Modern Eloquence Volume Ii Part 13

The Congress, forty years ago, was a body insignificant in its relations with the ma.s.ses of the people, in comparison with what it is to-day. It grapples, of necessity, with the new conditions, and the character of the public service is of enlarged consequence, for it is to all the communities and commonwealths far more comprehensive and penetrating in its influence than in other days; and it is well the citizens of the Republic are aroused to appreciation of their added requirements in the care that public life must give the general welfare.

During the recent popular experience of Christian science applied to practical politics, that resulted, among other things, in the intimacy of representative men of the Bowery and the Fifth Avenue, that allows the citizens of each locality to walk into the other locality at bedtime and select their sleeping-rooms, without asking whether the folks are at home, and to depart with or without leaving their P. P. C. cards, one of the speakers, noting in his audience evidences of dissent, said: "If I am speaking in a way that is prerogatory, while I want to go on, I am willing to quit." He honored his nativity by his modesty, and was allowed to go on; but he preferred to sit down, though his theme seemed to him to expand under treatment, and with his new word he retired. I quote him as a precedent and example for immediate imitation. It is more than a joke, though, that Fifth Avenue and the Bowery have got together, and we may hope they will work well for the good of this new country.

[Prolonged applause.]

BENJAMIN HARRISON

THE UNION OF STATES

[Speech of Benjamin Harrison at the thirteenth annual dinner of the New England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893. In proposing the first toast, "The President of the United States," the Chairman, Charles Emory Smith, said: "Gentlemen, my first duty is to give a welcome to our honored guests and a greeting to our worthy members. My second duty is to make an immediate change of the programme. Among the distinguished guests who honor us by their presence to-night is the ill.u.s.trious patriot and statesman who has filled--yes, filled, not rattled around in--the great dignity of the Presidency of the United States. [Applause.] In his career he has won the admiration of the country not merely by his transcendent abilities as a statesman, but by his n.o.ble qualities as a man. Among other characteristics, his love of children has touched the heart of the country. He has promised the little children who are gathered in his distant home that he will join them in preparing and sharing the joys of Christmas. It is imperative not that he shall leave us at this moment but that he shall terminate the three days of cordial and perhaps somewhat burdensome hospitality which he has enjoyed in Philadelphia, at a later stage of this evening. In order that he may be entirely free, and because the first word should be spoken by the first man at the table, I ask you to join me, at this time, in drinking a toast to the health of the ill.u.s.trious patriot, who is as greatly respected and honored in private life as he was in the Presidency--General Benjamin Harrison, whom I now have the pleasure of presenting to you."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA:--When my good friend and your good neighbor and President, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, invited me to be present to-night, I felt a special demand upon me to yield to his request. I thought I owed him some reparation for appointing him to an office the emoluments of which did not pay his expenses. [Merriment.] Your cordial welcome to-night crowns three days of most pleasurable stay in this good City of Philadelphia. The days have been a little crowded; I think there have been what our friends of The Four Hundred would probably call "eight distinct functions;" but your cordiality and the kind words of your presiding officer quite relieve my fatigue and suggest to me that I shall rightly repay your kindness by making a very short speech. ["No, no!"] It is my opinion that these members of the New England Society are very creditable descendants of the Forefathers. I'm not quite sure that the Forefathers would share this opinion if they were here; but that would be by reason of the fact that, notwithstanding the load of substantial virtues, which they carried through life, their taste had not been highly cultivated. [Laughter.]

I dread this function which I am now attempting to discharge more than any other that confronts me in life. The after-dinner speaker, unlike the poet, is not born,--he is made. I am frequently compelled to meet in disastrous compet.i.tion about some dinner-table gentlemen who have already had their speeches set up in the newspaper offices. They are given to you as if they were fresh from the lip; you are served with what they would have you believe to be "impromptu boned turkey;" and yet, if you could see into the recesses of their intellectual kitchen, you would see the days of careful preparation which have been given to these spontaneous utterances. The after-dinner speaker needs to find somewhere some unworked joker's quarry, where some jokes have been left without a label on them; he needs to acquire the art of seeming to pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech, as by the wayside, some flower of rhetoric. He seems to have pa.s.sed it and to have plucked it casually,--but it is a boutonniere with tin foil round it.

[Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer on his well-turned sentences. Now, the compet.i.tion with gentlemen who are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness that has kept me from competing in the field I have described.

It occurred to me to-day to inquire why you had to a.s.sociate six States in order to get up a respectable Society. My friend Halstead [Murat Halstead] and I have no such trouble. We are Ohio-born, and we do not need to a.s.sociate any other State in order to get up a good Society, wherever there is a civil list of the Government. If you would adopt the liberal charter method of the Ohio Society, I have no doubt you could subdivide yourselves into six good societies. The Ohio Society admits to members.h.i.+p everybody who has lived voluntarily six months in Ohio. No involuntary resident is permitted to come in. [Laughter.]

But the a.s.sociation of these States and the name "New England" is a part of an old cla.s.sification of the States which we used to find in the geography, and all of that cla.s.sification has gone except New England and the South. "The West" has disappeared and "the Middle States" cannot be identified. Where is "the West"? Why, just now it is at the point of that long chain of islands that puts off from the Alaska coast; and, if I am to credit what I read (for I have no sources of information now except the not absolutely reliable newspaper press), there are some who believe there are wicked men who want to hitch the end of that chain into an island farther out in the sea. [Applause.] If that is to be done, the West would become the East, for I think the Orient has generally been counted to be the East.

I would not, however, suggest a division of the New England Society. It is well enough to keep up an a.s.sociation that is one, not only of neighborhood and of historical a.s.sociation, but of sentiment. Let the New England Society live, and I fancy it will not be long until you enjoy the distinction of being the only great subdivision of the States; for, my fellow-citizens, whatever barriers prejudice may raise, whatever obstruction the interests of men may interpose, whatever may be the outrages of cruelty to stay the march of men, that which made the subdivision called "the Southern States," and all that separated them from the States of the West and of the North, will be obliterated.

[Cheering.]

I am not sure, though the story runs so, that I have a New England strain. The fact is that I have recently come to the conclusion that my family was a little overweighted with ancestry, and I have been looking after posterity. [Merriment.]

One serious word, gentlemen. The New England character and the influence of New England men and women have made their impress upon the whole country; for, even in the South, during the time of slavery, educated men and women from New England were the tutors and instructors of the youth of the South in the plantation home. The love of education, the resolve that it should be general, the love of home with all the pure and sacred influences that cl.u.s.ter about it, are elements in the New England character that have a saving force which is incalculable in this great nation in which we live. Your civil inst.i.tutions have been free, high and clean. From the old town-meeting days till now, New England has believed in and practised the Free Election and the Fair Count. But, gentlemen, I cannot enumerate all of your virtues--time is brief, the catalogue long. Will you permit me to thank you and your honored President for your gracious reception of me to-night?

[Long-continued cheering.]

JOSEPH ROSWELL HAWLEY

THE PRESS

[Speech of Gen. Joseph R. Hawley at the seventieth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1875. The President, Isaac H. Bailey, said by way of introduction: "Gentlemen, I will now give you the tenth regular toast: 'The Press.' This toast, gentlemen, will be responded to by a member of the press who has always adorned his profession--General Hawley, of Connecticut."]

GENTLEMEN:--Our distinguished President paid the very highest compliment to the Press to-night; for, while he has given at least a fortnight's notice to every other gentleman, he only told me to-night that I had to respond to the toast of "The Press." But as I have attended a good many dinners of the New England Society, and never knew "The Press" to be called upon before midnight, I felt entirely safe.

[Laughter.] Now, sir, I have spent an evening--some six hours--here, enjoying all the festivities and hospitalities of this occasion to the utmost, and at last I am called upon, at an hour when we are all full of jollity and mirth, to respond to a toast that in reality calls upon me for my most serious effort. [Applause.] I a.s.sure you that, had I known that I was to speak upon this subject to-night, I would, contrary to my usual custom, have been deliberately prepared [laughter]; for I, in reality, have a great deal to say upon that matter; and permit me to add that I have a somewhat peculiar qualification, for I have been a man within the press, "a chiel amang ye takin' notes, an' prentin' them;"

and I have been again a man altogether outside of the press, not writing for months to his own people, and subject to receive all the gibes and criticisms and attacks of the press. [Applause.] "I know how it is myself." [Laughter.]

"The Press of the Republic" is a text worthy of the n.o.blest oration. It has a great, a high, and a holy duty. It is at once the leader and educator, and, on the other hand, the representative of the people. I can only touch on some points that I have in my mind, upon this occasion. It seems to me that we are pa.s.sing through a period of peculiar importance regarding the value and influence of the press of the American Republic. There are times when I join with them in the most indignant denunciation, in the warmest appeal. There are times when I feel the cutting, cruel, stinging injustice of the American press.

[Applause.] It is the duty of an editor, sitting, as he does, as a judge--and I mean all that the word implies--upon all that goes on about him in public life--it is his duty to hear both sides, and all sides, as deliberately and calmly as he may, and to p.r.o.nounce a judgment that, so far as he knows, may be the judgment of posterity. [Applause.] It is true that he has two duties. We know that it is his duty to condemn the bad. When it is made perfectly clear that the bad man is really a bad man, a corrupter of youth, make him drink the hemlock, expel him, punish him, crush him. [Applause.]

But there is another duty imposed upon the American press, quite as great. If there be a man who loves the Republic, who would work for it, who would talk for it, who would fight for it, who would die for it--there are millions of them, thank G.o.d!--it is the duty of the American press to uphold him, and to praise him when the time comes, in the proper place, on the proper occasion. [Applause.] The press is to deal not alone in censure of the bad, but in praise of the good. I like the phrase, "The independent press." [Applause.] I am an editor myself.

I love my calling. I think it is growing to be one of the great professions of the day. I claim, as an editor (and that is my chief pursuit in life), to be a gentleman also. [Applause, and cries of "Good!

Good!"] If I see or know anything to be wrong in the land, high or low, I will say so. If it be in my own party, I will take special pains to say so [applause]; for I suppose it to be true of both parties that we have a very high, a very glorious, a very beautiful, a very lovable idea of the future American Republic. [Applause.]

So I will condemn, I say, whatever may be wrong. I hold myself to be an independent journalist. [Cries of "Good!"]

But, my friends, I hope you will excuse the phrase--I am going to follow it by another--at the same time I do freely avow that I am a _partisan_; for I never knew anything good, from Moses down to John Brown, that was not carried through by partisans.h.i.+p. [Applause.] If you believe in anything, say so; work for it, fight for it. There are always two sides in the world. The good fight is always going on. The bad men are always working; the devil is always busy. And again, on the other side you have your high idea of whatever is beautiful and good and true in the world; and G.o.d is always working also. The man who stands between them--who says: "This is somewhat good, and that is somewhat good; I stand between them"--permit me to say, is a man for whom I have very little respect.

[Applause.] Some men say there is a G.o.d; some men say there is no G.o.d.

Some of the independents say that the truth lies between them.

[Laughter.] I cannot find it between them. Every man has a G.o.d. If you believe in your G.o.d,--he may be another G.o.d from mine--if you are a man, I want you to fight for him, and I may have to fight against you, but do you fight for the G.o.d that you believe in. [Applause.]

I do sincerely think (and I wish that this was a congregation of my fellow-editors of the whole land, for my heart is in reality full of this thing)--I do sincerely think that there is something of a danger that our eloquent, ready, powerful, versatile, indefatigable, vigorous, omnipresent, omniscient men of the press may drive out of public life--and they will ridicule that phrase--may drive out of public life, not all, but a very considerable cla.s.s of sensitive, high-minded, honorable, ambitious gentlemen. [Applause.] Now, I do not say anything about the future for myself. I have got a "free lance," I have got a newspaper, and I can fight with the rest of them; but I will give you a bit of my experience in public life. I tell you, my friends of the New England Society, that one of the sorest things that a man in public life has to bear is the reckless, unreasonable censure of members of the press whom individually he respects. [Applause.] That large-hearted man, whom personally I love, with whom I could shake hands, with whom I did shake hands, with whom I sat at the social board time and again, grossly misinterprets my public actions; intimates all manner of dishonorable things, which I would fight at two paces rather than be guilty of; and it would be useless for me to write a public letter to explain or contradict. [Applause.]

Now, I am only one of hundreds. I can stand still and wait the result, in the confidence that, if not all, yet some, men believe me to be honorable and true; if they do not, G.o.d and I know it, and I would "fight it out on that line." [Applause.]

Gentlemen, it is rather my habit to talk in earnest. Next to the evil of having all public men in this land corrupt; next to the evil of having all our governmental affairs in the hands of men venal and weak and narrow, debauching public life and carrying it down to destruction, is the calamity of having all the young men believe it is so, whether it be so or not. [Applause.] Teach all the boys to believe that every man who goes into public life has his price; teach all the boys to believe that there is no man who enters public life anywhere that does not look out for his own, and is not always scheming to do something for himself or his friends, and seeking to prolong his power; teach every young man who has a desire to go into political life, to think--because you have told him so--that the way to succeed is to follow such arts, and by that kind of talk you may ruin your country. [Applause.]

Now, gentlemen, as I have said, this is a matter for an evening oration.

I have barely touched some of the points. I have said the press has a twofold duty and fortune: it is the leader, the educator, the director of the people. It is, at the same time, the reflector of the people. I could spend an hour upon the theme.

I cannot cease, however, without thanking the President of the St.

Patrick's Society [Denis MacMahon], the only gentleman who has mentioned the word "centennial." When I was leaving Philadelphia, my wife warned me not to use that word, knowing to what it might lead me [laughter]; and so I shall simply ask you all to come to Philadelphia next year, and join in the great national exhibition, where you will have an opportunity of seeing the progress which this nation has made under the ideas of liberty, government, industry, and thrift which were instilled by the Pilgrim Fathers. [Applause.]

JOHN HAY

OMAR KHAYYAM

[Speech of John Hay, American Amba.s.sador to Great Britain, at a dinner of the Omar Khayyam Club, London, December 8, 1897. Henry Norman, President of the Club, took the chair and in introducing Colonel Hay, as the guest of the evening, spoke of him as soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet and Omarian.]

GENTLEMEN:--I cannot sufficiently thank you for the high and unmerited honor you have done me to-night. I feel keenly that on such an occasion, with such company, my place is below the salt, but as you kindly invited me it was not in human nature for me to refuse. Although in knowledge and comprehension of the two great poets whom you are met to commemorate I am the least among them, there is no one who regards them with greater admiration, or reads them with more enjoyment than myself. I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's translation of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's Homer, has described the sensation once for all:--

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken."

The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those amazing stanzas, were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and of death.

Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has a.s.sailed many as ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet or his translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction of a new song, or a mystification of a great modern, careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in the eleventh century, so far away as Khora.s.san, so accomplished a man of letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such calm disillusion, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this Weltschmerz, which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in 1100? My doubt lasted only till I came upon a literal translation of the Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of Fitzgerald's was its fidelity to the original. In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald before the latter, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of Omar.

It is not to the disadvantage of the later poet that he followed so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius had appeared in the world; had sung a song of incomparable beauty and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sung it anew with all its original melody and force, and all the acc.u.mulated refinement of ages of art. [Cheers.]

It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master; each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of precious workmans.h.i.+p and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the two poets there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half barbarous province; Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read, the Rubaiyat have taken their place as a cla.s.sic. There is not a hill-post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union.

In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in every Club Library.

I heard Omar quoted once in one of the most lovely and desolate spots of the High Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of the world," where in the s.p.a.ce of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its water to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib summer. One morning at sunrise as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these words of sombre majesty:--

"'Tis but a tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of death addressed.

The Sultan rises and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another guest."