OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 
 LIBRARY 
 8CHOOP- 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ik 3fikari) Association 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CITY OF^NEW-YORK, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 ACADEMY OF Music, Nov. Qth, 1870. 
 
 AND THE 
 
 Fifth Anniversary Celebration 
 
 EX-OFFICERS UNION, 
 
 AT 
 
 DELMONICO S, Nov. loth, 1870. 
 
 . OO Y, 
 
 NEW- YORK: 
 
 GEORGE F. NESBITT & CO., PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, 
 Corner of Pearl and Pine Streets. 
 
 1871. 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 \ 
 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 lf fikarg 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CITY OF NEW-YORK, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 ACADEMY OF Music, Nov. gth, 1870. 
 
 AND THE 
 
 Fifth Anniversary Celebration 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EX-OFFICERS UNION, 
 
 AT 
 
 DELMONICO S, Nov. loth, 1870. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 
 GEORGE F. NESBITT & CO., PRINTERS AND STATIONERS, 
 Corner of Pearl and Pine Streets. 
 
 1871. 
 

Sc-V)00\ 
 
 residents of the Association 
 
 FROM ITS ORGANIZATION. 
 
 1 820-23 . . L UCIUS B ULL. 
 1823-24 . . CORNELIUS SA VA GE. 
 1824-26.. BENJAMIN I. SEWARD. 
 1827-31.. R. B. BROWN. 
 1S32-34..JOHN W. STEBBINS. 
 1834-35.. R. R. BOYD. 
 1836-37.. CHARLES ROLFE. 
 
 1838 EDMUND COFFIN. 
 
 1839 JOHN S. WINTHROP. 
 
 1839 ELIJAH WARD. 
 
 1840 A UG USTUS E. SILLIMAN. 
 
 1841 HECTOR MORISON, 
 
 1842 JOHN T. ROLLINS. 
 
 1843 LE WIS McMULLEN. 
 
 1 843 RICHARD B URLE W. 
 
 1844-45.. CHARLES E. MILNOR. 
 1 846-47.. CORNELIUS L. EVERETT. 
 
 1848 THOMAS W. GROSER. 
 
 1849 ISAAC H. BAILEY. 
 
 1 850 THOMAS J. BA YA UD. 
 
 1 869-70.. M. 
 
 1851 HENRY A. OAKLEY. 
 
 1852 GEORGE PECKHAM. 
 
 1853 WILLARD L. FELT. 
 
 1854 DANIEL F. APPLETON. 
 
 1855 D. REYNOLDS BUDD. 
 
 1855-56.. GEORGE C. WOOD. 
 1856-57.. JOHN CRERAR. 
 1857-58.. ROWLAND H. TIMPfiON. 
 If 51-58.. ALEXANDER P. FISKE. 
 1858-59.. E. BOUDINOT SERVOSS. 
 1 859-60.. RICHARD A. BACHIA. 
 1860-61 . . CHAS. E. XING SHERMAN. 
 1861-62.. CHARLES F. ALLEN. 
 } 862-63 . . CHARLES OSGOOD. 
 18fi3-64.. CHARLES H. SWORDS. 
 1864-65.. THEODORE H. VULTEE. 
 1865-66.. ROBERT WALKER IRWIN. 
 1866-67.. AARON C. ALLEN. 
 1867-68.. ALEXANDER RHIND. 
 1 868-69.. CHARLES F. ALLEN. 
 C. D. BORDEN. 
 
 A/ 
 
Officers add Members of the Board of Direction 
 
 AND 
 
 OFFICERS 
 
 OP ^THE 
 
 MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOGIATIDH FOR 1870-71. 
 
 (President, 
 
 M. C. D. BORDEN. 
 
 Vice- (President, 
 
 W. T. PEOPLES. 
 
 Corresponding Secretary, Recording Secretary, 
 
 EDWARD HASLEB. SAMUEL PUTNAM. 
 
 treasurer, 
 
 GEORGE B. MILLS. 
 
 Directors of the First Class, to hold office for One Tear, 
 
 M. C. D. BORDEN, N. H. MYRICK, 
 
 EDWARD HASLER, GEO. B. MILLS. 
 
 Directors of the Second Class, to hold office for (Two Years, 
 
 W. T. PEOPLES, A. W. SHERMAN, 
 
 SAMUEL PUTNAM, J. C. CURRIE. 
 
 Qirectors of the QLhird Class, to hold office for <lhree Tears, 
 
 CHARLES R ALLEN, ASHER S. MILLS, 
 
 W. A. SHERMAN, JNO. NICKINSON. 
 
 "Librarian, 
 
 A. M. PALMER. 
 
 Assistant Librarian, 
 
 GEORGE COOPE. 
 
Trustees of the Clinton Hall Association. 
 
 (President, 
 
 WILSON G. HUNT. 
 
 t ; \ . Secretary, (Treasurer, 
 
 HUGH N. CAMP. EDMUND COFFIN. 
 
 trustees, . 
 
 THOMAS H. FAILE, WILLIAM E. DODGE, 
 JOHN K. MYERS, ISAAC H. BAILEY. 
 
 BOARD OF DIRECTORS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PFFICERS UNION, FOR 1870 
 
 PRESIDENT, - HUGH N. CAMP. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENT, - COKNELIUS L. EVERITT, 
 
 CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, - M. C. D. BORDEN. 
 RECORDING SECRETARY, S. HASTINGS GRANT. 
 
 WILLARD L. FELT. 
 
 DIRECTORS, 
 
 HENRY A. OAKLEY, PETER VOORHIES, 
 JOHN J. HERRICK, CHARLES F. ALLEN, 
 
 AMOS F. ENO, A. G. AGNEW, 
 
 SEYMOUR A. BUNCE. 
 
FIFTIETH 
 
 ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION. 
 
 THE Fiftieth. Anniversary of the organization of the Mer 
 cantile Library Association of the City of New-York, was 
 celebrated in the Academy of Music, on the evening of 
 Wednesday, November 9th, 1870. A very large and bril 
 liant audience was in attendance. The President of the 
 Association, Mr. M. C. D. Borden, occupied the chair ; Wil 
 son Gr. Hunt, Esq., David Dudley Field, Esq., Hon. A. 
 Oakey Hall, William Cullen Bryant, Esq., Hon. Wm. E. 
 Dodge, Cyrus W. Field, Esq., Eev. H. C. Potter, D.D., Eev. 
 Stephen H. Tyng, D.D., Edmund Coffin, Esq., Thomas H. 
 Faile, Esq., Hon. John Cochrane, and many other prominent 
 gentlemen occupied seats upon the stage. The music was 
 furnished by Grafulla s Seventh Regiment Band. The exer 
 cises were opened with prayer by Rev. Stephen H. Tyng } 
 D.D. ; and the President then delivered the following 
 
 OPENING ADDRESS: 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : 
 
 In a little room in Wall Street, just fifty years ago to 
 night, there met together a small company of men, identified 
 as merchants clerks. Assembled at the call of a single gen 
 tleman, without any well-defined plan and with no concep 
 tion of an enterprise that should outlive themselves, this 
 little body of clerks, then and there, gave form to a project 
 which appears to-day as the most extensive and most useful 
 existing institution of its kind. On the 12th of February 
 
8 MEKCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 following, in an tipper room of the building known as 49 
 Fulton Street, our Association was formally introduced to 
 existence by the deposit for circulation of seven hundred 
 volumes, with a total membership of 150 subscribers. Such 
 was our birth as an Association. The first few years of life 
 were uneventful, save in the obstacles and difficulties which 
 inevitably attach to the earlier stages of all human under 
 takings, and which, in our experience, seemed to prevail in 
 exceptional force. 
 
 In point of fact, the five years introductory to our career 
 were in no proper sense a question of progress. They were 
 simply and singly a hardly contested struggle for existence. 
 Fortunately for us more happily for society the first and 
 greatest crisis was safely passed ; the period of convalescence 
 began to assert itself, and in 1826, in the month of June, the 
 Library was moved to more eligible and commodious rooms, 
 in the building then owned and occupied by the Harper 
 Bros., in Cliff Street. Here a new feature was added in 
 the form of a Eeading Room, unpretentious enough with its 
 complement of four weekly papers and seven magazines ; 
 but, nevertheless, a valued and valuable accession. From 
 this date 182 6 really begins the progress of the organiza 
 tion. Books accumulate more certainly ; papers and maga 
 zines increase more sensibly ; members, the support and 
 sustenance of the enterprise, multiply with encouraging 
 rapidity, and a few years later on, the merchants of New- 
 York contribute with a generous willingness to place the 
 Library in a building of its own. This was the first Clinton 
 Hall, completed and formally dedicated to our service in 
 November of 1830 ; built for us ; exclusively appropriated 
 to our use ; but providently held in trust by a Board of 
 Trustees, composed of older and more experienced men, 
 elected by and representing the subscribers to the building ; 
 a duly organized body under the name of the Clinton Hall 
 Association. This relation of the two Associations, which 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVEKSARY. 9 
 
 differ after all in name alone and are identical in purpose, 
 exists to the present day, and will continue for all time in 
 the interests of the beneficent cause they together represent. 
 Firmly established now and steadily progressive, we pass on 
 to the next and grandest move of all, in 1850, to the Clinton 
 Hall of to-day, far from its original site, with a membership 
 of more than 3,000 merchants clerks, and a store of not less 
 than 30,000 books. 
 
 Such, very briefly, was the Mercantile Library twenty 
 years ago. Do you ask what it is to-day ? It has the same 
 house, which it has outgrown ; it has the same garments, 
 which it has outworn ; it is the assured and resistless growth 
 supplanting the small and uncertain seed ; it holds a capital 
 of one hundred and twenty thousand books, to which it is 
 adding at the rate of ten per cent, a year ; it has a reading 
 room which affords to its patrons, access at will, to more 
 than four hundred newspapers and magazines ; its roll of 
 members stretches over a list of no less than eleven thou 
 sand names, for whose benefit it boasts an income of sixty 
 thousand dollars a year ; it scatters among its readers an 
 average of eight hundred volumes a day ; it circulates two 
 hundred and fifty thousand books a year ; it gives more for 
 less than any Library in the world ; it is the community s 
 friend one of those silent but irresistible agencies by which 
 society is informed and refined ; it is the city s university. 
 Give it all honor for the good it has done, and your honest 
 God-speed for the good it has yet to do. [Applause.] But 
 I try your patience too far. 
 
 You remember that Mr. Calhoun on one occasion so far 
 abused his privilege of discussion as to provoke from Mr. 
 Webster a most sharp and cutting retort " The honorable 
 member has made an expedition into regions as remote 
 from the subject of this debate as the orb of Jupiter from 
 that of our earth." And I am reminded that I am as widely 
 distant from the object that induces your presence as my 
 
10 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 indifferent utterance from the rich entertainment of eloquence 
 and speech to which I am presently to invite you. 
 
 As the result of circumstances, over which we unfortu 
 nately have no control, it has been found necessary to vary 
 somewhat the promised programme of the evening, and I 
 now have the pleasure of presenting to you a gentleman 
 whose name is known and honored by every American 
 audience, as his influence is daily felt by every citizen of 
 the Metropolis who reads, the Nestor of the American Press, 
 Mr. Wm. Cullen Bryant. [Long- continued applause.] 
 
 Address of WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : 
 
 I esteem myself highly fortunate in being able to con 
 gratulate the members of the Mercantile Library Association 
 on having reached the fiftieth anniversary of their life. 
 Forty-five years ago. when I first came to live in the City of 
 New -York, that Institution was in the early infancy of 
 which your President has just given an interesting account 
 I remember, very well, that the public-spirited young gen 
 tlemen by whom it was founded, expected much from it in 
 the future. They hoped, and the hope was not vain, that 
 it would greatly aid in forming the minds of the younger 
 part of the mercantile class to liberal tastes and to generous 
 views of their duty to their country and to mankind, and 
 that it would be in some measure a safeguard against the 
 temptations which beset young men in a populous city. 
 Those who then sat by its cradle, if they survive, are now 
 aged men ; those whose birth was coeval with its origin are 
 men of mature age, who have passed the zenith of life ; the 
 books which were collected in its first year, to form the be 
 ginning of what is now a flourishing library, belong to the 
 literature of a past generation. Yet, in founding this In 
 stitution, the men of that day left a noble legacy to future 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 11 
 
 times. While other institutions have risen and fallen, it 
 has continued to grow and to extend its beneficial influences 
 with the growth of our city ; not, indeed, in the same pro 
 portion, but steadily and with a sure advance, till now its 
 prosperity and duration seem almost beyond the reach of 
 accident. I learn that there is no Library in the country 
 which increases so fast as that which belongs to this Asso-. 
 ciation, and that within the last ten years it has more than 
 doubled the number of its volumes. If it proceeds at this 
 rate it will eventually have a library which will command 
 the admiration of the world and become the pride of our 
 country. [Applause.] 
 
 In the years yet to come, far in the depths of the future, 
 the young men who search among the old books of the 
 library will say to each other : u See with what reading our 
 ancestors entertained themselves many centuries since, and 
 how the language has changed since that time ! We can 
 laugh yet at the humor of Irving, in spite of the antiquated 
 diction. What a fiery spirit animates the quaint sentences of 
 the old novelist Cooper ! In these verses of Longfellow we 
 still perceive the sweetness of the numbers and the pathos of 
 the thoughts, and wonder not that the maidens of that dis 
 tant age wept over the pages of Evangeline. Here, 1 they 
 will add, " are the scientific works of that distant age. 
 Clever men were these ancestors of ours ; diligent inquirers ; 
 fortunate discoverers of scientific truth, but how far in its 
 attainment below the height which we have since reached ! " 
 
 What I have just now imagined, supposes our flourishing 
 library to escape destruction by war and by casual fire. 
 Ah, my friends, never may the fate of unhappy Strasburg 
 be ours ! to lie for weeks under a hail storm of iron and a 
 rain of fire, showered from the engines of destruction, 
 which Milton properly makes the guilty invention of the 
 sinning angels, and doomed to see her library, rich with the 
 priceless treasures of past centuries, suddenly turned to 
 
12 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 ashes. But whatever may be the fate of our library, the 
 Association itself is not so easily destroyed. If the Library 
 perish, the same spirit which founded it first, will restore it 
 so far as restoration is possible. The Association, I venture 
 to predict, will subsist till this great mart of commerce shall 
 be a mart no longer ; till the mercantile class shall have dis 
 appeared from the spot where it stands, and New- York shall 
 have dwindled to a fishing town. 
 
 But will this ever be ? Will our great city share the fate 
 of Tyre and Sidon, whose merchants were princes, and 
 which are now but Arab villages, with a few caiques and 
 here and there a felucca moored in their clear but shallow 
 waters, choked with the ruins of palaces ? Will she become 
 like Carthage, once mistress of flourishing colonies, but now 
 a desert ; like Corinth, once the seat of a vast commerce 
 opulent, luxurious, magnificent Corinth now a mere 
 cluster of houses overlooked by a dismantled and moulder 
 ing citadel ? 
 
 Or, to come down to later times, will this city decay like 
 Amsterdam, the mother of New- York, and once the centre 
 of the world s commerce? Or like Genoa, surnamed the 
 proud, and Venice, once the mistress of the Adriatic cities 
 which after having successively wielded the commerce of 
 the East, and made Italian the language of commerce in all 
 the ports of the Levant, have long since ceased to hold a 
 place among the great marts of the world ? 
 
 I answer that none of these cities had the same firm and 
 durable basis of commercial prosperity as our New- York. 
 It was their enterprise in opening channels of trade ; it was 
 their conquests and colonies which gave them their temporary 
 prosperity. They had no broad, well peopled region around 
 them, under the same government with themselves, whose 
 superabundant products it was their office to exchange with 
 other countries. Their prosperity was built on narrow 
 foundations, and it fell. Our circumstances are different 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 13 
 
 Here is a republic of vast extent, stretching from the sea 
 which bathes the western coast of Europe to that which 
 washes the eastern shore of Asia a region of fertile plains, 
 rich valleys, noble forests, mountains big with mines, water 
 courses whose sands are gold, mighty rivers, railways going 
 forth from our great cities to every point of the compass, 
 and covering an immense territory with their intersections, 
 and not a hindrance to commerce between city and city or 
 between sea and sea, or on our great rivers, or on the borders 
 of the States forming our confederation. This mighty re 
 gion, alive with an energetic population, is flanked with 
 seaports, through which the products sent by us to other 
 countries must pass, and through which the merchandise 
 sent us in exchange must be received. They are therefore 
 an indispensable part of our national economy. Their 
 prosperity is necessary, inevitable, and will endure while 
 our political institution remains as it now is. [Applause.] 
 
 But if it should come to pass that this fortunate order of 
 things is broken up, if this great republic should fall to 
 pieces and become divided into a group of independent 
 commonwealths, and if an illiberal legislation should ob 
 struct the channels of trade now so fortunately open over 
 all our vast territory, there are none of our marts of ex 
 change for whose future prosperity I could answer. Some 
 would fall into a slow decay, some pass into a rapid decline ; 
 some would become like Ascalon on the coast of Palestine, 
 once a harbor crowded with shipping, but when I saw it, a 
 desolate spot, where the sea-sand had drifted upon the 
 foundations of temples and palaces, invaded the harvest 
 fields, and moving before the wind, had entered the olive 
 groves and piled itself among them to the tops of the trees. 
 
 Our security from such unhappy results will, in a good 
 degree, lie in such institutions as this, and in other means 
 of a like character, the object of which is to diffuse knowl 
 edge, to open men s eyes to their true interests, and accustom 
 
14 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 them to large and generous views of the relations of com 
 munities to each other and to the world at large. For this 
 reason let us hope for the permanent and increasing pros 
 perity of the Mercantile Library Association. [Great ap 
 plause.] 
 
 The President The gentleman whose name is first on 
 the programme in your hands, we had confidently expected 
 to be here, and not until yesterday, at a late hour, did we 
 receive any indication to the contrary. Then came a tele 
 gram announcing the impossibility of his coming, over the 
 signature of the Hon. Eoscoe Conkling. 
 
 Mr. Maretzek, who perhaps, has disappointed a New- 
 York audience more frequently than any other individual, 
 has had the happy faculty of acquitting himself by pleading 
 the illness of the favorite absentee, invariably fortifying his 
 position by the strong armor of professional assertion and 
 doctor s certificate. While we have no positive informa 
 tion of the fact, we are nevertheless justified in supposing 
 that no lesser reason can excuse an absence so inopportune ; 
 and, without at this particular time, attempting to give a 
 name to the disease, we are forced to the conclusion that the 
 Hon. Senator is seriously sick. [Laughter and great ap 
 plause.] 
 
 The epidemic, however, is wide spread. The Governor 
 of your Commonwealth, no longer ago than on Monday 
 morning, gave me in person the assurance of his presence 
 here to-night, and I hold in my hand unimpeachable evi 
 dence of his good will and faith in giving the promise. I 
 have also conclusive evidence for supposing that the Gover 
 nor has been really ill, far too unwell to risk the exposure 
 that would necessarily attach to his coming out on a night 
 to be remembered for the violence of its storm. I crave 
 the pardon of His Excellency for saying that I think he is 
 ess to be pitied for his unfortunate indisposition than the 
 audience which is thereby deprived of the anticipated 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVEKSARY. 15 
 
 pleasure of hearing a thoroughly good speech. But the 
 chapter of difficulties does not end here. [Laughter.] I 
 have to assure you, upon my word of honor, that until two 
 o clock this very afternoon, we had the positive assurance 
 that the Hon Wm. M. Evarts would speak here to-night. 
 Then came a telegram, bidding our Ex- Attorney- General to 
 Washington, where a case of the highest importance was 
 awaiting his presence. It was the imperative summons of 
 the law, and the loyal advocate obeyed. Failing thus in 
 producing the talent we have offered you upon the pro 
 gramme, we have nevertheless made a valuable discovery, 
 to wit : that all the eloquence and ability of New- York 
 does not center in the gentlemen who have disappointed us ; 
 and I have now the honor to introduce a gentleman who has 
 not long been a resident of your city, but who is already 
 known by reputation to every member of your community, 
 the Rev. George H. Hepworth, who will now address you. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 Address of Rev. GEO. H, HEPWORTH. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN . 
 
 It is peculiarly embarrassing to stand here in the place of 
 the gentlemen in order to listen to whom, you have braved 
 the inclemency of the weather. I am reminded by my 
 position of an illustration. It is told of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes that he was once waited upon by a committee who 
 desired him to fill the place of Mr. Rufus Choate on the plat 
 form of a lyceum. He stood before his audience and said : 
 " Ladies and Gentlemen. I do not propose to fill Mr. Choate s 
 place, but with your permission I will wabble around in it for 
 hour." [Great laughter and applause.] I do not propose 
 to fill the place of the honorable gentlemen whom you ex 
 pected to hear on this platform; I cannot speak in their 
 eloquent phrases ; but the wish of my heart is just as warm 
 
16 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 as theirs, and my word of congratulation is just as sincere. 
 [Applause.] Gentlemen of the Association: I do most 
 heartily congratulate you upon having reached your fiftieth 
 birthday. You look indeed well, hale and hearty. You 
 bear your years and your honors nobly. You have a posiv 
 tion largely influential in this community ; and you have 
 money that is paying a good per centage ; and my great 
 wish is that I. may be here in your midst when the one 
 hundredth anniversary comes around, [laughter] and when 
 laden down with honors, yet buoyed up with the prayers of 
 the tens of thousands whom you have saved, or helped to 
 save, you will give to the New-Yorkers of that day a report 
 as glowing as that which your President has given to us to 
 night I cannot speak too warmly of the value of an In 
 stitution of this kind. Every man here, who has gray hairs, 
 knows its value. It has been to him perhaps a rod and a 
 staff upon which he has been able to lean in times of doubt 
 and in moments of toil and perplexity. 
 
 When a boy comes from a New England or from a New- 
 York village into this great place, he brings with him not 
 only the prayers of his mother and the good advice of his 
 old father, but also a noble burden of boyish purity of heart 
 He is buoyed up with large and golden dreams which 
 he hopes by hard work to crystalize into solid reality in 
 some day in the future. But the moment he touches your 
 sidewalk he feels the chill of the social atmosphere. It is 
 no longer home to him. The old roof protects him no more. 
 He must depend wholly upon his own resources, and he 
 must use alone his own energies. With only a few dimes 
 in his purse, and with all his worldly dry goods done up in 
 a bandanna pocket handkerchief he searches around among 
 the palaces on the avenue for a home, but every door is 
 shut. He goes into some by-street, hoping to live for a few 
 weeks on the first floor, but he cannot pay the rent He 
 goes up one flight of stairs, but again the janitor shakes his 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVEKPAKY. 17 
 
 head. He goes up another flight, and again the honest 
 shake of the head ; and so, up and up, and up, that pure 
 boy goes with his bandanna pocket handkerchief until he 
 stands on the upper floor, and can reach up and touch the 
 roof. What a strange contrast between his kindly home 
 and that place ! No sister, no mother, no friend ! He is 
 all, all alone, in the midst of an immense populace. 
 He has no one who can strike palms with him. He 
 has no one who can give him a gentle word of advice 
 or of admonition. His day s work over, he sits in his 
 room, reading by the dim, uncertain light of his penny 
 dip until he is worn out and weary. Then he takes his 
 hat and goes out upon the side-walk. He wanders from 
 street to street, and curiously enough, Satan, who seems to 
 be ubiquitous, has opened a thousand door-ways, and he 
 stands in each one of them, his horns and hoofs concealed, 
 and beckons with gentle hand the youth to enter. Here is 
 a counter, and across the counter is placed the ruby wine ; 
 and the boy is tempted. And here sits a syren singing to 
 him, and weaving little by little her spider web, hoping to 
 catch the fly, and when he is helpless to rob him of his all. 
 And, here and there, and everywhere these doors are open ; 
 and yet for him there is no word of admonition no strong, 
 calm, holy, beautiful friendship to which he can cling. And 
 so after a few months his honor becomes almost inevitably 
 dimmed just as the impalpable rust gathers upon the polished 
 surface of the steel blade when you breathe upon it. If 
 now in an auspicious moment he looks around and sees 
 some such Institution as this which you represent to-night, 
 and hears cheerful voices, and crosses the threshold and 
 sees the reading-room, with its books and magazines and 
 quarterlies, with its papers filed in every corner, the de 
 sire for information seizes upon him, he takes a book out of 
 your library, and carries it home with him ; and he reads 
 the next night an hour longer by his penny dip, than he did 
 2 
 
13 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 the night before; and thus you, unconsciously to your 
 selves, have really reached out a helping hand to that man, 
 and perhaps you have saved him from the bottomless pit 
 of a loss of his self-respect, the pit of ruin, of present im 
 purity and of moral degradation. [Applause.] Who can 
 count the value of the Institution which lifts to its mast 
 head such a banner as that, not only of relief, but of sal 
 vation ? A word of advice, generously and nobly given, 
 sometimes saves a soul ; and a kind word is like a seed 
 dropped into the ground. You may not see it to-day ; it is 
 buried out of sight by the dews of evening ; but when the 
 morning sun comes warm and fresh and drives that night 
 away, the seed sends up its little shoot and at last comes 
 the blossom and the fruit. Just so it is with such an 
 Institution as this. A word here to-night, a word there in 
 your lecture room, a book taken from the shelf here, a 
 newspaper taken from the pile there each one of these in 
 strumentalities in the hands of God s Providence may, in 
 such a city as this, be the means of lifting up a desponding 
 heart and of putting new energy into a despairing soul. I 
 have but one word to say of you, God bless the work that 
 you have done, and God grant that you may indeed mow 
 a wide swath in the future. 
 
 The moment a boy comes to New- York, the one idea 
 which he gets is concerning the necessity of making money. 
 That becomes his heaven. That is what all New-Yorkers 
 work for. The Frenchman s idea of heaven is that of a 
 place in the midst of which there is a huge Eepublic with 
 no Napoleon III ; a Republic in which every citizen is a 
 member of the Provisional Government, a Eepublic which 
 maintains a standing army whose special business it is to 
 wipe out the defeats of Metz and Strasburg. The English 
 man s idea of the future is immense landed estates and a 
 title to nobility of which he forms the prominent part. But 
 a New-Yorker s idea of heaven is a corner lot [laughter] 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSAEY. 19 
 
 and a free stone front ; and a Government contract once a 
 year. [Renewed laughter.] 
 
 And every single boy who comes from the country ex 
 pects that corner lot, and every boy works for it for the first 
 twenty years of his business life ; and he puts into the reali 
 zation of that dream all the muscle of his body, all the energy 
 of his mind and all the strength of his soul. You, gentlemen, 
 who are gray-headed, who are within the reach of my voice, 
 can corroborate my words. You came to this great city years 
 and years ago with nothing. Now you have your corner 
 lot, and you are satisfied. And what the young gentlemen 
 whom I represent here to-night want is a corner lot just like 
 yours. Yet, in the attainment of such a desire, what dangers 
 there are ! The thirst for gold grows hotter and hotter.. 
 The appetite grows mightier by what it feeds upon, until at 
 last the man becomes restless, weary, worn and tired: and 
 lies down, perhaps in defeat. But your Institution comes 
 in when he is fresh in his manly prime. While the 
 golden curls yet cluster around his brow, before the blue 
 eyes have lost anything of their lustre, and while the 
 memory of his old home on the hillside, and the dear 
 thoughts of father and mother cling around him, your In 
 stitution comes to him and reaches out its warm, friendly, 
 generous hand, and takes hold of his heart, and under its 
 influences he bears those principles and those virtues out of 
 which the only sturdy and true manhood is made, [Ap 
 plause.] 
 
 I remember once, while standing upon the sea shore, to 
 have seen a sight at once grand and awful. The waves 
 were running mountain high, and in their madness seemed 
 to throw their white caps to the very clouds. I looked off 
 in the distance and saw a full rigged ship. She came rolling 
 along from wave to wave, and I knew, but the captain did 
 not, that there was a great rock between her and me. The 
 man who trod the quarter-deck felt secure. He was sure 
 
20 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 of his seamanship. He thought that he was master of the 
 situation. All at once the vessel struck the solid rock, and 
 then all was consternation and terror on board. The wave?, 
 like a great, merciless, ruthless giant, lifted up the noble 
 craft in its great arms and then dropped it on the rock again. 
 In a moment a dozen men were standing by my side. They 
 unlocked the door of a house on the beach and took out the 
 lifeboat. In an instant those dozen men were in the boat 
 and were pulling as if for their lives. They did not care 
 for their own safety. There was a manly pulse in every 
 heart, and a manly thrill in every nerve. They pulled as 
 though each man were a father, and he was trying to save 
 his only child. Over the waves they went and then back they 
 came with a load of shipwrecked passengers. I looked 
 again from the hill top and there were passengers scattered 
 here and there in the water. The boat pulled out bravely 
 once more, and picked up the drowning ones, here a little 
 child in its mother s arms, and there a gray haired sire who 
 was struggling to keep the few short hours that yet remained 
 to him, and brought all safely to the land. And then all 
 ,our hearts went up in thanksgiving to God that society had 
 L builded that house in time of peace when the ocean was 
 calm aad quiet, so that when the ocean was storm-tossed, 
 strong men might save the helpless. 
 
 Brothers 1 you are doing a work like unto that. There 
 are breakers all over your city, and many and many a 
 young man is drawn through the maelstrom into the whirl 
 pool, and goes down never to be seen again. Their number 
 is not to be counted. You see them one moment, and then 
 they are gone forever. Such an Institution as this is the 
 expression of a desire on the part of the great community 
 to have lifeboats all along the coast, and to man them with 
 those who can be brave .and true. And so I say to you to 
 night and it is a simple word, and yet it is warm from 
 .my heart God bless you, young men, in the grand work 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 21 
 
 which you are doing. I give you my hand and say, God in 
 the Heavens give you good, speed. [Great Applause.] 
 
 The President : We have heard from the Press and from 
 the Pulpit, and it will be our privilege, later in the evening, 
 tov hear from the Bar. I now have the pleasure of intro 
 ducing to you a merchant of New- York, Mr. "W 
 Dodge. [Applause.] 
 
 Address of WILLIAM E. DODGE, Esq. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT When you called upon me, about dusk, 
 with suc*h a disconsolate face, and with your programme all 
 broken to pieces, I could hardly resist your request to 
 come and say a word in behalf of the Mercantile Library 
 Association. [Applause.] 
 
 It is well for us, fellow citizens, once in a while, to stop, 
 amid the pressing cares of business, and look around us to 
 see what we have in our city which is stable and likely to 
 last. And it is well occasionally to look back, as time 
 passes rapidly, take our observation, and see where we 
 are going. 
 
 A very venerable clergyman, now nearly eighty, yet with 
 some strength and much spirit left, was called upon to see 
 whether remembering the early history of the Mercantile 
 Library and his love for it he would not come here to 
 night and open this meeting with prayer. After giving the 
 reasons why he could not come, he said : " Fifty years ! 
 Why, that isn t much." [Laughter.] No, it is not a very 
 great while ; but how many things have transpired since 
 fifty years ago ! New- York was a very small place when this 
 Library was organized. It then had just about one-eighth 
 of its present population. In 1820 we had only one hun 
 dred and twenty -three thousand inhabitants. The bound 
 ary of New- York was then a little beyond Canal Stieet ; 
 and those of us who were clerks in that day were away 
 down town ; and those of us who were in the dry goods 
 
22 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 stores were all in Pearl Street. There was no other place 
 for the wholesale dry goods business but Pearl Street. 
 Then we were without Croton water, without gas, with 
 out steamboats, without railroads, without telegraphs. 
 What were we then? What are we now? And Jhis 
 Mercantile Library, that has grown so great in the last 
 fifty years, what will it be when it shall have lived a 
 century? To-day it has an income of sixty thousand 
 dollars a year, and a property worth half a million of 
 dollars. You heard the President say that the Library 
 had outgrown its present home. It will nofr be long 
 before the city, in its upward flight, will leave Astor 
 Place too far down town. Long before the next fifty 
 years shall have rolled around, this Association, with its 
 income of eighty or one hundred thousand dollars, will 
 have accumulated a library such as none other will be 
 found in this land ; and this for the instruction, the benefit, 
 and the elevation of the coming merchants of New -York. 
 Eleven thousand young men are now members of the Mer 
 cantile Library Association. They are young men, clerks, 
 soon to take the place of the merchants of New- York, 
 and of the land. how much they owe already, and how 
 much they will owe to you, as in the future they look back 
 to the Mercantile Library ! [Applause.] 
 
 Friends, this library belongs to us. It is the Mercantile 
 Library of Neiv- York. Let us cherish it. Let us become 
 better acquainted with it. Let us interest the youth more in 
 it. Let us who are advancing in life encourage it. [Applause]. 
 A few years ago there was a debt of sixty-five thousand 
 dollars on the building. The young men were invited to 
 come together, and books were distributed among them, 
 and they went out among the merchants, and asked thut 
 this debt might be removed, and the interest which they 
 were then paying on the mortgage might be devoted to the 
 purchase of valuable books. The merchants responded ; 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 23 
 
 the debt was paid ; and that noble building, now unencum 
 bered, belongs to the merchants clerks of New- York. 
 [Applause.] We are here to-night to celebrate the fiftieth 
 anniversary of the Library. Having looked down upon its 
 past years, which have been so prosperous, let us look for 
 ward with hope to the fifty years that are to come. May its 
 past prosperity be the security and the surety, of what it 
 shall be in the future. [Applause.] 
 
 The President : There is a gentleman in the hall who came 
 here with no intention of speaking, but who has kindly 
 consented to say a few words ; and I am sure that you will 
 thank me for introducing, as the next speaker, the Eev. 
 Henry C. Potter. [Applause.] 
 
 Address of Rev. HENRY C. POTTER, D. D. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT It was a part of the contract under 
 which I was wrested from my seat and brought, almost 
 forcibly, to this platform, that if the honorable Mayor of the 
 City of New-York should appear, and say his own words in 
 his own place, I was to be released. It was because the 
 Mayor was supposed to be laden down with a new kind of 
 responsibility to-night, that it was thought that perhaps he 
 might not be here. But since I have been upon the plat 
 form, we have seen his benign countenance beaming upon 
 us ; and we have the assurance of our own eyes as I heard 
 a cockney Englishman express it this morning, when he 
 opened his newspaper and read the result of yesterday s 
 election that " All is well ! " [Great laughter and ap 
 plause.] 
 
 I cannot, however, resist the temptation which is offered 
 me to express the feeling which was uppermost in my mind 
 when I came here this evening ; and that was the feeling of 
 thankfulness with which I came to this meeting. I think 
 I may claim to be, perhaps, the only one of my profession, 
 who is here this evening, who can" be said to have found 
 
24 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 his way to the ministry through the Mercantile Library. I 
 am proud to remind myself, to-night, that I was once a 
 merchant s clerk ; and that I owe a large part of my enthu 
 siasm for letters, if any I have, to the impetus which I re 
 ceived within the alcoves of the Mercantile Library. [Ap 
 plause.] It was there that, as a boy, I first learned to love, 
 not only the great literary heroes of the past, and not only 
 the men of letters of our own day, who have been named 
 to you to-night, but to love and revere, long before I ever 
 saw him, the author of Thanatopsis. [Great applause.] 
 Mr. Bryant has sketched for us a picture of the future, 
 when some of the young men of another and a later gen 
 eration shall take down from their shelves the well-worn 
 books of the past, and will recall with something of curios 
 ity, and something of admiration, the names of the men of 
 letters who had delighted these earlier generations. May I 
 not say, to-night, after the graceful and eloquent words 
 which we have heard from his lips, that if there be any 
 name then vividly remembered and cherished, it will be the 
 name of him whom the Westminster Review, only the other 
 day, called the Prince of our American Poets William 
 Cullen Bryant. [Great applause.] 
 
 I am pleased to be here to-night for another reason ; and 
 that is, because the very title of this institution marries two 
 words, which it is the temptation of too many men of letters 
 in our day to attempt to divorce. This is a mercantile 
 library, an institution recognizing the value of literature, 
 under the auspices of commerce. You have been told, 
 very often, that New- York can never hope to be a great 
 literary centre ; that it is too much immersed in business ; 
 and the picture drawn by my brother, who has just spoken 
 to you, of the wide-spread prevalence of an ambition for 
 corner lots, has been supposed to apply to every man who 
 comes to New- York and makes money. But, Mr. Presi 
 dent, when we come to look about this great city, what are 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 25 
 
 the buildings which we see standing upon so many of the 
 finest corner lots? How many corner lots are covered by 
 that noble institution which has contributed so largely to 
 literature and the arts the Cooper Institute ? [Applause.] 
 The Astor Library stands upon another corner lot ; and the 
 Lenox Library will stand upon another. [Applause.] 
 
 I desire here, as an ex-merchant, to call to mind the noble 
 service rendered to literature by merchants, in the early and 
 materialistic days of this Eepublic. The finest private 
 library of which I have any knowledge is in the dwelling 
 of a merchant in Cincinnati. I doubt not there are finer 
 here in New-York ; but I have not been permitted to be 
 come personally acquainted with them. Let us not, then, 
 indulge in the fallacy that there is any hostility between 
 a high and elevated commerce and a high and elevated 
 literature. Let us recognize the fact, that this modern civ 
 ilization of ours educates a spirit which makes them go 
 hand and hand, and that wherever the white wings of com 
 merce carry the freightage of our western hemispherej there, 
 also, will be wafted the literature that is to enlighten distant 
 nations. [Applause.] 
 
 Many of our New England friends are fond of drawing 
 a contrast between New England and New-York between 
 the spirit that reigns in and about Boston and the spirit that 
 reigns here ; yet I venture to say, that, of the young men, 
 educated by this Mercantile Library, familiar with its litera 
 ture, privileged there to commune with the society of the 
 past and of the present, and to forget that social chill of 
 which my brother Hepworth has spoken, in better company, 
 perhaps, than most young men could find anywhere else in 
 New -York in the company of Milton and Shakespeare, 
 of Chaucer and Spencer ; and of the still greater lights of 
 the past, of Dante, done into English by our own Long 
 fellow ; and of Homer, done into English verse by our own 
 Bryant [applause] finding inspiration in such society, I 
 
26 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 venture to say that our New England friends will never be 
 able to tell of us such a story as I heard Mr. Thos. Hughes 
 narrate, the other day, in the company of a few friends, of 
 a man who was born in New England, and who had spent 
 his life not a great way from the Hub. He had gone, as a 
 great many New Englanders are in the habit of doing, to 
 visit the home of Longfellow, not merely because it is the 
 abode of Longfellow, but because it was once the temporary 
 home of Washington. Mr. Longfellow found him in the 
 hall, and escorted him over the house, not certain whether 
 he came to see the house on his account, or because of its 
 early associations. When the stranger had gone over the 
 house from the top to the bottom, and came again to the 
 front door, he said, "I thank you for the privilege that you 
 have given me, sir. It is a great thing to have seen the 
 house where Washington ate and slept !" And then, turn 
 ing to Mr. Longfellow, he said, " And what might your 
 name be ?" " My name is Longfellow," said the poet, 
 "Longfellow?" with an air of reflection for a moment or 
 two; "Any relation to Abner Longfellow, down in New 
 Bedford ?" [Great laughter and applause.] 
 
 I venture to say, Mr. President, that if the Mercantile 
 Library continues to render the same service to the young 
 men of New- York that it has already done, we shall not be 
 guilty of so gross an ignorance here in this commercial and 
 unliterary city. 
 
 I add my hearty good wishes to those that have been 
 already expressed here to-night for the prosperity of this 
 Society. I have the fondest personal memories of its influ 
 ence, and the most abundant hopes of its glorious and en 
 larged future. [Great applause.] 
 
 THE PRESIDENT : 
 
 " Then said the mother to her son, 
 
 And pointed to his shield ; 
 Come with it when the battle s done, 
 
 Or on it from the field. " 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 27 
 
 Amid the perplexing difficulties that seem to have sur 
 rounded our assembling here to-night, it is an encouraging 
 thought that notwithstanding the alarm and confusion of 
 that fatal yesterday, we have one tried soldier with us who 
 has done even better than by coming to us on his shield 
 by coming with it. [Applause.] 
 
 The last office that I have to perform to-night is to intro 
 duce to your kindly attention, his Honor, Mayor Hall. 
 [Long continued applause.] 
 
 Address of Hon. A. OAKEY HALL. 
 
 I thank the Eev. Dr. Potter, of Grace Church, for his 
 benediction. After it, I feel like a Potter s broken vessel. 
 After Grace, should come meat ; but I bring only an epi 
 logue. One of the speakers said that he felt very much 
 embarrassed by the absence of the gentlemen upon this pro 
 gramme ; on the contrary / feel very much relieved. If 
 one has an onyx, and not an emerald or a ruby, he does 
 not wish to place it in a circlet of diamonds. I come there 
 fore merely to speak the epilogue ; and I remember to have 
 heard it well said that an epilogue ought to be short, and 
 should be crisp. I also remember that for him who pro 
 nounces the epilogue there is generally inserted on the pro 
 gramme, lest his vanity be wounded, this sentence : " Ladies 
 " and gentlemen are requested to remain until the close of 
 ." the performance, as their going out disturbs the harmony 
 " of the occasion." I am perfectly willing, however, that 
 any one should go out ; and I feel utterly lost of late, un 
 less there is about me, as a speaker, some buzz, much con 
 fusion, and a great deal of contention. [Laughter.] 
 
 Your programme, Mr. Chairman, is certainly one on 
 which any gentleman might feel proud to be placed ; and it 
 is certainly a programme very fitting for the name of a pub 
 lic man, as I perceive that your musical selection begins 
 with " Solid Men," and has for its finale " Popular Airs." 
 
MEKCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 Both are appropriate selections for this Institution. 
 [Laughter.] 
 
 It is very appropriate that the City of New- York, in its 
 civic authority, should be here to add the great voice of the 
 Metropolis to the chorus sung by Mr. Hepworth: "God 
 speed the Mercantile Library on the occasion of its Fiftieth 
 Anniversary." [Applause.] I am happily relieved from 
 saying anything about your Institution, because the whole 
 ground has been already occupied ; and I will therefore con 
 fine myself to epilogue. I wish, however, in reference to a 
 remark thrown out by my friend, Dr. Potter, to remind him 
 and you that the phrase, " Mercantile Library," is very ap 
 propriate and very memorable, because the first public 
 library that was founded in Europe after the dark ages 
 began to merge into the dawn of civilization, was founded 
 by a merchant in the City of Florence, by the name of 
 Nicholas Nicoli. . You are here to-night to celebrate the 
 growth of your fifty-year old library ; but some time when 
 you have the leisure, when in those pleasant alcoves 
 yonder, in the quiet of the library, search among the vol 
 umes and trace for yourselves the wonderful growth that a 
 few hundred years has wrought, in books and in libraries, 
 from the time when the library of Oxford consisted of a few 
 tracts in a chest ; or from the time when the library of the 
 Abbey of Croyland consisted of a few volumes, which 
 could not be loaned except under penalty of excommuni 
 cation a sentence which was then considered by all classes 
 as worse than hanging or execution for treason. That was 
 a long time ago, several more times than fifty years. There 
 was another library existing about that time, in which the 
 books were chained lest they should be taken out, so valu 
 able were they deemed. And for scores of years were 
 books in private libraries thus chained, so that readers ob 
 tained the milk of their literature as a dairy maid returns 
 with rich cream from the kine that have been tethered in 
 
FIFTIETH ANNIVEKSABY. 29 
 
 rich pastures, lest they be injured by too much roaming for 
 food. 
 
 As a New-York civic authority, I class all libraries, and 
 especially this Mercantile Library, as coming under the 
 class of the magnificent dispensaries of this city. Other 
 dispensaries take care of the body ; but over the portals 
 of all public libraries may be written the sign words which, 
 according to Diodorus, were written over the portals of 
 the first Egyptian public library, and which translated reads, 
 " Medicine of the Mind." 
 
 In this luxurious age, in comparison with the prices of 
 other things, the fee of five dollars per year almost makes 
 this institution a/ree library ; and I am happy to know that, 
 although it is not nominally or technically free, it is, unlike 
 a certain free library, open at night, so that the working 
 man may obtain access to it. And I take this occasion 
 briefly to announce since reference has been made to Mr. 
 Cooper that it is in contemplation by the city authorities 
 to adopt a suggestion of his, and by his aid, and the assist 
 ance which I think the public treasury, with the assent 
 of all parties, may give, to create an entirely free lending 
 library in the City of New-York. [Applause.] And it may 
 be that the Mercantile Library may be captured for that 
 purpose, and converted into a free lending library the city 
 giving it full and proper indemnity for the loss of its dues. 
 That would do no wrong to you, or to the incorporators ; 
 and would make all the people of this great city members 
 of your Association. 
 
 I cannot finish my epilogue without indulging a pardon 
 able pride, by stating that twenty-five years ago my humble 
 name was inscribed upon your books ; and often, amid the 
 roar of the metropolis, I have to recollect with gratitude the 
 cozy quietude of those dear reading-rooms in old Clinton 
 Hall, in the very centre of a circle that now may well be 
 described as the reading-room of the world, for, within tha" 
 
30 MERCANTILE LIBRARY. 
 
 circle radiates to, at least, the American world the news 
 paper literature of this country. 
 
 Fifty years ago ! Why, gentlemen, it is your golden 
 wedding! Shakespeare says, "Let us not to the marriage 
 of true minds admit impediment." Do not libraries, in one 
 sense, wed true minds for discussion, and for the pleasant 
 interchanges of mental life ? 
 
 Long, in the future of the City of New-York, may this 
 Association thrive as wonderfully and deservedly as it has 
 in the past Long into its portals may there throng, not 
 only merchants and clerks, but their wives and daughters, 
 to shut out, for a brief time at least, the perplexities of 
 business and society. And long may its subscribers, each 
 time on entering the library, recall the beautiful salutation 
 of the Copenhagen librarian, commencing, 
 
 " Salvete aureoli mei libelli," 
 which may be rendered thus : 
 
 Hail, my books ! my golden treasures ! 
 Objects of delicious pleasures, 
 Whom my eyes rejoicing please, 
 Whom my hands in rapture seize ; 
 Introducing wits and sages, 
 Lights who beamed through many ages, 
 Then left to leaves their conscious story, 
 And dared to trust to you their glory 
 And their hopes of fame achieved ; 
 Them, dear books, you ne er deceived ! 
 
 [Applause.] 
 
THE FIFTH 
 
 ANNUAL DINNER 
 
 OF THE 
 
 EX-OFFICERS ONION, 
 
 AT 
 
 DELMONICO S, 
 
 EVEKTIKTO-, 
 
 NOVEMBER 10, 1870. 
 
ifth llnnual Dinner. 
 
 The Fifth Annual Dinner of the Officers Union of the 
 Mercantile Library Association, was given at Delmonico s, 
 Thursday evening, November 10th, 1870. 
 
 Mr. H. 1ST. CAMP presided, and on his right were Alex 
 ander T. Stewart, Esq., A. J. Mundella, M.P., Hon. Henry 
 Hilton, Eev. Henry C. Potter, Abram S. Hewitt, Esq., Sam 
 uel Sloan, Esq., Thomas H. Faile, Esq., Edmund Coffin, 
 Esq., "Wm. E. Dodge, Jr., Esq., J. B. Vermilye, Esq., Henry 
 Clews, Esq., Hon. Lyman Tremaine, and Isaac H. Bailey, 
 Esq. ; upon his left were Hon. Stewart L. Woodford, Hon. 
 Wm. E. Dodge, Daniel James, Esq., Peter Cooper, Esq., 
 Maj.-G-en. Trwin McDowell, Eichard Lathers, Esq., Hon. 
 Smith Ely, Jr., Hon. Samuel S. Cox, M.C., Maj.-Gen. Alex 
 ander S. Webb, Eev. William Adams, D.D., Eev. C. C 
 Tiffany, E. L. Grodkin, Esq., and J. E. Kennedy, Esq. 
 
 After the dinner, the Chairman, in proposing the first 
 toast of the evening, said : 
 
 Fellow Members of the Officers Union: Again we are 
 permitted to meet together around these festive boards, and 
 to celebrate in a fitting manner this, our fifth anniversary, 
 and the fiftieth anniversary of the Mercantile Library Asso 
 ciation ; an Association to which all of us, during some pe 
 riod of our lives, have given a portion of our thoughts and 
 of our time. You will, I hope, permit me on this occasion, 
 very briefly indeed, to congratulate you on the success 
 which has attended our efforts in the formation and carrying 
 3 
 
34 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 on of this Society. Unlike many of the societies of New- 
 York, the St. Nicholas, the New England, and the St. 
 Oeorge which have for their object the calling of men 
 together of one clime, country, state or city, for charitable 
 purposes, we are banded together for the purpose of renew 
 ing old associations, of reviving friendships that else were 
 dead ; of re-enkindling our affections, and keeping alive our 
 love for an Institution, which, in our earlier days, was to us 
 a friend, a counsellor, a guide. [Applause.] And to give 
 to the Board of Direction that may be in power, whatever 
 aid we may in carrying on the great work of this Institution. 
 That the object of our Society has been attained, I need 
 only refer you to the scene before you to-night [Applause.] 
 During the year nothing has occurred in our Society of 
 marked importance. Our members are about the same in 
 number as last year. We have had a few withdrawals, and 
 a few admissions, so that the number has remained about 
 the same. From the very nature of the case, drawing our 
 membership only from a limited number as we do, (for only 
 ex -officers can be members,) we cannot expect any large in 
 crease in any one year ; nor can we at any time expect to 
 number many more members than we have at present. I 
 think that I may say, however, that we have upon our rolls 
 to-day about all the live, active, energetic members of the 
 various boards which have preceded the present very able 
 one. [Applause.] 
 
 It is always pardonable for those who have been connected 
 with an institution, in its management, to look with pride 
 and satisfaction upon the success which it has attained ; and 
 we are very apt to think that some measure, perchance, put 
 forward during the time that we were ourselves members 
 has been largely instrumental in the success of the Society. 
 As ex-officers, we have a great and enduring pride in the 
 success of the Mercantile Library Association, and in the 
 position which it holds to-day among the kindred institu- 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICEKS UNION. 35 
 
 tions of the country and of the world. When we look back 
 to the time when we ourselves were connected with the In 
 stitution as officers ; or if we go still further back, to the 
 time when with feeble, uncertain breath, it first showed signs 
 of life ; or later, to the time when such men as Philip Hone, 
 and John K. Leavitt, and Lawrence Nash, aided our in 
 fancy ; or still later, when such men as Wilson G. Hunt, 
 and others, came to us, and aided in placing our building 
 out of debt I say, when we look on that picture, and then 
 on this, we may well feel proud, nay, honored in having 
 been, no matter how humbly, connected with the management 
 of an Institution that has done, and is .destined to do so 
 much good to our beloved City of New-York. [Applause.] 
 There are one or two features connected with our institu 
 tion, which I think are worthy of especial attention. Until 
 within a few years, since which the Clinton Hall Associa 
 tion has furnished volumes to our library, the whole accu 
 mulation of one hundred and twenty thousand volumes has 
 been the result of a careful, wise, earnest husbandry of 
 the receipts of the members for dues. With two or three 
 exceptions, our library has never been the recipient of be 
 quests. When }^ou remember that out of this fund (and 
 the dues for many years were but two dollars per year, I 
 think for about forty years, and then three dollars, and now 
 four,) the whole expenses of our library, with its necessarily 
 large clerical force, have been paid, you will readily see how 
 honestly, how well, how judiciously the affairs of our insti 
 tution have been managed since its very organization. 
 [Applause.] As I said before, our library, with two or 
 three exceptions, has never been the recipient of any be 
 quests. The question has often occurred to me, and I doubt 
 not to many others why is this ? why is it that our mer 
 chants, in their large hearted liberality, dispensing their 
 charities with a princely hand, have not remembered an in 
 stitution like this ? It appears to me that there is no way in 
 
36 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 which money can do more good than by having the interest 
 of it provide books for the young. I beg to commend this 
 thought to the moneyed men of New- York, hoping that 
 the seed may fall in rich ground, and bear fruit a thousand 
 fold. [Applause.] 
 
 The great and pressing need of to-day and if the press 
 ing need of to-day, how much more of the future ? is a 
 new, large, fire-proof building, to contain the treasures that 
 we already own., [Applause.] The question is, how shall 
 this be attained ? We have called upon the good citizens 
 of New-York frequently, and our appeals have never been 
 in vain ; nor do I think we shall appeal to them again in 
 vain. But you, the members of the Officers Union, will 
 have a duty to do in this regard. Work must be done be 
 fore we can obtain this desideratum to which we all look 
 forward with so much of interest, I am confident that the 
 members of our library, in expecting from the merchants 
 of New-York a liberal response to the call which will, I 
 trust, be made on them one of these days, will not be dis 
 appointed. [Applause.] 
 
 But I will detain you no longer. We have with us to 
 night very many distinguished gentlemen, from many of 
 whom we expect to hear. I shall therefore close the few 
 remarks I have made by offering the first regular toast of 
 the evening : 
 
 " The State of New- York, an empire based on the will of 
 the people. While the foundation lasts, the superstructure 
 is imperishable." 
 
 The Governor of the State was expected to be here to 
 speak to this toast. He was called to Albany ; but we have 
 Ex-Lieutenant-Go vernor Woodford here. [Cheers.] In 
 writing his acceptance of our invitation, he says : "It will 
 give me great pleasure to be with you, provided Governor 
 Hoffman has not sent me so far up Salt Kiver that I cannot 
 get back in time/ [Great laughter and applause.] The 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 37 
 
 fact that he is with, us is evidence enough that he has not 
 been sent so very far in that direction ; and is further evi 
 dence that he is ready and willing to stand half a dozen 
 such defeats as he has had within the last three days. 
 [Cheers and applause.] 
 
 HON. STEWAET L. WOODFORD. 
 MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE MERCANTILE 
 LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, There may be a possible fitness in 
 my speaking to you in response to the a State of New- 
 York ;" for within the last seven weeks I have visited most 
 of the State [applause], and have found safe return to my 
 New- York home by the way of Salt River. [Renewed 
 laughter and applause.] Our State should touch our love 
 and our pride very deeply. We are in the centre of the 
 Atlantic chain. To this point the wealth and the enterprise 
 of our merchants brings whatever this entire nation needs 
 for its use, from the lands beyond the sea. Here the cotton 
 and the sugar of the South, the corn and the wheat of the 
 North- West, the ore of Pennsylvania, the manufactures of 
 New England and of the Middle States, find their mar 
 ket and their sale. To you, as mercantile men, 1 need say 
 nothing, either of what New- York has done in the past, of what 
 she is in the present, or of what she so justly promises to 
 be in the future. We occupy a position, both geographi 
 cally, and because of our wealth and power, that imposes 
 large responsibilities upon all New-Yorkers. We should 
 be radical in striving to secure all that may add to the 
 wealth, to the culture, and to the highest prosperity either 
 of our State or of the Union. [Applause.] We should 
 be conservative in holding all that is good in the past, that 
 it may be the seed corn of our growth in the years to come. 
 And more than that and now I speak to you as young 
 men you should do your duty, not merely as merchants 
 the plethoric pocket-books that rustle with greenbacks 
 
38 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 under each table indicate that you have done that already 
 [a laugh] but if we would have our State and nation be 
 what she should be, the young men of the land should not 
 forget themselves in the mere scrambling for the dollars. 
 [Applause.] You should cling to all that is best in cul 
 ture, to all that is broadest in education, to all that is 
 highest and most beautiful in art. You should make your 
 Mercantile Library, with its magnificent accumulation of 
 books, its courses of scientific lectures, its work in the prep 
 aration of young men you should make it the flower that 
 typifies the beauty of your commercial endeavor, as the 
 wealth of your merchants typifies and illustrates its success. 
 [Great applause.] While toiling in the counting-room, the 
 storehouse, or the bank, do not forget that your brains are 
 worth more than your pockets that an idea in your head 
 that shall be a power to you and a life to your fellows, is 
 worth more than a thousand added to your bank account. 
 Do not forget another thing : that you, young men, to what 
 ever party you may belong, should give your best thought, 
 your most earnest endeavor, to make the politics of your 
 State and of your land pure, honest, efficient for the real 
 up building of the people ; for, for the up-building of the 
 peoples all democracies and all republics were instituted 
 and made. [Applause.] Your toast has said that so long- 
 as New-York rests upon the will of the people, the super 
 structure will be enduring. See that your young men are 
 educated. See that your young men are honest. See that 
 they stand by that which is best, which is purest, which is 
 most progressive alike in business and in politics. 
 [Applause.] Remember another thing: that when the 
 strife and the bitterness of these annually recurring elec 
 tions are past, that our State and nation rises as something 
 better than party, something higher than platform, some 
 thing to which all good citizens should give their most 
 
UNION. 39 
 
 loving prayers, and their most earnest effort. [Applause.] 
 See to it, that in the public life of all your officials, you are 
 ready to approve that which is right, whether the officer be 
 with you in political theory or opposed to you; see to it 
 that you are ready to condemn that which is wrong, whether 
 the actor be with you in sentiment or be opposed to you. 
 [Great applause.] 
 
 Let us all, one and all, without regard to the lines that 
 have divided us, and that shall divide us in political strug 
 gles, do our whole duty as New- Yorkers, as citizens, and as 
 earnest, true-hearted young men. [Applause.] 
 Allow me, in closing, to propose a volunteer toast : 
 " The Governor of the State of New- York : may he be 
 supported in all that is right, and generously and fairly criti 
 cised in all that is wrong." [Applause.] 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN : 1 give you as the second regular toast : 
 " The City of New-York : unequaled in the splendor of 
 her geographical position, she welcomes, through her eastern 
 portal the citizens of the Old World, and from her western 
 gates issue myriads of people of the New. Long the chief 
 city of America, soon to become the metropolis of the 
 world." 
 
 Until about six o clock, his Honor, Mayor Hall, was ex 
 pected to be present and respond to this toast, as he prom 
 ised to do, and as we know he desired to do. But at half- 
 past six he writes us : " The cold, raw wind has shut up 
 my vocal organs, already heavily taxed." So we cannot 
 have a response from the Mayor of our City. But among 
 our guests we have one who talks well upon any subject 
 I ever heard him talk upon ; and I shall take the liberty 
 of calling upon him to respond to this toast the Hon. S. 
 S. Cox, sometimes called " Sun-Set Cox ;" but day before 
 yesterday he proved that there was no sun-set to his name. 
 [Applause.] 
 
40 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 t 
 
 HON. S. S. COX. 
 
 GENTLEMEN : I came here this evening fully prepared to 
 respond to a toast of a different order thoroughly accom 
 plished, as I supposed, to speak on quite another theme. I 
 was put down at the end of. the roll, on the old toast to 
 " Woman ;" and I reckoned that, by the end of the feast, 
 we might all become so oblivious to eloquence, that my 
 duty could be easily discharged. But I am called to a dif 
 ferent task, and to one which should have been discharged 
 by our worthy Mayor. I suppose the Mayor is at home, 
 and if not looking after his famous figures of speech, he is 
 doubtless ciphering up the figures of the late election. 
 [Laughter.] I feel very incompetent to respond to the toast 
 which has been so kindly proposed by my friend, the chair 
 man. I feel my inability to speak in this volunteer manner, 
 not only my inability, mentally, to speak for the big City 
 of New-York, but I feel very disproportionate physically, 
 for any such effort. You must therefore excuse me from 
 making anything but a very short speech. 
 
 The dominant idea of your toast is, that New- York sits 
 here as the gateway of the nations, as the great thorough 
 fare through which, not only commerce and trade, but the 
 very people are moving, as if by some divine order, to the 
 great West. As I come from the land of sunset, a land 
 powerful in arms, as my old comrade, Gen. McDowell, can 
 illustrate, and rich in her beautiful soil, as all your granaries 
 and elevators demonstrate, I can speak, in one sense, for 
 that great West ; and as your toast connects the West with 
 the East, and New-York with the outland and the inland, 
 I would for a moment make a little horoscope for your city, 
 
 New- York has just begun her great career. She will be 
 the metropolis, not only of this hemisphere, but of this 
 globe. She is destined to be so. [Applause.] The island 
 of Manhattan was never intended as a mere pasturage. It 
 
UNION. 41 
 
 I 
 
 was never intended, as the first Dutchmen tried it, merely 
 for raising cabbages, or grass. You cannot sub-soil New- 
 York so well as you can some other parts of our great 
 country. New- York was intended, not for agriculture, not 
 for farming, nor yet for forest ; but it was set as a great 
 jewel on the very brow of the ocean, that all nations might 
 send to her their people and their commerce. She reaches 
 out her hand to all the world, or would reach it, if her 
 better day in commerce were dawning, which I sincerely 
 hope. [Applause.] If New- York continues to increase in 
 the future as she has in the past forty years, I think it is 
 no exaggeration to say that New- York, at the end of a cen 
 tury, will have six millions of people ; and that the nation, 
 of which New- York will be the metropolis, will then have 
 a hundred millions. I do not mean to say that the island 
 of Manhattan will alone have six millions of people ; but 
 we shall do what other cities have done, we shall push over 
 to Brooklyn and "Williamsburg, and draw that distant 
 Jersey [a laugh] somewhat nearer to New -York, and 
 make one grand metropolis of all. [Applause.] Young 
 men here, to-night, will live to see New- York City a city of 
 six millions ; and I believe that some of our elder men 
 here will also live to see it. I will conclude my response 
 by wishing you all a life so long that you may see New- 
 York City with a population of six millions, and attend 
 the Centennial Anniversary of the Mercantile Library 
 Association. [Laughter and applause.] 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN The next toast is the one which is the 
 nearest to our hearts : 
 
 "The Mercantile Library Association; a half century of 
 steadily increasing usefulness constitutes its appropriate 
 eulogy." 
 
 Of course, there is but one person in the room who can 
 appropriately respond to a toast like this, the very able and 
 energetic President of the Association, Mr. M. C. D. Borden. 
 
42 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 M. C. D. BORDEN, ESQ. 
 
 Mr. PRESIDENT and GENTLEMEN /One of our later novel 
 ists in one of his most pleasing efforts, for the moment aban 
 dons his fiction to give place to a most truthful remark 
 " when we write a story or sing a poem of the great Nine 
 teenth Century, I give you my sacred word of honor there 
 is but one fear not that our theme, will be beneath us, 
 but we miles below it." 
 
 So, Sir, when I undertake to speak to the Toast you have 
 given me, I am impressed by the immensity of the- subject 
 and my utter helplessness to meet, at all adequately, its 
 claims. 
 
 A famous writer of our own times makes Coleridge re 
 sponsible for saying that if he were a clergyman in Corn 
 wall, he should preach fifty-two sermons a year against 
 wreckers. Having at heart the best interests of the Asso 
 ciation which I now represent, the same spirit must be my 
 apology for addressing you on the real poverty of our 
 Library and its one essential want 
 
 Mr. President, I have but one story to tell. It is that of 
 a great Institution, conceived in the interests of that vastly 
 numerous class to which most of us now belong born in 
 the obscurity of a modest enterprise nurtured in the high 
 purpose of its beneficent aim filling each new year of life 
 with a year s record of accomplished good established at 
 last, beyond all contingency and doubt, upon the firm basis 
 of experiment proven a success. It is the story of an In 
 stitution that has a broad philanthropy for its object- 
 indiscriminate good to all as its practiced motto and a half 
 century of faithful service, the unimpeachable evidence of 
 a stable and permanent worth. It is the story of sunshine 
 and^ storm of conquest and defeat of sufferance and re 
 ward ; the rainbow experience that discovers through and 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICEES UNION. 43 
 
 beyond the blinding shower a pledge of bright and glowing 
 promise. [Applause.] 
 
 It is the story of an Institution that has fought its way 
 through weary years of cold and discouraging doubt 
 whetting its determination against rough difficulties and 
 resisting force never so near a great danger as to-day, 
 when, with the mute appeal of its fifty well-spent years, it 
 rests calmly and quietly in its worn-out shell to see a 
 kindred organization celebrate its early anniversary in a 
 stately and palatial home.* Under circumstances ordinarily 
 incident to our festive gathering, I might content myself 
 with a simple acknowledgement of the compliment you 
 have offered me, pausing only to give expression to the cus 
 tomary sentiment of the occasion, and, in charity, find my 
 seat in the briefest possible time. 
 
 But we are assembled under circumstances most extraor 
 dinary. We are about to close the book and seal the 
 record of our semi-centennial life. What a history that vol 
 ume contains ! Were it my province to unfold it now, 
 reading but a single page at random here and there, how 
 would your hearts thrill with conscious joy and thankful 
 ness at that long record of accomplished good ! a history 
 of achievement and success, buoyant and full of cheer, 
 punctuated, in the ordinary course of events, by some mis 
 takes and many doubtful measures, but these serving only, 
 like the mariners trusted lights, to mark the shoals and 
 dangers of our experience, recording now and then defeats, 
 but writing always after them, in quick succession, the sub 
 stantial evidence of greater victories a bright chronicle, 
 take it all in all, of usefulness and good. [Applause.] To 
 dwell at length on this were a pleasing and a grateful task. 
 But another book is to be written. The second part of our 
 work begins here and to-night ; and I have surely mistaken 
 the courage and zeal, the loyalty and faith, the interest and 
 
 * The Young Men s Christian Association. 
 
44 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 metal of past and present friends, if the first page is to be 
 unworthy of the volume we have already closed. [Ap 
 plause.] 
 
 I call your attention, then, to one fact a fact that has 
 been staring us in the face most suggestively for years, 
 creeping upon us with our growth, the natural consequence 
 of our prosperity, making itself more and more patent with 
 expanding age, confronting us to-day with an earnestness 
 that compels our respect and a demand that will not be 
 ignored. It is the want, grown into the necessity, of a 
 new, a more commodious, and a safer building. [Applause.] 
 
 Few enterprises exhibit the progress of our own. Not 
 many institutions need so little, after all, to insure a perfect 
 and lasting success. You know how modest our beginning 
 was. You have witnessed the rapidity of our growth. 
 You recognize in our Library of to-day a great and distinct 
 ive power for good. It is a prophecy almost fulfilled, that 
 
 s to be the greatest, the grandest, the most useful of its 
 kind. Thus far no stain of weak indifference or thought 
 less inefficiency mars its fair name. Thus far, it has 
 kept pace with the times and the progress of our 
 matchless city. We have seen it in Fulton Street, a 
 half century since, the pioneer the first of the many 
 that have grown around it as a distributor of books, 
 then with a handful of volumes and a miniature hall for its 
 
 s than two hundred members. Five years elapse, and 
 find it in another home with a multiplied list of books, 
 
 larger roll of members and a few exceptional friends 
 among ^he outside world. Less than five years more, and 
 
 has moved again, this time to a building of its own the 
 
 Clinton Hall of forty years ago. A score years more are 
 
 passed and the greatest and the grandest move of all, AS 
 
 YET, to the Clinton Hall of to-day-its hundred members 
 
 Itiphed a hundred times, and a hundred volumes where 
 
 it had but one. 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS U:N T ION. 45 
 
 Here then, it rests to-day, inherently strong and pros 
 perous, abounding in books, the repository of vast and ac 
 cumulative wealth in literature and art, the occupant of a 
 building once well adapted, but already inadequate to its 
 use a home venerable with age, but correspondingly tot 
 tering and weak, so far from fire-proof as to be uncommonly 
 susceptible to fire, possible of destruction, with all it con 
 tains, in a single day. Well may we pause in the flush of 
 a pardonable pride, to contemplate a danger so appalling ! 
 Well may we start from our lethargy and sleep, to think 
 and plan and ACT for our defense. [Applause.] 
 
 First and above all, sir, I speak for the safety of our 
 property and books. It is the provident thought of a wise 
 man, who discovers himself in possession of that which he 
 values, to find some safe and secure depository for its keep 
 ing. It is the instinct of the child. It is the principle that 
 underlies all others in maturer life. The same rule of 
 caution, inborn in our nature and a part of our very being, 
 follows us from the cradle to youth, from youth to man 
 hood, from manhood to the grave. Out of this comes safety 
 to person, security to property and home. It is in obe 
 dience to this law of caution everywhere recognized and 
 obeyed that countless wealth appears in the form of stores 
 and storehouses, proof alike against fire and the burglar s 
 hand. Property is at a risk ; no sacrifice is too costly to 
 protect it. Material possessions are threatened ; how sub 
 lime the effort, how prodigal the exposure, the best of us 
 will make in their defence. Tell me now, where is the mer 
 chandize to match in value our ripe and well-earned har 
 vest of books? What fabric of the hand that hand can 
 make again to compare in worth to the work of minds, the 
 heritage direct from (rod? Why hesitate to deal with 
 facts ? In that building, while I speak, there are more than 
 a hundred thousand books. Many, aye, MOST of them, 
 money can replace. But cut of that collection, there are 
 
46 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 a many more rare relics of master minds, rich trophies of 
 classic day, of which no attainable duplicates exist. There, 
 too, lie files of the press, complete and in accessible form 
 the current news of to-day and days long since gone by 
 the world s history in detail the authentic record of the 
 little and the great events of life for the fifty years that 
 have gone. Not the collection of a single year ; not the 
 result of a single lifetime. Some who have added to its 
 aggregate have not lived to witness the growth to which the 
 Library has attained. Many who are here will never ap 
 preciate or know the weary hours and years of toil and 
 patient endeavor that have won for us the abundant recom 
 pense of our present power and influence. 
 
 Do I exaggerate the value of our Library ? Language 
 is powerless to express it. Silver and gold do not represent 
 it? Do you question its usefulness ? I give you back an 
 answer from the ten thousand members who attest its 
 worth and the hundreds who every day draw from its 
 varied fund. Will you dare to contemplate its loss? 
 Then you anticipate disaster which, like 
 
 " A malady 
 
 Preys on the heart that medicine cannot reach, 
 Invincible and cureless." 
 
 No man of us all but shrinks from the simple idea of 
 calamity like this. Away, then, with the fact which makes 
 t possible. [Applause.] You, who come together here 
 as the years roll on, to eat and drink to the prosperity of 
 your fair enterprise, have done yeoman s service in a fruit- 
 You think no labor irksome, no effort too costly 
 > attention close enough in the struggle for a higher and a 
 
 ,ter name. You watch-how untiringly !_the Institu 
 tion s growth ! You do all that man can do to accelerate 
 
 1 further it You do NOT take the first and now most 
 mportant step to make safe and secure the acquisition you 
 
OF THE EX OFFICERS UNION. 47 
 
 already have. Ah ! sir, it is the PREVENTIVE that we want 
 now, and it is always cheaper than the CURE. 
 
 You tell me, perhaps, that this is no new theme, and you 
 remind me that there has been talk enough and without 
 result on just this very thing. Sir! there never HAS been 
 talk enough there never WILL be talk enough, so long as 
 a hundred thousand books lie defenceless and exposed tp 
 fire ; and you and I, and the multitude of friends the Library 
 has, are false to our trust and false to ourselves so long as 
 the great danger remains, while safety, absolute and com 
 plete, is within our power. The Library has no selfish end. 
 It lives in the interest and for the good of those who accept 
 its proffered gifts. It was made for societj^. Its whole 
 purpose is for society s well-being and better estate. Let 
 society do this much for the Library, that it shall protect 
 and make safe its books. 
 
 Believe me, sir, this is no idle claim. It is the earnest 
 appeal of a grand enterprise in extremity. Establish safety, 
 and you secure success. Tolerate unnecessary danger, and 
 you tamper with deplorable failure. Webster once said, at 
 Eochester, " If I thought there was a stain on the remotest 
 hem of the garment of my country I would devote my ut 
 most labor to wipe it off." Let us take heed, gentlemen 
 guardians of the Library, that no spot of deliberate inac 
 tivity destroy for ever the whiteness of our official robes. 
 There stands the creature of your making. Full fifty 
 years to-night its race has run. 
 
 Fairer than sculptured stone, 
 
 Nobler than lofty monuments or gilded dome, 
 
 Proud epitaph of years to come, 
 
 Your contribution to your race. 
 
 One thing only is undone, and the hour is ripe for its ac 
 complishment. We have won a jewel, bright and re 
 splendent, as the price of a half century s work. Let us 
 hasten to find a casket WORTHY of its keeping. [Applause.] 
 
48 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 Iii the light of what SHOULD be, I seem to see the old 
 supplanted by the new all fears and doubts dispelled all 
 apprehension set at rest, and our fond hopes realized to the 
 full in the security of a grander edifice that shall save and 
 perpetuate our mother Institution . 
 
 In the terrible siege in India, it is related that a Scotch 
 girl raised her head from the pallet of the hospital, and 
 spoke words of courage to the English hearts around her. 
 4 I hear the bag-pipes the Campbells are coming." And 
 they said, "Jessie, it is delirium." "No, I KNOW it. I 
 heard it afar off." And after a little the pibroch rang upon 
 their ears, and the banner of England floated triumphantly 
 over their heads. 
 
 Even so on this, our fiftieth birth-day eve, I hear the re 
 joicing of a brighter day, when the crowning act of our de 
 votion shall be JUSTICE to the Library we have made. 
 [Long continued applause.] 
 
 The CHAIRMAN " The Merchants of New-York the 
 fame of whose intelligence, energy and honor, is only out 
 shone by the munificence of their benefactions. " 
 
 It is not always at a dinner that a toast is given that con 
 tains so much of truth as the one which I have just read ; 
 and it is still more rare that the presiding officer has the 
 privilege of calling upon one whose whole life and career 
 has been in accordance with the sentiment of this toast, to 
 respond, as has been the case of the gentleman upon my 
 left, the Hon. William E. Dodge. [Applause.] 
 
 HON. WILLIAM E. DODGE. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, We often hear of 
 the " princely merchants of New-York." We have with us, 
 to-night, the Pnnce of New-York Merchants.* [applause] 
 and I came here, to-night, expecting to listen to a response 
 
 * Mr. A. T. Stewart. 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 49 
 
 to this toast from this prince of merchants ; and it was but 
 a moment ago that I learned that I was expected to respond. 
 I have been thinking, while sitting here, and running my 
 mind back over the fifty years that have passed in the his 
 tory of the Mercantile Library, of the honored names of 
 those who were the merchants of New- York when this 
 Library Association was formed. It is well for us occa 
 sionally to stop and think of the past, arid to recall the 
 honored names of those who have long gone to their rest, 
 and left such a heritage to us. New- York, fifty years ago, 
 boasted of many men of noble stature. My mind has been 
 running along through South Street, Front Street, Pearl 
 Street and Broadway. I have thought of the Griswolds, 
 the Howes, the Goody ears ; and running along through 
 Pearl Street, I have thought of those honored men who 
 were the jobbing merchants when this Association was 
 formed the Parishes and the Palmers ; and then along 
 Broadway, of the retail merchants Vanderbilt, the Haights, 
 Jotham Smith and Doremus : and among the hardware men 
 the Roosevelts, the Yanderbilts and the Kingsleys. They 
 have all passed away, and hundreds and hundreds of their 
 associates with them noble men they were and have 
 given place to others ; and the city has been passing on ; 
 and those who were the first members of this Association 
 where are they now ? How few still linger who were with 
 you in Fulton and in Cliff Streets ! And how soon will 
 they who now occupy the places of the merchants of New- 
 York the high and prominent positions how soon will 
 they pass away, and give place to the present members of 
 your Association. And when fifty years more shall have 
 passed away, and some one shall speak, as I now do of the 
 merchants of New- York, they will run back to the present 
 period, and speak of those who are now active ; but what 
 changes will then have taken place ? What is New- York 
 now ? What was New- York then ? What will New- York 
 4 
 
50 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 be when another half century shall have rolled around ? 
 How different its business is now from what it was when 
 jour Association was formed. I was then a boy in a store 
 in Pearl Street. How different was business then from what 
 it is now. We had then our periodical seasons of business, 
 the Fall and the Spring. Our Winters and Summers were 
 as nothing. When the cold chills of November came, 
 it was predicted that soon the canal would close ; and then 
 down went half of the curtains. And after a little the 
 North Kiver would close, and then down went the curtains 
 for the rest of the Winter. [Laughter.] What would 
 New- York be to-day without railroads, without steamboats, 
 without telegraphs ? We have been passing through such 
 wonderful changes during the last half century, that we 
 hardly realize what they are. What was our vast country 
 when this Mercantile Library was established ? Chicago 
 had never been heard of. With the exception of St. Louis, 
 the entire West, now teeming with its millions of inhab 
 itants, and interlaced with its thousands of miles of rail 
 roads, was the hunting-ground of the Indians. The ele 
 ments that have been at work during the past fifty years, 
 making New-York what it is, and our country what it is, 
 will accumulate and act with increased impetus during the 
 fifty years to come ; and no man can conceive of what New- 
 York City will be, or of what these United States will be, 
 when another fifty years shall have rolled around. [Ap 
 plause.] Let the young men of New- York realize their 
 position and their high responsibility ; and let them pre 
 pare themselves, by the opportunities for self-improvement 
 that are open to them, for the vast responsibilities that will 
 rest upon them when we, who now fill the places of the mer 
 chants of New-York, shall have passed away. [Applause.] 
 THE CHAIRMAN : The Army and the Navy : -our pride 
 and boast ; ever ready to uphold our liberties when assailed 
 By foes within our borders or beyond our shores." 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 51 
 
 We have with us to-night one who, in all the positions 
 which he has held, has shown himself to be a man, a Chris 
 tian, and a gentleman ; and I shall call upon him to respond 
 to this toast Major-General McDowell, of the U. S. Army. 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL IKWIN McDOWELL. 
 Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN If there be worlds 
 besides our own and I hope there are where there are 
 beings not unlike ourselves, who not only profess to be and 
 call themselves, but who really are Christians, and who 
 live a life of higher intellectuality than we do; and if 
 such an one were to visit us, and go abroad among the 
 nations of the earth (I do not mean among the savage 
 nations of the earth, but among the highest Christian 
 people), nothing, I fancy, would so utterly bewilder him as 
 to see the immense preparations made by all those nations 
 for war. Every resource of chemistry, every manufacture 
 of whatever description, throughout the globe for war 
 always, flourishes at the expense of all other trades are 
 compelled to pay tribute to this end. Children are taken 
 at an early age, sent to school, and educated to the highest 
 point for that particular business. Vast numbers of men 
 are drawn from the ordinary, and what we would naturally 
 think, the proper avocations of life, and kept apart and in 
 training, ready for the terrible work of war. Why must 
 this be ? Where is the necessity for such immense prepara 
 tions for the destruction of our fellow-men ? This is a ques 
 tion upon which we may speculate to almost any extent. I 
 only know, in my own experience, that when I first entered 
 the army, the great question then seemed to be settled, and 
 that wars were never again to take place. It was then 
 proposed to abolish our military organization, disband the 
 army, and lay up the navy, for it was thought that the era 
 of good feeling and peace throughout the world had been 
 reached. [Laughter.] Then we had the Mexican war a war 
 
52 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 without any necessity a wrong done to a weak republic 
 and our neighbor which commenced with a lie : "Whereas, 
 American blood has been shed upon American soil," which 
 was untrue; "And whereas, war exists by the acts of 
 Mexico," which was untrue ; "Therefore," &c. And so we 
 had that war ; and other wars followed. I do not speak of 
 the Indian wars, which were brutal acts and without any 
 necessity whatever. [Applause.] I have frequently found 
 myself in the position of warring on the weak, with the 
 strong, or on the side of the wrong against the right. 
 Why is this ? Other persons than myself had better answer 
 that The fact probably is, that wars always will exist in 
 this country where they ought never to exist, and in other 
 countries that profess to be far advanced in civilization. 
 And they break out at times and places least expected. 
 You all recollect how unexpected our last war was ; but 
 it was not more so, probably, than the next will be. It 
 seems therefore to me, that it is our duty to see to it that 
 we are not wholly unprepared when the next war shall 
 come upon us. I have somewhere read the sentiment, 
 "Woe to the nation that is unfitted for war." A nation 
 may have arsenals and armies and vast magazines, yet all 
 these will avail nothing if the military spirit be wanting, 
 for the wolf never counteth how many sheep there be. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 The CHAIRMAN : " The Press of the City of New- York: 
 unsurpassed in intelligence, and unexcelled in enterprise 
 throughout the world. It has proved the Tribune of a free 
 people, and the active Herald of the Times. May it long pre 
 serve to us the Nation, and never yield to other agencies its 
 Post." 
 
 We have with us to-night a gentleman who, perhaps, is 
 personally known to but few of us, but known to all of us 
 by his works ; and I have great confidence that he will re 
 spond to this toast quite as ably as he edits The Nation. 
 
UNION. 53 
 
 MR. E. L. GODKIR 
 
 I was very much, and not altogether agreeably surprised, 
 when I was informed that I should be expected to respond 
 to the toast just given. I feel that I can only very inade 
 quately and very incompletely speak for the press of New- 
 York. The branch of it with which I am more particu" 
 larly connected can hardly be said to fulfill the qualifica 
 tions which constitute the strongest claim of the New -York 
 Press to distinction amongst which I may mention, as, 
 perhaps, the principal, the extraordinary skill and enter 
 prise which it shows in the collection of news. The weekly 
 press, of course, profits by that ; but then it cannot claim 
 credit for it ; and it really looks upon the process of collect 
 ing with very much the same simple wonder as the rest of 
 mankind does. The events of the last summer, during the 
 European war, have, perhaps, brought home to us more 
 vividly than ever before, the full nature and extent of the 
 service which the daily press renders to the public in that 
 particular field of its duty. I think it may be said also, 
 that nobody who is unfamiliar with the machinery of the 
 press, can really have an adequate idea of the amount of 
 skill and ingenuity, courage, patience and energy, that is 
 put into the " make up " of the summary of the world s 
 news which is laid on our tables every morning. To be 
 sure, there is some of it to which, perhaps, we are not fully 
 entitled. We, perhaps, have a right to know all that Bis 
 marck knows, or that Grambetta knows, or Moltke knows, 
 of the events of the war ; but we hardly have a right to 
 full and true and particular details of battles and skir 
 mishes of which no report has, or ever will reach the Prus 
 sian or the French headquarters ; and we have occasionally, 
 during the summer, been treated to some such items of 
 news. [Laughter and applause.] 
 
 The New- York Press undertakes to do a great deal - 
 
54 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 more, I think, than the press of any other country or city ; 
 and the greater part of it it certainly does admirably well. 
 [Applause.] It incurs, however, the penalty which usually 
 attaches to great enterprises and the .^assuming of great 
 responsibilities in laying itself open to a great deal of 
 fault finding. Notwithstanding the fault finding, it may be 
 truthfully said, that if the members of all the other profes 
 sions would, in proportion to their opportunities and abili 
 ties, do as much for the purification of society as the mem 
 bers of the press do, society would certainly before now 
 have been rid of many and the greatest of its evils. In 
 judging the press, we have to remember that an editor can 
 never speak in a whisper. Whatever he has to say, he has 
 to say through a speaking trumpet, and at the top of his 
 voice. If, for instance, as sometimes happens, he has to ex 
 press his dissatisfaction at the conduct of a brother editor, 
 he cannot whisper it about in coteries, as the lawyer or the 
 doctor can, but he has to proclaim it from the housetop ; 
 and this has not a tendency to raise the press in the popular 
 steem. 
 
 The power of the press is now enormous, and the exercise 
 of it is practically unrestrained, either by law, or by public 
 opinion. And I think, when we consider this, and consider 
 what human nature is, that the wonder is that this power 
 should have been so little abused, and has, on the whole, 
 been exercised so much for good. 
 
 I saw, the other day, in a paper for whose opinions I have 
 
 great respect the Christian Union an enumeration of the 
 
 wants of the day, and there was set down as one of the 
 
 most serious and pressing of them all, the want of Christian 
 
 iitors. It occurred to me that there was one want which 
 
 I more pressing,_the want of Christian readers. 
 
 (Applause). I think that what the economists call an ef- 
 
 ;ual demand for Christian editors would be answered as 
 
 lily as a similar demand for any other commodity ; and 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION, 55 
 
 the only people who can create such a demand, are Chris 
 tian readers. This is simply another way of saying that 
 the press is exactly what the community calls for. It can 
 never be anything else. And in the new civilization, upon 
 the first stage of which we now find ourselves, the press will 
 undoubtedly do the greater part of the work in giving tone 
 to society. The assertion may seem paradoxical, but the 
 press will take its character and tone from society. The 
 one reacts on the other. When we meet with a paper which 
 violates decency, which obstructs justice, or shields corruption, 
 or drags family secrets to light, it will not do to cast all the 
 odium of it on the man who makes an unclean living by it. 
 Those who read it are certainly partners, to a very great ex 
 tent, in his guilt. [Applause]. 
 
 There is one other point connected with the press which 
 is pertinent in an address to an assembly like this, which is 
 composed of gentlemen who are united by their interest in 
 a great public library, it is the charge which is so fre 
 quently brought against ne wpapers of being the enemies 
 of books. One hears it constantly said that the excessive 
 growth of newspaper reading has a tendency to drive from 
 the world the careful thinkers, and the close students, and 
 the patient investigators, by destroying in the public mind 
 all taste for, and all sympathy with the results of their 
 labors. Now, I think that if we look back during fifty 
 years, inside of which the newspaper press may be said to 
 have taken its rise, we shall not find much to support that 
 charge, but on the contrary, much to upset it. Although 
 it is true that in some branches of the arts, other ages have 
 been much more thorough and pains-taking than our age is, 
 nevertheless, in the fields of science and literature, which 
 require study, and search, and patient investigation, there 
 has been no age so thorough as ours ; and, although I do 
 not mean to say that the growth of books and the growth 
 of the newspaper press stand to each other in the relation of 
 
06 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 cause and effect, yet I think that I am quite warranted in 
 the assertion that the newspaper is not the enemy of books 
 and that newspaper reading, instead of being a hindrance, 
 is really a help to thorough investigation, patient search 
 and severe study. The newspaper press not only multiplies 
 readers, but it certainly does something towards providing 
 the authors of good books. [Applause]. 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN." The College of the City of New- 
 York : As the Free Academy, she educated many of our 
 noblest sons. May her usefulness increase in equal propor 
 tion to the dignity of her name. " 
 
 We have with us a gentleman who is best known to us 
 for his efforts, and for his successes upon the tented field, 
 ever ready to perform all the duties which he was there 
 called upon to perform, manfully and earnestly. Of late he 
 has been called to the Presidency of the College of the City 
 of New-York ; and I have no doubt he will fill that posi 
 tion with the same honor, the same integrity, and the same 
 directness of purpose with which he fulfilled the duties of 
 his old profession. I beg to introduce to you Major Gen 
 eral Webb. 
 
 MAJOR-GENERAL ALEX AN DEE S. WEBB. 
 Mr. PRESIDENT and GENTLEMEN: In the first place, I 
 must thank you for the wording of your toast. And next, 
 I thank you for having preceded me with such earnest 
 men as Governor Woodford, and your president, who 
 has in such well rounded sentences, expressed so much 
 that gives me cheer in the cause I represent. 
 
 You speak, first, of the Free Academy, and of its gradu 
 ates, and you speak of them in the most flattering terms, as 
 noble men. I come here to-night nearer to you because I 
 have been so short a time with that institution. I can, for 
 that reason, speak to you of it almost as one cf you, and as 
 an N outsider, but as one who has had time and opportunity 
 to thoroughly appreciate what I doubt has ever been 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICEKS UNION". 57 
 
 brought before you in proper language. I can speak to you 
 of its graduates, for their records I have examined. I can 
 point westward, to the man who took the place of Mitchel 
 in the observatory. I can point to the seat of the judge. I 
 can point you to lawyers to the number of eighty or ninety ; 
 to the clergy ten or fifteen ; to your architects five or 
 six, who are now known by their names, but who are not 
 known to you as they should be, as the graduates of that 
 place. The institution has not received its credit for them " 
 because I assure you I do not think the earnest voice of 
 some who have felt its influence has ever been raised in 
 properly bringing the Institution before the thinking minds 
 of our community. I am here as the President of that In 
 stitution. I am in the Institution, though still an army 
 officer, and still a representative- of the men who are also 
 represented here to-night by Major-Greneral McDowell; I 
 am the representative of these men to do a simple duty, 
 and to use my best endeavors, the gift of the United States 
 Government to me. [Applause.] 
 
 As a Free Academy, the Institution was founded for a 
 purpose which has never, perhaps, been fully explained to 
 those who, as citizens, cannot generally find the time to 
 bestow upon our educational system the thought which we, 
 who are most interested in it, feel that at many times we 
 have a right to demand for it. It had a double object. It 
 was not simply to give a higher education to those who 
 had no money wherewith to buy it, but its object also, was 
 to give an incentive to no less than sixty thousand youths, 
 and to place there a high standard of education. It has 
 fulfilled its mission in that respect. I say this after a care 
 ful examination that it has raised the standard of educa 
 tion. And it has done this entirely outside, and independ 
 ent of all physical machinery. The very best evidence of 
 this that could be given, I give you in my own person, 
 in my own election to the position I now hold. It is there- 
 
58 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 fore to me a sacred trust more sacred than you could pos 
 sibly believe. When I see before me each morning eight 
 hundred representatives of more than sixty thousand boys, 
 who are there, not only to receive an education, but also to 
 receive that which comes from that education that manli 
 ness and independence, that feeling that if you do right you 
 will be carried on in the right I feel then, and in such 
 times, what my responsibility is. 
 
 I have been there but one year and two short months. I 
 came there under the promise that it should be made what 
 its founders intended it should be. It is sui generis. You 
 have no right without an examination, to test it by any 
 other college in the land. It stands by itself. It has a 
 special mission. And that mission I feel that it must and 
 will fulfil. [Applause.] Within the City of New- York, 
 you have six thousand half educated boys who have been 
 forced to leave that institution by the want of means on the 
 part of their parents to support them. For the half educa 
 tion given those, it has seldom, if ever, received any credit 
 whatever. But once within its walls, once brought in con 
 tact with those who will teach them that be they rich or 
 poor, it is the battle of the brain, it is manliness, it is in 
 tegrity, it is the desire to do right, that will make the man 
 once brought within its influence, I believe they are sent 
 out to you to be better and purer men. [Applause.] 
 
 You have here nearly six hundred graduates. I can give 
 you the members and show you their several callings. You 
 have now a Board of Education which has determined that 
 this college shall furnish those who shall be ^prepared to 
 teach, in a proper way, those who enter our public schools ; 
 and I ask you, as thinking men, is it a little, is it a small 
 thing that we turn out five in a year who are competent to 
 teach, not only with the head, but with the heart ? Is it a 
 small thing that you are thus enabled to place within our 
 educational system five or ten young men per year, who are 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 59 
 
 taught to believe that in educating men there is a heart, and 
 a soul, and a fitness to the end that must go with it ? That 
 has been done within the last year ; and they are now erect 
 ing upon the college grounds a school costing the miserable 
 sum of thirty thousand dollars, which is only begged from 
 the funds, in order that the quality of those young men 
 may there be tested to see if they are fit to be sent out as 
 educators of the young. I assure you that a hundred thou 
 sand a year would help you as much in that respect, as in 
 any way that you could spend it. 
 
 I am glad that I have had the opportunity to express to 
 you the hopes and wishes which I cherish for the Institu 
 tion with which I have been for a short time connected. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN. " The Clergy of New- York distin 
 guished pre eminently for commending Christ s truth to the 
 common people, and embodying his spirit of humanity in 
 works of wide-spread beneficence." 
 
 Last night, at the Academy of Music, you were aware of 
 the many excuses that were received by the president of 
 the Association from the speakers that were expected to be 
 present, and that in the stress we laid violent hands upon 
 a gentleman whom we had invited merely as one of the 
 hearers. He made, I doubt not you will all agree with 
 me, one of the most telling speeches of the evening. We 
 have laid hands upon him again, and shall ask him to re 
 spond to the toast which has been given the Rev. Henry 
 C. Potter, of Grace Church. [Applause.] 
 
 EEV. H. C. POTTER. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT I was very much at home last night in 
 taking the unprepared service that I did, because of my 
 past relations to the merchants 7 clerks of this and other 
 cities. I am not so much at home to-night in speaking for 
 the clergy of New- York. [Laughter.] I am but a junior 
 
60 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 among the juniors ; and when I am confronted at the op 
 posite end of the table with the distinguished divine who 
 represents the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, [ap 
 plause,] I may well cast about for some such remote ex 
 cuse for action, as I heard an Irishman relate the other day, 
 of a friend, who chanced to meet the great poet to whom I 
 alluded last evening, and said to him : "Mr. Longfellow, 
 might I shake your hand, sir ?" and in excuse for the lib 
 erty, as he regarded it, he added : " Sir, I have got a 
 brother that is a pote and a drunkard, too !" [Laughter.] 
 
 It is only as one of the most insignificant of this great 
 brotherhood, and the youngest of them all, that I under 
 take at all to respond to your toast to-night. And yet if 
 any words ought to bring a clergyman to his feet, they are 
 the very kindly words in which you have spoken of that 
 vocation here to-night; and surely, in the face of them, 
 the clergy ought gratefully to remember, and I as one of 
 them do gratefully remember, and bear testimony to the 
 large-hearted and generous co-operation in every work of 
 fellowship which the clergy have had from the truly princely 
 class whom you represent What would be the philan 
 thropies of New- York without the purses of the merchants 
 of New- York? It is to me one of the most cheering facts 
 connected with the ministry in New- York, as I may speak 
 from my short experience of it here, that wherever there is 
 a good cause, a cause that has a bottom to it, and that is 
 doing a direct and practical work, there is no material diffi 
 culty in getting the money to sustain it. [Applause.] 
 Sometimes, it is true, our merchants are impatient of the 
 constant interruptions of this sort that meet them at their 
 business; and sometimes, as I heard the other day, they re 
 ceive those interruptions somewhat irreverently, if not pro 
 fanely ; but, as the incident I am about to relate will show, 
 even that irreverence generally finds its end in their habit- 
 ual generosity. I was told the other day of a somewhat 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 61 
 
 persistent, and not very discreet clergyman from the West, 
 who, full of the college which he represented, went down, 
 into Wall Street and pushed his way into a banking house, 
 and, without invitation, into the back counting-room, and r 
 without a word of preface, stuck under the eyes of an en- 
 grossed banker there his subscription book, with the sim 
 ple question : " Sir, what will you give to College ? r 
 
 It was not very surprising (though it was certainly not very 
 reverent), that he answered as he did " Sir, I will give 
 
 exactly one ." I leave you to fill in the word. 
 
 [Laughter.] The clergyman was a methodical man ; he 
 took his book to the corner of the room and wrote Mr. 
 John , one d ." [Great laughter.] He went 
 down the street and took his book into another counting- 
 room ; and you can imagine the sort of enthusiasm which 
 that sort t>f a subscription called out there. Persons who 
 saw it,- said : " Sir, I will give you twenty-five dollars for 
 that joke, it is worth it." [Laughter.] He went to another 
 place and got a still better subscription. [Renewed laughter.] 
 The story travelled down the street, as stories do travel 
 down Wall Street and presently it came back to the spot 
 where it had originated, and the merchant who had made 
 the impatient and profane answer, found it was going up 
 and down Wall Street with very productive results. He 
 followed this astute -and clever parson from the West, and 
 said to him : " Sir, this is a very good joke of yours, but it 
 has gone quite far enough, and I want to ask you what you 
 mean by putting my name on your book in connection with 
 such a profane expression ?" "I mean," said the clergy 
 man, " that when I came from the far West, my bishop told 
 me to put down on my subscription book every subscrip 
 tion I should receive, however small. [Laughter and ap 
 plause.] I have simply obeyed his directions." "Very 
 well, sir," said the merchant, " you have got the better of 
 me this time. I am willing to pay for this bit of humor," 
 
62 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 and he offered the clergyman twenty -five dollars to erase 
 the objectionable subscription. " No, indeed," said the 
 clergyman, u that subscription is worth a great deal more 
 than twenty -five dollars." [Great laughter.] But to make 
 a long story short, the end of it was and I tell the story to 
 illustrate the generosity of merchants in all matters of be 
 nevolence the merchant who had welcomed the agent 
 with such profanity, handed him a check for two hundred 
 and fifty dollars. [Applause.] 
 
 This is an illustration, so far as I know them, of the 
 habits of the class to which you belong, and to which it is 
 the pride of my life that I was once privileged for a short 
 time to belong. 
 
 What is a merchant, unless he undertakes to exert upon 
 the community, through his calling, just such an influence 
 for good as your library undertakes to bear upon it! 
 What is the merchant, in other words, without the advan 
 tages of culture? What but a mere accumulator, who, 
 when he comes to the end of his busy and engrossed life, 
 and dies out of it, ceases to be of interest to the world, save 
 as his effects create an interest so that the world forgets 
 the man in merely asking the gross and material question 
 What did he leave behind him?" On the contrary, 
 the merchant whose mind has been enlightened and ele 
 vated and enlarged by culture, who has learned to love let 
 ters, and through them to think of something else than 
 mere accumulation he becomes the large-hearted bene 
 factor in every good work. He founds the noble institu 
 tions of charity, and of literature, and of benevolence which 
 are destined one day to be the glory of this great cornmer. 
 cial city, and keep potent, as I believe can be done in 
 scarcely any other way, the enriching and ennobling in 
 fluences of the institution which you represent. [Applause.] 
 I^thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the privilege of having 
 responded to the kindly sentiment which you have given 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 63 
 
 in behalf of the calling which I here, in part, represent. I 
 desire no better alliance in the great work which the clergy 
 are called upon to do in the City of New- York, than to be 
 re-enforced by your merchants from day to day, and not only 
 backed up by them, but, as I heard a clever parson say the 
 other day, when making a strong appeal in behalf of a good . 
 cause but " green-backed up " in behalf of all good works. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN. To almost every other toast given this 
 evening, one response is enough, but so important a toast 
 as that which I have just proposed, I think, will bear a few 
 words from our venerable and much-esteemed friend, Dr. 
 Adams. [Applause.] 
 
 KEY. DR. ADAMS. 
 
 I am very much obliged to you, Mr. President (although, 
 as you yourself know, this is altogether unexpected upon 
 my part), for the very kindly manner with which my name 
 has been received, and this fresh reference to the profession 
 of which I am permitted to be an humble representative. 
 
 In some parts of the world, and in many parts of the con 
 tinent of Europe, men of action, of enterprise, men of the 
 world, as we say, are in direct antagonism with churchmen or 
 clergymen, not for the reason which I suppose none of them 
 hold that Christianity has no affinities to enterprise but 
 because, unhappily, in some parts of the world, those who 
 represent the Church, have put themselves in opposition to 
 liberty and to progress and to enterprise. Most fortunately, 
 the reverse of that is true in our own country. And the 
 very fact, that on an occasion like this, you have framed a 
 sentiment in honor of the clergy, shows that in your appre 
 hension, the clergy are the allies and the patrons of all that 
 is liberal, and refined, and healthful in human society. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 My eloquent friend and brother, Mr. Potter, knows that 
 
64 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 we are accustomed to speak from texts. He has got 
 through, however, most happily, without one being given to 
 him ; but if I were to fall upon a text (and I always want 
 some little plank to float upon when I am thrown upon the 
 water in this way), I should say that your very name, the 
 Mercantile Library Association those two words, joined in 
 that connection was a suggestive theme. There was a 
 time when the merchants were classed by themselves, just 
 as the clergy were classed by themselves ; and the different 
 classes of society were distinguished by some peculiarity 
 in dress. The different classes then had rivalries and 
 antagonisms. We are all familiar for books have been full 
 of them from the time of the old classics with the pictures 
 representing the choices which men were to make in life. 
 It has been a very favorite mode of representing life to pic 
 ture the world as a mart of commerce, where we have dif 
 ferent objects to select from, and where the objects them 
 selves are placed in rivalry or antagonism. It was sup 
 posed that it was absolutely necessary for a man in making 
 a choice, to confine himself to one particular class. Mer 
 chants, for instance, were not supposed to have any affinity 
 for literary pursuits, or to have any interest in books of any 
 kind, except such as are peculiar to counting-rooms, and 
 are called ledgers. But here you bring merchants and 
 books together in the Mercantile Library, which is a col 
 lection of books in the hands and for the use of merchants. 
 It is a libel that there is anything unreconcilable in these 
 pursuits ; and the names that we might bring together, of 
 such men as Halleck, and Bryant, and Sprague which are 
 just as familiar in the banking house, and on the exchange, 
 as they are in connection with the Muses are a complete 
 refutation of the statement that these pursuits are irrecon 
 cilable [Applause.] 
 
 I^see sometimes on the doors of counting-rooms" No 
 admittance except on business," but I do not believe that 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 65 
 
 that is the right thing for a merchant to put upon his fore 
 head. It was once, perhaps, but it is not now. I believe 
 that there is something liberalizing in the pursuits of the 
 merchant; and I believe also, that in the activity of a 
 commercial metropolis there is everything favorable to in 
 tellectual development, if men did but know it. I think it 
 is a great deal easier to give direction to a sparkling brook 
 than it is to put motion into a dead, stagnant pool. To 
 young men who are desirous of improving intellectually, 
 and of making advance in everything that is noble, I should 
 say, come to the city ; stay not in the torpor and apathy of 
 the country. For everything that is good, intellectually, 
 morally, and spiritually, give me the life and the activity of 
 the city. [Applause.] 
 
 It has been the attempt of philosophers oftentimes in a 
 somewhat facetious way to give a definition of man as 
 an animal, that would distinguish from other animals. 
 Burke gave this definition : that man was an animal that 
 cooked his food ; to which a distinguished man replied that 
 was hardly a correct definition, because there were some 
 animals that subjected their food to a process somewhat 
 similar to the culinary process. Adam Smith gave this 
 definition : that "man was an animal that made bargains." 
 You never knew one dog to exchange a bone with another 
 dog. Now, for a man to devote himself, as his profession 
 for life, to this matter of exchanging and bartering, and do 
 it in a way that shall leave his name and his credit immacu 
 late, and still increase his material possessions, is a great 
 art. Why, if my recollection is right, mercor, mercari, had 
 some connection with old Mercury, and Mercury was the 
 prince of thieves ; and I think there is some affinity be 
 tween the two. There are some men who, in this matter of. 
 bartering, take undue advantages, which are not much to 
 their honor or reputation. One of that class said once to 
 Dr. Johnson that hater of everything that was mean " I 
 6 
 
66 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 must live somehow." Johnson replied, " Sir, I deny your 
 premises; it is not at all necessary that you should live 
 somehow !" [Applause.] What is there that we should 
 honor more than we do commercial honor? That word 
 "credit," what a beautiful etymology it has credo, "I 
 believe him ;" " I trust him." That is the meaning of the 
 word. How worthy of honor is that man who, in all his 
 transactions with his fellow-men, in bartering, gaining 
 striving and acquiring, maintains a spotless honor and 
 secures a credit such that one . stroke of his pen would be 
 recognized on every exchange in the world ; a credit that 
 would load ships in distant parts of the globe ! If there is 
 not something in that that is noble and magnanimous 
 something that is chivalric then I do not know who 
 there is entitled to the name and honor of chivalry. 
 
 I have had a little intercourse with the merchants of New- 
 York now during a pastorate of thirty-six years in this city ; 
 and I heartily respond to everything that my friend, Dr. 
 Potter has said. I never yet knew a good thing, a really 
 good thing, that would commend itself to the sound judg 
 ment of men, and connected with morals or religion, for 
 which I could not find a prompt and generous response to 
 an appeal in its behalf from the merchants of the City of 
 New- York. [Applause.] And at this time, when young men 
 are making their plans for life, I do not know an opportu 
 nity more auspicious and more hopeful, for one who wishes 
 to make his mark in the world, than a merchant who is truly 
 magnanimous in his purposes, honorable in his intentions, 
 correct m his dealings with his fellow-men, liberal in his 
 pursuits, who knows that there are other books besides the 
 ledger, and who reads them, and who is projecting (as men 
 at this board have been, and as their successors, I know, 
 will do) things which are to be permanent decorations of 
 our city, in the interest of learning, philanthropy, and re 
 ligion. [Applause.] 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 67 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN : " The Clinton Hall Association an 
 enduring memorial of munificence on the part of our mer 
 chants: wisely bestowed and abundantly rewarded." [Ap 
 plause.] 
 
 In regard to the person whom I intend to call upon to 
 respond to this toast, I am a good deal in the position of 
 the boys who, seeing an old man who was noted for his pro 
 fanity, and who had a load of stone upon his cart, pulled 
 the tail-board out, and in going up hill, of course, the 
 stones were all scattered. The boys ran up the hill, ex 
 pecting to hear a volley of profanity from this old man at 
 this mishap which had occurred. But when the old man 
 saw what had occurred, he looked on very complacently 
 and said : " There is no use ; words cannot express my 
 feelings on this occasion." 
 
 I know I speak the feeling of all of you when I say, in 
 regard to our friend, Isaac H. Bailey, that no words are 
 necessary in introducing him to you this evening. [Ap 
 plause.] 
 
 MR. ISAAC H. BAILEY. 
 
 I feel it a great honor to be asked to respond in behalf 
 of the merchants of New- York who contributed to the 
 building up of the Mercantile Library Association that 
 roll of honor containing the names of men who in their 
 lifetime have distinguished themselves by recognizing the 
 literary wants of the young merchants of New- York. I am 
 particularly happy in being here to-night, on the occasion 
 of our fiftieth anniversary, and when, after having passed 
 around the hat so often, we are at length in the position of 
 respectable gentlemen of means and resources, who give 
 dinner parties and ask no favors. [Laughter and applause.] 
 I am entirely satisfied that we should never have organized 
 this Association of the Alumni, if we had not been in that 
 situation of perfect independence which made our guests 
 
(58 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 entirely sure that they would not be called upon for contri 
 butions. 
 
 My friend, Mr. Camp, in wording this toast, I am happy 
 to say, has not connected this Association with those reli- 
 o-ious and other benevolent institutions which throw out 
 such broad hints to wealthy citizens that somebody will 
 profit by their death, by printing upon their programme a 
 form of bequest to the association which they represent, and 
 t,hus throwing out a very unpleasant idea to those gentle 
 men of whom there may be some here who may be con 
 templating a retirement from life. [Laughter.] 
 
 It is a sad thought, and one that has always been sug 
 gestive of very unpleasant ideas to me, that a man should 
 be regarded as more profitable when in his tomb than in 
 his life time. Happily, we have around us those who have 
 distinguished themselves in their life time, during their ma 
 ture years, and while they were in the full glow of health, 
 by remembering the literary necessities of their fellows, and 
 contributing most nobly to them. When we have our 
 Stewarts, our Coopers, our Dodges in our midst, we need 
 not look for the prosperity of our institutions in obituary 
 notices. [Applause.] 
 
 I have a very pleasant memory of my connection with 
 the Library Association in its earlier days, and I remember 
 (and perhaps some of you are also sufficiently aged to re 
 member), that when I came to the City of New- York, many 
 years ago, I intimated to my confidential friends, that there 
 was one round upon the ladder of fame to which I wished 
 to aspire and that was the presidency of the Mercantile 
 Library Association. [Laughter.] It cost me several 
 weary years of toiling ambition to attain that proud height, 
 but having attained it, I assure you that the measure of my 
 ambition was full ; and I have since looked with sympa 
 thizing pity upon those who were struggling for that proud 
 position. [Laughter and applause.] I am entirely willing 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 69 
 
 that my honors should end with the distinguished office 
 which I held then. Although I must confess, that not 
 being gifted with foresight to see what would come, I did 
 not,^ when I was president of the Mercantile Library Asso 
 ciation, and looked over the figures of my annual report, 
 which presented an aggregate of ten thousand per year of 
 income, ever contemplate that I should witness the period 
 (and perhaps I should not if I had not advanced to a serene 
 old age), [great laughter,] when its resources would be fifty 
 thousand dollars per year, and its increase of books twelve 
 thousand volumes annually. I expect on the arrival of our 
 one hundredth celebration, to be here [renewed laughter,] 
 and congratulate you upon the realization of the dreams of 
 our president and all obtained out of that sinking fund 
 which the Trustees of the Clinton Hall Association hold 
 for the benefit of the Mercantile Library. [Applause and 
 laughter.] 
 
 It is the custom, I believe, of every man who responds to 
 a sentiment, to ignore the particular subject to which he is 
 asked to respond ; and I believe that I have been faithful 
 to that part of the programme, and yet I would like to say, 
 in behalf of this Clinton Hall Association, one single word : 
 that, having been created out of and being the outgrowth 
 of the Mercantile Library Association, having been, in fact, 
 elected the guardian of that Association, it has found itself 
 the guardian of a very healthy and a very wholesome ward, 
 which has occasioned little trouble, and which continues to 
 thrive by the aid of its excellent guardianship. I am 
 pleased in being able to state that in all the annual reports 
 of the Mercantile Library Association which I have read 
 since the year 1841, there has been one very prosaic and 
 yet very interesting sentence, and that is, " The Library is 
 free from debt." Such a remarkable ambition has been pre 
 sented among its officers to bring that sentence into each 
 annual report, that I remember, on one occasion, when I 
 
70 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 was asking a president how he was going to state the fact 
 to be in that respect, and whether he was going to give us 
 our grand old sentence, " The Library is free from debt," he 
 replied, " Yes ; we will report that, if we have to borrow 
 the money." [Applause.] 
 
 Gentlemen, I have been favored by your Chairman with 
 a telegraphic message, received to-day by the cable, from a 
 former friend of the Association, now somewhat lukewarm 
 with regard to all American institutions, but who, neverthe 
 less, has been very eminent in literature: 
 
 " Well, you have succeeded. Somebody is at the head of 
 the heap. See what you can make of him. I have no faith 
 in America, and no faith in fools. 
 
 "Yours respectfully, T. CAKLYLE." 
 
 But, gentlemen, I have the pleasure of stating to you 
 that there is a liberal Member of Parliament here to-night 
 who has faith in America, who has faith in ideas, and who 
 is thoroughly up to our American institutions. I am going 
 to ask you, with the permission of the chair to join with me 
 in drinking the health of Mr. Mundella. [Applause.] 
 
 MR. A. J. MUNDELLA (who was greeted with cheers), 
 said: 
 
 Mr. CHAIRMAN and GENTLEMEN The Vice-President 
 has proposed a very irregular toast, and one, indeed, for 
 which I am entirely unprepared, but for which I must at 
 least thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope the 
 kindly sentiments he uttered with respect to me, had more 
 foundation in fact than had the cable message which he has 
 read. [Laughter.] I trust that my countryman, Carlyle, 
 although he does say some rude things, has not been guilty 
 of sending such a message as that. [Applause and 
 laughter.] At any rate, I can safely say that few things 
 hare pleased me more since I have been among you than 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICEKS UNION. 71 
 
 to see the results of your great struggle, your recent war. 
 My friend, Major-Greneral McDowell, lias made some 
 very useful reflections on the real calamity which wars gen 
 erally bring upon a nation ; and he almost proved to my 
 mind that, although he is a good soldier, he is a better 
 Christian, and is somewhat in doubt, in his own conscience, 
 of the use of his profession. But there have been few wars 
 none that I can remember that show such useful results 
 as yours has done. [Applause.] I think it one of the 
 most gratifying features that I have ever witnessed, and one 
 that I never witness without a great deal of admiration 
 that the negro, who we said was not a man and a brother 
 (and as to whom I confess I brought with me to this coun 
 try some of my English prejudices, although I have long 
 been an emancipationist), has, after all, distinguished him 
 self in this country, by an industry and by orderly habits, 
 which not all the white men on our side of the globe dis 
 play. [Applause.] 
 
 Whenever my countrymen return from America, they 
 always speak of its splendid hospitality. I, too, shall have 
 to sing the same song when I return. I can hardly thank 
 Americans sufficiently for the kindly welcome which I 
 have received ; for I came among them a few months ago 
 almost an entire stranger, yet everywhere have been re 
 ceived with the kindest welcome, to which no merits of 
 mine entitle me. 
 
 I feel, as I know you feel, that we are all of one stock; 
 and that there ought to be no dividing lines between us". 
 [Applause.] It is true that I am a " liberal member of 
 Parliament," as has been stated; but that phrase means 
 something that you in this country have hardly yet come 
 to realize. We represent the people of England the men 
 who were your allies throughout your great struggle ; the 
 men who stood by you in spite of poverty, and famine and 
 
72 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 suffering ; and who were always true to you, notwithstand 
 ing the inducements and allurements presented to them to 
 be the contrary. [Applause.] 
 
 I am myself a large employer of labor (my trade was 1 the 
 custom trade), and I saw my workmen suffering for years 
 in consequence of your war. I never found a man among 
 them and I tried them again and again who would say 
 one word for the South. Notwithstanding all they had to 
 undergo, nothing could induce them to be untrue to their 
 faith in your principles. [Cheers.] 
 
 There has been a great revolution in England, although 
 it has been a revolution without bloodshed. The people 
 have been permitted to share the political power. Two 
 hundred new and " liberal " members of Parliament 
 were recently elected. The members of the aristocratic 
 party did not dare to meet that Parliament, but resigned be 
 fore it was called together ; and we have now in our gov 
 ernment such men as no government in England has ever 
 had before, and among them, and foremost, Gladstone, 
 Bright, Forster, the Duke of Argyll. Tradesmen and peers 
 are now working side by side for the amelioration and 
 emancipation of their country. [Cheers.] 
 
 I must confess that, although you treat me so well as an 
 individual, I cannot but perceive that you do not cherish 
 the same kindly feeling towards my country. It would be 
 idle in me to attempt to disguise that there are grounds of 
 discontent and disagreement between your country and 
 mine. But I cannot believe, I will not believe and every 
 thing that I have seen and heard compels me to the con 
 trary that the sentiments which I find reported in the 
 morning papers as the expression of an honorable member 
 of your national legislature (General Butler) are the senti 
 ments of the people of America. I do not believe that you 
 desire the humiliation of my country, or that you desire to 
 go to war with it. I believe that such a catastrophe would 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 73 
 
 be one of the greatest that could afflict mankind. I may 
 say, as one who was and is sincerely and staunchly your 
 friend, that in whatever was done, or neglected to be done, 
 whereby you were wronged, my countrymen are prepared 
 to do you right, to the uttermost farthing. [Cheers.] 
 
 I cannot believe, I will not believe, that the intelligent 
 citizens of this great continent desire to throw back the 
 march of progress in my country by inflicting upon the mil 
 lions of newly enfranchised workmen of England the hor 
 rors of an internecine war. I do not believe that such is 
 the real sentiment of the people of this country. And I 
 will say further, that the English people rejoice in your 
 prosperity ; we glory in your success ; we do not envy it ; 
 we feel it as reflecting pride and satisfaction upon our own 
 country. I believe in all I have heard to-night as to what 
 may be your future. You cannot realize what your future 
 will be. I sincerely trust that all your hopes and aspira 
 tions may be realized. When I presented myself to my 
 constituency, in opposition to the man whose words rankle 
 deepest in your bosoms, I appealed to them on the ground 
 that our natural allies were the men who spoke our own 
 tongue, and were our own kindred. Their appreciation of 
 these sentiments is shown by the fact of my election over 
 one of the ablest men of my country, by a majority of thou 
 sands. 
 
 I trust God will prevent any such misfortune to the peo 
 ple of both sides of the Atlantic, as I see foreshadowed in 
 the article in this morning s papers. I say that any man, 
 either on our side, or on yours, who desires to foment a war 
 between people speaking the same language, trusting in the 
 same Bible, having the same authors and traditions, and the 
 same sentiments and aspirations, for the mere purpose of 
 securing a political triumph, is guilty of the greatest crime 
 under heaven ! I trust you will forgive me for speaking 
 thus earnestly. I hope to live to see the day when the 
 
74 FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 whole English-speaking race will be confederated in one 
 great bond of union ; and if ever we do see that day, it will 
 put an end to war and bloodshed throughout the world. 
 [Long continued applause.] 
 
 THE CHAIRMAN. Our last regular toast of the evening, 
 is one with which you will all cordially sympathise : 
 
 " Woman the only privileged class in our land ; her 
 rule is not disputed, because she derives her power from 
 the consent of the governed." 
 
 We have with us an ex-Lieutenant-Grovernor of the State 
 of New- York, who will respond to this toast the Hon. Ly- 
 man Tremaine. 
 
 MR. TREMAINE. 
 
 GENTLEMEN Your chairman has called upon me, a com 
 parative stranger to the merchants of New- York, and a 
 non-resident of the city, to respond to the toast in honor 
 of woman. If you were upon the witness stand, I should 
 be inclined to ask you a question, and that would be in 
 the language of Artemus Ward, in his address to the six 
 teen widows of a deceased Mormon, who were all making 
 love to him at once, as he was about to leave Utah, " Why 
 is this thus ?" [Laughter.] I suppose the answer of the 
 chairman would be that, the subject he has given me is so 
 very excellent in itself, and that its intrinsic beauty and 
 purity are such, that it requires no ornamentation or em 
 bellishment, and therefore may be entrusted to the most 
 ordinary speaker. 
 
 The subject that is given me reminds me of the story 
 of a country horse jockey who was trying to sell a span of 
 horses (one black and one bay) to a wealthy city cus 
 tomer, who spent his whole time in enlarging upon the 
 excellent qualities of the bay, while the purchaser thought 
 that the black horse was altogether the better of the two ; 
 and he said to the jockey : " Why is it that you are talking 
 all the time about this bay horse, when the black horse 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICERS UNION. 75 
 
 seems to me to be the better ?" " Ah," said the jockey, 
 " the other horse will speak for himself." So it is with 
 woman. 
 
 The Alpha and the Omega of the sentiment which I 
 would advance with respect to this subject is simply this: 
 that woman is the highest, the noblest, the holiest blessing 
 that a kind Providence has ever vouchsafed to man. Some 
 musty, fusty, crusty old bachelor might be disposed to take 
 issue with me as to this, and to say that Eve was the first 
 to introduce sin into the world. (A laugh.) Now, I have 
 a great respect for the general opinions of mankind, yet I 
 doubt if old Mother Eve has not been more sinned against 
 than sinning. It is very certain that the Book says that she 
 was herself first beguiled by the serpent, and of course he 
 belonged to the masculine race. (Laughter.) I think the 
 Bible also teaches us that when Eve sinned, it was for the 
 benefit of her lord, Adam, and that she desired to elevate 
 him to the dignity of a God, where he would know good 
 from evil. But if you should see, as I have, the last and 
 crowning work from the chisel of Hiram Powers, in his 
 study at Florence, the magnificent statue of Eve, represent 
 ing her at the moment when she says to the Lord, " The 
 serpent be guiled me, and I did eat," and should notice the 
 expression of sweet penitence and humility that he has so 
 successfully infused into the marble, I am sure you would 
 be disposed to pardon Eve, or that any resentment you 
 might feel would be displaced by sympathy and pity. But 
 if Eve sinned, I think the debt was more than paid when 
 another woman gave us the Saviour, whereby Heaven and 
 eternal happiness were opened to us. 
 
 "Woman s influence is always on the right side ; and she 
 is the conservative force of humanity. This is acknowledged 
 everywhere. What woman on earth has been more honored 
 than the sovereign of the distingushed Member of Parlia 
 ment who has addressed us to-night, [applause] the model 
 
FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 mother, the devoted wife, the consistent Christian, and the 
 exemplary Queen of England ? [Applause.] Only a few 
 months ago I had the pleasure of visiting the Eoyal Chapel 
 at Windsor Castle. Among the tombs of the kings that 
 are buried there, I saw the memorial that was designed 
 and erected by that Queen, and which, while it illustrated 
 the virtues of her deceased royal husband, seemed also to 
 me, to reveal those traits of character that to her seemed 
 worthy of commendation. It was a bas-relief, representing 
 t four scenes, one where he was clothing the naked, another 
 where he was feeding the hungry, another where he was 
 visiting the sick, and another where he was administering 
 consolation to the afflicted. 
 
 And going across the channel, while perhaps there is but 
 little sympathy felt for Louis Napoleon, how different is the 
 feeling everywhere with regard to the devoted Empress 
 Eugenie, who in her misfortune has shown herself possessed 
 of a true womanly heart, and has commanded the cordial 
 sympathy of all true men and women everywhere. [Ap 
 plause.] 
 
 I do not refer to these instances because I would dis 
 parage my own country women, for I tell you, what I be 
 lieve every unprejudiced American will endorse, that 
 nowhere on the continent of Europe will you find women 
 who, in point of real taste, beauty of form, elegance, and in 
 the qualities that adorn and elevate the female sex, are 
 superior to our own country women. [Applause.] 
 
 Woman is the solace and comfort of man. She supports 
 tottering footsteps of infancy, administers comfort to 
 e middle. aged, she directs and upholds our children in 
 the paths of righteousness, of peace and of honor. 
 
 see around me to-night, the representatives of the 
 
 Ith, the culture, the intelligence and the enterprise of 
 
 great commercial metropolis ; and if I should put the 
 
 stion to each of you-to whom, more than to any other 
 
OF THE EX-OFFICEKS UNION. 77 
 
 person, do you feel indebted for the high positions and 
 privileges you hold and enjoy ? I believe the unanimous 
 response would be that you owed all to the influence, and 
 the teachings that you received from your sainted mother. 
 [Applause.] Am I not right ? [Cries of yes ! yes ! ] If 
 I am, then let us cherish this great blessing. And if there 
 are any bachelors here I would advise them to go, as soon 
 as they can make the necessary arrangements, and rnarry 
 the girls that they have loved so long and so well. 
 [Laughter and continued applause.] 
 
 The company here rose from the table, and shortly after 
 separated. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LIBRARY SCHOOL LIBRAE* 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 MAR 1 3 1964 
 
 
 WARS 1966 
 
 
 FEB 2 7 1968 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD 21-50m-4. 63 . . General Library 
 (D6471slO)476 University of California 
 Berkeley