(LIBRARY 
 
 UNIV .F 
 
 CAI.I 
 
 SAN DIEGO j
 
 , WISDOM, ELOQUENCE, 
 1 GREAT SPEECHES OF 
 COL, R G, INGERSOLL
 
 WIT, 
 
 WISDOM, ELOQUENCE, 
 
 AND 
 
 GREAT SPEECHES 
 
 OF 
 
 COL. R. G. INGERSOLL, 
 
 INCLUDING ELOQUENT EXTRACTS, WITTY, WISE, PUNGENT, TRUTH 
 FUL SAYINGS AND FULL REPORTS OF THE GREAT SPEECHES 
 OF THIS CELEBRATED MAN, TOGETHER WITH THE 
 FUNERAL ORATION AT HIS BROTHER S GRAVE. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 J. B. McCLURE, 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 RHODES & McCLURE, PUBLISHERS. 
 i83j.
 
 Entered according- to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by 
 J. B. rUfC lure Ac K. S. Kbodcft, 
 
 In the Offi-.-e of tho Libnrian of Congress,
 
 The general public are quite familiar with the wit, 
 wisdom, and eloquence of Col. R. G. Ingersoll. He cer 
 tainly ranks among the first of living orators, and many of 
 his sayings are as remarkable for terseness, pungency, and 
 truthfulness, as can be found, perhaps, in the English 
 tongue. The Compiler presents in this volume what he 
 has selected with great care, and what he believes to be the 
 wittiest, wisest and most eloquent wcrds of this noted man. 
 
 The reader will also find a number of the Colonel s 
 most eluquent and celebrated speeches given in full, includ 
 ing the remarkable funeral oration at his brother s grave. 
 
 J. B. McCLURE. 
 
 CHICAGO, June 20, 1881.
 
 A PACB 
 
 A Country Full of Kings, - . . -68 
 A Dark Picture, .... 79 
 Admit Your Faults, - - - 2O 
 A Dream (Part II), ..... 45 
 American Labor, - . . - 40 
 America s Coming Greatness, .... 82 
 A Michigan Story, - - - - 49 
 Amusing Remarks About Money, ... 70 
 Amusing Remarks About Getting Up Early in the Morning (Part II) 13 
 An Amusing and Instructive Speech (in full) to the Farmers on Agri 
 culture (Part II) 3 
 An Amusing Story, ..... 71 
 A Nation (Part II), - - . - 56 
 A Panic Picture, ..... 74 
 A Patent Lecture, - - - - 30 
 A Picture, - ... 56 
 A Revelation and Revolution (Part II), . . .48 
 A Scathing Denunciation on Alcohol, ... 12 
 At His Brother s Grave (Part II), . - - -65 
 
 Beefsteak How the Colonel Cooks It, 
 Best of This Earth (Part II), 
 Bright Money, ... 
 
 42 
 
 7 
 73 
 
 Celebrated Speech (in full) to the Veteran Soldiers at Indianapolis 
 
 (Part II), . . . - 27 
 
 Civilizing Influence of W oman, ... 28 
 
 E 
 Eloquent Defense of Good Government, ... 54
 
 CONTENTS, 7 
 
 P PACK. 
 
 Funeral Oration at his Brother s Grave (Part II), - 65 
 
 Future of America (Part II), .... 63 
 
 G 
 
 Good Clothes, - - - . - 28 
 
 Good Dollars and Good Times, ... 57 
 
 Great Speech on the Declaration of Independence (Part II), - 47 
 
 H 
 
 Honest Money, ..... 53 
 
 "Honor Brights," - - - - 15 
 
 How a Man Should Treat His Wife and Children (Part II), - 21 
 
 How Ingersoll Hopes to End His Days, ... 43 
 
 How the Colonel Cooks Beefsteak, ... 42 
 
 How They Did When Ingersoll was a Farmer, - 21 
 
 Human Happiness, - - - - 9 
 
 I 
 
 Ideal Farmer (Part II), - 6 
 
 Illinois, ...... 32 
 
 Industry, - . . . . 27 
 
 Influence of a Home, II 
 
 Influence of Woman, - . - . -28 
 
 Ingersoll Believes in the " Fashions," ... 28 
 
 Ingersoll on Alcohol, - - - - - 12 
 
 Inge: soil on Cookery (Part II), ... 22 
 
 Ingersollisms, - - - - - 15 
 
 Ingersollisms, - - - - .33 
 
 Ingersollisms, - - - - - -45 
 
 Ingersollisms, ..... 6l 
 
 Ingersollisms, - - - - - -85 
 
 Ingersoll s Apt Words on State Lines, ... 58 
 
 Ingersoll s Big Horse Race (Part II), - - 43 
 
 Ingersoll s Eloquent Vision .... 37 
 
 Ingersoll s Faith in American Labor, - - 40 
 
 Ingersoll s History of State. Sovereignty, 78 
 
 L 
 
 Love and Joy - 29 
 
 Love and Life, - - - - . 15 
 
 Love vs. Glory, - - - . . - 10 
 
 Liberty of Mind, - . - . 23 
 
 Liberty or Death (Part II), - 58 
 
 Little Oi.es, ..... 45
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 M PACK. 
 
 Marriage, - - - 15 
 
 Money and Yardsticks, . 72 
 
 More Solid Shot (Part II), - - - 36 
 
 O 
 
 Oration at His Brother s Grave (Part II), . . 65 
 
 P 
 
 Protection, - - .76 
 
 R 
 
 Reasons Why the Colonel is Not a Democrat (Part II), - 27 
 
 Repudiation, - 75 
 
 Rise of the Republic (Part II), - 51 
 
 S 
 
 Sarcastic Words on State Rights, 58 
 
 Solid Comfort (Part II), - - 25 
 
 Some Laughable Remarks About Money, 70 
 
 Speech (in full) to the Veteran Soldiers at Indianapolis (Part II), 27 
 
 Speech (in full) on the Declaration of Independence (Part II), 47 
 
 Speech (in full) to the Farmers on Farming (Part II), - 3 
 
 Speech (in full) at the Banquet of the Army of the Tennessee, 50 
 
 Speech (in full) Nominating Blaine for President, . 65 
 
 Speech (in full) to the Volunteer Soldiers, 50 
 
 Speech (in full) at His Brother s Funeral (Part II), - 65 
 
 T 
 
 The Colonel s Party, - - - - - 42 
 
 The Happy Farmer, ..... 24 
 
 The Happy Home (Part II), - - . 23 
 
 The Independent Man, .... 40 
 
 The Kingdom of Kindness, - . . - 25 
 
 The Man that Ingersoll Hates, - - - 26 
 
 The Past Rises Before Me Like a Dream, - . .37 
 
 The Struggle for Liberty, - - . 8l 
 
 The Tariff, - . . . - 77 
 
 Thirty-three Dozen Eggs for One Dollar (Part II), . 16 
 
 W 
 
 What a Dollar Can Do, 41 
 
 What the Colonel Has Seen and \\hat He Wants to See, - 80 
 
 What We Wnnt T.>-day (Part IT), . - - 6l 
 
 Why the Colonel is a Republican (Part TI), . . - 29 
 
 What the Railroads Have Done (Part II) - - 16
 
 INGERSOLL S 
 
 WIT, WISDOM, ELOQUENCE, 
 
 AND 
 
 GREAT SPEECHES. 
 
 Human Happiness. 
 
 I tell you I had rather make somebody happy ; I would 
 rather have the love of somebody ; I would rather go to 
 the forest, far away, and build me a little cabin bu ld it 
 myself and daub it with mud, and live there with my vile 
 
 CABIN HOME OF LINCOLN S PARENTS. 
 
 and children ; I had rather go there and live by myself 
 our little family and have a little path that led down to 
 the spring, where the water bubbled out day and night like 
 a little poem from the heart of the earth; a little hut with 
 some hollyhocks at the corner, with their bannered bosoms
 
 1O COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 open to the sun, and with the thrush in the air, liko a song 
 of joy in the morning; I would rather live there and have 
 some lattice work across the window, so that the sunlight 
 would fall checkered on the baby in the cradle ; I would 
 rather live there and have my soul erect and free, than to 
 live in a palace of gold and wear the crown of imperial 
 power and know that my soul was slimy with hypocrisy. 
 
 It is not necessary to be rich and great and powerful in 
 order to be happy. If you will treat your wife like a 
 splendid flower, she will fill your life with a perfume and 
 with joy. I believe in the democracy of the fireside; I 
 believe in the republicanism of home ; in the equality of 
 man and woman ; in the equality of husband and wife. 
 
 Love vs. Glory. 
 
 A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napo 
 leon a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a 
 dead deity and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyp 
 tian marble, where rest at last the ashes of the restless man. 
 I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career 
 of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him 
 walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide 
 I saw him at Toulon I saw him putting down the mob 
 in the streets of Paris I eavv him at the head of the army 
 of Italy I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the 
 tri-color in his hand I saw him in Egypt, in the shadows 
 of the pyramids I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle 
 the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw 
 him at Marengo at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in 
 Russia, where tlxe infantry of the snow smd the cavalry of 
 the wild blast scattered his legions like Winter s withered 
 leaves. I saw him at Leipsic iu defeat and disaster driven
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 1 1 
 
 by a million bayonets back upon Paris clutched like a wild 
 beast banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an 
 empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the 
 frightful field of Waterloo, where chance and fate combined 
 to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him 
 at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing 
 out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans 
 and widows he had made of the tears that had been shed 
 for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, 
 pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And 
 I said I would rather have been a French peasant, and 
 worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut 
 with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing 
 purple in the kisses of the Autumn sun. I would rather 
 have been that poor peasant with rny loving wife by my 
 side, knitting as the day died out of the sky with my 
 children upon my knees and their arms about me; I would 
 rather havo been that man and ^one down to the tongueless 
 silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that im 
 perial impersonation of force and murder known as Napo 
 leon the Great. And so I would, ten thousand thousand 
 times. 
 
 Influence of a Home. 
 
 There can be no such thing in the highest sense as a 
 home, unless you own it. There must be an incentive to 
 plant trees, to beautify the grounds, to preserve and im 
 prove. It elevates a man to own a home. It gives a cer 
 tain independence, a force of character that is obtained in 
 no other way. A man without a home feels like a passen 
 ger. There is in such a man a little of the vagrant. Homes 
 make patriots. He who has sat by his own fireside with
 
 I 2 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 wife and children, will defend it. When he hears the word 
 country pronounced, he thinks of his home. 
 
 Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a mus 
 ket in defense of a boarding-house. 
 
 The prosperity and glory of our country depend upon 
 the number of our people who are the owners of homes. 
 Around the fireside cluster the private and the public vir 
 tues of our race. Raise your sons to be independent through 
 labor to pursue some business for themselves, and upon 
 their own account to be self-reliant to act upon their 
 own responsibility, and to take the consequences like men. 
 Teach them above all things to be good, true and faithful 
 husbands winners of love, and builders of homes. 
 
 Ingersoll on Alcohol A Scathing Denunciation. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll, in speaking to a jury in a case which 
 involved the manufacture of alcohol, used the following 
 eloquent language : 
 
 "I am aware that there is a prejudice against any man 
 engaged in the manufacture of alcohol. I believe that 
 from the time it issues from the coiled and poisonous worm 
 in the distillery until it empties into the hell of death, dis 
 honor and crime, that it demoralizes everybody that touches 
 it, from its source to where it ends. I do not believe any 
 body can contemplate the subject without becoming preju 
 diced against that liquor crime. 
 
 "All we have to do, gentlemen, is to think of the wrecks 
 on either bank of the stream of death ; of the suicides, of 
 the insanity ; of the poverty, of the ignorance, of the des 
 titution ; of the little children tugging at the faded and 
 weary breasts of weeping and despairing wives, asking for 
 bread ; of the talented men of genius it has wrecked, the
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 1$ 
 
 men struggling with imaginary serpents, produced by this 
 devilish thing; and when you think of the jails, the alms- 
 houses, of the asylums, of the prisons, of the scaffolds 
 upon either bank, I do not wonder that every thoughtful 
 man is prejudiced against this stuff called alcohol. 
 
 " Intemperance cuts down youth in its vigor, manhood 
 in its strength, and age in its weakness. It breaks the 
 father s heart, bereaves the doting mother, extinguishes 
 natural affections, erases conjugal loves, blots out filial at 
 tachments, blights parental hope, and brings down mourn 
 ing age in sorrow to the grave. It produces weakness, not 
 strength ; sickness, not health j death, not life. It makes
 
 14 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 wives widows; children orphans; fathers fiends, and all of 
 them paupers and beggars. It feeds rheumatism, nurses 
 gout, welcomes epidemics, invites cholera, imports pesti 
 lence and embraces consumption. It covers the land with 
 idleness, misery and crime. It fills 3*011 r jails, supplies your 
 alms-houses and demands your asylums. It engenders con 
 troversies, fosters quarrels, and cherishes riots. It crowds 
 your penitentiaries and furnishes victims to your scafFulds. 
 It is the life blood of the gambler, the element of the bur 
 glar, the prop of the highwayman and the support of the 
 midnight incendiary. It countenances the liar, respects 
 the thief, esteems the blasphemer. It violates obligations, 
 reverences fraud, and honors infamy. It defames benevo 
 lence, hates love, scorns virtue and slanders innocence. It 
 incites the father to butcher his helpless offspring, helps 
 the husband to massacre his wife, and the child to grind 
 the paricidal axe. It burns up men, consumes women, 
 detests life, curses God, and despises heaven. It suborns 
 witnesses, nurses perjury, defiles the jury box, and stains 
 the judicial ermine. It degrades the citizen, debases the 
 legislator, dishonors statesmen, and disarms the patriot. 
 It brings shame, not honor; terror, not safety; despair, 
 not hope ; misery, not happiness ; and with the malevo 
 lence of a fiend, it calmly surveys its frightful desolation, 
 and unsatisfied with its havoc, it poisons felicity, kills peace, 
 ruins morals, blights confidence, slays reputation, and wipes 
 out national honors, then curses the world and laughs at 
 its ruin. 
 
 "It does all that and more it murders the soul. It is 
 the son of villainies, the father of all crimes, the mother of 
 abominations, the devil s best friend and God s worst 
 enemy."
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 1 5 
 
 Ingersoll s "Honor Brights" Love and Life. 
 
 Without the family relation is tender, pure and true, 
 civilization is impossible. 
 
 I believe in marriage. If there is any Heaven upon 
 earth, it is in the family by the fireside. 
 
 The happy man is the successful man; and the man 
 who makes somebody else happy, is a happy man. 
 
 I believe marriage should be a perfect and equal part 
 nership. I do not like a man who thinks he is boss. 
 
 If there is a man I detest, it is the man who thinks he 
 is the head of the family the man who thinks he is -boss." 
 
 I tell you this is a pretty good world, if we only love 
 somebody in it; if we only make somebody happy; if we 
 are only honor bright in it. 
 
 I believe in marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the
 
 1 6 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 opinions of long-haired men and short-haired women who 
 denounce the institution of marriage. 
 
 I do not like a man who thinks he has got authority, 
 and that the woman belongs to him that wants for his wife 
 a slave. I would not have a slave for my wife. 
 
 Love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent, of 
 interest on the outlay. Love is the only thing in which the 
 height of extravagance is the last degree of economy. 
 
 The man who has the love of one splendid woman is 
 a rich man. Joy is wealth, and love is the legal tender of 
 the soul ! Love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent, 
 to borrower and lender both. 
 
 I tell you it is an infamous word and an infamous feeling 
 a man who is "boss," who is going to govern in his fam 
 ily ; and when he speaks let all the rest of them be still; 
 some mighty idea is about to be launched from his mouth. 
 Do you know I dislike this man ? 
 
 The man that has gained the love of one good, splen 
 did, pure woman, his life has been a success, no matter if 
 he dies in the ditch; and if he gets to be a crowned mon 
 arch of the world, and never had the love of one splendid 
 heart, his life has been an ashen vapor. 
 
 Now, my friends, it seems to me that the woman is 
 the equal of the man. She has all the rights I have, and 
 one more, and that is the right to be protected. That s 
 my doctrine. You are married ; try and make the woman 
 you love happy ; try and make the man you love happy. 
 
 If you are the grand emperor of the world, you had 
 better be the grand emperor of one loving and tender heart, 
 and she the grand empress of yours. The man who has 
 really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do 
 not care if he dies a. beggar, his life has been a success
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. Ij 
 
 Imagine a young man and a young woman courting, 
 walking out in the moonlight and the nightingale singing a 
 song of pain and love, as though the thorn touched her 
 heart imagine them stopping there in the moonlight and 
 starlight and song, and saying, "Now, here, let s settle 
 who s boss! " 
 
 I have known men that would trust a woman with their 
 heart (if you call that thing which pushes their blood 
 around, a heart), and with their honor (if you call that fear 
 of getting into the penitentiary, honor) ; I have known 
 men that would trust that heart and that honor with a 
 woman, but not their pocket-book not a dollar bill. 
 
 I have not the slightest respect for the ideas of those 
 short-haired women and long-haired men who denounce 
 the institution of the family; who denounce the institution 
 of marriage ; but 1 hold in greater contempt the husband 
 who would enslave his wife. I hold in greater contempt 
 the man who is anythir in his family except love and ten 
 derness and kindness. 
 
 What is wealth compared with the love of a splendid 
 woman ? People tell me that it is very good doctrine for 
 rich folks, but it won t do for poor folks. I tell you that 
 there is more love in the huts and homes of the poor, than 
 in the mansions of the rich ; and the meanest hut with love 
 in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without that 
 is a den only fit for wild beasts. 
 
 Let me say right here, I regard marriage as the holiest 
 institution among men*. Without the fireside there is no 
 human advancement; without the family relation there is 
 no life worth living. Every good government is made up 
 of good families. The unit of government is the family, 
 and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly 
 devilish and infamous.
 
 1 8 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 Whoever marries simply for himself will make a 
 take; but whoever loves a woman so well that he says, U I 
 will make her happy," makes no mistake; and so with the 
 woman who says, "I will make him happy." There is 
 only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody 
 else so, and you can t be happy cross-lots; you have got to 
 go the regular turnpike road. 
 
 I say it took hundreds of years for woman to come 
 from a state of slavery to marriage ; and, ladies, the chains 
 that were upon your necks and the bracelets that were put 
 upon your arms were iron, and they have been changed by 
 the touch of the wand of civilization, to shining, glittering 
 gold. Woman came from a condition of abject slavery, 
 and thousands and thousands are in that condition now. 
 
 Let me say right here and I have thought a good 
 deal about it let me say right here, the grandest ambition 
 that any man can possibly have, is to so live and so im 
 prove himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the 
 love of some splendid woman ; and the grandest ambition 
 of any girl is to make horself worthy of the love and ado 
 ration of some magnificent man. That is my idea, and 
 there is no success in life without it. 
 
 I would not want the love of a woman that is not great 
 enough, grand enough, and splendid enough to be free. 
 I will never give to any woman my heart upon whom I 
 afterwards would put chains. Do you know sometimes 
 I think generosity is about the only virtue there is? How 
 I do hate a man that has to be begged and importuned 
 every minute for a few cents by his wife. "Give me a 
 dollar?" "What did you do with that fifty cents I gave 
 you last Christmas?" 
 
 When a man comes home let him come home like a 
 ray of light in the night bursting through the doors and
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 19 
 
 illuminating the darkness. What right has a man to assas 
 sinate joy, and murder happiness in the sanctuary of love 
 to be a cross man, a peevish man ? Is that the way he 
 courted? Was there always something ailing him? Was 
 he too nervous to hear her speak ? When I see a man of 
 that kind I am always sorry that doctors know so much 
 about preserving life as they do. 
 
 I tell you women are more prudent than men. I tell 
 yon, as a rule, women are more truthful than men. I tell 
 you that women are more faithful than men ten times as 
 faithful as man. I never saw a man pursue his wife into 
 the very ditch and dust of degradation and take her in his 
 arms. I never saw a man stand at the shore where she 
 had been morally wrecked, waiting for the waves to bring 
 back even her corpse to his arms ; but I have seen woman 
 do it. I have seen woman with her white arms lift man 
 from the mire of degradation, and hold him to her bosom 
 as though he were an angel. 
 
 It is not necessary to be rich in order to be happy. 
 It is only necessary to be in love. Thousands of men go 
 to college and get a certificate that they have an education, 
 and that certificate is in Latin, and they stop studying, and 
 in two years to save their life they couldn t read the certifi 
 cate they got. It is mostly so in marrying. They stop 
 courting when they get married. They think, we have 
 won her and that is enough. Ah ! the difference before 
 and after ! How well they look! How bright their eyes ! 
 How light their steps, and how full they were of generosity 
 and laughter ! I tell you a man should consider himself 
 in good luck if a woman loves him when he is doing his 
 level best ! Good luck ! Good luck ! And another thing 
 that is the cause of much trouble is that people don t count 
 fairly. They do what they call putting their best foot for-
 
 20 
 
 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 ward. That means tying a little. I say put your worst 
 foot forward. If you have got any faults, admit them. If 
 you drink, say so and quit it. It you chew and smoke and 
 swear, say so. If some of your kindred are not very good 
 people, say so. Jf you have had two or three that died on 
 the gallows, or that ought to have died there, say so. Tell 
 all your faults, and if after she knows your faults she says 
 she will have you, you have got the dead wood on that 
 woman forever. I claim that there should be perfect 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF GENERAL GRANT. 
 
 equality in the home, and I cannot think of anything nearer 
 Heaven than a home where there is true republicanism and 
 true democracy at the fireside. All are equal. And then, 
 do you know, I like to think that love is eternal ; that if 
 you really love the woman, for her sake, you will love her 
 no matter what she may do; that if she really loves you, 
 for your sake, the same if you really love her you will 
 always see the face you loved and won.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 11 
 
 How They Did when Ingersoll was a Farmer. 
 
 When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat two hun 
 dred miles in a wagon and sell it for thirty-five cents a 
 bushel. They would bring home about three hundred feet 
 of lumber, two bunches of shingles, a bar-e^ ot salt, and a 
 cook stove that never would draw anr 1 sver did bake. 
 
 In those blessed days the peo ;1 .ived on corn and bacon. 
 Cooking was an unknown a- . Eating was a necessity, 
 not a pleasure. It was hard work for the cook to keep on 
 good terms even with hunger. 
 
 The rain held the roofs in perfect contempt, and the 
 snow drifted joyfully on the floors and beds. They had 
 no barns. The horses were kept in rail pens surrounded 
 with straw. Long before spring the sides would be eaten 
 away and nothing but roofs would be left. Food is fuel. 
 When the cattle were exposed to all the blasts of winter, 
 it took all the corn and oats that could be stuffed into them 
 to prevent actual starvation. 
 
 In those times farmers thought the best place for the pig 
 pen was immediately in front of the house. There is noth 
 ing like sociability. 
 
 Women were supposed to know the art of making fires 
 without fuel. The wood-pile consisted, as a general thing, 
 of one log, upon which an axe or two had been worn out 
 in vain. There was nothing to kindle a fire with. Pickets 
 were pulled from the garden fence, clap boards taken from 
 the house, and every stray plank was seized upon for kind 
 ling. Everything was done in the hardest way. Everj r - 
 thing about the farm was disagreeable. Nothing was kept 
 in order. Nothing was preserved. The wagons stood in 
 the sun and rain, and the plows rusted in the fields. There 
 was no leisure, no feeling that the work was done. It was 
 all labor and weariness and vexation of spirit. The crops
 
 22 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 were destroyed by wandering herds, or they were put in 
 too late, or too early, or they were blown down, or caught 
 by the frost, or devoured by bugs, or stung by flies, or eu u - 
 en by worms, or carried away by birds, or dug up by 
 gophers, or washed away by floods, or dried up by the sun, 
 or rotted in the stack, or heated in the crib, or they all run 
 to vines, or tops, or straw, or cobs. And when in spite of 
 all these accidents that lie in wait between the plow and 
 the reaper, they did succeed in raising a good crop and a 
 high price was offered, then the roads would be impass 
 able. And when the roads got good, then the prices went 
 down. Everything worked together tor evil. 
 
 Nearly every fanner s boy took an oath that he would 
 never cultivate the soil. The moment they arrived at the 
 age of twenty-one they left the desolate and dreary farms 
 and rushed to the towns and cities. They wanted to be 
 book-kaepers, doctors, merchants, railroad men, insurance 
 agents, lawyers, even preachers, anything to avoid the 
 drudgery of the farm. Nearly every boy acquainted with 
 the three R s reading, writing and arithmetic imagined 
 that he had altogether more education than ought to be 
 wasted in raising potatoes and corn. They made haste to 
 get into some other business. Those who stayed upon the 
 farm envied those who went away. 
 
 A few years ago the times were prosperous, and the 
 young men went to the cities to enjoy the fortunes that 
 were waiting for them. They wanted to engage in some 
 thing that promised quick returns. They built railways, 
 established banks and insurance companies. They specu 
 lated in stocks in Wall street, and gambled in grain at 
 Chicago. They became rich. They lived in palaces. 
 They rode in carriages. They pitied their poor brothers 
 on the farms, and the poor brothers envied them. 
 
 But time has brought its revenge. The farmers have seen
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 23 
 
 the railroad president a bankrupt, and the road in the 
 hands of a receiver. They have seen the bank president 
 abscond, and the insurance company a wrecked and ruined 
 fraud. The only solvent people, as a class, the only inde 
 pendent people, are the tillers of the soil. 
 
 Liberty of Mind. 
 
 I do not know what inventions are in the brain of the 
 future; I do not know what garments of glory may be 
 woven for the world in the loom of years to be; we are just 
 on the edge of the great ocean of discovery. I do not 
 know what is to be discovered ; I do riot know what 
 science will do for us. I do not know that science did 
 just take a handful of sand and make the telescope, and 
 with it read all the starry leaves of heaven ; I know that 
 science took the thunderbolts from the hands of Jupiter, 
 and now the electric spark, freighted witli thought and love, 
 flashes under waves of the sea; I know that science stole 
 a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into 
 steam, and created a giant that turns with tireless arms the 
 countless wheels of toil ; I know that science broke the 
 chains from human limbs and gave us instead the forces of 
 nature for our slaves; I know that we have made the 
 attraction of gravitation work fur us; we have made the 
 lightnings our messengers ; we have taken advantage of lire 
 and fiiines and wind and sea; these slaves have no backs 
 to be whipped ; they have no hearts to be lacerated ; they 
 have no children to be stolen, no cradles to be violated. I 
 know that science has given us better houses ; I know it 
 has given us better pictures and better books; I know it 
 has given us better wives and better husbands, and more 
 beautiful children. I know it has enriched a thousand-fold
 
 24 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 our lives ; and for that reason I am in favor of intellectual 
 liberty. 
 
 The Happy Farmer. 
 
 There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope 
 of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can 
 promise. A professional man is doomed some time to feel 
 that his powers are waning. He is doomed to see younger 
 and stronger men pass him in the race of life. He looks 
 forward to an old age of intellectual mediocrity. He will 
 be last where once he was the first. But the farmer goes, 
 as it were, into partnership with nature he lives with trees
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 25 
 
 and flowers he breathes the sweet air of the fields. There 
 is no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. His 
 nights are filled with sleep and rest. He watches his flocks 
 and herds as they feed upon the green and sunny slopes. 
 He hears the pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, 
 and the trees he planted in youth rustle above him as he 
 plants others for the children yet to be. 
 
 When I was a farmer it was not fashionable to set out 
 trees, nor to plant vines. 
 
 When you visited the farm you were not welcomed by 
 flowers, and greeted by trees loaded with fruit. Yellow 
 dogs came bounding over the tumbled fence like wild 
 beasts. There is no sense there is no profit in such a 
 life. It is not living. The farmers ought to beautify their 
 homes. There should be trees and grass, and flowers and 
 running vines. Everything should be kept in order; gates 
 should be kept on their hinges, and about all there should 
 be the pleasant air of thrift. In every house there should 
 be* a bath-room. Tiie bath is a civil izer, a refiner, a beau- 
 tifler. When you come from the fields, tired, covered with 
 dust, nothing is so refreshing. Above all things, keep 
 clean. It is not necessary to be a pig in order to raise one. 
 In the cool of the evening, after a day in the field, put on 
 clean clothes, take a seat under the trees, mid the perfume 
 of flowers, surrounded by your family, and you will know 
 what it is to enjoy life like a gentleman. 
 
 The Kingdom of Kindness. 
 
 Above all, let every man treat his wife and children with 
 infinite kindness. Give your sons and daughters every 
 advantage within your power. In the air of kindness they 
 will grow about you like flowers. They will fill your homes
 
 26 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 with sunshine and all your years with joy. Do not try to 
 rule by force. 
 
 A blow from a parent leaves a scar on the soul. 1 should 
 feel ashamed to die surrounded by children I had whipped. 
 Think of feeling upon your dying lips the kiss of a child 
 you had struck. 
 
 See to it that your wife has every convenience. Make 
 her life worth living. Never allow her to become a servant. 
 Wives, weary and worn ; mothers, wrinkled and bent be 
 fore their time, fill homes with grief and shame. If you 
 are not able to hire help for your wives, help them your 
 selves. See that they have the best utensils to work with. 
 Women cannot create things by magic. Have plenty of 
 wood and coal good cellars and plenty in them. 
 
 The Man that Ingersoll Hates. 
 
 A cross man I hate above all things. What right has ne 
 to murder the sunshine of the day? What right has he to 
 assassinate the joy of life? Wiien you go home you ought 
 to feel the light there is in the house; if it is in the night 
 it will burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate 
 the darkness. It is just as well to go home a ray of sun 
 shine as an old, sour, cross curmudgeon, who thinks lie is 
 the head of the family. Wise men think their mighty 
 brains have been in a turmoil; they have been thinking 
 about who will be alderman from the fifth ward ; they have 
 been thinking about politics; great and mighty questions 
 have been engaging their minds; they have bought calico 
 at eight cents or six, and want to sell it for seven. Think 
 of the intellectual strain that must have been upon a man, 
 and when he gets home everybody else in the house must 
 look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 27 
 
 care of five or six children, and one or two of them maybe 
 sick, has been nursing them and singing to them, and taking 
 care of them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the 
 work of two, she, of course, is fresh and fine and ready to 
 wait upon this great gentleman the head of the family. 1 
 don t like him a bit ! 
 
 Industry. 
 
 We must get rid of the idea that a little learning unfits 
 one for work. There are hundreds of graduates of Yale 
 and Harvard and other colleges, who are agents of sewing 
 machines, solicitors for insurance, clerks, copyists, in short, 
 performing a hundred varieties of menial service. They 
 seem willing to do anything that is not regarded as work 
 anything that can be done in a town, in the house, in an 
 office, but they avoid farming as they would leprosy. 
 Nearly every young man educated in this way is simply 
 ruined. Such an education ouiHit to be called ignorance. 
 
 O d? 
 
 It is a thousand times better to have common sense without 
 education than education without the sense. Boys and girls 
 should be educated to help themselves. They should be 
 taught that it is disgraceful to be idle, and dishonorable to 
 be useless. 
 
 You can divide mankind into two classes; the laborers 
 and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest 
 and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon 
 the unpaid labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. 
 All laborers should be brothers. The laborers should have 
 equal rights before the world and before the law. And I 
 want every fanner to consider every man who labors either 
 witn Hand or brain as his brother. Until genius and labor 
 formed a partnership there was no such thing as prosperity 
 among men. Every reaper and mower, every asricultural
 
 28 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 implement, has elevated work of the farmer, and his voca 
 tion grows grander with every invention. In the olden 
 time the agriculturist was ignorant; he knew nothing of 
 machinery, he was the slave of superstition. 
 
 Ingersoll Believes in Fashion, Good Clothes, Etc. 
 
 I am a believer in fashion. It is the duty of every 
 woman to make herself as beautiful and attractive as she 
 possibly can. 
 
 "Handsome is as handsome does," but she is much 
 handsomer if well dressed. Every man should look his 
 very best. I am a believer in good clothes. The time 
 never ought to come in this country when you can tell a 
 farmer s daughter simply by the garments she wears. I say 
 to every girl and woman, no matter what the material of 
 your dress may be, no matter how cheap and coarse it is, 
 cut it and make it in the fashion. I believe in jewelry. 
 Some people look upon it as barbaric, but in my judgment, 
 wearing jewelry is the first evidence the barbarian gives of 
 a wish to be civilized. To adorn ourselves seems to be a 
 part of our nature, and this desire seems to be everywhere 
 and in everything. I have sometimes thought that the de 
 sire for beauty covers the earth with flowers. It is this 
 desire that paints the wings of moths, tints the chamber of 
 the shell, and gi?es the bird its plumage and its song. Oh! 
 daughters and wives if you would be loved, adorn your 
 selves if you would be adored, be beautiful ! 
 
 Civilizing Influence of Woman. 
 
 I don t believe man ever came to any high station with 
 out woman. Ther has got to be some restraint, something 
 to make you prudent, something to make you industrious.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 29 
 
 And in a country where you don t need an} T bed-quilt but 
 a cloud, revolution is the normal condition of the people. 
 You have got to have the fireside; you have got to have 
 the home, and there by the fireside will grow and bloom 
 the fruits of the human race. I recollect a while ago I was 
 in Washington when they were trying to annex Santo Do 
 mingo. They said : "We want to^take in Santo Domingo." 
 Says I : "We don t want it." " Why," said they, "it is 
 the best climate the earth can produce. There is every 
 thing you want. " "Yes," said I, "but it won t produce 
 men. We don t want it. We have got soil enough now. 
 Take 5,000 ministers from New England, 5,000 presidents 
 of colleges, and 5,000 solid business men and their fami 
 lies, and take them to Santo Domingo ; and then you will 
 see the effect of climate. The second generation you will 
 see barefooted boys riding bareback on a mule, with their 
 hair sticking out of the top of their sombreros, with a 
 rooster under each arm going to a cock-fight on Sunday." 
 You have got to have the soil ; you have got to have the 
 climate, and you have got to have another thing you have 
 got to have the fireside. 
 
 Love and Joy. 
 
 It is not necessary to be great to be happy ; it is not 
 necessary to be rich to be just and generous, and to have a 
 heart filled with divine affection. No matter whether you 
 are rich or poor, use your wife as though she were a splen 
 did creation, and she will fill your life with perfume and 
 joy. And do you know it is a splendid thing for me to 
 think that the woman you really love will never grow old 
 to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the music 
 of years, if you really love her, you will always see the
 
 3O COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 face yon loved and won. And a woman who really loves 
 a man, does not see that he grows older; he is not de 
 crepit; he does not tremble; he is not old; she always 
 sees the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and 
 heart. I like to think of it in that way; I like to think of 
 all passions; love is eternal, and as Shakspeare says, "Al 
 though time with his sickle can rob ruby lips and sparkling 
 eyes, let him reach as far as he can, he cannot quite touch 
 love, that reaches even to the end of the tomb." And to 
 love in that way and then go down the hill of life together, 
 and as you go down, hear, perhaps, the laughter of grand 
 children, and the birds of joy and love will sing once more 
 in the leafless branches of age. I believe in the fireside. 
 I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the re 
 publicanism of the family. I believe in liberty and equality 
 with those we love. 
 
 A Short Patent Lecture. 
 
 I despise a stingy man. I don t see how it is possible 
 for a man to die worth fifty milliouu of dollars or ten mil 
 lions of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost 
 every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips 
 of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in 
 the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty millions of dollars, 
 is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. 
 I should not think he could do it any more than he could 
 keep a pile of lumber where hundreds and thousands of 
 men were drowning in the sea. I should not think he could 
 do it. Do you know I have known men who would trust 
 their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not with 
 their pocketbook ; not with a dollar. "When I see a man 
 of that kind I always think he knows which of these articles 
 is the most valuable.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 31 
 
 Think of making your wife a beggar! Think of her 
 having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for two dollars, 
 or for fifty cents ! "What did you do with that dollar! 
 gave you last week?" 
 
 Think of having a wife that was afraid of you ! What 
 kind of children do you expect to have with a beggar and 
 a coward for their mother? Oh! I tell you if you have 
 but a dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, 
 spend it like a king ; spend it as though it were a dry leaf 
 and you the owner of unbounded forests ! That s the way 
 to spend it! 
 
 I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a 
 king, than be a king and spend my money like a beggar. 
 If it s got to go, let it go. Get the best you can for your 
 family try to look as well as you can yourself. 
 
 When you used to go courting, how nice you looked ! 
 Ah, your eye was bright, your step was light, and you just 
 put on the very best look you could. Do you know that it 
 is insufferable egotism in you to suppose that a woman is 
 going to love you always looking as bad as you can ? Think
 
 32 COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 of it ! Any woman on earth will be true to you forever 
 when you do your level best. Some people tell me, "Your 
 doctrine about loving and wives and all that is splendid for 
 the rich, but it won t do for the poor." I tell you to-night 
 there is on the average more love in the homes of the poor 
 than in the palaces of the rich ; and the meanest hut with 
 love in it is fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a 
 den only fit for wild beasts. That s my doctrine ! You 
 can t be so poor but that you can help somebody. 
 
 Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world ; 
 and love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent, to 
 borrower and lender both. Don t tell me that you have 
 got to be rich ! We have all a false standard of greatness 
 in the United States. We think here that a man to be 
 great rrust be notorious; he must be extremely wealthy or 
 his Dame must be between the lips of rumor. It is all 
 nonsense! 
 
 It is not necessary to be rich to be great, or to be power 
 ful to be happy; and the happy man is the successful man. 
 Happiness is the legal-tender of the soul. Joy is wealth. 
 
 Illinois. 
 
 Let me tell you something about Illinois. We have 
 fifty-six thousand square miles of land nearly thirty-six 
 million acres. Upon these plains we can raise enough to 
 feed and clothe twenty million people. Beneath these 
 prairies were hidden, millions of ages ago, by that old 
 miser, the sun, thirty-six thousand square miles of coal. 
 The Aggregate thickness of these veins is at least fifteen 
 feet. Think of a column of coal one mile square and one 
 hundred miles high ! All this came from the sun. What 
 a sunbeam such a column would be ! Think of &I1 this 
 force, willed and left to us by the dead rno/mng of the
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 33 
 
 world ! Think of the fireside of the future around which 
 will sit the fathers, mothers and children of the years to 
 be ! Think of the sweet and happy faces, the loving and 
 tender eyes that will glow and gleam iu the saered light of 
 all these flames ! 
 
 Ingersollisms. 
 
 Nothing is ever made by rascality. 
 
 It is necessary to the hapoiness of man that he be faith 
 ful to himself. 
 
 It will take thousands of years before the world will be- 
 lievirigly say " Right makes might." 
 
 It takes a great deal of trouble to raise a good Republi 
 can. 
 
 A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field. There 
 is no business under the sun that can pay ten per cent. 
 
 Every good man who has ever lived in the country, no 
 matter whether he has been persecuted or not, has made 
 the world better. 
 
 I know enough to know that agriculture is the basis of all 
 wealth, prosperity and luxury. I know that in the country 
 where the tillers of the fields are free, everybody is free and 
 ought to be prosperous.
 
 34 COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 Free speech is the brain of the Republic; an honest 
 ballot is the breath of its life, and honest money is the 
 blood that courses through its veins. 
 
 It is a splendid fact in nature that you cannot put chains 
 upon the limbs of others without putting corresponding 
 manacles upon your own brain. 
 
 I propose to stand by the Nation. I want the furnaces 
 kept hot. I want the sky to be filled with the smoke of 
 American industry, and upon that cloud of smoke will rest 
 forever the bow of perpetual promise. 
 
 The ballot box is the throne of America ; the ballot box 
 is the ark of the covenant. Unless we see to it that every 
 man who has a right to vote votes, and unless we see to it 
 that every honest vote is counted, the days of the Republic 
 are numbered. 
 
 Why is it that New England, a rock-clad land, blossoms 
 like a rose ? Why is it that New York is the Empire State 
 of the great Union? I will tell you. Because you have 
 been permitted to trade in ideas. 
 
 In every government there is something that ought to be 
 preserved ; in every government there are many things 
 that ought to be destroyed. Every good man, every pa 
 triot, every lover of the human race, wishes to preserve the 
 good and destroy the bad. 
 
 I despis ; the doctrine of State sovereignty. I believe in 
 the rights of the States, but not in the sovereignty of the 
 States. States are political conveniences. Rising above 
 States as the Alps above valleys are the rights of man. 
 Rising above the rights of the government even in this 
 Nation are the sublime rights of the people. Governments 
 are good only so long as they protect human rights. But 
 the rights of a man never should be sacrificed upon the 
 altar of the State or upon the altar of the Nation.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 35 
 
 I am the sole proprietor of myself. No party, no organ 
 ization, has any deed of trust on what little brains I have, 
 and as long as I can get my part of the common air I am 
 going to tell my honest thoughts. One man in the right 
 will finally get to be a majority. 
 
 Years ago I made up my mind that there was no particu 
 lar argument in slander. I made up my mind that for 
 parties as well as for individuals, honesty in the long run 
 is the best policy. I made up my mind that the people 
 were entitled to know a man s honest thoughts. 
 
 I like a black man who loves this country better than I 
 do a white man who hates it. I think more of a black man 
 who fought for our flag than for any white man who endea 
 vored to tear it out of heaven ! I like black friends better 
 than white enemies. And I think more of a man black 
 outside and white inside than I do of one white outside and 
 black inside. 
 
 The old way of farming was a great mistake. Every 
 thing was done the wrong way. It was all work and waste, 
 weariness and want. They used to fence a hundred and 
 sixty acres of land with a couple of dogs. Everything was 
 left to the blessed trinity of chance, accident and mistake. 
 
 I am in favor of the idea of the great and splendid truth 
 that this is a Nation one and indivisible. I deny that we 
 are a confederacy bound together with ropes of cloud and 
 chains of mist. ThL is a Nation, and every man in it owes 
 his first allegiance to the grand old flag for which more 
 blood was shed than for any other flug that waves in the 
 sight of heaven. 
 
 I am not only in favor of free speech, but I am also in 
 favor of an absolutely honest ballot. There is one king in 
 this country; there is one emperor ; there is one supreme 
 czar ; and that is the legally expressed will of the majority
 
 36 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 of the people. The man who casts an illegal vote, the man 
 who refuses to count a legal vote, poisons the fountain of 
 power, poisons the spring of justice, and is a traitor to the 
 only king in this land. 
 
 I have always said; and I say again, that the more lib" 
 erty there is given away, the more you have. There is 
 room in this world for us all; there is room enough for all 
 of our thoughts; out upon the intellectual sea there is room 
 for every sail, and in the intellectual air there is space for 
 every wing. A man that exercises a right that he will not 
 give to others is a barbarian. A State that does not allow 
 free speech is uncivilized, and is a disgrace to the Ameri 
 can Union. 
 
 I have been told that during the war we had plenty of 
 money. I never sa\v it. I lived years without seeing a 
 dollar. I saw promises for dollars, but not dollars. And 
 t e greenback) unless you have the gold behind it, is no 
 more a dollar than a bill of fare is a dinner. You cannot 
 make a paper dollar without taking a dollar s worth of paper. 
 We must have paper that represents money. I want it 
 issued by the government, and I want behind every one of 
 these dollars either a gold or silver dollar, so that every 
 greenback under the flag can lift up its hand and swear, "I 
 know that my redeemer liveth."
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 
 
 37 
 
 Ingersoll s Eloquent Vision. 
 
 The following remarkably eloquent words are taken 
 from Col. Ingersoll s brilliant address to the veteran sol 
 diers at Indianapolis: 
 
 The past, as it were, rises before me like a dream. Again 
 we are in the great struggle for National life. We hear 
 the sound of preparation the music of the boisterous 
 drums the silver voices of the heraic bugles. We see 
 thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators ; 
 we see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of 
 men ; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose 
 dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them 
 no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great
 
 38 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. 
 Some are walking for the last time in quiet woody places 
 with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings 
 and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part 
 forever. Others are bending over cradles kissing babies 
 that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old 
 men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and 
 press them to their hearts again and again, and say noth 
 ing ; and some are talking with wives, and endeavoring 
 with brave words spoken in the old tones to drive away the 
 awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing 
 in the door with the babe in her arms standing in the sun 
 light sobbing at the turn of the road a hand waves she 
 answers by holding high in her loving hands the child. 
 He is gone, and forever. 
 
 We see them all as they march proudly away under the 
 flaunting flags, keeping time to the wild grand music of 
 war marching down the streets of the great cities through 
 the towns and across the prairies down to the fields of 
 glory, to do and to die for the eternal right. 
 
 We go with them one and all. We are by their side on 
 all the gory fields, in all the hospitals of pain on all the 
 weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild 
 storm and under the quiet stars. We are with them in 
 ravines running with blood in the furrows of old fields. 
 We are with them between contending hosts, unable to 
 move, wild with tiiirst, the life ebbing slowly away among 
 the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and 
 torn with shells in the trenches of forts, and in the whirl 
 wind of the charge, where men become iron with nerves of 
 steel. 
 
 We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine 
 but human speech can never tell what they endured. 
 
 We are at home when the news comes that they are dead.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 39 
 
 We see the maiden in the shadow of her sorrow. "We see 
 the silvered head of the old man bowed with the last grief. 
 
 The past rises before us, and we see four millions of hu 
 man beings governed by the lash we see them bound 
 hand and foot we hear the strokes of cruel whips we see 
 hounds tracking women through tangled swamps. We see 
 babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty unspeak 
 able ! Outrage infinite ! 
 
 Four million bodies in chains four million souls in fet 
 ters. All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and 
 child, trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all 
 this was done under our own beautiful banner of the free. 
 
 The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek 
 of the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. There 
 heroes died. We look. Instead of slaves we see men and 
 women and children. The wand of progress touches? 
 the auction-block, the slave-pen, and the whipping-post 
 and we see homes and firesides, and school-houses and 
 books, and where all was want and crime, and cruelty and 
 fear, we see the faces of the free. 
 
 These heroes are dead. They died for liberty they 
 died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land 
 they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, un 
 der the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, 
 the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of 
 the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the 
 windowless palace pi rest. Earth may run red with other 
 wars they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the 
 roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have 
 one sentiment for the soldiers living and dead cheers for 
 the living and tears for the dead.
 
 4O COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 The Colonel s Faith in American Labor. 
 
 I believe in American labor, and I tell you why. The 
 other day a man told me that we had produced in the 
 United States of America one million tons of rails. How 
 much are the} worth ? Sixty dollars a ton. In other words, 
 the million tons are worth $60,000,000. How much is a 
 ton of iron worth in the ground ? Twenty-five cents. 
 American labor takes 25 cents of iron in the ground and 
 adds to it $59.75. One million tons of rails, and the raw 
 material not worth $24.000. We build a ship in the United 
 States worth $500,000, and the value of the ore in the 
 earth, of the trees in the great forest, of all that enters 
 into the composition of that ship bringing $500,000 in gold 
 is only $20,000; $480,000 by American labor, American 
 muscle, coined into gold ; American brains made a legal- 
 tender the world around. 
 
 The Independent Man. 
 
 It is a thousand times better to be a whole farmer than 
 part of a mechanic. It is better to till the ground and 
 work for yourself than to be hired by corporations. Every 
 man should endeavor to belong to himself. 
 
 About seven hundred years ago, Kheyam, a Persian, 
 said : "Why should a man who possesses a piece of bread 
 securing life for two days, and who has a cup of water 
 why should such a man serve another?" 
 
 Young men should not be satisfied with a salary. Do 
 not mortgage the possibilities of your future. Have the 
 courage to take life as it comes, feust or famine. Think of 
 hunting a gold mine for a dollar a day, and think of finding 
 one for another man. How would you feel then ? 
 
 We are lacking in true courage, when, for fear of the
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 4! 
 
 future, we take the crusts and scraps and niggardly salaries 
 of the present. I had a thousand times rather have a farm 
 and be independent, than to be President of the United 
 States, without independence, filled with doubt and trem 
 bling, feeling of the popular pulse, resorting to art and art- 
 tifice, inquiring about the wind of opinion, and succeeding 
 at last in losing my self-respect without gaining the respect 
 of others. 
 
 Man needs more manliness, more real independence. 
 We must take care of ourselves. This we can do by labor, 
 and in this way we can preserve our independence. We 
 should try and choose that business or profession, the pur 
 suit of which will give us the most happiness. Happiness 
 is wealth. We can be happy without being rich without 
 holding office without being famous. I am not sure that 
 we can be happy with wealth, with office, or with fame. 
 
 What a Dollar Can Do. 
 
 Ainsworth R. Spofford says Col. Ingersoll gives the 
 following facts about interest : 
 
 "One dollar loaned for one hundred years at six per 
 cent., with the interest collected annually and added to the 
 principal, will amount to three hundred and forty dollars. 
 At eight per cent, it amounts to two thousand two hundred 
 and three dollars. At three per cent, it amounts only to 
 nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. At ten per cent, it 
 is thirteen thousand eight hundred and nine dollars, or 
 about seven hundred times as much. At twelve per cent, 
 it amounts to eighty-four thousand and seventy-five dollars, 
 or more than four thousand times as much. At eighteen 
 per cent, it amounts to fifteen million one hundred and for 
 ty-five thousand and seven dollars. At twenty-four per
 
 42 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 cent, (which we sometimes hear talked of) it reaches the 
 enormous sum of two billion five hundred and fifty-one mil 
 lion seven hundred and ninety-five thousand four hundred 
 and four dollars." 
 
 One dollar at compound interest, at twenty-four per 
 cent, for one hundred years, would produce a sum equal 
 to our national debt. 
 
 Interest eats night and day, and the more it eats the 
 hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at 
 night, can, if he listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, 
 he can hear his corn grow. Get out of debt as soon as you 
 possibly can. You have supported idle avarice and lazy 
 economy long enough. 
 
 The Colonel s Party. 
 
 I wish to belong to that party which is prosperous when 
 the country is prosperous. I belong to that party which is 
 not poor when the golden billows are running over the seas 
 of wheat. I belong to that party that is prosperous when 
 there are oceans of corn, and when the cattle are upon the 
 thousand .hills. I belong to that party which is prosperous 
 when the furnaces are aflame ; and when you dig coal and 
 iron and silver; when everybody has enough to eat; when 
 everybody is happy ; when the children are all going to 
 school ; and when joy covers my nation as with a garment. 
 That party which is prosperous then, that is my party. 
 
 How the Colonel Cooks Beefsteak. 
 
 There ought to be a law making it a crime, punishable 
 by imprisonment, to fry beefsteak. Broil it; it is just as 
 easy, and when broiled it is delicious. Fried beefsteak 
 is not fit for a wild beast. You can broil even on a stove.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 43 
 
 Shut the front damper open the back one, then take of a 
 griddle. There will then be a draft down through this 
 opening. Put on your steak, using a wire broiler, and not 
 a particle of smoke will touch it, for the reason that the 
 smoke goes down. If you try to broil it with the front 
 damper open, the smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, 
 even soft coal, makes a better fire than wood. 
 
 How Ingersoll Hopes to End His Days. 
 
 I can imagine no condition that carries with it such a 
 promise of joy as that of the farmer in the early winter. 
 He has his cellar filled he has made every preparation for 
 the days of snow and storm he looks forward to three 
 months of ease and rest ; to three months of fireside con 
 tent; three months with wife and children; three months 
 of long, delightful evenings; three months of home ; three 
 months of solid comfort. 
 
 "When the life of the farmer is such as I have described, 
 the cities and towns will not be filled with want the streets 
 will not be crowded with wrecked rogues, broken bankers, 
 and bankrupt speculators. The fields will be tilled, and 
 country villages, almost hidden by trees, and vines, and 
 flowers, filled with industrious and happy people, will nes 
 tle in every vale and gleam like gems on every plain. 
 
 The idea must be done away with that there is something 
 intellectually degrading in cultivating the soil. Nothing 
 can be nobler than to be useful. Idleness should not be 
 respectable. 
 
 If farmers will cultivate well, and without waste; if they 
 will so build that their houses will be warm in winter and 
 cool in summer; if they will plant trees and beautify their 
 homes; if they will occupy their leisure in reading, in 
 thinking, in improving their minds and in devising ways
 
 44 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 and means to make their business profitable and pleasant , 
 if they will live nearer together and cultivate sociability; 
 if they will come together often; if they will have reading 
 rooms and cultivate music ; it they wil have bath-rooms, 
 ice-houses and good gardens ; if their wives can have an 
 easy time ; if the nights can be taken for sleep and the ev 
 enings for enjoyment, everybody will be in love with the 
 fields. Happiness should be the object of life, and if life 
 on the farm can be ma !e really happy, the children will 
 grow up in love with the meadows, the streams, the woods 
 and the old home. Around the farm will cling and cluster 
 the happy memories of the delightful years. 
 
 Remember, I pray you, that you are in partnership with 
 all labor that you should join hands with all the sons and 
 daughters of toil, and that all who work belong to the same 
 noble family. 
 
 For my part, I envy the man who has lived on the same 
 broad acres from his boyhood, who cultivates the fields 
 where in youth he played, and lives where his father lived 
 and died. 
 
 I can imagine no sweeter way to end one s life than in 
 the quiet of the country, out of the mad race for money, 
 place and power far from the demands of business out of 
 the dusty highway where fools struggle and strive for the 
 hollow praise of other fools. 
 
 Surrounded by these pleasant fields and faithful friends, by 
 those I have loved, I hope to end my days.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 
 
 Little Ones. 
 
 A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it 
 yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you 
 would with yonr banker. 
 
 I intend so to live that when I die my children can come 
 to my grave and truthfully say: "He who sleeps here 
 never gave us one moment of pain." 
 
 If you tell a child you will do anything, either do it or 
 give the child the reason why. Truth is born of confidence. 
 It comes from the lips of love and liberty. 
 
 We have been saved by that splendid thing called inde 
 pendence, and I want to see more of it, day after day, and 
 I want to see children raised so they will have it. That is 
 my doctrine. 
 
 Make your home happy. Be honest with the children ; 
 divide fairly with them in everything. Give them a little 
 liberty, and you cannot drive them out of the house. They 
 will want to stay there. Make home pleasant. 
 
 Let children have some daylight at home if you want to 
 keep them there, arid don t commence at the cradle and
 
 46 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 yell, "Don t!" "Don t!" "Stop!" That is nearly all 
 that is said to a young one from the cradle until he is 
 twenty-one years old. 
 
 Another thing : let the children eat what they want to. 
 Let them commence at whichever end of the dinner they 
 desire. That is my doctrine. They know what they want 
 much better than you do. Nature is a great deal smarter 
 than you ever were. 
 
 Every little while some door is thrown open in some 
 orphan asylum, and there we see the bleeding back of a 
 child whipped beneath the roof that was raised by love. 
 It is infamous, and the man that can t raise a child without 
 the whip ought not to have a child. 
 
 Don t plant your children in lorg, straight rows, like 
 posts. Let them have light and air, and let them grow 
 beautiful as palms. When I was a little boy, children went 
 to bed when they were not sleepy, and always got up when 
 they were. I would like to see that changed, but they say 
 we are too poor, some of us, to do it. Well, all right. It 
 is as easy to wake a child with a kiss as with a blow ; with 
 kindness as with a curse. 
 
 I tell you there is something splendid in man that will 
 not always mind. Why, if we had done as the kings told 
 us five hundred years ago, we would all have been slaves. 
 If we had done as the priests told us, we would all have 
 been idiots. If we had done as the doctors told us, we 
 would all have been dead. We have been saved by dis 
 obedience. We have been saved by that splendid thing 
 called independence, and I want to see more of it, day after 
 day, and I want to see children raised so they will have it. 
 That is my doctrine. Give the children a chance. 
 
 Be perfectly honor bright with your children, and they 
 will be your friends when you are old. Don t try to teach
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 47 
 
 them something they can never learn. Don t insist upon 
 their pursuing some calling they have no sort of faculty 
 for. Don t make that poor girl play ten years on a piano 
 when she has no ear for music, and when she has practiced 
 until she can play "Bonaparte crossing the Alps," you 
 can t tell after she has played it whether .Bonaparte ever 
 got across or not. Men are oaks, women are vines, chil 
 dren are flowers, and if there is any Heaven in this world, 
 it is in the family. It is where the wife loves the husband, 
 and the husband loves the wife, and where the dimpled 
 arms of children are about the necks of both. 
 
 If there is one of you here that ever expect to whip your 
 child again, let me ask you something. Have your photo 
 graph taken at the time and let it show your face red with 
 vulgar anger, and the face of the little one with eyes swim 
 ming in tears, and the little chin dimpled with fear, look 
 ing like a piece of water struck by a sudden cold wind. If 
 that little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way 
 to spend an Autumn afternoon than to take that photograph 
 and go to the cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender 
 gold, and when little scarlet runners are coming, like poems 
 of regret, from the sad heart of the earth; and sit, down 
 upon that mound, and look upon that photograph, and 
 think of the flesh, now dust, that you beat. Just think of 
 it. I could not bear to die in the arms of a child that I 
 had whipped. I could not bear to feel upon my lips, when 
 they were withered beneath the touch of death, the kiss of 
 one that I had struck. 
 
 I said, and I say again, no day can be so sacred but that 
 the laugh of a child wili make the holiest day more sacred 
 still. Strike with hand of fire, oh, wierd musician, thy 
 harp, strung with Apollo s golden hair; fill the vast cathe 
 dral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of
 
 48 COL. INGERSOI.L S WIT, 
 
 the organ keys; blow, bugler, blow, until thy silver notes 
 do touch the skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the 
 lovers wandering on the vine-clad hills : but know, your 
 sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood s 
 happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light and 
 every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of lite, thou art 
 the blessed boundary-line between the beasts and man, and 
 every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fiend of 
 care; oh, laughter, divine daughter of joy, make dimples 
 enough in the cheeks of the world to catch and hold and 
 glorify all the tears of grief. 
 
 I like to hear children at the table telling what big things 
 they have seen during the day; I like to hear their merry 
 voices mingling with the clatter of knives and forks. I had 
 rather hear that than any opera that was ever put upon the 
 stage. I hate this idea of authority. I hate dignity. I 
 never saw a dignified man that was not after all an old 
 idiot. Dignity is a mask; a dignified man is afraid that 
 you will know he does not know everything. A man of 
 sense and argument is always willing to admit what he 
 don t know why? because there is so much that he does 
 know; and that is the first step towards learning anything 
 willingness to admit what you don t know, and when yon 
 don t understand a thing, ask no matter how small and 
 silly it may look to other people ask, and after that you 
 know. A man never is in a state of mind that he can 
 learn until he gets that dignified nonsense out of him, and 
 so I pay let us treat our children with perfect kindness and 
 tenderness. 
 
 I want to tell you that you cannctgetthe robe of hypoc 
 risy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will 
 not see through every veil, and if you pretend to your chil 
 dren that you are the best man that ever lived the bravest
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 49 
 
 man that ever lived they will find you out every time. 
 They will not have the same opinion of father when they 
 grow up that they used to have. They will have to be in 
 mighty bad luck if they ever do meaner things than you 
 have done. When your child confesses to you that it has 
 committed a fault, take that child in your arms, and let it 
 feel your heart beat against its heart, and raise your chil 
 dren in the sunlight of love, and they will be sunbeams to 
 you along the pathway of life. Abolish the club and the 
 whip from the house, because, if the civilized use a whip, 
 the ignorant arid the brutal will use a club, and they will 
 use it because you use the whip. 
 
 I was over in Michigan the other day. There was a boy 
 over there at Grand Rapids about five or six years old, a 
 nice, smart boy, as you will see from the remark he made 
 what you might call a nineteenth century boy. His 
 father and mother had promised to take him out riding. 
 They had promised to take him out riding for about three 
 weeks, and they would slip oft and go without him. Well, 
 after a while that got kind of played out with the little 
 boy, and the day before I was there they played the trick 
 on him again. They went out and got the carriage, and 
 went away, and as they rode away from the front of the 
 house, he happened to be standing there with his nurse, 
 and he saw them. The .whole thing flashed on him in a 
 moment. He took in the situation, and turned to his nurse 
 and said, pointing to his father and mother: "There goes 
 the two biggest liars in the State of Michigan!" When 
 you go home fill the house with joy, so that the light of it 
 will stream out the windows and doors, and illuminate even 
 the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the 
 world.
 
 5o COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 
 
 Ingersoll s Eloquent Speech to the Volunteer Soldiers. 
 
 At the banquet given to the Army of the Tennessee, at 
 Chicago, Nov. 13th 18 , Gen. Sherman announced the 
 following toast : "The volunteer soldiers of the Union 
 army, whose valor and patriotism saved the world a gov 
 ernment of the people, by the people and for the people." 
 Response by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. 
 
 Col. Ingersoll, mounting the table by which he was sit 
 ting, spoke as follows : 
 
 "When the savagery of the lash, the barbarism of the 
 class, and the insanity of secession confronted the civiliza 
 tion of our century, the question, "Will the great republic 
 defend itself?" trembled on the lips of every lover of man 
 kind. 
 
 The North, filled with intelligence and wealth children 
 of liberty marshalled her hosts and asked only for a leader. 
 From civil life, a man, silent, thoughtful, poised and calm, 
 stepped forth and with lips of victory voiced the nation s 
 first arid last demand: "Unconditional and immediate 
 surrender." From that moment the end was known. 
 That utterance was the first real declaration of war, and, in 
 accordance with the dramatic unities of mighty events, the
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 5 I 
 
 great soldier who made it received the final reward of the 
 rebellion. 
 
 The soldiers of the republic were not seekers after vulgar 
 glory. They were not animated by the hope of plunder or 
 the love of conquest. They fought to preserve the bless 
 ings of liberty and that their children might have peace. 
 They were the defenders of humanity, the destroyers of 
 prejudice, the breakers of chains, and in the name of the 
 future they slew the monster of their time. They finished 
 what the soldiers of the Revolution commenced. They re 
 lighted the torch that fell from their august hands and filled 
 the world again with light. They blotted from the sta ute 
 books laws that had been passed by hypocrites at the insti 
 gation of robbers, and tore with indignant hands from the 
 Constitution that infamous clause that made men the catch 
 ers of their fellow men. 
 
 They made it possible for judges to be just, for states 
 men to be human, and for politicians to be honest. 
 
 They broke the shackles from the limbs of slaves, from 
 the souls of martyrs, and from the Northern brain. They 
 
 kept our country on the map of the world and our flag in 
 heaven. 
 
 They rolled the stone from the sepulchre of progress, 
 and for these two angels clad in shining garments Nation 
 ality and Liberty. The soldiers were the saviors of the na 
 tion. They were the liberators of men. In writing the
 
 52 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 proclamation of independence, Lincoln, the greatest of our 
 mighty dead, whose memory is as gentle as the summer 
 air when reapers sing amid the gathered sheaves copied 
 with the pen what Grant and his brave comrades wrote 
 with their swords. 
 
 Grander than the Greek, nobler than the Roman, the sol 
 diers of the republic, with patriotism as taintless as the air, 
 battled for the rights of others ; for the nobility of labor; 
 f>ught that mothers miirht own their babes; that arroirant 
 
 GJ O t o 
 
 idleness should not scar the back of patient toil, and that 
 our country should not be a many-headed monster made of 
 warring States, but a nation, sovereign, great and free. 
 
 Blood was water, money, leaves, and life was common 
 air until one flag floated over a republic without a master 
 and without a bluve. Then was asked the question: Will 
 a free people tax themselves to pay the nation s debt? 
 
 The soldiers went home to their waiting wives, to their 
 glad children, and to the girls they loved they went back 
 to the fields, the shops and mines. They had not been de 
 moralized. They had been ennobled. They were as hon 
 est in peace as they had been brave in war. Mocking at 
 poverty, laughing at reverses, they made a friend of toil. 
 They said : "We saved the nation s life, and what is life 
 without honor?" They worked and wrought with all of 
 labor s sons, that every pledge the nation gave should be 
 redeemed. And their great leader, having put a shining 
 hand of friendship a girdle of clasped and happy hands 
 around the globe, comes home and finds that every promise 
 made in war has now the ring and gleam of gold. 
 
 There is still another question: Will all the wounds 
 of the war be healed?" I answer, Yes. The Southern peo. 
 pie must submit, not to the dictation of the North, but to 
 the nation s will and to the verdict of mankind. They 
 were wrong, aud the time will come when they will say
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 5j 
 
 that they are victors who have been vanquished by the 
 right. Freedom conquered them, and freedom will culti 
 vate their fields, educate their children, weave f >rthem the 
 robes of wealth, execute their laws, and fill their laud with 
 happy homes. 
 
 The soldiers of the Union saved the South as well as the 
 North. They made us a Nation. Their victory made us 
 free and rendered tyranny in every other land as insecure 
 as snow upon volcano lips. 
 
 And now let us drink to the volunteers, to those who 
 sleep in unknown, sunken griives, whose names are only in 
 the hearts of those they loved and left of those who only 
 hear in happy dreams the footsteps of return. 
 
 Let us drink to those who died where lipless famine 
 mocked at want to alt the maimed whose scars give mod 
 esty a tongue, to all who dared and gave to chance the 
 care and keeping of their lives to all the living and all the 
 dead to Sherman, to Sheridan and to Grant, the foremost 
 soldiers of the world ; and last, to Lincoln, whose loving 
 life, like a bow of peace, spans and arches all the clouds of 
 war." 
 
 Honest Money. 
 
 I am next in favor of honest money. I am in favor of 
 gold and silver, and paper with gold and silver behind it. 
 I believe in silver, because it is one of the greatest of 
 American products, and I am in favor of anything that will 
 add to the value of American products. tint I want a silver 
 dollar worth a gold dollar, even if you make it or have to 
 make it four feet in diameter. No Government can afford 
 to be a clipper of coin. A great Republic cannot afford to 
 stamp a lie upon silver or gold. Honest money, an honest 
 people, an honest Nation. When our money is only worth
 
 54 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 80 cents on the dollar, we feel 20 per cent, below par. 
 When onr money is good we feel good. When our money 
 is at par, that is where we are. I am a profound believer 
 in the doctrine that for nations, as well as men, honesty is 
 the best, always, everywhere and forever. 
 
 Eloquent Defense of Good Government. 
 
 We all want a good Government. If we do not, we 
 should havo none. We all want to live in a land where 
 the law is supreme. We desire to live beneath a fl-ag that 
 will protect every citizen beneath its folds. We desire to be 
 citizens of a Government so great and so grand that it will 
 command the respect" of the civilized world. 
 
 Most of us are convinced that our Government is the best 
 Upon this earth.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 55 
 
 It is the only Government where manhood, and manhood 
 alone, is made not simply a condition of citizenship, but 
 where manhood, and manhood alone, permits its possessor 
 to have his equal share in the control of the Government. 
 
 It is the only Government where poverty is upon an ex 
 act equality with wealth, 6O far as controlling the destinies 
 of the Republic is concerned. 
 
 It is the only Nation where the man clothed in a rag 
 stands upon an equality with the one wearing purple. 
 
 It is the only country in the world where, politically, the 
 hut is upon an equality with the palace. 
 
 For that reason, every poor man should stand by that 
 Governmeat, and every poor man who does not is a traitor 
 to the best interests of his children ; every poor man who 
 does not is willing his children should bear the badge of 
 political inferiority; and the only way to make this Govern 
 ment a complete and perfect success is for the poorest man 
 to think as much of his manhood as the millionaire does of 
 his wealth. 
 
 A man does not vote in this country simply because he is 
 rich ; he does not vote in this country simply because he 
 nas an education ; he does not vote simply because he has 
 talent or genius; we say that he votes because he is a man, 
 and that he has his manhood to support; and we admit in 
 this country that nothing can be more valuable to any 
 human being than his manhood, and for that reason we put 
 poverty on an equality with wealth. 
 
 We say in this country manhood is worth more than gold. 
 We say in this country that without liberty the Nation is 
 not worth preserving. I appeal to every laboring man, and 
 I ask him, Is there another country on this globe where 
 you can have your equal rights with others? Now, then, 
 in every country, no matter how good it is, and no matter 
 how bad it is in every country there is something worth
 
 56 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 preserving, and there is something that ought to be de 
 stroyed. Now recollect that every voter is in his own right 
 a king ; every voter in this country wears a crown ; every 
 voter in this country has in his hands the scepter of authority; 
 and every voter, poor and rich, wears the purple of author, 
 ity alike. Recollect it; and the man that will sell his vote 
 !S the man that abdicates the American throne. 
 
 The man that sells his vote strips himself of the im 
 perial purple, throws away the scepter, and admits that he 
 is less than a man. More than that, the man that will sell 
 his vote for prejudice or for hatred, the man that will be 
 lied out of his vote, that will be slandered out of his vote, 
 that will be fooled out of his vote, is not worthy to be an 
 American citizen. 
 
 Now let us understand ourselves. Let us endeavor to do 
 what is right ; let us say this country is good we will make 
 it better; let us say if our children do not live in a Republic 
 it shall not be our fault. 
 
 A Picture. 
 
 The other night I happened to notice a sunset. The sun 
 went down, and the west was full of light and fire, and I 
 said: "There is the perfect death of a great man; that 
 dying sun leaves a legacy of glory to the very clouds that 
 obstruct its path. That sun, like a great man, dying, leaves 
 a legacy of glory even to the ones who persecuted him, 
 and the world is glorious only because there have been men 
 great enough and grand enough to die for the right." Will 
 any man, can any man ttffurd to die for this country ? Then 
 we can afford to vote for it. If a man can afford to tight 
 for it and die for it, I can afford to speak for it. 
 
 And now I beg of you, every man and woman, no mat 
 ter in what country born, if you are an Irishman, recol-
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 5; 
 
 lect that this country has done more for your race than all 
 other countries under heavens ; if you are a German, recol 
 lect that this country is kinder to you than your own fath 
 erland, no matter what country you came from, remem 
 ber that this country is an asylum, and vote as in your 
 conscience you believe you ought to vote to keep this flag 
 in heaven. I beg every American to stand with that part 
 of the country that believes in law, in freedom of speech, 
 in an honest vote, in civilization, in progress, in human 
 liberty, and in universal justice. 
 
 Good Dollars and Good Times. 
 
 If I am fortunate enough to leave a dollar when I die, 
 I want it to be a good one ; I don t wish to have it turn to 
 ashes in the hands of widowhood, or because a Democratic 
 broken promise in the pocket of the orphan ; I want it 
 money. I saw not long ago a piece of gold bearing the 
 stamp of the Roman Empire. That Empire is dust, and 
 over it has been thrown the mantle of oblivion, but that 
 piece of gold is as good as though Julius Caesar were still 
 riding at the head of the Roman Legion. I want money 
 that will outlive the Democratic party. They told us 
 and they were honest about it they said, when we 
 have plenty of money, we are prosperous." And I 
 said: "When we are prosperous, then we have credit, and, 
 credit ii.flates the currency. Whenever a man buys a 
 pound of sugar and says, Charge it, he inflates the cur 
 rency ; whenever he gives hU note, he inflates the curren 
 cy; whenever his word takes the place of money, lie 
 inflates the currency." The consequence is that when we 
 are prosperous, credit takes the place of money, and we 
 have what we call " plenty." But you can t increase pros 
 perity simply by using promises to pay.
 
 58 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 Suppose you should come to a river that was about dry, 
 and there you would see the ferryboat, and the gentleman 
 who kept the ferry, high on the sand, and the cracks all 
 opening in the sun filled with loose oakum, looking like an 
 average Democratic mouth listening to a Constitutional 
 argument, and you should say to him : 
 
 " How is business ?" 
 
 He would say " Dull." 
 
 And then you would say to him, " Now, what you want 
 is more boat." 
 
 He would probably answer, "If I had a little more wa 
 ter I could get along with this one." 
 
 Ingersoll s Apt Words on State Lines. 
 
 In old times, in the year of grace, 1860, if a man wished 
 the army of the United States to pursue a fugitive slave, 
 then the army could cross a State line. Whenever it has 
 been necessary to deprive some human being of a right, 
 then we had a right to cross State lines ; but whenever we 
 wished to strike the shackles of slavery from a human be 
 ing we had no right to cross a State line. In other words, 
 when you want to do a mean thing you can step over the 
 line, but if your object is a good one you shall not do it. 
 
 This doctrine of State sovereignty is the meanest doctrine 
 that was ever lodged in the American mind. It is political 
 poison, and if this country is destroyed that doctrine will 
 have done as much toward it as any other one thing. I be 
 lieve the Union one absolutely. The Democrat tells me 
 that when I am away from home the Government will pro 
 tect me ; but when I am home, when I am sitting around 
 the family fireside of the nation, then the Government can 
 not protect me ; that I must leave if I want protection. 
 Now I denounce that doctrine. For instance, we are at
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 5g 
 
 war with another country, and the American nation comes 
 to me and says : We want you." 
 
 I say : I won t go." 
 
 They draft me, put some names in a wheel, and a man 
 turns it and another man pulls out a paper, and my name 
 is on it, and he says : "Come." So I go, and I fight for 
 the fiag. When the war is over I go back to my State. 
 Now let us adm. tv> flt the war has been unpopular, and 
 that when I got to the State the people of that State wished 
 to trample upon my rights, and I cried out to my Govern 
 ment : Come and defend me ; you made me defend you." 
 What ought the Government to do ? 
 
 I only owe that Government allegiance that owes me my 
 protection. Protection is the other side of the bargain ; 
 that is what it must be. And if a Government ought to 
 protect even the man that it drafts, what ought it to do for 
 the volunteer, the man who holds his wife for a moment in 
 a tremulous embrace, and kisses his children, wets their 
 cheeks with his tears, shoulders his musket, goes to the 
 field, and says : "Here I am to uphold my flag." A na 
 tion that will not protect such a protector is a disgrace to 
 mankind, and its flag a dirty rag that contaminates the air 
 in which it waves. 
 
 I believe in a Government with an arm long enough to 
 reach the collar of any rascal beneath its flag. 
 
 I want it with an arm long enough and a sword sharp 
 enough to strike down tyranny wherever it may raise its 
 snaky head. 
 
 I want a nation that can hear the faintest cries of its 
 humblest citizen. 
 
 I want a nation that will protect a freedman standing in 
 the sun by his little cabin, just as quick as it would protect 
 Vanderbilt in a palace of marWe and gold. 
 
 I believe in a Government that can cross a State line on an
 
 60 COL. INOERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 errand of mercy. I believe in a Government that can cross 
 a State line when it wishes to do justice. I do not believe 
 that the sword turns to air at a State line. I want a Gov 
 ernment that will protect me. I arn here (Kocktord, III.,) 
 to-day do I stand here because the flasc of Illinois is above 
 me ? I want no flag of Illinois, and if I were to see it I 
 
 should not know it. I am here to-day under the folds of 
 the flag of my country, for which more good, blessed blood 
 has been shed than for any other flag that waves in this 
 world. I have as much right to speak here as if I had been 
 born right here. 
 
 That is the countrj* in which I believe ; that is the nation 
 that commands my respect, that protects all.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 
 
 Ingersollisms. 
 
 ^ The thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth 
 inuta uot much. 
 
 We have a common interest in the preservation of a 
 common country. 
 
 I believe in absolute intellectual liberty; that a man 
 has a right to think. 
 
 I never knew a man who did a decent action that 
 wanted it forgotten. 
 
 It will be thousands of years before the world will be 
 willing to say that right makes might. 
 
 I hau /ather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like
 
 62 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 a king than be a king and spend my money like a beggar. 
 
 If you want to get at the honest thoughts of a man he 
 must be free. If he is not free you will not get his honest 
 thought. 
 
 Whenever a man does what mantles the cheeks of his 
 children with shame, he is the man who says, "Let by 
 gones be by-gones." 
 
 The Constitution of the United States was the first 
 decree entered in the high court of a nation forever divorc 
 ing Church and State. 
 
 Printing gave pinions to thought and made it possible 
 for man to bequ- ath to the future the richness of his brain, 
 the wealth of his soul. 
 
 I believe another thing. If I belong to the superior 
 race I will be so superior that I can make my living without 
 stealing from the inferior. 
 
 We used to worship the golden calf, and the worst you 
 can say of us now, is, we worship the gold of the calf, and 
 even the calves are beginning to see this distinction. 
 
 Education is the most radical thing in the world. To 
 teach the alphabet is to inaugurate a revolution. To build 
 a school house is to construct a fort. A library is an arsenal. 
 
 I say here that I think a hundred times more of the 
 good, honest, black, industrious man of the South than I 
 do of all the white men together that don t love the 
 government. 
 
 In the long run the nation that is honest, the people 
 that are industrious, will pass the people that are dishonest, 
 the people that are idle ; no matter what grand ancestry 
 they may have had. 
 
 I believe that every round in the ladder of fame, from 
 the one that rests on the ground to the last one that leans
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 63 
 
 against the shining summit of human ambition, belongs to 
 the foot that gets on it. 
 
 Every man who has invented anything for the use and 
 convenience of man has helped raise his fellow man. 
 
 Yon should keep your minds open to reason ; hear 
 what a man has to say, and do not let the turtle-shell of 
 bigotry grow above your brain. Give everybody a chance 
 and an opportunity ; that is all. 
 
 If some men were as ashamed of appearing cross in 
 public as they are of appearing tender at home, this world 
 would be infinitely better. I think you can make your 
 home a heaven if you want to you can make up your 
 minds to that. 
 
 I believe if you have got a dollar in the world and you 
 have got to spend it, spend it like a man ; spend it like a 
 king, like a prince. If you have to sperd it, spend it as 
 though it was a dried leaf, and you were the owner of un* 
 bounded forests. 
 
 The last Napoleon was not satisfied with being Emperor 
 of the French ; he was not satisfied with having a circlet 
 of gold about his head ; he wanted some one evidence that 
 he had something within his head, so he wrote the life of 
 Julius Csesar, that he might become a member of the French 
 academy. 
 
 In every age some men carried the torch of progress 
 and handed it to some other, and it has been carried through 
 all the dark ages of barbarism, and had it not been for such 
 men we would have been naked and uncivilized to-night, 
 with pictures of wild beasts tattooed on our skins, dancing 
 around some dried snake fetish. 
 
 The more a man knows the more liberal he is ; the less 
 a man knows the more bigoted he is. The less a man
 
 64 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 knows the more certain he is that he knows it, and the more 
 a man knows the better satisfied lie is that he is entirely 
 ignorant. Great knowledge is philosophic, and little, nar 
 row, contemptible knowledge is bigoted and hateful. 
 
 I have sometimes wished that there were words of pure 
 hatred out of which I might construct sentences like snakes, 
 out of which I might construct sentences with mouths 
 fanged, that had forked tongues, out of which I might con 
 struct sentences that writhed and hissed ; then I could give 
 my opinion of the rebels during the great struggle for the 
 preservation of this nation. 
 
 The grave is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. 
 The living have a right to control this world. I think a 
 good deal more of to-day than I do of yesterday, and I 
 think more of to-morrow than I do of this day ; because, 
 it is nearly gone that is the way I feel. The time to be 
 happy is now ; the way to be happy is to make somebody 
 else happy and the place to be happy is here. 
 
 It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great 
 to be a success ; and neither is it necessary to have your 
 name between the putrid lips of rumor to be great. We 
 have had a false standard of success. In the years when I 
 was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow was a 
 success that did not make a fortune or get a big office, and 
 he generally was a man that slept about three hours a night. 
 They never put down in the books the names of those gen 
 tlemen that succeeded in life that slept all they wanted to ; 
 and we all thought that we could not sleep to exceed three 
 or four hours if we ever expected to be anything in this 
 world. We have had a wrong standard.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 65 
 
 The Celebrated Speech of Col. Ingersoll Nominating 
 James G. Elaine for President. 
 
 At Cincinnati, June, 1876, in nominating James G. 
 Elaine tor President, Col. Ingersoll spoke as follows: (full 
 report.) 
 
 MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : Massachu 
 setts may be satisfied with the loyalty of Benjamin II. 
 Bristow ; so am I ; but if any man nominated by this con 
 vention cannot carry the State of Massachusetts, I am not 
 satisfied with the loyalty of that State. If the nominee of 
 this convention cannot carry the grand old commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts by seventy-five thousand majority I would 
 advise them to sell out Faneuil Hall as a Democratic head 
 quarters. I would advise them to take from Bunker Hill 
 that old monument of glory. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States demand as their 
 leader in the great contest of 1876, a man of intelligence, a 
 man of integrity, a man of well-known and approved politi 
 cal opinions. They demand a statesman ; they demand a 
 reformer after as well as before the election. They de 
 mand a politician in the highest, broadest and best sense 
 a man of superb moral courage. They demand a man ac 
 quainted with public affairs ; with the wants of the people ; 
 with not only the requirements of the hour, but with the 
 demands of the future. 
 
 They demand a man broad enough to comprehend the 
 relations of this Government to the other nations of the 
 earth. They demand a man well versed in the powers, 
 duties and prerogatives of each and every department of 
 this Government. They demand a man who will sacredly 
 preserve the financial honor of the United States ; one who 
 knows enough to know that the national debt must be paid 
 through the prosperity of the people ; one who knows 
 enough t > know that ail the financial theories in the world
 
 66 COL. INGEKSOLL S WIT, 
 
 cannot redeem a single dollar ; one who knows enough to 
 know that all the money must be made, not by law but by 
 labor ; one who knows enough to know that the people of 
 the United States have the industry to make the money, 
 and the honor to pay it over just as fast as they make it. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States demand a man 
 who knows that prosperity and resumption, when they 
 come, must come together ; that when they come they will 
 come hand in hand through the golden harvest fields ; 
 hand in hand by the whirling spindles and the turning 
 wheels; hand in hand past the open furnace doors; hand 
 in hand by the chimneys filled with eager tire, greeted and 
 grasped by the countless sons of toil. 
 
 This money has to be dug out of the earth. You cannot 
 make it by passing resolutions in a political convention. 
 
 The Republicans of the United States want a man who 
 knows that this Government should protect every citizen, 
 at home and abroad ; who knows that any Government 
 that will not defend its defenders and protect its protectors, 
 is a disgrace to the map of the world. They demand a 
 man who believes in the eternal separation and divorce 
 ment of church and school. They demand a man whose 
 political reputation is as spotless as a star ; but they do not 
 demand that their candidate shall have a certificate of 
 moral character signed by a Confederate Congress. The 
 man who has, in full, heaped and rounded measure, all 
 these splendid qualifications is the present grand and gal 
 lant leader of the Republican party James G. Elaine. 
 
 Our country, crowned with the vast and marvelous 
 achievements of its first century, asks for a man worthy of 
 the past and prophetic of her future ; asks for a man who 
 has the audacity of genius ; asks for a man who is the grand 
 est combination of heart, conscience and brain beneath hei 
 flag. Such a man is James G. JJlaine.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 6/ 
 
 For the Republican host, led by this intrepid man, there 
 can be no defeat. 
 
 This is a grand year a year filled with recollections of 
 the Revolution ; filled with the proud and tender memories 
 of the past; with the sacred legends of liberty ; a year in 
 which the sons of freedom will drink from the fountains of 
 enthusiasm ; a year in which the people call for a man who 
 has preserved in Congress what our soldiers won upon the 
 field ; a year in which they call for the man who has torn 
 from the throat of treason the tongue of slander for the 
 man who has snatched the mask of Democracy from the 
 hideous face of rebellion ; for this man who, like an intel 
 lectual athlete, has stood in the arena of debate and chal 
 lenged all comers, and who is still a total stranger to de 
 feat. 
 
 Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. 
 Elaine marched down the halls of the American Congress 
 and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen 
 foreheads of the defamers of his country and the maligners 
 of her honor. For the Republican party to desert this gal 
 lant leader now is as though an army should desert their 
 Goii T;,! nr<>n the field of battle. 
 
 James G. J31ai; e is now and has been for years the 
 bearer or the sacred standard of the Republican party. I 
 call it sacred because no human being can stand beneath 
 its folds without becoming and without remaining free. 
 
 Gentlemen of the convention, in the name of the great 
 Republic, the only Republic that ever existed upon tiiis 
 earth ; in the name of all her defenders and of all her sup 
 porters ; in the name of all her soldiers living ; in the 
 name of all her soldiers dead upon the field of battle, and 
 in the name of those who perished in the skeleton clutch of 
 famine at Andersonville and Libbj 7 , whose sufferings he so 
 vividly remembers, Illinois Illinois nominates fur the next
 
 68 
 
 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 President of this country that prince of parliamentarians 
 that leader of leaders James G. Elaine. 
 
 A Country Full of Kings. 
 
 I want the power where somebody can use it. As long 
 as a man is responsible to the people there is no fear of des 
 potism. There s no reigning family in this country. We 
 are all of us Kings. We are the reigning family. And 
 when any man talks about despotism, you may be sure he 
 wants to steal or be up to devilment. If we have any sense, 
 we have got to have localization of brain. If we have any 
 power, we must have centralization. We want centraliza 
 tion of the ri<iht kind. The man we choose ibr our head
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 69 
 
 wants the army in one hand and the navy in the other, and 
 to execute the supreme will of the supreme people. 
 
 But you say you will cross a State, line. I hope so. 
 When the Democratic party was in power and wanted to 
 pursue a human slave, there was no State line. When we 
 want to save a human being, the State line rises up like a 
 Chirese wall. I believe when one party can cross a State 
 line to put a chain on, another party can cross it to take a 
 chain off. " Why," you say, "you want the Federal Gov 
 ernment to interfere with the rights of a State." Yes, I 
 do, if necessary. I want the ear of the Government acute 
 enough and arm long enough to reach a wronged man in 
 any State. A government that will not protect its pro 
 tectors is no government. Its flag is a dirty rag. That is 
 not my government. I want a government that will pro 
 tect its citizens at home. The Democratic doctrine is that 
 a government can only protect its citizens abroad. If a 
 father can t protect his children at home, depend upon it, 
 that he can t do much for them when they are abroad. 
 
 Think of it ! Here s a war. They come to me in Illinois 
 and draft me. They tell me I must go. I go through the 
 war and come home safe. Afterwards that State finds a 
 way to trample on me. I say to the Federal Government, 
 u You told me I owed my first allegiance to you, and I had 
 to go to war. Now, I say to you, You owe your first alle 
 giance to me, and I want you to protect me! 
 
 The Federal Government says, "Oh, you must ask your 
 State to request it." 
 
 I say, "That s just what they won t .do !" Such a con 
 dition of things is perfectly horrible! 
 
 If so with a man who was drafted, what will you say of 
 a volunteer ? Yet that s the Democratic doctrine of Federal 
 Government. It won t do ! And vou know it!
 
 7o COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 Some Laughable Remarks About Money With a Few 
 Illustrations. 
 
 They say that money is a measure of value. Tisn t so. 
 A bushel doesn t measure values. It measures diamonds 
 as well as potatoes. If it measured values, a bushel of 
 potatoes would be worth as much as a bushel of diamonds. 
 A yard-stick doesn t measure values. They used to say, 
 u there s no use in having a gold yard-stick." That was 
 right. You don t buy the yard-stick. If money bore the 
 same relation to trade as a yard-stick or half- bushel, you 
 would have the same money when you got through trading 
 as you had when you begun. A man don t sell half-bush 
 els. He sells corn. All we want is a little sense about 
 these things. 
 
 I don t blame the man wno wanted inflation. I don t 
 blame him for praying for another period of inflation. 
 < ; When it comes," said the man who had a lot of shrunk 
 en property on his hands, "blame me, if I don t unload, 
 you may shoot me." It s a good deal like the game of 
 poker ! I don t suppose any of you know anything about 
 that game ! Along towards morning the fellow who is 
 ahead always wants another deal. The fellow that is he- 
 hind says his wife s sick, and he must go hcme. You 
 ought to hear that fellow descant on domestic virtue ! And 
 the other fellow accuses him of being a coward and want 
 ing to jump the game. A man whose dead wood is hung 
 up on the shore in a dry time, wants the water to rise once 
 more and float it out into the middle of the stream. 
 
 We were in trouble. The thing was discussed. Some 
 said there wasn t enough money. That s so ; I know what 
 that means myself. They said if we had more money we d 
 be more prosperous. The truth is, if we were more pros 
 perous we d have more money. They said more money 
 would facilitate business.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 7 I 
 
 Suppose a shareholder in a railroad that had earned 
 $18,01)0 the past year should look over the books and find 
 that in that year the railroad had used $12,000 worth of 
 grease. The next year, suppose the earnings should fall 
 off $5,000, and the man, in looking over the accounts, 
 should learn that in that year the road hr.d used only $500 
 worth of grease! Supposing the man should say: "The 
 trouble is, we want more grease." What would you think 
 of a man if he discharged the superintendent for not using 
 more grease ? 
 
 I said, years ago, that resumption would come only by 
 prosperity, and the only way to pay debts was by labor. 
 I knew that every man who raised a bushel of corn helped 
 resumption. It was a question of crops, a question of in 
 dustry. 
 
 An Amusing Story. 
 
 ou Greenbackers are like the old woman in the Tewks- 
 bury, Mass., Poor-House. She used to be well off, and 
 didn t like her quarters. You Greenbackers have left your 
 father s house of many mansions and have fed on shucks 
 about long enough. The Supervisor came into the Poor- 
 House one day and asked the old lady how she liked it. 
 She said she didn t like the company, and asked him what 
 he would advise her to do under similar circumstances. 
 
 " Oh, you d better stay. You re prejudiced," said he. 
 
 " Do you think anybody is ever prejudiced in their sleep?" 
 asked the old lady. "I -had a dream the other night. I 
 dreamed I died arid went to Heaven. Lots of nice people 
 were there. A nice man came to me and asked me where 
 I was from. Says I, From Tewksbury, Mass. 
 
 He looked in his book and said, "You can t stay here."
 
 72 COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 I asked what he would advise ine to do under similar 
 circumstances. 
 
 <kk Well, he said, there s Hell down there, you might 
 try that. 
 
 u Well, I went down there, and the man told me my 
 name wasn t on the book and I couldn t stay there. Well, 
 said J, " What would you advise me to do under similar 
 circumstances? 
 
 "Said he, You ll have to go back to Tewksbury." 
 
 And when Greenb;ickers remember what they once were, 
 yon must feel now, when you were iorced to join the Demo 
 cratic part} 7 , as bad as the old lady who had to go back to 
 Tewksbury. 
 
 Money and Yardsticks. 
 
 A thousand theories were born of want ; a thousand the 
 ories were born of the fertile brain of trouble ; and these 
 people said after all : "What is money? why it is nothing 
 but a measure of value, just the same as a half-bushel or 
 yardstick." True. And consequently it makes no differ 
 ence whether your half-bushel is of wood, or gold, or sil 
 ver, or paper; and it makes no difference whether your 
 yardstick is gold or paper. But the trouble about that 
 statement is this : A half-bushel is not a measure of value; 
 it is a measure of quantity, and it measures rubies, dia 
 monds and pearls, precisely the same as corn and wheat. 
 The yardstick is not a measure of value ; it is a measure of 
 length, and it measures lace, worth $100 a yard, precisely 
 as it does cent tape. And another reason why it makes no 
 difference to the purchaser whether the half-bushel is gold 
 or silver, or whether the yardstick is gold or paper, you 
 don t buy the yardstick; you don t get the half-bushel in 
 the trade. And if it was so with money if the people
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 73 
 
 that had the money at the start of the trade, kept it after 
 the consummation of the bargain then it wouldn t make 
 any difference what you made your money of. But the 
 trouble is, the money changes hands. And let me say right 
 here, money is a thing it is a product of nature- and you 
 can no more make a "fiat" dollar than you can make a fiat 
 star. 
 
 Bright Money. 
 
 Now listen : No civilized nation, no barbarous nation, 
 no tribe, however ignorant, ever used anything as money 
 that man could make. They had always used for money 
 a production of nature. Some may say, "Have not some 
 uncivilized tribes used beads fur money, something that 
 civilized people could make?" Yes, but a savage tribe 
 could not make the beads. The savage tribes supposed 
 them to be a product either of nature or of something else 
 that they could not imitate. 
 
 Nothing has ever been considered money among any 
 people on this globe that those people could make. What 
 is a greenback ? The greenbacks are a promise, not money. 
 The greenbacks are the nation s note, not money. You 
 cannot make a fiat dollar any more than you can make a 
 fiat store. You can make a promise, and that promise 
 may be made by such a splendid man that it will pass 
 among all who know him as a dollar ; but it is not a dollar. 
 You might as well tell me that a bill of fare is a dinner. 
 The greenback is only good now because you can get gold 
 for it. If you could not get gold for it it would not be 
 worth any more than a ticket for dinner after the fellow 
 who issued the ticket had quit keeping the hotel. A dollar 
 must be made of something that nature has produced. 
 
 When 1 die, if I have a dollar left I want it to be a good
 
 74 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 one. I do not want a dollar that will turn into ashes in the 
 hand of widowhood or in the possession of an orphan. Take 
 a coin of the Roman empire a little piece of gold and it 
 is just as good to-day as though Julius Csesar still stood at. 
 the head of the Roman legions. I do not wish to trust the 
 wealth of this nation with the demagogs of the nation. I 
 do not wish to trust the wealth of the country to every 
 blast of public opinion. I want money as solid as the earth 
 on which we tread, as bright as the stars that shine above us. 
 
 A Panic Picture. 
 
 No man can imagine, all the languages of the world can 
 not express what the people of the United States suffered 
 from 1873 to 1879. Men who considered themselves mil 
 lionaires found that they were beggars ; men living in pal 
 aces, supposing they had enough to give sunshine to the 
 winter of their age, supposing they had enough to have all 
 they loved in affluence and comfort, suddenly found that 
 they were mendicants with bonds, stocks, mortgages, all 
 turned to ashes in their aged, trembling hands. The chim 
 neys grew cold, the fires in furnaces went out, the poor 
 families were turned adrift, and the highways of the United 
 States were crowded with tramps. Into the home of the 
 poor crept the serpent of temptation, and whispered in the 
 ?ar of poverty the terrible word "repudiation." 
 
 I want to tell you that you cannot conceive of what the 
 American people suffered as they staggered over the desert 
 of bankruptcy from 1873 to 1879. We are too near now to 
 know how grand we were. The poor mechanics said 
 "No;" the ruined manufacturer said "No ;" the once mil 
 lionaire said "No, we will settle fair ; we will agree to pay 
 whether we ever pay or not, and we will never soil the
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 75 
 
 American name with the infamous word, repudiation. " 
 Are you not glad ? What is the talk ? Are you not glad 
 that our flag is covered all over with financial honors ? The 
 stars shine and gleam now because they represent an lion 
 est nation. 
 
 Repudiation. 
 
 I think there is the greatest heroism in living for a thing ! 
 There s no glory in digging potatoes. You don t wear a 
 uniform when you re picking up stones. You can t have a 
 band of music when you dig potatoes ! In 1873 came the 
 great crash. We staggered over the desert of bankruptcy. 
 No one can estimate the anguish of that time. Millionaires 
 found themselves paupers. Palaces were exchanged for 
 hovels. The aged man, who had spent his life in hard 
 labor, and who thought he had accumulated enough to sup 
 port himself in his old age, and leave a little something to 
 his children and grandchildren, found they were all beggars. 
 The highways were filled with tramps. 
 
 Then it was that the serpent of temptation whispered in 
 the ear of want that dreadful word "Eepudiation." -An 
 effort was made to repudiate. They appealed to want, to 
 misery, to threatened financial ruin, to the bare hearth 
 stones, to the army of beggars. We had grandeur enough 
 to say: "No; we ll settle fair if we don t pay a cent!" 
 And we ll pay it. Twas grandeur! Is there a Democrat 
 now who wishes we had taken the advice of Bayard to 
 scale the bonds? Is there an American, a Democrat here, 
 who is not glad we escaped the stench and shame of repu 
 diation, and did not take Democratic advice? Is there a 
 Greenbacker here who is not glad WP. didn t do it? He 
 may say he is, but he isn t. We then had to pay 7 per 
 cent, interest on our bonds. Now we only pay 4. Our
 
 76 COL. INGERSOI.L S WIT. 
 
 greenbacks were then at 10 per cent, discount. Now they 
 are at pnr. How would an American feel to be in Ger 
 many or France and hear it said that the United States re 
 pudiated ? We have found out that money is something 
 that can t be made. We have found out that money is a 
 product of Nature. When a nation gets hard up, it is 
 right and proper for it to give its notes, and it should pay 
 them. We have found out that it is better to trust lor 
 payment to the miserly cleft of the rocks than to any Con 
 gress blown about by the wind of demagogs. We want 
 our money good in any civilized nation. Yes, we want it 
 good in Central Africa! And when a naked Hottentot 
 sees a United States greenback blown about by the wind, 
 he will pick it up as eagerly as if it was a lump of gold. 
 They say even now that money is a device to facilitate ex. 
 changes. Tisn t so ! Gold is not a device. Silver is not 
 a device. You might as well attempt to make fiat suns, 
 moons, and stars as a fiat dollar. 
 
 Protection. 
 
 There is another thing in which I believe. I believe in 
 the protection of American labor. The hand that holds 
 Aladdin s lamp must be the hand of toil. This nation 
 rests upon the shoulders of its workers, and I want the 
 American .aboring man to have enough to wear. I waut
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 77 
 
 him to have enough to eat. I want him to have something 
 for the ordinary misfortunes of life. I want him to have 
 the pleasure of seeing his wife well dressed. I want him 
 to see a few blue ribbons fluttering about his children. I 
 want him to see the flags of health flying in their beautiful 
 cheeks. I want him to feel that this is his country, and 
 the shield of protection is above his labor. 
 
 And I will tell you why I am for protection, too. If we 
 were all farmers we would be stupid. If we were all shoe 
 makers we would be stupid. If we all followed one busi" 
 ness, no matter what it was, we wonld become stupid. 
 Protection to American labor diversifies American indus 
 try, and to have it diversified touches and developes every 
 part of the human brain. Protection protects integrity ; it 
 protects intelligence ; and protection raises sense; and by 
 protection we have greater men and better-looking women 
 and healthier children. Free trade means that our laborer 
 is upon an equality with the poorest paid labor of this 
 world. 
 
 The Tariff. 
 
 Where did this doctrine of a tariff for revenue only come 
 from ? From the South. The South would like to stab 
 the prosperity of the North. They had rather trade with 
 Old England than with New England. They had rather 
 trade with the people who were willing to help them in war 
 than those who conquered the rebellion. They knew what 
 gave us our strength in war. They knew that all the 
 brooks and creeks and rivers in New England were putting 
 down the rebellion. They knew that every wheel that 
 turned, every spindle that revolved, was a soldier in the 
 army of human progress. It won t do. They were so 
 lured by the greed ot office that they were willing to trade
 
 78 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 upon the misfortunes of a nation. It won t do. I don t 
 wish to belong to a party that succeeds only when rny coun 
 try falls. I .don t wish to belong to a party whose banner 
 went up with the banner of rebellion. I don t wish to be 
 long to a party that was in partnership with defeat and dis 
 aster. I don t. And there isn t a Democrat here but what 
 knows that a failure of the crops this year would have 
 helped his party. You know that an early frost would 
 have been a godsend to them. You know that the potato- 
 bug could have done them more good than all their speak 
 ers. 
 
 Ingersoll s History of State Sovereignty. 
 
 This doctrine of State sovereignty has to be done away 
 with ; we have got to stamp it out. Let me tell you its 
 history : The first time it ever appeared was when they 
 wished to keep the slave trade alive until 1808. The first 
 resort to this doctrine was for the protection of piracy and 
 murder, and the next time they appealed to it was to keep 
 the inter-state slave trade alive, so that a man in Virginia 
 could sell the very woman that nursed him, to the rice fields of 
 the South. It was done so they could raise mankind as a 
 crop. It was a crop th.it they could thresh the year around. 
 
 The next time they appealed to the doctrine was in favor 
 of the Fugitive Slave law, so that every white man in the 
 North was to become a hound to bay upon the track of the 
 fugitive slave. Under that law the North agreed to catch 
 women and give them back to the bloodhounds of the 
 South. Under that infamy men and women were held and 
 were kidnapped under the shadow of the dome of the Na 
 tional Capitol. If the Democratic party had remained in 
 power it would be so now. The South said : " Be fi lends 
 with us, all we want is to steal labor ; be friends with us,
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 79 
 
 all we want of you is to have you catch our slaves; be 
 friends with us, all we want of you is to be in partnership 
 in the business of slavery, and we are to take all the money 
 and you are to have the disgrace and dishonor for your 
 share." The dividend didn t suit me. 
 
 The next time they appealed to the doctrine of State 
 rights was that they might extend the area of human 
 slavery ; it was that they might desecrate the fair fields of 
 Kansas. 
 
 The next time they appealed to this infamous doctrine 
 was in secession and treason ; so now, when I hear any 
 man advocate this doctrine, I know that he is not a friend 
 of my country, he is not a friend of humanity, of liberty, 
 or of progress. 
 
 A Dark Picture. 
 
 This world has not been fit to live in fifty years. There 
 is no liberty in it very little. Why, it is only a few years 
 ago that all the Christian nations were engaged in the t-lave 
 trade. It was not until 1808 that England abolished 
 the slave trade, and up to that time her priests in her 
 churches, and her judges on her benches, owned stock 
 in slave ships, and luxuriated on the profits of piracy 
 and murder; and when a man stood up and denounced it, 
 they mobbed him as though he had been a common burglar 
 or a horse thief. Think of it ! It was not until the 28th 
 day of August, 1833, that England abolished slavery in her 
 colonies ; and it was not until the first day of January, 1862, 
 that Abraham Lincoln by direction of the entire North, 
 wiped that infamy out of this country ; and I never speak 
 of Abraham Lincoln but I want to say that he was, in uiy 
 judgment, in many respects the grandest man ever President 
 of the United States. I say that upon his tomb there ought
 
 8o COT,. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 to be this line and I know of no other man deserving it 
 so well as he: "Here lies one who having been clothed 
 with almost absolute power never abused it except on the 
 side of mercy." 
 
 What the Colonel Has Seen and What he Wants 
 to See. 
 
 I have been in countries where the laboring man had 
 meat once a year ; sometimes twice Christinas and Easter. 
 And I have seen women carrying upon their heads a bur 
 den that no man would like to carry, and at the same time 
 knitting busily with both hands. And those women lived 
 without meat ; and when I thought of the American laoorer 
 1 said to myself, After all, my country is the best in the 
 world." And when I came back to the sea and saw the 
 old flag flying in the air, it seemed to me as though the air 
 from pure joy had burst into blossom. 
 
 Labor has more to eat and more to wear in the United 
 States than in any other land of this earth. I want Amer 
 ica to produce everything that Americans need. I want it 
 so if the whole world should declare war against us, so if 
 we wore surrounded by walls of cannons and bayonets and 
 swords, we could supply. all our human wants in and of 
 ourselves. I want to live to see the American woman 
 dressed in American silk ; the American man in everything 
 from hat to boots produced in America by the cunning 
 hand of the American toiler. 
 
 I want to see a workingman have a good house, painted 
 white, grass in the front yard, carpets on the floor and pic 
 tures on the wall. I want to see him a man feeling that 
 he Is a king by the divine right of living in the Republic* 
 And every man here is just a little bit a king, you know. 
 Every man here is a part of the sovereign power. Every
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 8 I 
 
 man wears a little of purple ; every man has a little of 
 crown and a little of sceptre; und every man that will sell 
 his vote for money or be ruled by prejudice is uutit to be 
 an American citizen. 
 
 The Struggle for Liberty. 
 
 Seven long years of war fighting for what? For the 
 principle that all men are created equal a truth that 
 nobody ever disputed except a scoundrel; nobody in the 
 entire history of this world. No man ever denied that 
 truth who was not a rascal, and at heart a thief; never, 
 never, and never will. What else were they fighting for? 
 Simply that in America every man should have a right to 
 life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nobody ever 
 denied that except a villain ; never, never. It has been 
 denied by kings they were thieves. It has been denied 
 by statesmen they were liars. It has been denied by
 
 82 COL. 1NGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 priests, by clergymen, by cardinals, by bishops and by 
 popes they were hypocrites. 
 
 What else were they fighting for? For the idea that all 
 political power is vested in the great body of the people. 
 They make all the money; do all the work. They plow 
 the land ; cut down the forests ; they produce everything 
 that is produced. Then. who shall say what shall be done 
 with what is produced, except Mie producer? Is it the 
 non-producing thief, sitting on a throne, surrounded by 
 vermin ? 
 
 The history of civilization is the history of the slow and 
 painful enfranchisement of the human race. In the ol len 
 times the family was a monarchy, the father being the 
 monarch. The mother and children were the veriest 
 slaves. The will of the father was the supreme law. He 
 had the power of life and death. It took thousands of 
 years to civilize this father, thousands of years to make the 
 condition of wife and mother and children even tolerable. 
 A lew families constituted a tribe; the tribe had a chief ; 
 the chief was a tyrant; a few tribes formed a nation ; the 
 nation was governed by a king, who was also a tyrant. A 
 strong nation robbed, plundered and took captive the 
 weaker ones. 
 
 America s Coming Greatness. 
 
 Standing here amid the sacred memories of the first cen 
 tury, on the golden threshold of the second, I ask, Will 
 the second century be as grand as the first ? I believe it 
 will, because we are growing more and more humane ; I 
 believe there is more human kindness, and a greater desire 
 to help one another, than in all the world besides. 
 
 We must progress. We are just at the commencement 
 of invention. The steam engine the telegraph these are
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 8j 
 
 but the toys with which science has been amuse d. There 
 will be grander things ; there will .be wider and higher cul 
 ture a grander standard of character, of literature and art. 
 
 We have now half as many millions of people as we have 
 years. We are getting more real solid sense. We are 
 writing and reading more books; we are struggling more 
 and more to get at the philosophy of life, of things trying 
 more and more to answer the questions of the eternal 
 Sphinx. We are looking in every direction investigating ; 
 in short, we are thinking and working. 
 
 The world has changed. I have had the supreme pleas 
 ure of seeing a man once a slave sitting in the seat of 
 his former master in the Congress of the United States. I 
 have had that pleasure, and when I saw it my eyes were 
 filled with tears, I felt that we had carried out the Declara 
 tion of Independence, that we had given reality to it, and 
 breathed the breath of life into its every word. I felt that 
 our flag would float over and protect the colored man and 
 his little children standing straight in the sun, just the 
 same as though he were white and worth a million. 
 
 All who stand beneath our banner are free. Ours is the 
 only flag that has in reality written upon it: Liberty, 
 Fraternity, Equality the three grandest words in all the 
 languages of men. Liberty : Give to every man the fruit 
 of his own labor the labor of his hand and of his brain. 
 Fraternity: Every man in the right is my brother. Equal 
 ity : The rights of all are equal. No race, no color, no 
 previous condition, can change the rights of men. The 
 Declaration of Independence has at last been carried out 
 in letter and in spirit. The second century will be grander 
 than the first. To-day the black man looks upon his child 
 and says : The avenues of distinction are open to you upon 
 your brow may fall the civic wreath. We are celebrating 
 the courage and wisdom of our fathers, and the glad shout
 
 84 COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, 
 
 of a free people, the anthem of a grand nation, commencing 
 at the Atlantic, is following the sun to the Pacific, across a 
 continent of happy homes. We are a groat people. Three 
 millions have increased to fifty thirteen states to thirty- 
 eight. We have better homes, and more of the conveni 
 ences of life than any other people upon the face of the 
 globe. The fanners of our country live better than did 
 the kings and princes two hundred years ago and they 
 have twice as much sense and heart. Liberty and labor 
 have given us all. Remember that all men have equal 
 rights. Remember that the man who acts best his part 
 who loves his friends the best is most willing to help 
 others truest to the obligation who has the best heart 
 the most feeling the deepest sympathies and who freely 
 gives to others the rights that he claims for himself, is the 
 best man. We have disfranchised the aristocrats of the 
 air and have given one country to mankind.
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 85 
 
 Ingersollisms. 
 
 Musicians playing to a deaf audience will not do their 
 best. 
 
 Man must give liberty to others if he would be free 
 himself. 
 
 A lie will not fit a fact; it will only fit another lie for 
 the purpose. 
 
 For ages reason was the cry of a drowning man lost in 
 the roaring bea. 
 
 Every fact pushes a superstition from the brain and a 
 ghost from the clouds. 
 
 Fear paints pictures of the ghosts and hangs them in 
 the gallery of ignorance. 
 
 The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, 
 and does not do his duty to his fellow-men. 
 
 Every form of slavery is a viper that will sooner or 
 later strike its poisonous fangs into the bosoms of ir^n. 
 
 Out on the intellectual sea there is room for every sail; 
 in the intellectual air there is space enough for every wing. 
 
 Without liberty there can be no worship. The slave 
 may bow, and cringe, and crawl, but he cannot h>e, he 
 caimot adore.
 
 86 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 Great minds seem to be a part of the infinite. Those 
 possessing them seem to be brothers of the mountains and 
 the seas. 
 
 And this is my advice to the poor. You can never be 
 so poor that whatever you do you can t do in a grand and 
 manly way. 
 
 Frederick Douglass told me that he had lectured upon 
 the subject of freedom twenty years before he was permit 
 ted to set his foot in a church. 
 
 The time is coining when a man will be rated at his 
 real worth, and that by his brain and heart. We care 
 nothing now about an officer unless he fills his place. 
 
 The time will come when no matter how much money 
 a man has he will not be respected unless he is using it for 
 the benefit of his fellow-men. It will soon be here. 
 
 I pity the man, I execrate the man, who has only to 
 brag that he is white. Whenever I am reduced to that 
 necessity, I believe shame will make me red instead of 
 white 
 
 Great men do not live alone ; they are surrounded by 
 the great; they are the instruments used to accomplish the 
 tendencies of their generation ; they fulfil the prophecies of 
 their age. 
 
 I believe all the intellectual domain of the future is 
 open to every :nan. Every man who finds a fact first, that 
 is to be his fact. Every man who thinks a thought first, 
 that is to be his thought. 
 
 I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what 
 thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know 
 not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to 
 come. 1 cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the 
 field of thought ; but I do know that, coming down the in-
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 87 
 
 finite sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank 
 and shoal of time" a richer gift, a rarer blessing than lib 
 erty for man, woman and child. 
 
 I believe in liberty, and I say, "Oh, liberty, float not 
 forever in the far horizon remain not forever in the dream 
 of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet, but come 
 and make thy home among the children of men." 
 
 All the mechanical ingenuity of this earth cannot 
 make two clocks run alike ; and how are you going to 
 make millions of people of different quantities and qualities 
 and amount of brain, clad in this living robe of passionate 
 flesh, how are you going to make millions of them, think 
 alike ? 
 
 From Copernicus we learned that this earth is only a 
 grain of sand on the infinite "shore of the universe; that 
 everywhere we are surrounded by shining worlds vastly 
 greater than our own, all moving and existing in accord 
 ance with law. True, the earth began to grow small, but 
 man began to grow great. 
 
 The last Napoleon was not satisfied with being the 
 emperor of the French. He was not satisfied with having 
 a circlet of gold about his head. He wanted some evidence 
 that he had something of value within his head. So he 
 wrote the life of Julius Caesar that he might become a 
 member of the French Academy. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many re 
 spects, the grandest man ever President ot the United 
 States. Upon his monument these words should be writ 
 ten : "Here sleeps the only man in the history of the 
 world who, having been clothed with almost absolute 
 power, never abused it except upon the side of mercy." 
 
 A government founded upon anything except liberty 
 and justice cannot and ought not to stand. All the wrecks
 
 88 COL. INGERSOLL S WIT, 
 
 on either side of the stream of time, all the wrecks of the 
 great cities, and all the nations that have passed away all 
 are a warning that no nation founded upon injustice can 
 stand. From the sand-enshrouded Egypt, from the mar 
 ble wilderness of Athens, and from every fallen, crumbling 
 stone of the once mighty Rome, comes a wail, as it were, 
 the cry that no nation founded upon, injustice can perma 
 nently stand. 
 
 I have some excuses to offer for the race to which I 
 belong. My first excuse is that this is not a very good 
 world to raise (oiks in anyway. It is not very well adapted 
 to raising magnificent people. There s only a quarter of it 
 laud to start with. It is three times better fitted for rais 
 ing fish than folks ; and in that one-quarter of land there is 
 not a tenth part fit to raise people on. You can t raise 
 people without a good climate. You have got to have the 
 right kind of climate, and you have got to have certain ele 
 ments in the soil or you can t raise feood people. Do you 
 know that there is only a little zig zng strip around the 
 world within which have been produced all men of genius ? 
 
 In my judgment the black people have suffered 
 enough. They have been slaves for two hundred years. 
 They have been owned two hundred years, and, more than 
 all, they have been compelled to keep the company of these 
 who owned them. Think of being compelled to keep the 
 society of a man who is stealing from you. Think of being 
 compelled to live with a man that stole your child from the 
 cradle before your very eyes. Think of being compelled to 
 live with a thief all your life, to spend your days with a 
 white loafer, and to be under his control. For two hun 
 dred years they were bought and sold and branded like 
 cattle. For two hundred years every human tie was rent 
 and torn asunder by the brutal, bloody hand of avarice
 
 WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 89 
 
 and might; and for that reason I am in favor of this Gov 
 ernment protecting them in* every right they have got in 
 every Southern State, if it takes another war to do it. 
 
 It is often said of this or that man that he is a self- 
 made man that he was born of the poorest and humblest 
 parents, and that with every obstacle to overcome he be 
 came great. This is a mistake. Poverty is generally an 
 advantage. Most of the intellectual giants of the world 
 have been nursed at the sad but loving breast of poverty. 
 Most of those who have climbed highest on the shining lad 
 der of fame commenced at the lowest round. They were 
 reared in the straw thatched cottages of Europe ; in the log 
 houses of America ; in the factories of the great cities ; in 
 the midst of toil ; in the smoke and din of labor, and on 
 the verge of want. They were rocked by the feet of moth 
 ers whose hands, at the same time, were busy with the 
 needle or the wheel. 
 
 The superior man is the man who helps his fellow- 
 men ; the superior man is the useful man ; the superior 
 man is the kind man, the man who lifts up his down-trod 
 den brothers ; and the greater load of human sorrow and 
 human want you can get in your arms the higher you can 
 climb the great hill of fame. The superior man is the man 
 who loves his fellow-men. Let me say right here, the su 
 perior men, the grand men, are brothers the world over. 
 No matter what their complexion continents may divide 
 them yet they embrace each other. Centuries may sep 
 arate, yet they are hand in hand, and all the good and all 
 the grand and all the superior men, shoulder to shoulder, 
 heart to heart, are fighting che great battle for the progress 
 of mankind. 
 
 All the advance that has been made in the science of 
 medicine has been made by the recklessness of patients. I
 
 9O COL. INGERSOLLS WIT, WISDOM, AND ELOQUENCE. 
 
 can recollect when they wouldn t, give a man water in a 
 fever riot a drop. Now and then some fellow would get 
 so thirsty he would say : "Well, I ll die anyway, so I ll 
 drink it," and thereupon he would drink a gallon of water, 
 and thereupon he would burst into a generous perspiration 
 and get well, and the next morning when the doctor would 
 come to see him they would tell him about the man drink 
 ing the water, and he would say : "How much ?" 
 
 "Well, he swallowed two pitchers full." 
 
 "Is he alive?" "Yes." 
 
 So they would go into the room and the doctor would 
 feel his pulse and ask him : 
 
 "Did you drink two pitchers of water ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "My God ! what a constitution you have got." 
 
 I think we came from the lower animals. I am not 
 dead sure of it, but think so. When I first read about it I 
 didn t like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those 
 people who leave nothing to be proud of except ancestors. 
 I thought how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the 
 old world. Tbink of their being forced to trace their an 
 cestry back to the Duke Orang-Outang or to the Princess 
 Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over I came to the con 
 clusion that I liked that doctrine. I became convinced in 
 spite of myself. I read about rudimentary bones and mus 
 cles. I was told that everybody had rudimentary muscles 
 extending from the ear into the cheek. I asked : "What 
 are they?" I was told: "They are the remains of mus 
 cles; they became rudimentary from the lack of use." 
 They went into bankruptcy. They are the muscles with 
 which your ancestors used to flap their ears. Well, at first 
 I was greatly astonished, and afterward I was more aston 
 ished to find they had become rudimentary.
 
 Part II. 
 GREAT SPEECHES,

 
 COL.INGERSOLL S 
 
 L TO THE FARMERS ON FARMING. 
 
 INGEKSOLL S EARLY EXPERIENCE WHEN HE WAS A P AEMEE 
 A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW. 
 
 [From the Illinois State 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I am not an old and expe 
 rienced fanner, nor a tiller of the soil, nor one of the hard- 
 handed sons of labor. I imagine, however, that 1 know 
 something about cultivating the soil, and getting happiness 
 out of the ground. 
 
 I know enough to know that agriculture is the basis of 
 all wealth, prosperity and luxury. I know that in tho 
 country where the tillers of the fields are free, everybody 
 is free and ought to be prosperous. 
 
 The eld way of farming was a great mistake. Every 
 thing wa& done the wrong way. It was all work and waste, 
 weariness and want. They used to fence a hundred and 
 sixty acres if land with a couple of dogs. Everything was 
 left to the piotection of the blessed trinity of chanc?. acci 
 dent and mistake. 
 
 When I was a farmer they used to haul wheat two hun- 
 
 3
 
 dred miles in wagons and sell it for thirty-five cents a 
 bushel. They would bring home about three hundred feet 
 of lumber, two bunches of shingles, a barrel of salt, and a 
 cook-stove that never would draw and never did bake. 
 
 In those blessed days the people lived on corn and bacon. 
 Cooking was an unknown art. Eating was a necessity, not 
 a pleasure. It was hard work for the cook to keep on good 
 terms even with hunger. 
 
 We had poor houses. The rain held the roofs in perfect 
 contempt, and the snow drifted joyfully on the floors and 
 beds. They had no barns. The horses were kept in rail 
 pens surrounded with straw. Long before spring the sides 
 would be eaten away and nothing but roofs would be left. 
 Food is fuel. When the cattle were exposed to all the 
 blasts of winter, it took all the corn and oats that could be 
 stuffed into them to prevent actual starvation. 
 
 In those times farmers thought the best place for the pig 
 pen was immediately in front of the house. There is noth- 
 inf like sociability. 
 
 Women were supposed to know the art of making fires 
 without fuel. The wood-pile consisted, as a general thing, 
 of one log, upon which an axe or two had been worn out 
 in vain. There was nothing to kindle a fire with. Pickets 
 were pulled from the garden fence, clap-boards taken from 
 the house, and every stray plank was seized upon for kind 
 ling. Everything was done in the hardest way. Every 
 thing about the farm was disagreeable. Nothing was kept 
 in order. Nothing was preserved. The wagons stood in 
 the sun and rain, and the plows rusted in the fields. There 
 was no leisure, no feeling that the work was done. It was 
 all labor and weariness and vexation of spirit. The crops 
 were destroyed by wandering herds, or they were put in 
 too late, or too early, or they were blown down, or caught 
 by the frost, or devoured by bugs, or stung by flies, or
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 3 
 
 eaten by worms, or carried away by birds, or dug up by 
 gophers, or washed away by floods, or dried up by the sua, 
 or rotted in the stack, or heated in the crib, or they all run 
 to vines, or tops, or straw, or sraut, or cobs. And when 
 in spite of all these accidents that lie in wait between the 
 plow and the reaper, they did succeed in raising a good 
 crop and a high price was offered, then the roads would be 
 impassable. And when the roads got good, then the prices 
 went down. Everything worked together for evil. 
 
 Nearly every fanner s boy took an oath that he would 
 never cultivate the soil. The moment they arrived at the 
 age of twenty-one they left the desolate and dreary farms 
 and rushed to the towns and cities. They wanted to be 
 book-keepers, doctors, merchants, railroad men, insurance 
 agents, lawyers, even preachers, anything to avoid tha 
 drudgery of the farm. Nearly every boy acquainted with 
 the three li s reading, writing and arithmetic imagined 
 that he had altogether more education than ought to be 
 wasted in raising potatoes and corn. They made haste to 
 get into some other business. Those who stayed upon the 
 farm envied those who went away. 
 
 A few years ago the times we re prosperous, and the young 
 men went to the cities to enjoy the fortunes that were 
 waiting for them. They wanted to engage in something 
 that promised qnick returns. They built railways, estab 
 lished brinks and insurance companies. They speculated 
 in stocks in Wall street, and gambled in grain at Chicago. 
 They became rich. They lived in palaces. They rode in 
 carriages. They pitied their poor brothers on the farms, 
 and the poor brothers envied them. 
 
 But time has brought its revenge. The farmers have 
 seen the railroad president a bankrupt, and the road in the 
 hands of a receiver. They have seen the bank president 
 abscond, and the insurance company a. wrecked and ruined
 
 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 fraud. The only solvent people, as a class, the only inde 
 pendent people, are the tillers of the soil. 
 
 COL. INGERSOLL S IDEAL FARMER. 
 
 Farming must be made more attractive. The comforts 
 of the town must be added to the beauty of the fields. The 
 sociability of the city must be rendered possible in the 
 country. 
 
 Farming has been made repulsive. The farmers have 
 been unsociable, and their homes have been lonely. They 
 have been wasteful and careless. They have not been 
 proud of their business. 
 
 No farmer can afford to raise corn and oats and hay to 
 pell. He should sell horses, not oats; sheep, cattle an(J 
 pork, not corn. He should make every profit possible out 
 of what he produces. So long as the farmers of the Middle 
 States ship their corn and oats, so long they will be poor, 
 just so long will their farms be mortgaged to the insurance 
 companies and banks of the east, just so long will they do 
 the work, and others reap the benefit, just so long will 
 they be poor, and the money lenders grow rich, just so 
 long will cunning avarice grasp and hold the net profits of 
 honest toil. When the fanners of the west ship beef and 
 pork instead of grain, when we manufacture here, when 
 we cease paying tribute to others, ours will be the most 
 prosperous country in the world. 
 
 Another thing It is just as cheap to raise a good as a 
 poor breed of cattle. Scrubs will eat just as much as 
 thoroughbreds. If you are not able to buy Durhams and 
 Alderneys, you can raise the corn-breed. 13y "corn-breed " 
 
 1 mean the cattle that have for several generations had 
 enough to eat, and have been treated with kindness. Every 
 firmer who will treat his cattle kindly, and feed them all 
 they want, will, in a few years, have blooded stock on his
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 7 
 
 farm. All blooded stock has been produced in this way. 
 You can raise good cattle just as you can raise good people. 
 It you wish to raise a good b >y you must give him plenty 
 to eat, and treat him with kindness. In this way, and in 
 this way only, can good cattle or good people be produced. 
 
 Another thing You must beautify your homes. 
 
 When I was a farmer it was not fashionable to set out 
 trees, nor to plant vines. 
 
 "When you visited the farm you were not welcomed by 
 flowers, and greeted by trees loaded with fruit. Yellow 
 dogs came bounding over the tumbled fence like wild beasts. 
 There is no sense there is no profit in such a life. It is 
 not living. The farmers ought to beautify their homes. 
 There should be trees and grass, and flowers and running 
 vines. Everything should be kept in order ; gates should 
 be kept on their hinges, and about all there snould be the 
 pleasant air of thrift. In every house there should be a 
 bath-room. The bath is a civilizer, a refiner, a beautifier. 
 When you come from the fields tired, covered with dust, 
 nothing is so refreshing. Above all things, keep clean. It 
 is not necessary to be a pig in order to raise one. In the 
 cool of the evening, after a day in the field, put on clean 
 ciothes, take a seat under the trees, mid the perfume of 
 flowers, surrounded by your family, and you will know 
 what it is to enjoy life like a gentleman. 
 
 WHAT THE COLONEL BELIEVES TO BE THE BEST PORTION OF 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 In no part of the globe will farming pay better than in 
 the Western States You are*in the best portion of the 
 earth. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, there is no such 
 country as yours. The east is hard and stony ; the soil is 
 stingy. The far v/est is a desert parched and barren, dreary 
 and desolate as perdition wou.d be with the fires out. It
 
 8 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 is better to dig wheat and corn from the soil than gold. 
 Only a few days ago I was where they wrench the precious 
 metals from the miserly clutch of the rocks. When I saw 
 the mountains, treeless, shrubless, flowerless, without even 
 a spire of grass, it seemed to me that gold had the same 
 effect upon the country that holds it, as upon the man who 
 lives and labors only for that. It affects the land as it does 
 the man. It leaves the heart barren without a flower of 
 kindness without a blossom of pity. 
 
 The farmer in the Middle States has the best soil the 
 greatest return for the least labor more leisure more 
 time for enjoyment than any other farmer in the world. 
 His hard work ceases with autumn. He has the long win 
 ters in which to become acquainted with his family with 
 his neighbors in which to read and keep abreast with the 
 advanced thought of his day. He has the time and means 
 of self-culture. He has more time than the mechanic, the 
 merchant or the professional man. If the farmer is not 
 well informed it is his own fault. Books are cheap, and 
 every farmer can have enough to give him the outline of 
 every science, and an idea of all that has been accomplished 
 by man. 
 
 THE FABMER AND THE MECHANIC WHICH THE COLONEL THINKS 
 HAS THE BEST OF IT. 
 
 In many respects the farmer has the advantage of the 
 mechanic. In our time we have plenty of mechanics but 
 no tradesmen. In the sub-division of labor we have a 
 thousand men working upon different, parts of the same 
 thing, each taught in one particular branch, and in only 
 one. We have, say, in a shoe- factory, hundreds of men, 
 but not a shoemaker. It takes them all, assisted by a great 
 number of machines, to make a shoe. Each does a par 
 ticular part, and not oue of them knows the entire trade.
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 9 
 
 
 
 The result is that the moment the factory shuts down these 
 men are out of employment Out of employment means 
 out of bread out of bread means famine and horror. The 
 mechanic of to-day has but little independence. His pros 
 perity often depends upon the good-will of one man. He 
 is liable to be discharged for a look, for a word. He lays 
 by but little for his declining years. He is, at the best, the 
 slave of capital. 
 
 It is a thousand times better to be a whole farmer than 
 part of a mechanic. It is better to till the ground and 
 work for yourself than to be hired by corporations. Every 
 man should endeavor to belong to himself. 
 
 About seven hundred years ago, Kheyam, a Persian, 
 said : "Why should a man who possesses a piece of bread 
 securing life for two days, and who has a cup of water 
 why should such a man serve another?" 
 
 Young men should not be satisfied with a salary. Do 
 not mortgage the possibilities of your future. Have the 
 courage to take life as it comes, feast or famine. Think of 
 hunting a gold mine for a dollar a day, and think of finding 
 one for another man. How. would you feel then? 
 
 We are lacking in true courage, when, for fear of the 
 future, we take the crusts and scraps and niggardly salaries 
 of the present. I had a thousand times rather have a farm 
 and be independent, than to be President of the United 
 States without independence, filled with doubt and trem 
 bling, feeling of the popular pulse, resorting to art and 
 artifice, inquiring about the wind of opinion, and succeed 
 ing at last in losing my self-respect without gaining the re 
 spect of others. 
 
 Man needs more manliness, more real independence. We 
 must take care of ourselves. This we can do by labor, and 
 in this way we can preserve our independance. We should 
 try and choose that business or profession the pursuit of
 
 IO COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 which will give ns the most happiness. Happiness is wealth. 
 We can be happy without being rich without holding 
 office without being famous. I am not sure that we can 
 be happy with wealth, with office, or with fame. 
 
 THE FARMER AND THE PROFESSIONAL MAN THE RACE 
 OF LIFE. 
 
 There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope 
 of a serene old age. that no other business or profession can 
 promise. A professional man is doomed some time to feel 
 that his powers are waning. He is doomed to see younger 
 and stronger men pass him in the race of life. He looks 
 forward to an old age of intellectual mediocrity, lie will 
 be last where once he was the first. But the farmer goes, 
 as it were, into partnership with nature he lives with trees 
 and flowers he breathes the sweet air of the fields. There 
 is no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. His 
 nights are filled with sleep and rest. He watches his flocks 
 and herds as they feed upon the green and sunny slopes. 
 lie hears the pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, 
 and the trees he planted in youth rustle above him as he 
 plants others for the children yet to be. 
 
 Our country is filled with the idle and unemployed, and 
 the great question asking for an answer is : What shall be 
 done with these men? What shall these men do? To 
 this there is but one answer : They must cultivate the soil. 
 
 COL. INGERSOLL S IDEA OF AN EDUCATED FARMER. 
 
 Farming must be more attractive. Those who work the 
 land must have an honest pride in their business. They 
 must educate their children to cultivate the soil. They 
 must make farming easier, so that their children will not 
 hate it themselves. The boys must not be taught that
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. I I 
 
 tilling the soil is a curse and almost a disgrace. They 
 must not suppose that education is thrown away upon them 
 unless they become ministers, lawyers, doctors or states 
 men. It must be understood that education can be used 
 to advantage on a farm. We must get rid of the idea that 
 a little learning unfits one for work. There are hundreds 
 of graduates of Yale and Harvard and other colleges, who 
 are agents of sewing machines, solicitors for insurance, 
 clerks, copyists, in short, performing a hundred varieties of 
 menial service. They seem willing to do anything that is 
 not regarded as work anything that can be done in a town, 
 in the house, in an office, but they avoid farming as they 
 would a leprosy. Nearly every young man educated in 
 this way is simply ruined. Such an education ought to be 
 called ignorance. It is a thousand times better to have 
 common-sense without education, than education without 
 the sense. Boys and girls should be educated to help 
 themselves. They should be taught that it is disgraceful 
 to be idle, and dishonorable to be useless. 
 
 I say again, if you want more men and women on the 
 farms, something must be done to make farm-life pleasant. 
 One great difficulty is that the farm is lonely. People 
 write about the pleasures of solitude, but they are found 
 only in books. He who lives long alone becomes insane. 
 A hermit is a mad man. Without friends and wife and 
 child, there is nothing left worth living for. The unsocial 
 are the enemies of joy. They are filled with egotism and 
 envy, with vanity and hatred. People who live much 
 alone become narrow and suspicious. They are apt to be 
 the property of one idea. They begin to think there is no 
 use in anything. They look up<m the happiness of others 
 as a kind of folly. They hate joyous folks, because, way 
 down in their hearts, they envy them.
 
 12 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 SHOULD LIVE IN VILLAGES. 
 
 In our country farm-life is too lonely. The farms are 
 large, and neighbors are too far apart. In these days, when 
 the roads are tilled with tramps,* the wives and children 
 need protection. When the farmer leaves home and goes 
 to some distant field to work, a shadow of fear is upon his 
 heart all day, and a like shadow rests upon all at home. 
 
 In the early settlement of our country the pioneer was 
 forced to take his family, his axe, his dog and his eun, and 
 go into the far wild forest, and build his cabin miles and 
 miles from any neighbor. He saw the smoke from his 
 hearth go up alone in all the wide and lonely sky. 
 
 But this necessity has passed away, and now, instead ot 
 living so far apart upon the lonely farms, you should live 
 in villages. With the improved machinery which you have 
 with your generous soil with your markets and means 
 of transportation, you can now afford to live together. 
 
 You should live in villages, so that you can have the 
 benefits of social life. You can have a reading-room you 
 can take the best papers arid magazines you can have 
 plenty of books, and each one can have the benefit of them 
 all. Some of the young men and women can cultivate 
 music. You can have social gatherings you can learn 
 from each other you can discuss all topics of interest, and 
 in this way you can make farming a delightful business. 
 You must keep up with the age. The way to make farming 
 respectable is for fanners to become really intelligent. 
 They must live intelligent and happy lives. They must 
 not be satisfied with knowing something of the affairs of a 
 neighborhood and nothfng about the re.-*t of the earth. The 
 business must be made attractive, and it never can be 
 until the farmer has prosperity, intelligence and leisure.
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 13 
 
 THE COLONEL S AMUSING REMARKS ABOUT GETTING UP EARLY 
 IN THE MORNING. 
 
 ft is doe necessary in this age of the world for the farmer 
 to rise in the middle of the night and begin his work. 
 This getting up so early in the morning is a relic of bar 
 barism. It has made hundreds of thousands of young men 
 curse the business. There is no need of getting up at 
 three or four o clock in the winter morning. The farmer 
 who persists in dragging his wife and children from their 
 beds ought to be visited by a missionary. It is time enough 
 to rise after the sun has set the example. For what pur 
 pose do you get up ? To feed the cattle ? Why not feed 
 them more the night before ? It is a waste of life. In the 
 old times they used to get up about three o clock in the 
 morning, and go to work long before the sun had risen with 
 healing upon his wings," arid as a just punishment they 
 all had the ague ; and they ought to have it now. The 
 man who cannot get a living upon Illinois soil without 
 rising before daylight ought to starve. Ei^ht hours a day 
 is enough for any fanner to work except in harvest time. 
 When you rise at four and work till dark what is life worth? 
 Of what use are all the improvements in farming? Of 
 what use is all the improved machinery unless it tends to 
 give the farmer a little more leisure ? What is harvesting 
 now, compared with what is was in the old time? Think 
 of the days of reaping, of cradling, of raking and binding 
 and mowing. Think of threshing with the flail and win 
 nowing with the wind. And now think of the reapers and 
 mowers, the binders and threshing machines, the plows and 
 cultivators, upon which the farmer rides protected from the 
 sun. If, with all these advantages, you cannot get a living 
 without rising in the middle of the night, go into some 
 other business. You should not rob your families of sleep.
 
 14 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 Sleep is the best medicine in the world. There is no such 
 thing as health without plenty of sleep. Sleep until you 
 are thoroughlj* rested arid restored. When you work, 
 work ; and when you get through take a good, long and 
 refreshing sleep. 
 
 THE FASHIONS AND HANDSOME WOMEN. 
 
 Another thing I am a believer in fashion. It is the 
 duty of every woman to make herself as beautiful and 
 attractive as she possibly can. 
 
 "Handsome is as handsome does," but she is much 
 handsomer if well dressed. Every man should look his 
 very best. I am a believer in good clothes. The time 
 never ought to come in this country when you can tell a 
 fanner s wife or daughter simply by the garments she 
 wears. I say to every girl and woman, no matter what the 
 material of your dress may be, no matter how cheap and 
 coarse it is, cut it and make it in the fashion. I believe in 
 jewelry. Some people look upon it as barbaric, but in my 
 judgment, wearing jewelry is the first evidence the barbarian 
 gives of a wish to be civilized. To adorn ourselves seems 
 to be a part of our nature, and this desire seems to be every 
 where and in everything. I have sometimes thought that 
 the desire for beauty covers the earth with flowers. It is 
 this desire that paints the wings of moths, tints the chamber 
 of the shell, and gives the bird its plumage and its song. 
 Oh ! daughters and wives, if you wouid be loved, adoro 
 yourselves if you would be adored, be beautiful! 
 
 HOME VS. THE BOAKDINQ-HOUSE. 
 
 There is another fault common with the farmers of oui 
 country they want too much land. You cannot, at present, 
 when taxes aiv high, afford to own land that you do not 
 cultivate. Sell it . .id let others w.a-k^ farm* a.ud homes.
 
 THREE GREAT LECTURES. 1 5 
 
 In this way what you keep will be enhanced in value. 
 Farmers ought to own the land they cultivate, and cultivate 
 what they own. Renters can hardly be called fanners. 
 There can be no such thing in the highest sense as a home 
 unless you own it. There must be an incentive to plant 
 trees, to beautify the grounds, to preserve and improve. 
 It elevates a man to own a home. Jt gives a certain inde 
 pendence, a force of character that is obtained in no other 
 way. A man without a home feels like a passenger. There 
 is in such a man a little of the vagrant. Hom2S make 
 patriots. lie who has sat by his own fireside with wife 
 and children, will defend it. When he hears the word 
 country pronounced, he thinks of his home. 
 
 Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a mus 
 ket in defense of a boarding house. 
 
 The prosperity and glory of our country depend upon 
 the number of our people who are the owners of homes. 
 Around the fireside cluster the private and the public vir 
 tues of our race. Raise your sons to be independent 
 through labor to pursue some business for themselves, 
 and upon their own account to be self-reliant to act 
 upon their own responsibility, and to take the consequences 
 like men. Teach them above all things to be good, true 
 and faithful husbands winners of love, and builders of 
 homes. 
 
 INDUSTRY AND BROTHERHOOD. 
 
 A great many farmers seem to think that they are the 
 only laborers in the world. This is a very foolish thing. 
 Fanners cannot get along without the mechanic. You are 
 not independent of the man of genius. Your prosperity 
 depends upon the inventor. The world advances by the 
 assistance of all laborers; and all labor is under obligations 
 to the inventions of genius. The inventor does as much 
 for agricultrre as he who tills the soil. Ail laboring men
 
 1 6 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 should be brothers. Yon are in partnership with the me 
 chanics who make your reapers, jour mowers and your 
 plows; and you should take into your granges all the men 
 who make their living by honest labor. The laboring 
 people should unite and should protect themselves against 
 all idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: the 
 laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, 
 the honest and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who 
 lives upon the unpaid labor of others, no matter if lie occu 
 pies a throne. All laborers should be brothers. The 
 laborers should have equal rights before the world and 
 before the law. And I want every farmer to consider every 
 man who labors either witii hand or brain as his brother. 
 Until genius and labor formed a partnership there was no 
 such thing as prosperity among men. Every reaper and 
 mower, every agricultural implement, has elevated the 
 work of the farmer, and his vocation grows grander with 
 every invention. In the olden time the agriculturist was 
 ignorant ; he knew nothing of machinery, he was the slave 
 of superstition. 
 
 The farmer has beep elevated through science, and he 
 should not forget the debt he owes to the mechanic, to the 
 inventor, to the thinker. He should remember that all 
 laborers belong to the same grand family that they are 
 the real kings and queens, the only true nobility. 
 
 WHAT THE RAILROADS HAVE DONE THIRTY-THREE DOZEN 
 EGGS FOR ONE DOLLAR. 
 
 Another idea entertained by most farmers is that they 
 are in some mysterious way oppressed by every other kind 
 of business that they are devoured by monopolies, espe 
 cially by railroads. 
 
 Of course, the railroads are indebted to the farmers for 
 their prosperity, and tho farmers are indebted to the railroads.
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 1 7 
 
 A few years ago you endeavored to regulate the charges 
 of railroad companies. The principal complaint you had 
 was that they charged too much for the transportation of 
 corn and other cereals to the East. You should remember 
 that all freight are paid by the consumers of the grain. 
 You are really interested in transportation from the East 
 to the West and in local freights. The result is that while 
 you have put down through freights } r ou have not succeeded 
 so well in local freights. The exact opposite should be the 
 policy in Illinois. Put down local freights ; put them down, 
 if you can, to the lowest possible figure, and let through 
 freights take care of themselves. If all the corn raised in 
 Illinois could be transported to New York absolutely free, 
 it would enhance but little the price that you would receive. 
 What we want is the lowest possible local rate. Instead of 
 this you have simply succeeded in helping the East at the 
 expense of the West. The railroads are your friends. 
 They are your partners. They can prosper only where the 
 country through which they run prospers. All intelligent 
 railroad men know this. They know that present robbery 
 is future bankruptcy. They know that the interest of the 
 farmer and of the railroad is the same. We must have 
 railroads. What can we do without them ? 
 
 When we had no railroads, we drew, as I said before, our 
 grain two hundred miles to market. 
 
 In those days the farmers did not stop at hotels. They 
 slept under the wagons took with them their food fried 
 their own bacon, made their own coffee, and ate their meals 
 in the snow and rain. Those were the days when they 
 received ten cents a bushels for corn when they sold four 
 bushels of potatoes for a quarter thirty-three dozen eggs 
 for a dollar, and a hundred pounds of pork for a dollar and 
 a half. 
 
 What has made the difference ? The railroads came to
 
 1 8 COL. IXGERSOLL S 
 
 your door and they brought with them the markets of the 
 world. They brought New York and Liverpool and Lon 
 don into Illinois, and the State lias been clothed with pros 
 perity as with a mantle. It is the interest of the farmer to 
 protect every great interest in the State. In these iron 
 highways more than three hundred million dollars have 
 been invested a sum equal to ten times the original cost 
 of all the land in the State. To make war upon the rail 
 roads is a short-sighted and suicidal policy. They should 
 be treated fairly and should be taxed by the same standard 
 that farms are taxed, and in no other way. If we wish to 
 prosper we must act together, and we must see to it that 
 every form of labor is protected. 
 
 BUSINESS AND THE MONEY QUESTION. 
 
 There has been a long period of depression in all busi 
 ness. The farmers have suffered least of all. Your land 
 is just as rich and productive as ever. Prices have been 
 reasonable. The towns and cities have suffered. Stocks 
 and bonds have shrunk from par to worthless paper. 
 Princes have become paupers, and bankers, merchants and 
 millionaires have passed into the oblivion of bankruptcy. 
 The period of depression is slowly passing away, and we 
 are entering upon better times. 
 
 A great many poople say that a scarcity of money is our 
 only difficulty. In my opinion we have money enough, 
 but we Jack confidence in each other in the future. 
 
 There has been so much dishonesty, there have been so 
 many failures, that the people are afraid to trust anybody. 
 There is plenty of money, but there seems to be a scarcity 
 of business. It you were to go to the owner of a ferry, 
 and, upon seeing his boat lying high and dry on the shore, 
 should say, "There is a superabundance of ferry-boat," 
 he would probably reply, ".No, but there is a scarcity of
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 1 9 
 
 water." So with ns there is not a scarcity f money, but 
 there is a scarcity of business. And this scarcity springs 
 from Jack of confidence in one another. So many presi 
 dents of savings banks, even those belonging to the Young 
 Men s Christian Association, run off with the funds; so 
 many railroad and insurance companies are in the hands of 
 receivers; there is so much bankruptcy on every hand, that 
 all capital is held in the nervous clutch of fear. Slowly, 
 but surely, we are coming back to honest methods in busi 
 ness. Confidence will return, and then enterprise will un 
 lock the safe and money will again circulate as of yore; 
 the dollars will leave their hiding places, and every one will 
 be seeking investment. 
 
 For my part I do not ask any interference on the part of 
 the government except to undo the wrdng it has done. I 
 do not ask that money be made out of nothing. I do not 
 ask for the prosperity born of paper. But I do ask for the 
 remonetization of silver. Silver was demonetized by fraud. 
 It was an imposition upon every solvent man; a fraud 
 upon every honest debtor in the United States. It assas 
 sinated labor. It was done in the interest of avarice and 
 greed, and should be undone by honest men. 
 
 The farmers should vote only for such men as are able 
 and willing to guard and advance the interests of labor. 
 We should know better than to vote for men who will de 
 liberately put a tariff of three dollars a thousand upon 
 Canada lumber, when every farmer in the States is a pur 
 chaser of lumber. People who live upon the prairies ought 
 to vote for cheap lumber. We should protect ourselves. 
 We ought to have intelligence enough to know what we 
 want and how to get it. The real laboring man of this 
 country can succeed if they are united. By laboring men, 
 I do not mean only the fanners. I mean all who contri 
 bute in some way to the general welfare. They should
 
 2O COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 forget prejudices and party names, and remember only the 
 best interests of the people. Let us see if we cannot pro 
 tect every department of industry. Let. us see if all prop 
 erty cannot be protected alike and taxed alike, whether 
 owned by individuals or corporations. 
 
 Where industry creates and justice protects, prosperity 
 dwells. 
 
 ILLINOIS. 
 
 Let me tell you something about Illinois. We have fifty- 
 six thousand square miles of land nearly thirty-six mil 
 lion acres. Upon these plains we can raise enough to feed 
 and clothe twenty million people. Beneath these prairies 
 were hidden, millions of ages ago, by that old miser, the 
 sun, thirty-six thousand square miles of coal. The aggre 
 gate thickness of these veins is at least fifteen feefe. Think 
 of a column of coal one mile square and one hundred miles 
 high ! All this came from the sun. What a sunbeam such 
 a column would be ! Think of all this force, willed and 
 left to us by the dead morning of the world ! Think of 
 the fireside of the future around which will sit the fathers, 
 mothers and children of the years to be ! Think of the 
 sweet and happy faces, the loving and tender eyes that will 
 glow and gleam in the sacred light of all these flames ! 
 
 We have the best country in the world. Is there any 
 reason that our farmers should not be prosperous and happy 
 men? They have every advantage, arid within their reach 
 are all the comforts and conveniences of life. 
 
 Do not get the land fever and think you must buy all the 
 land that joins you. Get out of debt as soon as you pos 
 sibly can. A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest 
 field. There is no business under the sun that ran pay ten 
 per cent. 
 
 WHAT A DOLLAR CAN DO. 
 
 Ainsworth R. Spofford gives the following facts abou*
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 21 
 
 interest: " One dollar loaned for one hundred years at six 
 per cent., with the interest collected annually and added 
 to the principal, will amount to three hundred and forty 
 dollars. . At eight per cent, it amounts to two thousand 
 two hundred and three dollars. At three per cent, it 
 amounts only to nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents. 
 At ten per cent, it is thirteen thousand eight hundred and 
 nine dollars, or about seven hundred times as much. At 
 twelve per cent, it amounts to eighty-four thousand and sev 
 enty-five dollars, or more than four thousand times as much. 
 At eighteen per cent, it amounts to fifteen million one hun 
 dred and forty-five thousand and seven dollars. At twen 
 ty-four per cent, (which we sometimes hear talked of) it 
 reaches the enormous sum of two billion five hundred and 
 fifty-one million seven hundred and ninety-nine thousand 
 four hundred and four dollars." 
 
 One dollar at compound interest, at twenty-four per 
 cent., for one hundred years, would produce a sum equal 
 to our national debt. 
 
 Interest eats night and day, and the more it eats the 
 hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at 
 night, can, if he listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, 
 he can hear his corn grow. Get out of debt as soon as 
 you possibly can. You have supported idle avarice and 
 lazy economy long enough. 
 
 HOW A MAN SHOULD TREAT HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN. 
 
 Above all, let every farmer treat his wife and children 
 with infinite kindness. Give your sons and daughters every 
 advantage within your power. In the air of kindness they 
 will grow about you like flowers. They will fill your homes 
 with sunshine and all your years with joy. Do not try to 
 rule by force. A blow from a parent leaves a scar on the 
 soul. I should feel ashamed to die surrounded by children
 
 22 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 I had whipped. Think of feeling upon your dying lips the 
 kiss of a child you had struck. 
 
 See to it that, your wife has every convenience. Make 
 her life worth living. Never allow her to become a servant. 
 Wives, weary and worn ; mothers, wrinkled and bent be 
 fore their time, fill homes with grief and shame. If you 
 are not able to hire help for your wives, help them your 
 selves. See that they have the best utensils to work with. 
 Women cannot create things by magic. Have plenty of 
 wood and coal good cellars and plenty in them. Have 
 cisterns, so that you can have plenty of rain water for wash 
 ing. Do not rely on a barrel and a board. When the rain 
 comes the board will be lost or the hoops will be off the 
 barrel. 
 
 Fanners should live like princes. Eat the best things 
 you raise and sell the rest. Have good things to cook and 
 good things to cook with. Of all people in our country, 
 you should live the best. Throw your miserable little stoves 
 out of the window. Get ranges, and have them so built 
 that your wife need not burn her face off to get you a break 
 fast. Do not make her cook in a kitchen hot as the ortho 
 dox perdition. The beef, not the cook, should be roasted. 
 It is just as easy to have things convenient and right as to 
 have them any other way. 
 
 INOERSOLL ON COOKERY. 
 
 Cooking is one of the fine arts. Give yonr wives and 
 daughters things to cook, and things to cook with, and they 
 will soon become most excellent cooks. Good cooking is 
 the basis of civilization. The man whose arteries and veins 
 are tilled with rich blood made <>f good and well-cooked 
 food, has pluck, courage, endurance and noble impulses. 
 Remember that your wife should have things to cook with. 
 
 In the good old days there would be eleven children in
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 23 
 
 the family and only one skillet. Even thing was broken 
 or cracked or loaned or lost. 
 
 There ought to be a law making it a crime, punishabls 
 by imprisonment, to fry beefsteak. Broil ir ; it is just as 
 easy, and when broiled it is delicious. Fried beefsteak is 
 not fit for a wild beast. You can broil even on a stove. 
 Shut the front damper open the back one, then take off a 
 griddle. There will then be a draft downwards through 
 this opening. Put on 3 our steak, using a wire broih r, and 
 not a particle of smoke will touch it, for the reason that the 
 smoke goes down. If you try to liroil it with the front 
 damper open, the smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, even 
 soft coal, makes a better fire than wood. 
 
 There is no reason why fanners should not have fresh 
 meat all the year round. There is certainly no sense in 
 stuffing yourself full of salt meat every morning, and making 
 a well or a cistern of your stomach for the rest of the day. 
 Every fanner should have an ice house. Upon or near 
 every farm is some stream from which plenty of ice can be 
 obtained, and the long summer days made delightful. Dr. 
 Draper, one of the world s greatest scientists, says that ice 
 water is healthy, and that it has done away with many of 
 the low forms of fever in the great cities. Ice has become 
 one of the necessaries of civilized life, and without it there 
 is very little comfort. 
 
 THE HAPPT HOME. 
 
 Make your homes pleasant. Have your houses warm 
 and comfortable for the winter. Do not build a story-and- 
 a-half house. The half-story is simply an oven in which, 
 during the summer, you will bake every night, and feel in 
 the morning as though only the rind of yourself was left. 
 
 Decorate your rooms, even if you do so with cheap 
 engravings. The cheapest are far better than none. Have 
 books have papers, arid read them. You have more
 
 24 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 
 
 leisure than the dwellers in cities. Beautify your grounds 
 with plants and flowers and vines. Have good gardens. 
 Remember that everything of beauty tends to the elevation 
 of man. Every little morning-glory whose purple bosom 
 is thrilled with the amorous kisses of the sun, tends to put 
 a blossom in your heart. Do not judge of the value of 
 everything by the market reports. Every flower about a 
 house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine, 
 climbing and blossoming, tells of love and joy. 
 
 Make your houses comfortable. Do not huddle together 
 in a little room around a red-hot stove, with every window 
 fastened down. Do not live in this poisoned atmosphere, 
 and then, when one of your children dies, put a piece in 
 the papers commencing with, " Whereas, it has pleased 
 divine Providence to remove from our midst ." Have 
 plenty of air, and plenty of warmth. Comfort is health. 
 Do not imagine anything is unhealthy simply because it is 
 pleasant. This is an old and foolish idea. 
 
 Let your children sleep. Do not drag them from their 
 beds in the darkness of night. Do not compel them to 
 associate all that is tiresome, irksome and dreadful with 
 cultivating the soil. In this way you bring farming into 
 hatred and disrepute. Treat your children with infinite 
 kindness treat them as equals. There is no happiness in 
 a home not filled with love. Where the husband hates his 
 wife where the wife hates the husband ; where children 
 hate their parents and each other there is a hell upon 
 earth. 
 
 There is no reason why farmers should not be the kindest 
 and most cultivated of men. There is nothing in plowing 
 the fields to make men cross, cruel and crabbed. To look 
 upon the sunny slopes covered with daisies does not tend 
 to make men unjust. Whoever labors for the happiness of 
 those he loves, elevates himself, no mutter whether lie
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 25 
 
 works in the dark and dreary shops, or in the perfumed 
 fields. To work for others is, in reality, the only way in 
 which a man can work for himself. Selfishness is ignor 
 ance. Speculators cannot make unless somebody loses. In 
 the realm of speculation, every success has at least one 
 victim. The harvest reaped by the farmer benefits all and 
 injures none. For him to succeed, it is not necessary that 
 some one should fail. The same is true of all producers 
 of all laborers. 
 
 THE COLONEL S VIEW OF "SOLID COMFORT." 
 
 I can imagine no condition that carries with it such a 
 promise of joy as that of the farmer in the early winter. 
 He has his cellar filled he has made every preparation for 
 the days of snow and storm he looks forward to three 
 months of ease and rest ; to three months of fireside con 
 tent; three months with wife and children; three months 
 of long, delightful evenings; three months of home; three 
 months of solid comfort. 
 
 When the life of the farmer is such as I have described, 
 the cities and towns will not be tilled with want the streets 
 will not be crowded with wrecked rogues, broken bankers, 
 and bankrupt speculators. The fields will be tilled, and 
 country villages, almost hidden by trees, and vines, and 
 flowers, filled with industrious and happy people, will nes 
 tle in every vale and gleam like gems on every plain. 
 
 The idea must be done away with that there is something 
 intellectually degrading in cultivating the soil. Nothing 
 can be nobl?. than to be useful. Idleness should not be 
 respectable. 
 
 If farmers will cultivate well, and without waste ; if they 
 will so build that their houses will be warm in winter and 
 cool in summer; if they will plant trees and beautify their 
 homes; if they will occupy their leisure in reading, in 
 thinking, in improving their minds and in devising ways
 
 26 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 and means to make their business profitable and pleasant; 
 if they will live nearer together and cultivate sociability; 
 if they will come together often ; if they will have reading 
 rooms and cultivate music; if they will have bath-rooms, 
 ice-houses and good gardens; if their wives can have an 
 easy time; if the nights can be taken for sleep and the 
 evenings for enjoyment, everybody will be in love with the 
 fields. Happiness should be the object of life, and if life 
 on the farm can be made really happy, the children will 
 grow up in love with the meadows, the streams, the woods 
 and the old home. Around the farm will cling and cluster 
 the happy memories of the delightful years. 
 
 Remember, I pray you, that you are in partnership with 
 all labor that you should join hands with all the sons and 
 daughters of toil, aud that all who work belong to the same 
 noble family. 
 
 For my part, I envy the man who has lived on the same 
 broad acres from his boyhood, who cultivates the fields 
 where in youth he played, and lives where his father lived 
 and died. 
 
 I can imagine no sweeter way to end one s life than in 
 the quiet of the country, out of the mad race for money, 
 place and power far from the demands of business out 
 of the dusty highway where fools struggle and strive for 
 the hollow praise ot other fools. 
 
 Surrounded by these pleasant fields and faithful friends, 
 by those I have loved, I hope to end my days. And this I 
 hope maybe the lot of all who hear my voice. I hope that 
 you, in the country, in houses covered with vines and 
 clothed with flowers, looking from the open window upon 
 rustling fields of corn and wheat, over which will run the 
 sunshine and the shadow, surrounded by those whose lives 
 you have tilled with joy, will pass away serenely as the 
 Autumn dies.
 
 IL-COL. INGERSOLL S GREAT SPEECH TO THE 
 YETERAN SOLDIERS. 
 
 DELIVERED AT INDIANAPOLIS. 
 
 REASONS WHY THE COLONEL IS NOT A DEMOCRAT. 
 [From the Indianapolis Journal] 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN FELLOW CITIZENS AND CITIZEN 
 SOLDIERS: I am opposed to the Democratic party, and I 
 will tell jou why. Every .State that seceded from the 
 United States"*was a Democratic State. Every ordinance 
 of secession that was drawn was drawn by a Democrat. 
 Every man that endeavored to tear the old flag from the 
 heaven that it enriches was a Democrat. Every man that 
 tried to destroy this nation was a Democrat. Every enemy 
 this great republic has had tor twenty years has been a 
 Democrat. Every man that shot Union soldiers was a 
 Democrat. Every man that starved Union soldiers and 
 refused them in the extremity of death, a crust, was a Dem 
 ocrat. Every man that loved slavery better than liberty 
 was a Democrat. The man that assassinated Abraham 
 Lincoln was a Democrat. Every man that sympathized 
 with the assassin every man glad that the noblest Presi 
 dent ever elected was assassinated, was a Democrat. Every 
 man that wanted the privilege of whipping another man to 
 make him work for him for nothing and pay him with lashes 
 on his naked hack, was a Democrat. Every man that 
 raised blood-hounds to pursue human beings was a Demo 
 crat. Ever} man that clutched from shrieking, shuddering, 
 
 27
 
 28 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 crouching mothers, Iwbes from tlieir breasts, and sold them 
 into shivery, was a Democrat. Every man that impaired 
 the credit of the United States, every man that swore we 
 would never pay the bonds, every man that swore we would 
 never redeem the greenbacks, every maligner of his coun 
 try s credit, every calumniator of his country s honor, was 
 a Democrat. Every man that resisted the draft, every mail 
 that hid in the bushes and shot at Union men simply be 
 cause they were endeavoring to enforce the laws of their 
 country, was a Democrat. Every rn;m that wept over the 
 corpse of slavery was a Democrat. Even* man that cursed 
 Lincoln because he issued the proclamation of emancipation 
 the grandest paper since the Declaration of Independence 
 every one of them was a Democrat. Every man that 
 denounced the soldiers that bared their bosoms to the storms 
 of shot and shell for the honor of America and for the sacred 
 rights of man, was a Democrat. Every man that wanted 
 an uprising in the North, that wanted to release the rebel 
 prisoners that they might burn down the homes of Union 
 soldiers above the heads of their wives and children, while 
 the brave husbands, the heroic fathers, were in the front 
 fighting for the honor of the old flag, every one of them was 
 a Democrat. I am not through yet. Every man that be 
 lieved this glorious nation of ours is a confederacy, every 
 man that believed the old banner carried by our fathers 
 through the Revolution, through the war of 1812, carried 
 by our brothers over the plains of Mexico, carried by our 
 brothers over the fields of the rebellion, simply stood for a 
 contract, simply stood for an agreement, was a Democrat. 
 Every man who believed that any State could go out of the 
 Union at its pleasure, every man that believed the grand 
 fabric of the American Government could be mde to crum 
 ble instantly into dust at the touch of treason, was a Dem 
 ocrat. Every man that helped t<> burn orphan asylums in
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 2Q 
 
 New York, was a Democrat ; every man that tried to fire 
 the city of New York, although he knew that thousands 
 would perish, and knew that the great serpents of flame 
 leaping from buildings would clutch children from their 
 mothers arms every wretch that did it was a Democrat. 
 Recollect it! Every man that tried to spread small-pox 
 and yellow fever in the North, as the instrumentalities of 
 civilized war, was a Democrat. Soldiers, every scar you 
 have got on your heroic bodies was given you by a Demo 
 crat. Every scar, every arm that is lacking, every limb 
 that is gone, every scar is a souvenir of a Democrat. I 
 want you to recollect it. Every man that was the enemy 
 of human liberty in this country was a Democrat. Every 
 man that wanted the fruit of all the heroism of all the ages 
 to turn to ashes upon the lips every one was a Democrat. 
 
 WHY THE COLONEL IS A REPUBLICAN. 
 
 I am a Republican. I will tell you why : This is the 
 only free government in the world. The Republican party 
 made it so. The Republican party took the chains from 
 4,000,000 of people. The Republican party, with the 
 wand of progress, touched the auction-block and it became 
 a school-house. The Republican party put down the re 
 bellion, saved the nation, kept the old banner afloat in the 
 air, and declared that slavery of every kind should be ex 
 tirpated from the face of the continent. What more? I 
 am a Republican because it is the only free party that ever 
 existed. It is a party that has a platform as broad as hu 
 manity, a platform as broad as the human race, a party 
 that says you shall have all die fruit of the labor of your 
 hands, a party that says you may think for yourself; a 
 part * that says no chains for the hands, no fetters for the 
 soul. (A voice "Amen." Cheere.) At this point the 
 rain began to descend, and it looked as if a heavy shower
 
 3O COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 was impending. Several umbrellas were put up. Gov. 
 Noyes "God bless you! What is rain to soldiers ?" 
 Voice "Go ahead; we don t mind the rain." (It was 
 proposed to adjourn the meeting to Masonic Hall, but the 
 motion was voted down by an overwhelming majority, and 
 Mr. Ingersoll proceeded.) I am a Republican because the 
 republican party says this country is a nation, and not a 
 confederacy. 1 am here in Indiana to speak, and I have 
 as good a right to speak here in Indiana as though I had 
 been born on this stand not because the State flag of In 
 diana waves over me. I would not know it it I should see 
 it. You have the same right to speak in Illinois, not be 
 cause the State flag of Illinois waves over you, but because 
 that banner, rendered sacred by the blood of all the heroes, 
 waves over me and you. I am in favor of this being a na 
 tion. Think of a man gratifying his entire ambition in the 
 State of Rhode Island. We want this to be a nation, and 
 you can t have a great, grand, splendid people without a 
 great, grand, splendid country. The great plains, the 
 sublime mountains, the great rushing, roaring rivers, shores 
 lashed by two oceans, and the grand anthem of Niagara, 
 mingle and enter, as it were, in the character of every 
 American citizen, and make him or tend to make him a 
 great and a grand character. I am for the Republican 
 party because it says the government has as much right, 
 as much power to protect its citizens at home as abroad. 
 The Il publican party don t say you have to go away from 
 home to get the protection of the government. The Demo 
 cratic party says the government can t march its troops 
 into the South to protect the rights of the citizens. It is a 
 lie. The government claims the right, and it is conceded 
 that tin? government has the right, to go to your house, 
 while you are sitting !>y your iircfide with your wife and 
 children about you, and the old lady knitting, and the cat
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 3 I 
 
 playing with the .yarn, and everybody happy and sweet 
 the government claims the right to go to your fireside and 
 take yon by force and put you into the army : take you 
 down to the valley and the shadow of hell, set you by the 
 ruddy, roaring guns, and make you fight for your flag. 
 Now, that being so, when the war is over and your country 
 is victorious, and you go back to your home, and a lot of 
 Democrats want to trample upon your rights, I want to 
 know if the government that took you from your fireside 
 and made you fight for it, I want to know if it is not bound 
 to fight fop you. The flag that will not protect its pro 
 tectors is a dirt;; rag that contaminates the air in which it 
 waves. The government that will not defend its defenders 
 is a disgrace to the nations of the world. I am a Republi 
 can because the Republican party says, " We will protect 
 the rights of American citizens at home, and if necessary 
 we will march an army into any State to protect the rights 
 of the humblest American citizen in that State." I am a 
 Republican because tint party allows me to be free allows 
 me to do my own thinking in my own way. I am a Re 
 publican because it is a party grand enough and splendid 
 enough and sublime enough to invite every human being 
 in favor of liberty and progress to fight shoulder to shoul 
 der tor the advancement of mankind. It invites the Meth 
 odist; it invites the Catholic; it invites the Presbyterian 
 and every kintJ of sectarian; it invites the free-thinker; it 
 invites the inti lei. provided he is in favor of giving to every 
 other human being every chance and every right that he 
 claims for himself. I am a Republican, I tell you. There 
 is room in the Republican air for every wing; there is 
 room on the Republican sea for every sail. Republicanism 
 says to every man : "Let your soul bf like an eagle; fly 
 out in the ureat doni" of thought, an i question the stars 
 for yourself. 15 But the Democratic party says: 4k Be blind
 
 32 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 owls; sit on the dry limb of a dead tree, and only hoot 
 when Tilden & Co. tell you to." 
 
 In the Republican party there are no followers. We are 
 all leaders. There is not a party chain. There is not a 
 party lash. Any man that does not love this country, any 
 man that does not love liberty, any man that is not in favor 
 of human progress, that is not in favor of giving to others 
 all he claims for himself; we don t ask him to vote the 
 Republican ticket. You can vote it if you please, and if 
 there is any Democrat within hearing who expects to die 
 before another election, we are willing that he should vote 
 one Republican ticket, simply as a consolation upon his 
 death-bed. What more? I am a Republican because that 
 party believes in free labor, It believes that free labor 
 will give us wealth. It believes in free thought, because it 
 believes that free thought will give us truth. You don t 
 know what a grand party you belong to. I never want any 
 holier or grander title of nobility than that I belong to the 
 Republican party and have fought for the liberty of man. 
 The Republican party, I say, believes in free labor. The 
 Republican party also believes in slavery. What kind of 
 slavery ? In enslaving the forces of nature. 
 
 We believe that free labor, that free thought, have en 
 slaved the forces of nature, and made them work for man. 
 We make old attraction of gravitation work for us; we 
 make the lightning do our errands ; we make steam ham 
 mer and fashion what we need. The forces of nature are 
 the slaves of the Republican party. They have got no backs 
 to I e whipped ; they have got no hearts to be torn no 
 hearts to be broken ; they cannot be separated from their 
 wives; they cannot be dragged f r om the bosoms of their 
 husbands ; they wo k night and day and they cannot tire. 
 You cannot whip tiiern, you cannot starve them, and a 
 Democrat even can be trusted with one of them. I tell
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 33 
 
 you I am a Republican. I believe, as I told you, that 
 free labor will give us these slaves. Free labor will 
 produce all these things, and everything you have got 
 to-day has been produced by free labor, nothing by slave 
 labor. 
 
 Slavery never invented but one machine, and that was a 
 threshing-machine in the shape of a whip. Free labor has 
 invented all the machines. We want to come down to the 
 philosophy of these things. The problem of free .labor, 
 when a man works for the wife he loves, when he works 
 for the little children he adores the problem is to do the 
 most work in the shortest space of time. The problem of 
 slavery is to do the least work in the longest space of time. 
 That is the difference. Free labor, love, affection they 
 have invented everything of use in this world. I aoi a 
 Republican. 
 
 I tell you, my friends, this world is getting better every 
 day, and the Democratic party is getting smaller every day. 
 See the advancement we have made in a few years, see what 
 we have done. We have covered this nation with wealth, 
 and glory, and with liberty. This is the first free govern 
 ment in the world. The Republican party is the first party 
 that was not founded on some compromise with the devil. 
 It is the first party of pure, square, honest principle ; the 
 first one. And we have got the first free country that ever 
 existed. 
 
 And right here I want to thank every soldier that 
 fought to make it free, every one living and dead. I 
 want to thank you again, and again, and again. You made 
 the first free government in the world, and we must not 
 forget the dead heroes. If they were here they would vote 
 the Republican ticket, every one of them. I tell you we 
 must not forget them.
 
 34 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 COL. INGERSOLL S REMARKABLE VISION ONE OF THE MOST 
 ELOQUENT EXTRACTS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 
 The past, as it were, rises before me like a dream. Again 
 we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the 
 sound of preparation the music of the boisterous drums 
 the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see thou-ands of 
 assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators ; we see the 
 pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men ; and 
 in those assemblages we see all the dead whoso dust we 
 have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no 
 more. We are with them when they enlist in the great 
 army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. 
 Some are walking for the last time in quiet woody places 
 with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings 
 and the sweet vovvs of eternal love as they lingeringly 
 part forever. Others are bending over cradles kissing 
 babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of 
 old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them 
 and press them to their hearts again and again, and say 
 nothing ; and some are talking with wives, and endeavoring 
 with brave words spoken in the old tones to drive away the 
 awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing 
 in the door with the babe in her arms standing in the sun 
 light sobbing at the turn of the road a hand waves she 
 answers by holding high in her loving hands the child. He 
 is gone, and forever. 
 
 We see them all as they march proudly away under the 
 fl uniting flags, keeping time to the wild grand music of 
 war marching down the streets of the great cities through 
 the towns and across the prairies down to the iields of 
 glory, to do and t> <lie for the eternal right. 
 
 We go with them one and all. We are by their side on 
 all the gory fields, in all the hospitals of pain on all the
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. $ 
 
 weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild 
 storm and un irr the qnii-t stars. We are with them in 
 ravines running with blood in the farrows of old fields. 
 We are with them between contending hosts, unable to 
 move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away among 
 the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and 
 torn with shells in the trenches of forts, and in the whirl 
 wind of the charge, where men become iron with nerves 
 of steel. 
 
 We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine, 
 but human speech can never tell what they endured. 
 
 We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. 
 We see the maiden in the shadow of her sorrow. We see 
 the silvered head of the old man bowed with the last grief. 
 
 The past rises before us, and we see four millions of 
 human beings governed by the lash we see them bound 
 hand and foot we hear the strokes of cruel whips we see 
 the hounds tracking women through tangled swamps. We 
 see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty un 
 speakable! Outrage infinite! 
 
 Four million bodies in chains four million souls in fetters. 
 All the sacred relations of wife, mother, father and child, 
 trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this 
 was done under our own beautiful banner of the free. 
 
 The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of 
 the bursting shell. The broken fetters fall. Tliere heroes 
 died. We look. Instead of slaves we see men and 
 women and children. The wand of progress touches the 
 auction-block, the slave-pen, and the whipping-post, and we 
 see homes and firesides, and school houses and books, and 
 where all was want and crime, and cruelty and fear, we see 
 the faces of the free. 
 
 These heroes are dead. They died for liberty they 
 died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the laud they
 
 36 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under 
 the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, 
 the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of 
 the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the 
 windowless palace of rest. Earth may run red with other 
 wars they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the 
 roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have 
 one sentiment for the soldiers living and dead cheers for 
 the living and tears for the dead. 
 
 MORE SOLID SHOT. 
 
 Now, my friends, I have given you a few reasons why I 
 am a Republican. I have given you a few reasons why I 
 am not a Democrat. Let me say another thing. The 
 Democratic party opposed every movement of the army of 
 the Republic, every one. Don t be fooled. Imagine the 
 meanest resolution that you can think of that is the reso 
 lution the Democratic party passed. Imagine the meanest 
 thing you can think of that is what they did ; and I want 
 you to recollect that the Democratic party did these devilish 
 things when the fate of this nation was trembling in the 
 balance of war. I want you to recollect another thing: 
 when they tell you about hard times, that the Democratic 
 party made the hard times ; that every dollar we owe to 
 day was made by the Southern and Northern Democracy. 
 
 When we commenced to put down the rebellion we had 
 to borrow money, and the Democratic party went into the 
 markets of the world and impaired the credit of the United 
 States. They slandered, they lied, they maligned the 
 credit of the United States, and to such an extent did they 
 do this, that at one time during the war paper was only 
 worth about 34 cents on the dollar. Gold went up to $2.90. 
 What did that mean ? It meant that greenbacks were worth
 
 THREE GREAT LECTURES. 37 
 
 34 cents on the dollar. What became of the other 66 
 cents ? They were lied out of the greenbacks, they were 
 calumniated out of the greenbacks, by the Democratic 
 party of the North. Two-thirds of the debt, two-thirds of 
 tiie burden now upon the shoulders of American industry, 
 were placed there by the slanders of the Democratic party 
 of the North, and the other third by the Democratic party 
 of the South. And when you pay your taxes keep an 
 account and charge two-thirds to the Northern Democracy 
 and one-third to the Southern Democracy, and whenever 
 you have to earn the money to pay the taxes, when you 
 have to blister your hands to earn that money, pull off the 
 blisters, and under each one, as the foundation, you will 
 find a Democratic lie. 
 
 Recollect that the Democratic party did all the things of 
 which I have told you, when the fate of our nation was 
 submitted to the arbitrament of the sword. Recollect they 
 did these things when your husbands, your fathers, your 
 brothers, your chivalric sons were fighting, bleeding, suffer 
 ing upon the fields of the South, where shot and shell were 
 crashing through their sacred flesh, where they were lying 
 upon the field of battle, the blood slowly oozing from the 
 pallid, mangled lips of death; when they were in the hos 
 pitals of pain, dreaming broken dreams of home, and 
 seeing fever pictures of the ones they loved ; when they 
 were in the prison pens of the South, with no covering but 
 the clouds, no bed except the frozen earth, no food except 
 such as worms had refused to eat, and no friends except 
 insanity and death. Recollect it. I have often said that 
 1 wished there were words of pure hatred out of which I 
 might construct sentences like serpents, sentences like 
 snakes, sentences that would writhe and hiss I could then 
 give my opinion of the Northern allies of the Southern 
 rebels.
 
 38 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 THREE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 There are three questions now submitted to the American 
 people. The tirst is, Shall the people that saved this 
 country rule it? Shall the men who saved the old flag hold 
 it? Shall the men who saved the ship of State sail it? or 
 shall the rebels walk her quarter-deck, give the orders and 
 sink it. That is the question. Shall a solid South, a united 
 South, united by assassination and murder, a South solidi 
 fied by the shot-gun ; shall a united South, with the aid of 
 a divided North, shall they control this great and splendid 
 country ? Well, then the North must wake up. We are 
 right back where we were in 1861. This is simply a pro 
 longation of the war. This is the war of the idea, the other 
 was the war of the musket. The other was the war of 
 cannon, this is the war of thought; and we have got to 
 beat them in this war of thought, recollect that. The ques 
 tion is, Shall the men who endeavored to destroy this 
 country rule it? Shall the men that said, This is not a 
 nation, have charge of the nation? 
 
 The next question is, Shall we pay our debts? We had 
 to borrow some money to pay for shot and shell to shoot 
 Democrats with. We found that we could get along with 
 a few less Democrats, but not with any less country, and 
 so we borrowed the money, and the question now is, will 
 we pay it? And which party is the most apt to pay it, the 
 Republican party, that made the debt the party that swore 
 it was constitutional, or the party that said it was unconsti 
 tutional ? Whenever a Democrat sees a greenback, the 
 greenback says to the Democrat, " I am one of the fellows 
 that whipped you. 1 Whenever a Republican sees a green 
 back, the greenback says to him, "You and 1 put down 
 the rebellion and saved the country." Now, my friends, 
 you have heard a great deal about finances. Nearly every-
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 39 
 
 body that talks about it gets as dry as if they had been 
 
 in the final home of the Democratic party for forty years. 
 
 INGERSOLL ON THE MONEY QUESTION. 
 
 I will give yon my ideas about finances. In the first 
 place the government don t support the people ; the people 
 support the government. The government passes around 
 the hat, the government passes around the alms dish. 
 True enough, it has a musket behind it, but it is a perpetual, 
 chronic pauper. It passes, I told you, the alms-dish, and 
 we all throw in our share except Tilden. This govern 
 ment is a perpetual consumer. You understand me, the 
 government don t plow ground, the government don t 
 raise corn and wheat; the government is simply a perpetual 
 consumer; we support the government. Now, the idea 
 that the government can make money for you and I to live 
 on why. it is the same as though my hired man should 
 issue certificates of my indebtedness to him for me to 
 live on. 
 
 Some people tdl me that the government can impress its 
 sov< reii>nty on a piece of paper, and that is money. Well, 
 if it is, what s the use of wasting it making one dollar bills? 
 It takes no more ink and no more paper why not make 
 $1000 bills? Why not make $100,000,000 bills and all be 
 billionaires ? 
 
 If the government can make money, what on earth does 
 it collect taxes from yo:i and me for? Why don t it make 
 what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the 
 balance to us? Mr. Greenbacker, suppose the government 
 issued $1,000,000,000 to-morrow, how would you get any 
 of it? (A voice Steal it) I was not speaking to the 
 Democrats. You would not get any of it unless you had 
 something to exchange for it. The government would not
 
 4-O COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 go around and give you your average. You have to have 
 some corn, or wheat, or pork to give for it. 
 
 How do you get your money ? By work. Where irom ? 
 You have to dig it out of the ground. That is wLu > it 
 comes from. In old times there were some men - bo th .^b.fc 
 they could get some way to turn the baser metalb l^lo g Jd. 
 and old gray-haired men, trembling, tottering on the verge 
 of the grave, were hunting for something to turn ordinary 
 rnetals into gold; they were searching for the fountain of 
 eternal youth, but they did not find it. No human ear has 
 ever heard the silver gurgle of the spring of immortal 
 youth. 
 
 There used to be mechanics that tried to make perpetual 
 motion by combinations of wheels, shifting weights, and 
 rolling balls ; but somehow the machine would never quite 
 run. A perpetual fountain of greenbacks, of wealth with 
 out labor, is just as foolish as a fountain of eternal youth. 
 The idea that you can produce money without labor is just 
 as foolish as the idea of perpetual motion. They are old 
 follies under new names. 
 
 Let me tell you another thing. The Democrats seem to 
 think that you can fail to keep a promise so long that it is 
 as good as though you had kept it. They say you can 
 stamp the sovereignty of the government upon paper. The 
 other day I saw a piece of silver bearing the sorereign 
 stamp of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar lias been dnst about 
 two thousand years, but that piece of silver was worth just 
 as much as though Julius Caesar was at the head of the 
 Roman legions. Was it his sovereignty that made it valu 
 able ? Suppose he had put it upon a piece of paper it 
 would have been of no more value than a Democratic 
 promise. 
 
 Another thing, my friends, this debt will be paid ; you 
 need not worry about that. The Democrats ought to pay
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 4! 
 
 it. They lost the suit and they ought to pay the costs. 
 But we are willing to pay our share. It will be paid. The 
 holder;-; of the debt have got a mortgage on a continent. 
 They have a mortgage on the honor of the Republican 
 party, and it is on record. Every blade of gr..3S that 
 grows upon tulc continent is a guarantee that the debt will 
 be paid ; every field of bannered corn in the great, glorious 
 West is a guarantee that the debt will be paid ; all the coal 
 put u7:y in the ground millions of years ago by that old 
 miser, the sun, is a guarantee that every dollar of that debt 
 will be paid ; all the cattle on the prairies, pastures and 
 plains, every one of them is a guarantee that this debt will 
 be paid ; every pine standing in the somber forests of the 
 North, waiting for the woodman a ax, is a guarantee that 
 this debt will be paid ; all the gold and silver hid in the 
 Siei~a Nevadas, waiting for the miner s pick, is a guaran 
 tee th\t the debt will be paid ; every locomotive, with its 
 ii-usclei. of iron and breath of flame, and all the boys and 
 girls bendini; over their books at school, every dimpled 
 ^hild in the cradle, every good man and every good woman, 
 and every man that votes the Republican ticket is r guar 
 antee that the debt will be oaid. 
 
 MORE ELOQUENCE. 
 
 What is the next question ? The next question is, will 
 we protect the Union men in the South ? I tell you the 
 white Union men have suffered enough. It is a crime in 
 tha Southern States to be a Republican. It is a crime in 
 every Southern State to love this country, to believe in the 
 sacred rights of men. 
 
 I tell you the colored people have suffered enough. They 
 have been owned by Democrats for two hundred years. 
 Worse than that: they have been forced to keep the com 
 pany of their owners. It is a terrible thing to live with a
 
 42 . COL. IXGERSOLLS 
 
 man that steals from yon. They have suffered enough. 
 For two hundred years they were branded like cuttle. Yes, 
 for two hundred years every human tie was torn asunder 
 by the cruel hand of avarice and greed. For two hundred 
 years children were sold from their mothers, husbands from 
 their wives, brothers from brothers, and sisters from sis 
 ters. There was not during the whole rebellion a single 
 negro that was not our friend. We are willing to be recon 
 ciled to our Southern brethren when they will treat our 
 friends as men. When the} will be just to the friends of 
 this country; when they are in favor of allowing every 
 American citizen to have his rights then we are their 
 friends. We are willing to trust them with the Nation 
 when they are the friends of the Nation. We are willing 
 to trust them with liberty when they believe in liberty. We 
 are willing to trust them with the black man when they 
 cease riding in the darkness of night those masked 
 wretches to the hut of the freed man, and notwithstanding 
 the prayers and supplications of his family, shoot him down; 
 when they cease to consider the massacre of Hamburg as a 
 Democratic triumph, then. I say, we will be their friends, 
 And not before. 
 
 Now, my friends, thousands of the Southern people, and 
 thousands of the Northern Democrats, are afraid that the 
 negroes are going to pass them in the race for life. And, 
 Mr. Democrat, he will do it unless you attend to your busi 
 ness. The fsimple fact that you are white cannot save you 
 always. You have got to be industrious, honest, to culti 
 vate a justice. If you don t the colored race will pass you, 
 as sure as you live. I am for giving every man a chance. 
 Anybody that can pass me is welcome. 
 
 I believe, my friends, that the intellectual domain of the 
 future, like the hind used to be in the State of Illinois, is 
 open to pre-emption. The fellow that gets a fact first, that
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 43 
 
 is his ; that gets an idea first, that is his. Every round in 
 the ladder of fame, from the ono that touches the ground 
 to the last one that leans against the shining summit of 
 ambition, belongs to the foot that gets upon it first. 
 
 Mr. Democrat, I point down because they are nearly all 
 on the first round of the ladder, if you can t climb, stand 
 one side and let the deserving negro pass. 
 
 INGERSOLL S BIO HORSE-RACE. 
 
 I must tell you one thing. I have told it so much, and 
 you have all heard it, I have no doubt, fifty times from 
 others, but I am going to tell it again because I like it. 
 
 Suppose there was a great horse-race here to-day, free to 
 every horse in the world, and to all the mules, and all the 
 scrubs, and all the donkeys. At the tap of the drum they 
 come to the line, and the judges say "it is a go." Let me 
 ask you, what does the blooded horse, rushing ahead, with 
 nostrils distended, drinking in the breath of his own swift 
 ness, with his mane flying like; oanner of victory, with his 
 veins standing out all over him, is if a net of life had been 
 cast around him with his thin i sck, his high withers, his 
 tremulous flanks what does he care how many mules and 
 donkeys run on that track? But the Democratic scruo, 
 with his chuckle head and lop-ears, with his tail full of 
 cuckle-burs, jumping high and short, and digging in the 
 ground when he feels the breath of the coining mule on his 
 cuckle-bur tail, he is the chap that jumps the track and 
 says, "I am down on mule equality." 
 
 My friends, the Republican party is the blooded horse in 
 this race. 
 
 I stood, a little while ago, in the city of Paris, where 
 stood the Bastile, where now stands the column of July, 
 surmounted by the figure of liberty. In its right hand is a 
 broken chain, in its left hand a banner ; upon its shining
 
 44 COL. INGERSOLLS 
 
 forehead a glittering star and as I looked upon it I said, 
 such is the Republican party of my country. The other day 
 going along the road I came to the place where the road 
 had been changed, but the guide-board was as thoy had 
 put it twenty years before. It pointed diligently in the 
 direction of a desolate field. Now, that guide-post had been 
 there for twenty years. Thousands of people passed, but 
 nobody heeded the hand on the guide-post, and it stuck 
 there through storm and shine, and it pointed as hard as 
 ever as if the road was through the desolate field ; and I 
 said to myself, such is the Democratic party of the United 
 States. 
 
 The other day I came to a river where there had been a 
 mill ; a part of it was there yet. An old sign said, " Cash 
 for wheat." The old water-wheel was broken, and it had 
 been warped by the sun, cracked and split by many winds 
 and storms. There hadn t been a grain of wheat ground 
 there for twenty years. rr iere was nothing in good order 
 but the dam ; it was as ood a dam as ever I saw, and I 
 said to myself, "such is .lie Democratic party." I was 
 going along the road the >ther day, when I came to where 
 there had once been a hotel. r>ut the hotel and barn had 
 burned down ; nothing remained but the two chimneys, 
 monuments of the disaster. In the road there was an old 
 sign, upon which were these words: "Entertainment for 
 man and beast." The word "man" was nearly burned 
 out. There hadn t been a hotel there for thirty years. 
 That sign had swung and creaked in the wind ; the snow 
 had fallen upon it in the winter, the birds had sung upon it 
 in the summer. Nobody ever stopped at, that hotel ; but 
 the sign stuck to it and kept swearing to it, "Entertain 
 ment for man and beast," and I said to myself, "Such is 
 the Democratic party of the United States." 
 
 Now, my friends, I want you to vote the Republican
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 45 
 
 ticket. I want you to swear you will not vote for a man 
 who opposed putting down the rebellion. I want you to 
 swear that you will not vote for a man opposed to the utter 
 abolition cf slavery. I want you to swear that you will 
 not vote for a man who called the soldiers in the field Lin 
 coln hirelings. I want you to swear that you will not vote 
 for a man who denounced Lincoln as a tyrant. I want you 
 to swear that you will not vote for any enemy of human 
 progress. Go and talk to every Democrat that you can 
 see ; get him by the coat-collar, talk to him, and hold him 
 like Coleridge s Ancient mariner, with } T our glittering eye; 
 hold him, tell him all the moan things his party ever did ; 
 tell him kindly ; tell him in a Christian spirit, as I do, but 
 tell him. Recollect there never was a more important 
 election than the one you are going to hold in Indiana. I 
 want you every one to swear that you will vote for glorious 
 Ben Harrison. I tell you we must stand by the country. 
 It is a glorious country. It permits you and me to be free. 
 It is the only country in the world where labor is respected. 
 Let us support it. It is the only country in the world 
 where the useful man is the only aristocrat. The man that 
 works for a dollar a day, goes home at night to his little 
 ones, taking his little boy on his knee, and he thinks that 
 boy can achieve anything that the sons of the wealthy man 
 can achieve. The free schools are open to him ; he may 
 be the richest, the greatest, and the grandest, and that 
 thought sweetens every drop of sweat that rolls down the 
 honest face of toil. Yote to save that country. 
 
 INGERSOLL S BEAUTIFUL DREAM. 
 
 MY friends, this country is getting better every day. 
 Samuel J. Tilden says we are a nation of thieves. and ras 
 cals It th^t is so he ought to be the President. But I 
 denounce him as a calumniator of my country; a maligner
 
 46 COL, INGERSOLL S 
 
 of this nation. It is not so. This country is covered with asy 
 lums for the aged, the helpless, the insane, the orphan, wound 
 ed soldiers. Thieves and rascals don t build such things. 
 In the cities of the Atlantic coast this summer, they built 
 floating hospitals, great ships, and took the little children 
 from the sub-cellars and narrow, dirty streets of New York 
 city, where the Democratic party is the strongest, took 
 these poor waifs and put them in these great hospitals out at 
 sea, and let the breezes of ocean kiss the roses of he dth 
 back to their pallid cheeks. Rascals and thieves do not do 
 so. When Chicago burned, railroads were blocked with 
 
 ^-* * 
 
 the charity of the American ueople. Thieves and rascals 
 did riot do so. 
 
 I am a Republican. The world is getting better. Hus 
 bands are treating their wives better than they used to; 
 wives are treating their husbands better. Children are 
 better treated than they used to be ; the old whips and gods 
 are out of the schools, and they are governing children by 
 love and by sense. The world is getting better; it is get 
 ting better in Maine. It has got better in Maine, in Ver 
 mont. It is getting hotter in every State of the North. 
 
 I have a dream that this world is growing better and bet 
 ter every day and every year ; that there is more charity, 
 more justice, more love every day. I have a dream that 
 prisons will not always curse the earth ; that the shadow 
 of the gallows will not always fall on the land ; that the 
 withered hand of want will not always be stretched out for 
 charity ; that tinally wisdom will sit in the legislature, just 
 ice in the courts, charity will occupy all the pulpits, and 
 that tinally the world will be controlled by liberty and love, 
 by justice and charity. That is my dream, and if it does 
 not come true, it shall not be my fault. Good-bye. (Im 
 meuse and prolonged cheering.)
 
 III. COL. INGERSOLL S GREAT SPEECH ON THR 
 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 THE GRANDEST OF DOCUMENTS. 
 
 [From the Indianapolis 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The Declaration of Inde- 
 pt-ndence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profonndest 
 political document that was ever signed by the represent 
 atives of the people. It is the embodiment of physical and 
 moral courage and of political wisdom. 
 
 I say physical courage, because it was a declaration of 
 war against the most powerful nation then on the globe; a 
 declaration of war by thirteen weak, unorganized colonies; 
 a declaration of war by a few people, without military 
 stores, without wealth, without strength, against the most 
 powerful kingdom on the earth ; a declaration of war made 
 when the British navy, at that day the mistress.of every 
 sea, was hovering along the coast of America, looking after 
 defenseless towns and villages to ravage and destroy. It 
 was maJe when thousands of English soldiers were upon 
 our soil, and when the principal cities of America were in 
 the substantial possession of the enemy. And so, I say, 
 all things considered, it was the bravest political document 
 ever signed by man. And if it was physically brave, the 
 moral courage of the document is almost infinitely beyond 
 the physical. They had the courage not only, but they 
 
 47
 
 48 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 had the almost infinite wisdom, to declare that all men are 
 created equal. 
 
 With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck 
 down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that 
 priestcraft, that kingcraft had raised between man and man. 
 They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous 
 spirit of caste that makes a god almost a beast, and a beast 
 almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped 
 away and utterly destroyed all that had been done by cen 
 turies of war centuries of hypocrisy centuries of in 
 justice. 
 
 What more did they do ? Then they declared that each 
 man ha* a right to live. And what does that mean? It 
 means that he has the right to make his living. It means 
 that he has the right to breathe the air, to work the land, 
 that he stands the equal of every other human being be 
 neath the shining stars; entitled to the product of his labor 
 the labor of his hand and of his brain. 
 
 What more? That every man has the right to pursue 
 his own happiness in his own way. Grander words than 
 these have never been spoken by man. 
 
 And what more did these men say ? They laid down 
 the doctrine that governments were instituted among men 
 for the purpose of preserving the rights of the people. The 
 old idea was that people existed solely for the benefit of 
 the State that is to say, for kings and nobles. 
 
 The old idea was that the people were the wards of king 
 and priest that their bodies belonged to one and their 
 souls to the other. 
 
 A REVELATION AND REVOLUTION. 
 
 And what more? That the people are the source of 
 political power. That was not only a revelation, but it was 
 a revolution. It changed the ideas of people with regard
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 49 
 
 to the source of political power. For the first time it made 
 human beings men. What was the old idea? The old 
 idea was that no political power came from, nor in any 
 manner belonged to, the people. The old idea was that 
 the political power came from the clouds; that the political 
 power came in some miraculous way from heaven ; that it 
 came down to kings, and queens, and robbers. That was 
 the old idea. The nobles lived upon the labor of the 
 people ; the people had no rights ; the nobles stole what 
 they had and divided with the kings, and the kings pre 
 tended to divide what they stole with God Almighty. The 
 source, then, of political power was from above. The 
 people were responsible to the nobles, the nobles to the 
 king, and the people had no political rights whatever, no 
 more than the wild beasts of the forest. The kings were 
 responsible to God, not to the people. The kings were 
 responsible to the clouds, not to the toiling millions they 
 robbed and plundered. 
 
 And our forefathers, in this declaration of independence, 
 reversed this thing, and said : No, the people, they are the 
 source of political power, and their rulers, these presidents, 
 these kings, are but the agents and servants of the great, 
 sublime people. For the first time, really, in the history 
 of the world, the king was made to get off the throne and 
 the people were royally seated thereon. The people be 
 came the sovereigns, and the old sovereigns became the 
 servants and the agents of the people. It is hard for you 
 and me now to imagine even the immense results of that 
 change. It is hard for you and me, at this day, to under, 
 stand how thoroughly it had been ingrained in the brain of 
 almost every man, that the king had some wonderful right 
 over him ; that in some strange way the king owned him ; 
 that in some miraculous manner he belonged, ^body and 
 soul, to somebody who rode on a horse, to somebody with
 
 5o COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 epaulettes on his shoulders, and a tinsel crown upon his 
 brainless head. 
 
 Our forefathers had been educated in that idea, and when 
 they first lauded on American shores they believed it. 
 They thought they belonged to somebody, and that they 
 must be loyal to some thief, who could trace his pedigree 
 back to antiquity s most successful robber. 
 
 It took a long time for them to get that idea out of their 
 heads and hearts. They were three thousand miles away 
 from the despotisms of the old world, and every wave of 
 the sea was an assistant to them. The distance helped 
 to disenchant their minds of that infamous belief, and every 
 mile between them and the pomp and glory of monarchy 
 helped to put republican ideas and thoughts into their minds. 
 Besides that, when they came to this country, when the 
 savage was in the forest and three thousand miles of 
 waves on the other side, menaced by barbarians on the one 
 side, and famine on the other, they learned that a man who 
 had courage, a man who had thought, was as good as any 
 other man in the world, and they built up, as it were, in 
 spite of themselves, little republics. And the man that 
 had the most nerve and heart was the best man, whether 
 he had any noble blood in his veins or not. 
 
 THE EDUCATION OF NATURE. 
 
 It has been a favorite idea with me that our forefathers 
 were educated by nature; that they grew grand as the 
 continent upon which they landed ; that the great rivers 
 the wide plains the splendid lakes the lonely forests 
 the sublime mountains that all these things stole into and 
 became a part of their being, and they grew great as the 
 country in which they lived. They began to hate the 
 narrow, contracted views of Europe. They were educated 
 by their surroundings, aiid every little colony had to be,
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 5 1 
 
 to a certain extent, a republic. The kings of the old 
 world endeavored to parcel out this land to their favorites. 
 But there were too many Indians. There was too much 
 courage required for them to take and keep it, and so men 
 had to come here who were dissatisfied with the old country 
 who were dissatisfied with England, dissatisfied with 
 France, with Germany, with Ireland and Holland. The 
 kings favorites stayed at home. Men came here for liberty, 
 and on account of certain principles they entertained and 
 held dearer than life. And they were willing to work, 
 willing to fell the forests, to fight the savages, willing to go 
 through all the hardships, perils and dangers of a new 
 country, of a new land ; and the consequence was that our 
 country was settled by brave and adventurous spirits, by 
 men who had opinions of their own, and were willing to 
 live in the wild forests for the sake of expressing those 
 opinions, even it they expressed them only to trees, rocks, 
 and savage men. The best blood of the old world came to 
 the new. 
 
 THE RISE OF THE REPUBLIC LIBERTY AND TOLERATION. 
 
 When they first came over they did not have a great deal 
 of political philosophy, nor the best ideas of liberty. We 
 might as well tell the truth. When the puritans first came 
 they were narrow. They did not understand what liberty 
 meant-- what religious liberty, what political liberty, was; 
 but they found out in a few years. There was one feeling 
 among them that rises to their eternal honor like a white 
 shaft to the clouds they were in favor of universal educa 
 tion. Wherever they went they built school houses, intro 
 duced books, and ideas of literature. They believed that 
 every man should know how to read and how to write, and 
 should find out all that his capacity allowed him to compre 
 hend. That is the glory of the Puritan fathers.
 
 52 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 Tney forgot in a little while what they had suffered, and 
 they forgot to apply the principle of universal liberty of 
 toleration. Some of the colonies did not forget it, and I 
 want to give credit where credit should be given. The 
 Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new 
 continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this 
 be remembered to their eternal honor. Let it be remem 
 bered to the disgrace of the Protestant government of Eng 
 land, that it caused this grand law to be repealed. And to 
 the honor and credit of the Catholics of Maryland let it bo 
 remembered, that the moment they got back into powei 
 they re-enacted the old law. The Baptists of Rhode Isjand, 
 also, led by Roger Williams, were in favor of universal 
 religious liberty. 
 
 IS o American should fail to honor Roger Williams. He 
 was the first grand advocate of the liberty of the soul. He 
 was in favor of the eternal divorce of Church and State. 
 So far as I know, he was the only man at that time in this 
 country who was in favor of real religious liberty. While 
 the Catholics of Maryland declared in favor of religious 
 toleration, they had no idea of religious liberty. They 
 would not allow any one to call in question the doctrine of 
 the trinity, or the inspiration of the scriptures. They stood 
 ready with branding-iron and gallows to burn and choko 
 out of man the idea that he had a right to think and to 
 express his thoughts. 
 
 So many religions met in our country so many theories 
 and dogmas came in contact so many follies, mistakes and 
 stupidities became acquainted with each other, that religion 
 began to 1 all somewhat into dispute. Besides this, the 
 question of a new nation began to take precedence of all 
 others. 
 
 The people were too much interested in this world to 
 quarrel about the next. The preacher was lost iu tho
 
 THREE GREAT LECTURES. 63 
 
 patriot. The bible was read to find passages against kings. 
 
 Everybody was discussing the rights of man. Farmers 
 and mechanics suddenly became statesmen, and in every 
 shop and cabin nearly every question was asked and 
 answered. 
 
 During these rears of political excitement, the interest in 
 
 o / > 
 
 religion abated to that degree that a common purpose ani 
 mated men of all sects and creeds. 
 
 At last our fathers became tired of being colonists tired 
 of writing and reading and signing petitions, and present 
 ing them, on their bended knees, to an idiot king. They 
 began to have an aspiration to form a new nation, to be 
 citizens of a new republic instead of subjects to an old 
 monarchy. They had the idea the Puritans, the Catho 
 lics, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Quakers, and a 
 few Free-Thinkers, all had the idea that they would like 
 to form a new nation. 
 
 Now, do not understand that all of our fathers were in 
 favor of independence. Do not understand that they were all 
 like Jefferson ; that they were all like Adams or Lee ; that 
 they were all like Thomas Paine or John Hancock. There 
 were thousands and thousands of them who were opposed 
 to American independence. There were thousands and 
 thousands who said: "When you say men are created 
 equal, it is a lie ; when you say the political power resides 
 in the jTeat body of the people, it is false." Thousands 
 and thousands of them said: " We prefer Great Britain." 
 But the men who were in favor of independence, the men 
 who knew that a new nation must be born, went on full of 
 hope and courage, and nothing could daunt or stop or stay 
 the heroic, fearless few. 
 
 They met in Philadelphia, and the resolution was moved 
 by Lee, of Virginia, that the colonies ought to be hide-
 
 54 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 pendent States, and ought to dissolve their political connec 
 tion with Great Britain. 
 
 They made up their minds that a new nation must be 
 formed. Ail nations had been, so to speak, the wards of 
 some church. The religious idea as to the source of power 
 had been at the foundation of all governments, and had 
 been the bane and curse of man. 
 
 Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to 
 dictate to the rest. Fortunately lor us, the colonists not 
 only, but the colonies differed widely in their religious 
 views. There were the Puritans who hated the Episco 
 palians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics, and 
 the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them 
 all in contempt. There they were, of every sort, and color, 
 and kind, and how was it that they came together? They 
 had a common aspiration. They wanted to form a new 
 nation. More than that, most of them cordially hated 
 Great Britain ; and they pledged each other to forget these 
 religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that 
 there should be only one religion until they got through, 
 and that was the religion of patriotism. They solemnly 
 agreed that the new nation should not belong to any paitic- 
 ular church, but that it should secure the rights of all. 
 
 Our fathers founded the first secular government th.it was 
 ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The h r&t sec 
 ular government; the first government that said evt ry 
 church has exactly the same rights, and no more ; every 
 religion has the same rights and 1:0 more. In other words 
 our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the 
 genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have 
 a sword; that it should be allowed only to exert its moral 
 influence. 
 
 You might as well have a government united by force 
 with Art, or with Poetry, or with Oratory, as with itelig-
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 55 
 
 ion. Religion should have the influence upon mankind 
 that its goodness, that its morality, its justice, its charity, 
 its reason and its argument give it, and no more. Religion 
 should have the effect upon mankind that it necessarily has, 
 and no more. 
 
 So our fathers said: "We shall form a secular govern 
 ment, and under the flag with which we are going to enrich 
 the air, we will allow every man to worship God as he 
 thinks best." They said : " Religion is an individual thing 
 between each man and his Creator, and he can worship as 
 he pleases and as he desires." And why did they do this? 
 The history of the world warned them that the liberty of 
 man was not safe in the clutch and grasp of any church. 
 They had read of and seen the thumb-screws, the racks and 
 the dungeons of the inquisition. They knew all about the 
 hypocrisy of the olden time. They knew that the church 
 had stood side by side wit x he throne; that the high 
 priests were hypocrites, and vhat the kings v/ere robb^-s. 
 They also knew that if they gave to any church ~,ower, . * 
 would corrupt the best chur.-h in the world. And so the 
 said that power must not reside in a church, nor in a sect, 
 but power must be wherevei humanity is in the great body 
 of the people. And the officers and servants of the people 
 must be responsible to tuem. And so I say agpjn, as I 
 said in the commencement, this is the wisest, the profound- 
 est, the bravest political document that ever was written 
 and signed by man. 
 
 They turned, as I tell you, everything squarely about. 
 They derived all their authority from the people. They 
 did away forever with the theological idea of government. 
 
 And what more did they say ? They said that whenever 
 the rulers abused this authority, this power, incapable of 
 destruction, returned to the people. How did they come 
 to say this ? I will tell you ; they were pushed into i f
 
 56 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 How ? They felt that they were oppressed ; and whenever 
 a man feels that he is the subject of injustice, his perception 
 of right and wrong is wonderfully quickened. 
 
 Nobody was ever in prison wrongfully who did not be 
 lieve in the writ of habeas corpus. Nobody ever suffered 
 wrongfully without instantly having ideas of justice. 
 
 And they began to inquire what rights the king of Great 
 Britain had. They began to search for the charter of his 
 authority. They began to investigate and dig down to the 
 bed-rock upon which society must be founded, arid when 
 they got there, forced there, too, by their oppressors, forced 
 against their own prejudices and education, they found at 
 the bottom of things, not lords, not nobles, not pulpits, not 
 thrones, but humanity, and the rights of men. 
 
 And so they said, we are men ; we are MEN. 
 
 A NATION. 
 
 They found out they were men. And the next thing 
 they said was : " We will be free men; we are weary of 
 being colonists ; we are tired of being subjects ; we are men ; 
 and these colonies ought to be states ; and these states 
 ought to be a nation ; and that nation ought to drive the 
 last British soldier into the sea." And so they signed that 
 brave declaration of independence. 
 
 I thank every one of them from the bottom of my heart 
 for signing that sublime declaration. I thank them for their 
 courage for their patriotism for their wisdom for the 
 splendid confidence in themselves and in the human race. 
 I thank them for what they were, and for what we are 
 for what they did, and for what we have received for what 
 they suffered, and for what we enjoy. 
 
 What would we have been if we had remained colonists 
 and subjects ? What would we have been to-day ? No 
 bodies ready to get down on our knees and crawl in the 
 very dust at the sight of somebody that was supposed to
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 5/ 
 
 have in him some drop of blood that flowed in the veins of 
 that mailed marauder William the Conqueror. 
 
 They signed that declaration of independence, although 
 they knew that it would produce a long, terrible, and 
 bloody war. They looked forward and saw poverty, depri 
 vation, gloom, and death. But they also saw, on the wrecked 
 clouds of war, the beautiful bow of freedom. 
 
 These grand men were enthusiasts; and the world has 
 oJy been raised by enthusiasts. In every country there 
 have been a few wLc have given a national aspiration to 
 the people. The enthusiasts ef 1776 were the builders and 
 framers of this great and splendid government; and they 
 were the men who saw, although others did not, the golden 
 fringe of the mantle of glory, that will finally cover this 
 world. They knew, they felt, they believed they would 
 give a new constellation to the political heavens that they 
 would make the Americans a grand people grand as the 
 continent upon which they lived. 
 
 The war commenced. There was little money and less 
 credit. The new nation had but few friends. To a great 
 extent, each soldier of freedom had to clothe and feed him 
 self. He was poor and pure brave and good, and so he 
 went to the fields of death to fight for the rights of man. 
 
 What did the soldier leave when he went? He left his 
 wife and children. 
 
 Did he leave them in a beautiful home, surrounded by 
 civilization, in the repose of law, in the security of a great 
 and powerful republic ? 
 
 No. He left his wife and children on the edge, on the 
 fringe of the boundless forest, in which crouched and crept 
 the red savage, who was at that time the ally of the still 
 more savage Briton. He left his wife to defend herself, 
 and he left the prattling babes to be defended by their 
 mother and by nature. The mother made the living ; she i/ 
 
 \~
 
 58 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 planted the corn and the potatoes, and hoed them in the 
 sun, raised the children, and in the dark night told them 
 about their brave father, and the "sacred cause," she told 
 them that in a little while the war would be over, and father 
 would come back covered with honor and glory. 
 
 Think of the women, of the sweet children who listened 
 for the footsteps of the dead who waited through the sad 
 and desolated years for the dear ones who never came. 
 
 LIBERTY OR DEATH. 
 
 The soldiers of 1776 did not march away with music and 
 banners. They went in silence, looked at and gazed alter 
 by eyes filled with tears. They went to meet, riot an equal, 
 but a superior to fight five times their number to make a 
 desperate stand to stop the advance of the enemy, and 
 then, when their ammunition gave out, seek the protection 
 of rocks, of rivers, and of hills. 
 
 Let me say here : The greatest test of courage on tho 
 earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. That army is 
 the bravest that can be whipped the greatest number of 
 times and fight again. 
 
 Over the entire territory, so to speak, then settled by our 
 forefathers, they were driven again and again. Now and 
 then they would meet the English with something like equal 
 numbers, and then the eagle of victory would proudly perch 
 upon the stripes and stars. And so they went or ><* best 
 cntvy could, hoping and fighting until they came to the uarz 
 and somber gloom of Valley Forge. 
 
 There were very few hearts then beneath that flag that 
 did not begin to think that the struggle was useless ; that 
 all the blood and treasure had been spent and shed in vain. 
 But there were some men gifted with tha f wonderful proph 
 ecy that fulfills itself, and with tua ; wonderful magnetic 
 power that makes heroes of everybody they coino i^ contact 
 with. And so our fathers went through the gloom of that ter-
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 5g 
 
 rible time, and still fought on. Brave men wrote g*and 
 words, cheering the despondent ; brave men did brave 
 deeds; the rich man gave his wealth ; the poor man gave 
 his life, until at last, by the victory of Yorl^town, the old 
 banner won its place in the air, and became glorious forever. 
 
 Seven long years of war fighting for what? For the 
 principle that all men are created equal a truth that no 
 body ever disputed except a scoundrel ; nobody in the 
 entire history of this world. No man ever denied thai 
 truth who was not a rascal, and at heart a thief; never, 
 never, and never will. What else were they fighting for ? 
 Simply that in America every man should have a right to 
 life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nobody ever 
 denied that except a villian ; never, never. It has been 
 denied by kings they were thieves. It has been denied 
 by statesmen they were liars. It has been denied by 
 priests, by clergymen, by cardinals, by bishops and by 
 popes they were hypocrites. 
 
 "What else were they fighting for? For the idea that all 
 political power is vested in the great body of the people. 
 They make all the money ; do all the work. They plow 
 the land ; cut down the forests ; they produce everything 
 that is produced. Then who shall say what shall be done 
 with what is produced except the producer ? Is it the non- 
 producing thief, sitting on a throne, surrounded by vermin? 
 
 The history of civilization is the history of the slow and 
 painful enfranchisement of the human race. In the olden 
 times the family was a monarchy, the father being the mon 
 arch. The mother and children were the veriest slaves. 
 The will of the father was the supreme law. He had tin 
 power of life and death. It took thousands of } T ears to civil 
 ize this father, thousands of years to make the condition oi 
 wife and mother and children even tolerable. A few fam 
 ilies constituted a tribe ; the tribe had a chief; the chief
 
 62 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 protect the rights of others. It is a sublime thing to be 
 free and just. 
 
 Only a few days ago I stood in Independence Hall in 
 that little room where was signed the immortal paper. A 
 little room, like any other; and it did not seem possible 
 that from that room went forth ideas, like cherubim and 
 seraphim, spreading their wings over a continent, and 
 touching, as with holy fire, the hearts of men. 
 
 In a few moments I was in the park, where are gathered 
 the accomplishments of a century. Our fathers never 
 dreamed of the things I saw. There were hundreds of loco 
 motives, with their nerves of steel and breath of flame 
 every kind of machine, with whirling wheels and the myriad 
 thoughts of men that have been wrought in iron, brass arid 
 steel. And going out from one little building were wires 
 in the air, stretching to every civilized nation, and they 
 could send a shining messenger in a moment to any part of 
 the world, and it would go sweeping under the waves of the 
 sea with thoughts and words within its glowing heart I 
 saw all that had been achieved by this nation, and I wished 
 that the signers of the Declaration the soldiers of the Revo 
 lution could see what a century of freedom has produced. 
 I wished they could see the fields we cultivate the rivers 
 we navigate the railroads running over the Alleghanies, 
 far into what was then the unknown forest on over the 
 broad prairies on over the vast plains away over the 
 mountains of the West, to the Golden Gate of the Pacific. 
 
 All this is the result of a hundred years of freedom. Are 
 you not more th;in glad that in 1776 was announced the 
 sublime principle that political power resides with the peo. 
 pie? that our fathers then made up their minds nevermore 
 to be colonists and subjects, but that they would be free 
 and independent citizens of America. I will not name any 
 of the grand men who fought for liberty. All should be
 
 THREE GREAT SPEECHES. 63 
 
 named, or none. I feel that the unknown soldier who was 
 down without even his name being remembered who 
 was included only in a report of "a hundred killed," or 
 "a hundred missing," nobody knowing even the number 
 that attached to his august corpse is entitled to as deep 
 and heartfelt thanks as the titled leader who fell at the head 
 of the host. 
 
 THE GRAND FUTURE OF AMERICA. 
 
 Standing here amid the sacred memories of the first, on 
 the golden threshold of the second, I ask, Will the second 
 century be as grand as the first? I believe it will, because 
 we are growing more and more humane ; I believe there is 
 more human kindness, and a greater desire to help one an 
 other, than in all the world besides. 
 
 We must progress. We are just at the commencement 
 of invention. The steam engine the telegraph these are 
 but the toys with which science has been amused. There 
 will be grander things ; there will be wider and higher cul 
 ture a grander standard of character, of literature and art. 
 
 We have now half as many millions of people as we have 
 years. We are getting more real solid sense. We are 
 writing and reading more books ; we are struggling more 
 and more to get at the philosophy of life, of things trying 
 more and more to answer the questions of the eternal 
 Sphinx. We are looking in every direction investigating ; 
 in short, we are thinking and working. 
 
 The world has changed. I have had the supreme pleasure 
 of seeing a man once a slave sitting in the seat of his 
 former master in the Congress of the United States. I 
 have had that pleasure, and when I saw it my eyes were 
 filled with tears, I felt that we had carried out the Declara 
 tion of Independence, that we have given reality to it, and 
 breathed the breath of life into its every word. I felt that 
 our flag would float over and protect the colored man and
 
 64 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 his little children standing straight in the sun, just the 
 same as though he wore white and worth a million. 
 
 All who stand beneath our banner are free. Ours is the 
 only fl.ig that has in reality written up wi it: Liberty, 
 Fraternity, Equality the three grandest words in all the 
 languages of men. Liberty : Give to every man the fruit 
 of his own labor the labor of his hand and of his brain. 
 Fraternity: Every man in the right is my brother. Equal 
 ity : The rights of all are equal. No race, no color, no 
 previous condition, can change the rights of men. The 
 Declaration of Independence has at last been carried out in 
 letter and in spirit. The second century will be grander 
 than the first. To-day the black man looks upon his child 
 and says : The avenues of distinction are open to you up in 
 your brow may fall the civic wreath. We are celebrating 
 the courage and wisdom of our fathers, and the glad shout 
 of a free people, the anthem of a grand nation, commencing 
 at the Atlantic, is following the sun to the Pacific, across a 
 continent of happy homes. We are a great people. Three 
 millions have increased to fifty thirteen states to thirty- 
 eight We have better homes, and more of the conveni 
 ences of life than any other people upon the face of the 
 globe. The farmers of our country live better than did 
 the kings and princes two hundred years ago and they 
 have twice as much sense and heart. Liberty and labor 
 have given us all. Remember that all men have equal 
 rights. .Remember that the man who acts best his part 
 who loves his friends the best is most willing to help 
 others truest to the obligation who has the best heart 
 the most feeling the deepest sympathies and who freely 
 gives to others the rights that he claims for himself, is the 
 best man. We have disfranchised the aristocrats of the 
 air ad have given one country to mankind.
 
 COL. INGERSOLL S FUNERAL ORATION. 
 
 65 
 
 Col. Ingersoll s Funeral Oration at His Brother s 
 Grave. 
 
 The funeral of Hon. Ebon C. Ingersoll, brother of Col. 
 Robert G. Ingersoll, took place at his residence in Wash 
 ington, D. C., June 2, 1879. The ceremonies were ex 
 tremely simple, consisting merely of viewing the remains 
 by relatives and friends, and a funeral oration by Col. 
 Ingersoll. A large number of distinguished gentlemen 
 were present. Soon after Mr. Ingersoll began to read his 
 eloquent characterization of the dead, his eyes filled with 
 tears. He tried to hide them behind his eye-glasses, but 
 he could not do it, and finally he bowed his head upon the 
 dead man s coffin in uncontrollable grief. It was after
 
 66 COL. INGERSOLL S 
 
 some delay and the greatest efforts at self-mastery, that 
 Col. Ingersoll was able to finish reading his address, which 
 was as follows: 
 
 MY FRIENDS : 1 am going to do that which the dead often 
 promised he would do for me. The loved and loving 
 brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood s 
 morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still 
 were falling towards the West. He had not passed on 
 life s highway the stone that marks the highest point, but 
 being weary for a moment he laid down by the wavsido, 
 and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless 
 sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love 
 with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence 
 and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in 
 the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager 
 winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen 
 rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar a sunken ship. 
 For, whether in mid-sea or among the breakers of the far 
 ther shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of each and 
 all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich 
 with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at 
 its close, become a tragedy, as sad, and deep, and dark 
 as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and 
 death. This brave and tender man in every storm of 
 life was oak and rock, but in the sunshine he was vine and 
 flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed 
 the heights and left all superstitions far below, while on 
 his forehead fell the golden dawning of a grander day. 
 He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form and mu 
 sic touched to tears. He sided with the weak, and with 
 a willing hand gave alms; with loyal heart and with the 
 purest hand he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He 
 was a worshipper of liberty and a friend of the oppressed. 
 A thousand times I have heard him quote the words:
 
 FUNERAL ORATION. 67 
 
 "For justice all place a temple and all season summer." 
 He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the 
 only torch, justice the only worshipper, humanity the only 
 religion, and love the priest. 
 
 He added to the sum of human joy, and were every one 
 for whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to 
 his grave he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of 
 flowers. Lite is a narrow vale between the cold and barren 
 peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond 
 the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the 
 echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the 
 unreplying dead there comes no word ; but in the night of 
 death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rus 
 tle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistak 
 ing the approach of death for the return of health, whis 
 pered with his latest breath, "I am better now." Let us 
 believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas and tears and fears 
 that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. 
 And now, to you who have been chosen from among the 
 many men he loved to do the last sad office for the dead, 
 we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. 
 There was there is no gentler, stronger, manlier man.
 
 DEAFNESS! 
 
 The new scientific invention, the 
 AUDIPHONR, 
 
 assists the DEAF to hear through ihe 
 medium of the TEETH. It Is convenient 
 to carry and use. Thousands tire note 
 in use and in every country in the world. 
 
 Invented by B. S. RHODES, Chicago, 
 
 Originally for His Own Uce. 
 
 It is sold at so low a price that every 
 one afflic ed with defective hearing can 
 afford to have one. For full particulars, 
 
 Address, 
 
 RHODES & McSLURE, 
 
 No. II Methodist Church Block, Chicago.
 
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