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 LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER
 
 _J
 
 _)
 
 -J
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Hon. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, LL.D., 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OP THE 
 
 Gelebration of tlie Birthday of klmhm Lincoln 
 
 AT 
 
 Burliugtou, Vermont, Feb. 12tli, 1895, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 Gommencement Exercises of the University of Gtiicago, 
 
 April 1st, 1895, 
 
 AND AT 
 
 His Birtl^day Dii^i>er, 
 
 TENDERED HIM BY THE 
 
 NIONTAUK CLUB OK BROOKLYN, 
 April 20thL, 1895.
 
 -J
 
 
 ADDRKSS 
 
 OF 
 
 Hon. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, LL. D., 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OP THE CELEBRATION OF THE 
 
 Birthday of Abraham Lincoln, 
 
 AT 
 
 BURLINQTOM, VERNIONT, 
 FEBRUARY 12th, 1895. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 The pleasure of aiDpearing before you this after- 
 noon is great, but marred by circumstances. I had 
 supposed the occasion was to be the usual recrea- 
 tion for a busy man of the after-dinner speech which 
 pleasantly occupies the mind without tiring it. To 
 have it transformed into an afternoon address or 
 oration means a preparation, or the use of the Hor- 
 atian method of the file and thumb-nail, and my 
 conditions made that impossible. You will pardon 
 the absence of formality and accept the earnest- 
 ness with which I approach a subject so grand in it- 
 self as the hero whose memory ,we celebrate, and 
 principles so enduring and vivifying as those of 
 the party of which he is the greatest ornament. 
 
 The tendency in all times has been for the people 
 to grow so far apart from their National heroes
 
 2 
 
 that tlie hero becomes impossible. We cannot 
 live with perfection ; we cannot have the' cam- 
 araderie of personal communion with saints. The 
 force and effect of continuing leadership is to be in 
 touch with the leader. We have idealized already 
 the worthies of the revolutionary period, and 
 especially Washington, so that they are out of the 
 pale of humanity. To us they never possessed the 
 foibles and weaknesses which are common to our 
 race. I doubt if Washington ever did. I had oc- 
 casion at the time of the Centennial to study closely 
 his character and career. It was impossible to 
 lower him to any plane where a horizontal view 
 could be had of him. In the camp and in the cab- 
 inet, in the Continental Convention and around the 
 campfire, in the midst of his soldiers, or at the mess 
 with his staff, he was always the same dignified, 
 majestic and unapproachable figure. For the times 
 in which he lived, for the mission to which he was 
 destined, these lofty characteristics were appropri- 
 ate. The revolution knew little of the fierce dem- 
 ocracy. The classes and the masses were distinctly 
 defined and separated. The pride of birth, of an- 
 cestry and landed proprietorship) was never 
 more distinctly asserted and never more 
 generally recognized. It is probable that for the 
 purpose of bringing the wealth and the intelligence 
 of the country to the support of the patriot cause 
 it was necessary that one of this class who was infi- 
 nitely superior to his fellows, and whose aim and 
 ambition were only his country and its liberties,
 
 3 
 
 should lead the movement. The processes of evo- 
 lution of democracy for one hundred years had 
 created a condition where Washington would have 
 been a failure in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, 
 his opj)osite in every respect, because he was so 
 different, was the most successful leader of any re- 
 volution of modern or ancient times. 
 
 As we study the characteristics which made Lin- 
 coln great and successful, we find them not in the 
 usual gifts of great statesmen. Others have been 
 more cultured, others have had more genius, 
 others have had more experience and training, but 
 none of any time had as the motive power of every 
 action an indomitable and resistless moral force. 
 You may call it the principle of natural religion, 
 or whatever you may. It was an instinct for the 
 right, a comprehension of justice, a boundless 
 sympathy and compassion, an intense and yearn- 
 ing love for his fellows and their welfare which 
 knew neither rank nor race, but gathered within 
 its boundless charity all mankind. The force and 
 effect of this power in Lincoln can be best illus- 
 trated by the contrast between him and his great 
 antagonist, Douglas. Douglas was born in Ver- 
 mont ; about him were all the influences of this 
 liberty-loving and intelligent commonwealth ; his 
 father was a clergyman, a college graduate, a man 
 of brains and culture, and his mother a worthy 
 helpmeet for her minister husband. Every author- 
 ity of environment and atmosphere was for right, 
 justice and liberty. His struggles with poverty
 
 J 
 
 were not those which enervate or degrade, but 
 those which inspire men of fiber, energy, ambition 
 and genius to the efforts wbich make a career. His 
 natural abilities, trained in the best of schools, 
 made him a teacher, a lawyer, a judge, a legislator, 
 a senator and the leader of his party. It made 
 him the ablest of debaters in the United States 
 Senate, the most formidable of foes upon the 
 platform in a political campaign, and the most 
 adroit of politicians in framing issues which 
 should capture or mislead the people. In 
 any condition of the country's affairs, when 
 great moral questions were not at issae, 
 Stephen A. Douglas would have been President. 
 Lincoln, on the other hand, was born in a slave 
 State, the son of a poor white, and lived during his 
 early youth in a cabin of one room, under condi- 
 tions of abject poverty and ignorance. His mother 
 died, his shiftless father moved to Indiana, a log 
 cabin was erected which had neither partitions nor 
 floors and scarcely windows or doors, a few acres 
 were cleared to get the bare necessaries of life, 
 and almost at the period of manhood Lincoln had 
 no education, was dressed in skins, was associated 
 with semi-savages who relieved the hard conditions 
 of their lives by brntal debauches and equally 
 brutal fights among themselves, and yet he remained 
 uncontaminated by the drinking, swearing, idle 
 loafers, roughs or thugs who constituted his com- 
 panionship. His energies would be shown occa- 
 sionally with his enormous strength in protecting
 
 the weak or rescuing the defeated, and a promise 
 of his future powers given by holding spellbound 
 at times his rough auditors by his rustic eloquence, 
 or entertaining them at night with his endless fund 
 of anecdote, drollery and mimicry. An insatiable 
 craving for knowledge led him to learn to read and 
 to write. The only books within miles about him 
 were Robinson Crusoe, a short history of the United 
 States, Weem'sLifeof Washington, and Bunyan's 
 Pilgrim's Progress. These he soon knew by heart. 
 This master of the English tongue, this most felici- 
 tous of phrase makers, this most eloquent of 
 speakers, framed his sentences and formed his 
 style by writing compositions with charcoal upon 
 a wooden shovel or the shingles from the mill. A 
 clerk in a store on starvation wages, a storekeeper 
 without capital, and his business sold out by the 
 sheriff, a surveyor earning ten or fifteen dollars a 
 month, and a lawyer with no other equipment than 
 Blackstone and the statutes of Illinois — such was 
 Lincoln at a period when the accomplished and 
 cultured Douglas was already the idol of his State. 
 And yet thus, on the threshold of a career, with 
 such surroundings, such teachings and such im- 
 pressions, in the midst of a community which 
 drank, Lincoln was a temperance man ; in the 
 midst of a community that swore, Lincoln was 
 free from blasphemy ; in the midst of a com- 
 munity not highly moral, Lincoln was as 
 pure as an angel ; in the midst of a com- 
 munity which regarded the negro as no better
 
 6 
 
 than the horse or the mule, Lincoln was an abol- 
 itionist. 
 
 Sailing down the Mississippi River up)on a flat 
 boat, with a crew composed of his rough comrades, 
 who boasted they were half horse and half alli- 
 gator, who anchored at night for roystering riots 
 in the villages and continued them when they 
 reached ISIew Orleans, Lincoln was apart from 
 them, while of them. He wandered one day into 
 the slave market and saw a young girl put up at 
 auction. He witnessed the brutal examination of 
 her by the buyers and spectators, the coarse jokes 
 that were exchanged in the crowd and the cynical 
 beastliness of the auctioneer, and the slumbering 
 fire of moral and religious wrath planted in him by 
 his mother, or inherited from some saintly ances- 
 tor, broke out with the declaration, "If I live, the 
 day will come when I will hit slavery a blow from 
 which it shall perish." That slave girl on the 
 block aroused the moral forces within him which 
 kept him from the temptations of his environ- 
 ment and made him the hero and tlie martyr of 
 liberty. 
 
 The peoples in all ages have loved gladiatorial 
 combats, whether of the mind or muscle. The 
 keen delight of the Greek in the contests of his 
 orators, and of the Roman in the bloody fights of 
 his gladiators, illustrated the principle. The de- 
 bate between Douglas, the leader of his party, the 
 inventor of the phrase, "popular sovereignty," 
 which was to stand both for the priucii^le and the
 
 policy which would save his party from being over- 
 whelmed by the rising spirit of liberty in the coun- 
 try, and the possible President of the United 
 States, and a man who, though unknown, excited 
 interest because the Republican party in his State 
 deemed him worthy to be placed against the 
 champion, was a picture which made Illinois the 
 battle ground of freedom. If Lincoln had pos- 
 sessed less of this controlling moral principle — if 
 he had been actuated by the same motives which 
 governed Douglas— if his God had been his per- 
 sonal ambition more than the welfare of the race, 
 or the Presidency more than patriotism — he would 
 have defeated Douglas. The repeal of the Mis- 
 souri Compromise had thrown open the territories 
 of the great northwest to slavery. Douglas had 
 met the rising tide of indignation and stemmed it 
 by a proposition which apparently left the people 
 of the territory to decide whether their institutions 
 should be free or slave. The decision of the Su- 
 preme Court in the Dred Scott case had shown that 
 this alleged principle was a flimsy pretext. Never- 
 theless it was generally accepted. The South was 
 committed to slavery and regarded its extension 
 as necessary to the existence of the system. The 
 business of the North was bound up in the preser- 
 vation of slavery. The press and the iiuli)it were 
 largely with their congregations, their constitu- 
 encies and their readers. "Abolitionist" was a 
 term of reproach and opprobrium. " Anti- 
 slavery " was little better. To touch slavery was
 
 8 
 
 to touch the Union, and to touch the Union was to 
 imperil the Republic, and so slavery became the 
 cornerstone of the Republic. The Declaration of 
 Independence was an empty sound for Fourth of 
 July declamations and assaiilts upon the mon- 
 archial systems of other countries. Lincoln wrote 
 his speech. He read it to the leaders of his party. 
 It was based upon this thought, couched in these 
 words, " A house divided against itself cannot 
 stand. I believe this government cannot endure 
 permanently half slave and half free. I do not 
 expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect 
 the house to fall, but I expect it will cease to be 
 divided. It will become all one thing or all the 
 other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest 
 the further spread of it, and place it where the 
 public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the 
 course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates 
 will push it forward, till it shall become alike 
 lawful in all the States — old as well as new, north 
 as well as south." The leaders of the party with 
 one voice said, "That speech defeats you and 
 elects Douglas." " Ah ! " said Lincoln, " I know 
 that, but I am looking beyond Douglas and be- 
 yond the Senatorship. That sentiment appeals to 
 the conscience of the north against the extension 
 of slavery in the territories and against the system 
 of slavery." It was the gauntlet of liberty 
 thrown into the arena which began the battle that 
 ended with the publication of the Proclamation 
 of Emancipation.
 
 There never was sncli a President — never such 
 a ruler as Abraham Lincoln. He did not repre- 
 sent hereditary privileges, for he came from the 
 plainest of the plain people ; he did not repre- 
 sent heredity, for he had none ; lie did not 
 represent the colleges or the universities, for 
 he knew them not ; he did not represent capital 
 and great accumulations, for he had neither ; but 
 he did represent the toiler upon the farm, in the 
 workshop, upon the highway, in the factory, any- 
 where, everywhere where honest men and honest 
 women were striving to better their conditions and 
 to illustrate the dignity of labor and the nobility 
 of American citizenship. Without this touch with 
 the plain people his ability, his genius, would have 
 made him distrusted, for it may be taken as almost 
 an axiom that there" is no career for great genius 
 by popular vote. He knew the country, the lim- 
 itations of his power, how far and how fast the 
 administration could go in the great struggle, 
 better than the cabinet, or Congress, or journalists, 
 or advisers. "Call for troops to suppress the 
 rebellion," shouted the northern press, the north- 
 ern pulpit and the representatives in Congress. But 
 he said, with the adoration that exists for the con- 
 stitution and its strict interpretation, and for the 
 Union, and with the dread there is of its dissolution, 
 the j3ag must be assailed before a response can be 
 had. Against the advice of every member of his 
 cabinet he said, "Let us send jDrovisions to the be- 
 leaguered United States soldiers heroically defend-
 
 10 
 
 ing the flag in Cliarleston Harbor.'" The unarined 
 provision ship was driven back, the flag tired upon, 
 the fort was captured, the plain people who were 
 his constituents understood then the situation, and 
 millions of soldiers responded to his call. 
 
 Mr. G-reeley thundered in the Tribune, Mr. Sum- 
 ner in the Senate, the clergymen in their jDulpits, 
 and the orators upon the platform, that he should 
 destroT the confederacv at once bv freeing the 
 slaves. He knew as no other man did the strength 
 and power of the feeling which had grown up in 
 the countrv of the sort of sacredness that hedged 
 abont property in slaves. But when defeat after 
 defeat came, when there was desx:»air of the result, 
 when the future of the Republic looked dark, 
 when the people had been educated to regard 
 the Union as more sacred than slavery, then he 
 promulgated his immortal proclamation. Other 
 Presidents and other rulers have deemed their fall 
 duty performed in their annual communications 
 to their congresses or their parliaments, but 
 Lincoln every day was addressing letters by 
 which he was counseling and arguing with 
 the people upon the questions of the hour, the 
 perils of the country and the duties and dangers 
 that were before him. Xow he writes to Mr. 
 Greeley, now to the workingmen of Manchester, 
 now to the workingmen of Xew York, now to a 
 State Convention, now to a convocation of clergy- 
 men ; but always to the people of the United 
 States. Whenever his great brain and his great
 
 11 
 
 heart welled np so that he seemed about to be 
 suflfocated by the difficulties of the situation, aud 
 by the impossibility of solvinsj his problems. Lincoln 
 poured his troubles out to the people of the United 
 States, and asked for their sympathy, their advice 
 and their support. The appeal was never made in 
 Tain. Politicians raved against him, and said that 
 his utterances were unwise, and his actions indis- 
 creet. Earnest men, who had the cause at lieart, 
 called conventions to prevent his renomination, 
 and then to defeat him for re-election, but the 
 plain people with whom he had been talkinc: as 
 with familiar friends, whose homes he had en- 
 tered, at whose firesides he had sat. by whose bed- 
 sides he had talked, in whose inmost circles and in 
 the midst of whose family prayers he had been, re- 
 sponded with an overwhelming support whicli 
 gave him again the presidency, and the presidency 
 by practically the unanimous voice of the people. 
 
 Lincoln knew nothing of the dignity, so far as 
 it is expressed in manner and dress, which belongs 
 to high station. The instinctive sense of propriety 
 and consciousness of superiority and greatness 
 which hedged Washington was absent in him. In 
 our time, in the fierce light of our publicity, with 
 the scintillations of electricity rendering brilliant 
 every nook and corner and crannv of a public 
 man's existence and thought, the temptations to 
 enlarge the wreath whicli the people place upon 
 his head are almost irresistible. The test of 
 greatness is the wearing of the halo. Ic destroyed
 
 12 J 
 
 Napoleon, J it ruined two-thirds of the generals in 
 the war, it has'driven great and little politicians, 
 from the commencement of our Republic until 
 now. into obscurity. But Lincoln w^as never 
 troubled as to the size of his head. He never over- 
 estimated nor underestimated who he was, what 
 he was nor what he represented. He never for- 
 got w-here he came from, and never lost sight 
 of the fact that except by the accident of 
 position he ' was neither better nor worse than 
 those who placed him in the Presidential chair. 
 He possessed what no other ruler ever did, or, if he 
 did, no other ruler dared to use, the power of humor. 
 The portentous solemnity of our public men per- 
 vades our political atmosphere, even to depressing 
 melancholy. The less the statesman knows the 
 more solemn he is, the thicker his head the more 
 owlish [his bearing. A President of the United 
 States once said to me, " No man can ever succeed 
 in this country who gives rein to his humor or his 
 fun. The people no longer look upon him as a 
 serious man, and only serious men are recognized in 
 the consideration of public affairs." 
 
 When Mr. Lincoln came to Washington he was 
 unknown to the great leaders of the party. He had 
 the courage, which only a very great man can have, 
 of summoning them all into his Cabinet. The rule 
 has been growing to summon only lesser men into 
 the Cabinet. In modern times as soon as the Presi- 
 dent has selected his constitutional advisers the 
 whole detective agency of the newspapers is set to
 
 13 
 
 work to find oiit who they are, where tliey come 
 from and what the}' have done. The village attor- 
 ney, the village scribe, the local philosopher bound 
 upon the national platform with theories as broad 
 as their environment, and as useful. The j)rocess 
 has the merit of elevating the chief b}^ the depre- 
 ciation of his subordinates. Lincoln believed in 
 more harmonious pictures. Napoleon, surrounded 
 bv the Marshals of France, everv one of them a hero 
 of a great battle, every one of them the demon- 
 strated leader of a mighty army, himself the ac- 
 knowledged chief and leader of them all, formed a 
 picture tliat commanded the admiration of his time 
 and has arrested the attention of posterity. This 
 Illinois lawyer, orator and statesman, called to his 
 aid the men who had demonstrated in the Senate, 
 in the House and in the Courts that they were the 
 leaders of men. What a spectacle ! This ungainly 
 giant of the west, angular and awkward, uncouth 
 o£ manner, inelegant of address, with the courtly 
 Seward for Secretary of State, the stately Chase for 
 Secretary of the Treasury, the worldly, dominant 
 and shrewd Cameron for Secretary of War, and the 
 imperious Stanton as his successor ! Chase turns 
 to his friends and intimates that the country has a 
 mountebank for President. Seward, ever anxious to 
 be useful, w^rites a private note offering to perform 
 all the duties of the Presidency and leave the orna- 
 ments of its name and station to Lincoln. He re- 
 ceives in reply a letter which ignores the insult but 
 says in effect, "I will] run the administration and
 
 14 
 
 -I 
 
 you rim your department, except when I think that 
 you had better run it in some other way." In less 
 than a year everyone of those great leaders recog- 
 nized that he was in the presence of his chief and 
 superior. 
 
 Lincoln under other conditions might have made 
 a great playwright, or he might have been a great 
 actor. He was unconciously dramatic. His dis- 
 a]3pearance at Harrisburg, on the way to Washing- 
 ton for the first inauguration, his reai^pearance at 
 the Capital when the thugs were waiting to assas- 
 sinate him, was a dramatic surprise which excited 
 the whole country. His appointment of Hooker 
 to the command of the Army of the Potomac, in a 
 letter which told him plainly his weaknesses and 
 his failures and the reasons why he ought not to 
 have the responsibility of the command placed 
 upon him, was both a comedy and a tragedy. His 
 offer to McClellan to borrow his army if he only 
 knew what to do with it, as it was aj^parent 
 McClellan did not know, was one of those strokes 
 of genius in expression which removed the i)opular 
 idol and broke it. A messenger summoned the 
 cabinet to the White House, The first to enter 
 was the stately, the dignified, the always i^roper 
 Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. The 
 President looked up from his book and said, "Mr. 
 Chase, I was just reading a most interesting work, 
 which I have enjoyed more than anything I have 
 met with in a long time. Let me read you a part 
 of it." And thereupon he began reading to him
 
 15 
 
 Artemus Ward's lecture on " Wmx Figgers." The 
 astonished and irritated Secretary of the Treas^^ry, 
 listening as the other members of the cabinet 
 gathered, indignantly exclaimed, " Mr. President, 
 we did not come here to hear this idiotic nonsense. 
 For what are we snnrimoned?" Mr. Lincoln pat 
 his hand in his drawer, pulled out a paper and 
 said, "Gen.tlemen, I summoned you to submit this 
 paper ; not to ask your advice as to whether I 
 should issue it or not, because I intend to issue it 
 no matter what your advice may be ; but to ask sug- 
 gestions as to its form." And he read to them the 
 immortal Proclamation of Emancipation ; the docu- 
 ment which was to set four millions of human 
 beings free ; the document which was to relieve the 
 Constitution from the curse of slavery ; the docu- 
 ment which was to make the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence for the first time in our history the vital 
 force in the principles and in the policies of the 
 United States ; the document which was to remove 
 the stain which made us a by- word and reproach 
 among all civilized people ; the document which 
 carried out in letter and spirit the vow made so 
 many years before when the flat-boatman saw the 
 girl sold in the shambles at New Orleans. A few 
 suggestions were made, a few hesitating protests 
 against the fierce determination of the President 
 for publication, an earnest request for delay until 
 a victory should come, and that most memorable of 
 Cabinet meetings in the history of the United States 
 adjourned, and as they tiled out this incomprehen-
 
 16 
 
 sible President put the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion back in the drawer and resumed the reading of 
 Artemus AVard, 
 
 I remember as if it was yesterday an afternoon 
 with Mr. Lincoln. I was but a boy, though Secre- 
 tary of Xew York State. Horatio Seymour was 
 the Democratic Governor, and the Legislature was 
 Republican, The soldiers' Tote was to be obtained. 
 The Republican Legislature would not trust the 
 Governor, and it devolved upon me the duty of 
 collecting the soldiers' vote. Mr. Lincoln looked 
 np as I pressed my way through the crowd in his 
 reception room and said : " Well, Depew, what 
 can I do for you ? " I said : " Mr, President, I do 
 not want anything ; I am in TVashington on a 
 mission from our State to get out from the armies 
 our New York soldiers' vote, and I simply called 
 to pay my respects." He said : "It is so rare that 
 anyone comes here who wants nothing, please wait 
 and I will get rid of these people in a few minutes." 
 The room was soon emptied, the faithful " Jerry " 
 was guarding the door, and on the lounge the tired 
 President was rocking to and fro, holding his long 
 knees in his arms and telling story after story to 
 relieve his mind, and he said : "Depew, they say 
 I tell a great many stories. I think I do. They 
 sav I lower the dignitv of the Presidential office 
 by these broad anecdotes. Possibly that is true. 
 But I have found, in the course of a long ex- 
 perience, that the plain people of the country take 
 them as they are, and are more easily reached and
 
 17 
 
 influenced and argued witli througli the medium of 
 a humorous illustration than in any other way." 
 
 While I was there Mr. John Granson, of Buffalo, 
 was a member of Congress, His face and his head 
 were hairless and polished like a billiard ball. He 
 was a Democrat, but supjDorted the President. The 
 conditions of the army were very blue in the East 
 and in the West. Ganson came in one day and 
 said : " Mr. President, I am risking my re-election 
 in supporting your war measures. The campaign 
 seems very unsatisfactory. Of course I will not 
 give out anything you tell me. What is the situa- 
 tion at the front ? "' Mr. Lincoln, in his searching 
 and sad way, looked at him for a moment as if he 
 was about to reveal the secret of the whole army, 
 and then tumbled Ganson out of the reception room 
 by saying, '' Ganson, how clean you shave." Lord 
 Lyons, who was a bachelor, went up to announce 
 the marriage of the Princess Alexandra. As is 
 usual on such occasions, the Secretary of State had 
 prepared a formal reply to the address of the Eng- 
 lish Minister. Mr. Lincoln fumbled in his pockets, 
 and, unable to tind Mr. Seward's courtly response, 
 grasped Lord Lyons cordially by the hand and said, 
 " Lyons, go thou and do likewise." 
 
 As I sat in his room that afternoon, it was not 
 Congressmen who crowded about him, it was not 
 Senators, but it was wives and mothers who wanted 
 to get to the front, and whom the War Department 
 would not permit to go where their loved ones lay 
 wounded in the hospitals. It was wives and
 
 IS 
 
 mothers and fathers pleading for husbands and 
 sons condemned to be shot. Xo petitioner for 
 mercy ever left Lincoln with his petition not 
 granted. I was dining one night with General 
 Sherman, and, except Mr. Choate and myself, all 
 the gnests were commanders of armies in the war. 
 Thev were all lamenting how Mr. Lincoln had im- 
 paired discipline by i>ardoning the men who liad 
 been cotirt-martialed and condemned to be shot, and 
 the proceedings of the court-martial approved by 
 them, and finally Slocnm said, ''Sherman, what 
 did Toa do*'" That stem old warrior answered 
 grimly, **I shot them first." Bat with Mr. Lincoln 
 it was impossible to approve a death warrant. To 
 the father pleading for his son he gave a respite, 
 and, when the father wanted something more, bis 
 answer was. " If yotir boy lives till that sentence is 
 carried out, he will be so old that the world 
 will think Methnselah was a baby in years when 
 he died."" On his first visit to General Grant's 
 headquarters the driver of the mules was arguing 
 with his team in that picturesque fashion which the 
 army teamster thinks can be best understood by 
 the mule. Mr. Lincoln's rebuke of the blasphemy, 
 which he detested, was unique. " ' My friend, ' ' said 
 lie, "'are you an Episcopalian?" "Xo, Mr. Presi- 
 dent I am a Methodist."' "Oh!" said Mr. Lin- 
 cola, ''I thought you were an Episcopalian, be- 
 cause mv Secretary of State. Mr. Seward, some- 
 times talks that way, and he is a warden in the 
 Episcopal Chtirch in Auburn."
 
 19 
 
 It is significant of our time and of the questions 
 interesting to us, as we celelebrate the birthday 
 of this saviour of the Republic, this foremost of 
 statesmen, this plainest and most honest of mortals, 
 this most dignified, most humorous, most serious, 
 most sad of men, this most gentle of human beings, 
 this leader in his time, and of all time, of the Re- 
 publican party, that his first speech was for a pro- 
 tective tariff. He was first, last and all the time an 
 American ; an American when Xapoleon, invading 
 Mexico, would have broken up the Union, an 
 American when Great Britain would have inter- 
 fered for the purpose of destroying the Republic — 
 because, as Lord Salisbury said, we kept shop and 
 were her rivals in business — an American in his 
 earnest devotion to the Union and the Constitution, 
 an American in his love of liberty, an American in. 
 his belief that within the borders of the United 
 States should be manufactured all that the 
 people of the United States might require for 
 themselves. He loved the Union above all 
 things. He was the representative of the cult 
 which was started by Daniel Webster. The world 
 little knows what it owes to that great brain. ' * The 
 Union, one and inseparable, now and forever" was 
 the inspiration of the schools. It created a mighty 
 wave of unreasoning worship of the Union. Lin- 
 coln absorbed it, Lincoln understood it. In his in- 
 augural address — the first one — it was the Union ; 
 in his inaugural address — the second one— it was 
 the Union, in all his letters and speeches it was the
 
 20 
 
 Union. It was the Union with slavery, or the 
 Union without slavery, but always the Union of 
 the States. 
 
 We cannot pass by this celebration, ^^'e cannot 
 relegate again to the books and the libraries 
 this heroic and majestic figure without enforcing 
 by his example and teachings the sentiment of 
 the hour. There are always great crises coming 
 periodically in the history of nations. It was the 
 Revolutionary War which gave us our Republic. 
 It was the debates with Hayne and with Douglas 
 which gave us the love of union. It was the 
 Civil War which ended slavery, and now it is the 
 mighty contest of industrial forces, of economic 
 principles, of the proper relations of the currency 
 and the credit of the United States tc its trade 
 and credit in other countries, upon which are 
 builded our hopes or our fears. We have had a 
 civil war in which no blood has been shed, but 
 there have been more desolated homes, more closed 
 industries, more sacrifices of property, more ruin 
 and misery than was occasioned by the war from 
 1861 to 1865. This has been caused by the same 
 forces, springing largely from the same territory, 
 coming largely from the same pale of intelligence 
 and motives in different sections as that which 
 precipitated the great struggle. The generation 
 which followed the Civil War knew what the Dem- 
 ocratic party in power meant, and kept it in the 
 minority for a quarter of a century. The world is 
 fond of experiments, and experiments run in cycles.
 
 •21 
 
 What has been will be. So, after thirty years we 
 have tried the Democratic party in i)ower once 
 more. We gave them the Presidency and Congress, 
 and we have had repeated, industrially and finan- 
 ciall}', the experiences of the Democratic party in 
 power, as it was evidenced in their rule prior to 
 1860. The Democratic party stands for nothing 
 national. Its principles in the east are antagonistic 
 to its principles in the west. Its ideas in the west 
 are hostile to its ideas in the south, and its views on 
 the Pacific coast have no relations to its principles 
 or ideas or views anywhere else in the country. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln might have lived and added to his 
 greatness by a speedier settlement of the issues 
 which arose out of the Civil War. Mr. Cleveland 
 was President for four years without power, and 
 had he never been re-elected, with a Democratic 
 party on his hands, he might, with the halo which 
 was thrown around him, have gone down to poster- 
 ity as one of the great Presidents of the country. 
 But Cleveland was re-elected and did have the 
 Democratic party on his hands, and what might 
 have been is not, and Cleveland is not regarded as 
 one of the great Presidents of the country. 
 
 We have won our victory. It is the victory of 
 returning common sense, the victor}^ of experience 
 over hope. We are not yet out of the woods. The 
 Republican party can only hold the country where 
 it is and prevent further damage until it assumes 
 the responsibilities of power. The ditiicnlt}^ with 
 the democracy is not only of inex[)erience, but of in-
 
 22 
 
 -J 
 
 competence. The evolution of the student is first 
 his devotion to phrases, and the more vague they 
 mav be the more wise they seem, and from the 
 phrase he comes to theory. The theory makes him 
 a sceptic in religion and a mugwump in politics. 
 Then he either settles down to the stern renlities of 
 life and successful solutions of his problems, or he 
 becomes bankrupt in business and in faith. The 
 Democratic party captured the country by the 
 phrases '* free raw materials," " the tariff is a tax," 
 " the markets of the world." We have lost the 
 markets of the world, we have little left to tax, and 
 our raw materials and manufactured articles and 
 labor are all free, because there are so few pur- 
 chasers or employers. We are governed by the 
 party whicn gave us the Gorman tariff, which has 
 left solvent only the business upon ^vhicli Repub- 
 lican protection is continued, the party which 
 reversed the good old policy that you should pay 
 your debts wath money which you earned, and 
 adoi^ted the new one of paying them with borrowed 
 money. Micawber is its financial authority. That 
 party is suspending credit by the eyelids and busi- 
 Qess by the hair in the effort to solve the currency 
 problem, which needs little better solution than to 
 leave it alone. After thousands of years of hopeless 
 experiments the Democratic leaders are still striving 
 to square the circle and lift one's self over the stone 
 wall by the straps of one's boots; they are still 
 striving to pay debts without assets ; still striving 
 to give money where none has been earned and dis-
 
 23 
 
 tribute currency where there is no property to 
 exchange for it ; still striving to give value to the 
 air and to coin and mint theories, and they have re- 
 duced the national credit so that the Government 
 has to j)ay three and three-quarters per cent, inter- 
 est where the citizen can borrow for three per cent. 
 Against that the Republican party puts in prac- 
 tice the maxims of "Poor Richard" and the 
 principles whirli have made commercial nations 
 prosperous and commercial peoples ricli. This is 
 not the time nor is there occasion for 
 despair. The hand of the Republican engineer is 
 on the throttle, and the train can no longer run 
 away. The conductor can stop the momentum or 
 side-track the cars, but the engineer will not let 
 him derail them. The Republican House of Rep- 
 resentatives is the living protest of the country 
 against paralysis and despair, and it will hold the 
 fort until in 1896 the relief comes and the country 
 is saved. At the siege of Lucknow a handful of 
 soldiers were defending their own lives and the lives 
 of their wives and little ones against the hordes of 
 Sepoys about them. The food was giving out, the 
 hunger belt was drawn closer ; it seemed that the 
 day of relief and salvation would never come. 
 Suddenly the keen ears of the Scotch woman heard 
 the distant bagpipes, and she shouted: "Dinna 
 ye hear the slogan ? It is Havelock and his High- 
 landers." " Dinna ve hear the slogan ?" It came 
 in the last election and gave the Republicans the 
 House of Representatives. "Dinna ye hear the
 
 24 -^ 
 
 slogan?" It came from tlie breaking of the solid 
 South. "Dinna ye hear the slogan?" It came 
 from Missouri, from Maryland, from Tennessee, 
 from West Virginia. "Dinna ye hear the slo- 
 gan?" It is the marching of the army which 
 answered once, "We are coming, Father Abra- 
 ham, three hundred thousand more," to the victory 
 of 1896. Then the Republican Senate will respond 
 to the Republican House, and the Republican 
 House will respond to the Republican President, 
 and the country will receive prosperity, happiness 
 and peace.
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 OP 
 
 Hon. Cliaimcey M. Depew, LLD., 
 
 AT THE 
 
 COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES OF THE UNI- 
 VERSITY OF CHICAGO, AT THE 
 AUDITORIUM, 
 
 Monday Evening, April 1st, 18 9 5. 
 
 THE PRESENT, ITS OPPORTUNITIES 
 AND PERILS. 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 
 
 In the career of a young man are several 
 climacterics. They are well defined and in- 
 tensely interesting if he has the advantages of a 
 liberal education. Broadly stated they are his 
 entering college, the day of his graduation, the 
 career he adopts and his marriage. His gradu- 
 ation day and the selection of his career come 
 so close together that they may almost be ac- 
 cepted as one. His university and the learned 
 faculty have equipped and trained him for his 
 life work. His reliance thereafter is upon him- 
 self. He leaves college and enters the world
 
 26 
 
 -J 
 
 under poetic, even romantic conditions. His 
 situation is like that of the knight in the ancient 
 tournament whose valor and skill were witnessed 
 by throngs of gallant gentlemen and beautiful 
 ladies, and who, if successful, had the supreme 
 happiness of crowning some one as the queen of 
 love and beauty. As this modern knight of the 
 college curriculum stands upon the commence- 
 ment platform he is surrounded by admiring 
 relatives, by happy and sympathetic friends and 
 a joyous and applauding multitude. 
 
 The entrance of a young man into the world 
 is commonly described in the vocabulary of the 
 literature of the battle-field, but that characteri- 
 zation is wholly inadequate. Not only is it in- 
 adequate, but it is untrue. The ambitious aspir- 
 ant for the rewards and honors of life does not 
 expect to win them by the defeat and destruc- 
 tion of his competitors. Blood and treasure are 
 not poured out in a successful career in litera- 
 ture, the professions or business. It is an igno- 
 ble and a mean view which relies upon the ruin 
 of an opponent in order to secure his place. 
 Success in life, with all its hot competitions, is 
 rather a contest like some of the games of 
 Olympia and some of the athletic feats of our 
 own times in which the swifter runner or the
 
 27 
 
 more skillful oarsman may win the prize, but 
 there are honors and cheers, there are places and 
 rewards for those who fail In securing the su- 
 preme positions. Of course we know of fortunes 
 which have been made by the misfortunes of 
 others and positions which have been won by 
 the overthrow of others, but the man whose ac- 
 cumulations, however great and glittering they 
 may be, represent simply the ruin of tens, or 
 hundreds, or thousands is nothing but a legal- 
 ized brieand. It is the misfortune of our com- 
 plex civilization that the law has not compre- 
 hended and covered in its prohibitions and pen- 
 alties all the opportunities of sinning against the 
 persons and properties of a community. 
 
 It is not the least of the glories of our period 
 that a liberal education has become popular and 
 the university the ambition of all the people. 
 For nearly a thousand years the university was 
 only for the select few. The plain people had 
 no lot or part or Interest or opportunity in Its 
 advantaofes. The medieval foundation which Is 
 the ancestor of the modern college was only for 
 the benefit of a fraction of the population. 
 Originally it was only for the church. It 
 took centuries to embrace In a liberal education 
 what are known as the professions. It is only
 
 28 ~J 
 
 in our own time and in America tliat journalism 
 has been recognized as one of the Hberal profes- 
 sions. There is nothing so conservative as the 
 college. It follows last in the procession of 
 progress ; it distrusts innovations and discredits 
 theories. Its faculty by the very peculiarity of 
 their existence learn to respect the traditions 
 and the teachings of the past. They point to 
 the long line of men, eminent in every depart- 
 ment of human thought and activity, whom the 
 colleges have created, and they naturally inquire 
 most critically into the innovation which prom- 
 ises to improve upon the Abelards and the 
 Bacons, upon the Miltons and the hundreds of 
 others who have illumined literature ; upon the 
 innumerable line of statesmen and orators and 
 the grand body of preachers and thinkers. The 
 university in Europe has_]]about it the medieval 
 flavor. It is not a school of the people. It is 
 still an institution for classes and not for the 
 masses. Its training and its objects are for the 
 professions, the sciences, literature and heredi- 
 tary statesmanship. It is the American devel- 
 opment which has brought the college home to 
 the people. Harvard and Yale, the parents of 
 all the American colleges, were founded origi- 
 nally simply to educate men for the pulpit. It
 
 29 
 
 is a curious fact that for a hundred years after 
 the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock 
 there was not a lawyer in New England. In 
 every community the minister was not only the 
 pastor of his flock, the curator of souls and the 
 administrator of the church, but he was also the 
 authority in political matters and the judge in 
 neighborhood disputes. His sacred office, his 
 education and his superior training made him 
 the leader of the people in all matters affecting 
 their relations with each other or with their 
 God. There are nearly four hundred colleges 
 in the United States to-day and their number 
 evidences the aspirations of the farm and the 
 workshop for a higher education for their boys 
 and their girls. This rapid evolution of the uni- 
 versity toward popular ideas and popular bases 
 In our country has made acute the question 
 whether our education should be specifically for 
 the pursuit which the student has selected as his 
 vocation, or whether upon ancient and tried 
 lines it should develop himi first by discipline, 
 by training, and by teaching to the full growth 
 and command of all his faculties, and then let 
 him select his pursuit. 
 
 I acknowledge the position and the usefulness 
 of the business college, the manual training
 
 30 
 
 -J 
 
 school, the technological institute, the scientific 
 schools and the schools of mines, medicine, law 
 and theology. They are of infinite importance 
 to the youth who has not the money, the time, 
 or the opportunity to secure a lil^eral education. 
 They are of equal benefit to the college gradu- 
 ate who has had a liberal education in training 
 him for his selected pursuit. But the theorists, 
 or rather the practical men who are the archi- 
 tects of their own fortunes, and who are pro- 
 claiming on every occasion that a liberal educa- 
 tion is a waste of time for a business man, and 
 that the boy who starts early and is trained 
 only for his one pursuit is destined for a larger 
 success, are doing infinite harm to the ambitious 
 youth of this country. 
 
 It has been my lot in the peculiar position 
 which I have occupied for over a quarter of a 
 century of counsel and adviser for a great cor- 
 poration and its creators, and of the many suc- 
 cessful men in business who have surrounded 
 them, to know how men who had been denied 
 in their youth the opportunities for education 
 feel when they are possessed of fortunes and 
 the world seems at their feet. Then they pain- 
 fully recognize their limitations ; then they 
 know their weakness ; then they understand that
 
 31 
 
 there are things which money cannot buy, and 
 that there are gratifications and triumphs which 
 no fortune can secure. The one lament of all 
 those men has been " Oh, if I had been educated ! 
 I would sacrifice all that I have to attain 
 the opportunities of the college ; to be able to 
 sustain not only conversation and discussion 
 "w^th the educated men with whom I come in 
 contact, but competent also to enjoy what I see 
 is a delight to them beyond anything which I 
 know." 
 
 The college, in its four years of dicipline, 
 training, teaching and development makes the 
 boy the man. His Latin and his Greek, his 
 rhetoric and his logic, his science and his phil- 
 osophy, his mathematics and his history have 
 little or nothino^ to do with law or medicine or 
 theology, and still less to do with manufacturing, 
 or mining, or storekeeping, or stocks, or grain 
 or provisions. But they have given to the youth 
 when he has graduated, the command of that 
 superb intelligence with which God has endowed 
 him, by which for the purpose of a living or 
 a fortune, he grasps his profession or his 
 business and speedily overtakes the boy who, 
 abandoning college opportunities, gave his nar- 
 row Hfe to the narrowing pursuit of the one
 
 32 ~J 
 
 thing by which he expected to earn a living. The 
 college-bred man has an equal opportunity for 
 bread and butter, but beyond that he becomes a 
 citizen of commanding influence and a leader 
 in every community where he settles. Within 
 his home, however humble it may be and how- 
 ever limited his income to support it, he has 
 enjoyment among his books and in the grasp 
 and discussion of the questions of the hour, 
 which are denied to the man who has not drunk 
 at or who refused to go to the fountain of 
 knowledge and the well-spring of inspiration 
 which flows only in the college or the university. 
 The best proof of the value of a college 
 education in all the pursuits of life is to be 
 found in the eminent success of those who have 
 enjoyed it in the higher v;alks of the profes- 
 sions, of statesmanship and even in business. 
 As de Tocqueville pointed out and as Bryce has 
 discovered, ours' is a lav/yers' government. The 
 vast majority of our Presidents, our Cabinet 
 Ministers, of the members of our House of Rep- 
 resentatives and of the Senate have been law- 
 yers. The reason has not been because the 
 lawyers are better fitted to make laws or to 
 legislate than the farmer or the business man, 
 but because the lawyers have been better trained
 
 33 
 
 from having been in the past almost universally 
 educated at the college. The legislation of the 
 Parliament of Great Britain during the past fifty 
 years has been as liberal and as advanced as 
 that of any government in the world. It has 
 been a constant succession of measures for the 
 emancipation of the sufferage, the emancipation 
 of trade, and the emancipation, upon philan- 
 thropic lines, from the penal laws which repre- 
 sented the barbarism of the Middle Ages. 
 Very few of the members of Parliament 
 have been lawyers, but ninety one-hundreths 
 of the members were graduates of the great 
 universities of Great Britain, and there they 
 secured that university training which gave 
 to them that broadness of understanding, 
 that fullness of grasp, that touch with the 
 questions of the hour, that knowledge of the 
 present and of the past, and insight into the 
 future which made them the statesmen of the 
 British Empire. 
 
 The world which our' young man enters to- 
 day is a very different one from that which his 
 father or his grandfather or his ancestor of a 
 hundred years ago knew anything about. Fifty 
 years ago he would have graduated at a denom- 
 inational college and fallen into the church of
 
 34 
 
 -J 
 
 his fathers and of his faculty. Fifty years ago 
 he would have dropped into the party to \vhich 
 his father belonged. He would have accepted 
 his religious creed from the village pastor and 
 his political principles from the national platform 
 of his father's party. But to-day he graduates 
 at a college where the denominational line is loose- 
 ly drawn, and finds that the members of his fam- 
 ily have drifted into all churches and are profess- 
 ing all creeds, and he must select for himself the 
 church in which he shall find his home, and the 
 doctrines upon which he shall base his faith. 
 He discovers that the ties of party have been 
 loosened by false leaders or incompetent 
 ones, and by the failure of party organizations 
 to meet the exigencies of the country and the 
 demands of the tremendous development of the 
 tim^es. Those who should be his advisers say to 
 him, " Son, judge for thyself and for thy country." 
 Thus at the ver}- threshold he requires an equip- 
 ment which his father did not need for his du 
 ties as a citizen or for the foundations of his 
 faith and principles. He starts out at the close 
 of this marvelous nineteenth century to be told 
 from the pulpit and the platform and by the 
 press, and to see from his own observations 
 that there are revolutionary conditions in the
 
 35 
 
 political, the financial and the industrial world 
 which threaten the stability of the state, the po- 
 sition of the church, the foundations of society 
 and the safety of property. But while precept 
 and prophesy are of disaster he should not de- 
 spair. Every young man should be an optimist. 
 Every young man should believe that to-morrow 
 Avill be better than to-day and look forward with 
 unfaltering hope for the morrow, while doing 
 his full duty for to-day. 
 
 That the problems are difficult, and the situa- 
 tion acute, we all admit. But it is the province 
 of education to solve problems and remove acute 
 conditions. Our period is the paradox of civil- 
 ization. Heretofore our course has been a mat- 
 ter of easy interpretation and plain sailing by 
 the navigation books of the past. But we stand 
 five years from the twentieth century facing 
 conditions which are almost as novel as if a vast 
 convulsion had hurled us through space and we 
 found ourselves sittino^ beside one of the canals 
 of Mars. 
 
 Steam and electricity have made the centu- 
 ries of the Christian era down to ours 
 count for nothing. They have brought 
 about a unity of production and markets 
 which upset all the calculations and all
 
 36 -' 
 
 the principles of action of the past. They 
 have united the- world in an instantaneous 
 communication which has overthrown the limi- 
 tations which formerly were controlled by time 
 and distance or could be fixed by legislation. 
 The prices of cotton on the Ganges or the Ama- 
 zon, of wheat on the plateaus of the Himalayas 
 or in the delta of the Nile, or in the Argentines, 
 of this morning, with all the factors of currency 
 of climate and wages which control the cost of 
 their production, are instantly reflected at noon 
 at Liverpool, at New Orleans, at Savannah, at 
 Mobile, at Chicago and at New York. They 
 send a thrill or a chill through the plantations 
 of the South and the farm-houses of the West. 
 The farmers of Europe and America are justly 
 complaining of their conditions. The rural popu- 
 lations are rushing to the cities and infinitely in- 
 creasing the difficulties of municipal government. 
 Capitalists are striving to form combinations 
 whichjshall float with the tide or stem it, and labor 
 organizations with limited success are endeavor- 
 ing to create a situation which they believe will 
 be best for themselves. The tremenduous pro- 
 gress of the last fifty years, the revolutions 
 which have been worked by steam, electricity 
 and invention, the correlation of forces working
 
 37 
 
 on one side of the globe and producing instan- 
 taneous effects upon the other, have so changed 
 the relations of peoples and industries that 
 the world has not yet adjusted itself to them. 
 The reliance of the present and future must be 
 upon education, so that supreme intelligence may 
 bring order out of the chaos produced by this 
 nineteenth century earthquake of opportunities 
 and powers. 
 
 There have always been crises in the world. 
 They have been the efforts and aspirations of 
 mankind for somethinor better and higher, and 
 have ultimately culminated in some tremendous 
 movement for liberty. These revolutions have 
 been attended by infinite suffering, the slaughter 
 of millio'ns and the devastation of provinces and 
 kingdoms. The crusades lifted Europe out of 
 the slavery of feudalism, the French Revolution 
 broke the bonds of caste. Napoleon was the 
 leader and wonder worker, though selfishly so, of 
 modern universal suffrage and parliamentary 
 government. The aspiration of all the centuries 
 has been for liberty and more liberty. The expec- 
 tation has been, that when liberty was gained 
 there would be universal happiness and peace. 
 The English speaking peoples have secured 
 liberty in its largest and fullest sense ; that
 
 38 
 
 liberty where the people are their own govern- 
 ors, legislators and masters. The paradox of 
 it all is that with the liberty which we all hold 
 as our greatest blessing has come a discontent 
 greater than the world has ever known. The 
 socialist movement in Germany grows from a 
 hundred thousand votes ten years ago to some 
 millions in 1894. The Republican elements in 
 France become more radical and threateninor 
 month by month. The agrarian and labor 
 troubles of Great Britain are beyond any ability 
 of her statesman to overcome except by make- 
 shifts from day to day. There was an anarchist 
 riot in Chicago, when only the disciplined valor 
 of a small corps of policemen saved the great 
 city from the horrors of pillage and the sack. 
 A single man created an organization of railway 
 employees in a few months so strong that under 
 his order tvv^enty millions of people were paralyzed 
 in their industries, and their movements, and all 
 the elements which constitute the support of com- 
 munities temporarily suspended. So potential 
 was this uprising that two governors surrendered 
 and the mayor of one of our Western Metropolis 
 took his orders from the leader of the revolt. 
 Industrial and commercial losses of incalculable 
 extent were averted only by the strong arm of 
 the Federal Government.
 
 39 
 
 A Congress which has just adjourned nominally 
 represented several parties, but recognized allegi- 
 ance to none, and its ignorance and incom- 
 petence were the wonder of the world and the 
 amazement of the country. Its idiocy nearly 
 wrecked the credit and business of the country. 
 It could formulate no policy, nor devise any 
 scheme of relief. Each of its little groups had its 
 pet theories and plans. Its faults and failures were 
 due to ignorance. There was not enough of 
 educated intelligence to concentrate upon meas- 
 ures which could start once more the wheels 
 of industry and give profitable employment on 
 the farms, and in the factories, the mines and the 
 railroads. The times are ripe for ignorant dema- 
 gogues and educated patriots, and our colleges 
 are the recruiting stations for the patriots. All 
 these are not revolutions. They are symptoms ; 
 symptoms of conditions which must be grasped, 
 understood, met and solved. We need fear 
 no revolution, because revolution only comes, 
 as it has in the past, when there is an under and 
 oppressed class seeking to break the crust of 
 caste or privilege. We have no caste or priv- 
 ilege. The people who are discontented are 
 the eovernors and rulers and must solve their 
 own problems. They can elect their own Con-
 
 40 
 
 grasses and presidents. They cannot revolt 
 ao^ainst themselves nor cut their own tliroats. 
 Sooner or later and in some way or other they 
 will solve their problems, but it will be by and 
 through the law. It will be bv destructive or 
 constructive methods. 
 
 The inquiry is natural. •" With all the pros- 
 perity and progress of the world; why this dis- 
 content?" The rapidity of invention and the 
 opportunities afforded by electricity and steam 
 have destroyed in the last twenty-five years 
 sixty per cent, of the capital of the world and 
 thrown forty per cent, of its labor out of employ- 
 ment. The triple expansion engine, the inven- 
 tion of a new motor, the reduplication of forces 
 by a new application of m.achiner}* makes use- 
 less all the old ones. It does more, it compels 
 the skilled artisan, in the loss of the tool by which 
 he earned his living, and v/hich is no longer of 
 any use, to fall back into the vast mass of com- 
 mon laborers. At the same time these very 
 forces which have thus destroyed the majority 
 of values and thrown out of employment so 
 many people, have created new conditions which 
 have added beyond the power of calculation to 
 the wealth of the world and the opportunities 
 of its people for living, comfort and happiness.
 
 41 
 
 But to enjoy its opportunities, its comfort and 
 its happiness a better education becomes neces- 
 sar\-. 
 
 Another of the Paradoxes of our quarter of 
 a centur\* is that ever\* artisan and mechanic 
 and the laborer in ever}- department tcniay, with 
 shorter hours of labor, receives twent\--five per 
 cent, and in many cases fifty per cent more than 
 he did thirtv vears aofo. While he recei. ts 
 thus one third more than he did thirt\- years 
 aofo. his dollar will buv in clothes and food 
 twice as much as it would thirty years ago. 
 One would think that the laborer ought to be 
 supremely happy when he compares the past 
 with the present, and that beyond his living he 
 ought to be laying up in the savings bank the 
 fund which would speedily make him a capita- 
 list. And yet he feels a discontent which his 
 father thirty years ago with one-third the wages 
 and his dollar buvinof onlv half as ~-ich. never 
 knew. This all comes of education. 
 
 Education has made possible the mar\-elous 
 gTO\\-th of our countn,-. and the wonderful op- 
 portunity it affords for employment and fortunes, 
 but it has lifted our people out of the methods 
 and habits of the past, and we can no longer 
 live as our fathers did.
 
 -J 
 42 
 
 The common school and the hiorh school, with 
 their superior advantages, have cultivated us so 
 that the refinements of life make broader and 
 more intelligent men and brighter, more beauti- 
 ful and more large souled women. It lifts them 
 above the plane of the European peasant. 
 While education and liberty have made Ameri- 
 cans a phenomenal people, they have also, in a 
 measure, raised the standards of living and its 
 demands in the older countries of Europe. The 
 Indian laborer can live under a thatch in a 
 single room with breech clout for clothes and a 
 pan of rice for his food. But the American 
 mechanic wants his home with its several rooms. 
 He has learned, and his children have learned, 
 the value of works of art. They have all 
 become familiar with the better food and die 
 better clothino: and the better life v/hich con- 
 stitute not luxury but comfort and which maices 
 up and ought to make up the citizens of our 
 Republic. 
 
 Masterful men of orreat foresisfht and courao-e 
 have seized upon the American opportunity to 
 accumulate vast fortunes. The masses who 
 have not been equally fortunate look upon them 
 and say " we have not an equal share in these 
 opportunities." This is not the place nor have I
 
 43 
 
 time to even hint at the solution of these diffi- 
 culties, or the solving of these problems. That 
 the Pfenius exists amonor ^s to meet them if need 
 be by legislation, if need be by other processes 
 no man in his senses can doubt. We require 
 for our time more education, more college 
 students, and more college opportunities. 
 Every young man who goes out from these 
 foundations into the world goes out as a mis- 
 sionary of light and knowledge. He will stand 
 in the community where he will settle for an 
 intelligent, broad and patriotic appreciation of 
 the situation of the country and in his neighbor- 
 hood. The graduates of the four hundred Uni- 
 versities of the country are the lieutenants and 
 the captains, the colonels the brigadier generals 
 and the major generals of that army of Ameri- 
 can progress to which we all belong. We are 
 fighting the battles not only of to-day but for 
 all times ; we are developing this country not 
 only for ourselves but also for posterity. We 
 have overcome slavery, we have extirpated 
 polygamy and our only remaining enemy is ig- 
 norance. 
 
 The best use to which wealth can be applied 
 is to assist these sfreat universities which are 
 thus educating the youth of our land.
 
 ?S"This institution which owes its existence to 
 the'benehcence of Rockefeller is in itself a monu- 
 ment of the proper use of wealth accumulated 
 bv a man of genius. So is Cornell, so is 
 Vanderbilt, and so are the older colleges, as 
 they have received the benefactions of generous, 
 appreciative and patriotic v>-ealth. But in view 
 of the dangers which are about us and of the 
 difficulties which are before us we cannot 
 rely alone upon what the rich may do or v.-hat 
 philanthropy, or generosity or wisdom may sug- 
 gest. The State has already done well in the 
 common school ; it has done better in the high 
 school, and better still in the final opportunity 
 which it eives in manv cases for a liberal educa- 
 tion. 
 
 It would be a long step forw^ard in populariz- 
 inor hiofher education if the Government should 
 establish at Washington a great National Uni- 
 versitv'. As at Oxford or at Cambridge there 
 are historic colleges with foundations running 
 back for hundreds of years, and each having its 
 own traditions, but all part of the University, 
 so in ever}' state there would be colleges, 
 each one of them having its own merits and 
 traditions and all of them belonging to the 
 Grand University which will represent the cul- 
 ture of the new world, the University of the 
 United States.
 
 ADDRE 
 
 OF 
 
 Hon. Chauncev M. Dere^. LL. D. 
 
 At His Birthday Dixxej. ^zm^--^_ 
 
 Him by 
 
 The Montaui; Club, of IriikljD, 
 
 SATTHrAY Z--zv:n3. A??:l 20-h, 1895. 
 
 Marvelloiis in irsir/-l2f-5 ' -"'i-? :?~ -- :''f 
 spirit of good-fellowship wJiiiuJa 5 lif-i 
 
 cey M. Depew at his sixt Y-fiist : . . ^ I: ii r : i: 
 the Moniaak Club, in Brooklyn, 1 - : _ A ~ 5 
 
 a memonhle night to erery i 
 
 Mr. Depew's speech wasa tr: ~ s 
 
 strong and resonant, and Ms words i: 
 
 ears. Ir was 10 o'clock before diL r ^ — at 
 every plate was a Ing peadu and Mr. Depe^ - 
 as he saw them. Befejre President C- — A. 
 Moore, of the cluK introdnced Siepken A. Gris- 
 wold. who in turn introduced Mr. Bepew. six 
 '*bK>wnies '* bearing a peach-tree well loaded with 
 fmit came in and deposited !r ir. fr.nT :f Mr. 
 Depew.
 
 46 
 
 Mr. Depew, in responding to an address of wel- 
 come by ex-Senator Griswold, spoke as follows : 
 
 Mr. Pkesidext and G-extlemen : On the 23d of 
 April Shakespeare, St. George and m\'self were 
 born, and I am the only survivor. It is hardly 
 a case of the survival of the fittest. This 
 annual compliment which you pay tne is highly ap- 
 preciated and valued. There is always somewhere, 
 however, either a ily or the remains of one in tlie 
 purest amber. In my case it is the necessity on 
 these recurring anniversaries to make a speech to 
 substantially the same three or four hundred gen- 
 tlemen who honor me, when the only subject before 
 the house is the person whose birthday is cele- 
 brated. As he is forbidden by every rule to talk of 
 himself, how shall he meet this annual obligation ? 
 He is in serious danger of having the guests cry 
 out, as one of them did at a hotel where I was 
 recently in the South, who, after the tenth day. as 
 the evening banquet closed, remarked in a loud 
 voice (I do not know that I get his chapter and 
 verse correctly), "Hebrews xiii, 2." The indignant 
 landlady after awMle said to him : " Sir, some of 
 the best families which I have in my hotel are Jews, 
 and thev are hart at this reference to them." He 
 replied : " Madam, I did not refer to them. It was 
 simply a tribute to your daily dinner which I in- 
 tended to convey by quoting a verse which reads, 
 * The same yesterday, to day and forever.' " 
 There is represented here every profession and
 
 47 
 
 business of our American life. The cleigyraan, tlie 
 lawyer, the doctor, the man of affairs and the man 
 of literature sit ro-niojht within the hospitable walls 
 of this most hospitable of clubs. The year since 
 we last met has been so significant of events of mo- 
 ment to the well-being of the State and society that 
 they impress the lesson of progress and cheer the 
 heart of the optimist by the evidences of continued 
 imiDrovement in the world. It has been particularly 
 a year of revolt, of independence and of the results 
 of beneficent revolution. Our platform in the Mon- 
 tauk is as broad as the universe and as liberal as 
 truth. 
 
 After one serious break which broke the breakers, 
 our discussions are free. It is understood that we 
 are of all creeds and faiths in religion and politics. 
 It is understood that we are here not as Repub- 
 licans, nor as Democrats, nor as Prohibitionists, nor 
 as Mugwumps, nor as Independents. AYeare here 
 under the genial banner of good fellowship, to say 
 what we please, so long as it is uttered with charity 
 toward all and with malice toward none. TTe start 
 with the maxim that no party has a monopoly of 
 virtue and no party a corner on vice. It is the 
 party in power out of which virtue oozes and which 
 gradually accumulates vice. Hence we have the con- 
 ditions which have led to theiDhenomenal overturn- 
 ing since last we were here. \Vheu Kings County 
 changes 50,000 votes, when a Republican Mayor 
 of Xew York, by the changing of 70,000 votes one
 
 48 
 
 way to 40,000 the other, is elected, when for the 
 first time in ten years a "Republican Governor and 
 a Republican Legislature get into power by 
 150,000 majority, it is not a party victory. It is 
 because the good men of the majority, finding it 
 impossible to purify municipal or State government 
 within the organization, join the minority party to 
 teach their rulers, organizers and leaders a drastic 
 lesson. 
 
 It is the plain teachings of such events that 
 the lucky recipients of this combination of party 
 fidelity and party disgust have it in their power to 
 hold a sufficient number of the independent and 
 thoughtful elements which came to them, to con- 
 tinue for a period the power in their own hands, or 
 else they can so use their opportunities for personal, 
 or selfish, or purely party purposes as not only 
 to drive away the men who had joined them 
 temporarily, but a large body of their own inde- 
 pendent following. In this way it is quite possible, 
 if we may make such a metaphor, for a party to 
 experience within a twelvemonth alternations from 
 zenith to zero. 
 
 The despair of the publicist and the sociologist 
 has been the government of cities. The inrushing 
 from the country and from abroad of desirable and 
 undesirable peoples and the rapidity of settlement, 
 making impossible the processes of assimilation, 
 have made the municipal problem the despair of 
 the statesman. But the last twelvemonth has
 
 49 
 
 solved that problem — solved it on the side of liber- 
 ty, and American liberty. It has demonstrated 
 that the vox popull is the wx Dei, providing the 
 voice of the people can find some medium through 
 which it can be heard. 
 
 How shall the voice be registered in legislation ? 
 When a committee of a hundred or a committee 
 of seventy of the best citizens that all parties may 
 have, who have the confidence of their fellow-citi- 
 zens, present a programme, and that programme is 
 adopted by the public vote, it carries with it two 
 instructions — one, that this committee, whose pro- 
 gramme was accepted, and the officers who were 
 elected are the chosen representatives of the people, 
 upon whom the peojple have i:)ut the responsibility, 
 and in whom the people repose the confidence to 
 frame the legislation which shall do away with the 
 evils under which they have suffered and bring to 
 them the reforms and good government for which 
 they have fought and voted. 
 
 Any declaration by statesmen, however wise, 
 however experienced, however conscientious, from 
 distant communities, that these committees and 
 the officers elected on the wave of reform 
 are novices in politics, that they do not know 
 what the people vv^ant, that they do not un- 
 derstand the needs of great populations, that their 
 bills are foolish and their measures idiotic, is full 
 of danger to the party organization, of which these 
 gentlemen are the leaders, and its success in the
 
 50 ^ 
 
 future. It may be that tlie measures are idiotic ; 
 it may be that they are not wise, but the peo- 
 ple whose representatives have framed them, as 
 soon as they are defeated, will believe that they 
 are the wisest measures ever devised by man, and 
 the oftener they are defeated the more they will in- 
 sist upon having them, or punish the party which 
 defeated them. 
 
 An event has occurred during the year, little 
 noted, and yet of the greatest interest. I arrived in 
 Chicago a few weeks ago to find candidates lost 
 sight of in the popular discussion of a principle. 
 The cabman who drove me around, the porter who 
 carried my bag, the waiter who stood behind my 
 chair in the hotel, the clerk who handed me the 
 book in which to register my name, the ticket- 
 agent in the railway depot, and the conductor on 
 the horsecar, the clerk in the big drygoods store, 
 and the elevator boy who carried us to the infinite 
 heights of the Chicago building, all wanted to know 
 what I thought of Civil Service Reform. The 
 Legislature had passed a bill submitting to the 
 people whether their offices should all be put upon 
 Civil Service principles or should be the patronage 
 of party leaders as theretofore. The result of this 
 discussion in that most polyglot and cosmopolitan 
 of Western cities was a majority of 50,000 for 
 Civil Service. I remember when reformers with 
 so-called fads, like the late George William 
 Curtis, suggested Civil Service twenty years 
 ago, how it was scouted by all parties.
 
 61 
 
 We all of us who were active in politics believed 
 that parties could not be run except by patronage, 
 and we all of us— and I as readily as the rest — de- 
 clared that without patronage a party leader could 
 not hold his place nor a party retain its power. It 
 was for the patronage with which to control the 
 organization that Weed and Greeley split their 
 party in two ; it was for the same high purpose 
 that Conkling, on the one side, and all the leaders 
 against him on the other, kept us in an internecine 
 war ; it was for the same lofty object that the State 
 machine, headed by Daniel Manning, and the city 
 machine, headed by John Kelly, disrupted the 
 Democratic party ; and patronage, with its sup- 
 posed power and influence, has those eminent 
 knights, armed cap-a-pie, with lance at rest, at 
 either end of the lists, waiting for the signal to 
 charge, Grover Cleveland and David Bennett Hill. 
 And yet the people of Chicago, defying the poli- 
 ticians, have taught them that government can get 
 along without patronage. Civil Service applied to 
 cities solves the question of municipal machines 
 and municipal bossism. To that must be added the 
 separation of city elections from the State and 
 general elections. So a man can vote against a thief 
 or an incompetent man in his own party for mayor 
 or sheriff without destroying the tariff or passing 
 the bill for the free coinage of silver. 
 
 The processes for political power are simple. A 
 few masterful men, whose business is politics, and
 
 !rO ~^ 
 
 iJi 
 
 who believe that the end justices the means, f]^et 
 control of tlie machinery of the dominant party in 
 the municipality. They elect their mayor and their 
 board of aldermen, which secures for them the 
 public works, the docks, water, gas and 
 electricity, and that gives them the patronage. 
 Then they appoint the judges of the police courts 
 and the civil justices, and that gives them infinite 
 power over the liberty and property of the citizen. 
 Then they elect their members of the legislature, 
 and that prevents the governing body from inter 
 fering with them. And then they intimidate the 
 higher courts, so that no complaints will be enter- 
 tained. This accomplished, the great city is abso- 
 lutely in the hands of a feudal baron, with his 
 feudatories around him, intrenched in the City 
 Hall. The city treasury supports from ten to twenty 
 thousand retainers vvho are dependent absolutely 
 upon the barony for their subsistence. Through 
 them the baron holds the primaries, controls the 
 organization, overawes inspectors, manages the 
 count, owns the court and carries the legislature 
 in his pocket. Then we have this amazing condi- 
 tion, that the processes of liberty are caxDable of 
 greater tyranny than the autocratic will of the 
 despot. Despotism is tempered by the opportuni- 
 ties of assassinating the tyrant. Against a semi- 
 republican and semi-oligarchical government like 
 that of France there can be revolution, but against 
 a municipal tyranny owning the polls, controlling
 
 53 
 
 the courts, managing the finances and masters of 
 the party organization, frequent elections pre- 
 vent revolt, and there is nobody to assassinate. 
 I may be criticised for saying that the processes 
 of liberty can be made more tyrannical than the 
 edicts of a Czar, but you all remember in the mar- 
 vellous revelations of the Lexow Committee that 
 widow whose friends contributed a few hundred 
 dollars for her to have a cigar store with which to 
 support herself and her four children. She kept 
 house in one room and sold her cigars in the other ; 
 she sent her children to the public school, and she 
 was doing everything which a good, virtuous, 
 masterful, motherly woman could do to bring a 
 family up respectably and keep out of the poor- 
 house. The ward policeman wanted the contribution 
 which she could not pay. Refusing, she was 
 hauled to the police station, taken before the police 
 judge, and sent to the penitentiary for six montiis, 
 and when, on her release, she returned to her home 
 she found her little stock of guods had been 
 divided among the ministers of the law and her 
 children had disappeared. It only required a 
 policeman, a captain and a police justice to make 
 possible an outrage which could not be per- 
 petrated in any other country or in any other 
 city in this wide world. Now civil service 
 in municipal affairs makes this sort of crime 
 impossible. Masterful men will always be leaders. 
 They will always have a following, they will always
 
 54 
 
 ~j 
 
 be dominant in the control of party organizations, 
 but under civil service there will be no thousands 
 or tens of thousands of retainers supported out of 
 the city treasury to defeat the taxpayers who pay 
 them. These officers will be relieved from party 
 pledges and party control, and the leaders must 
 appeal to the i>eople. There will always be leaders, 
 and so I say, '* All hail the leader who, like Andrew 
 Jackson, or Henry Clay, or James G. Blaine, or 
 William E. Gladstone, the people can follow." 
 
 And now, gentlemen, the year having proved so 
 eventful, I have been struck with the questions 
 which are brought to me by the interviewer. I 
 have found that if you wish to know what the 
 people are talking about it is first developed by 
 the man with the pad and pencil who drops into 
 your house or office and wants your opinion on it. 
 Two questions seem to have been started sud- 
 denly, and each assumed at once world-wide im- 
 portance. The first, from the hitherto unknown 
 Dr. Nordau, of Germany, is: "Is the world de- 
 generating?" The second is Bismarck's wonder- 
 ful remark in his eightieth-birthday speech, that 
 he never received any happiness from his succes- 
 ses. I beg leave to diiier with both of these eminent 
 men. The facts which I have just recited show 
 that the world is not degenerating, and Bismarck, 
 when he made the startling observation that suc- 
 cess brought no happiness, ignored the fact that 
 his success had brought to him on his eightieth
 
 55 
 
 • 
 
 birthday the homage and devotion of the German 
 peoples, not only in their own land, but wherever 
 they might be all over the world ; that this hom- 
 age was received for his success in establishing 
 German unity, and for his success in illustrating 
 the possibilities of German brains and German en- 
 ergy and what they could accomplish, and that this 
 tribute of love and affection and veneration, coming 
 from all over the world, gave to him on his eightieth 
 birthday more hapiuness thanhad been concentrated 
 in all the days and all the years of his past exist- 
 ence. "Is the world degenerating ?" says the news- 
 paper interrogator. Certainly it is not in the liberties 
 which are being gained for the people, because they 
 are increasing year by year. Certainly it is not in 
 the education which is afforded by the Government, 
 for that is enlarging and becoming better all the 
 time. Certainly it is not in standards of morality. 
 Twenty-five years ago Palmerston was Prime Minis- 
 ter of England and Disraeli the leader of the opposi- 
 tion. Palmerston at eighty had been detected in an 
 intrigue of which the proofs were clear and positive. 
 The party leaders went to Disraeli and said : " Let 
 us drive him from oflSce." Disraeli's answer was : 
 " If you start that movement, I resign, because it 
 will lead to his becoming so popular that he will 
 remain permanently in j^ower." Ten years after- 
 ward the same thing drove Dilke from public 
 life, and later did infinite injury to Parnell, 
 and to-day there is no man in America or in Eng-
 
 56 
 
 -J 
 
 land, in i')iiblic life, who could survive the clear 
 proofs of a violation of the Seventh Command- 
 ment. All these things, which are taken as 
 evidences of degeneration, are simply the nine- 
 teenth century cleaning house for its new ten- 
 ant, the twentieth century. There are always 
 about the old house rubbish, unused furniture, 
 old rags and the remnants of filth and disease. The 
 good tenant does not leave these evidences for tiie 
 new one to discover the family weaknesses and 
 criticise the family habits. The nineteenth century 
 is a good tenant and it is sweeping out fads and 
 humbugs of every nature and description. It is 
 gathering them up and putting them in shape, either 
 to bury or burn them, to carry them, away, or to 
 put them in the apartment which is reserved for 
 things which are to be brought out hereafter. 
 
 We have labor troubles, and yet with the various 
 solutions of paternalism in government, of arbitra- 
 tion, of co-oj)eration and educational advantages 
 bringing capital and labor nearer together, the nine- 
 teenth century bids fair to solve the problem be- 
 fore the twentieth century comes in. We have had 
 our stage Hooded with plays which made the heroine 
 anything but what she ought to be, until the play- 
 wright believed that without such a heroine the 
 l^lay was impossible, and we have simply brought 
 her out in the closing years of the century to ex- 
 pose her hideousness in order that the twentieth 
 misrht not find her in the house. We have had
 
 57 
 
 aestheticism and have cultivated it, and praised it, 
 and honored it, and finally, when we found it was 
 filth covered with flowers, we have buried it in a 
 felon's cell with Oscar Wilde. We have had 
 our literature, which the German scientist 
 especially deprecates, where the good old novel 
 which amused and inspired us and brought us in 
 contact with humanity and with nature for the 
 betterment of our mind and soul was succeeded by 
 the modern experiment. The new novel came 
 from Zola and Tolstoi and Ibsen and their like. 
 It came to preach doctrines. The new novel 
 bored us with sermons, and sent us to bed 
 with the headache, because of problems and possi- 
 bilities which threatened the disruption of society, 
 of the family and of all in which we had invested 
 our hearts, our hopes and our future. The closing 
 hours of the nineteenth century are getting rid of 
 those novels by rushing frantically, with out- 
 stretched arms and mouths wide open, to human 
 nature, humble, fascinating, plain, common, human 
 nature, in Trilby. 
 
 The transparent lesson to us of the closing hours 
 of the nineteenth century is that while the century 
 dies, we should live as long as we can. We can 
 only live by getting out of life all there is in it. 
 What is happiness, anyway ? While I do not dis- 
 credit the future world, but, on the contrary, be- 
 lieve in it, according to the doctrines of the Church 
 which I attend, yet we do not personally know,
 
 58 
 
 either from those who have come from the other 
 world, or from revelations received from there, pre- 
 cisely what is the happiness of the next world. 
 Our problem is not so much to long for that as to 
 find our happiness here. Where is it ? It is in a 
 healthy mind, a healthy soul and a healthy body, 
 and even if your body is not healthy, you can keep 
 the other two in fair condition. 
 
 The secrets of happiness and longevity, in my 
 Judgment, are first, cherish and cultivate cheerful, 
 hopeful and buoyant spirits. If you haven't them, 
 create them. Enjo}' things ms they are. The rag- 
 gedest person I ever saw was a Turkish peasant 
 standing in the field, clothed in bits of old carpet. 
 But the combination of color made him a 
 thing of beauty, if not a joy forever. Let us 
 never lose our faith in human nature, no matter 
 how often we are deceived. Do not let the decep- 
 tions destroy confidence in the real, honest good- 
 ness, generosity, humanity and friendship that ex- 
 ist in the world. They are overwhelmingly in 
 the majority. I have lost twenty-five per cent, 
 of all I have ever made in loaning money and in- 
 dorsing notes, and have incurred generally the 
 enmity of those I have helped because I did not 
 keep it up. But every once in a while there was 
 somebody who did return in such full measure the 
 credit for the help that was rendered, that faith 
 was kept alive, and the beauty and the goodness of 
 our human nature were made evident.
 
 59 
 
 I have appointed about one thousand men to office 
 and employment which gave them support and 
 the chance to climb to positions of greater responsi- 
 bility and trust if they had the inclination and 
 ability. About nine out of every ten of them 
 throw stones at me because I did not do better for 
 them, and keep pushing them, and yet there are a 
 hundred or so who, by the exercise of their own 
 ability, their own grasp of the situation, have gone 
 on to the accomplishment of such high ambitions and 
 successes, and have appreciated in so many ways 
 the help extended to them by helping others, that 
 again my faith in human nature remains undimin- 
 ished. And my last recipe for happiness is to keep 
 in touch with the young. Join in their games, be 
 a partner in the dance, rom^^ the fastest and turn 
 the quickest in the Virginia reel or the country 
 dance, go up to the old college and sit down and 
 light your i)ipe and sing college songs, take the 
 children to the theatre and howl with them at the 
 roaring farce, and laugh with them at the comedy 
 and cry with them at the tragedy, be tlieir confi- 
 dant in their love affairs, and if they are not equal 
 to it, write their love letters, and never stop writing 
 some for yourself. 
 
 Thus, gentlemen, wall the twentieth century, 
 with its cleaner purposes, its higher endeavor and 
 its limitless opportunities, welcome us older fellows 
 as the 3^oungest and most vigorous of those who 
 are to solve its problems and make its record.
 
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