thee must fight, fight well and 
 fight to the end." In war time, when a Quaker 
 brother took counsel with Whittier, whether he had 
 better fulfill his contract with the government to 
 
 180 
 
furnish certain oak timber, seeing he was morally 
 certain the timber was to be used in constructing a 
 battle-ship and his peace conscience was troubling 
 him, Whittier, after teasing him awhile, finally said 
 at parting, '"Now friend, if thee really does furnish 
 any of that oak timber, see to it that it is all sound. ' ' 
 I alluded in the beginning to his sense of humor. 
 Those who knew Whittier through his verse only 
 ean hardly understand how very keen it w^as. It 
 was a family trait. "WTien he was a child he was 
 encouraged to discuss the daily Scripture reading. 
 On one occasion he expressed grave doubts whether 
 David would have been eligible to the Society of 
 Friends seeing he was such a man of war. Where- 
 upon his parents concluded to confine the reading 
 for a time, at least, to the New Testamient. The Quaker 
 apparel, he used to say, sometimes saved the wearer 
 from vain amusements. Once in New York, as he 
 was passing a play-house he saw a man, too drunk 
 to stand alone, holding on by the railing of the steps. 
 As he turned to look at him the man said, ''Don't 
 thee come in here, Quaker. This is no place for thee. 
 I will report thee to Friend Jenkins and he will 
 turn thee out of the Monthly Meeting.'' As an ex- 
 ample of his keenness in literary criticism, take his 
 comment on one of Browning's books, "Men and 
 Women." ''It seems to me," he said, "like a gal- 
 vanic battery in full play. Its spasmodic utterances 
 and intense passion make me feel as if I had been 
 taking a bath among electric eels. " To an old friend 
 who was worried lest she should not have money 
 enough to take her through her last sickness and 
 bury her, he said, "Mary, did thee ever hear of any 
 
 181 
 
one, bound on that last journey, sticking by the way 
 for want of funds?" When he was a Free-soil can- 
 didate for Congress Whittier said he got abused very 
 badly by the newspapers and was even accused of 
 ill-treating his wife ! 
 
 With the insight of true statesmanship Whittier 
 had seen from the beginning that the strength of the 
 South lay in the fact that it was united in defense 
 of slavery — the weakness of the North, that it was not 
 united in defense of liberty. The problem was how 
 to meet a united South with a united North. That 
 required a quickening of the public conscience that 
 could only come through a series of shocks and ap- 
 peals as well as a gradual enlightenment of the un- 
 derstanding. The logic of events was after all the 
 great teacher. It was Whittier 's mission, taking every 
 conspicuous event as his text, to speak the fiery word 
 that should carry its meaning to the brain and heart 
 and conscience of the country. It was, essentially, 
 you see, the work of a great orator, but with this ad- 
 vantage which the singing word always possesses over 
 the spoken one when it flies level to the ears of the 
 people and is fledged with the divine fire : It was more 
 intense, more compact, more laconic, easier to be re- 
 membered than any speech. It sung itself over and 
 over in the heart, justifying again the old French- 
 man's boast, ''Let me make a people's songs, and 
 let who will make their laws." The nation's song 
 is sure to be the nation's law in the end; and so it 
 was with Wliittier's. When slavery was at last abol- 
 ished by Constitutional amendment, and the joy bells 
 were ringing, through the land, who had a better 
 right to exult? He heard them ringing as he sat 
 
 182 
 
in the quiet Quaker meeting and his great paean 
 came to him then and there like an inspiration from 
 on high. It came to liim as Longfellow said "The 
 Wreck of the Hesperus" did to him, not in single 
 words or phrases but in whole strophes and stanzas. 
 How it still pulses and leaps with the ecstacy of its 
 creation ! 
 
 "It is done! 
 Clang of bell and roar of gun 
 Send the tidings up and down. 
 How the belfries rock and reel! 
 How the great guns, peal on peal, 
 Fling the joy from town to town!" 
 
 We cannot be too thankful that many years still 
 remained to the great poet, years of honor and re- 
 ward, years in which he gathered into his bosom 
 a full ripe sheaf of love and veneration, — the late 
 but happy harvest of that early painful sowing — 
 years wherein he enriched the literature of his native 
 land mth legend and song and hymn. Yet to those 
 young, dangerous years he always turned as to the 
 time when he had really lived. 
 
 "Methinks the spirit's temper grows 
 
 Too soft in this still air; 
 Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 
 
 Of needed watch and prayer. 
 Better than self-indulgent years 
 
 The outflung heart of youth. 
 Than pleasant songs in idle ears 
 
 The tumult of the truth." 
 
 He owned that the political issues of later times 
 seemed poor and small after the mighty ones wdth which 
 he had been engaged. As he drew near the confines 
 of the other world he looked forward to meeting 
 
 183 
 
again his brave companions of that generous cause, 
 often recalling them by name. "When Garrison died 
 we can think of him as saying with the dying Arthur : 
 
 "The sequel of today unsolders all 
 The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 
 Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep 
 They sleep, the men I loved." 
 
 If you wonde:" why I turn from his great achieve- 
 ments in other lines to dwell so fully upon what he 
 did as a reformer, I ask you to remember that I 
 place the emphasis exactly where he placed it. The 
 claim I make upon your gratitude is the only claim 
 he ever countenanced or ever would. He was not the 
 poet of nature — Bryant surpassed him there. He was 
 not the poet of old-world culture and memories — there 
 Longfellow was easily his master. He was not the 
 poet of varied gift and manifold achievement — 
 he was narrow beside Lowell. He was not the poet 
 of mysticism — Emerson was there before him and 
 will hold his throne long after he is gone. But he 
 was the poet of human freedom, in a sense in which 
 they never were, with a force and fire which none 
 of them could ever hope to match. Here his inspira- 
 tion was like a rushing, mighty wind, swaying him 
 like a reed, possessing him, not possessed by him, 
 leaping into forms which are not to be criticized as 
 literature, which cannot be measured by any of the 
 rules of art, but over-top all art and put all art to 
 shame by their own spontaneous, elemental power, 
 like revelations of the Deity. "Whittier was a voice 
 that cried to sluggard conscience, ''Sleep no more" 
 — a cry that split the ears of a cowardly and time- 
 serving church — an indignation which wrapped his 
 
 184 
 
frail body like a flame and gave his fragile arm the 
 strength of His who scourged the money-changers 
 from the temple courts. 
 
 I should not have come here to speak of Whittier 
 as a story-teller, as a song writer, as a delineator of 
 New England life, or even as the mystic whose pray- 
 ers and psalms are revelations of spirit power. I 
 should have left his praise to be spoken by other lips. 
 I came because I was born and reared in a home 
 whose atmosphere was charged with electric sym- 
 pathy with the anti-slavery cause. Its traditions are 
 my earliest recollections, its advocates were my boy- 
 hood heroes, and their faces were to my eyes as the 
 faces of the saints and martyrs. In my ears the name 
 of Whittier has always been sacred as the name of 
 the great poet of freedom and humanity. 
 
 But if he had ''the lion heart in battle," he had 
 also "the woman's heart in love." In 1892, on that 
 beautiful September day, as he lay dying, a beloved 
 voice repeated in his ears his own sweet and solemn 
 invocation : 
 
 "When on my day of life the night is falling, 
 And, in the wind from unsunned spaces blown, 
 I hear far voices out of darkness calling 
 
 My feet to paths unknown, 
 Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, 
 
 Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; 
 O Love Divine, O Helper ever present. 
 Be Thou my strength and stay!" 
 
 Tremblingly came from his lip.5 the half-audible 
 words, again and again, as if he could not go without 
 leaving us his message : ' ' Love, — ^love to all the world. ' ' 
 We shall never forget that — that Whittier died leav- 
 ing to us — ^yes, to every one of us, his love ! 
 
 185 
 
THE MEASURE OF A MAN 
 
 An Address at a Meeting in Memory of Philip Gerry, at 
 the Public Library in Washington. 
 
 It was one of the wisest sayings of Aurelius 
 that ''the value of a man is the value of the ob- 
 jects on which his heart is set." Who then shall 
 estimate the value of the man whose heart is set, not 
 on property or power or position or applause, but 
 on those only objects of a rational devotion — the 
 true, the beautiful and the good ? 
 
 The test which the Imperial Stoic proposed 
 is one that might have been welcomed by the man 
 whose sudden taking-off has called this company of 
 friends together. To those who knew him best it 
 has seemed that any memorial to be appropriate 
 and worthy of him must bear some reference to 
 the pure and noble purposes for which he lived. 
 The best memorial is the one which best fosters and 
 forwards the aims and ideals of the lost leader; 
 for thereby death is robbed of the fruits of his vic- 
 tory, and the man, in his highest personality, — in 
 his true spiritual potency — ^lives on. That, as I con- 
 ceive it, is the thought that has moved his admirers 
 to propose a tablet, which they hope may present 
 a, has relief of Philip Gerry, to be placed in some 
 alcove of this People's Library, where shall be 
 brought together the books he labored so earnestly 
 and lovingly to interpret and make familiar — the 
 
 186 
 
richest heritage of oar race — the masterpieces of the 
 English tongue. 
 
 Mr. Gerry was a man of many moods and varied 
 gifts, whose rich and ardent nature sought expres- 
 sion in mcinifold activities. In the deep and grateful 
 interest manifested by this meeting, nothing is more 
 remarkable than the testimony it affords to the ver- 
 satility of his gifts and the catholicity of his spirit. 
 Singer, teacher, lecturer, critic, poet, lover of art 
 and music, zealous advocate of every measure that 
 could help to make the city where he dwelt the 
 city beautiful, helper and inspirer of his fello\^Tnen, 
 lover of life, "joy-giver and en j oyer" — such are 
 the words and phrases that leap to one's lips to sug- 
 gest his character and work. It is only when they 
 are brought together that we realize the full stature 
 of the man. Truly did he sing of himself 
 
 "My heart is an ocean warm and deep 
 Nor limit nor land can bound." 
 
 If we may trust assurances that come to us 
 from every side, here was a man who gave himself 
 unstintedly to the plans and purposes of others — 
 always more interested in what concerned you than 
 in what concerned him — so that his defect, if we 
 must name it so, was that he failed to duly rever- 
 ence his ovm. finer and more splendid gifts by cul- 
 tivating them to the utmost. But what a godlike 
 defect it was; and how few of us wdll ever be ac- 
 cused of such a failing! The river had so many 
 wheels to turn, so many thirsty meaidowlands to 
 water, it could not stop to spread itself into a broad 
 and placid lake, to mirror the forest and mountain 
 
 187 
 
in its depths and wear the moon and stars upon 
 its bosom. 
 
 But in his poems the man himself in his true 
 nature, stands revealed. Here we can watch the 
 movement of the deep currents that controlled his 
 life. He was a lover of beauty — no lackadaisical 
 lover, but a passionate and determined wooer: 
 
 "For I would follow beauty as the sea 
 Follows the clarion of the rising moon 
 Roused from its uncouth caves forevermore; 
 And where against my passion's liberty 
 Bleak continents lie dull with rock and dune 
 Plunge with incessant protest on the shore." 
 
 He was a lover of country, and of those great 
 ideals that make one's country something more than 
 a stretch of territory or a heap of coin in a bank- 
 vault. He was a lover of the world about him. He 
 had felt the profound influences of nature — the awful 
 silences that hush the soul. He was, as all true 
 poets are, a lover of love. He was an idealist in 
 daily life, set on keeping dewy-fresh the passionate 
 devotion of his youth. He was a lover of life. He 
 thirsted for all stimulating and strengthening ex- 
 periences. He seems to have had some prescience 
 of his own tragic fate and to have sung his own 
 requiem with its eager opening prayer and its noble 
 and uncomplaining close: 
 
 "Oh, grant me years this great life to discover! 
 
 I cry no curses on the world as seen; 
 
 To me life looms majestic as a queen, ' 
 
 And I plead lowly as a patient lover! 
 I would not die: those myriad hopes to smother 
 
 Of sowing fields soon breaking into green, 
 
 Of golden months wherein to reap and glean; 
 
 188 
 
To charge my tribute to some tired brotlier! 
 
 \et let death come! Not less shall I have known 
 
 The undisturbed rocks., the living rain. 
 The grace of branches where the robins swing; 
 Not less to me shall every day have shown 
 
 The balm of joy, the perfecting of pain, 
 Man's work, maid's love, and mother's minist'ring." 
 
 Shall we not take him at his word? He had his 
 work and his dreams, his love, his fireside and his 
 friends; and these make life. He has lived his life 
 and he was grateful for it, — grateful most of all that 
 it closed without rust or stain. For that we have his 
 ov/n sententious and prophetic words: 
 
 "Whether I may or must, 
 
 WJio knows? 
 Whether a soul or dust, 
 
 What shows? 
 Myself I scan, and trust 
 
 This rose. 
 
 My life, may close 
 Unstained by rust." 
 
 I know how natural it is to tJiink of all that 
 might have been; and yet, in that world of thought 
 and aspiration where his days were spent, who knows 
 whether his death can be counted even as an inter- 
 ruption? Perhaps it is not so. When he bound up 
 his poems for the one who loved them most, he 
 drew upon the cover in severe and simple lines a Doric 
 column, — not a half-built or broken pillar, but one 
 unbroken dignity from base to capital. iTliat, I con- 
 jecture, stood for the art he strove for and the life 
 he would have lived. Let us think twice before we 
 suffer grief or disappointment to substitute for that 
 serene, aspiring emblem, a shattered column. 
 
 189 
 
Rather let us lean against its foot our wreath of 
 laurel, and, sharing his large faith in the ideal, 
 leave the column, even as he drew it, complete. 
 
 190 
 
THE PURITAN IDEAL 
 
 A Response to that Toast at the Thirtieth Annual Dinner of 
 
 the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, at the 
 
 Academy of Music, December 21, 1909. 
 
 Mr. President, Members and Guests of the New 
 England Society in Brooklyn — The Puritan was not 
 perfect. We should not choose him for the ideal 
 man. The ideal man loves beauty as well as truth. 
 He is charmed with love in the same degree that he 
 is loyal to the truth. Love, truth, and beauty, that is 
 the old trinity, never to be divided when we are speak- 
 ing of perfection. The Puritan was blind to beauty, 
 or at least tried hard to be, and we never think of 
 him as an example of charity; but he did belong 
 to truth; to her he was constant; in her service he 
 was fearless. It is not that the Puritan made any dis- 
 covery of truth; there was nothing new in his belief. 
 It has been pointed out before, but it deserves to be 
 remembered always, the distinction of the Puritan 
 is simply this: that he acted on his belief. "What 
 he believed about God and duty and destiny was all 
 real, oh, terribly real to him! He accepted the con- 
 clusion that followed, no matter how hard it bore 
 upon himself. If it meant that he himself might 
 turn out to be one of the lost in spite of all his 
 prayers and efforts, very well, he was ready to meet 
 it in the spirit of the Yankee whom Dr. Cyrus Bartol 
 was fond of quoting: *'If God had made him to 
 
 191 
 
be damned he guessed lie had made him so he could 
 stand it." 
 
 There is something impressive, not to say awe- 
 some, in this unhestitating acceptance of consequences. 
 We are not speaking tonight of that ideal man, in 
 whom love, truth, and beauty were all blended, whose 
 heart took in our whole humanity, and who goes 
 down the ages carr3dng in one hand the knotted 
 scourge with which he drove the money-changers from 
 the temple and in the other the sweet lilies of the 
 field. "We are speaking only of men, imperfect men. 
 But we can see how men have come near perfection 
 just in proportion as they have shown in their char- 
 acters the qualities we are calling for the present, 
 beauty, truth, and love. 
 
 The Puritan had such a splendid basis in truth 
 and the love of truth. When to that was added, 
 as there was in some of them, in the Pilgrims, for 
 example, the softer grace of charity, how winsome 
 they became! And when to the stern love of truth 
 was added the love of beauty, it was as when a 
 rocky fortress is over-run with some blossoming, lux- 
 uriant vine. Look at Milton — a Puritan if there ever 
 was one — and yet not less an artist than a lover of 
 the truth. Milton, in his early manhood, went to 
 Italy. It was the Puritan invading the richest realm 
 of beauty. He was thirty years of age. Already 
 he had written Comus, The Hymn on the Nativity, 
 Lycidas, and perhaps L 'Allegro and II Penseroso, 
 besides a priceless handful of sonnets. In other 
 words, he had already earned the right to be ranked 
 with the few great poets of his race. Yet all he had 
 done appeared to him of small significance when 
 
 192 
 
set beside the mighty poem he was to sing. For 
 with all the intensity of his Puritan nature he be- 
 lieved tliat he had a mission. It was to be a poet, 
 a priest of song, a prophet whose words were music, 
 the heaven-voiced oracle of his age. He was not to 
 rely on his native gifts alone, although he was well 
 persuaded these were strong. He was to enrich him- 
 self wdth all learning; he was to discipline himself 
 "with every form of training; he was to be a mighty 
 scholar and lay the culture of all times and peoples 
 under tribute. And when all was won he w^as to 
 bring the rich spoil of his labor to make glorious 
 the work he would leave in verse, ' ' so written as that 
 the world would not willingly let it die." He de- 
 clared that no man should attempt to write of heroic 
 things without being himself heroic. And so it was 
 that the same purpose that sent Milton to Italy, 
 sent him back again to England. Think of it! 
 There he was, in the very home and haunt of beauty 
 — and no man ever walked the earth more sensitive 
 to her appeals — but when he heard from The Islands 
 that the battle of the age was coming on he turned 
 his face towards England, determined to have some 
 part, however small, on the side that he believed 
 w^as God's. In Italy itself, Catholic Italy, papal 
 Italy, surrounded by friends and followers of the 
 hostile faith, flattered and lionized by the greatest of 
 the land, he made no effort to conceal his real 
 opinions. Galileo was a prisoner at Florence. The in- 
 quisition was at work. Assassination lay in wait for 
 heretics. Milton himself was warned if he breathed 
 a syllable against the Pope his life was not worth a 
 farthing. Even Sir Henry Wotton, wlio gave liim 
 
 193 
 
letters for his journey, enjoined him to keep his eyes 
 open and his lips shut. Yet young Milton, taking 
 counsel only of his own courage and conscience, laid 
 down for his conduct this rule : Never to broach the 
 subject of religion, but if Protestantism was assailed 
 in his presence to defend it like a freeman. And so he 
 did, even in the shadow of the Vatican. 
 
 To contemplate Milton at this period of his life 
 is to turn continually from one side of his nature to 
 the other. The man of iron will is forming and 
 hardening under the impressionable poet. If you 
 have forgotten the troubadour lightness and grace 
 of his spirit, recall that only five years before, he 
 had w^ritten his sonnet To the Nightingale. 
 
 "O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray 
 Warblest at eve when all the woods are still." 
 
 There is one pole of his character. The other is 
 found in that tremendous sonnet ^Titten a score of 
 years later — 
 
 "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones 
 Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold!" 
 
 It is the prayer of a warrior. That is the Milton 
 that went back to England. Italy, with all her 
 sorceries of land and sea and sky, of history and 
 art and letters, could not hold him. "Went back 
 to teach school," sneers a biographer. Yes, or to 
 do anything else that was honest and of good report, 
 until the hour of greater things should come. Went 
 back to his studies; went back to those long nights 
 when he "out-watched The Bear," and to those winter 
 mornings when, "before the sound of any bell woke 
 men to labor or devotion," he rose and began his 
 
 194 
 
arduous day with only the fire of his great pur- 
 pose to Avarm his heart. Perhaps we shall never have 
 a more consummate example of Puritanism in its 
 flower. Here for once the love of truth and the love 
 of beauty were made one. 
 
 If we do often miss in the Puritan character 
 that charining love of man and sympathy with hu- 
 man failings we call charity, perhaps it is more often 
 still that we miss in the philanthropist and the warm- 
 hearted, impetuous reformer that rigid observance 
 of the bounds of law and truth which was the very 
 life of Puritanism. We need this too, if we are not 
 to do more harm than good by our well-meaning ef- 
 forts — we must learn never to trifle with the truth 
 for any imaginable object. I am afraid we need to 
 learn that lesson now. From the adoption of the 
 Constitution to the ratification of the Fifteenth 
 Amendment we in this country were engaged in the 
 effort to make a strong central government. We 
 succeeded. Some think the next generation or two 
 may be kept busy in saving local self-government. 
 But even that question, it seems to me, is of less im- 
 portance than the question, how the constitution and 
 laws are to be treated, and how changes therein are 
 to be brought about. We sometimes hear it an- 
 nounced that the constitution means one thing if the 
 states do their duty and may mean sometliing 
 else if they fail to do it. Now it is hardly necessary 
 to say that certain powers are possessed by the 
 national government to the exclusion of the states, 
 and certain other powers are possessed by the states 
 to the exclusion of the national government, while 
 there is a third class of powers which may be ex- 
 
 195 
 
ercised by the state unless and until Congress shall 
 see fit to act; and when Congress does act its action 
 suspends and supersedes that of the state. Now, 
 speaking of this third class, it may be well said that 
 Congress will act or not according as the states take 
 or fail to take the needed steps. But that is not the 
 proposition we have in hand. In that case the pow- 
 er of Congress to act does not depend upn the failure 
 of the state to act. Its power cannot be doubted. 
 Whether it shall exercise it is purely a question of 
 policy. But now and again the deliberate proposition 
 is put forth that powers clearly and unmistakably 
 reserved to the state shall be transferred to the na- 
 tional government by construction. ''Constructions 
 will be found" has become a favorite expression. 
 Where found? Where, indeed, but in the desire of 
 the prevailing party to have them found. The|n 
 there is no limit to governmental action except in the 
 will and desire of the prevailing party. We are try- 
 ing to impress upon the people respect for law; but 
 if words mean nothing, if even the constitution may 
 be construed to suit the taste, how shall people 
 respect the law? Nothing can be respected that is 
 not straight-forward and sincere. It is not a ques- 
 tion whether the constitution shall be amended, but 
 how it shall be amended and by whom it shall be 
 amended. It is, whether we have a constitution at aU, 
 except in the national consciousness as it may 
 chance to find expression at any given time in the 
 triumphant party of the hour. Is not the man who 
 debases words guiltier than the man who debases 
 coin? Language is the currency of thought. De- 
 stroy the meaning of words and you destroy the bonds 
 
 196 
 
that hold society together. Beware how you dull 
 the edge of words or blur the lines that separate 
 ideas. The law-giver of old proclaimed: "Cursed 
 be he that moveth his neighbor's landmark." But 
 what is that to moving the landmarks that divide the 
 great conceptions of law and power and duty ? From 
 the beginning of history, you might almost say that 
 the growth of the human mind is to be measured by 
 its ability to discriminate. Said the Greek pliil- 
 osopher, "He shall be as a god to me who can dis- 
 tinguish and define." Is anything more important 
 than to say what you mean and mean what you say? 
 And yet how often men seem to forget it. We see the 
 tendency in la^\', where juries sworn, in the most 
 solemn form their consciences approve, to decide 
 causes by the written la^^', feel at liberty to decide 
 them by some umvritten law instead We see it even in 
 religion, where we are sometimes bidden to repeat the 
 ancient form of words and put our own construction 
 on them ; as if anything in the creed itself could 
 be more vital than the intellectual honesty which is 
 lost when we play fast and loose with words. What 
 we need nov/ is intense convictions. Wlien they come 
 again they will make their o^^^l definitions, too sharp 
 to be mistaken or confused. 
 
 But what a necromancer Time is ! The Puritan 
 himself has become romantic. The Puritan record 
 is itself a poem. The voyage of the Mayflower is one 
 of the epics of the race. It is one of the stories men 
 love to hear and never can forget. It looms larger 
 and larger as it recedes into the past and becomes a 
 part of that high-hearted and romantic world that 
 lays a spell at times on the imagination of us all. 
 
 197 
 
The Pilgrim prow was launched upon a sea more full 
 of peril and emprise than the Atlantic. It was 
 launched upon the sea of song and story. It rides 
 the ridges of that grey old deep that bore the barque 
 of Jason, — around whose dim and undiscovered shores 
 Odysseus made his nine-years' wanderings, — that sea 
 of mystery and doom Columbus dared when his in- 
 trepid, unprecursored ship sailed out from the bar 
 of Saltes. The Puritan boat has joined the company 
 of heroic keels that plough the waves forever. Dis- 
 coverer, adventurer, viking, victor — thesfe are her 
 mates and convoy, — all the bold and hardy ones who 
 have gone out upon that watery plain whose barren 
 furrows, the old singer said, no man may sow or reap, 
 and brought therefrom the golden harvest of unfad- 
 ing praise. The tale is in our blood. It has gone 
 into the warp and woof of all our thinking. It has 
 been woven in and out of the nation's web of thought 
 and deed and dream until, today, if you could sever 
 and draw out the threads it has contributed, the tap- 
 estry would be left a marred and sorry pattern. We 
 call ourselves a practical people, and other nations 
 call us traders and mechanics; but the truth is we 
 live in the ideal, and not for all the kings of money- 
 making can bestow, would we give up one of our 
 great traditions. And one — one of the greatest and 
 proudest of all these — is that which makes us f easters 
 at this board tonight. 
 
 The sublimity of that tradition does not depend 
 on heroic hardihood alone. It is almost a wrong to 
 rank the Mayflower vdth those ships that sailed for 
 fame or gold or empire or the sheer love of daring. 
 It is not even that these men were laying the four 
 
 198 
 
walls of a redoubted state. It is because they were 
 impelled by principle. They went out into the 
 wilderness to be alone with God. They cast upon the 
 wind the things that made up -life for other men, — a 
 seat beside the fire, the light of morning on the 
 English hills, a resting place at last in sweet and 
 hallowed ground under the ivied walls, — and chose 
 instead the bare economy of a cold, unneighbored 
 coast. They made proof by their deed how dearly 
 they desired the things they prayed for. They had 
 the faith that acts out what it holds. They really did 
 believe. Indifference, which loves to masquerade as 
 tolerance, had not benumbed their spirits. And when 
 the principle they had espoused led them to incon- 
 venience, hardship, exile, death itself, they ploughed 
 on to the end. They did not run to cover. They did 
 not seek the shelter of some cozy qualification. They 
 never said, as we too often say, — as Rip Van Winkle 
 says when, cup in hand he is about to break his pledge, 
 — "We won't count this!" They were not oppor- 
 tunists. They saw no opportunity except the open 
 port of God's approval. For that port they steered 
 and spread out all their sail. 
 
 Such men there are in almost every time. We 
 have them still. We owe them more than we can ever 
 pay. We cannot even reckon up our debt, — it is too 
 great. They do not always make the pleasantest 
 companions. They have not always the mellow charm 
 that makes some characters attractive. Softness may 
 be excellent in an apple. It would be vicious in a 
 sword. These men were swords, and it was necessary 
 that they should be hard. I do not say that all men 
 should be like them. I do not say that we should 
 
 199 
 
imitate the best of them in every point. But this 
 we have to learn from them, first to believe, and then 
 to live as we believe. To plant yourself on some 
 eternal truth and take the consequences — that is what 
 it is to be a Puritan — to scorn the refuge of those 
 large and comfortable exceptions that emasculate 
 our principles, and not to be afraid of being called a 
 doctrinaire. If we really do believe in democratic 
 government — ^if it really is our faith that the people 
 should conduct their own affairs — ^we shall not be dis- 
 mayed b}^ partial and temporary failures. We shall 
 not be frightened off by specters of ignorance and 
 vice snatching the reins of power. Eather we shall 
 lean hard upon the truth that we profess and make 
 the necessary sacrifice to do away with ignorance and 
 vice. If the grogshop, the brothel, and the dema- 
 gogue strike hands to rule our splendid cities we shall 
 see that the remedy lies, not in a return to any form 
 of despotism, — the surrender back of power into the 
 hands of one or of the few — but exactly the reverse, 
 in a quickening of the public conscience and the re- 
 turn of the many to the exercise of their abandoned 
 power. 
 
 Every people has in the last analysis exactly the 
 government it deserves. Especially in a land like this, 
 where everywhere, except in the city that is the seat 
 of national government itself, the form of self-gov- 
 ernment prevails, and the people of the community 
 have only to put forth the power that they possess. 
 That marks the progress we have made thus far. We 
 have at least secured a form of government that en- 
 ables the people, when their blood is up, to work out 
 righteousness. Then let us hold fast to our institu- 
 
 200 
 
tions; and let us have the burning zeal for what is 
 right that held the Mayflower to her stormy course. 
 
 But most of all let us have faith as they did. The 
 Puritan had one unfailing light to steer by, — the 
 Sovereignty of God. To him life was the same im- 
 penetrable mystery it is to us. He could not see the 
 beginning nor the end. He did not know what port 
 his soul had left. He did not know what harbor the 
 frail ship would make. The waters that he sailed 
 were strange as sleep. The winds were fitful but the 
 stars were true. 
 
 201 
 
ON THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE 
 
 Speech for a Mass Meeting in Music Hall, St. Johnsbury, 
 Vermont, Sunday Evening, March 8, / 896. 
 
 Why are we liere tonight? "What is Armenia? 
 "What has happened there ? Why did it happen ? And 
 what is it to us? If the Sultan has cut some forty 
 thousand Christian throats, what are we going to 
 do about it? And if we can't do anything, what is 
 the use of talking? These are the natural Yankee 
 questions on such an occasion as this. 
 
 Armenia lies in the northeast corner of Asia 
 Minor. It is about as large as New England, — 
 ridged mth mountains wliich are roamed over by 
 the Kurds; — at the foothills stretch the fertile valleys 
 where the Armenians themselves have made their 
 homes. That part of the region which has sprung 
 into horrible prominence during the last few months 
 consists of six provinces. Here dwell more than five 
 millions. Of these more than three and one-half 
 millions are Mohammedans. Then there are towards 
 a million Christians, known as Gregorians. These 
 belong to the ancient church of Armenia, said to be 
 the oldest national church on the globe. Then there 
 are some sixty thousand Protestants, converts and 
 adherents of British and American missionaries. 
 There are about the same number cf Roman Catho- 
 lics. But these have not suffered. France protects 
 them. And there are some two hundred thousand 
 
 202 
 
Greeks, Clialdeans, and Syrians; but the Greeks are 
 not touched — Russia takes care of them, it is upon 
 the eight hundred and fifty thousand Gregorians and 
 the sixty thousand Protestants that tlie wrath of 
 Islam has fallen. That is to say, upon those who are 
 supposed to be safeguarded by Great Britain, — upon 
 those who were to have been benefited by the 
 promised reforms. 
 
 What reforms, and what need of reform? Need 
 enough, heaven knows. Taxation! We growl about 
 taxes when they reach two per cent. Look at 
 Armenia. No doubt all Turkey is tax-ridden, but it 
 is the Christian who has to pay for the luxury of his 
 religion. For relief from military service he lias to 
 pay, for every member of his family — wife, daughter, 
 grandmother, cripple, babe, no' matter what — one 
 dollar and fifty cents per year — a good start for a 
 poor man. Then on his land, according to its value, 
 one dollar to six dollars per acre, and one-eighth of 
 his harvest — one bushel in every eight. If he has 
 an orchard he pays twenty-two dollars, and one 
 traveller — his name is given in The Review of 
 Reviews — saw a poor man chopping down the solitary 
 date tree before his door because he could not pay the 
 taxes upon the tree. Then every eighth load of hay 
 he draws into his barn pays two dollars. The barn 
 pays one dollar to three dollars according to its 
 cost. The cottage he lives in pays its tax. When he 
 gets married he pays a tax for that, and tlien for 
 the privilege of earning his living, and earning the 
 money to pay his taxes, he must be taxed again, and so 
 he pays a tax upon his occupation. But that is not all. 
 There is the entertainment tax. Every Cliristian 
 
 203 
 
must entertain for three days any Mohammedan who 
 may come to his door and demand it. What a Para- 
 dise for tramps! And what does the Christian get 
 for his taxes ? "What do we get for ours 1 Protection, 
 the right to share in the administration of govern- 
 ment — all but the women and a few convicts. But 
 the Christian subject of the Turk can take no share 
 in government, can hold no office, cannot be a police- 
 man — not even if he were an Irishman — and protec- 
 tion is an unkno^Ti word. From the dictionary to 
 be sold in Turkey the censor obliterates every sucii 
 word as liberty, progress. There is no such thing in 
 Turkey, and there must be nothing to remind men 
 of it. Mussulmen hold the offices. Mussulmen ad- 
 minister the laws. Mussulmen soldiers are quartered 
 on Christian families, and the virtue of the daughter 
 and wife are at their tender mercies. Such is the pop- 
 ulation of the valleys. But above them hangs the 
 dark cloud of Kurdish mountaineers, — wild, cruel, 
 reckless, fanatical, ready to swoop down at any 
 moment and bear off whatever spoil the regular au- 
 thorities have left. 
 
 Such was the condition of Christians in Airmenia. 
 What were the reforms proposed? First, the Sultan 
 was to protect his subjects from the rapacities of 
 the Kurds. Second, he was to protect them from the 
 extortions of the taxgatherer. Third, Christians 
 were to hold offices in certain districts in proportion 
 to the Christian population. Fourth, Christian and 
 Mussulman were to be equal before the law. These 
 were the reforms proposed, and the six provinces now 
 desolate were the ones where these reforms were to 
 be put in force. The Sultan had bound himself to 
 
 204 
 
put those reforms in force in those six provinces 
 last fall. He had bound himself by the treaty of 
 Berlin, and now the powers were insisting upon per- 
 formance. These reforms have not (;ome, and it looks 
 as if there might be no Christian population to be 
 benefited by them; and that is the intention of the 
 Sublime Porte. For months before the tim^e came 
 the Sultan had been arming the Kurds, — making 
 the fierce, ungovernable, hordes a part of his army. 
 The governors got their orders from Constantinople. 
 Then when the hour struck the carnage began, — cold- 
 blooded, deliberate, systematic. At noon the Moslem 
 goes to pray. At the end of the noon-day hour the bu- 
 gle sounds and the work begins. Too horrible to talk 
 about; too sickening in ghastly details to be des- 
 cribed! For four hours or six houi'S, the exact time 
 set, the butchery and robbery go on unchecked; then 
 it ceases, and if a Turk kill a Christian after time is 
 called the blood is on his own head ; he is shot himself. 
 Meantime the houses and stores have been pillaged, 
 the men have been killed, the girls and women have 
 been violated or hurried off to satisfy the lust of the 
 harem, and every Armenian Christian capable of 
 becoming a sharer in the government under the 
 proposed reforms has been converted to Moham- 
 medanism or put to death. And this is not what 
 happened in one place only, but in towns and villages 
 all over those devoted provinces — five hundred 
 square miles devastated — from twenty-five thousand 
 to forty thousand slaughtered. Yet any one might 
 save himself by recanting — only blaspheme Christ — 
 only pronounce the Moslem formula. Many did: 
 many who would gladly have died the death of 
 
 205 
 
torture live the life of hyprocrisy and shame for the 
 sake of wife and children, whom they saved from 
 a fate worse than death. Many have preferred to 
 kill wives and daughters, and then die themselves. 
 
 Meantime in his palace on the Bosporus sits 
 the absolute monarch of this realm who gives the 
 signal for the slaughter to begin and cease, writing 
 to Lord Salisbury that he will see to it personally that 
 the reforms in Armenia are carried out. The Sultan, 
 the shadow of God on earth, Abdul Hamid the Second, 
 or as he is better called by William Watson, Abdul 
 The Damned. Such is Armenia, such was the need 
 of reform, such was the promise of reform, and 
 such has been the performance. 
 
 Now, whose business is it — anybody's? What 
 place does Turkey hold among the powers? At the 
 close of the Crimean war, in 1865, she was under the 
 practical dominion of Kussia. For a hundred years 
 her great northern neighbor had exercised a protector- 
 ate over the Christians in her borders. But in 1865 
 a change was made. Instead of Russia alone the six 
 great powers of Europe assumed that position. What 
 is everybody's business is nobody's business, and the 
 Turk has come off better since then, playing one of 
 the powers against another with all his native cun- 
 ning. 
 
 The present Sultan, thrust upon the throne a 
 score of years ago against his will, seems to have 
 done his best according to his light, to hold his heathen 
 realm together in security. He had a hard task on 
 his hands. He found his treasury" empty, his people 
 poor, nobody about him he could trust, and the 
 Russian army almost at his door. The early dissolu- 
 
 206 
 
tion of his empire was confidently predicted. He 
 has held his own through all these years, and kept his 
 foot upon the western shore of the Bosporus, by just 
 such reliance upon the jealousies and selfishness of his 
 European masters as today is saving him from ruin. 
 
 What a commentary on the Christianity of the 
 age ! Here we are in the last decade of the nineteenth 
 century. Here are thousands of Christians being 
 put to the edge of the sword, day by day, mth 
 medieval barbarity, and no power in Christendom 
 will lift its finger to stop the outrage. Have men 
 really progressed as far as w^e thought? Have we 
 any real right to look back with supercilious satis- 
 faction upon the middle ages? There was a time 
 w^hen a barefooted monk tramped over Europe and 
 called every soldier in Christendom to arms. Tide 
 after tide from as far west as the British Isles swept 
 eastward to rescue the very grave where Jesus had 
 once lain from the Saracen's dominion. Today there 
 is no Peter the Hermit to speak — or is there no chival- 
 rous Europe to hear and respond? Here lies Turkey, 
 still on Christian borders. Here is the coveted city, 
 mistress of two seas, the proudest-placed capital on 
 the face of the earth — fit to be the capital of the 
 globe — and over it shines the Crescent, not the Cross. 
 And here within the limits of that heathen realm the 
 followers of Christ are preyed upon like sheep. There 
 to the north lies Russia, able to put three million 
 fighting men into the field — and Russia pretends to 
 worship Christ. There is Germany, the land of 
 Luther and the Reformation, of education, and the 
 art of printing, with the most massive and mobile 
 land force in the world. There is France, war-like 
 
 207 
 
France, fretting for the strife, bearing ever in her 
 breast the dream of conquest, and the mighty memory 
 of Napoleon — the France of the Revolution, the eman- 
 cipator of man from the feudal yoke. Here is Italy 
 with her great past and her glorious future ; and Aus- 
 tria, strong in the present. Christian nations, every 
 one, in name and creed ! And over there against the 
 northern sea lies England, Cromwell's and Milton's 
 England, richest of nations, mistress of the seas, 
 holding her fleets in check like a leash of lions, ready 
 and able to enforce her will. Eussia, Germany, 
 France, Italy, Austria, England — the half-dozen 
 powers that give law to the eastern world! And to 
 these six great Christian nations the weak and tremb- 
 ling Ottoman had pledged his word. The word is 
 broken, but not a government stirs. What then? 
 It is nothing new that governments should be coward- 
 ly and selfish. But where are the people they pretend 
 to represent; Where are the masses who have still 
 a heart to sympathize with their kind ? Salisbury and 
 the rest are but the figureheads of Christendom. 
 Where is Christendom itself? 
 
 And what is Christendom ? What is Christianity ? 
 Not Romanism, nor yet Protestantisin — ^not any phil- 
 osophy or creed or church, short of that universal 
 church the Master himself foresaw exultingly when 
 He rose to that breadth of prophetic vision where 
 even now the eyes of His disciples blink as they try 
 to follow His gaze — nothing short of that universal 
 stream of spiritual life which, whatever may have 
 been its obscure and secret source, has gathered 
 strength along all the centuries and bears today upon 
 its bright and growing tide the treasures of all the 
 
 208 
 
past and the hopes of all the future, — all that makes 
 the life of man worth living here today. That is 
 Christianity; and they are Christians who have in- 
 herited its inspiring history and cling to its trans- 
 cendent promises. "Whenever in thought, in word, in 
 act, in aspiration, the character of Christ shows 
 itself, — there again as upon a rock the Christ founds 
 his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it. 
 
 Speaking on this burning question here tonight 
 I cannot accept from anyone a narrower definition of 
 Christianity than that. I claim the right to speak 
 for many in this hall, for thousands upon thousands 
 in this land, whose names perhaps may not be found 
 on any church roll, whose minds have struggled in 
 vain ^\ith doubts, but whom the sad experience of 
 life has led to the same conviction that loA^e is omni- 
 potent, and to the same blessed hope of immortality, 
 which is rooted and grounded in love. Wlio will try 
 to part Christ's seamless robe? Who tonight will 
 divide with names that universal church? Love is 
 the life of the soul; and Christendom lies wherever 
 the law of love struggles to find expression. This is 
 Christendom, above it stands the Cross, and over 
 against it stands this heathendom — Moham^medanism 
 — woman in the harem, the child a slave, liberty an 
 untolerated word, progress undreamed of, hearts 
 steeled by fatalism, prayers for vengeance, conversion 
 by the torch and sword; and over it all hangs the 
 Crescent. Between these the quarrel lies. 
 
 When governments prove false what should the 
 people do? The people should speak as with one 
 voice. From Italy to England, from the Atlantic 
 
 209 
 
to the Pacific, should go up one cry of warning and 
 condemnation. No government in the nineteenth 
 century can resist that. That is why we are here 
 tonight. It is little w^e can do alone, but we should 
 do what everybody ought to do; and if every com- 
 munity in Christendom would do what we are doing 
 here tonight the Armenian Christians would be saved. 
 The Turk would have to quit his throne. Salisbury 
 pretends to speak for England, the self-constituted 
 guardian of the unhappy victims, when he says that 
 interA^ention might bring on a holy war, might bring 
 all Asia to the Straits of the Dardanelles. But that is 
 not England's real voice. She has spoken. Hear her 
 word : 
 
 "Ho¥/ long shall they be borne? Is not the cup 
 
 Of crime yet full? Doth devildom still lack 
 
 Some consummating crown, that we hold back 
 
 The scourge, and in Christ's borders give them roomi? 
 
 How long shall they be borne, O England? Up, 
 
 Tempest of God, and sweep them to their doom!" 
 
 If war should come, would not war be 
 better than the cowardly peace of the past four 
 months? But w^ar would not come. If the people 
 would but utter that universal cry the hour demands, 
 it would be enough. 
 
 What is our duty in America? Here stands our 
 country, the Tita^i of the new age, almost unarmed, 
 defenceless — her sword unfleshed in old-world 
 quarrels. It is not her treaty that is broken. But 
 Americans have sent ten million dollars to Turkey, 
 have two and one-half millions invested there in mis- 
 sionary property. Our fellow citizens are there 
 as teachers and pastors. We can insist that our gov- 
 
 210 
 
ernment shall take every means to save tliese, and 
 support the Executive in all he does to protect their 
 rights; and we can give substantial aid to those who 
 suffer there. 
 
 Above all, let us not sleep in this great hour. 
 Oh, for eyes to see things as they really are! — for 
 liearts to appreciate the crises of life before they 
 pass ! We are touched by the stories of old martyr- 
 doms. Let us not be blind to the fact that we are 
 ^^itnessing today one of the greatest persecutions 
 the Church has undergone. Let us not be so worldly 
 and sodden that we cannot see the real heroism of 
 those who died by thousands rather than deny that 
 name w^hich stands for all they held dear and ail that 
 we hold dear. We do not know why such things are. 
 We do not know why Christ himself must hang upon 
 the cross. We do not know why sin and evil are. 
 But w^e do know that sin and evil have no remedy 
 but in tliat same divine, unselfish, love which is the 
 very lieart of our religion. We do ?iot know why for 
 the iirst three centuries Christianity marked its w^ay 
 by the rack, the cross, and the stake; but w^e do 
 know that out of that agony and sacrifice have 
 come the liberty and peace w^hich w^e enjoy; and 
 we cannot but believe that the awL'ul suffering, the 
 triumphant faith of poor, martyred, Armenia may 
 yield to future times a like glorious harvest. But 
 let us w^atch wdth her, and to some purpose. Let 
 us give her all w^e can of sympathy ^;nd aid. And let 
 us not b}' selfish lives deny the name of Christ, for 
 if we do — if the people of Europe be not better than 
 Their rulers — if w^e shrink from any needed sacrifice 
 for them — Armenia may turn to us and say, as the 
 
 211 
 
Lord said when he walked between the ranks of 
 wailing women to be crucified: ''Weep not for me; 
 weep rather for yourselves, and for your children." 
 
 212 
 
A PHILANTHROPIST 
 
 A Response to the Toast, **Our Country/' Made at a Dinner 
 
 Given to the Honorable Simon Wolf, on the Seventieth 
 
 Anniversary of His Birth, October 28, 1906. 
 
 Our Country — what does that really mean? 
 Civil and religious liberty — these are the twin glories 
 of the land we love. 
 
 Liberty is the sweetest word the lips of men have 
 ever learned to frame. The race has funded all its 
 labors, all its triumphs, all its sacrifices, in that single 
 word. It holds all memories: there is not a tear that 
 has been shed by agonized martyrs, there is not a 
 drop of blood that has flowed from the side of dying 
 heroes, that is not treasured in it. It holds all hopes : 
 there is not a dream of happiness tJiat hovers on the 
 horizon of the human mind today but was born of its 
 inspiration and will be realized only through its 
 workings. It means so much that we forget its 
 meaning: we take, like careless and ungrateful 
 children, blessings that were born of speechless 
 anguish and have been cradled on the knees of pain. 
 
 The history of the world is nothing but the story 
 of man's struggle for a chance to be himself. That 
 is the end of all his learning. ''You shall know the 
 truth," said Jesus, ''and the truth shall make you 
 free." Free — ^yes, even from the trammels and super- 
 stitions which misguided followers of the Master have 
 
 213 
 
piled upon his pure and simple teaching. The 
 laureate of freedom sang, across tlie sea: 
 
 *'A creed is a rod, 
 
 And a crown is of night. 
 But this thing is God — 
 
 To be man with thy might, 
 
 To grow straight in the strength of thy manhood and 
 
 live out thy life as the light." 
 
 When God made man in his own likeness he 
 made it impossible that he should remain a slaA^e. 
 If anything has been learned from six thousand years 
 of social order, it is this: that there is no dungeon 
 deep enough, there is no flame fierce enough, there is 
 no rack cruel enough, to over-awe the spirit of a man 
 determined to be free. You may bury him under 
 mountains of oppression; you may wind him in the 
 meshes of form: and ceremony as closely as the worm 
 7/eaves itself in the cocoon; but his faith in himself 
 Can move the mountain into the sea, and the awaking 
 chrysalis will find its wings. 
 
 The liberty of the one — that is monarchy; the 
 liberty of the few — that is aristocracy; the lawless 
 liberty of each — that is anarchy, and ends in the 
 despotism of the strongest hand; but the liberty we 
 love is the liberty of each, bounded always, and 
 bounded only, by the liberty of all. It is liberty 
 under law. It is the freedom of the race. Its goal 
 is in that glorified humanity which is yet to be upon 
 this earth, which wears upon its brow the simplest, 
 saddest, tenderest of Hebrew names — the Son of 
 Man. It is man himself come into his OAvn, man in 
 his true dignity and glory, sitting on the right hand 
 of power and coming in the clouds of every revolu- 
 
 214 
 
tion. That is the vision that gilds the blackness of 
 darkness in the storm that is gathering over Kussia. 
 That is the leaven that is leavening the whole lump 
 of Orientalism until China herself is almost ready 
 to take her place beside the Western powers. There 
 is only one thing worth living for, and that is to have 
 a part, however small, in bringing that better time 
 upon its way. When man shall come at last into his 
 kingdom and look back upon the progress he has 
 made, he mil not ask who was rich or who was poor, 
 who was miglity or who was humble, who was wise 
 or who was foolish according to the stupid standards 
 of our day; he mil ask one thing, and one thing 
 only, — ''Who fed and clothed and visited the hungry 
 and naked and sick among my brothers? — who recog- 
 nized that man was of royal lineage, ho^vever mean 
 the raiment he put on, and reverenced the King in 
 his disguise?'' 
 
 The man in whose honor we are met tonight 
 may safely present his life as an answer to that 
 question. That is the reason I am here to pay my 
 tribute with the others: that is why I call him for- 
 tunate and blest. 
 
 And now I hope Mr. Wolf will accept these few 
 lines in honor of his birthday: 
 
 "Call no man blest till his last day is done," 
 
 The Theban counselled with uncovered head. 
 And if life's blessing be a cloudless sun 
 
 Which yet may be o'ercast, 'twas wisely said. 
 But if our blessings of ourselves are born, 
 
 And they that bless the world are ever blest, 
 The day may keep the splendor of the morn 
 
 Whatever storms may gather in the west. 
 For thee, dear friend, who all thy life hast striven 
 
 215 
 
To blow aflame the love-enkindling spark, 
 If all the lamps be blotted out of heaven. 
 
 Their going will not leave thee in the dark: 
 Thou Shalt be lighted by the light thou givest. 
 And so we call thee blest while thanking God thou 
 livest. 
 
 216 
 
THE OLD COMMONER: THADDEUS 
 STEVENS 
 
 An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Vermont Historic 
 
 cal Society, Held at Montpelier, on the Ninth Day of 
 
 November, 1906, in the Hall of the House of 
 
 Representatives. 
 
 When I was a boy there was a picture tacked 
 up OP the dingy wall of my father's factory office, 
 which I used to gaze upon with wonder and awe. 
 It was the picture of an old man seated in a chair. 
 I remember he had a club foot and seemed to be dis- 
 torted with age and pain; yet the face was one of 
 commanding power. There was scorn in the firm-shut 
 lips; there was a defiant glance in the eagle eyes; 
 and yet it was a face that even as a child I felt that 
 I could trust. ''Who is that old man, father?" I 
 asked. And, as nearly as I can remember, he replied : 
 "That is Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. He 
 was born over here in Danville or Peacham. He was 
 leader of the House of Representatives at Wash- 
 ington during the war and afterwards until he died. 
 They called him the great commoner, because he 
 believed in the common people and fought like a tiger 
 for the rights of all men rich and poor, black and 
 white. He hated slavery with a hatred that knew no 
 bounds, and he poured out on rebels and traitors 
 all the vials of his wrath. When a^ou are older you 
 can read and judge for yourself; but I tell you, he 
 
 217 
 
was a great man, — that old Thad Stevens!" And 
 so when I found I was to make this address my mind 
 went back to that early impression, and I said to 
 myself: ''I will try to draw the portrait of that 
 strong old man, — that true son of Verm/ont, who 
 fought as bravely and as mightily for the Union in 
 the halls of Congress as any of her sons fought upon 
 the field, and who finally breathed her own implac- 
 able hatred of oppression into the three great amend- 
 ments to the constitution." That is how it happens 
 that I am speaking to you tonight of Thaddeus 
 Stevens, War leader of the House of Representatives 
 and Father of the Constitutional Amendments. 
 
 Thaddeus Stevens was the spirit of Yerm/ont in- 
 carnate. Even in his faults and his failings he was 
 ours. He came as honestly by his defects as he did 
 by his virtues. Imperious, irascible, he carried in his 
 breast a heart as tender as a child's. When he 
 was a child himself his mother had gone about amiong 
 the neighbors nursing the sick through a terrible 
 epidemic. Thad saw her sacrifice, and never forgot 
 the lesson. Human suffering never failed to touch 
 him to tears. His own infirmity made him especially 
 solicitous for the halt and lame. He gave to his 
 physician this order: "Doctor, whenever you come 
 across a poor boy who has any trouble with his legs, 
 do the best you can for him, and send the bill to me. ' ' 
 Even to the careless and improvident he was kind 
 and generous — that is, if he had anything himself. 
 Sometimes his own pockets were empty. If that was 
 the case he would never disclose the fact but would 
 put his refusal to give on the ground that they were 
 unworthy to receive, and give them a sharp lecture 
 
 218 
 
on their shiftless ways. There was never a particle 
 of sham piety about him. He hated cant with all 
 the intensity of his nature. He had a near relative 
 who was very punctilious to ask a blessing at every 
 meal. Thad said to him: "Morrill, why don't you 
 take some rainy day in the fall and bless all your 
 garden-sauce at once, and save this everlasting repeti- 
 tion?" Yet no one loved genuine righteousness in 
 man or nation more than he, and no one gave him- 
 self more resolutely to secure it. 
 
 Nobody seems to remember much about his father. 
 Some say he was a worthless sort of fellow and ran 
 away. Some say he was killed in the war of 1812. 
 We know he was a shoemaker and taught Thad to 
 cobble. And tradition says he was a great wrestler 
 and could throw any man in the county. But there 
 is no need to inquire about his father. His greatness 
 is all accounted for by his mother; and that is where 
 greatness usually begins. She had four sons. The 
 others were well and able-bodied — Thad was sickly 
 and lame. You can guess which was the favorite. 
 A poet once wrote: 
 
 These mothers are like God — they love 
 Ugly and fair alike. 
 
 He made a great mistake: they love the ugly and 
 misshappen far the best; on them they lavish their 
 tenderest care; for them they are ready to labor and 
 go without. "It is plain Thad can never make his 
 way by physical labor. He must go to the academy 
 and college, and if I have to work my fingers off he 
 shall." And he did. Do you wonder that Stevens's 
 heart always melted at mention of his mother? The 
 
 219 
 
greatest iDleasure his prosperity brought him was the 
 ability to give her the fine farm she wanted and the 
 bright gold-pieces she loved to drop in the contribu- 
 tion box. ^'Everything I have done, everything I 
 am, I owe to my mother. " So he said. And when he 
 died his will provided that her grave in Peacham 
 should be carefully tended and its corners planted 
 with roses, ''or other cheerful flowers" to the end of 
 time. Oh, harsh and forbidding old man, we have 
 found your secret out! Your sternness was only a 
 mask to Idde the over-tender nature. How many of 
 the softest hearts that beat put on this appearance of 
 hardness for their own protection! Yfhen Jesus was 
 on earth He saw through such disguises, just as He 
 saw through the mask of hypocrisy and pretense the 
 pharisee put on. He drew about him such men as 
 this — ^men on whom the religious world of his day 
 looked askance but whom the Son of Man saw to 
 be kind and true of heart. Thad Stevens never be- 
 longed to any church, but when the "ordained hypo- 
 crites" of his time turned their backs upon the slave, 
 "the least of these my brethren," Stevens went to 
 him and gave him all he had. Whether he was a 
 Christian or not, judge ye! Once, late in life, he 
 was betrayed into a theological discussion. He 
 showed such a profound familiarity with the subject 
 that the listeners asked him if he had not at some 
 period of his life studied for the ministry. Stevens 
 parried the query with his customary snort: 
 ' ' Hump]i ! I have read their books. ' ' 
 
 No doubt he had read them and read them 
 well. That was a habit he had. He bent himself 
 to his task with an iron will, and studied relentlessly. 
 
 220 
 
He never meant that anything he set out for should 
 get away from him — least of all an idea. He went 
 through the academy at Peacham; he spent a term or 
 two in the university at Burlington ; but he finally 
 graduated from Dartmouth. That was in 1814. 
 Then he went to Pennsylvania to teach school and 
 study law. When he was ready to take his bar 
 examination he found that the lawyers had passed 
 a rule to keep him out. The rule required that the 
 applicant should not have been engaged in any oc- 
 cupation except the study of law during the years 
 of his preparation. Stevens had been teaching 
 school daytime and studying law nights. So he 
 crossed over into Maryland and took the examina- 
 tion there. Then he came back and settled down 
 in Gettysburg where the great battle was afterwards 
 fought. He had a right to practice in Pennsylvania 
 then, being a member of the bar in Maryland. But 
 it is one thing to have the right and it is another 
 thing to get the chance. It was a long time before 
 Stevens got a chance, and in the meantime he nearly 
 starved. Again and again he was almost ready to 
 give up. One day he said to an acquaintance: ''I 
 can't stand it any longer. I have got to go away." 
 The next day opportunity knocked at his door. It 
 was a murder case. The old story. He was offered 
 the chance to defend because the case was too poor 
 for anybody else to touch. Stevens seized the chance. 
 He could not win his case but he tried it with such 
 astonishing ability that his reputation in that com- 
 munity was made, and from that hour he never 
 lacked for business. The plea was insanity. In 
 those days it was a new-fashioned plea and very un- 
 
 221 
 
popular; but Stevens believed thoroughly in the truth 
 of the defence. Long afterwards he said he had 
 defended fifty mtirder cases, and succeeded in every 
 one but this; and yet that this was the only man in 
 the whole lot that ought to have been acquitted. 
 
 But Stevens found better business than defend- 
 ing murderers. They were close by Maryland. Fug- 
 itive slave cases were common and these enlisted 
 every faculty of body, mind and heart that he pos- 
 sessed. If he couldn't save the poor wretch in court 
 he would buy him rather than let him be taken back. 
 He saw the wicked, cruel system close at hand. Hte 
 knew it in its most hideous aspect. His soul flamed 
 wherever slavery showed itself. He brought to the 
 borders of the slave states the spirit of the free hills 
 and mountains of the north, and he never lost it 
 as so many others did. 
 
 I must tell you a story to illustrate his method 
 in court. A Quaker miller in that part of Penn- 
 sylvania had been very active in assisting runaway 
 slaves to make their escape. He was put on trial 
 for doing so in one instance, and the charge was 
 that he had levied war against the United States. 
 The case was tried before Justice Grier afterwards 
 of the Federal Supreme Court. When the evidence 
 was all in, the district attorney made an extended 
 argument upon the question of law, reading from 
 volume after volume to show what conduct might 
 constitute the crime in question. Stevens listened 
 in innnovable contempt, silent to the end. When 
 the attorney had taken his seat he rose, hobbled over 
 to the clerk's desk, leaned upon it, and looked Grier 
 in the eye. "I have listened to this long and labored 
 
 222 
 
argument with the gravest anxiety — not for my 
 client, but for you. Because it is now for you to tell 
 this jury whether a Quaker miller, white with the 
 dust of his occupation, and riding on a bob-tailed 
 sorrel nag, can be found to have been levying war, 
 under sldj construction to be given to the consti- 
 tution." And he sat down. He always knew when 
 to sit do^vn. I sometimes think that is the hardest 
 Jesson a lawyer ever has to learn. 
 
 The constitution declared that persons held to 
 service in one state, if they escaped into another, 
 should not be discharged therefrom, but should be 
 surrendered on claim of the owner. "Very well," 
 said Stevens, ''then we will do it. But it doesn't 
 say the rest of us shall turn out and join the hunt. 
 It doesn't say that a man shall not have a trial by 
 jury to decide whether he is a freeman or a slave. 
 We will stand by the constitutior, but we won't 
 stretch it a hair 's breadth in the interest of slavery. ' ' 
 Case after case he defended for nothing; but he was 
 no Hessian. He never let out his sword to the op- 
 pressor. Those were the days that molded the great 
 advocate of freedom. These were the experiences 
 that burned into his soul the lesson the whole coun- 
 try was finally to learn. 
 
 Stevens didn't make the mistake so many young 
 lawyers make — of going at once into politics. I 
 thing it would trouble you to name a really great 
 lawyer who did not give the first years of his pro- 
 fessional life entirely to the law. Those are the 
 days that determine what he is to be. With the 
 sure instinct of genius, Stevens devoted himself for 
 fifteen years to the mastery of his calling. In those 
 
 223 
 
years he laid broad and deep the foundations of 
 h's massive learning and acquired the accomplish- 
 ment of his consummate skill. When he died Jere- 
 miah Black declared that he had not left his equal 
 at the American bar: and Jeremiah Black was a 
 rival, a political opponent — himself accounted by 
 many the greatest lawyer of Ms time. 
 
 Stevens alwaj went to the heart of his subject. 
 He always laid his finger on the sore spot of his ad- 
 versary's case. He never wasted words. He had 
 pondered well the Grreek saying, ''The half may- 
 be more than the whole." He never took a note 
 during a trial. He trusted his memory and his mem- 
 ory never betrayed the trust. He flew at the decisive 
 point with all the ferocity of his nature and fastened 
 upon it with a grip that nothing could relax. Airs and 
 graces he despised, but his words quivered with the 
 intensity of his conviction, and his wit illumined the 
 obscurity of his subject as the lightning lays the 
 landscape bare beneath a midnight sky. His sarcasm 
 stung like hornets and his drollery was indescrib- 
 able and unique. Senator Morrill said he wasted 
 wit enough every day to make the reputation of an 
 ordinary humorist. The most mirth-provoking things 
 he ever said were spoken with a face of unmoved, 
 funereal solemnity. When he was leader of the 
 House at Washington he could at any time put the 
 chamber in a roar without an effort. If you read 
 the record you will find, ''laughter," "great merri- 
 ment," following remarks of his, v/hicli having lost 
 the manner in which he made them have lost their 
 whole significance and charm. After all, the great 
 secret is personality, and no analysis can penetrate 
 to that. 
 
 224 
 
Stevens was forty-one when he first went to the 
 legislature. Instantly he took his place in the front 
 rank. The next year he was returned and took a 
 hand in the great fight for free schools. I must 
 linger a moment upon that. Pennsylvania furnished 
 education for the rich at established rates and if 
 a father was too poor to pay, he was obliged to make 
 application for assistance on the ground of poverty. 
 Class distinctions sprang up and sensitive parents 
 kept their children at home rather than send them 
 to be looked upon as paupers. This year the leg- 
 islature passed an act providing for public educa- 
 tion for rich and poor alike at the public charge. 
 But this meant more taxes for the comfortable people 
 who had no children of their own. A mighty reac- 
 tion set in. The Pennsylvania pocket book was as sen- 
 sitive as any other pocket book and a legislature was 
 elected pledged to repeal the law. The senate did 
 its part at once. Then the repeal bill came before the 
 house. A test vote was taken on a preliminary 
 question and showed a majority of thirty in favor 
 of repeal. Then Stevens appeared upon the scene. 
 He had been absent until now. The friends of free 
 education gathered round him and told him it was 
 useless lo oppose the tide. The mercenary wave had 
 swept every thing before it. Now one man stood 
 up against it. Stevens immediately moved to strike 
 out the whole bill after the enacting clause and to 
 substitute for it a bill of his own, strengthening the 
 free school law. Upon this motion he made a speech 
 which for immediate practical effect upon its hearers 
 has never been equaled in a legislative assembly in 
 this country. The house was packed. The senate 
 
 225 
 
which had just passed the bill crowded in to hear 
 this audacious argument against their action. 
 
 His biographer says. ''Stevens then in the 
 prime of life was erect and majestic. His form had 
 outgrown the slenderness of youth. It was not yet 
 bent with the heavy weight of years." A witness 
 declares, ''he looked like a descended god." He was 
 inspired by his great subject. He spoke with the 
 fire of a Hebrew^ prophet. The house w^as electri- 
 fied. It voted as soon as Stevens took his seat and 
 carried his motion almost two to one — and the senate 
 hurried back to its chamber, revoked its former ac- 
 tion and concurred. To understand the magnitude 
 of his trumph we must remember that the men whom 
 Stevens convinced and persuaded were not merely 
 opposed to his motion when he began : they had been 
 elected on that very issue. They had been com- 
 manded by their constituents to vote for the repeal. 
 Yet such was the force of reason. — such was the 
 power of righteousness in Stevens's speech, that every 
 thing was forgotten save the mighty, elemental truths 
 he brought to bear; and before many days Penjisyl- 
 vania herself, clothed and in her right mind, was 
 ready to praise and bless him for the service. So 
 it is always. No matter what the hue and cry of 
 the moment may be — no matter how the mtiltitude 
 may be hurried away to do evil, the leader who 
 dares to utter the deepest, noblest, truest word, he 
 it is who is certain to be acknowledged in the end 
 as the true voice and tribune of the people. Is it 
 strange that Stevens always looked back upon tliis 
 victory as the crowning achievement of his life? Of- 
 ten he said that he w^ould be paid and over-paid for 
 
 226 
 
all his labors, if a single child of destitution who had 
 found the blessing of education through his help 
 should come to drop a tear of gratitude upon his 
 grave. 
 
 The speech made liis name a household word 
 throughout the state and Pennsylvania was proud 
 to call him her son. But after all he was only an 
 adopted son. He really belonged to us. I suppose 
 you have all heard the witticism that was sprung on 
 a banquet of Pennsylvanians. They had been praising 
 their state ad nauseam as is apt to be the case at all 
 state meetings. Finally a guest arose and said: ''I 
 give you a toast — the three greatest Pennsylvanians, 
 Benjamin Franklin — of Massachusetts, Albert Galla- 
 tin — of Switzerland, and Thaddeus Stevens — of 
 Vermont. ' ' 
 
 A year or two after the free school victory 
 a convention was called to amend the state consti- 
 tution. Stevens was a member. It was a stormy 
 time and Stevens was in his element. Every at- 
 tempt to carry class or race distinctions into the 
 organic law found in him a constant and determined 
 foe. You can see how early and consistent a friend 
 he was of equal suffrage. The constitution as the 
 convention left it limited the right 1o white citizens. 
 Stevens having fought in vain against the odious dis- 
 crimination, utterly refused to affix his name to the 
 document that contained it. And that was away 
 back in 1837. 
 
 About the same time he attended another con- 
 vention. It had been called by the supporters of 
 slavery. They thought the only \vay to save the 
 Union was to put a stop to the anti-slavery agita- 
 
 227 
 
tion. How Stevens ever managed to get a seat in 
 such a body no one seems to understand, but he 
 did it, and he succeeded in making it so ridiculous 
 that there was nothing left for it to do but to ad- 
 journ. Of course he was a champion of the very 
 views the convention was called to denounce. Yet 
 he made himself the central figure of the scene and 
 by his mastery of parliamentary tactics, by resolu- 
 tions, points of order, by wit, eloquence, sar- 
 casm, he turned the whole movement into a 
 rout. His own self-command was complete, his 
 countenance imperturbable. His sallies kept the 
 contention in alternate bursts of laughter 
 and applause. Nothing was too personal or ad 
 captandum for his use. A minister rose and bitter- 
 ly denounced him; for bringing a firebrand into the 
 convention. Stevens solemnly rebuked the reverend 
 gentleman for indulging in personalities, gravely pre- 
 tending to believe that by "firebrand" he was refer- 
 ring to a member with flaming red hair who had come 
 in with Stevens and sat at his side. Whereupon 
 the convention nearly exploded. I cannot recall anoth- 
 er instance where a single unsupported member, 
 hostile to the sentiment of the assembly and gaining 
 admittance for the sole purpose of defeating its 
 object, has been able, by sheer force of personal ad- 
 dress and management, to turn a serious gathering 
 into a farce and utterly frustrate its whole design. 
 Surely it was only the rarest combination of humor, 
 eloquence and forensic skill that could make such 
 a performance possible. 
 
 After this he devoted himself a great deal to 
 politics, and of course he was an intense partisan. 
 
 228 
 
In the last years of his life, when he was leader of 
 the house, he came in one day just in time to vote 
 on a contested election case, and asked a member of 
 his own party how the matter stood. "Not jnuch 
 choice," he replied. "They are both damned 
 rascals." "Very well," said Stevens, "Which is 
 onr damned rascal?" Yet this was only dealing with 
 things as he found them. Partisan as he was, he was 
 wise and just enough to see the folly of determining 
 such questions by a party vote and advocated another 
 method. He proposed that they should be referred 
 to a committee who should hear and decide the ques- 
 tion judicially as is done in England. 
 
 "Well, he devoted so much time to politics that 
 when he was fifty years old he woke up one morning 
 and found himself poorer than he was when he landed 
 in Pennsylvania. He had been engaged in a large 
 iron business and his partner had run him in debt 
 $200,000. Stevens went to work and paid it up to 
 the last cent. In the course of his life he made and 
 lost three fortunes and yet left a comfortable estate 
 at the last. He went to Lancaster and fought his 
 way to the front in a new field. He drew young 
 men about him as a magnet draws the steel filings. 
 He had nine students in his office at one time. 
 In polities the machine was against him but the 
 people were for him and by a great majority tliey 
 elected him to Congress. That was in 1849 anvl 
 Stevens was fifty-eight years old. 
 
 He had now reached that chamber where with 
 the possible exception of John Quincy Adams he 
 was one day to become the greatest figure that ever 
 dominated its debates. But that supreme period 
 
 229 
 
of his life was even then some fifteen years away. 
 On his first appearance the little company of 
 Freesoilers and Conscience Whigs rallied around him 
 and adopted him as their leader. He was their can- 
 didate for speaker. It was 1850 — the year of the 
 second great compromise on the subject of slavery. 
 The war with Mexico was ended. A vast region had 
 been gained. New territories were to be orgaaized, 
 new states were to come in. California stood knock- 
 ing for admission — '' Calif ornia, " as Seward de- 
 scribed her, ' ' the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her 
 robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold." 
 Congress, controlled by the slaveholders, hesitated 
 to admit her. The Mexican war had been kindled 
 and carried on to make more slave states and be- 
 hold the first state in the new territory ready for 
 admission had spurned slavery from her threshold 
 and adopted a free constitution. New Mexico and 
 Utah were to be given territorial governments. How 
 about slaverj^ in these? Should it be provided for 
 or prohibited? These and other great issues arose 
 and at the bottom of each was the burning question 
 of slavery. Thirty years before, Missouri had asked 
 for admission as a slave state. She was finally ad- 
 mitted but upon the express condition that tliro' the 
 rest of that vast region purchased From France and 
 kno^ATi as Louisiana, a line should be draT\Ti at 36° 
 30' — and north of that line slavery should be forever 
 prohibited. That was the famous Missouri com- 
 promise of 1820. Now a new comx)romise was pro- 
 posed by Henry Clay and in the end it was adopted. 
 Among other things it provided fo»; a stronger fug- 
 itive slave law. It took away trial by jury and 
 
 230 
 
required the citizens of free states to actively as- 
 sist in the capture and return of slaves. On this 
 proposition Stevens made his first speech in Congress. 
 It was a topic where he was at home and which roused 
 him as no other subject could. For almost the first 
 time Congress heard the voice of the unterrified North 
 speaking the bitter, blasting truth on the subject of 
 slavery where i'. had so long listened to the soft 
 phrases of conciliation and persuasion. It was a 
 new experience and I am still Yankee enough to 
 think that it was wholesome. "Keep slavery where 
 it is. ' ' he declared, ' ' and it ^\dll die of its o^mi poison. 
 Let it spread and the whole body will become dis- 
 eased. Surround it with a cordon of freemen and in 
 twenty years not a single slave state but ^^ill have 
 on its statute books a law for the gradual extinction 
 of the system." With merciless sarcasm he handled 
 the pretension that the negro was better off as a 
 slave; that when he had tried freedom he had been 
 known to return and voluntarily receive the yoke. 
 That delusion held its ground even after the begin- 
 ning of the war. One day a Union officer happened 
 to meet a slave running away towards the north. He 
 had kno^^ra him in the days of his servitude. "Why 
 Sambo," he said, "why should you run away? 
 You had a good home — plenty to eat and drink and 
 the most considerate of masters!" "Well sah," 
 Sambo replied, continuing liis flight, "yo' can put 
 in yo' application — de situation am vacant." 
 
 But Stevens was speaking in 1850, and he was 
 a decade ahead of his time. The fugitive slave law 
 was enacted. The compromise was adopted, and 
 once more the slave question was put to sleep. 
 
 231 
 
Stevens was not a man to compromise on a question 
 of principle. He lost his interest in the politics of 
 such a period and went back to the law. When he 
 appeared in that chamber again it was on the eve 
 of civil war. The years that had come and gone had 
 been big with events. The nation had moved steadily 
 towards freedom. If the south had kept the compro- 
 mise of 1850 it might have held the scepter for an- 
 other generation. But it was not in the slave party to 
 rest on any ground it had gained. It struck out at 
 every point. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, held 
 sacred by the north for thirty-four years. It dis- 
 puted the power of Congress to keep slavery out of 
 the territories. It flaunted the Dred Scott decision 
 from the highest seat of judgment. It strove with 
 bullet and bowie knife to force slavery upon Kan- 
 sas and with culminating impudence it proposed a 
 revival oP the slave trade. Meanwhile a great pol- 
 itical party had been born pledged to resist the fur- 
 ther extension of slavery. The election of 1860 was 
 almost at the door, when for the first time in the 
 history of the republic "the slave was to choose a 
 president of the United States." 
 
 It was December, 1859, and Stevens was on the 
 verge of three score years and ten. He had not 
 expected to come to "Washington again. When he 
 had retired a few years before he had delivered his 
 valedictory; and now as he reappeared he sadly con- 
 fessed the consciousness of failing powers. "More 
 graceful would it be to retire — for us who find by 
 repeated trials that we can no longer bend the bow 
 of Ulysses. Fitting would it be to lay doA\Ti the 
 discus W'3 have not the strength to hurl." It was the 
 
 232 
 
new hope for liberty that nerved him to put on the 
 armor — that marvellous political awakening — that 
 "marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mold 
 its laws." It was his opportunity — at last his hour 
 had come. It had come to him in his age. If he had 
 died before, he would have been forgotten. "I have 
 no history!'' was his melancholy exclamation a few 
 months before. "It is my life-long regret that I 
 have lived so long and so uselessly. " It is as a gaunt, 
 infirm and aging man but with the undying fire of 
 liberty and genius in his spirit that he will be paint- 
 ed for the times to come. He did not stand now as 
 he stood in the days of his youthful vigor, fighting his 
 way to the head of a hostile bar. He looked no longer 
 as he looked on the day in the statehouse at Har- 
 risburg when he swept house and senate by his 
 impassioned speech and compelled them to do right 
 by the children of the poor in Pennsylvania. He 
 was nearing the end of a long and lonely life that 
 had been childless and wifeless. Age had bent his 
 frame. Infirmity had crippled his gait. Suffering 
 had blanched his cheek. Thought and care had 
 ploughed deep into his forehead. Strife and passion 
 had left the mark of bitterness and scorn upon his 
 sunk and withered lip. But with the clear vision of 
 a prophet he saw that one of the crises of the world's 
 history was at hand, and denying to himself the 
 comfort and quiet of age, he gathered up all the re- 
 mains of his ancient strength to strike his last and 
 mightiest blow for freedom. 
 
 The house was eight weeks in choosing a speaker. 
 The question was whether the new Republican party 
 could muster strength enough to organize and 
 
 233 
 
control the body. One day a Democratic member 
 got up and invited all who were opposed to the Re- 
 publican program to meet in one caucus and act to- 
 gether. That only meant that the rest should give 
 up and vote for the Demjocratic candidate. Stevens 
 punctured the proposal with one of his favorite 
 weapons — ridicule. He said it made him think of 
 the happy family described in ''The Prairie" where 
 the owl, the prairie dog and the rattle-snake all lived 
 in one hole. Stevens helped to keep the contest live- 
 ly. Now and then he relieved the strain by his 
 humor. For instance he rose, with a serious counten- 
 ance to a question of privilege — sajdng that one of 
 his votes had been criticized in the public press and 
 he desired to make an explanation. He sent the 
 newspaper to the clerk's desk and asked that it be 
 read. The clerk looked at it blankly and replied 
 that the paper was printed in Grerman and he could 
 not read it. "Very well then," said Stevens with 
 unaffected gravity, ''I will postpone my explanation 
 till the clerk can read it." Finally the various for- 
 ces hostile to slavery came together and the Republi- 
 can candidate was seated in the chair. 
 
 Let us come at once to December, 1860. Lin- 
 coln has been elected, but the party that elected him 
 is terrified by the consequences of its victory. Se- 
 cession conventions have been called, and Congress goe£ 
 down on its knees begging the South to come back and 
 take everything it ever claimed. Both houses pass 
 a constitutional amendment to make slavery perpet- 
 ual in this government. Yes, two-thirds of house 
 and senate voted for this horrible measure. I re- 
 joice tonight that Stevens opposed every syllable of 
 
 234 
 
the weak-kneed, cowardly proposition ''The time for 
 compromises has gone by," he cried. "What we 
 need now is courage, calm, unwavering courage that 
 no danger can appall. We will faithfully execute the 
 present compact, but if it be torn m pieces by rebels 
 our next United States ^\ill liave no foot of ground 
 a slave can tread — no breath of air a slave can ever 
 breathe. ' ' 
 
 Senator Dawes, then a member of the House 
 from Massachusetts, has left us a striking picture of 
 the scene. ''No one who saw it," he declares, "can 
 ever forget it. All I can say of it or of him is tame 
 without the inspiration of the time and of his pres- 
 ence. It was the last of Buchanan's administration. 
 Lincoln had been elected. The house resembled a 
 powder magazine more than a deliberative assembly. 
 His denunciation of traitors to their face was ter- 
 rible, his exposure of the barbarism of their pre- 
 tended civilization was awful. Nearly fifty 
 southern members rose to their feet and rushed to- 
 wards him with curses and threats of violence. As 
 many of his friends gathered round him and moving 
 him in a hollow square to the space in front of the 
 speaker's desk opened before his assailants and stood 
 iijuard over him while he arraigned the slavocracy 
 in an indictment that surpassed even the great 
 arraignment of Sumner. He was nearly seventy. 
 On his form and voice time had made sad inroads, 
 but he stood at that moment erect as at thirty-five. 
 Calm' and self-possessed as a judge, he lashed them 
 Into fury, and then bade them compose themselves 
 at their leisure. The excitement beggars all de- 
 scription and can live only in the memory of those 
 
 235 
 
who witnessed it/' The long subserviency of the 
 North was near its end. In that uncompromising 
 tribune of the people the old domineering South had 
 at last found its master. 
 
 But the time had not yet come for the great 
 radical to lead. A little longer the counsels of fear 
 were destined to prevail. Bear in mind, state after 
 state had already seceded. The president of the con- 
 federate Congress had declared the separation per- 
 fect and perpetual. A president of the new republic 
 had been elected and his cabinet appointed, yet even 
 then Congress hugged the old delusion to its heart 
 that by surrendering all it might bring the rebels 
 back — and it voted to surrender aJl. It was only 
 when that full offer was spurned that the North 
 sadly and reluctantly took up the gage of battle, 
 which was not to be laid down until the principles 
 for which the old commoner contended had been em- 
 blazoned in the constitution of the Union and the 
 constitution of every single state that had rebelled. 
 
 You remember how cautiously Lincoln began; 
 how tenderly he pleaded with the South in his in- 
 augural; how slowly he moved until Sumter was 
 fired upon and he knew he had a solid North behind 
 him. On the 4th of July Congress met in answer to 
 his call. Union mien were in the saddle now. In the 
 House of Representatives there was no looking about 
 for a leader. All eyes were turned on Stevens. 
 James G. Blaine, by no means a partial admirer, de- 
 clares: ''He was the natural leader and took his place 
 by common consent." It was Blaine, also, who said: 
 ''He had the courage to meet any opponent, and was 
 never over -matched in intellectual conflict." He 
 
 236 
 
stood at the head of the committee charged with the 
 duty of raising money to support the government 
 and carry on the war as well as the duty of 
 advising how it should be spent. It was exactly the 
 duty Milton described in his noble sonnet to Sir 
 Henry Vane — • 
 
 Then to advise how war may, best upheld, 
 Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 
 In all her equipage. 
 
 In three days be brought in a bill to raise $250,000,- 
 000. Ho followed it with another appropriating $160,- 
 000,000 for the array, and for the navy $30,000,000 
 more. They passed at once. Then he bent himself to the 
 task of raising a revenue to answer these enormous 
 calls. With courage, with tact, with patience, he 
 brought Congress and the country to his plans. Yet, 
 burdened as hardly ever man was burdened, his eye 
 sv^^ept the horizon, and his capacious mind was 
 already busy with the outcome of it all. He seemed 
 to see the end from the beginning. 
 
 You remember the Crittenden resolution? It 
 declared that the war was not waged for conquest nor 
 to interfere with slavery, but only to restore the old 
 order of things, and that when that end was accom- 
 plished the war should cease. Senate and House 
 hurried to adopt it. Stevens stood out almost alone 
 against it. He did not believe in apologizing for the 
 war or going about to explain it. "Ask those who 
 made the war what is its object. The laws of war 
 must govern our conduct now." He saw that the 
 struggle was to be long and bloody. He had a vision 
 of the tremendous price that must be paid — the awful 
 sacrifice that was to be exacted. He did not believe 
 
 237 
 
in the nation tying its hands by resolutions. If it 
 should become necessary to free the slave or arm him 
 against his master, if new conditions mjust be imposed 
 to secure the peace hereafter, he would not pass a reso- 
 lution now to stare us in the face. The resolution 
 did pass, but a few months saw it broken. When the 
 next session had to deal with the same matter Stevens 
 moved to lay it on the table and his motion was sus- 
 tained. 
 
 Southern citizens were devoting their property 
 to the rebellion. Stevens said ''Confiscate it." 
 Masters were setting their slaves to build forts and 
 dig trenches. "Set them free," said Stevens, "every 
 man that is employed against us. If the war goes 
 on the time will come when we shall arm' every rebel's 
 slave to fight upon our side." The bill failed, but 
 the day came when the House was glad to pass it. 
 
 At the outset the South had one enormous ad- 
 vantage. Her vast crops could be raised by slaves 
 exactly as in time of peace. She could keep her 
 fighting strength untouched and send the products of 
 her plantations to buy the suppjies of war in 
 European markets. Stevens would have snatched 
 this advantage from her. Even before Lincoln was 
 inaugurated he brought in a bill to do it. A year 
 later he brought it up again. "Repeal," said he, 
 "the laws creating southern ports of entry. Then 
 foreign nations cannot enter them. It would be an 
 act of war against this country. A nation has a 
 right to close its own ports. It can do so by a law. 
 That law is better than a fleet. But blockade them 
 and you must keep everybody out by force. They 
 have a right to enter if they can. More than all, if 
 
 238 
 
you blockade them you acknowledge them as belliger- 
 ents, and foreign nations will do the same." What 
 would have happened if his advice had been heeded 
 we shall never know. We proclaimed the blockade 
 and Europe acknowledged the belligerency of the 
 South. 
 
 From the very beginning Stevens's mind was 
 occupied mth the great question of reconstruction. 
 Never doubting the ultimate triumph of our arms 
 he w^as sounding the depths of the profound problem 
 which, a few years later, was to engross the attention 
 of the people and their leaders. He came to his 
 conclusion early, announced it boldly, advocated it 
 without ceasing and adhered to it until he died. 
 Distrusted, doubted, opposed in the beginning, the 
 logic of events confirmed it and it had to be accepted 
 and adopted in the end. No dreamer, no speculator, 
 no spinner of fine theories, but a practical man of 
 affairs and the hardest-headed lawyer of his day, he 
 wasted no time seeking to discover in the constitu- 
 tion itself provision for the steps that must be taken 
 toward the seceding states. The constitution did 
 not contemplate an effort on the part of its members 
 to dissolve the union. The power to preserve its o\^ti 
 existence against a parcel of rebellious states was not 
 to be looked for in its phrases but in the powers of 
 war which pertain to every nation fighting for its 
 life. The southern states had repudiated, spurned 
 and spit upon the constitution; could they at the 
 same time claim the protection of its terms? Stevens 
 said, ''You cannot, indeed, destroy the constitution, 
 but you can place yourself outside of its protection 
 while you are waging public war against it." 
 
 239 
 
Already he was grappling with the question 
 that would face us when the war was closed. When 
 the rebel states should be subdued would they have 
 a right to be treated as back again in the old Union, 
 under the old terms, bringing the same old sources 
 of controversy with them, or would Congress have a 
 right to prescribe the terms on wliich they should be 
 received? Should they come back slavery and all? 
 Should they continue to hold seats in Congress for 
 themselves and for the black race too? Should they 
 have power to repudiate the debt that had been made 
 in putting their rebellion down? Should the loyal 
 men of the South be liable to pay the debts of disloy- 
 alty and treason? With a mind that pierced like a 
 sword even to the dividing of the joints and marrow, 
 he drove the question home. He saw that the whole 
 ease turned upon one point. If the trouble was only 
 a domestic insurrection it was to be suppressed by 
 criminal prosecutions in the courts, and the insur- 
 gents were entitled to the protection of the constitu- 
 tion and the ordinary laws. But if it was a public 
 war. then they were subject to the laws of war alone. 
 He proved by all the oracles of the law of nations 
 that when a republic is broken into two armed camps 
 it is civil war, and while the war continues the two 
 factions stand towards each other as separate and 
 independent powers. Was this a public war ? 
 Europe had acknowledged the belligerency of the 
 South. We had acknowledged it ourselves. We had 
 blockaded their ports, exchanged prisoners of war 
 and sent flags of truce. It was not a mob, nor a riot, 
 nor an insurrection, but war, public war, and the 
 greatest civil war in history. While it lasted no 
 
 240 
 
paper obligations could be relied upon by the South 
 against the North, and when the rebellious faction 
 should be vanquished it would be for the victor to 
 lay down the terms of peace. So was he preparing 
 the minds of men for the time when, conquered in 
 the field, the rebel states should demand to be re- 
 stored as of right to every privilege under the old 
 constitution which they had renounced and defied. 
 
 The shilly-shallying military movements that 
 marked the early stages of the war —you can guess 
 what sort of a critic Stevens was of these. Here is 
 the way he described McClellan's march to Antietam: 
 "The President ordered him to pursue the enemy. 
 He started after them with an army of 120,000 men 
 before him and marched that army at the rapid rate 
 of six miles a day until they stopped and he caught 
 up \sdth them!'' 
 
 Throughout the whole struggle Stevens was bend- 
 ing his best energies to remove the cause. No man 
 knew better where it lay. ''Now is the time to get 
 rid of slaveiy. There can be no solid peace, no per- 
 manent union so long as it remains. Let our generals 
 befriend the slaves that flee to them and arm them 
 against the enemy. We shall never conquer until we 
 adopt a new method. Southern soldiers are as brave 
 as ours, their leaders as intelligent. The swamps and 
 mountains will be their allies. The climate will kill 
 our armies off. We keep a vast army at hom^ to till 
 the field and run the factory; but every white man 
 in the South can fight and not a single hand be missed 
 from the plantation. The slave does not carry a gun 
 but he is the mainstay of the war. Call him to your 
 side and let him fight for his freedom. He tniII not 
 
 241 
 
prove inhuman. I do not look to see the day when 
 in a Christian land merit shall counterbalance the 
 crime of color; but give him an equal chance to 
 meet death in battle. Let him find equality in the 
 grave — the only place where all the children of God 
 are equal." For more than a week, against every 
 form of obstruction and opposition, Stevens stood on 
 the floor of the House and battled for negro enlist- 
 ment. Finally the measure passed; and the humane 
 valor of hundreds of thousands of black soldiers vin- 
 dicated its justice and its wisdom. 
 
 Slowly but steadil}^ Congress and the country 
 moved towards the great goal, emancipation. First the 
 House and Senate resolved that Federal aid be extend- 
 ed to any state that would voluntarily adopt a measure 
 for gradual emancipation. Stevens said it was ''the 
 most diluted milk and water gruel proposition ever 
 offered to the American people!" but he voted for 
 it Then he moved to abolish slavery in the District of 
 Columbia ; and it was done. Then he supported Love- 
 joy 's bill prohibiting slavery in the territories, and 
 it passed. Then Lincoln warned the rebel states that 
 unless they laid down their arms by January first 
 he would set their slaves free. January first came 
 and he kept his word. From that hour the God of 
 battles smiled upon our cause. The crest of the re- 
 bellion broke on the field of Gettysburg and the long 
 refluent wave of confederate disaster and defeat be- 
 gan its ebbing course. The next day Vicksburg fell 
 and the morning of deliverance began to break. But 
 Lincoln's proclamation did not affect the slave states 
 that were not in rebellion. There slavery still re- 
 mained. His right to issue the proclamation at all 
 
 242 
 
was certain to be questioned in days to come. There 
 was only one way to set the matter at rest and that 
 was by constitutional amendment. The North was 
 ready for emancipation now. It was reached at last. 
 The thirteentli amendment which makes slavery- for- 
 ever impossible under the stars and stripes stands 
 today almost in the ver>^ words m which Stevens 
 cast his motion. 
 
 Reconstruction! Never since the constitution 
 was adopted had the statesmen of this country been 
 called upon to face so grave a question. It had shown 
 itself in Congress as early as the second year of the 
 war. We gained a foothold in Louisiana and the 
 attempt was made to erect a loyal government there. 
 Congress and the President were not agreed. The 
 war was yet to be fought out and so the question was 
 put aside for the time being. When it came up again 
 Lincoln was in his grave and a president of another 
 sort was in his seat. Congress and Lincoln might 
 have come together: Congress and Johnson never 
 could. He began by threatening to hang all the 
 rebels. Ben "Wade, you remember, ad\ised him to 
 content himself with a baker's dozen and kindly 
 offered to name the right ones. In six weeks Johnson 
 had turned completely round and from that time on 
 was the champion of the South. He tried to go on 
 wdthout Congress. He said ''The war is over. The 
 Southern states stand just where they did to start 
 with. They have all and the same rights with the rest. 
 There is nothing to do but repair their state machines 
 a little and set them going." He called on the South 
 to do it. The same men who had headed the rebellion 
 were the ones that were to do the work. It was soon 
 
 243 
 
done. New governments were quickly running in 
 all the late rebellious states and senators and repre- 
 sentatives were chosen. Now up to this time there 
 was little sentiment in the North in favor of negro 
 suffrage. But emancipation was another matter. 
 The North could not forget that slavery had been 
 the root and cause of the rebellion and it did watch 
 wdth anxiety to see whether emancipation was to be 
 a theory only or a fact. It did not have long to wait. 
 As soon as Johnson's legislatures could put pen to 
 paper they had the negro back in his chains. Under 
 the thin disguise of vagrant and apprentice laws 
 Ihey resumed over the black race a dominion as abso- 
 lute and in some respects more cruel than the old. 
 They did not even pretend to treat the races as equal 
 before the law. They made one law for the white 
 man and another for the black. Let me remind you 
 of a single instance. If a white mlan broke his contract 
 with a negro it was only ground for a civil suit. 
 If a negro broke his contract with a white man he 
 could be whipped with thirty-nine lashes or put to 
 labor for a year. Such was the first fruit of the 
 presidential plan. It did not taste well on the lips 
 of those who had given their own blood, or blood that 
 was dearer than their own, to make every foot of the 
 republic free. 
 
 Congress camje together. It was December, 1865. 
 Would the new members be seated? Would John- 
 son's new governments be recognized? Stevens sat 
 with a great majority behind him, — the undisputed 
 leader of the House. He wished to gain time. He 
 wanted the President's policy to have a chance to 
 bring its bitter fruit to ripeness before the contest 
 
 244 
 
mth the White House should be on. Before the 
 President's message could be received he put through 
 his resolution for a joint comxaittee. It was to look 
 into the condition of the Southern states and report 
 v/hether they were entitled to representation in either 
 House. Till then no member from an ex-Confederate 
 state should be received. He was at the head of 
 the committee (»n the part of the House. Before 
 the session was two days old he had brought forward 
 a series of amendments to the constitution. They 
 would have changed the basis of representation in 
 Congress so that the South would have no seats there 
 on the basis of her black population unless she gave 
 them the ballot. They forbade the payment of the 
 rebel debt. They declared all citizens of whatever 
 race or color equal before the law. These he said 
 were the conditions on which the rebel states should 
 be received. Even then you must notice, he did not 
 propose to compel the South to adopt negro suffrage. 
 He would leave it for her to say whether she would 
 enfranchise the negro and have eighty-three seats 
 or refuse to do it and content herself with forty-six. 
 If his form of amendment had been adhered to this 
 would have been the result. Unfortunately it was 
 changed and under its provisions time has defeated 
 the old commoner's purpose. Today nobody in the 
 South pretends the negro is allowed to vote and 3^et 
 the South holds nearly half her seats in Congress 
 and wields half her political power by virtue of the 
 very race that she excludes. 
 
 On the 30th of April 1866, Stevens reported to 
 the House the famous fourteenth amendment sub- 
 stantially as we have it now, — that sublime guaran- 
 
 245 
 
tee of freedom and equality worthy to be inscribed 
 in letters of gold and sure to be revered by after 
 ages with the Petition of Right and Magna Charta. 
 How was it treated by these states that were demand- 
 ing recognition? Every one rejected it. In some of 
 the legislatures there was not a solitary vote in its 
 support. If such was the temper ot the white people 
 of the South, what hope was left that free govern- 
 ments could be established there at all? Think for a 
 moment what it meant, consider the attitude taken 
 by the Southern states. What they said, in effect, was 
 this: We will not consent that the war debt of the 
 Union shall be paid. We reserve the right to make 
 the. country pay our own debt when we get the 
 power. We will not give a single black man the 
 ballot ; yet we claim the right to send representatives 
 to Congress for the black man as well as for the 
 white. We have passed these laws annulling emanci- 
 pation and we propose to enforce them. What are 
 you going to do about it? 
 
 Stevens said, "There is only one thing to do. 
 Give every black man the ballot. No otherwise can 
 we protect him in the freedom we have given him. 
 Without him the Union has not friends enough in 
 the South to organize loyal government. With his 
 aid free constitutions may be adopted." 
 It is easy now to say that suffrage ought not to 
 have been conferred upon the black race all at once. 
 Bui what could we have done? That was the condi- 
 tion that confronted them, statesmen as wise and 
 brave as ever sat in council. It was not a question 
 between allowing free government to be set up and 
 carried on by the white race on the one hand or the 
 
 246 
 
black race on the other; it was a question whether 
 there should he free government at all. It was a 
 question whether the war had been won or lost. It 
 was a question whether we were still in the clutch of 
 the merciless power that had held free institutions 
 by the throat for seventy years, — whether the dead 
 had really died in vain, and whether government of 
 the people, by the people, and for the people had 
 not perished from the earth. Then it was that 
 Stevens made his great plea for universal suffrage — 
 the same ground he had taken in the constitutional 
 convention for Pennsylvania thirty years before. It 
 was the speech that to all appearances would be his 
 last. He was white and haggard, worn and broken 
 by his vast labors in the cause of freedom. There was 
 little hope that another session would find him in 
 his place. The house was hushed to hear his fare- 
 well message and his words came with unparalleled 
 solemnity and power. "I desire to make one more, 
 perhaps an expiring, effort to do something useful 
 for my fello^vmen. It is easy to protect the rich and 
 the powerful; it is labor to guard the down-trodden 
 and the poor, — the eternal labor of Sisyphus, forever 
 to be renewed. I believe we must all account here- 
 after for the deeds done in the body. I desire to 
 take to the bar of final settlement the record I shall 
 make here today on this great question of human 
 rights. It cannot atone for half my errors, but some 
 palliation it may be. Who is there that will venture 
 to take this list with his negative seal upon it and 
 unroll it before that stern Judge, who is the father 
 of the immortal beings they have trampled under 
 foot, — whose souls they have been crushing out ? ' ' 
 
 247 
 
Congress was not ready for the m^easure then 
 and it went over to the next session. Meantime a 
 political campaign almost without a parallel in the 
 history of the country had brought the North to the 
 position occupied by Stevens. Johnson himself had 
 opposed the fourteenth arojendment. Three of his 
 cabinet had broken with him on the question and 
 resigned. He had made his appeal to the country 
 against what he called the tyranny of Congress. The 
 chief humorist of the day said the question was 
 whether political power should be concentrated in the 
 Senate and House of Representatives or whether it 
 should be diffused through the person of the Presi- 
 dent. The country thought such concentration safer 
 than such diffusion — especially as Congress was for 
 saving tlie fruits of the war and the President was 
 for throwing them away. Stevens himself had been 
 too feeble to take any part in the <jampaign. As it 
 proved, he had little more than a year to live. But 
 he husbanded his failing strength and took his seat 
 once more. He looked more like a spirit than a man, 
 but he was the spirit of the united North now — a 
 North that had come at last to the espousal of the very 
 principles for which during more than forty years 
 he had been as the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
 ness. His theory of reconstruction was adopted. 
 The Southern states were recognized as conquered 
 provinces. They were divided into military districts 
 under generals of the army charged mth the main- 
 tenance of law and order. They were not to be recog- 
 nized as states until they should ratify the fourteenth 
 amendment and adopt constitutions in harmony with 
 it In framing their new constitutions the blacks 
 
 248 
 
must be allowed to vote as well as the whites, and 
 their constitutions, when adopted, must wipe out all 
 distinctions of race and color and guarantee equal 
 i-ights to all. This was that momentous reconstruc- 
 tion bill, which, passing House and Senate over 
 Johnson's veto, became the law of the land, — the 
 full, ripe harvest of the seed that had been sown 
 m the proud ordinances of secession. 
 
 The old commoner's work was done. And yet 
 we are to have a final glimpse of him in another role, 
 perhaps the most dramatic and impressive of all, — 
 as he stood at the bar of the Senate to impeach 
 Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, of 
 high crimes and misdemeanors in office. It was 
 February, 1868, and Stevens died in August. Already 
 the hand of death was on him. Day after day daring 
 the trial that succeeded he was carried to and from 
 the Senate in a chair. Such was the tenacity of life 
 in his wasted frame that he turned to the stalwart 
 negroes who bore him and asked, ''Who mil carry 
 me, boys, when you are dead and gone?" The rep- 
 resentatives of the people had been roused to fury 
 by Jolinson's long, bitter, obstinate resistance to the 
 people's Avill. Finally they had voted to impeach 
 him. It was Stevens who had checkmated him at 
 every play. For three years, almost, at the head 
 of a loyal and determined House he had thwarted 
 him in every attempt to nullify the results of war. 
 Again and again he had met and over-ridden his veto 
 -^dth the constitutional two-thirds majority. It was 
 fitting that it should be reserved for him to rise from 
 his death-bed to bring to the bar of the Senate that 
 unique and tremendous accusation. He did it like 
 
 249 
 
the great lawyer that he was. ''Who can forget/' 
 said Charles Simmer, "his steady, solemn utterance 
 of that great arraignment? 1 doubt if words were 
 ever delivered with more effect. They w^ere few but 
 they will resound through the ages." 
 
 When Congress took its recess near the end of 
 July, Stevens was too weak to be taken to Pennsyl- 
 vania. The others scattered to their homes. He 
 f'tayed behind in Washington, and there in a few days 
 he died. Undaunted to the last he said : " I am going 
 to die in harness. I mean to die hurrahing!" A 
 few of his Mn were by him. Two sisters of charity 
 watched at his side. Two colored clergymen came 
 and asked leave to say a prayer for him, and he gave 
 them his hand. One of the sisters took a glass of 
 water and tenderly baptized him, and like a little 
 child falling asleep in his mother's arms that in- 
 domitable spirit passed away. 
 
 It was a sweet and fitting act to touch his rugged 
 brow with the sign of our redemption; but I cannot 
 think they would have missed it in the w^orld to 
 which he went. For the motive that inspired Thad- 
 deus Stevens's life was, in the profoundest sense, a 
 religious one. He was not impressed by the signs 
 and symbols of religion; he was not convinced by 
 the creeds in which the subtlest intellects of two 
 thousand years have expressed their belief in a spirit- 
 ual world; he was not a mystic, lost in solitary con- 
 templation of the divine presence; he was not a poet 
 captivated by the beautiful mythology that gathers 
 about any faith that finds a home in the heart of 
 man. But religion speaks with a thousand voices: it 
 has its own appropriate appeal for every human 
 
 250 
 
soul. To Thaddeus Stevens the Son of Man came 
 in the likeness of the poor and enslaved of his o\vn 
 generation. In their unhappy faces, with their be- 
 seeching black and bruised hands, He made to Thad- 
 deus Stevens His appeal, and He did not appeal in 
 vain. The consecration of a divine, unselfish purpose 
 kindled his brain, and touched his lips with the lire 
 of prophecy. It is a false ajid shallow view 
 that looks upon this man merely as a fierce and bitter 
 partisan, or as a keen, determined lawyer, or even as 
 a sound, far-seeing statesman. He was something 
 more than these: he was a witness to the 
 truth. He was caught up by a breatii of 
 that great spirit that is forever moving over 
 the face of the human deep lifting now one and now 
 another to be a leader and a light to the wandering 
 and shipwrecked race. He felt himself upborne on 
 the wings of eternal truth. The words he spoke were 
 not his own but the words of justice, that cannot 
 fail. Heaven and earth might pass away, but its 
 words would not pass away. Apostle or martyr was 
 never more persuaded of the necessity or the sanctity 
 of his witness. That is what electrified his hearers. 
 That is what gave him, on his great day at Harris- 
 burg, the appearance of a descended god. That is 
 what forced Senator Dawes to say of him: '* There 
 were moments when he did not look like any other 
 man I ever saw, and scarcely like a man at all."' God 
 gave him to see with unobstructed vision the absolute 
 equality in which all men stand before their Maker 
 and in which they shall stand, one day, before the 
 law. For that ideal he battled. And when he was 
 near his end he pledged his friends to bury him, 
 
 251 
 
not with the prosperous and powerful, not in any 
 burial place that would exclude the race for which 
 he labored, but in a certain small and obscure grave- 
 yard where the dead of every class and color were 
 received. And so they did. His very j^rrave stands as a 
 witness to the principles he fought for in his life. 
 
 To that humble, far-off resting-place our thoughts 
 go out from this assembly mth peculiar tenderness 
 and pride. We think of his boyhood of poverty and 
 promise, of genius and deformity. We think of the 
 mother whose unquestioning sacrifice made all his 
 triumphs possible. We see him far from home, strug- 
 gling for a foothold among strangers, forging his 
 wa^ over every opposition to the first place at the 
 bar. We see him defending the forlorn and helpless 
 fugitive in the court of justice, freely devoting to 
 the defence of liberty the skill and learning and 
 eloquence which all the money of oppression could 
 not buy; and when the law claims its victim we see 
 him paying the ransom out of his own slender store. 
 We see him standing up alone against an unjust 
 mk)vement of the people and by the single mjglit 
 of moral earnestness defeating it and putting it to 
 shame. We see him refusing to set his name to a state 
 constitution that presumes to draw a line between the 
 sons of men according to the color of their skin. We 
 see him at last in the halls of Congress facing the 
 fiery and despotic South with a spirit as intense and 
 uncompromising as its own. We see him returning 
 to those halls again after years of silence, the infirmity 
 of age upon his body but the fire of an exalted pur- 
 pose in his soul, determined to die in harness now that 
 the battle is really on. We think oi the marvellous 
 
 252 
 
foresight tliat took in every element of the problem 
 and had it solved before his fellow statesmen even 
 understood its terms. We hear him. day by day and 
 month after month expounding his principles, pre- 
 paring the way for the measures that he knew must 
 come, waiting with patience till the country was ready 
 to adopt his yiev/, and then pouring the hot lava of 
 freedom into the mold of unassailable and enduring 
 law. We think of his wit, liis eloquence, his logic, 
 his skill, the courage that never wavered, the resources 
 that never failed, all dedicated to a lofty and un- 
 selfish plan — the iron wdll that nothing could bend 
 or shatter, and underneath that stern forbidding 
 countenance the heart as tender as a child's! Then, 
 indeed, we are eager to stretch out our hands and 
 claim him. Sleep sweetly in your unfrequented 
 grtive among the poorest of God's creatures! If no 
 sculptor has given your rugged figure to the eyes of 
 men, if no poet has sung your praises, if the dark 
 despairing multitudes for whom you strove ne^^er 
 knew of their benefactor, you would not care for 
 that. Your work still stands in the very frame-work 
 oP free government where you imbedded it. Your 
 spirit still lives in millions who accept mthout a 
 question the principles you vindicated against the 
 greatest odds. And here among the hills where you 
 were born, where in your youth you girded up your 
 loins and went forth to battle, men still love liberty 
 and hate oppression, — still cherish that grand ideal, 
 absolute justice and equal rights for all, that made 
 your life heroic. You were worthy of Vermont, and 
 Vermont is proud of her son. 
 
 253 
 
A CAPITAL OF CAPITALS: THE FUTURE 
 OF WASHINGTON 
 
 Introductory Address, Washington, D. C, February 27, 
 
 1913. 
 
 Fellow Members and Guests op the Committee op 
 
 One Hundred : 
 
 I am not here to introduce the distinguished 
 speaker, but to perform as best I ma;r' the task, at once 
 tempting and difficult, of saying a lew words by way 
 of preface to the real address of the evening, which 
 we have all come to hear. 
 
 After nine years in Washington, I find that the 
 love and admiration for this inspiring city, which I 
 brought with me when I came, have grown deeper and 
 more rich, and that my hopes and wishes for its 
 future have taken larger and more definite outline 
 as I have come to see more clearly wliat the national 
 capital may one day be. This ideal which has slowly 
 fashioned itself in my own mind I offer you, — not be- 
 cause it is mine, but because I venture to think it may 
 be much the same as that of multitudes of others, and 
 for that reason entitled to attention and respect. 
 
 The capital of a nation, though it may lie, as 
 ours does, at the level of the sea, must be in a very 
 true sense, a city that is set on a hill and which cannot 
 be hid. In the nature of things, it draws to itself not 
 only the eyes of its own people, but, if it be the capital 
 of a great nation, as ours is, the eyes of the whole 
 
 254 
 
world. If the national domain be vast in extent, 
 belting a continent, embracing different zones, reveal- 
 ing almost every variety of climate and production, 
 with corresponding differences in ways of life and 
 material interests, while at the same time it is one by 
 virtue of a common national spirit and ideal, these 
 facts will only make more impressive, as they certain- 
 ly will make more necessary, that sentiment of awe 
 and majesty that should surround and invest the 
 seat of governmental power. And if this magni- 
 ficent domain be the home of nearly half a hundred 
 separate republics, each having its own history and 
 traditions, its own pride of place, subordinate only 
 to those of the nation, — ^not a few of them great 
 enough in individual wealth and power to constitute 
 nations by themselves, and having each its own capi- 
 tal, often beautiful and beloved, — then it is all the 
 more essential that this capital of capitals should be 
 no mean city, but worthy in every respect to domi- 
 nate them all. 
 
 The natural sentiment of men in these conditions 
 will tend to make reverend and august the capital of 
 such a country, wherever it may be placed and what- 
 ever its separate history may have been. But if in 
 fact it be almost coeval with the republic itself, if it 
 have been founded by the idolized Father of his 
 Country and bear his name, if it have been for 
 upwards of a century the scene o<^ historic events 
 that have determined the fate of the nation, if it 
 swarm with memories of statesmen and heroes and 
 martyrs, if no one can look upon it \^ithout recalling 
 a titanic struggle for its possession which marshaled 
 men by the million, sprinkled the whole land with 
 
 255 
 
blood, and finally gave that land, an Lincoln declared, 
 ' ' a new birth of Freedom, ' ' then I say It may well be, 
 and surely irust become, a Mecca for the feet of 
 patriots as long as the nation shall endure. 
 
 Whether we will it so or not, it mil become a 
 symbol, — a symbol of the great republic whose visible 
 throne is here. For imagination is not dead and can- 
 not die; and the w^ay of men in ail ages is to make 
 sjrmbols, and to cling to them when they are made. It 
 is wisdom, then, to see that the symbol shall be worthy 
 of the love and veneration it expresses, that it may 
 in turn strengthen love and deepen veneration for the 
 reality which it shadows forth. Who shall say that 
 the multitudes who come and go shall not bear away 
 in their bosoms a loftier conception of their country, 
 a juster pride in its history, a firmer faith in its prin- 
 ciples, a brighter hope for its future, and a more 
 steadfast purpose to make that future what it ought 
 to be, if they behold here a city which is the outward 
 and visible sign of the inward and spiritual life of a 
 free and advancing people? Not a dollar is wasted 
 that is carefully devoted to that use. When you 
 throw^ a noble bridge across this ri\er it will be an 
 arm to draw the South and North together. It will 
 not only symbolize re-union, it will serve to make re- 
 union surer and more lasting. For the masses of 
 mankind learn by what they look upon even more 
 than by what they hear or what they read. When 
 Ihey look upon that structure they will feel the im- 
 pulse of the fraternal love that put it there. Their 
 hearts will tell them what it means. It will need no 
 inscription. They will see North and South clasping 
 hands, in the shadow of Washington 's monument and 
 
 256 
 
undei' the fatherly eyes of LincoJn, who loved aud 
 would have saved them both. 
 
 To serve its highest purpose in this kind the city, 
 then, must be a work of art, — not a loose gathering of 
 various works of art, but one work. How can this 
 be, without observance of the first principle of art, — 
 unity? Unity of ideal and unity of design — these 
 we must have, unless we are to be satisfied with a 
 mere collection of separate and inharmonious at- 
 tempts. That is the idea, that is the truth, that has 
 united us and called this Conunittee into being. Upon 
 the success of our endeavors, or the endeavors of 
 others inspired by the same principle, the success of 
 the enterprise depends. To have some part however 
 small in securing the realization of this ideal is a 
 privilege and will be a joy and pride to us and to 
 those who shall come after. 
 
 And now, without longer standing between you 
 and the pleasure you anticipate, I yield the floor to 
 our most welcome guest, whose wide experience in 
 other lands, whose knowledge of this country and 
 appreciation of its institutions, together wdth liis 
 deep and f^enerous interest in Washington itself, so 
 eminently fit him to be our guide m such a field, — 
 Mr. Bryce. 
 
 257 
 
FOUR BROTHERS: A GRAVE IN ARLING- 
 TON 
 
 An Address Delivtred at the National Cemetery, Arlington, 
 Va.,May30, 191/ . 
 
 ''Not a day passes over the earth" — so the great 
 novelist begins his masterpiece — "bat men and women 
 of no note do great deeds, speak great A\^ords, and 
 suffer noble sorrows. ' ' This little monument is erected 
 to four brothers who sleep under this sod — four 
 private soldiers in the Civil War. All were wounded in 
 battle. All died, sooner or later, cf their wounds. 
 One lived till 1869 and the last survived the conflict 
 by more than forty years; but after he was dead the 
 surgeon's loiife revealed the truth. Not many years 
 ago, on a ploughed field in Virginia, that had been 
 fought over in the dreadful struggle, a buried shell 
 was turned up to the light of day — and it exploded, 
 carrying destruction with it. For forty years the 
 unspent force of war had slumbered in its womb, 
 sullenly waiting for its bloody birth. So here, sooner 
 or later, the fatal seeds of war bore fruit and now at 
 last the harvest is complete. 
 
 Fifty years have passed away since their young 
 blood was stirred by ''the silver voices of heroic 
 bugles," and their ingenuous hearts answered to the 
 all -compelling voice of duty. Fifty years! If we 
 would understarid what the war meant to those who 
 suffered by it, we should not deal with numbers and 
 
 258 
 
statistics, we should hear the story of some single 
 family like this. In 1801 it was a happy, devout and 
 loving household in the blue hills o[ Pennsylvania — 
 father and mother, six sons and three daughters. 
 Their first home was a log cabin. But they have 
 outgrown that, and from the clay of their owli farm 
 the bricks are molded and burned for the new, 
 large house that shall shelter them, as they imagine, 
 for many years to come. Jacob Logan is the oldest 
 son, bearing his mother's maiden name. He is twenty- 
 three. John Lyle is the second, named after his 
 father. He is twenty. Then there is Nelson at seven- 
 teen and Joseph at sixteen, and there are two still 
 younger. Jacob, the eldest, enlists in August, 1861. 
 All the family go to the county-seat to watch his regi- 
 ment march away. It is the 100th Pennsylvania 
 Volunteers. But that is not the name it goes by. 
 Lieutenant General Scott had named it before it was 
 recruited. They were to be, and were, "The Round- 
 iieads. " They were mustered from those counties 
 south of Pittsburg, settled in large numbers by Crom- 
 wellians and Covenanters. Just a year later, Jolin 
 enlists and joins his brother. Nelson and Joseph beg for 
 leave to go. Father and mother will not consent. But 
 in February and March, 1864, when the same regi- 
 ment is being refilled to make good the gaps of war. 
 Nelson and Joseph join, and the four brothers are 
 marching under the same regimental colors. Of the 
 two brothers younger still, one attempts to enlist and 
 is rejected ; the other is too young even to be offered. 
 It was in truth the Roundhead regiment. 
 Through four years of hard campaigning, from Port 
 Royal to Petersburg, it proved itself worthy of its 
 
 Z59 
 
name. It was a fighting, Bible-reading regiment. On 
 the evening before the battle of CoJd Harbor, Jacob 
 and Nelson read their Testaments together. The next 
 day Jacob was killed and Nelson received the 'dread- 
 ful wound he carried to the grave. That was the 
 summer of 1864 — the fearful slaughter-time when 
 Grant was grinding his bloody, obstinate way 
 through the Wilderness. Nelson was carried to a 
 farmliouse, where surgeons did their best but gave 
 no promise of recovery. After a week the order came 
 that the wounded should be moved to Washington. 
 The ambulances w^ere reserved for those who might 
 recover. Nelson was considered beyond hope. He 
 was placed in an empty supply wagon, and started 
 on his ride over a road of corduroy. He begged to 
 be taken out and left behind to die in a corner of the 
 fence; but finally, his body resting on a sack of oats, 
 his shoulders against the stay-chain, and his arms 
 around it, he contrived to ease the jar of his twenty 
 miles' torturing journey till he reached the steamer. 
 At Washington he lay in the Lincoln Hospital, where 
 Lincoln Park is now. His mother somehow got the 
 news. She took the train (she had never seen a train 
 before) and came to Washington to find her boy. She 
 finds the hospital, but the soldiers standing guard 
 will not admit her. She sinks down upon the curb- 
 stone weeping. A stranger sees her distress and finds 
 a way for her to gain admittance. She sits beside 
 her wounded son till night comes on, when in spite 
 of all entreaties she is sent away, and goes sadly back 
 to her home among the hills. At that very time 
 Joseph, the youngest of her four soldier boys, is lying 
 in a hospital in the same city, the Mt. Pleasant, dying 
 
 260 
 
of homesickness as much as from his wound; (if he 
 could only have seen his mother for an hour!) but 
 this she never knows till long years after. Joseph 
 died in a few days and was buried somewhere here 
 at Arlington in July, 1864. Jacob was buried at Cold 
 Harbor, where he fell. AVhat became of John, the 
 second son? He was shot through the lungs when 
 the mine exploded before Petersburg — was taken 
 home and lived till 1869, and was the only one of 
 the four to be buried in the old liome churchyard 
 there. Here at last, gathered from their various 
 resting places, they are all sleeping side by side. 
 
 That is the sad proud story of the McCulloughs. 
 It claims our admiration and our tears, not because 
 it was peculiar, but because it was not. In how 
 many, many homes the story was repeated — mothers 
 weeping for their first-born and would not be comfort- 
 ed Family after family lost all. It is only when 
 we take the individual instance to our hearts, and 
 then multiply its agony into thousands and tens of 
 thousands, that we can even begin to understand. 
 This very regiment that numbered, from first to last, 
 two thousand and fourteen, lost eight hundred and 
 eighty-seven in dead and wounded. Two hundred 
 and twenty-four of its brave boys were killed out- 
 right or died the lingering, torturing death of Rebel 
 prisons. To read the roll of its battles is to sum- 
 mon up all the mingled shadows and splendors of 
 those awful years. It sounds like a summary of 
 the war itself: Manassas, Chantilly, South Mountain, 
 Antietam, Blue Springs, Knoxville, The Wilderness, 
 Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and many 
 more. Lying in trenches, storming the batteries, 
 
 261 
 
walkng with bare and bleeding feet on frozen ground, 
 burning witii fever, fainting with hunger, marching 
 and remarcMng, from Charleston Harbor to the en- 
 virons of Vieksburg — they knew all the hardships, 
 all the vicissitudes, all the defeats and triumphs of 
 that unexampled war. What were they fighting for 
 and what sustained them? That is the secret and 
 and the lesson we would learn. These boys com- 
 prehended the moral issues that lay beneath the war. 
 They knew that they were fighting for the truth. 
 They understood. They knew it was not merely a 
 quarrel between two sections. It was not really the 
 North against the South. It was freedom against 
 slavery. It was the schoolhouse against the auction- 
 block. It was a nation that had finally pledged 
 itself to liberty for all, against a confederacy that had 
 solemnly declared that slavery should be perpetual. 
 They knew that the South had written it into her 
 constitution that no state should ever have the power 
 to abolish slavery. They knew that between such a 
 government and a union of free states, side by side 
 upon this continent, there never could be peace. 
 They knew that Lincoln was right when he said it 
 must be one thing or the other — the country would 
 be all slave or all free. There was only one way, 
 and that was to fight it out. If they shirked the 
 task they knew another generation would have the 
 work to do. They adopted Washington's old motto 
 — ''Thorough." They determined to fight it to the 
 finish; and they did. They did not underestimate the 
 foe. They knew there was plenty of courage on the 
 other side — plenty of endurance, plenty of sincerity. 
 But they knew by their faith in truth and justice 
 
 262 
 
and by the pure prayers they learned at their mx)th- 
 er's knee, that their enemies were wrong and they 
 were right. They never doubted that the God of 
 their fathers, who had given them the victory at j\Iars- 
 ton ]\Ioor and Naseby, was on their side. 
 
 They had seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred 
 
 circling camps; 
 They had builded Him an altar in the evening dews and 
 
 damps; 
 They had read His righteous sentence by the dim and 
 
 flaring lamps — His truth was marching on! 
 
 And now these four are sleeping here where so 
 many thousands of their comrades are resting on their 
 ariiis never to be startled by the bugle-call. They 
 sleep in the soil of Virginia, the chief state of the 
 old Confederacy, but, thank God! they sleep in Union 
 soil, — in sight of the Capital they helped to save, by 
 the side of the war-storied river that now in all its 
 windings sees no South, no North, but one country, 
 under one flag, consecrated to the truths they fought 
 for, dedicated forever to Libert}^ and Law. 
 
 263 
 
THE NEGRO AND THE NATION 
 
 Chairman's Address at the National Conference to Consider 
 
 the Status of the Negro, at the Public Meeting in 
 
 Cooper Union, New York City, May 31, 
 
 1909. 
 
 I believe in the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
 hood of man. Not the brotherhood of white men, 
 but the brotherhood of all men. 1 believe in the 
 Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, 
 and I stand by the Constitution of the United States, 
 including the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. 
 That is my creed and my platform. 
 
 Some questions are difficult because they are 
 so complicated. Others are difficult because they 
 are so simple. Duty is apt to be difficult, and the 
 simplest duty may yet be the hardest. I assum'e 
 that human nature is substantially the same in 
 every climate and under every skin. I assume that the 
 white people of the South are in themselves no better 
 and no worse than the white people of the North. I 
 assume that their opinions and conduct are what ours 
 might have been if we had come under the same in- 
 fluences and conditions. But such considerations do 
 not settle the question, "What is right? 
 
 The broad subject of our conference is the negro 
 and the Nation, not the negro and the North, not the 
 negro and the South, not the negro and the white 
 man, but the negro and the nation. The questions 
 
 264 
 
it brings up are national. They cannot be settled 
 by any one race and still less by any one section. They 
 concern the whole country and they must be answered 
 by the country as a whole. If the Constitution is not 
 binding in South Carolina it is not binding in New 
 York. If it cannot protect the black man it cannot 
 long protect the white. If fifteen states can set aside 
 the Constitution at their pleasure there is no Con- 
 stitution worth the name. If a state can nullify one 
 clause it can nullify the whole. If a state can, in 
 a single congressional district, deliberately exclude 
 three-fourths of its eligible voters from the polls on 
 the real ground of color, and yet insist upon hav- 
 ing them all counted for the purpose of holding a 
 seat in the national assembly, it can perpetrate a 
 fraud on every legally constituted congressional dis- 
 trict in The United States, and there is no security 
 for representative government in any corner of the 
 land. If any class or race can be permanently set 
 apart from and pushed do^n beloAv the rest in pol- 
 itical and ci\dl rights, so may any other class or race 
 when it shall incur the displeasure of its more power- 
 ful associates, and we may say farewell at once to 
 the prin'dples on which we have counted for our 
 safety. 
 
 "We are confronted not by a theory but by a fact. 
 That fact is the deliberate and avowed exclusion of a 
 whole race of our fellow citizens from their con- 
 stitutional rights, accompanied by the announcement 
 that that exclusion must and shall be permanent. 
 It is not that the negro is ignorant, nor that he is 
 poor, nor that he is vicious, but that he is a negro. 
 Even when he is good and learned cuid rich, he must 
 
 265 
 
still be excluded because be is still a negro. Tbat 
 is the proposition, and that it is which makes it the 
 duty of all who dissent from such a doctrine to make 
 their dissent known and to make it uncompromising 
 and clear. 
 
 If the Southern states were only taking the 
 ground that all voters white and black alike must 
 possess certain high qualifications in property and 
 education, the situation would not be what it is. 
 Such restrictions might result in the exclusion of the 
 great mass of colored men as it would result in the 
 exclusion of large numbers of the white. Yet we 
 might well wait for the effects of time. If any 
 indication were to be found that the South is look- 
 ing forward to a day w^hen the colored man shall ex- 
 ercise his political rights, and that it is providing 
 some process, no matter how slow and gradual, by 
 w^hich that result may be attained, it might be our 
 patriotic duty to hold our peace. But when no such 
 indication is to be found, when no encouragement 
 is held out that the negro shall ever have any, even 
 the slightest, part in the government under which 
 he lives, patriotic duty forbids that we should be 
 silent. When will there be any change — why should 
 there be any change — as long as the whole country. 
 North as well as South, acquiesces in the present 
 order ? 
 
 But there is a still deeper consequence involved. 
 If laws can be made and enforced which e\ery child 
 knows were intended to deprive and do in fact de- 
 prive millions of American citizens of the riglits 
 guaranteed them by the Constitution of their coun- 
 try, it is vain to call on men to reverence the law, and 
 
 266 
 
when we swear to the Constitution we swear to a 
 rotten reed. ' ' When the Son of Man cometh shall He 
 find faith on the earth ? ' ' That was the old prophetic 
 question. Not faith in the mystic spiritual sense, 
 but fides, good faith, common honesty. When multi- 
 tudes of men take an oath which on their own con- 
 fession they have no thought of keeping, the public 
 conscience is debased and the bond that holds society 
 together is well nigh dissolved. The grossest barbar- 
 ian that ever shed human blood to solemnize his 
 oath has had some form of words that would bind 
 his darkened conscience, and to break which he 
 counted as damnation. It was left for the nineteenth 
 Christian century to exhibit the spectacle of thous- 
 ands of civilized men taking upon tljeir lips an oath, 
 in the most solemn form of their religion, which 
 they themselves publicly and shamelessly admit they 
 never intended to observe. From such a position 
 it is but a short step to verdicts on liie unwritten law 
 and trial and execution by the mob. When the Con- 
 stitution is defied it can make no essential difference 
 whether that defiance is expressed in Tillman's 
 coarse and brutal words, ''To hell with the Constitu- 
 tion," or is couched in some honeyed, euphemistic 
 phrase that appeals to Anglo-Saxon prejudice and 
 pride. In either case the thing is done. 
 
 It is a fitting day for such a subject. It has 
 become the fashion of recent years to treat the Ci^dl 
 War as nothing but a political contest, ignoring the 
 tremendous moral issues that alone justified its sac- 
 rifices. But read Lincoln's second inaugural, where 
 he spoke as the propliet of his people and uttered the 
 •deep secret of the conflict. It wiU not do to shut 
 
 267 
 
our eyes to the real causes and results of the war — 
 especially now when Northern indifference and South- 
 ern injustice strike hands to keep the black race in 
 a new bondage as helpless and hopeless as the old. 
 As a member of the white race and turning for the 
 moment to white men, I say that our race will de- 
 serve any calamity the presence of the black race 
 may bring. We brought it here by theft and force. 
 We owed it liberty and we gave it a chain. We owe 
 it light and we give it darkness. We owe it oppor- 
 tunity and we hedge it round with restraints. We 
 owe it the court house and we give it the lynching 
 tree. We owe it an example of order and self-con- 
 trol; we give it an example of lawlessness and hate. 
 We are sowing the wind and if we reap the whirl- 
 wind we shall have ourselves to blame. 
 
 The strong imagine they have a mortgage upon 
 the weak but in the world of morals it is the other 
 way. We complain that virtue and intelligence can- 
 nou be safe in the neighborhood of ignorance and 
 vice. God means that it should be so. So does he 
 take bonds from the mighty to do justice by the 
 weak. Shame on the race that holds in its hands the 
 wealth of the continent and carrie:-^ in its brain the 
 accumulated culture of the centuries and yet, refus- 
 ing to lift ignorance and vice to the level of enlighten- 
 ment and virtue makes that ignorance and vice an ex- 
 cuse for the denial of human rights. Never until the 
 white man has spent his last surplus dollar and ex- 
 hausted the last faculty of his brain in the effort 
 to lift up his weaker brother — never until then can 
 he stand in the presence of infinite justice and com- 
 plain of the ignorance or the criminality of the black. 
 
 268 
 
It is really a contest between caste and equality, 
 — a contest as old as the world and possibly as per- 
 manent. The spirit of caste is nothing else than that 
 self-worship that is fostered and gratified when it 
 can look down upon another. The secret of caste 
 is inordinate self-love and pride. It can find no 
 welcome in the heart where the Son of Man is made 
 at home. Underneath every political or social phase 
 of the subject lies the profounder phase which makes 
 it a question of duty and of true religion. If we 
 can do nothing else, we can at least, on tliis day 
 of sacred memories, purify our ideals, and test our 
 conduct by them. "We do not make our ideals, our 
 ideals make us. America did not choose the great 
 doctrine of equal rights — that immortal truth chose 
 America. It has molded her from the beginning; it 
 will mold her until the end ; or if it cannot it will cast 
 her off with the -s^Teckage of the past and take up 
 some other nation that shall be found worthy. 
 
 There is a power that has been working here 
 from the beginning. It will be w^orking here when 
 you and I are gone. It is the power whose purpose 
 is that all men shall be free. Various races have at 
 various times flattered themselves that they were a 
 chosen people. But if history shows anything it 
 shows that a nation is nothing but a tool in the 
 hand of The Almighty. If if serves His purpose it is 
 used. If it breaks in His hand it is thro\\Ti away, 
 and another is chosen in its stead. If this nation 
 has any mission it is to make the Declaration of In- 
 dependence good — that and the three great amend- 
 ments to the Constitution which were the necessary 
 outcome of the sublime pledge of 1776. It is true 
 
 269 
 
those amendments were adopted in a glow of idealism. 
 But so was the Declaration itself. It is true they 
 have not been lived up to any more than the Dec- 
 laration was lived up to in the first seventy years of 
 the Republic. But now as then and at all other times 
 the test of our institutions, both of their power to last 
 and of their worthiness to last, is simply and solely 
 this : Do they serve to keep the rights of men sacred 
 and secure? 
 
 270 
 
RUSSIA AND THE JEWS 
 
 A Speech at the Mass Meeting in Belasco Theatre, Wash- 
 ington, D. C, January 21, 1906. 
 
 Mr. Chairman : — The events which have called us 
 together stand by themselves. There is nothing to 
 equal them in the records of the race. To find any- 
 thing worthy of comparison you must pass by St. 
 Bartholomew and the Inquisition, and go back to the 
 Dispersion, the Captivity or the bondage in Egypt* 
 They constitute one of the highest mountain-peaks 
 of human wickedness. When you and I have lain 
 in our forgotten graves a thousand years, it will 
 still loom dark against the horizon. The eye that 
 gazes across the centuries will be arrested by it as 
 one of the colossal crimes in human history. We are 
 standing in its shadow, and we are awed by its very 
 magnitude, as if we stood in the presence of a 
 malignity that knows no bounds. 
 
 The world is used to slaughter ; it has grown cal- 
 lous to carnage; it can even exult in battle where man 
 meets man and tights to a finish ; but it has never grown 
 used to murder. Hardened as it is, the blood of a 
 hundred thousand murders turns it pale. Cities 
 have been sacked before; childhood has been trodden 
 under heel, womanhood has been violated and homes 
 ha^'e been laid desolate before. These terrors follow in 
 the train of * * glorious war, ' ' and nations have learned 
 to expect them as a part of the great price to be paid 
 
 271 
 
for victory and peace. But Eussia's six hundred 
 desolated villages and towns were not in the track 
 of war; they were at peace; they were under the 
 protection of the ciAdl power. There is nothing new 
 in riots and in mobs. But eyewitnesses declare — the 
 world is compelled to believe — that these mobs did 
 their work under the eye of Cossack and police, 
 while the guns of the state Avere tiained not on the 
 rioters, but on their victims. Russia is in revolution. 
 An empire struggling to keep its seat cannot be ex- 
 pected to maintain the order of tranquil times. But, 
 for the most part, these towns and cities were never 
 in revolt. The murdered thousands were unoffend- 
 ing and defenseless. Neither slayer nor slain had 
 lifted hand against the men in power. The great 
 body of Russian Hebrews did, indeed, long in their 
 hearts to be free; they had made known their desire for 
 a free constitution. That was their only crime — that 
 and the fact that they were Jews. Race hatred is 
 as old as the race; but why this sudden and unex- 
 ampled fury — why this uprising, as if at a signal, 
 in a hundred communities at once? There is only 
 one possible answer. The spite and vengeance of 
 a discredited autocracy is being visited upon them 
 because they alone, among the lovers of freedom, are 
 unable to resist. Upon them it is easy to turn the 
 tide of old prejudice and superstitious hate. Let 
 the rapacity of the people be glutted out of their sub- 
 stance — then perhaps it may forget to turn against 
 the powers that be. ** Desperate diseases demand des- 
 perate remedies," and Russian tyranny, driven to 
 the wall, is stri^ang to drowTi the revolution in a de- 
 luge of Hebrew blood. In Odessa, where eight thous- 
 
 272 
 
and Jews were murdered, Baron Kaulbars was in 
 conunand of sixty thousand troops, and refused to 
 interfere. A thousand students armed themselves for 
 the defense of the Jews. Then the garrison did in- 
 terfere, yes, surrounded the students and held them 
 prisoners until the massacre was over. 
 
 Race hatred ! A Russian to hate a Jew ! Think 
 of it. On the walls of his vast cathedrals he carves 
 the figures of his twelve holy apostles — and every 
 one of them a Jew. He enters and prostrates liimself 
 before the picture of a Hebrew child in the arms of 
 a Hebrew mother; he mutters a creed that declares 
 a Jew to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the 
 world — then he goes out and kills the first Jew he 
 meets, because he is a Jew ! 
 
 The Hebrew race is entitled to the admiration 
 of the world for great and peculiar virtues; but if it 
 w-ere black as prejudice can paint it, its sorrows would 
 deserve our sympathy today. In Southern Russia, 
 and just across her borders, six million Jews have 
 made their home — one-half of all that dwell upon the 
 globe. Were those who have died already offenders 
 above the rest, or is the massacre to go on until all shall 
 perish or be scattered to the winds ? 
 
 The rulers of Russia — are they responsible for 
 these outrages? Shall we shut our eyes to what the 
 past quarter of a century has brought to light? The 
 charge is not made against the shepherds of a free 
 people. It is made against a despotism that still 
 dreams it can impose upon the twentieth century the 
 forms and fetters of the twelfth. It is brought 
 against a caste that mil give up nothing of its feudal 
 claims except in obedience to the dagger or the bomb. 
 
 273 
 
Wliat can you expect of a land that puts its ruffians 
 in office and its heroes in prison? What can you 
 expect of a land that year after year sends the flow- 
 er of its young manhood to grow gray in Siberian 
 dungeons — and for what? For cherishing the very 
 opinions which every man in this audience would 
 die to maintain. What can you expect of a govern- 
 ment that flogs women naked in the public square 
 if they betray sympathy with their martyred brothers 
 by a whispered word? 
 
 Those are the governors to whom Israel must 
 look for protection. That is the upper millstone. 
 Underneath lies the dull and heavy mass of Russian 
 peasantry, blind, brutish, supertitious — debased and 
 degraded by a thousand years oi: oppression — the 
 ninety millions whose awakened fury may yet sweep 
 Czar and Cossack from the earth. That is the nether 
 millstone. And between th^e two Russian liberty, 
 the intelligence and aspiration of the new Russia, 
 may be ground to powder. That Is the plan. 
 
 There are calamities so great that they melt all 
 races into one family. '^One touch of nature makes 
 the whole world kin." So does an assault like this 
 upon the rights of man. It melts do\ATi every barrier 
 that divides us. We are no longer Russian or 
 American, Jew or Christian, we are only men. In 
 such a time as this we must either deny our manhood 
 or we must speak. Governments may still be bound 
 by other ties; but the people in a moment like this 
 are bound by no ties except the ties of kindness and 
 justice, w^hich God Himself ordained when He made 
 of one blood all nations of the earth to serve Ilim. 
 
 What good will our denunciation do? What 
 
 274 
 
does Russia care for the opinion of mankind? 
 Friends, the time has gone by when any man or 
 monarch could defy the united indignation of the 
 world- The cords of mutual dependence are too many 
 and too strong. Let every community in Christen- 
 dom do what we propose to do tonight and Russia, 
 yes, even Russia, would be able to read the writing 
 on the wall. Let us assume that the rest of the world 
 wdll do their duty; but if all the rest should hold 
 their peace, let us do ours. 
 
 Sir, as I said in the beginning, this is a crime 
 that future ages will take note of. The men of after- 
 time mil have their own opinion of it. They mil not 
 judge it by what we say of it, but they will judge 
 us very largely by the way we treat it. Never fear, 
 the glorious liberty-loving future will know how 
 to damn such a deed as this without our prompting. 
 But when the student of history shall turn the pages 
 of the past to find what part our country took, will 
 he not ask such questions as these? ''England, Ger- 
 many, Italy, France, these sent from their capitals 
 a cry of protest. Had the great free nation of the 
 West no word for an hour like this? Then as now," 
 he will say, ''from the bank of the Potomac soared 
 the sublime monument to the Father of his Country ; 
 then as now, the sacred sepulchre at i\Iount Yernon 
 was visited by pilgrims without number; on every 
 side lay the old battlefields of freedom; and there at 
 the capital were gathered from more than forty 
 states the representatives of a free and mighty people. 
 "Was there no voice from the grave of Washington? 
 Was America heartless or afraid to speak?" Sir, 
 it is not the Jews of Moscow and Odessa, it is we and 
 
our children who have most at stake in the answer 
 to that question. This is the place and this is the hour 
 to answer it. 
 
 276 
 
THE MAKING OF VERMONT 
 
 Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives at 
 
 Montpelier, October 24, 1900, on the Invitation of 
 
 The Society of Colonial Dames. 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Members of the Society of Coloni- 
 al Dames, and Invited Friends : "We may well count 
 ourselves happy in the time and place of our meet- 
 ing. "We are here in the very heart of the Green 
 Mountain land — Verd Mont, the Frenchman called 
 it, a phrase that was to become on English-speaking 
 lips the most beautiful name for the most beautiful 
 state in the whole new hemisphere, Vermont. Just 
 dver there rises our stateliest lanchnark, Camel's 
 Hump, earlier and fitlier called the Crouching Lion, 
 — the sununit whose majestic contour arrested the 
 gaze of Samuel Champlain as he sailed up the blue 
 midland water almost three centuries ago. Below 
 us winds the Winooski, that main highway of war 
 over which by summer and ^^dnter, in birch canoe or 
 on moccasin and racket, the Canadian savages red 
 and white sped on their bloody errands, to cross the 
 mountain-di^dde and fall with tomahawk and torch 
 upon the pioneers along the Connecticut. Almost at 
 our feet is the spot where, a hundred and twenty 
 years ago this very month, one such fiendish band 
 overtook two hunters from Newbury, believed their 
 story that the great-valley settlements were up-in- 
 arras to meet them, and, turning aside from their 
 premeditated course, swooped with fire and knife 
 
 277 
 
down White River upon Royalton; and here a few 
 days later they repassed through the rustling fallen 
 leaves of October, leading their sixteen pale-face cap- 
 tives to be sold in the Montreal market ''for a half- 
 joe apiece." We are met in the capital of the state. 
 Here, after its long wandering and fifteen temporary 
 resting places, the ark of government found a temple 
 at last; and here for well nigh a hundred years the 
 lawgivers of the commonwealth have wrought the 
 sentiments, purposes and ideals of the people into 
 plain and wholesome rules of civic conduct. Just 
 outside, in the portico, stand the brass cannon 
 wrenched from Hessian and British hands on the 
 great day at Bennington; and mthin the halls hang 
 the stained and tattered flags of a later and vaster 
 conflict, to which the loyal little state sent one-tenth 
 of her entire population, — ^more than one-half of all 
 her able-bodied men. Surely it is a fitting time and 
 place, and this dignified and beautiful presence is an 
 inspiration to one who tries to tell once more the 
 story of the heroism of the New Hampshire Grants 
 — The Making of Vermont. 
 
 I cannot expect to tell you anything you have not 
 heard before. If it were new it w^ould be false; and 
 the story I am set to tell is true. But old stories 
 are not always dull, as we, who were once boys and 
 girls, can testify, and I count tonight upon your 
 partial fondness for the theme, just as your mother 
 did V'hen she repeated some familiar tale which for 
 the hundredth time could charm the ears of childhood. 
 
 Vermont was made and fashioned in the conflict 
 of tremendous forces. If she had not been harder 
 than the millstones of oppression that chafed her she 
 
 278 
 
would have been pulverized between tliem; but she 
 was a diamond, and came out of the process every 
 facet symmetrically polished and luminous with 
 liberty. 
 
 If we seek for causes we must look far back. Be- 
 fore ever a white man's foot had touched her borders 
 her destiny was being shaped in the struggles and 
 rivalries of Europe. Her fate hung for a time on 
 the division of this continent between Britain and 
 Holland, and afterwards between Britain and France. 
 England had laid her hand upon the Atlantic coast 
 from Florida to Labrador, and said, "Take notice, 
 all this is mine." But the Dutch had been first up 
 the Hudson: they had planted a trading post at 
 Albany, ?nd claimed the land southward to Delaware 
 Bay and northward to Cape Cod. The wave of 
 Dutch settlement spreading eastward from Hudson 
 River met the wave of English settlement spreading 
 westward from Narragansett Bay, and there began 
 to be trouble. It was the old question of boundary, 
 — at all times the most fruitful source of controversy, 
 if we except woman, since the world began. This 
 controversy, howerver, was settled for the time being 
 by a sort of treaty between the Dutch governor on 
 the one hand and the New England commissioners on 
 the other, and the line had been estiiblished ten miles 
 east of Hudson River and running north as far as 
 anybody cared. England would never recognize this 
 settlement, — indeed, she could not without recognizing 
 the Dutch claim, and she was resolved to treat the 
 Dutch as intruders. But Holland ratified it as her 
 permanent eastern bound. That was in 1650. Fourteen 
 years later, in 1664, the English Ring, Charles IT., 
 
 279 
 
made up his mind it was time to oust the Hollanders. 
 So, in the usual generous manner of kings, he gave 
 all the land they claimed to his brother James, Duke 
 of York, and sent him over here with plenty of ships 
 and men to take possession; and he did so completely 
 that same autumn of 1664. But, strange as it may 
 seem to us. only two years earlier this same generous 
 king had granted the charter of Connecticut, to take 
 in everything within its range from Narragansetl" 
 Bay to the Pacific Ocean ; and just north of that, thirty 
 years before, the Crown had granted the charier of 
 ]\Iassachusetts, likewise stretching westward across 
 the continent. Ordinary men, if they had made deeds 
 like these, might have looked for difficulties; but these 
 were the deeds of kings. So we need not be surprised 
 to find that when Charles granted the Dutch teri-itory 
 to his dearly-beloved brother he granted him every- 
 thing in sight — from Delaware Bay to Connecticut 
 River. Hiland Hall, in his painstaking Early History 
 of Vermont, has pointed out the reasons for the extrav- 
 agant language of this deed and has shown clearly 
 enough that the King's intent w^as to embrace only 
 the Dutch possessions, which the Dutch themselves, 
 as we have just seen, had limited on the east to a ten- 
 mile line from Hudson River. "Within six weeks after 
 the conquest of New Netherlands the eastern line was 
 in fact located by the King's commissioners only 
 twenty miles east of the river, ru7ining northerly to 
 Lake Champlain; and that is the line for which 
 our fathers contended. But long afterwards New 
 York unearthed and brought to light this old charter 
 to the Duke and sought to bound herself by the Con- 
 necticut. 
 
 280 
 
So much for British and Dutch, but England 
 and France were to have a longer and a tougher 
 struggle. It was not until a century later, in 1760, 
 that Canada passed from under the banner of the 
 fleur-de-lis and North America was secured to the 
 Anglo-Saxon. It was a French Catholic explorer who 
 sailed up the Sorel River and Lake Champlain in 1609. 
 It was French Jesuits who discovered Lake George in 
 164.6, and gave its emerald waters the pious name St. 
 Sacrament. It was a little colony of French Cana- 
 dians, unquestioning children of the Mother Church, 
 that settled at Chinmey Point in 1730. Cro^^^l Point 
 and Ticonderoga were the work of Frenchmen, and 
 the land where we live was long reckoned a part of 
 New France. Our lofty water-shed sends do^^Ti its 
 eastern slope stream after stream to Connecticut 
 River and Long Island Sound, and down its western 
 side to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, and 
 not a drop today, thank God ! will touch a foot of soil 
 that is not under Anglo-Saxon rule. Yet those north- 
 w^ard flowing streams traverse a region almost as un- 
 like our own in manners, customs, religious, and po- 
 litical idi;as, as the Latin and Teutonic races are un- 
 like. The French provinces shifted their allegiance, 
 but not their ways and views of life. There the 
 statesman may be in place, but the priest is in power. 
 It was a great moment for our unborn State that 
 saw the l^Jnglish flag planted upon the battlements of 
 Quebec, guaranteeing that these hills and valleys 
 should be peopled from New England, not from New 
 France. 
 
 So you see, we Vermonters narrowly escaped 
 being Dutchmen, and still more narrowly escaped 
 
 281 
 
being Frenchmen; but it was by a special interposi- 
 tion of Providence that we escaped being New York- 
 ers! Now if you feel half -inclined to resent even a 
 jest that would seem to cast a slur upon the magni- 
 ficent Empire State, I am glad, for that feeling is 
 the surest proof and truest measure of the vast 
 change that has taken place since 1777. Looking upon 
 our sisterhood of states today, resting on the same 
 broad principles of free government, bound together 
 and bulwarked by the same great constitution, we 
 mij-i^ht ask. What matter w^hether a little tract, of ten 
 thousand square miles, should fall within the bounds 
 of one or another? But from 1760 to 1791 it was 
 not so. The colonies differed widely. 
 
 New England was, indeed, pretty much all alike, — 
 Puritan in religion, democratic in government, pro- 
 gressive in spirit, choosing her own officers, doing 
 her own business in town meeting, jealous of inter- 
 ference from over-sea, chafing under restraint and 
 ready to cast off the lightest weight of oppression. 
 New York was just the opposite, — churchy in religion, 
 arjstrocratic in government, Tory in politics, a 
 stumbling-block throughout the Revolution. The 
 people had small voice in affairs of state ; local officers 
 were appointed by the governor, and he, of course, 
 by the Crown; a few strong families, securing enor- 
 mous grants of land and pilfering from the publi«} 
 purse without shame, almost without concealment, 
 ruled the colony. Of course I do not mean that 
 the common people of New York were so different 
 from the common people of New England. Their 
 heart was in the Revolution — their heart was with 
 the Vermonters when Vermont contended with their 
 
 282 
 
government at home. But they were not in control. 
 I speak of the men who held the reins of power, and 
 of the form of institutions that enabled them to rule ; 
 for it was these that gave character to the colony. 
 We should not readily consent even today to become 
 a county or two of New York, swallowed up and lost 
 in her seven million population, our individual traits 
 and traditions surrendered, our independence a thing 
 of the past. Yet all that might happen today with 
 smaller loss to us and to our children than that which 
 threatened our fathers w^hen they declared their 
 determination to be free. 
 
 This is the view which gives dignity and eleva- 
 tion to our theme. The quarrel between New York 
 and the Hampshire Grants w^as not a mere question 
 of boundary; it was not a great law-suit concerning 
 land; it was not merely resistance to unjust and ar- 
 bitrary acts that threatened ruin to a thous- 
 and homes. You cannot rightly estimate the struggle, 
 you cannot even understand it, until you see in it a 
 gi'apple betw^een aristrocracy and democracy, — 
 between the Crown and the ComJnonwealth. The 
 principles and practices of government that marked 
 the sway of Golden and Glinton came down through 
 the school of kingly prerogative to Geo. III. from 
 Charles I., while the strength of Allen and "Warner, 
 of Fay and Chittenden, was drawn from the ideas 
 that settled Plymouth and triumphed at Naseby and 
 held up the hands of the Long Parliament, ideas that 
 prompted the pen of Milton, the tongue of Vane, the 
 heart of Hampden, the sword of Cromwell, and finally 
 brought the head of the first Stuart to the block. Ver- 
 mont was peopled from Rhode Island, Massachusetts 
 
 283 
 
and Connecticut. The key fact is not that they took 
 charters through Benning Wentworth from the king, 
 but that the}^ claimed the rights of freemen through 
 a long line of heroic fathers from the King of kings. 
 But they were clearly right in their contention judged 
 by the plainest rules of equity and law. The old con- 
 troversy has been threshed over a thousand times. Let 
 us try to state it once more in a few simple words. 
 
 "When the French war came to an end, in 1760, 
 this territory between the lake and the long river, 
 west and east, between Canada and the Massachusetts 
 border, north and south, was practically one unbroken 
 wilderness. But it was not unknown, nor unfamiliar, 
 to the New England soldiers, who had made their 
 way through it again and again during the long war 
 that was now over. They found here pure water, 
 fertile soil, natural fruits, abundant fish and game, 
 attractive scenery; and they made up their minds to 
 take deeds and settle. Where should they go for 
 titles? Why, they went to the only man who seened 
 to be in the business of granting titles at that time — 
 and that was Governor Wentworth of New Hamp- 
 shi]-e. The King had given him a charter of the lands 
 north of Massachusetts and extending westward 
 "until they met his other governments." His other 
 gov^ernment on the west was of course New York; and 
 that meant, as every one supposed, to the eastern line 
 of New York as acknowledged by Holland when she 
 was in possession, as located by the king's commis- 
 sioners upon the conquest of New Netherlands, as 
 laid down upon the accepted map of British pos- 
 sessions and as understood and practically agreed 
 upon by the people of the neighboring jurisdictions 
 
 284 
 
for a hundred years, — substantially the eastern line 
 of New York as it is today. 
 
 Benning Went worth, beginning with the grant of 
 his nan^e-sake town, Bennington, in 1749, and acting 
 under his royal license, issued grants of one hundred 
 and thirty to^\^lships; and into this new land, from 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut, from the Rhode 
 Island and Pro\ddence Plantations, thronged the 
 hardy and adventurous settlers, founding the first 
 rude homes that were to be the cradle of the future 
 State. 
 
 But then New York set up her claim under the 
 old charter to the Duke, and said. The Connecticut is 
 my boundary ; and the case came before King and 
 Council in London. There for a long time it wavered 
 in the balances, which on the whole Inclined to the 
 New Hampshire side, until political weights were 
 thrown in which turned the scale. You remember 
 it was 1764 and '5, — the era of the stamp 
 af:t. The mutterings of the American Revolution 
 were beginning to be heard, and the King dimly fore- 
 saw that he had a struggle at hand mth his subjects. 
 It was a shrewd time for New York to suggest a pos- 
 sible advantage to the Crown if the new territory 
 should become a part of loyal, Tory New York, rather 
 than Whig, rebellious New^ England. The suggestion 
 did its work, and in April, 1765, news came that the 
 boundary was to be the Connecticut. 
 
 But wherever the line was drawn the settlers 
 should certainly have been undisturbed. New Hamp- 
 shire and New York were both royal provinces, not 
 proprietary ones. That is to say, they were under 
 the immediate control of the King, who might draw 
 
 285 
 
the line between the two to suit his will. But while 
 the line remained uncertain, grants from either gov- 
 ernment, niade in his name and settled in good faith 
 by his subjects, ought, by the simplest and plainest 
 rules of law and justice, to have been held good ; and 
 such was the V7ew adopted and announced by the 
 English government. But New York set it aside, and 
 instead of treating the line as newly-established, 
 treated it as having been the line from the beginning, 
 declared all charters from the New Hampshire gov- 
 ernor null and void, and proceeded to re-grant the 
 lands to others. 
 
 Outrageous as her course was, the reasons ?nd 
 motives v/hich prompted it made it more outrageous 
 still. The great feudal families that had plundered 
 and pillaged New York for a century had well-nigh 
 exhausted that territory and were looking for new 
 lands to divide up. Col. Nicholas Bayard, member 
 of the council, had had a grant of fifty fertile miles 
 along riverside, to yield and pay therefor the mag- 
 nificent rental of one otter skin a year. The Rev. 
 Godfrey Dellius, minister at Albany, wdth four others 
 took a grant fifty miles in length by four in breadth 
 along the Mohawk river, two miles on each side of it, 
 (oh, ministers were modest in those days!) mtli a 
 quit rent of one beaver skin per annum for the first 
 seven years and five beaver sMns a year forever 
 after. And this same minister, whose Christian 
 name by some mistake was Godfrey instead of Godly, 
 got another tract seventy miles long by twelve miles 
 wide on Hudson river, bounded on the south by the 
 present to^^n of Saratoga, and in return therefor 
 undertook to see that the King had one raccoon skin 
 
 286 
 
every year. The governors did not forget themselves. 
 They granted vast tracts to figureheads who the next 
 day deeded back to them. And when they made 
 genuine grants to others they exacted enormous fees 
 for the patent, which seldom found their way to the 
 royal exchequer. But the greatest objection that 
 New Englanders could have to these dishonest grants 
 was that they placed the earth in the hands of men 
 who were unwilling to divide and sell it, but were 
 determined to people it with a dependent tenantry. 
 It meant feudalism. 
 
 Such was the spirit of greed and wanton disre- 
 gard of public right that had characterized the old 
 government of that province of which the Hamp- 
 shire Grants had now become a part. It was not long 
 before the same spirit made itself manifest here. In 
 the very next month after news came that New York 
 had won, her governor granted to twenty-six men in 
 common a tract of twenty-six thousand acres, twelve 
 miles long with an average width of three miles, com- 
 prising the rich valley of the Battenkill in the present 
 towns of Arlington, Sunderland, Manchester, and 
 Dorset. The twenty-six men were men of straw, and 
 a few weeks later they turned the property over to 
 three men, the real OAvners, — Kempe, Duane, and 
 Rutherford. The first was attornej^ general of the 
 province, the second a conspicuous lawj^er, the third 
 a merchant, and all arrant speculators. The grant 
 was on its face a double violation of the King's in- 
 structions, for it extended lengthwise along the banks 
 of a river, and failed to embrace poor land along with 
 good. In these very towns, on some of these very 
 lands, the Hampshire settlers were making their 
 homes. 
 
 287 
 
Grant after grant followed in quick succession 
 until November 1st, 1765, when all at once they 
 ceased. "Why? November 1st, 1765, was the day 
 fixed by the British Parliament for the stamp act to 
 take effect. liand patents were required to be 
 stamped. But there were no stamps to be had — ^the 
 American people had seized them. 
 
 That same month brought a new governor to New 
 York, Sir Henry Moore, a young and ardent soldier 
 with some reputation for fairness and chivalry. To 
 hini the Hampshire settlers went with their grievance. 
 He gave them pleasant words but no relief. At last 
 he made an order that they might apply to have their 
 grants confirmed under New York. But the condi- 
 tions imposed in patent fees and new surveys were 
 too heavy. The pioneers had spent their all in their 
 first purchase and improvements, and went back dis- 
 heartened. Then they applied to the Crown. They 
 sent Samuel Eobinson with a petition to the King 
 signed by a thousand grantees. 
 
 The King and ministry were on the side of the 
 settlers. They encouraged their claims and threatened 
 the rulers of the province if they held on in their 
 unjust course. Some of the council were ready to 
 take the bull by the horns and confirm the charters 
 out of hand. But — how great things turn upon small ! 
 — the president of the council had the gout. He grew 
 cross and tired of the long-winded hearing, and so the 
 settlers were finally turned out and told to seek their 
 remedy in the courts of law. When we remember 
 that the court of law was at Albany, and its judges 
 and officers the most determined enemies the settlers 
 had, we are reminded of Thomas Erskine's sudden 
 
 288 
 
and brilliant reply to Lord Kenyon, when he dis- 
 missed his case and advised him to take it into chan- 
 cery — ' ' Would your Lordship send a dog you loved 
 there?" They did not seek the court at Albany; 
 but they didn't have to — the court at Albany sought 
 them. It sent out its writs of ejectment. They stood 
 for trial at the June term, 1770. The settlers had 
 no confidence in the court, but they appeared and 
 defended. A test case was put on. The plaintifi: 
 showed his patent from New York. The defendant 
 offered to show his earlier patent from New Hamp- 
 shije; but the court shut it out, and ordered a verdict 
 for the plaintiff, holding as matter of law that New 
 York had always extended to the Connecticut. This 
 was the end of the cases. The odds were all against 
 the settlers. The Lieutenant Governor, several of 
 the counsellors, many leading men in the province, the 
 Attorney General himself, were claimants under New 
 York. Even Judge Livingston who presided was a 
 grantee, in common with his family and friends, of 
 thirty-fivt; thousand acres, and generally believed to be 
 the real owner of the whole. Is it strange that the 
 settlers looked upon the trial as a mockery? Their 
 leading counsel had been a distinguished lawyer of 
 Connecticut, Jared Ingersol; but the defence had 
 been prepared by an unknown man, not a lawyer, who 
 then first appeared upon the scene — Ethan Allen. He 
 attended and watched the trial. Wlien it was over 
 the Attorney General said to him, "You hadl)etter go 
 home and tell your friends to make the best terms they 
 can with the landlords. Wliatever the merits of your 
 caso, you see how things are going, and in these 
 matters might makes right." It was then that Allen 
 
 289 
 
made his immortal answer : * ' The gods of the valleys 
 are not rhe gods of the hills/' ''What does that 
 mean?" asked Kempe. "Come up to Bennington," 
 said Allen, "and we'll show you." 
 
 The effect of the Albany decision was to annul 
 every grant under New Hampshire. With the settlers 
 their all was at stake. They had bought the land and 
 paid for it; they had gone into the wilderness and 
 built their homes ; they had sweat to clear the ground, 
 and all they had in the world was invested in the soil. 
 If the judgment was to stand and be enforced they 
 were beggars and outcasts upon the face of the earth. 
 They resolved to appeal — to bring the case before 
 tbe King himself, and in the meantime to defend their 
 homes. It was an audacious stand; it was throwing 
 their gage in the face of government itself; but it 
 was that or ruin. 
 
 Then began to be shown forth those qualities, — 
 courage, endurance, sagacity, self-control — which 
 through seven dangerous and desperate years were 
 to slowly mold a hundred fearful and scattered set- 
 tlements into a single bold, united and independent 
 people. 
 
 At first the problem was how to resist the courts 
 without bringing the royal government about their 
 ears. The ministry was favorably inclined: they 
 could not afford to anger it. Yet that would assured- 
 ly follow an open and bloody revolt. In all the excit- 
 ing and dramatic events that followed, the most re- 
 markable fact is, that throughout the long years of 
 obstinate resistance to the New York authority not a 
 single life was taken or lost. What volumes that 
 speaks for the wisdom and self-restraint of the Green 
 
 290 
 
Mountain Boys. Oh, I know they threatened ter- 
 ribly. More than one traitor they banished under 
 pain of death if he returned. ]\Iore than one venture- 
 some New York officer learned painfully that he had 
 got out of his bailiwick, and went home wdtli the 
 enormous beech seal upon his back, bearing, it was 
 thought, a ghastly resemblance to the seal on New 
 Hampshire land-grant parchments, which the settlers 
 insisted was a beech tree. These culprits were given 
 a certificate that they had been once duly punished — 
 a sort of parole like those since furnished by our prison 
 commissioners — effectual during good behavior. It 
 was poetic justice, the settlers maintained, that these 
 offenders should be chastened, as they put it, with 
 ''the t^\dgs of the wilderness, the growth of the land 
 they coveted." When the council of New York set 
 a price on the heads of our leaders, our leaders set 
 a price on the heads of the jobbers, and neither 
 bounty was ever claimed. 
 
 We must never lose sight of the fact that it was 
 not a coiitroversy between the people of the two dis- 
 tricts. The people of New York could never be induced 
 to back up their leaders in this quarrel. If this were 
 an old feud between sister states we might hesitate 
 to revive its memories. But it is not so. The stuffed 
 catamount that crouched atop Fay's tavern sign- 
 post in Bennington grinning towards the New York 
 border, Avas not showing his teeth to the people of 
 New York but to the heartless rulers and land-jobbers 
 whom their own people condemned. The sheriff was 
 never able to summon a posse that would stand by 
 him. He came once with three hundred, lieutenanted 
 by the mayor and alderman of Albany and four 
 
 291 
 
lawyers. He was going to set out James Breaken- 
 ridge. But they were stopped at the bridge by a half- 
 dozen. The leaders were allowed to pass on to the 
 house and hold parley with its cjcore of defenders, 
 who sent back word that they would hold it at all 
 hazards ; whereupon, spite of coaxing and threatening, 
 the posse comitatus went off to their homes. They 
 had better business than ousting honest settlers under 
 dishonest judgments. 
 
 The Green Mountain Boys had that free and open 
 way of dealing with their cause which goes with an 
 undoubting faith in its merits. One day a New Yorker 
 dismounted at the Catamount Tavern. On entering 
 he saw a large gathering and thinking it might 
 be something private offered to go into another room. 
 "Oh, no!" he was answered, "stay and hear the 
 discussion." Stephen Fay, the landlord, was reading 
 aloud Gov. Tryon's proclamation. When he came 
 to the statement that the Connecticut River had 
 always been New York's eastern boundary, the reader 
 dropped the sententious comment that "/le knew that 
 Avas a damned lie." When the reading was over the 
 guest was asked his opinion; and when he said he 
 thought the Yorkers would win, Eihan Allen ga^e 
 him. a sounding thwack on the shoulder and exclaimed, 
 "A man must be a fool to talk like that. Haven't we 
 licked 'em every time they've come up here?" They 
 cast off all pretences and made their appeal to the 
 facts. When one of them was asked to show his 
 commission for his doings in a certain raid, he held 
 up the stump of his thumb, which he had lost in an 
 encounter with Justice Munro, and cried, "Here is 
 my commission." 
 
 292 
 
Yet dramatic as are the incidents which marked 
 those years from 1770 to 1775, we ?hall miss the true 
 meaning of the narrative if we fail to see how the 
 bonds of a larger and firmer union were growing and 
 knitting between town and town. Each had its com- 
 mittee of safety and the committees came together in 
 convention. They resolved to put a stop to New York 
 surveys and to permit no settlements thereunder. 
 They organized the militia and made good their reso- 
 lution. The New York hirelings seized Remember 
 Baker, and they rescued him. Justice Munro w^ho 
 had planned the capture refused to return Baker's 
 gun ; and, when Seth Warner rode into his yard on 
 horseback to demand it, tried to arrest him. Warner 
 struck him over the head with his cutlass, and the 
 town of Poultney voted him a hundred acres in grate- 
 ful recognition of the act. Rumor said that Gov. 
 Try on was coming with regulars, and cannon were 
 brought up from Hoosic for defence. The opposition 
 grew so formidable that governor and council began 
 to weaken and offer terms. Bennington met them 
 gladly but they fell through. Every attempt of 
 Yorkers to settle on the land was headed off. The 
 committees were everywhere alert. Gov. Tryon 
 begged the ministry for troops and was refused. 
 Tryon had need of troops — no doubt whatever about 
 that. It was a one-sided struggle indeed when a land- 
 lord sent his servile tenantry to wrest the soil from 
 individual owners. 
 
 But in the meantime the settlers were pushing 
 their apf>eal to the Crown, and sent Breakenridge 
 and Hawley to London. They were referred to the 
 Board of Trade. The Board of Trade reported in 
 
 293 
 
their favor, — censured the conduct of Tryon in the 
 strongest terms, — and the King approved it. But 
 their report was like one from our Board of Railroad 
 Comimissioners — good advice, perhaps, but you can 
 do as you think best about adopting it. New York 
 refused to adopt it — sent back a lengthy protest, and 
 there the matter hung. Meanwhile in Vermont the 
 incessant warfare went on. Forts Avere built; riots 
 were frequent; again and again the governor called 
 on London for troops. But the Vermont whirlpool 
 was now caught up and lost for a time in the swirl 
 of a mightier current. The American Revolution was 
 coming on apace. Every colony except New York 
 had resolved to cut off all commerce with the mother- 
 land until she should take back her unjust laws. 
 Congress declared any colony refusing to join an 
 enemy to the common cause. Vermont was with 
 the Congress — exasperated that New York held back 
 and that she must be counted a part of it. At West- 
 minster on the 14th of March the cohinty court 
 was to hold its session in the name of New York 
 and of the King. The settlers determined it should 
 not be held. They had long hated and distrusted it. 
 Now they met, on the 13th, with clubs of cordwood 
 and took possession of the court house. The sheriff 
 ordered them to disperse; then withdrew to resume 
 negotiations in the morning. But this was only a 
 ruse. Just before midnight he came again with an 
 armed force and fired into their midst, killing two and 
 wounding eight others. The patriots fought their 
 way out with their cudgels. One oE them laid about 
 him so lustily that eight or ten of the posse went down 
 with damaged heads. His name was Philip Safford. 
 
 294 
 
How I wish he had spelt his name with at! This was 
 the first blood of the Revolution — spilt more than a 
 month before the grass was reddened on the lawn at 
 Lexington. The court did open, but no business was 
 transacted for by noon the countryside was up and 
 the streets of the village swarmed with angry men. 
 Soon came the Lexington and Concord fights, and then 
 the whole country was in arms. 
 
 Canada was Tory, the certain base from which 
 British forces would move down upon the colonists. 
 Lake Champlain was the door to the country and Ti- 
 conderoga was the key. Straight at the fort the 
 Green JMountain Boys struck; and on the morning 
 of the 10th of May the union jack came down — the 
 first time, but not the last, it saluted the coming re- 
 public. New York's Tory governor said it was ''the 
 Bennington mob" that did it, and for once he seems 
 to have been right. The capture gave the Green 
 Mountain Boj'^s irmnense prestige. They were out- 
 laws no longer, and Allen and Baker could mingle 
 and consult with the friends of freedom in New York 
 without danger of arrest. Congress bade them raise 
 a batallion to be under their own leaders, and after 
 that a regiment; and they did. Seth "Warner was 
 Colonel. Ethan Allen went to stir up patriotism in 
 Canada, raised a hundred men, fell upon Montreal, 
 and if his colleague had not failed him would have 
 taken it. He was himself taken instead and sent in 
 irons to England. But the Revolution, when it did 
 carry New York, brought no help to the Yermonters. 
 To them the new government was as hostile as the 
 old. So Vermont said to the Congress : We will stand 
 ty you and fight for you, but not under New York. 
 
 295 
 
We will contribute by ourselves. And there she stood 
 throughout the struggle. 
 
 Vermont was an apt scholar, and she soon had 
 the Declaration of Independence by heart. Moreover, 
 she had a practical turn of mind and proceeded to 
 apply it to her o^YJl situation. Puil:ing the governor 
 of New York for Geo. Ill it seemed to fit her case 
 exactly. That is the danger of great truths. Announce 
 one, pledge yourself to a great principle, and you can 
 never tell what selfish hold you may have to relax, 
 what darling sin must be given up. Vermont had 
 learned to spell Freedom — she was learning to spell 
 the longer and harder word Indepeyidence. It did 
 not take her long. In September after the great 4th 
 of July she, too, passed measures towards a separate 
 government, and in January, 1777, unanimously de- 
 clared, — "The people of the New Hampshire Grants 
 are and of right ought to be a free and independent 
 state. ' ' 
 
 Then she asked to be taken into the Union: and 
 of course she met her old enemy at the door. The 
 Congress could not tell what to do. It was between 
 two fires. If it took in Vermont it might lose New 
 York, of all the colonies the easiest to lose and in some 
 respects the most important to hold, — strategically 
 their ^ailnerable point and the key to the country. 
 New York must be held fast. On the other hand, 
 Vermont was the road from Canada, and the frontier 
 of three states. What she could do in a pinch had 
 been shoT\Ti at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. That 
 justice was on her side looked plausible, and that she 
 was not to be trifled Avith, her long opposition to 
 New York bore witness. At least two of the leading 
 
 296 
 
spirits in Congress — Sam Adams and Roger Sherman 
 — were on her side. Sam Adams, the man of the town 
 meeting, who organized the Revolution and met the 
 will of King George with an obstinacy as inflexible as 
 his own, — the farthest sighted statesman of his time: 
 Roger Sherman, called by his contemporaries the man 
 of supreme common sense, — of whom Jefferson de- 
 clared that he never said a foolish thing in his life — 
 Sherman, as our enemies themselves reported, plead 
 our cause mth a zeal he had never shown in any other. 
 Here again we see the line of cleavage between pre- 
 rogative and popular rights. Adams and Sherman 
 were for us because they were, and always had been, 
 tribunes of the people. So Congress did the only 
 thing it dared to do — ^nothing. 
 
 But Vermont did something : made her a constitu- 
 tion; appointed a council of safety, and put on the 
 forms and powers of government. It was high time. 
 Burgojme 's magnificent army was coming up the lake. 
 Ticonderoga was abandoned, and our forces put to 
 flight at Hubbardton. She sent her call to New 
 Hampshire and the Bay State, and they answered. 
 The Tories in her midst fled to the enemy and on the 
 instant she seized the goods they left and turned them 
 into powder and ball. Joining her forces under Warn- 
 er and Stark with the New Hampshire and Massachu- 
 setts boys at Bennington, she helped fight the two 
 fights and win the double victory of that day, well 
 earning for her people the proud title Burgoyne gave 
 them when he reported his disasters — "the most 
 active and rebellious race of the continent. " In a few 
 short weeks her council of safety, a handful of plain 
 farmers, had developed a foresight and skill in the 
 
 297 
 
conduct of large affairs that would have shed luster 
 on the oldest state. 
 
 Then sne made a mistake, almost her first mis- 
 take. Sixteen towns on the other side of Connecticut 
 River asked leave to come in. They were said to be 
 unanimous and New Hampshire willing. Her As- 
 sembly voted to admit them. When New Hampshire 
 resented the act and the true state of affairs became 
 known Vermont drew back; but it was too late. Bad 
 blood had been brewed; and New Hampshire that 
 before had favored her claim and virtually acknowl- 
 edged her independence became her enemy. 
 
 Now the plot thickens. New Hampshire and 
 New York strike hands, and agree to divide the bone 
 of contention between them« — the Green Mountains 
 shall be the line of division. They work together 
 upon Congress; and Congress undertakes at last to 
 decide her fate. But stop ! Vermont denies its right 
 to judge. She is a sovereign independent state, as 
 right in her revolt from New York as Congress in its 
 revolt from G-reat Britain, and will not submit the 
 question of her existence to any court or congress 
 under heaven If Congress will not take her in she 
 vtdll appeal to the legislatures of the states one by 
 one, and begins to send forth her messages. 
 
 But now a greater danger threatens. An English 
 army is coming up the lake under Carleton. In New 
 York the Mohawk valley is raided. In Vermont Roy- 
 alton is visited by three hundred redskins under a 
 British leader, and laid in ashes. Vermont is the 
 buffer between the colonies and Canada, — open to 
 be run over from the north, left defenceless, the con- 
 tinental troops withdrawn, plotted against by New 
 
 298 
 
Hampshire on the east, by New York on the west, 
 Massachusetts claiming a part of her territory on the 
 south, Congress itself taking steps to stamp her out, 
 the horrors of invasion and Indian massacre staring 
 her in the face — it is 1781 — it is the hour of her 
 supreme trial — it is the world against Vermont, and 
 Vermont against the world! 
 
 Then shines forth the clear courage, the daunt- 
 less defiance, that prove when men are fitted to be 
 free. The voice of the state is the voice of Ethan Allen 
 replying to Congress, "We are as resolutely deter- 
 mined to defend the independence of Vermont as 
 Congress that of the United States: and rather than 
 fail we will retire into the desolate caverns of the 
 mountains and wage war mth human nature at 
 large. ' ' 
 
 Unless they did retire to the caverns they had 
 only one resource left — diplomacy: the means a boy 
 adopts to evade punishment — only in that case we 
 call it lying. First they negotiated with the British 
 general and brought about an exchange of prisoners. 
 Then they led him on to believe that they might be 
 won back to the Crown. By shrewd suggestions, by 
 well explained delays, they kept the negotiations on 
 foot and held off the army of invasion from their 
 own borders and those of New York alike for the 
 better part of a year, till the immediate danger had 
 passed by, — one of the most successful intriguings in 
 history. Was it right? Was it justifiable? They 
 claimed it was only a kind of strategy justified by the 
 perils of their position. They thought if God could 
 forgive a mother for lying to save her child from the 
 tomahawk of a savage, he might perhaps forgivo 
 
 299 
 
them their falsehood which probably saved hundreds 
 from massacre. Honest New York, though her own 
 homes were saved by it, thought it was very wicked! 
 Vermont was quite veiling Congress should take 
 alarm at it; and Congress, you may well guess, was 
 on pins and needles. The desertion of Vermont 
 might prove fatal to the cause. 
 
 Then the plucky little state determined on a 
 still bolder stroke. New Hampshire's settlements on 
 the Connecticut and New York's settlements east of 
 the Hudson wanted to be annexed. She annexed 
 them, thereby doubling her o\\ti territory. So far 
 it was a shrewd move. It brought Congress to its 
 senses; and Congress said — ''Give up this new terri- 
 ritory and you may come in." But New York pro- 
 tested, and Vermont refused. Meantime civil war was 
 kindling in these new wings of territory. It was at 
 this crisis that Washington interposed, advised our 
 fathers to recede and assured them of final success if 
 they did; and the Vermont Assembly, all honor to 
 it! voted without a division to take his word. 
 
 But New York had one more card to play. She 
 had public lands which the Congress coveted. By 
 giving up those she made herself friends in the Ver- 
 n^ont quarrel. She stirred up discord in Windham 
 county, sent her officers in to set up her authority, 
 and, when Vermont threw them into jail and let them 
 out on promise of better behavior, she brought them 
 with their pitiful complaints before Congress, and 
 Congress passed this imbecile order: It directed 
 that each citizen should be permitted to recognize and 
 obey whichever government he preferred — a capital 
 program for anarchy — and threatened to send an 
 
 300 
 
army to enforce the decree. Washington raised his 
 hand, the army never came. The year of 1784 saw the 
 last attempt of the old Congress to meddle with Ver- 
 mont affairs. Thence until 1791, seven years, Ver- 
 mont went on her unmolested way, a free and inde- 
 pendent state. New York did not recognize her; 
 the Congress did not take her in; but they let her 
 alone, and that was all she asked. 
 
 The war of the Revolution was over. The treaty 
 of peace had been signed at Paris and ratified by 
 Congress, and it embraced Vermont. So she had 
 nothing to fear from Great Britain. If the Union 
 did not want her she could get along very well in- 
 deed, thank you, without the Union. She could not 
 be asked to help pay its old debts, and that was pleas- 
 ant. She had no debts of her own, for she had kept 
 her men paid up as the war went on and saved her- 
 self a deal of expensive fighting by her wits, — by 
 hoodmnMng the enemy and holding off the invasion. 
 "When she had to have money she raised it by selling 
 her lands, and in spite of what New York would 
 have called the flaw in the title they brought her a 
 very fair price. She had plenty of good land left. 
 Here where we are met the axe was not struck in 
 the tree until 1787. Settlers were eager to come 
 in. Taxes were light; the soil was rich; the govern- 
 ment was firm and mild. She was doing better than 
 any of her neighbors. They were running dowTi. 
 They had the debts of the Confederation to pay, 
 and heavy debts of their own. If you would be re- 
 minded of the wretched, almost hopeless condition 
 that prevailed in the colonies between the treaty of 
 peace and the birth of the Federal government, you 
 
 301 
 
will find it summed up by John Fiske in his Critical 
 Period of American History, dealing with those very 
 years. She exercised about all the functions of a 
 sovereign state, fixed the standard of weights and 
 measures, coined money, had her post ofQces and 
 a postmaster general. The post office was usually the 
 tavern drawer where the mail was all thrown in 
 together and if you thought you ought to have a letter 
 you waited till the postmaster could find it ; but that 
 was better located than the one at Salem, Illinois, 
 when *'Abe Lincoln" was pOvStmaster and carried 
 all the mail around in his hat. "We have better 
 appliances today but we know far less than they 
 did if we have not learned that red-tape and furni- 
 ture do not make a state. The tesi of a government 
 is whether it governs. Theirs governed. In those 
 days they were not so much set on rotation in office 
 as on having their business well done. They miade 
 the same man governor eighteen times. He hadn't 
 much education and, I suppose, nothing at all of 
 what Massachusetts calls ''culture;" but he was the 
 governor in the original sense of the word — ^he 
 steered the boat. This of course was old Gov. Chit- 
 tenden. He kept a tavern and had the inquisitive- 
 ness common among tavern-keepers in those days. 
 The late Rowland Robinson in his delightful history 
 of Vermont tells a story of him which Chittenden 
 was fond of telling at his own expense. One day 
 a traveler stopped for a drink at his bar. ''Where 
 might you come from, friend?" inquired the Grov- 
 ernor. "From down below," was the curt reply. 
 "And where might you be going?" "To Canada.'* 
 "To Canada? Indeed! And what might take you 
 
 302 
 
there?" "To get my pension." "And what might 
 you get a pension for, friend?" *'Por what you 
 never will, as I judge. " " Indeed ! and what is that ? ' ' 
 "For minding my owti business." And that was the 
 end of the dialogue. 
 
 What changes a few years may bring. Vermont 
 did not care greatly now to join the Union. But 
 New York had become anxious that she should. The 
 measures which justice pleads for in vain are granted 
 at last in some crisis because the selfish interests of 
 men demand them'. So slaver^^ went down, not be- 
 cause the people hated slavery any more than they did 
 a year or two before when they mobbed abolition 
 meetings, but because that was the only way to save 
 the Union. So, x)erhaps, the saloon will be everywhere 
 abolished some day when society awakes to the fact 
 that it is being robbed of its money as well as of its 
 m'anhood. So, perhaps, the ballot will be given to 
 woman some day, not because it is right and always 
 has been, but because the hour has arrived when 
 the forces that would save the state cannot prevail 
 without her. Revolutions are not brought about by 
 sentiment alone. We did not enfranchise the negro 
 because w^e loved him nor because he needed the ballot 
 to protect his rights, but because the negro was almost 
 the only friend the Union had in the South and we 
 could not organize free governments there without his 
 vote. 
 
 New York wanted the Federal capital. The in- 
 terests of Vermont would be identical with hers. 
 Kentucky was knocking for admission and must be 
 off-set by a northern state. Moreover, Vermont was 
 independent of New York in fact and might as well 
 
 303 
 
be so in law. This was the view taken by New York's 
 great men, — by John Hay, by Gouveneur Morris, and 
 by that greatest American of his time, save Washing- 
 ton alone, Alexander Hamilton ; and although her nar- 
 row and bigoted Clinton still kicked against the 
 pricks, the way was made easy for her admission. 
 And Vermont said, "Why, if it would be any accomo- 
 dation to the Union she didn't know but she would 
 come in! and so, at last, on the 4th of March, 1791, 
 she did. 
 
 Such was the making of Vermont. But what of 
 the state that was made ? Browning wrote : 
 
 "A people is but the attempt of many 
 To rise to the completer life of one." 
 
 Unity of ideal, purpose and effort, — ^that is what 
 makes a state. The people of the New Hampshire 
 Grants were made one by their resolve to defend their 
 homes against the court at Albany; by their zeal in 
 the colonial cause and contempt for the lagging policy 
 of New York ; by their welcome of the Declaration of 
 Independence, so perfectly suiting their own case ; by 
 their ambition to frame a government fit for the sons 
 of Puritans; but most of all by the efforts they put 
 forth, by their toil, their dangers, their hardships and 
 their sufferings. The outcome of their long trial and 
 struggle was that peerless and costly product, a nation 
 — a people one in purpose, effort, and ideal. 
 
 She was one people then — she is one people still. 
 The qualities that marked her out to be a nation by 
 herself are hers today. She has always had an indi- 
 viduality and character of her own. To say that a 
 w;ord or a deed was like Vermont has always been to 
 praise it and to give it the highest praise. She has 
 
 304 
 
been first on many fields. She gave the first blood of 
 the Revolution, at Westminster ; received the first sur- 
 render of a British flag, at Ticonderoga ; was first to 
 seize and sell the property of Tories; first to prohibit 
 slavery by bill of rights ; and first to answer Lincoln 's 
 call for volunteers. I am proud that she could not 
 be enslaved herself, — prouder still that she would not 
 enslave others. In 1777, when Ebenezer Allen took 
 prisoners Dinah Morris and her child, he spread their 
 freedom papers on the t6wn records of Bennington, 
 *' being conscientious that it is not right in the sight 
 of God to keep slaves." It took the Union almost a 
 hundred years to reach that point ; but that is where 
 Vermont stood from the beginning. Early in the cen- 
 tury when Judge Harrington was requested to send 
 back a fugitive slave, he demanded to be shown "a 
 bill of sale from God Almighty;" and in later years 
 when the fugitive slave law had been enacted, when 
 almost every Northern state knelt to the South and 
 even Boston gave up the hunted ones, let it stand 
 to the everlasting glory of the Green Mountain State 
 that no master ever dared to take a run-away slave 
 in Vermont. 
 
 Vermont has been the modern Sparta, — Lacedae- 
 mon, the best example in all antiquity of inflexible 
 devotion to the ideal state. Thermopylae was but one 
 instance of an obedience to law that could never think 
 of retreating or turning aside. There was a time when 
 it was said, Let Greece furnish the troops and Sparta 
 the commanders. On the field of battle, in the court 
 and in the hall of legislation Vermont has shown her- 
 self great. Her bench has been adorned by great 
 judges; she has sent to Washington a line of states- 
 
 305 
 
men ; she has mustered and armed forces that earned 
 the ever-quoted order of Sedgwick ''Put the Ver- 
 monters at the front and close up the column." But 
 let us not claim for her what she has not earned. Her 
 sons can afford to he modest. Respectable, more than 
 respectable, is the work Vermont has done in almost 
 every line of human endeavor, and in some she has 
 won eminence. In art we point with pride to the 
 productions of Powers and Mead and Hunt and 
 Thomas Wood ; in poetry we claim admiration for the 
 wit and satire of Saxe and for the refinemient and 
 melody of Mrs. Dorr. But speaking broadly of our 
 century and a quarter of individual life it must be 
 admitted that Vermont has shown herself far stronger 
 on the practical side than on the aesthetic. It has 
 rather been her part, in great crises, to utter the 
 calm word of counsel or strike the unerring blow. 
 
 We cannot bear comparison with Massachusetts 
 in art and letters, nor with New York in wealth, lux- 
 ury and commerce, nor with many a western state, 
 perhaps, in zeal and enterprise, though Vermont 
 blood has made itself felt in each of these larger 
 fields; but we have our mission and our glory, none 
 the less — let them have theirs. 
 
 "Leave to the soft Campanian his baths and his 
 
 perfumes; 
 Leave to the sordid race of Tyre their dyeing-vats and 
 
 looms; 
 Leave to the sons of Carthage the rudder and the oar; 
 Leave to the Greek his marhle nymphs and scrolls of 
 
 wordy lore!" 
 
 But for Vermont, child of adversity, outcast on 
 the mountain and nursed at the teats of the she-wolf 
 Freedom, it is for her to keep pure that strain of 
 
 306 
 
valor and hardihood that makes the iron in the blood 
 of the Republic. When new, strange elements come 
 in, seeking to alter the face of things, when lower 
 ideals of life, freer customs and looser morals creep 
 in like poison among the people, when she is bidden 
 to renounce her Spartan views, relax her laws and 
 do as the rest have done, let her not fail: let her be 
 true to her traditions, and send back, charged with 
 sublimer meaning, the old answer of Allen — ''The 
 gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills. ' ' 
 
 307 
 
THE STATE AND ITS CRIMINALS 
 
 Speech at the Annual Banquet of the University Club, at the 
 
 Raleigh Hotel in Washington, D. C, February / 6, 
 
 1907, 
 
 Mr. President J and Members of the University 
 Club : I thank you for bidding me to this banquet. I 
 am glad aud proud to sit at such a board. Here are 
 half a thousand men who stand for culture and im- 
 provement. They have received the best their time 
 and country had to give, and hold themselves ready 
 to repay the debt. We speak not of the general 
 humanities alone. Here are specialists from almost 
 every field of service and inquiry. Washington easily 
 gathers such, and the gathering itself is typical of 
 Washington. And when we have said that, have 
 we not said, tj^ical of America? England may 
 not be judged by London, nor France by Paris, but 
 surely Washington must be America in miniature. 
 Its residents are drawn from every quarter of the 
 land. Its laws are fashioned by a body that repre- 
 sents all portions of the vast republic. What the 
 city has lost in self government it has lost to the 
 nation. To the nation it looks to send it wise and 
 earnest makers of its laws. In legislating for the 
 District of Columbia Congress is not embarrassed 
 by any possibility of conflict between State and Fed- 
 eral powers. Its hands are free. Within these sixty- 
 five square miles it possesses all the legislative pow- 
 
 308 
 
ers of state and nation both. Here then may we not 
 hope to find the most enlightened laws and institu- 
 tions ? 
 
 We recognize the obligations of culture. We 
 realize that every gift is a trust. We know that 
 properly speaking there is no such thing as a gift, 
 and never can be, — that nothing can be received with- 
 out a corresponding obligation. We hold that the 
 true test of greatness in men is the attitude they 
 take towards their inferiors. The real hero on the 
 ladder of life is always reaching up \vdth one hand 
 for the round above him, but with the other he 
 is always reaching down to help the man below him. 
 So a nation must be judged by the way it treats 
 its helpless and its criminals. The state is the mother 
 of all her children. She must deal with them as such. 
 The prosperous and powerful have drawn their 
 strength from her bosom. The skilled and cultivated 
 were trained and taught at her knees. The ignorant 
 are those whom she has failed to call around her. 
 The poor may be those whom her imperfect or part- 
 ial laws have kept in poverty. Her very criminals 
 are too often those who have taken their vicious taint 
 from her own blood. You do not judge a father 
 by what he does for his gifted and promising son. 
 But how does he treat the son who has gone astray, 
 the son who is imbecile or crippled or depraved? So 
 do we judge times and peoples. If Helen Keller 
 had been bom in Sparta she would have been left 
 to the wolves on Mt. Taygetus. America saved her 
 to instruct the intellect and inspire the heart. 
 
 What shall we do with our criminals? For a 
 quarter of a century the best thought of the world 
 
 309 
 
has been devoted to the problem. A few things it 
 has learned. It has learned to separate the con- 
 victed from those who are merely accused. It has 
 learned to build ample and sanitary jails. It has 
 learned better than to keep men in idleness. It has 
 learned to establish real reformatories for those who 
 are under sentence. It has begun to teach and train 
 the idle and vicious minds and hands. It has learned 
 to build up as well as to tear down, — not only to 
 remove the choking weeds, but to plant in their place 
 the sweet, sustaining grain. It has learned to hold 
 before the eyes of sorrow and despair the shining 
 hope of a redeemed and respected life. It has 
 learned to remold our laws to these humane ideas. 
 For a fixed and unalterable sentence pronounced by 
 the judge when the jury renders its verdict, it puts 
 a sentence whose duration is to be determined by 
 the conduct and improvement of the prisoner him- 
 self as judged by those who see and watch him year 
 by year. For the determined and incorrigible 
 criminal it says there should be no release. Why 
 should we turn back upon society its avowed and 
 inveterate foes? For the penitent there should be 
 the promise of conditional release when safe sur- 
 roundings can be assured and a new trial ventured. 
 It has learned another thing — that even among growTi 
 men and women the first offence may sometimes prove 
 the last if the offender can be given another chance 
 and saved the infamy of a prison cell. The proba- 
 tion system hangs over his head the sword of Dam- 
 ocles and he knows the first infraction of the law 
 will bring it down. 
 
 These four things at least have been found good. 
 
 310 
 
(1) An ample and sanitary jail with careful sep- 
 aration of the convicted and the accused. (2) A 
 probation system for adults as well as children. 
 (3) A reformatory in place of the old hopeless 
 prison. (4) An indeterminate sentence permitting 
 the guarded find conditional release of the re- 
 formed and the perpetual detention of the incorri- 
 gible. Which of these wise changes have we adopted 
 here? I am sorry to say, not one. Instead of these 
 we have a jail, intended for three hundred, where 
 almost twice that number are confined, two or three 
 crowded in a room; the accused and the convicted 
 treated alike; no modern plumbing; the calls of na- 
 ture answered in the cell; and out of 24 hours of 
 idleness and sloth thirty minutes of exercise. We 
 have no probation system whatever except for chil- 
 dren. A bo3^ just past his seventeenth birthday 
 comes up for sentence for his first offense. You can 
 send him. to the work house for six months or less. 
 You can send him to the jail for not more than a 
 year. Or, if the sentence be longer than a year, he 
 can be sent to the penitentiary. But one of those 
 three things you must do — you must smite him on 
 the spot. Excepting the reform school for children, 
 we have no reformatory whatever. For all those 
 graver offenses which the statutes declare shall be 
 punished in the penitentiary we have no institution 
 in the District. Sentence is imposed and the con- 
 vict goes where the Department of Justice sends 
 him, to some state penitentiary with which it may 
 have a contract. Some of the states have real re- 
 formatories and laws that provide for indeterminate 
 sentences. But we cannot send our prisoners to 
 
 311 
 
these. Doubtless they are full already, and if they 
 are not, we cannot send our prisoners to be held or 
 released according to the laws of other jurisdictions. 
 What we need in this respect is a true reformatory 
 here in the District of Columbia and a law that will 
 permit the offender to be sentenced for a term whose 
 length shall be determined by the reformation of 
 the prisoner himself — a prison that shall be what 
 every prison ought to be, a moral hospital. 
 
 Is this too much to look for at the very seat of 
 government? The capital of a nation, though it lie 
 at the level of the sea, is a city set on a hill; it can- 
 not be hid. This capital of ours has a future of 
 undreamed magnificence before it — destined to be- 
 come the great throbbing heart of the western world 
 through w^hich the purple tides of patriotic life will 
 come and go. Here the miser History will gloat 
 upon the treasures of the past ; the dreamer Prophecy 
 will study out the stars; while the spendthrift Pres- 
 ent pours his prodigalities on every hand. It ought 
 to be, it must be, first and foremost in all that dig- 
 nifies and justifies the ownership of sovereign pow- 
 er. Power can afford to be patient. The State 
 holding in her hands all might, need never be cruel, 
 though for very kindness sake she must be stern. 
 She should never dip her hands in the blood of her 
 sons. Her office is not merely to guard the fold 
 but to seek and save the lost. The capital of the New 
 World shall be glorious not only with the homes of 
 private splendor, the sumptuous palaces of untitled 
 princes, with galleries of art and halls of learning, 
 with spacious parks and noble boulevards, with 
 monuments, viaducts and arches that shall suggest 
 
 312 
 
only to put to shame the proudest triumphs of the 
 ancient day, but most of all with law, — law that 
 shall curb the strong while it lifts up the lowly and 
 with mild majesty puts forth its arm to save even 
 the hand that has been raised against it. Happy 
 will be the sons of the morning whose eyes may see 
 the realization of our vision — only less happy than 
 we w^ho in the watches of the night may labor and 
 sacrifice for its fulfillment. 
 
 313 
 
ANN STORY: A WOMAN WHO HELPED 
 TO FOUND A STATE 
 
 Address at the Dedication of a Monument to Ann Story, at 
 Salisbury, Vermont, July 27, J 905. 
 
 When God is going to make the world a 
 great man he begins by making a great woman for his 
 mother. I do not say that he could not bring forth 
 a brave and mighty son from a weak and timid moth- 
 er; but I think it would trouble you to iind an in- 
 stance where he ever did. There was never a great 
 state that was not great in its women. The French 
 king said, ''I am the state." He lied. The state 
 was never born in a palace. It never vaunted itself 
 upon a throne. It is born in the cottage; and it 
 bears the throne upon its massive shoulders, as the 
 elephant carries the flimsy and gaudy trappings of 
 the circus on its back. The state is the people. It 
 is born in the homes of industry, frugality and truth. 
 It is cradled in the arms of love, fed at the breast 
 of hope, and brooded on the knees of faith; and if 
 it dies at last it dies because love, faith and hope 
 have died before it in the homes where it was born. 
 Pity the child that must blush for its parents. Envy 
 the man who is proud of his race. The son who 
 forgets his father will be forgotten by his children; 
 and the state that will not remember its founders 
 will not be long remembered by the world. 
 
 This monument is erected to a mother in Israel 
 
 314 
 
— one of Plutaich's women, worthy to have been a 
 Roman matron in Rome's early day, Brutus' wife 
 or Cato's daughter, — a woman of heroic mold, of un- 
 compromising truth, of undaunted courage — tit com- 
 panion for that race of young giants which made 
 the name of Vermont synonymous with liberty, and 
 the name of the Green Mountain Boys a terror unto 
 its enemies. 
 
 This is the spot, above all others, where her mem- 
 orial ought to stand. Here, after her husband's 
 sudden and tragic death, she came herself to occupy 
 his cabin and widen the clearing he began. Here 
 she saw that first strong house burned to the ground 
 by savages. Here, with her own hands, she felled 
 the trees for a second dwelling, and ^\dthout the aid 
 of horse or ox rolled them to their place and rebuilt 
 her home. Here she staid when other settlers prud- 
 ently withdrew at the approach of war. Here, sum- 
 mer after summer, with sturdy arm and unfalter- 
 ing spirit, she pushed back the borders of the wilder- 
 ness, planted her crops, gathered and reared her 
 brood of children. Here, in the times that tried 
 men's souls the friends of freedom came for counsel 
 and succor. From this spot and by her direction 
 started the little expedition that captured twenty 
 Tories and landed them in Fort Ti. Under the op- 
 posite bank of the creek she dug that secret cavern, 
 her nightly shelter against Indian and Tory, the 
 fruitful source of romantic traditions that have 
 thrilled the hearts of three generations. And here at 
 last she saw the end of war and the fair beo-innings of 
 security and peace. Surely, here, if anywhere, one 
 of the foundation stones of the Green Mountain Re- 
 public was laid. 
 
 315 
 
This woman was a Whig — a Revolutionary Whig. 
 She had the vigor of mind to do her own thinking. 
 She lived in a time when political opinions meant 
 something. The American Revolution was not at 
 bottoml a struggle between the colonies and Great 
 Britain. It was a struggle between Whig and Tory. 
 You might have t^ken up all the American people 
 and set them down in England ; you might have taken 
 up all the British people and set them down in 
 America, and the Revolution would have gone on 
 just the same. It was a line of cleavage that divided 
 the English race wherever they happened to be. The 
 Whig believed in progress ; he believed in the people ; 
 he believed in self-government. The Tory believed in 
 staying as he was, in the divine right of kings, in 
 the doctrine that Rumbold denounced upon the scaf- 
 fold — 'Hhat one part of the race is born booted and 
 spurred, ready to ride, and the other is born ready 
 saddled and bridled to be ridden." It was a time 
 of intense convictions. To conceive an opinion was 
 like being born of the spirit. The man was a new 
 creature. He held to his view with the tenacity 
 of a life and death purpose. The love of liberty was 
 a consuming fire. The questions that divided men 
 were not questions of policy. They were questions 
 of principle, of patriotism. Opponents were sep- 
 arated by the moral chasm, which cannot be bridged 
 over. One side was eternally right, the other was 
 eternally wrong. Newspapers did not sell their 
 space to the opposite party "at the usual advertis- 
 ing rates." To sow the contrary view was to plant 
 treason. The cry of the age was the cry of Henry: 
 ''Give me liberty or give me death!'* It was one 
 
 316 
 
thing or the other. There was no half-way house, 
 no make-shift, no easy-going, comfortable alterna- 
 tive. The Puritan, Republican ideas that a century 
 before had shaken the English state to its founda- 
 tion and given it the greatest chapter in its history, 
 — those ideas had not spent their force here. They 
 w^ere the breath of life in the nostrils of the new 
 world. God's hand flung the seed of nations across 
 the Atlantic and the finest grains fell on the bleak 
 shores of New England. 
 
 Our state was a slip from the old New England 
 vine. Vermont was settled from Rhode Island, 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut. The hardy and ad- 
 venturous men who had made their way into the wild- 
 erness were the picked and chosen spirits of those 
 freedom-loving colonies. No wonder New York's 
 Tory Governors found them hard to manage. No 
 wonder Burgoyne proclaimed them ''the most active 
 and rebellious race of the continent." Large- 
 limbed, broad-chested, the best blood of England 
 bounding in their veins, the wind of the free moun- 
 tains bloT\4ng in their lungs, Runnymede and the 
 Commonwealth woven into every fibre of brain and 
 heart, what had they to do with the petty despots 
 of a Tory colony, — the pitiful creatures and hangers- 
 on upon royalty? They took liberty for their mis- 
 tress and worshiped her with measureless devotion. 
 
 When Ann Story came to Salisbury the New York 
 trouble had been brewing for a dozen years. Ten 
 years before the king had fixed the line between New 
 York and New Hampshire at the Connecticut river. 
 At the same ti^ie he had declared that grants pre- 
 viously issued by the New Hampshire governor and 
 
 317 
 
settled in good faith by his subjects should be held 
 good. Year after year, New York had trodden the 
 mandate under foot ; she had declared the New Hamp- 
 shire charters null and void, and kept on granting 
 the same lands to others. Five years before the test 
 case had been tried at Albany, and a judgment had 
 been rendered that made every claimant under New 
 Hampshire a trespasser and a vagabond. When the 
 decision was announced Allen had startled the con- 
 fident land jobbers with that mysterious oracle, 
 "The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the 
 hills;" and summer and winter since, he had been 
 laboring to make its meaning plain to their darkened 
 understandings. For five restless and vigilant years 
 The Green Mountain Boys had been holding off the 
 writs of possession; they had been sending home 
 the foreign surveyors with the great *^ beech seal" 
 upon their backs; they had been teaching the New 
 York officers by painful and repeated process to 
 know and recognize the limits of their bailiwick. 
 Prudence, sagacity and self-control had grown up to 
 match their splendid courage, their unbending reso- 
 lution. Year by year, through committee and con- 
 vention, the bonds of union had been knitted between 
 town and to^^ni, until the time had almost come when 
 a hundred scattered and fearful settlements were to 
 be welded into a single, bold, united and independ- 
 ent, people. 
 
 It was in such a time, in such a community, 
 that Ann Story's lot was cast. She was a woman, 
 and her woman's heart was a safer guide to justice 
 than any that beat under the ermine at Albany. She 
 had a masculine understanding, and she took in the 
 
 318 
 
whole breadth and scope of the question. She was 
 wise and sell* -contained, and the secrets of the 
 council were safe in her ears. She was brave and 
 strong, and what her mind approved her arm did not 
 tremble to execute. She gave herself heart and soul 
 to the great cause of the people against their tyrants. 
 It is not easy to understand today precisely what 
 that controversy meant. We must try to stand where 
 they did. We look upon our sisterhood of states 
 today; we see it resting on the same broad principles 
 of free government; we see it bound together and 
 bulwarked by the same great constitution; and we 
 ask. What did it matter w^hether a little tract of ten 
 thousand square miles should fall within the bounds 
 of one or another? But in their day it was not so. 
 The colonies differed widely. New England was in- 
 deed pretty much all alike, — Puritan in religion, 
 democratic in government, progressive in spirit, 
 choosing her own officers, doing her o\^ti business 
 in town-meeting, jealous of interference from over 
 sea, chafing under restraint and ready to cast 
 off the lightest weight of oppression. New York was 
 just the opposite, — churchy in religion, aristrocratic 
 in government, Tory in politics, a stumbling block 
 throughout the Revolution. The people had small 
 voice in affairs of state. Local officers were appoint- 
 ed by the governor, and he, of course, by the Crown. 
 A few strong families, securing enormous grants of 
 land and pilfering from the public purse without 
 shame, almost without concealment — these ruled the 
 colony. Of course I do not mean that the common 
 people of New York were so different from the com- 
 mon people of New England. Their heart was in 
 
 319 
 
the Revolution, — their heart was with the Yermont- 
 ers when Vermont was contending with their gov- 
 ernment at home. But they were not in control. I 
 speak of the men who held the reins of power and 
 of the form of institutions which enabled them to 
 rule; for it was these that gave the colony its char- 
 acter. I suppose we should not readily consent even 
 today to become a county or two of New York, 
 swallowed up and lost in her seven-million popula- 
 tion, our individual traits and traditions surrender- 
 ed, our independence a thing of the past. Yet all that 
 might happen today with sm^aller loss to us and to 
 our children than that which threatened our fathers 
 when they declared their determination to be free. 
 This is the view that gives dignity and elevation to 
 our theme. The quarrel between New York and 
 the Hampshire grants was not a mere question of 
 boundary. It was not a great law-suit concerning 
 land. It was not merely resistance to unjust and 
 arbitrary acts that threatened ruin to a thousand 
 homes. You cannot rightly estimate the struggle — 
 you cannot even understand it — ^until you see in it 
 a grapple between aristrocracy and democracy. It 
 was a clinch between the Crown and the Common- 
 wealth. The principles and practices of government 
 that marked the sway of Colden, of Tyron, of Clin- 
 ton, came down through that school of kinglj^ pre- 
 rogative to George the Third from Charles the First ; 
 while the strength of Allen and "Warner, of Fay 
 and Chittenden, was drawn from the ideas that 
 settled Plymouth and triumphed at Naseby and held 
 up the hands of the Long Parliament, — ideas that 
 prompted the pen of Milton, the tongue of Yane, 
 
 320 
 
the heart of Hampden, the sword of Cromwell, and 
 finally brought the head of the first Stuart to the 
 block. 
 
 The genius of the age was political. Other ages 
 have surpassed it in other w-ays, — in letters, in art, in 
 science, in conquest, in discovery. But now the 
 minds of men were stirred as never before over the 
 principles of government. The foundations of civil 
 and sacred institutions were being searched as wdth 
 candles. The spirit of the time flowered and fruited 
 in the Declaration of Independence, in the Statute 
 of Religious Liberty for Virginia, in the grand Con- 
 stitution of 1787, and in the luminous expositions of 
 the Federalist. It was not alone among the great and 
 learned that these questions were overhauled. Every 
 tavern and fireside w^as boiling with debate. Every 
 public assembly was stormy \nth discussion. Where 
 two or three w^ere gathered together in the name of 
 the people there was liberty in the midst of them. 
 The long argument against British encroachment had 
 taught every farmer and mechanic the essentials of 
 free institutions. "If God spares my life," said 
 Tyndale, "I will cause the boy that driveth the plow 
 to know more of the scriptures than the Pope does." 
 So Jefferson and Franklin, Otis and the Adamses had 
 caused the boy that drove the plow in the colonies to 
 know more of the basis of social order than the rulers 
 of Europe. The same causes that tore America from 
 Great Britain tore the New Hampshire grants from 
 New York. You cannot limit the application of a 
 principle. Emerson, you remember, bade the world 
 look out for itself w^hen God should turn loose a 
 thinker upon the planet. The Revolution gave Ver- 
 
 321 
 
mont the principles that justified her own revolt. It 
 also gave her time to make her declaration good. 
 Who knows what might have been the end if New 
 York had been free to turn her whole attention to 
 us? Vermont by her zeal in the general cause put 
 to shame the halting, lagging policy of New^ York 
 and made herself friends among the other colonies. 
 When the war was over she had behaved so gallantly 
 and grown so strong that her independence was be- 
 yond peril. For fourteen years she held her own 
 against the world ; and then she took her place in the 
 Union, — ^the first of that great in-gathering of states 
 which have come to swell the might and majesty of 
 the incomparable Republic. 
 
 We look about us on fertile fields, on comfort- 
 able, quiet homes, on happy faces of men and women, 
 on children who shall live their lives, as we live ours, 
 in freedom and security; and then, if we have 
 hearts to feel the touch of gratitude, we think what 
 it has cost. We see the dark primeval forest with the 
 bright stars overhead. We hear the night wind 
 blowing in the trees. We hear the screech of panthers 
 and the howl of wolves; and here and there amid 
 the vast, forbidding soltitude we see the watch-fires 
 of the pioneers. 
 
 We see white winter over all the land. We feel 
 the biting cold in cabins that will hardly keep the 
 snow outside. We lie beneath the rafters and see the 
 frosty stars shine through the roof. We see the 
 settler crouching by his hearth where the last faint 
 ember has expired, trying with infinite pains to bring 
 the birth of fire from the cold marriage of the flint 
 and steel. We see the boy upon his father's horse, 
 
 322 
 
winding through forest ways, going twenty miles to 
 get a little grain ground into flour for his mother 
 to make bread. We see the fever-stricken household 
 far from human help, — the lonely burial under the 
 drooping boughs. 
 
 We see the woodman leaning on his axe beside 
 the half-cut tree, his tanned face dripping with the 
 rain of toil, his musket leaning on the log close by. 
 We see the little clearing he has made to let the 
 sunlight in upon the virgin soil, the narrow patch 
 of potatoes or of corn that means life for the coming 
 year. We see the rude hut where he lives, the brook 
 that brings him water and the slender trail that 
 leads back to the safety he has left. We see his wife 
 about her homely tasks, his little children at their 
 play. A gun speaks from the woods. We see him 
 fall. We hear the wild, wavering warwhoop, and 
 then we shut our eyes to the horrors that we know 
 must come. 
 
 We see the clearings grow, the crops increase, 
 the dwellings m,ade tight and warm, and here and 
 there a bed of flowers beside the door, a vine that 
 clambers up the wall — a touch of beauty and a sign 
 of peace. We are there when news comes that this 
 land they have bought and paid for, this home they 
 have built with labor and pain unspeakable, is not 
 their own, — that a court sitting somewhere has de- 
 cided they must go. We hear the argument that 
 follows, — the brief, clear story of the grants, the ap- 
 peal to reason and the law of right in burning, pas- 
 sionate speech. We see courage flashing in the eyes 
 of women and determination hardening in the faces 
 of men. 
 
 323 
 
We see the turmoil of the settlements when they 
 hear of Westminster, of Lexington, of Concord. We 
 see them snatch their flintlocks and hurry off with 
 Allen to Fort Ti. We see the terror that overspreads 
 the land when Carleton's coming is announced and 
 Indian massacre is at their doors. We see a group of 
 rude, strong men in council. We hear their deep 
 and anxious voices. We listen to their bold and care- 
 ful plans. And we realize that here, in this low-raft- 
 ered room, at this rough table, by this tavern fire, 
 courage and foresight and statesmanship, the best 
 and soundest of the timfe, are watching by the cradle 
 of a new-born state. We think of all the Jiardships 
 they endured, of all the perils they encountered, of 
 all the ease and comfort they renounced; w^e think 
 of all the triumphs they achieved in those desperate 
 years making it possible for us to say and say with 
 pride, "We, too, are sons and daughters of Ver- 
 mont!" 
 
 Long ago in the House of Representatives at 
 Washington, John Randolph of Roanoke, desiring to 
 taunt the member from New Hampshire, pretended 
 to forget the state he came from and referred to him 
 as the gentleman from Vermont. Thanks to the 
 course of history in that body and out of it, even 
 Randolph, if he were living today, would not imagine 
 that to call a man a Vermonter was anything but 
 praise. 
 
 With a great price our fathers purchased this 
 freedom, but we were free born. Yet in spite of all 
 they suffered, in spite of all we possess without an 
 effort, let us hesitate to say that our lot is a more 
 blessed one than theirs. It is not what man has 
 
 324 
 
done, but what he is doing and is to do, that makes 
 his life worth living. Even if they had failed nienmight 
 have written over their graves the profound saying 
 of Guizot, ''The struggle itself supplied in some 
 measure the place of liberty. ' ' The gifts of tlie spirit 
 cannot be stored up. The divine manna must be 
 gathered by each generation for itself. "No man 
 can pay another's debt, or save his brother's soul." 
 And so it is that standing with the gifts of the ages 
 in their hands men throw away the priceless gems like 
 pebbles. Freedom to think, to speak, to act, to wor- 
 ship; equal opportunity to broaden the mind and 
 better the condition; equal voice and vote in matters 
 that concern the state; — these the common blessings 
 we see on every side till we forget to value them — 
 how men of other times have prayed and fought to 
 reach them, seeing them afar off as the vision of 
 a new Heaven and a new earth ! Let us not think of 
 ourselves more liighly than we ought to think. Better 
 bleeding, trampled Russia, travailing in the throes of 
 revolution, quivering in every town and hamlet with 
 the agonies of a new birth — better that than the 
 cities of universal suffrage where men absorbed in 
 luxury or greed have given up the seats of govern- 
 ment to impudence and theft, — where the weak sons 
 of mighty fathers, "seeing rest that it was good and 
 the land that it was pleasant have bowed their 
 shoulders to bear and become servants unto tribute." 
 Let the memorial that we rear speak to us of days 
 that were great, not in the multitude of things which 
 men possessed, but in the spirit which possessed 
 them. Let it say to us once more, as they would say 
 to us if they were here : ' ' The man who loves freedom 
 
 325 
 
for anything but freedom's self was made to be a 
 slave. ' ' 
 
 This monument is a reminder that there are 
 sisters of Ann Story still living in the world. It is a 
 proof that, poor as she was and woman as she was, 
 the mark she made upon her time was too deep and 
 strong for a century to obliterate. It is a sign to 
 those who labor and sacrij&ce that labor and sacrifice 
 are not always to be forgotten even here. You that 
 in other lands are waging against fearful odds the 
 same old fight o:^' freedom, you that toil and agonize 
 in unseen places for the good of those that shall come 
 after, you that lead the forlorn hopes of the world's 
 progress through derision and disgrace, do not 
 despair: look here and see another proof that, under 
 all its disguises the heart of the race beats true to 
 its benefactors. Your day will come. 
 
 "In seeds of laurel in the earth 
 The blossom of j^our fame is blown; 
 
 And somewhere, waiting for its birth, 
 The shaft is in the stone." 
 
 326 
 
WENDELL PHILLIPS: THE TRIBUNE OF 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 A Centennial Oration, Delivered in Park Street Church, 
 
 Boston, on the Evening of November 28, 1911, at a 
 
 Meeting Held under the A uspices of the National 
 
 Association for the Advancement of Colored 
 
 People. 
 
 A hundred years ago tomorrow Wendell 
 Phillips was born. We have assembled tonight to 
 pay our tribute to his memory — one of the purest 
 patriots, one ol" the soundest and farthest-sighted 
 statesmen, probably the greatest orator, and certain- 
 ly the greatest tribune of the people, the New World 
 has produced. In other cities men are doing the 
 same. But we are happy above all the rest in the 
 place of our meeting, the city of his birth. This 
 house, indeed, is barren of association with the re- 
 form movements to which his life w^as devoted, if we 
 except the fact that here in 1829 Garrison made his 
 first important anti-slavery address. Here, to para- 
 phrase his owu words, he seized the trump and blew 
 the first of those jarring blasts by which the land was 
 shaken as a leaf is shaken by the wind. Its doors 
 were closed to anti-slavery meetings from that hour. 
 Yet here we do stand at the center of the scene where 
 Wendell Phillips's life of conflict and peril was 
 passed. Yonder on Beacon Street he was born. Down 
 there on Common Street he died. Over there in 
 
 327 
 
Essex Street he lived for forty years. In the burial 
 ground beside ^is his body lay interred for two years 
 before its removal to the green shades of Milton. 
 Faneuil Hall, the scene of his first triumph and of 
 many later ones, is near at hand, and only across 
 the street are Tremont Temple and Music Hall, 
 where, just before and during the war, his greatest 
 speeches were delivered, and whence the ever at- 
 tentive mobs escorted him to his door and received 
 his stately, ''Good night, gentlemen." Yes, these 
 are the very streets he loved inexpressibly, over which 
 his mother held up tenderly his baby feet, and which, 
 he swore, if God granted him time enough, he would 
 make too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave. 
 
 Wendell Phillips was a born reformer. He 
 could never have been satisfied with anytliing short 
 of perfection. He contended with the evils of his 
 time, but if he were living in our day he would be 
 at war with the evils that surround us now ; and if he 
 should return to earth a thousand years hence, it 
 would be the same. As long as anything better re- 
 mained to be achieved, as long as injustice held any 
 foothold on the globe, he would still be crying ''for- 
 ward," and assailing the powers of darkness with 
 all his old-time eloquence and zeal. 
 
 Added to that, he was, from deliberate and pro- 
 found conviction, an agitator. He believed that in a 
 free country all real progress must be brought about 
 by agitation. He accepted Sir Robert Peel's defini- 
 tion of the word, "the marshaling of the conscience 
 of a nation to mold its laws." But his faith in the 
 method went even deeper than that. Not only was 
 it the sole means by which reforms could be carried 
 
 328 
 
through, it was the only means by which governments 
 could be kept free. A people that is satisfied with the 
 institutions it has gained, that worships the past and 
 refuses to go forward to larger freedom, has already 
 ceased to be free. In his own eloquent words, * ' If the 
 Alps, piled in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem 
 of despotism, the ever restless ocean is ours, only 
 pure because never still.'' In the widest sense of the 
 word he was a democrat. He believed in the people. 
 *'The people mean right," he said, "and in the end 
 they will have the right." He saw that it is never for 
 the interest of the masses that injustice should be 
 done. Hence, while it is not safe to trust any class 
 by itself, it is safe to trust the people. Not any one 
 race, not either sex, but all races, both sexes, all 
 sorts and conditions of men, good and bad, learned 
 and ignorant, rich and poor. He would give the 
 suffrage to all. He would put the ballot even in the 
 hands of the most ignorant, and then turn to the state 
 and say : ' ' Here is one of your rulers. Now see to it 
 that he is educated, or he may give you trouble." He 
 believed in universal suffrage because it took bonds of 
 the rich and powerful to do their duty by the weak 
 and poor. 
 
 Himself an aristrocrat by birth and breeding, 
 he became such a tribune of the people as Kome 
 never saw. If you look only at the surface of things, 
 his career is full of contradictions. Here was a man 
 of purest Anglo-Saxon lineage spending his life in 
 the service of the dusky sons of Africa; and not only 
 that, but claiming for the African race, "by virtue 
 of its courage, its purpose, and its endurance, a place 
 as near to the Saxon as any other blood in history." 
 
 329 
 
Here was a devout Christian, adhering to the creed of 
 his fathers, yet spurning the nominal Christianity 
 of his day, coming out from it and shaking the very 
 dust of its threshold from his feet. Here was a man 
 dowered with all the gifts of intellect, all the graces 
 of person and of speech, "formed," as Emerson de- 
 clared, "for the galleries of Europe," and able, if he 
 would only stretch out his hand, to take the highest 
 prizes of public life, refusing every bribe, turning 
 his back on all the world had to offer, and casting in 
 his lot with a handful of fanatics. Trained for the 
 bar and preeminently fitted for success in the forum, 
 he left the courthouse, locked his office door, and re- 
 pudiated his oath to support the Constitution. Deep- 
 ly interested in politics, and master, as few men 
 were, of political questions, he never held an office, 
 he never threw a ballot, he refused to swear allegi- 
 ance to a government that required him to lend his 
 hand to the maintenance of human bondage. De- 
 voting himself for thirty years to the overthrow of 
 slavery, and living to see his object accomplished in 
 the midst of a convulsion that left the anti-slavery 
 sentiment dominant in the land and made the once- 
 despised name of Abolitionist a passport to public 
 favor, he refused to ride into political office on the 
 crest of the victorious wave — left others to celebrate 
 the victory, while he pushed on, unhesitating and 
 almost alone, to new battlefields for suffering human- 
 ity. It is plain we must go beneath the surface if we 
 would understand a man like this. 
 
 Reformer, agitator, democrat, tribune of the 
 people, he was something more: he was a prophet. 
 He saw with open eye the secret of the world. He 
 
 330 
 
saw, under every disguise and through all confusion, 
 the clear working of the eternal will. God reigns. 
 Falsehood and wrong are only for a day — justice is 
 for the ages. In the serene confidence of that vision he 
 rebuked the mighty oppressors of his time and cheer- 
 ed the hearts of the downtrodden and Ihe weak. 
 *'The spirit of ihe Lord was upon him, because he had 
 annointed him to preach good tidings to the poor. He 
 had sent him to proclaim liberty to the captive and 
 the opening of the prison to them that were bound." 
 We shall try in vain to understand the Abolition 
 movement unless we recognize from the beginning 
 that it was a religious movement. It was a revival 
 of original, primitive Christianity, and the applica- 
 tion of those principles to the United States of 
 America in the second quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. These men actually believed in the fatherhood 
 of God and the brotherhood of man. They really re- 
 membered those that were in bonds as bo and with 
 them. They took Christ's word for it that what they 
 did unto these, the very least of His brethren, they 
 were doing unto Him. It was very simple. How 
 should tve like to be slaves? How should tve like 
 to have our children sold and torn from our arms? 
 How should we like to see our daughters ravished, our 
 fathers and m.others beaten till they could not feel? 
 How should lue like to be goods and chattels, with no 
 rights our masters were bound to respect? "Well, 
 that was the system of human slavery that did exist 
 in the United States. The Abolitionists were never 
 too hard upon that system; they never gave it any 
 harsher name than it deserved; and for the very 
 simple reason that it would have been impossible. 
 
 331 
 
They used all the words within their reach, but the 
 English language had no words black enough to 
 paint it or hot enough to danm it. Unless words had 
 been scorpions and sentences had been thunderbolts, 
 it would have been impossible for human speech to 
 denounce it as it deserved. 
 
 The Constitution of the United States ! We speak 
 the words today with affection and with awe, and 
 well we may, for it gathers up and bears in its ma- 
 jestic bosom the liberties of all; and wherever today, 
 under the Stars and Stripes, the meanest child of man 
 is denied the equal protection of the law, there is an 
 infamous and treasonous violation of the Constitu- 
 tion. But I am speaking for the moment of 1835. 
 I am taking you back to a time when obedience to 
 the Golden Rule was treason, when the Constitution 
 was not the surety of freedom but the guaranty of 
 bondage, when the snake slavery had its loathsome, 
 slimy nest in the very hollow of its shield. I speak 
 of a time when if you swore to support the Constitu- 
 tion you swore that you would help strike down 
 every black man who had the courage to fight for a 
 liberty that belonged to him as much as yours be- 
 longed to you — when, if you swore to it, you promised 
 to turn the trembling, starving fugitive from your 
 door, or bind him and send him back to unpaid 
 labor, to torture, or to death. That was the Con- 
 stitution the Abolitionists refused to lend their hands 
 to. Tested by the teachings of Jesus Christ, were 
 they wrong or were they right when they refused? 
 Did they go too far when they adopted the words 
 of the Hebrew prophet and said, it is ''a covenant 
 with death and an agreement with hell?" Take the 
 
 332 
 
case of George Latimer. He was seized in Boston as 
 a slave. He had escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, with, 
 his wife and children and was living here. Tiiey took 
 him on a false charge of theft. He was brought 
 before Chief Justice Shaw, in the state court, was 
 denied a jury trial, and sent back to Judge Story's 
 court, the United States Court, where he lay under 
 the beak and talons of the American eagle ; from that 
 court he was sent back to slavery. At the bidding of 
 the Constitution, lawyer, trader, and priest had 
 joined hands to sacrifice the victim. There was a vast 
 meeting in Faneuil Hall on the Sunday night before 
 he was condemned. Standing before the furious mob 
 that had just howled down one speaker, Wendell Phil- 
 lips said: ''We presume to believe the Bible out- 
 weighs the Statute Book. When I look upon these 
 crowded thousands, and see them trample on their 
 consciences and the rights of their fellowmen at the 
 bidding of a piece of parchment, I say my curse be 
 on the Constitution of these United States!" 
 
 The Abolitionists had not come to that extreme 
 position willingly or in a moment. They were driven 
 to it by the inexorable logic of events. Garrison be- 
 gan his crusade by endeavoring to enlist the Church. 
 He was nothing but a boy, without friends, 
 without money, without prestige, without even 
 a press to print his paper on. He turned to one 
 after another of the natural leaders of the time, and 
 besought them to champion the cause. One after 
 another they all refused. Left alone, he said, ''If no 
 one else will assail this gigantic system of crime, I 
 must do it!" And he did. He was thrown into jail; 
 assassins lay in wait for his life; sovereign states set 
 
 333 
 
a price upon his head; but he kept on, making his 
 appeal to the conscience of the American people to 
 wash their hands of the sin. Then he found he had 
 aroused the hostility of the very forces he had looked 
 to for support. Not only would they not lead them- 
 selves, they would not suffer another to go forward. 
 They turned upon him. Pulpit and press, traders 
 and statesmen, college presidents — all the recognized 
 leadership of the time cast him out and strove to put 
 him to silence. Not content with this, they went on 
 to defend the institution itself. The Church apolo- 
 gized for it; welcomed slaveholders to its comonunion 
 table; opened its pulpit to men-stealers. Merchants 
 said, "You must not attack slavery, it will ruin 
 trade ! ' ' Politicians said, ' ' If you breathe a word about 
 it, you will break up the Union. ' ' The press said, ' ' Men 
 who talk like that ought to be mobbed." The pulpit 
 murmured "Amen," and confirmed its pious approv- 
 al with a text. Bishops wrote books to prove that 
 God had always intended the black race to be slaves; 
 and many thought it doubtful whether they had any 
 souls at all. 
 
 For half a century the South had been in the 
 saddle. It had furnished the political leaders of the 
 nation. The North, meanwhile, had turned to the 
 making of money or the development of the land. 
 All the North asked was to be let alone, that it 
 might continue to pile up its dollars. What should 
 the Abolitionists have done ? If they sat down under 
 the threats of the slave power, the liberty to speak 
 and print was lost. It was not now a question 
 whether the slaves of the South should be set free — 
 it was whether the free men of the North sliould 
 
 334 
 
be made slaves. Should they file their tongues to 
 silence upon the gravest moral question of the age 
 at the bidding of false priests, hucksters, and dema- 
 gogues? Thank God, they said, No! We owe it to 
 them that we have free speech today. Even Charming 
 acknowledged this. They looked about them and took 
 their bearings. Their fathers had formed this Union 
 and bound it to slavery. Should they submit to it 
 as a necessary evil in the hope that some day the 
 Constitution might be amended and slavery removed? 
 They were confronted by the fact that slavery was 
 on the increase — that the South was determined to 
 make it perpetual, that the North submitted, and that 
 the powers dominant in Church and State forbade 
 even a peaceable discussion of the question. They 
 made up their minds that somebody must move. They 
 saw that responsibility for the Union, and conse- 
 quently for slavery, rested on each and every one. 
 They refused to carry that responsibility any longer. 
 They ''came out." They appealed to all men to 
 come out mth them to form a new Union of free 
 states, parting peaceably from the states that were 
 determined to remain slave. Their course was radical. 
 Yes, it Avas an appeal to the ancient, sacred right of 
 revolution. But mark this — the changes required 
 were changes that could be brought about only by 
 revolution. The South refusing to abolish slavery, 
 it was impossible for the North to do so by amending 
 the Constitution. When the change finally came, it 
 came by way of revolution. Not, indeed, the peacable 
 revolution the i^bolitionists proposed, but the awful 
 revolution of war. The bloody sequel showed that 
 they were right. They approached the question like 
 
 335 
 
statesmen. They handled it with plain, unanswerable 
 logic. They wore the only party at the North that 
 did meet the question squarely. At the South there 
 was another party that met it with equal boldness 
 and directness, asserting that slavery was right — the 
 party of secession. They were the only consistent 
 parties in the country. There never was any real 
 union between the slave states and the free. The 
 only approach to it was when the North was utterly 
 subservient to the South, that is, when the so-called 
 free states were really slave states like the rest. Long 
 before Seward had coined his famous phrase, "the 
 irrepressible conflict," long before Lincoln had de- 
 clared that "a house divided against itself cannot 
 stand," yes, a quarter of a century before either of 
 those utterances, the same truth had fallen upon deaf 
 ears from the lips of Garrison and his fellows. If to 
 discern the true nature of the problem and foresee in 
 a large way the solution that must be found, while 
 choosing the only means that can secure the object — 
 if this is to be a statesman, then the right of the 
 Abolitionist to that title is beyond doubt or cavil. 
 With unquestioning faith in the justice of his cause, 
 with unclouded sight of the truth of his position, he 
 took the country up by its four corners and shook it 
 with a tempest of moral power. Mobs were the proof 
 of his evangel. The land was stagnant with apathy, 
 and where the wind and lightning of the word came 
 there was tumult and disturbance. Mobs were bad 
 enough, but they were a thousand times better than 
 the sluggish calm that preceded them, the languor and 
 torpor of spiritual death. 
 
 If we deny the name of statesman to the Aboli- 
 
 336 
 
tionist, to whom of his time should we grant it? 
 Should it be to the smooth compromisers, like Clay, 
 who spread the thin batter of mutual concession over 
 the rumbling volcano of irreconcilable forces? Should 
 it be to those valorous Northerners who warned the 
 South that the annexation of Texas would be the dis- 
 solution of the Union, and then, \^'hen Texas was 
 annexed, ate their own words and made haste to take 
 the hero of that infernal war for their Chief Magis- 
 trate? Should it be to a man like Webster, so far 
 behind his age or so deaf to the voices of humanity 
 that he actually thought the consciences of men 
 could be stifled, and that this mighty movement, 
 which he sneeringly nicknamed "the rub-a-dub agi- 
 tation," could be put dowTi? Should it be to leaders 
 like Birney, and Gerritt Smith for a season, w^ho 
 tried to make themselves believe that the Constitu- 
 tion was an anti -slavery document? Should it be to 
 the men who formed the Republican party with the 
 avowed purpose of stopping the extension of slavery, 
 of abolishing it where the national government had 
 the power, and of putting it, as Lincoln said, 'Svhere 
 the public mind might rest in the belief that it was in 
 the course of ultimate extinction," and yet, when se- 
 cession was upon them, went down on their knees, 
 in Congress, and offered to adopt a Constitutional 
 amendment making it impossible ever to get rid of 
 slavery ? Should it be to the men in office in the days 
 of the great rebellion, who finally adopted emanci- 
 pation at the point of the bayonet, as the last and 
 only means of saving the Union, by bringing to their 
 side the sympathy of the civilized world and the tardy 
 succor of an outraged and alienated God? Or should 
 
 337 
 
it not rather be accorded to the men who saw and 
 declared in 1835 what, thirty years later, all men were 
 obliged to see ? They did not need the Dred Scott de- 
 cision to show them the plan and purpose of the slave 
 power. They Linderstood it from the first. 
 
 I have no quarrel Tvith you if you only mean to 
 make excuses foi the millions who never answered to 
 their call, who could never rise to the height on 
 which they stood. The saving remnant is always, in 
 all ages, only a remnant — '"a few leaves upon the 
 topmost bough. ' ' But when you deny them the claim 
 to statesmanship — when you imply that the measures 
 they proposed were impracticable and vain — I ask you 
 to point to the popular statesman of their time who 
 proposed anything that had a feather's weight against 
 the mighty tempest that swept all selfish calculations 
 to the Gehenna of civil war. What did the Abolition- 
 ists propose? They demanded emancipation — imme- 
 diate and unconditional. You came to it at last, not 
 willingly, not through conversion, but when God had 
 driven you to it with the lash of rebellion and defeat. 
 It was only the old excuse — Let us do evil that good 
 may come. Men could not trust God to make the right 
 successful. They must go into partnership with the 
 devil to do the Lord's work. The Abolitionists whose 
 faith in God has never been surpassed, who believed 
 in doing right and leaving it to Him who made it 
 right to see that justice was expedient — they were the 
 infidels and heretics of the time. '^If I die before 
 emancipation," said Phillips, "^VTite this for m|y 
 epitaph, ' Here lies "Wendell Phillips, infidel to a church 
 that defended human slavery — traitor to a govern- 
 ment that was only an organized conspiracy against 
 the rights of men.' " 
 
 338 
 
The movement begun by Garrison had proceed- 
 ed for seven years before his most powerful assistant 
 came to his side. Whatever may have been the imme- 
 diate occasion of his coming, he owed his anti-slavery 
 birth, as he alwaj^s declared, to Garrison. "For my- 
 self," said he, "no words can adequately tell the 
 measureless debt I owe him. — the intellectual and 
 moral life he opened to me." In the principles of ilio 
 two men touching their life work there was never 
 any, the slightest, antagonism or division. Phillips, 
 from the beginning to the end, was a Garrisonian 
 Abolitionist. To the service of the cause he brought 
 his own rich and peculiar gifts. First of all, his 
 character, his personality. Puritan of the Paritans; 
 son of the best blood of Boston; trained by Latin 
 School, Harvard College, and the law teachers, of 
 Cambridge; handsome, athletic, accomplished; pos- 
 sessed of a singular personal charm, the talismanic 
 gift that moved Emerson to say, "I would give a 
 thousand shekels for that man's secret;" endowed 
 with such eloquence a Greek would have said that 
 on his lips the Attic bees had swarmed and left their 
 sweetness; yet with a rapierlike thrust, skillful to 
 disarm his antagonist or pierce the thickest armor, so 
 that Mrs. Stowe said truly, "In invective no Ameri- 
 can or English orator has ever surpassed him;" an 
 easy mastery over every sort of audience; breadth 
 of view and statesmanlike comprehension of the is- 
 sue; unflinching courage, undrooping hope, unfalter- 
 ing confidence in the triumph of the truth and the 
 mighty power of God. Such was the man who closed 
 his office door, recanted his oath of allegiance, and 
 niade himself an alien in the city of his fathers, to 
 
 339 
 
join the Abolitionists. It was the only step he could 
 have taken and remained true to his blood, his tra- 
 ditions, and the voice of conscience that had led him 
 from the cradle. It was a happy choice. It gave him 
 the fellowship of the noblest spirits of Ms time. Do 
 you think he ever missed the attentions of the class 
 he went out from? If you imagine that he cast one 
 wistful look behind him, you have yet to gain your 
 first glimpse into the character of Wendell Phillips. 
 What he said of Garrison may be said of him, ' ' There 
 were not arrows enough in the whole quiver of the 
 Church and State to wound him." Think what it 
 must have meant to the little band of reformers array- 
 ed against a hostile nation, whom even John Quincy 
 Adams could describe as ''a small, shallow, enthusi- 
 astic party," to find in their mi«ist the most eloquent 
 man who spoke the English language, whom Henry 
 Ward Beecher pronounced "the most admirable 
 orator in the world." Said Emerson, ''Strange as it 
 may seem, it is true, the world owes the finest orator 
 of the age to the movement that enlisted Wendell 
 Phillips in the service of the poor, despised slave;" 
 and in his journal he added, "Everett and Webster 
 ought to go to school to him." Now let the South 
 bring on her Randolphs, her Haynes, her Brecken- 
 ridges! They shall meet a power of speech as much 
 more withering than theirs as the fire of the prophets 
 is fiercer than the temper of the mob. There was 
 need of such a voice. "Webster," said Phillips, 
 ' ' had taught the North the 'bated breath and crouch- 
 ing of a slave. It needed that we should exhaust 
 even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn, to fitly utter 
 the haughty and righteous contempt that honest men 
 
 340 
 
had for men-stealers. Only in that way could we 
 wake the North to self-respect, or teach the South that 
 at length she had met her equal, if not her master. ' ' 
 
 While John Brown was on trial, Phillips spoke 
 at Plymouth Church, from Beecher's pulpit, on 
 *'The Lesson of the Hour." "Virginia," said he, 
 *4s a pirate ship, and John Brown sails the seas the 
 Lord High Admiral of the Almighty, with his com- 
 mission to sink every pirate he meets on God's ocean 
 of the nineteenth century. I mean literally and exact- 
 ly what I say. One on God's side is a majority. 
 Virginia is only another Algiers. The barbarous 
 horde who gag each other, imprison women for teach- 
 ing children to read, prohibit the Bible, sell men on 
 the auction-blo(3k, abolish marriage, condemn one- 
 half their women to prostitution, and devote them- 
 selves to the breeding of human beings for sale, is 
 only a larger and a blacker Algiers. John Brown has 
 twice as much right to hang Governor Wise as Gov- 
 ernor Wise has to hang him." Here burst on the 
 speaker a tempest of cheers and hisses. The silver 
 voice went on, "You see I am talking of that abso- 
 lute essence of things which lives in the sight of the 
 Eternal and the Infinite, not as men judge it in the 
 rotten morals of the nineteenth century among a herd 
 of states that calls itself an empire because it raises 
 cotton and sells slaves ! ' ' 
 
 The Abolitionists were right in charging the re- 
 sponsibility for slavery upon the North, "Northern 
 opinion," said Phillips, "the weight of Northern 
 power, is the real slaveholder of America." Edward 
 Everett, on the floor of Congress declared himself 
 ready to shoulder his musket to put down the first 
 
 341 
 
slave-rising. Do you wonder that Randolph of Roa- 
 noke boasted, ''We do not rule the Morth hy our 
 Southern black slaves but by your Northern white 
 ones?" The task before the Abolitionists was to 
 wake the North to its duty, to give it no rest or peace 
 until it should withdraw the only power that made 
 slavery possible upon this continenc. By 1860 the 
 North had been roused, and was beginning to with- 
 draw its power. The South saw the handwriting on 
 the wall. ''For the first time in our history," said 
 Phillips, "the slave has elected a President of the 
 United States." It was exactly so. The slave ques- 
 tion, like Aaron's rod, had devoured all other politi- 
 cal issues and held the stage alone. True to his teach- 
 ings of twenty years, Phillips urged the acknowledg- 
 ment of secession and the peaceable separation of the 
 states. But neither to Phillips nor to any other 
 prophet had it been given to divine the depth and 
 intensity of Northern sentiment that clung around 
 the flag. When the Stars and Stripes fell from Sum- 
 ter and the multitudinous North leaped as one man 
 to avenge it, the Abolitionists saw^ that there would 
 be no disunion, that the old Union had been swept 
 away forever, and that the new^ Union would be free. 
 Only the winter before, Phillips had spoken in Music 
 Hall at the peril of his life, facing many a murderous 
 pistol in his Sunday congregation, and had gone do^\Ti 
 to his house In Essex Street followed by thousands 
 of angry men. Now he spoke from the same platform, 
 but, "for the first time in his anti-slavery life, he 
 spoke under the Stars and Stripes, and welcomed the 
 tread of Massachusetts men marshaled for war." He 
 hailed that sublime rally of a great people to the de- 
 
 342 
 
fence of the national honor, ''a noble and puissant 
 nation rousing herself like a strong man from sleep 
 and shaking her invincible locks." There had been 
 nothing to match it since that night when the bea- 
 cons blazed from Dover to Carlisle and, between sun- 
 set and sunrise, all England rose to hurl back the 
 Armada. "Today," said he, "the slave thanks God 
 for a sight of this banner and counts it the pledge 
 of his redemption. Hitherto it may have meant what 
 you thought or what I did; today it means 
 sovereignty and justice." Then his lips were touched 
 by a live coal from the altar, and he burst into pro- 
 phecy : ' ' Years hence, when the smoke of the conflict 
 has cleared away, the world will see under our banner 
 all tongues, all creeds, all races one brotherhood, and 
 on the banks of the Potomac the genius of Liberty 
 robed in light, four and thirty stars for her diadem, 
 broken chains under her feet, and an olive branch in 
 her right hand." 
 
 It was one of the happiest coincidences in history 
 that the anti-slavery cause should have culminated 
 during the Yery years that saw Wendell Phillips in 
 the full maturity of his splendid powers. When the 
 rebellion began, he was fifty years of age. For more 
 than twenty years he had been discussing the slave 
 question in all its bearings. He had studied and 
 pondered it in all its phases. Every weapon in his 
 arsenal was bright w^th service and ready for instant 
 use. His armor had been hardened by blows. His 
 speech had acquired its perfection of form and was 
 now to be charged with unexampled force. In 1861, 
 as jMoncure Conway has justly recorded, he delivered 
 the greatest speeches that ever have been heard in 
 
 343 
 
America. No man saw more clearly that the war 
 could never be won and the Union established except 
 on the basis of freedom. The North might indeed 
 over-power her adversary, but she could never make 
 a Union between freedom and slavery. This was the 
 burden of the prophet during those four long years, 
 years of the warrior, filled with "confused noise and 
 garments rolled in blood," "with dreadful faces 
 thronged and fiery arms." It was his mission to 
 rouse the powerful and populous North till it cried 
 as with a single voice, "Proclaim liberty throughout 
 the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." In the 
 nature of things it is impossible to separate and 
 weigh the influence of any one man in the formation 
 of public opinion, that subtle, all-pervasive force 
 which, 
 
 "Like the air, 
 Is seldom heard but when it speaks in thunder;" 
 
 but that there was in all that tremendous period no 
 clearer or more potent voice, the Muse of History 
 will yet affirm. 
 
 When slavery had been abolished he was too 
 deeply concerned with the dangers that lay ahead to 
 join in the cheers of victory. He kncAV that the old 
 hatred of the Negro would find new ways to work 
 against him. He would not halt to hang up wreaths 
 and trophies or to build monuments. He girded 
 up his loins and pushed on to fight for enfranchise- 
 ment. He was for taking advantage of the sentiment 
 for freedom and equality while it lasted. He struck 
 while the iron was hot. He worked while it was 
 yet day, knowing that the night was coming wherein 
 no man could work. From 1865 to 1870, the most 
 
 344 
 
alert and strenuous years of his life, he toiled night 
 and day for the principle that was finally embodied 
 in the fifteenth amendment. To him more than to 
 any other man, perhaps more than to all other men, 
 its adoption was due. He was right. The night has 
 succeeded to the glorious day that gave us the three 
 great amendments, worthy to be written in letters 
 of gold beside the Petition of Right and Magna 
 Charta. The iron that was heated seven times hot 
 in the furnace of battle was happily hammered, be- 
 fore it was too late, into the forms that cannot easily 
 be changed. But the glow is gone. A new generation 
 has come upon the scene. Selfishness, prejudice, the 
 old spirit of caste, are doing their work; and the 
 people that received the tables of stone from the 
 mount that burned with fire and shook with the 
 thunders of Jehovah, has turned to the worship of 
 the golden calf, and is taking its pleasure at the 
 banquet. All this Phillips foresaw and foretold. To- 
 day not a state of the old Confederacy records the 
 Negro's vote. The fifteenth amendment is sneered 
 at by millions at the North as the greatest blunder 
 of the age. Today law journals publish labored ar- 
 ticles to prove the amendment void. And yet what 
 is the fifteenth amendment? What does it declare? 
 Merely this, that a man's right to vote shall not 
 depend upon his color or his race. The South is as 
 free as ever to make the right depend upon any 
 reasonable test that can be applied to black and 
 white alike, education, property, what she will. Why 
 need she resort to miserable subterfuges to let in her 
 poor, ignorant, and vicious whites, while she ex- 
 cludes even the virtuous, the learned, and prosper- 
 
 345 
 
ous among the blacks? Is this the courage, is this 
 the sense of fairness, of the Anglo-Saxon race? 
 
 The black race, in less than fifty years of 
 freedom, has justified every claim of the Abolition- 
 ists. It has shown itself brave in battle, faithful in 
 peace, eager to learn, capable of acquiring and control- 
 ling wealth, and able to produce noble and far-sighted 
 leaders of its own blood. In spite of race prejudice 
 and political betrayal it has got its feet on the solid 
 ground of material well-being and is reaching out its 
 hands with slow, patient, but irresistible power to 
 the great prizes of the world of effort and ideas. Its 
 progress during the last half -century mil be one of 
 the marvels of history. Every man who loves justice 
 or humanity must rejoice at such a sight. We who 
 have united to demand of the American people the 
 rights guaranteed by the Constitution to every child 
 born under the flag, and who are resolved never to 
 rest until those rights have been secured in fact as 
 well as in name — we have reason to believe that the 
 master spirits of the earlier crusade are with us now. 
 As those who fought by Lake Regillus, in the old 
 days of Rome, saw riding on their right the Great 
 Twin Brethren in snow-white coats of mail, and 
 knew that 
 
 "The gods who live forever 
 
 Were on Rome's side that day," 
 
 SO in every charge we make against the forces of 
 oppression we have a right to feel that Garrison and 
 Phillips, the twin warriors, the great white brothers, 
 are riding at our side. 
 
 The anti-slavery cause was only one branch of 
 a movement that embraces the world and reaches 
 
 346 
 
through all time. It is the triumphant progress of 
 democracy — the movement of the common people to 
 take possession of their own. Phillips was never 
 narrow enough to have his heart bound up with 
 one race only. He was too true a soldier to sit down 
 content with any partial triumph. When the Anti- 
 slavery Society disbanded in 1870 his last words to his 
 companions were: "We sheathe no sword. We only 
 turn our front upon a new foe." Looking out over 
 Christendom he saw, as he said, ''that out of some 
 three hundred or four hundred millions, at least one 
 hundred millions never had enough to eat.*' He 
 saw the w^ealth of the world in the hands of com- 
 paratively few, and he saw^ that this wealth had been 
 created not by the few, but by the toil of the many. 
 With brave, unflinching logic he announced his prin- 
 ciple, ''Labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all 
 it creates," and avow^ed himself willing to follow it 
 to its ultimate conclusion, to the utter abolition of 
 the wage system, and the substitution, for cut- 
 throat competition, of a fair and just cooperation. He 
 had begun his study of the labor question as early as 
 1861 or 1862, when no journal except the anti-slavery 
 papers would ^ve an inch of space to its discussion. 
 But in 1871 the workingmen of IMassachusetts had 
 formed a party and invited him to be their candidate 
 for governor. He consented, not because he wished 
 or was willing to be elected if that had been pos- 
 sible, but only to advance the agitation. To the 
 laboring men he gave this characteristic advice: 
 "Write on your ballot boxes, 'We never forget. If 
 you do us a wrong, you may go down on your knees 
 and say I am sorry I did the act, and it may avail you 
 
 347 
 
in heaven, but on this side of the grave, never!' '' 
 And so far as worMngmen have succeeded in their 
 political aims, it has been because they have followed 
 that advice. 
 
 It would require a separate address to recount 
 his services to other causes. The wrongs of Ireland 
 claimed his voice; the wrongs of the Indian, the 
 Chinaman, the Jew. He spoke for the temperance 
 movement, woman suffrage, prison reform, the aboli- 
 tion of the gallows. He taught race prejudice its 
 most wholesome lesson in his lecture on the great 
 San Domingo black, ''the soldier, the statesman, the 
 martyr," Toussaint L'Ouverture; he gave religious 
 bigotry its most stinging rebuke in his Daniel 'Con- 
 nell; he brought religion itself to its most vital test 
 in Christianity a Battle, Not a Dream; and in 1881, 
 in the most finished effort of his life, his great Phi 
 Beta Kappa address at Harvard, he arraigned the 
 timid scholarship of his time for having been a clog 
 on the wheels of reform, and turned respectability 
 pale by showing it that the Nihilists were only the 
 Washingtons and Warrens, the Patrick Henrys and 
 Sam Adamses of Russia. In the last fifteen years of 
 his life he fulfilled more perfectly than any other 
 American his own definition of the agitator. ''The 
 agitator," said he, "must stand outside of organiza- 
 tions, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, 
 no party to save, no object but the truth — to tear a 
 question open and riddle it with light." 
 
 If he were living today how he would rejoice 
 over those six stars in the suffrage banner — six states 
 that have risen above the bigotry of sex. How he 
 would be fighting for the initiative and referendum 
 
 348 
 
and overthrowing every ar^gument against them, ar- 
 guments that have no foundation save in the old Tory- 
 distrust of the people. We have not begun to come 
 up with Wendell Phillips, but such achievements are 
 signs that we are on his trail. He was a prophet 
 even in the matter of mechanics. Addressing the 
 school children of Boston in 1865, he said: "We have 
 invented the telegraph. But what of that? If I 
 live forty years I expect to see a telegraph that will 
 send messages wdthout wires and both ways at the 
 same time." It gives one a weird feeling to re- 
 member that it was almost exactly forty years from 
 that date that Marconi's wonderful invention was 
 given to the world. Radical, progressive, as he was, 
 never satisfied with^what had been attained, he had 
 yet the poet's leverence for the past. How fond he 
 was of quoting those words: 
 
 "The great of old, 
 
 The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 
 
 Our spirits from their urns." 
 
 His lecture ou Lost Arts, prepared on the spur of 
 the moment, but repeated over two thousand times, 
 is as fine a tribute as was ever paid to the forgotten 
 genius of antiquity. He sympathized with every 
 attempt to save for future ages "the places w^here 
 bold men spoke or brave men died." He plead in 
 vain for the preservation of the Hancock House. He 
 plead, not in vain, for the preservation of the Old 
 South. Its dark walls stand today a proof and trophy 
 of his eloquence. 
 
 To read his speeches you would say they must 
 have come flaming from the furnace. You seem to 
 hear the lion roar of Mirabeau and picture to your- 
 
 349 
 
self the stormy action of Demosthenes. Yet his voice at 
 its loudest was like a silver clarion, and oftener 
 would remind you of a flute, while his action was at 
 all times the grace of a Greek god. Higginson said: 
 *'No matter how humble the client he represented, 
 he always had tlie air of the grand seigneur." He 
 really introduced a new style in oratory. He made 
 the old bombast ridiculous. Such rantings put you 
 in mind of savages who beat tom-toms and yell and 
 screech to appall their enemies; but Phillips remind- 
 ed you of the Spartan heroes, who marched, as Mil- 
 ton said, 
 
 "to the Dorian mood 
 Of flutes and soft recorders," 
 
 going forth smiling and crowned with roses to those 
 deadly combats from which it was their point of 
 honor never to retreat. A Southerner who listened 
 to him in the old days, expecting to hear a noisy 
 demagogue, could only describe him as ''an infernal 
 machine set to music." 
 
 Severest of all the public speakers of his time, he 
 carried in his bosom the tenderest of hearts. 
 
 "For all the lost and desolate 
 
 Woman and man revile, 
 Saint Francis at the cloister gate 
 
 Had not so sweet a smile." 
 
 How close he kept to the people! Lived for 
 forty years down there on Essex Street, and when 
 the city tore doAvn his house and ran the pavement 
 over its ruins, moved over to Common Street, to a 
 house as near like the old one as he could find. Bom 
 on Beacon Hill, died in Common Street — that seems 
 to tell the story of the man. In the morning, when 
 
 350 
 
it was possible, he would go to the Criminal Courts 
 to lend his hand to some poor outcast falsely accused 
 or honestly desiring to do better. One night he was 
 accosted by a woman of the street here on the Com- 
 mon Mall. Looking in his pure face she saw her 
 mistake and apologized. Mr. Phillips drew her on 
 to talk, walked back and forth with her under the 
 elms until he had her story, then took her to a home 
 where she became the woman (rod intended her to 
 be. 
 
 "Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!" 
 If we had a right to draw aside the curtain that hides 
 his home life, what an example of chivalrous devo- 
 tion Avould be brought to view! — devotion not with- 
 out its rich reward, since from the seclusion of that 
 sick chamber came the highest inspiration to heroic 
 words and deeds. 
 
 Not many men deserve to be remembered on 
 their hundredth birthday; but Wendell Phillips's 
 second centennial may be better observed than his 
 first. We may be sure his name will be written high- 
 er a hundred years hence than it is today. When 
 the reforms he advocated have become accomplished 
 facts, when prisons have been turned into moral 
 hospitals, when society has learned to erect '*a guide- 
 post at the beginning of the road instead of a gal- 
 lows at the end of it," when cities have sloughed off 
 the grogshop and the brothel, when woman has been 
 summoned into civil life and has become the yoke- 
 fellow of man, no longer his plaything or his drudge, 
 when the hands that create the wealth of the world 
 have learned to hold it and to handle it for the good 
 of all, and every child bom in America has an equal 
 
 351 
 
chance in life, when the dark-browed multitudes for 
 whom he toiled and suffered have joined the en- 
 franchised millions that are yet to trample all op- 
 pression under their feet — do you think that in that 
 day the name of Wendell Phillips is likely to be for- 
 gotten? Whatevsr we may say, do you imagine 
 it will be the judgment of coming times that he con- 
 demned the tyrants of his own age too severely? 
 
 The word of the Lord came to Wendell Phillips, 
 as to the propljets in all ages, * ' Cry aloud and spare 
 not!" Thank God, he did not spare! Thank God 
 for every bitter, biting, blasting speech that woke 
 a sluggard land to its duty and made the ears of recre- 
 ant statesmen tingle with shame! Would that in this 
 day another might arise like unto him, so gifted, so 
 consecrated, so fearless, so mighty in the power of 
 the Spirit, to rebuke the cowards and oppressors of 
 our time. Wrong still walks the earth, the expecta- 
 tion of the poor perishes, and the needy are for- 
 gotten. Oh that he himself were here to defend 
 the mighty bulwarks of liberty he labored to build 
 up within the Constitution! Oh that he were here 
 to shame his own race into honest dealing with the 
 black — to lay open to scorn the sneaking cowardice 
 that makes laws to give white ignorance and vice the 
 ballot and deny it to the black, not daring to meet 
 its rival in the open field and lay down one equal test 
 for all, but skulking behind "grandfather clauses," 
 while it taxes the black man for parks and libraries 
 and shuts liim out from both ! Oh that he were here to 
 damn as it deserves the hellish hatred that. North 
 as well as South, condemns men unheard because they 
 are black, tortures innocent and guilty at the stake, 
 
 352 
 
yes, even in the Quaker Commonwealth, drags the 
 wounded black boy from the hospital on his pallet 
 and burns him in his blood — the shameless perjury 
 that acquits the lynchers, the brazen impudence that 
 finds unwritten law to clear cold-blooded murder with 
 the sanction of the court! Oh that he were here to 
 find some fitting name for states that, pretending to 
 be democratic, hold seats in Congress for millions of 
 men whose political rights they have villainously 
 filched away, voting now, not as in old days for three- 
 fifths of the Ne^'roes, but for all ! He should be here 
 to pour contempt upon communities that let the 
 hands of infants do their work, rob the schoolhouse 
 and the playfield to run the factory, and do not wince 
 when they 
 
 "Hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years," — 
 
 the sodden dullness that suffers greed and cunning to 
 strike hands and tax the bread and meat, the coal and 
 clothing of millions to fill the pockets of a few — 
 the purblind prejudice that still holds woman back 
 from her part in civic life while it leaves the grog- 
 shop and the brothel free to rot the heart out of great 
 cities! Oh that he would come and unfrock those 
 time-serving priests that have no word for the giant 
 iniquities of their day, dumb dogs that will not bark 
 when the thief is climbing into the fold! Would 
 that he could wield once more the fearful lash that 
 made bribed statesmen cringe and tremble and the 
 backs of apostate judges smart under their robes! 
 But not to rebuke only — would that he were with us 
 now to cheer and lead! One blast upon that silver 
 bugle would be worth a hundred men. The battle 
 
 353 
 
has moved onward; there are fighters in the field. 
 It is not an hour for curse or lamentation. It is an 
 hour for the consecration of knighthood for vigil, 
 and for vow. We do not come to praise you, Wendell 
 Phillips; you have received alread^^ your eternal 
 great reward. We have come to catch the glow of your 
 great spirit £nd resolve to make our lives like yours. 
 Here, where a century ago your life began we are 
 gathered to celebrate your coming with deep thanks- 
 giving and with solemn joy, pledging ourselves anew 
 to the grand purpose to which your life was devoted 
 — a war against all oppression for the liberty of all! 
 
 H 18 89 .^^i 354 
 
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