, . Of this book there have been printed from type in the month of August, nineteen hundred and eleven, nine hundred and fifty copies on specially made paper and fifty copies on "Old Stratford paper. Cter attlje 2,0100 Club ^ CitJerfctn ^ Chester & Cfjatles ^. $rice i^etu got*: ptinteft fot; t^e !Loto0 Club Jiomrnt mcm^t SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ARRANGED BY JOHN ELDERKIN CHESTER S. LORD CHARLES W. PRICE 5n t&e Uept&s of t&e lotos t&ere 10 tttttj)*" ORIENTAL PROVERB. NEW YORK PRINTED FOR THE LOTOS CLUB MCMXI Copyright, 1911, by THE LOTOS CLUB CONTENTS PAGE FRANK R. LAWRENCE, President of the Club . . 1 At the last Yule-tide dinner in the house 556, 558 Fifth Avenue, January 9, 1909 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 9 At the dinner to Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., March 23, 1901 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 12 At the dinner to Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., March 23, 1901 WILLIAM HENRY WHITE, Vice-President of the Club 16 At the dinner to Joseph H. Choate, November 16, 1901 JOSEPH H. CHOATE 18 At the dinner in his honor, November 16, 1901 ANDREW CARNEGIE 26 At the dinner to Joseph H. Choate, November 16, 1901 THOMAS B. REED 31 At the dinner to Joseph H. Choate, November 16, 1901 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS . . . . . . 35 At the dinner to Joseph H. Choate, November 16, 1901 EDWARD PATTERSON . 39 At the dinner to Joseph H. Choate, November 16, 1901 MORGAN J. O BRIEN . ..... . . . 43 At the dinner in his honor, December 21, 1901 THOMAS R. SLICER 48 At the dinner to Morgan J. O Brien, December 21, 1901 V M181913 vi CONTENTS PAGK DAVID B. HILL 53 At the dinner to Morgan J. O Brien, December 21, 1901 FREDERICK FUNSTON 56 At the dinner in his honor, March 8, 1902 MINOT J. SAVAGE 81 At the dinner to Frederick Funston, March 8, 1902 CHARLES S. GLEED 87 At the dinner to Frederick Funston, March 8, 1902 JOSEPH B. COGHLAN 91 At the dinner to Frederick Funston, March 8, 1902 HORACE PORTER 93 At the dinner in his honor, June 17, 1902 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS . % 99 At the dinner to Horace Porter, June 17, 1902 CHOWFA MAHA VAJIRAVUDH, Crown Prince of Siam . 108 At the dinner in his honor, October 25, 1902 PRINCE CHOWFA CHAKRABONGSE OF SIAM . . . 110 At the dinner to the Crown Prince of Siam, October 25, 1902 FELIX ADLER . . . . . . . 112 At the dinner to the Crown Prince of Siam, October 25, 1902 HENRY D. ESTABROOK 115 At the dinner to the Crown Prince of Siam, October 25, 1902 JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE ....... 119 At the supper to Edward H. Sothern, February 21, 1903 ELIHU ROOT ...... . . 123 At the dinner in his honor, May 9, 1903 SIMEON FORD 131 At the dinner to Elihu Root, May 9, 1903 JOSEPH C. HENDRIX 135 At the dinner to Elihu Root, May 9, 1903 CONTENTS vii PAGE SIR CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG 140 At the dinner in his honor, November 28, 1903 THOMAS R. SLICER 144 At the dinner to Sir Chentung Liang Chang, November 28, 1903 STEWART L. WOODFORD 150 At the dinner to Sir Chentung Liang Chang, November 28, 1903 JOSEPH WHEELER 153 At the dinner to Sir Chentung Liang Chang, November 28, 1903 SIR HENRY MORTIMER DURAND > . . , - 155 At the dinner in his honor, January 20, 1904 HENRY VAN DYKE -. . . . . . . 160 At the dinner to Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, January 20, 1904 WAYNE MCVEAGH 164 At the dinner to Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, January 20, 1904 E. FRANCIS HYDE 167 At the dinner to Richard Strauss, March 19, 1904 SIMEON FORD 170 At the dinner to George B. McClellan, March 25, 1904 WILLIAM H. MCELROY 174 At the dinner to George B. McClellan, March 25, 1904 JOHN MORLEY 177 At the dinner in his honor, November 25, 1904 NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER , . , . , 183 At the dinner to John Morley, November 25, 1904 HENRY VAN DYKE , . . 188 At the dinner to John Morley, November 25, 1904 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 193 At the dinner to John Morley, November 25, 1904 viii CONTENTS PAGE LYMAN ABBOTT 197 At the dinner to John Morley, November 25, 1904 FELIX ABLER 201 At the dinner to John Morley, November 25, 1904 HENRY VAN DYKE 207 At the dinner in his honor, December 23, 1904 MINOT J. SAVAGE 214 At the dinner to Henry Van Dyke, December 23, 1904 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 219 At the dinner to Henry Van Dyke, December 23, 1904 GEORGE HARVEY 223 At the dinner to Henry Van Dyke, December 23, 1904 IRVING BACHELLER . . . ... . 225 At the dinner to Henry Van Dyke, December 23, 1904 HAMILTON W. MABIE .231 At the dinner to Henry Van Dyke, December 23, 1904 SIR CASPAR PURDON CLARKE . . . . . 239 At the dinner in his honor, February 23, 1905 FREDERICK DIELMAN . . . . . 242 At the dinner to Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, February 23, 1905 WILLIAM T. EVANS 245 At the dinner to Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, February 23, 1905 WHITELAW REID 249 At the dinner in his honor, May 18, 1905 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 256 At the dinner to Whitelaw Reid, May 18, 1905 ERNEST M. STIRES 260 At the dinner to Whitelaw Reid, May 18, 1905 CLARK HOWELL 263 At the dinner to Whitelaw Reid, May 18, 1905 CONTENTS ix PAGE FRANK R. LAWRENCE 266 At the dinner to Joseph H. Choate, October 21, 1905 JOSEPH H. CHOATE 269 At the dinner in his honor, October 21, 1905 FRANK R. LAWRENCE . 278 At the dinner to Horace Porter, November 18, 1905 HORACE PORTER 280 At the dinner in his honor, November 18, 1905 SETH Low . 287 At the dinner to Horace Porter, November 18, 1905 WOODROW WILSON . . . ... . . 292 At the dinner in his honor, February 3, 1906 ANDREW V. V. RAYMOND ...... 302 At the dinner to Woodrow Wilson, February 3, 1906 GEORGE HARVEY 309 At the dinner to Woodrow Wilson, February 3, 1906 ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY 313 At the dinner in his honor, December 15, 1906 HORACE PORTER 318 At the dinner to St. Clair McKelway, December 15, 1906 ROBERT E. PEARY 326 At the dinner in his honor, February 2, 1907 ARTHUR T. HADLEY 335 At the dinner to Robert E. Peary, February 2, 1907 ROBLEY D. EVANS . . . . , . . 337 At the dinner in his honor, November 2, 1907 HENRY C. POTTER 341 At the dinner to Rear- Admiral Evans, November 2, 1907 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 344 * At the dinner in his honor, January 11, 1908 x CONTENTS PAGE ANDREW CARNEGIE 356 At the dinner to Samuel L. Clemens, January 11, 1908 ROBERT STUART MACARTHUR 360 At the dinner to Samuel L. Clemens, January 11, 1908 Wu TING FANG 364 At the dinner in his honor, May 6, 1908 JAMES WHITFIELD BASHFORD 366 At the dinner to Wu Ting Fang, May 6, 1908 STEPHEN S. WISE 371 At the dinner to Wu Ting Fang, May 6, 1908 BARON KOGORO TAKAHIRA . . . . . 375 At the dinner in his honor, December 19, 1908 MELVILLE E. STONE . . . . . . 378 At the dinner to Baron Kogoro Takahira, December 19, 1908 JOHN S. WISE 382 At the dinner to Baron Kogoro Takahira, December 19, 1908 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 384 At the dinner to Charles E. Hughes, January 30, 1909 CHARLES E. HUGHES . 387 At the dinner in his honor, January 30, 1909 MAHLON PITNEY 398 At the dinner to Charles E. Hughes, January 30, 1909 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 402 "Last words in the old house," January 30, 1909 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 403 At the dinner to Andrew Carnegie, March 17, 1909 ANDREW CARNEGIE 406 At the dinner in his honor, March 17, 1909 CONTENTS xi PAGE ST. CLAIR MCKELWAY 410 At the dinner to Andrew Carnegie, March 17, 1909 RICHARD WATSON GILDER 413 At the dinner to Andrew Carnegie, March 17, 1909 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 415 At the dinner to Andrew Carnegie, March 17, 1909 HENRY S. PRITCHETT 419 At the dinner to Andrew Carnegie, March 17, 1909 ROBERT STUART MACARTHUR 423 At the dinner to Andrew Carnegie, March 17, 1909 JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON . . . . . 427 At the supper in his honor, April 2, 1910 WILLIAM WINTER 432 At the supper to J. Forbes-Robertson, April 2, 1910 LAURENCE IRVING 439 At the supper to J. Forbes-Robertson, April 2, 1910 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 441 At the dinner to Charles E. Hughes, November 19, 1910 CHARLES E. HUGHES 444 At the dinner in his honor, November 19, 1910 DAVID H. GREER 450 At the dinner to Charles E. Hughes, November 19, 1910 GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM 453 At the dinner to Charles E. Hughes, November 19, 1910 MORGAN J. O BRIEN . . . . . . . 456 At the dinner to Charles E. Hughes, November 19, 1910 FRANK R. LAWRENCE . . . . . . 465 At the dinner to Jules J. Jusserand, December 2, 1910 xii CONTENTS PAGE JULES J. JUSSERAND 468 At the dinner in his honor, December 2, 1910 HAMILTON W. MABIE 474 At the dinner to Jules J. Jusserand, December 2, 1910 CHARLEMAGNE TOWER 479 At the dinner to Jules J. Jusserand, December 2, 1910 CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 483 At the dinner to Jules J. Jusserand, December 2, 1910 LIST OF PLATES FRANK R. LAWRENCE Frontispiece FACING PAGE MENU OF THE YULE-TIDE FEAST, 1910 1 JOHN ELDERKIN 2 CHARLES W. PRICE 56 MENU OF THE DINNER TO RICHARD STRAUSS, 1904 . . . 167 WILLIAM T. EVANS 245 MENU OF THE DINNER TO SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, 1908 . 344 MENU OF THE DINNER TO ANDREW CARNEGIE, 1909 . . 406 MENU OF SUPPER TO J.FORBES-ROBERTSON, 1910 . . . 427 YULE-TIDE FEAST, 1911 465 INTEODUCTION THE previous volume of "Speeches at the Lotos Club," published just ten years ago, contained a few speeches delivered in the early days of the Lotos, including those of Charles Kingsley, James An thony Froude, and Wilkie Collins, in the first house at No. 2 Irving Place, but mainly speeches of later date, when the custom of stenographically preserving them had become general. Some of those published were de livered in the second house, 147 Fifth Avenue, and the others in the club s third home, 556 Fifth Avenue. That volume ended with the beginning of 1901. The period covered by the present volume, from 1901 to the end of 1910, was one of great prosperity for the club, during which its traditions were well main tained. The long procession of interesting men and events moved across its stage unceasingly, and no single year passed without notable gatherings under its roof, at which homage was paid to genius or achievement, and often * the fun flew fast and furious. The presidency of Mr. Lawrence continued through out this period, and has now entered its twenty-third year, covering, with that of his distinguished predeces sor, Whitelaw Reid, ever beloved in the club, some thirty-seven years of the club s forty-one years of ex istence. XV xvi INTRODUCTION In lieu of other introduction, the compilers print, out of its order, at the beginning of the book, the address of President Lawrence at one of the unique and delightful Yule-tide dinners, the last in the house recently va cated, believing that that address adequately portrays our gatherings and appropriately ushers in the good things which follow. Like its predecessor, the present volume contains but a few of many speeches, all well worthy to be preserved. The chief embarrassment of the compilers has been an embarrassment of riches. August, 1911. SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB "Dr. Johnson once described a club as A company of good fellows meeting regularly under certain conditions. I cannot help thinking that Johnson would have liked the Lotos Club. He liked the fra grance of the bowl and the generous trencher dish; and he liked to sit up late at night, as I understand some of you do down here. There is a tradition that on a certain occasion he celebrated the success of a young woman poet by inviting her to a company, and they sat up all night; and in order to give distinction to the feast he had a large fresh apple- pie made which was crowned with bay. Boswell records that as the hours wore away, Dr. Johnson s face became rosier and rosier until the dawn. Now we find here to-night the bay and the laurel; we have the mountain pine for purity, and the Scotch heather for the sweep of the sky; we have the balsam for the fragrance and the warmth of friend ship, and we have the blue flower for the eternal search of the poet, and those who have the poet s soul for the ideal. Hamilton W. Mabie, at the dinner to Henry Van Dyke, December 23, 1904. FEANK E. LAWEENCE (PRESIDENT OF THE CLUB) AT THE LAST YULE-TIDE DINNER IN THE HOUSE 556, 558 FIFTH AVENUE, JANUAEY 9, 1909 THE feast was opened in customary form, by passing the wassail-bowl, a huge silver loving-cup dating from 1870, and augmented by one of lesser size, made from an Ameri can shell taken by Henry N. Gary, a member of the club, from one of the wrecked Spanish battle-ships the day after the battle at Santiago. The carols were sung, beginning with the ancient melody "God Rest You, Merrie Gentlemen"; the pipers passed in procession about the rooms, preceding the great baron of beef, which was borne upon the shoulders of four men, and followed by the cooks, and when "The Roast Beef of Old England" had been sung, the viands eaten, the punch, brewed by mystic light, circulated, and the coffee placed upon the tables, President Frank R. Lawrence arose and spoke as follows : THE ruthless hand of improvement will soon be laid upon this spot, and this house, where for the past sixteen years you have kept alive the fires of good fel lowship, will know only "the dust and ashes of achieve ment." At such a time as this it is natural to dwell upon the past, and to express a hope for the future. 1 2 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB I promise you that I am not going to weary you by speaking at length. You are here to enjoy yourselves, and you would rather listen to the musicians than listen to me. Yes, even though, like the friars in Heine s poem, they were Singing sinful songs in a sorrowful tone, you would rather listen to the musicians than listen to me. But I think you will bear with me a moment, for I may claim to be a veteran of the club, having been a member here, not so long as John Elderkin, or White- law Reid, or Chauncey M. Depew, or Samuel L. Clem ens; still for more than thirty years I have been a member of this club, and for twenty years your kind ness has retained me as your president. This seems to be an office from whose term there is no deduction for either good or ill conduct. My illus trious predecessor served you for fourteen years, and escaped only by accepting a foreign mission, which compelled him to leave the country. "When I entered the club, John Brougham was its president, and William J. Florence, John McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, and sometimes Edwin Booth were among its active members. Depew was a popular speaker, practising the art of oratory on all occasions. Clemens had already set the world in the roars of laughter in which he has ever since kept it, and Reid was a brilliant journalist, still sometimes having to bear the taunt of being a young man. The house in Irving Place was before my member- FRANK E. LAWRENCE 3 ship. But the house at Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street, the Bradish Johnson mansion, which we now call the old house, as you will soon be calling this the old house, is, to the men of my time, rich with memories of the past, and the dinners in that house, where only one hundred and eight members in all could be seated at the tables, appeared like Lucullan banquets, never to be outdone ! There have been many delightful moments in this club. Some of you will remember the night when Cyrus W. Field brought in Oliver Wendell Holmes, who filled the rooms with anecdotes and memories of Longfellow and Hawthorne and Emerson and Lowell, until we seemed, in fancy, in the midst of the most brilliant group of literary men known in American history. But that was in the old house. In that house we entertained General Grant, and I knew Bayard Taylor and Henry M. Stanley. Stanley was called from your table while on his feet, speaking after dinner, by a telegram from the King of the Belgians, which summoned him to one of his expedi tions to Central Africa. Stanley was seldom far away from our old friend Major Pond, whom the London Punch once referred to as "Lago Maggiore," an allusion which the good Major at first seemed disposed to resent ! Going one day, as a young member, into the library, where hardly any one ever went, I found a curious little coffee-colored man browsing about in search of something he could not find. We talked long together, and I did not know who he was, until Petroleum V. 4 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Nasby came in, and then I found that I had been talk ing with Paul du Chaillu, the explorer and a modern discoverer of the African gorilla. Do you remember the night when, in these rooms, at a dinner to Ian Maclaren, there fell from the lips of William Winter a picture of Scotland, its history, its scenery, and its poetry, so beautiful that Walter Scott himself could never have surpassed it; and how the club rose to Winter as one man ? Do you remember how, in these rooms, one night, at a dinner to our fellow-member Anton Seidl, Robert G. Ingersoll, speaking reluctantly and I know that Inger- soll was not prepared to speak that night spoke in accents which seemed enraptured, in praise of litera ture, of sculpture, and of pictorial art, ending what seemed to me as fine a speech as I ever heard, with a beautiful tribute to music, near whose throne poor Seidl, soon to go to the grave, and soon to be followed by Ingersoll himself, occupied so high a place ? Shall I remind you of the dinner here to Charles A. Dana, when something in the speech of Horace Porter recalled to our guest an incident of the Civil War, so forcibly that, as General Porter concluded, he sprang to his feet and spoke again, in that clear language of which he was so fine a master, describing that which he had seen, so vividly that Porter, our friend and comrade of many years, seemed again the brave young officer, with sword in hand, rallying bodies of our disorganized troops amid the awful slaughter at Chickamauga ? Or shall I remind you of that other night when a tiny little man spoke here for an hour or more, with great FRANK R. LAWRENCE 5 rapidity of utterance, with no attempt at oratory, but whose earnest simplicity held you spellbound, while General Funston told the story of the war in the Philip pines, scarcely mentioning at all his own part in it, until, at the end, some one spoke of the capture of Aguinaldo, when he began again, and spoke a second time, as delightfully as before ? Or would you recall the story of Italian opera in this country, as told here by Parke Godwin, at a dinner to the two De Reszkes, going back to the time when Jenny Lind sang at Castle Garden, and telling us of the much more distant time when his wife, as a child, was known to Madame Malibran, the first opera singer of conse quence to visit this country, New York being, in 1826, an unimportant place, where an opera troupe made a brief stay on its way to the brilliant capital at Havana ? Do you remember how often Henry Irving, prince of actors, and, to those who knew him as I did, prince among men, has spoken here ? And the stately Choate 1 And old Joe Jefferson? But why continue? For to repeat the names of those who have spoken upon this spot would be to catalogue the brilliant men of our time. These rather ill-shaped rooms, where every speaker is at a disadvantage, have seemed to lend themselves to our occasions by drawing members closer together ; and many a time, from under this doorway, where, from necessity, your table of honor has usually been placed, it has been my privilege to gaze into the faces of an audience so lost in the intellectual enjoyment of the 6 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB moment as to be perfectly oblivious of their surround ings. And what an audience ! The late James C. Carter, speaking here once, at tempted to define this club as being " Upper Bohemia." Mr. Carter was one of the most profound lawyers of his day, and his mind rebelled against anything which he could not define. And so he tried to define this club. To what extent his definition was correct, I do not know. The Bohemian boundaries have always been indefinite, and even Shakespeare fell into the error of placing the scene of a part of his "Winter s Tale" upon the coast of Bohemia, although Bohemia had no seacoast. We are soon to go to a banqueting-hall of much greater capacity than this, which I am told will also be a picture-gallery unequaled by any in New York ; and, from what is now beginning to appear, I fear that what I have once or twice unwittingly said to the club, as to the modesty and simplicity of the new surroundings, will not entirely be made good. But whatever may be its surroundings, whether splendid or humble, my greatest wish for this club is that it may always strive to maintain the spirit of good fellowship, a devotion to literature and art, to be among the first to recognize merit in the artist or man of let ters, and to welcome the distinguished stranger who comes to our city ; for these have been the things which have distinguished this club from others. The evolution to the new house has been attended by some picturesque circumstances, characteristic of a somewhat eccentric organization. FRANK R. LAWRENCE 7 It would never have answered to do the thing in a commonplace way. If we had never got into trouble, how could we ever have got out of it ? First came the sale of this property; then the ac quirement of the property in Fifty-seventh Street ; then the tearing down of the building which occupied the Fifty-seventh Street site; next, opportunely, the panic of 1907, tying up the resources with which the new house was to have been built and paid for; and then came our great and good friend, renowned for gener osity the world over, our fellow-member, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, and placed at the disposal of the club the amount of which it stood in need; and out of our dilemma grew a triumph, and the new house, where steel beams were first set only at the end of May, will be ready for your occupation at the end of January. In the new house the club will desire an addition to its membership, but it is to be hoped that there will be no rapid or radical change. Let us not take into our system more than we can assimilate, and let us carefully restrict membership to those who share our tastes and who have something in common with us. But the club will soon need new blood; it needs it now. And I am glad to see some younger men among the recent members. They are welcome here. There is work for them to do. Places in the front rank will soon become vacant, and must be filled by them. We have faith and hope in a brilliant future for this club, a future surpassing its past, but this must be mainly worked out through the efforts of the younger men. And as for us, we have tried to preserve the tradi tions which came from the generation before ; as for us, 8 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the old ones, who are soon to pass from the stage, the words of the gladiators are upon our lips, it is Morituri te salutamis. We must accept our fate ; but can we do better than follow the advice of the poet Beranger, and try to Live backward, and change into a Springtime the Winter that comes ! THEODOEE ROOSEVELT (VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES) AT THE DINNER TO BENJAMIN B. ODELL, JR., MARCH 23, 1901 I ESTEEM myself fortunate in having a chance to come before you to briefly pay my tribute of respect and admiration for the Governor of the State of New York, of whom not merely those of his party, but all the citizens of the State, have the right to feel proud, because he is the Governor of all the State, bent upon doing all that in him lies to carry the State onward and upward. The bed of the Governor of the State is not always a bed of roses. Of course, he has his difficulties; of course, he has troubles. Do any of you know a task worth doing which has not its difficulties? Do any of you know a prize worth winning which has not to be won by hard effort? It is because the task is so well worth doing ; it is because you are doing it so well, that difficulties inevitably arise, Governor Odell. The Gov ernor is not to be pitied or even sympathized with because of those difficulties. He is having a pretty good time. Any man who properly appreciates the honor it is to be the chief executive of this great State will not only feel the most solemn sense of responsibility for 10 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the performance of the duties of his office, but will feel, if he deserves, as you have deserved, the sense that he has done them right, a profound satisfaction in the performance of his duties that can come to him in hardly any other way. It is a great task, but it is one of the most honorable of all tasks ; he should be praised who has done it well, as you have done it. Mr. President, you were kind enough in introducing me to speak of the opportunities open to young men. I have never sympathized with those excellent but per haps not too red-blooded people who feel that the day of doing big things is over. There is any amount of excellent work to be done in the world, and it can be done and done well by those who will do it for the sake of doing it well, and to whom the having done it well is reward enough. Happy are we who have lived in the nineteenth century, in a century dealing with great events, with great men who figure in these great events ; and happier still are those who stand on the threshold of the new century with the long years lying before us, whose life is before them, with the determination to make of this nation what it should be made: one of the great nations we hope the greatest nation of all. And it can be done by each doing his duty, each in his place supporting those who have the important duties in their places. The country, the nation can be put where we believe it should be put by each of us doing his duty, each in his place, as you have done, Governor Odell, in your place as Governor of the State of New York dur ing the months that have just been passed. I am under great obligations, obligations that, of THEODORE ROOSEVELT 11 course, I can never repay, to the people of this State for what they have done for me. It has been the great est pleasure to have served them according to the light that was in me, according to the capacity that I had, in the past. It was the greatest pleasure to be asso ciated with so many men who have aided and helped me, who held up my hands. It was a particular pleas ure to be associated with you, Governor Odell, during the two years that I was Governor, and to feel that now I can be numbered among your friends and sup porters and admirers in my turn. In speaking to this audience, I don t wish to seem to assume a needlessly solemn attitude, and yet, I think it is a good thing for all of us to understand the weighty responsibilities that rest upon the man in that office. Heavy are his duties ; great are his responsibilities. He is trying to act for seven millions of people, diverse in interest, diverse in so many things. We know he can do that work to the best possible advantage only when he has the cordial support of each of us, as it is given, as we find ourselves able to render that support to him. And I ask in closing, that all of us, all citizens who are proud of New York, all citizens who are not only good New Yorkers but good Americans, that each of us, as he finds it in his power, shall do his best to help Gov ernor Odell to discharge the whole of his duty the large and great duties of the office upon which he has so worthily entered. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS AT THE DINNER TO BENJAMIN B. ODELL, JR., MARCH 23, 1901 1 LATELY had the pleasure and the honor of visit ing Governor Odell on matters of public business in his political home in the State House, in the bosom of- his political family the Legislature, a family made trp in the proportion of three Republicans for business to one Democrat for ornament and social elevation. I went up there without salary to plead against the re duction, the proposed reduction, of the citizen s lib erties, and to vote against the Ramapo Bill in the Senate, if I could get a chance to enter upon the floor of the House, and to introduce a police bill. Not be cause they were running short of police bills. And if the Governor would promise to sign it, my bill would pass. -I am privileged on the floor of the House any where in all the legislative bodies in the world, a thing that happened by accident rather than merit. I wanted to introduce that police bill. It seemed to me that it was a very good idea. Now it was not like any other police bill that has ever been introduced anywhere. There was a little self-interest in it, here and there, and my scheme was to have none but authors on the police. Well, for myself, I wanted to be the 12 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 13 chief of police, not because I thought I was really qualified for the place, but because I was tired and wanted a rest. I wanted Mr. Howells for first deputy, not because Mr. Howells knows anything about those things, but because he was tired too. A lot of us authors are tired. And now that Mr. Depew has pub lished speeches and other books, and has become an author, I wanted him for second deputy. Not because he is tired, because he is n t, but because he is one of those men who do all things well, and he could run the t V police business and I could take the salary! .And, besides, more than that, he and I have a tie. Indeed, we are members of the celebrated Class of 53 of Yale, only he was there before I was. And another thing, he is a Missourian, like me. And in the Missourians there is no guile. And there is a nearer tie still. When I was born I was a member of a firm of twins. And one of them disappeared, and it has been borne in upon me of late that the personal resemblance between Depew and me, and the general handsome style and grace of form and figure and things of that sort, and activity of speech, and well, it proves to me that that long lost twin is here ! Well, I wanted I wanted Stedman, and Aldrich, and Brander Matthews, and Crawford, and Cable for the Broadway squad, and others for the Red Light district, and others still to take care of the pretty mani curists. Now, that bill I drew myself. That was my dream ; it was my hope ; my ambition ; but it failed like so many bright dreams in this disappointing world. Governor Odell would n t favor it. He said that authors were 14 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB well enough in their place, but he said, "It would n t do for me to leave the city unprotected. " Now, that remark was irrelevant. It was n t discreet. The very thing I was trying to do was to protect the city. He said the authors as police that it would be worse than Ramapo, but I can t agree with him. Ramapo is au thorized to bring on a water famine authors never do that. Well, I shall never forget to be grateful to the Legis lature up there for the hospitalities extended to me and for the chance that I had to hear a reverend gentleman speak from his impromptu speech which he read from type-written manuscript, and in which he did for me again what has been done so often before blasted my character what was left of it. He said that if I had my just deserts I would not be a guest there, I should be a guest somewhere else maybe, or be dangling from a lamp-post somewhere. He was telling about the last time that I broke jail and said that I carried off sev eral pairs of boots belonging to other folks. This state ment was a lie, only that; and he knew that perfectly well. He was there a guest in that place, and so was I ; and he was so interested in drawing my character in the past although he came there to absolutely obliter ate me before the people. He had n t anything personal against me, except that I was opposed to the political war, and he said I was a traitor and did n t go to fight in the Philippines. That does n t prove anything. That does n t prove a man is a traitor. Where s the evidence? There are seventy-five millions of us work ing our patriotism. He did the same thing himself. It would be an entirely different question if the coun- SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 15 try s life was in danger, its existence at stake; then that is one kind of patriotism we would all come for ward and stand by the flag, and stop thinking about whether the nation was right or wrong ; but when there is no question that the nation is in any way in danger, but only some little war away off, then it may be that on the question of politics the nation is divided, half- patriots and half -traitors, and no man can tell which from which. WILLIAM HENEY WHITE (VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CLUB) AT THE DINNER TO JOSEPH H. CHOATE, NOVEMBER 16, 1901 THE Lotos Club, founded upon ideas, and faithless as it possibly has been to most of them, has been loyal to two. One is good fellowship, and the other hospitality. Our guest of to-night seems somehow to have exem plified the idea of the Lotos Club, and I say for you to him, that of all the distinguished men who have pre ceded him at our board, and at our hearth fire, no man has so eminently taught what the Lotos Club stands for in club life. Mr. Carnegie in the crypt of the club some months ago heartily agreed with me that the Lotos Club seemed to recognize nothing in money, nothing in genealogy, nothing in politics, but seemed to reduce everything to the simple concrete fact of good fellowship. He was true ; the thought was right. A man who is not a good- fellow has no standing in the Lotos Club. Therefore, as I face your guest I desire to express to him for you a hearty welcome ; to toast him as one who, by great achievements in his profession, by his oratory and his wit, and by genial companionship, has honored 16 WILLIAM HENRY WHITE 17 this community and endeared himself to his contem poraries. I ask you to rise and drink with me, health, long life, and undiminished gaiety of soul to the Honorable Joseph H. Choate. JOSEPH H. CHOATE (AMERICAN AMBASSADOR AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES) AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, NOVEMBEE 16, 1901 SINCE I left these shores I have seen many distin guished companies, but never one like this. Such modesty; such self -shrinking embodied in the person and character of the vice-president of the club; such hiding of his light under a bushel! I think you may search the United States and Great Britain through without finding an equal or a rival of the Lotos Club. I appreciate the extraordinary honor you have, as your vice-president put it, done to-night to me and to yourselves. I reciprocate his overtures of hospitality, and if you will come to London, individually or col lectively, I promise to apply to your entertainment all that remains of my salary after paying the house rent. If the whole membership of the club comes together, there won t be very much to go round; and if you should come a second time, it might be a mere Barme- cidean feast ; but my heart will go with it to every one. Seriously, I do say, as your chairman said somewhat jocosely, that I do consider this the greatest compli ment that I have received. But it is an evidence to me that three years of absence have not killed the attach ment which I had been forty years acquiring among 18 JOSEPH H. CHOATE 19 you. Now, I am not here to-night to discuss any public questions. Reticence is impressed upon me as the first law of my being, and for the last three years I have been afflicted with political lockjaw. When I recover from that infirmity I shall return to those subjects which in former years I did like so much to discuss. To-night what I shall have to say to you will be more purely of a personal nature. When I arrived in that wonderful ship of the Ameri can line, I found myself surrounded by strangers, but yet friends, who stuck closer than so many brothers. They would not be shaken off. Even my friend Speaker Reed, I believe, would hardly be able to escape or veto them. One question governed and con trolled them all: What are you coming home for?" Well, I had kept it as a very great secret, to be dis cussed for the first time here to-night. And imme diately, as is the custom with the men of that craft, they indulged in every possible supposition, public and private, as to the reason for my return; and now, for the first time, I am prepared to disclose it. And I will tell you confidentially, not to go any farther, the reason of my coming. I came because I was a little, or, rather, I may say, I was not a little homesick. I wanted to breathe once more a little American air. None of your second-hand, breathed-over stuff, but American air, fresh every morning from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlan tic. I wanted to revel in a little American sunshine. Why, there is more real, pure, honest sunshine in one bright October day in Stockbridge or New York than in a whole winter of London. Perhaps you have read what I have escaped: that great national institution, 20 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the London fog, which has clothed the British Isles in a pall of sorrow ever since I left. And then I wanted to touch foot once more upon American soil, the real thing, not the fictitious article which Americans in London come to in my hired house in the Embassy as a temporary shelter on American soil, but the real mother earth from which we sprung and to which we shall return. Was it not Brutus, Mr. Chairman, at Delphi The Chairman : I think it was. The chairman says he thinks it was ; he could safely say that before he knew what it was but I believe it was Brutus at Delphi who, when the oracle said that he should rule at Rome who should first kiss his mother, pretended to be stupid and stumbled, and kissed the earth which was the mother of us all. Well now, I should like to try that osculatory experiment. But not upon the pavements of New York City. But if you will give me a chance in my native State of Massachusetts, somewhere on the rocky coast of Essex, or in the granite hills of Berkshire, I really believe I could drink in a fresh draught of inspiration from kissing the soil of my native land. Now, I intend to tell you what I have been doing abroad. I don t think I have done as much as the president in his letter was good enough to say, but I have enjoyed myself a great deal there. You all know, many of you have personally experienced, the gener osity and the freedom of English hospitality. I am sure that you do not know I am sure that nobody who has not been there during the last three years can fully realize what a steadfast purpose our brethren on the JOSEPH H. CHOATE 21 other side of the Atlantic have to maintain the friend ship that happily exists between the two places. I may not discuss any of those questions which affect the relations of the two countries, but I believe from what I know of the people of both, that any questions that arise will be harmoniously, amicably, and honorably adjusted. Now you still have the right, I think, to have me tell you, in view of your most cordial reception of me here to-night, and of this, to me, unprecedented honor that you have paid me that I should tell you how my three years of absence abroad have affected me, and what are my impressions of this great city of my adoption on my return to it after so long an absence. Well, let me say that I don t believe that any intelligent American can remain abroad so long as I have, without gathering, month by month and year by year, increased and inten sified love and affection for the land of his birth, and increasing admiration for her government and her in stitutions. Let me say a word seriously on that subject from the bottom of my heart. I suppose that at the dis tance we get a different and perhaps a better perspec tive than those who remain at home, and for one I am more and more convinced, to me it is absolutely clear without any possibility of doubt or contradiction, that the cardinal principle that underlies our government, our laws, and our policy, namely, the absolute civil and political equality of all citizens, aided by the right of universal suffrage, is the secret of America s success. Aided by that generous and comprehensive and un- equaled system of general education which qualifies every citizen not only to pursue his calling but to exer- 22 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB else the elective franchise, it puts America on the magnificent plane that she occupies to-day. And again I say that it passes my comprehension how any intelli gent and observant citizen can go abroad and remain abroad without returning a greater admirer, a warmer lover, a more devoted friend and champion of his own country than he was before. Now what shall I say about New York ? Mr. Carnegie : Be careful, Mr. Speaker. As my friend has just said, from such a man as Mr. Carnegie, when I get a hint to be careful, I will go ahead and say exactly what I think. It seems to me that New York to-day is just beginning its progress. It seems to me that in the last three years it has devel oped more signs of growth, of power, and of influence than in any decade that has preceded it. I have been an observer of the growth of New York for now well- nigh fifty years. When I first landed here, when I first came as a visitor to this metropolis, great city as we then thought it, it was a little city of much less than a million people. The New Haven Railroad landed the New England immigrant in Canal Street. Twenty- third Street was out of the city. And some years after that, even when Mr. Eno started the great project of building the Fifth Avenue Hotel, it was denounced as Eno s Folly, for they said that nobody would come so far out-of-town to stay overnight. The horse railroad, then in its infancy, was looked upon as rapid transit already realized. And Trinity Church the spire of Trinity Church towered high above everything else. Stephen "Whitney, an old merchant, the sole survivor then of the down-town center of fashion, held the last JOSEPH H. CHOATE 23 palace at No. 7 Bowling Green. And now what do we see ? Why, in fifty years, until Greater New York was created four years ago, there was a magnificent series of strides, each greater than any that had gone before, and each prodigious in itself, and there when the new municipality was brought into being, the second city of the world; and yet, it seems to me, that in the three years that I have been abroad, there are signs of growth and progress never before dreamed of. As we approached the city from the bay vast palaces of industry and commerce were scraping the sky with their battlemented fronts, and giving the whole city the appearance of a fortified citadel. And then as we landed, every man, woman, and child seemed to be moving by the force of steam or electricity, as though they were full of that force in person, each man himself an automobile. And as we advanced up -town the whole city seemed to be undermined, excavated, earthquaked, as though titanic engineers were working their way through the bowels of her soil. Subterranean explo sions in all directions indicated that the war of the elements was waging below the surface of the city, and I believe they were. Sulphurous streams, emitted every few rods of our passage, seemed to indicate that Titans indeed were at work below ; and, if I rightly understand it, that gigantic, that marvelous piece of engineering and mining combined, is but the beginning of a new growth of this great and wondrous city. It seems to me that I have returned at a moment, at an era, of grand upheavals, physical, financial, intel lectual, and political. I have told you what I have observed of the physical upheaval. Then take the 24 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB financial upheaval. I understand that everybody has grown very rich; that at all the corners of the streets you will meet multi-millionaires with pockets bursting at very step. Combinations are formed surpassing in magnitude anything that ever was known before. It seemed to me that the genie of Aladdin had returned for practical work on this island. No sooner has one vast combination of wealth been created than it is swal lowed up by another still greater and greedier than the last. And then the intellectual development in these three years our two great universities in their magnificent homes on the highest elevations in the city have been completed, and are endowed with facilities which will give them their true and leading place among the edu cational institutions of the world. The reservoir, which was so dear to the hearts of all citizens of New York for the last fifty years, which was admired so much for its architectural beauty, and filled with a fluid influence which it was supposed to exert upon the city, has given place to the foundations of a great library which will be the leading center of light and knowledge for generations to come. And our two institutions, the Museums of Art and Natural History, enriched by the generosity of the gentlemen connected with them, one of whom, the president of the Museum of Natural History, I am proud to see here to-night. They have taken their place among the great educa tional museums of the world. And all this has been accomplished in these three years. Now, gentlemen, I think I have said pretty nearly all I can think of. There is only one more subject of great JOSEPH H. CHOATE 25 advantage ; that is, to return to the subject with which I set out the glory, the might, and the magnificence of the Lotos Club, and the dignity and brains, the signs of good fellowship of each of its members, so well illus trated by and so well incorporated in the person of your vice-president. Gentlemen, I thank you with all my heart for this magnificent greeting. When you return my visit, as I hope you will, you will find the latch- string out. You may find it a little ragged, but it will always be out. ANDREW CARNEGIE AT THE DINNEE TO JOSEPH H. CHOATE, NOVEMBER 16, 1901 I HAVE listened with great pleasure, as you all have, to the heartfelt, moving address of our guest of this evening, our Ambassador to the Court of St. James. I appreciate his feelings. I am absent at some times from this country, and from New York, and I never return without being more and more oppressed yes, gentlemen, impressed and oppressed by the speed at which our country is advancing; by the advantages which it has over all other lands, especially in those great fundamental principles to which our Ambassador has referred, the equality of the citizen, universal suffrage, and equal electoral districts one man, one vote. Our guest has said ten times more than I said in Southampton in regard to New York, which attracted attention in Britain, and after reflection I have n t the slightest hesitation in saying that not only every word that I said is true, but that all that our honored guest said to-night is true ; and this is saying a great deal for any ambassador. Wherever I go, Mr. Choate, I try to counteract that hypercritical spirit which prevails among a certain 26 ANDREW CARNEGIE 27 class of our people who stay at home and don t know the disadvantages of other lands, who only see the spots in the sun of their own, spots that would not be seen at all except for the very brightness of the great orb itself, our beloved Republic. I said to a man who met me at Southampton, one of fifteen, I think, who asked me: "Mr. Carnegie, we want to know, here in England, why you could give so much money to a city so corrupt, so vile, so wicked as New York, and I said : "My friend, listen to me. The city of New York is in many respects the best-governed city in this world ! Look at your London, still buying its water from private corporations the shares of which were one pound and are now twenty-one hundred pounds, and furnishing only thirty gallons a day to each inhabitant, and to some of them not even that. Contrast New York, owning its own water-supply, with its hundred gallons a day for every one, and more in reserve, and then with the work in progress to-day which will yield that supply for future generations. Contrast our pub lic parks of New York with your parks. You can get no more breathing spaces in London. It has not looked ahead. New York has bought several thousands of acres in the Bronx and also at Pelham for new parks. It takes wise heads to manage for New York like that. Look at the wharves New York is now building all round the island. There is nothing to compare with those granite wharves in the world ; and more than that, they will pay for themselves in thirty years, and not cost a cent. The sinking-fund out of revenues is paying off the bonds. It takes wise management to do that, gentlemen. This 28 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB means foresight and brains. And when the city is so governed that it does such things as that, I don t care which party is in power, the great progress of New York is not to be impeded by any party or by all par ties. We unduly criticize our officials, and fail to praise them where praise is deserved. Enough of this. The unique honor paid to the Am bassador to-night, the feature of this dinner, has not been referred to. [Turning to Mr. Choate:] Your Excellency, now that you have been accus tomed to the various customs prevailing in the cities of Europe, in Great Britain, of presenting the freedom of cities to yourself and other distinguished citizens, the Lotos Club resolved that they would do you the unique honor of presenting in a golden casket the free dom of the Lotos Club ; that includes much more than the city of New York. Of course, you will not ask me, as I asked a provost who was presenting me with the freedom of a city in Scotland, "What goes with the freedom? I know that Burns says that freedom and whisky gang thegither. " "Well," he said, "Mr. Carnegie, I don t know whether Burns was right, but I can assure you that whisky does go with freedom in this city. Gentlemen, referring to the hypercritical spirit of the man who finds nothing good in his own country I find most everything good here, I am an optimist we have the complaints of the Civil Service Commission that we have no trained diplomats ; there should be generation after generation of young men taught how to manage the business of our country at foreign courts. ANDREW CARNEGIE 29 Well, we made such a bad start when this Republic was established! Why, we sent nobody better than Franklin, and Adams, and Jay; and then we sent a Lee; and we followed that up by sending such men to the Court of St. James as Lowell, Phelps, Bayard, and Hay ! And then did we fall down, down, very far when we sent the gentleman we have met to honor to-night? That is what we do in this country, for the lack of Civil Service training for diplomats. Can you tell me that any school equals the world of affairs, the universal school, for training men who will attend to our business at foreign courts? You take a man like our guest. Consider what it means when he visits the Prime Min ister or the Foreign Minister of Great Britain for the week-end, and spends two or three days; or visits His Majesty. When you come to the Prime Minister, and our friend, our guest to-night, consider what in fluence a man like he can exert during the few days he spends in the home of the Minister of Great Britain. Gentlemen, the best diplomat does his work quietly, sometimes like a mole, underground; you don t know how. He advertises all the good things of his own coun try and does not advertise himself. But I tell you, if the secret history is ever written of the delicate negotia tions which have resulted in favor of this country, we shall know what our Ambassador has attained by these visits of his. He has told his hosts some very plain truths, I doubt not, but always in the most diplomatic language. Much credit, I am certain, is due to Mr. Choate, our Ambassador, for the very satisfactory set tlement of all the differences between the old country and the new. 30 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB We send him forth as one of the most precious fruits of this land of triumphant democracy, in which one man s privilege is every man s right. We are all very proud of you, Mr. Choate, as our Ambassador, and very fond of you as our friend. Long and happy life to you and yours. THOMAS B. EEED AT THE DINNER TO JOSEPH H. CHOATE, NOVEMBEE 16, 1901 I SUPPOSE that I have been called upon to-night because I am really the only person who can exactly express the state of mind that we all have with regard to Mr. Choate. I suppose that I alone understand the severe nature of the duties which devolve upon him as Ambassador to the Court of St. James. He is the only diplomat in the service of the United States who is required to learn the language of the country to which he is accredited. And it is a most terrible and laborious task, because the patois which he brought from Stock- bridge would be a delusion and a snare instead of an aid and assistance. He is, therefore, obliged at the very beginning to learn that language, otherwise he would be roaming around in the railroad stations trying to buy a ticket when he ought to be at the " booking-office, " and in stead of stopping over from his train he would be "breaking his journey," and he would be otherwise miscellaneously misbehaving himself, as I understand that in that country an annual pass and a statesman are not necessarily companions. He has to understand that a man in order to be clever has got to be intellec- 31 32 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB tual; he has also to learn certain phrases and formulae of speech, and he has to mention that we have a com mon Shakespeare, though why he should be called common when everybody finds him uncommon, I never could understand. He also, unfortunately, is not al lowed to say that we have a common Joseph Miller that would not tend to increase, absolutely increase, the intercourse between the countries not so. And, con sequently, he has to be original. He has to invent meth ods of making the English understand some portions of the deep and delightful fun which underlies the whole American character. In every relation of life he has to conform himself to the custom and fashions of the inhabitants, and that has some points of difficulty. I don t think you realize and appreciate the differ ence in the language of the two countries which I have endeavored to picture by simple suggestions. I had an opportunity to see it in full force, for I encountered it the first time I went to the United States Embassy or Legation, as it then was, in London, for I heard a gentleman in pure English meeting a book-agent and upsetting him completely, and I felt that the Ambas sador of that period had this man there for the purpose of giving every American who came there a plunge into the well of English, pure and undefiled; and for my part I have never forgotten my plunge. A great deal has been said and suggested to-night about our relations with England. There has been no country upon the face of the earth for which we have felt all our lives the tenderness felt for England. A young Englishman cannot be made to understand, can not by any possibility understand, the deep sensibility THOMAS B. REED 33 which every American of English origin has when he sets foot upon English soil. It is living history. No body expressed it better than Hawthorne when he gave the title to his book, "The Old Home." We have al ways had that feeling toward Great Britain; we have always shown it, if in no other way, by the character of the men we have sent there. We began by sending the man who afterward was the second President of the United States. We have sent men of such fame and distinction that there is no body of statesmen in the United States that can by any possibility be compared with the men who have represented the country in England poets, orators, Presidents ; we have sent men of the highest distinction. It has been one continuous testimonial of our regard and affection for the mother country. And if at last they understand us, I am glad of it. Not because I want our people to conform to their ideas, but because I want them to conform to the sentiments and views of our people. I hope that the doctrine which the Ambassador is promulgating to-day, of universal suffrage and universal liberty, will prevail, not only over this country but all over the world. I do not think that we need say anything in praise of ourselves; and I think it is not in the least necessary, because our works do our praising, our works release us from the obligation of having the approval of any body but ourselves, and having our own, we don t need the others. I can remember so many famous names, that I don t venture to inflict them upon this company. Your time is passing away, and I shall not speak of all the great men. Mr. Carnegie has anticipated me, but I do say 34 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB that with, perfect propriety on this occasion, we may conclude this great list of those who have represented this country in the mother country with the name of Mr. Choate, who has done this country great honor, and who is the honored guest of this evening. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS AT THE DINNER TO JOSEPH H. CHOATE, NOVEMBER 16, 1901 MR. CARNEGIE suggested that on the other side of the water it is considered necessary to train men for the diplomatic office, and he also suggested that on this side we did not find it necessary to do that, but had been able to produce ready-made diplomats when occa sion required; and I have waited, and I have listened, and I have expected to hear somebody tell an anecdote which has not been told, and it becomes necessary for me to tell it. You have heard that anecdote many times, and you will hear it many more times, but you have never known, perhaps, its historic significance. You have never known how much was bound up in that anecdote. The greatness of this country rests upon two anec dotes. The first was of the time when young George Washington told his father about the little hatchet, when he was eight years of age, long ago in 1740 ; and that anecdote produced one of the foundations upon which the greatness of America rests, the foundation of true speaking, which is a characteristic of the nation. And then the other one. The other anecdote, which, as I shall show you, produced the other great feature of this country, that is, the prosperity, the material 35 36 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB prosperity of this country, which dates from so short a time back the largest portion of it underlies that anecdote. I refer to a time when His Excellency, the guest of the evening, was engaged in a lawsuit, and he had as his pal a Hebrew lawyer of great ability, and in the process of skinning the client, or, rather, when it was over, when they had won the suit or lost it, they did n t know which, they were not particular, the main thing was to come yet, and that was to collect a bill for their services in skinning the man services is the term used by that craft to signify the kind of function which they perform, a diplomatic expression for things diplomatic in their nature and the Hebrew lawyer, Mr. Choate s co-respondent, proposed to make out the bill, and he did. He made out a bill for $500 for these services, so-called, and submitted it to his confederate for his criticism ; and Mr. Choate said : * Perhaps I had better attend to that myself." And the next day Mr. Choate made out a bill and collected it, and handed to this friend of his $5000, and said: "That is your half of the loot." And this simple little Hebrew was pro foundly touched and he said, looking up with deep rev erence : "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. Now, many laughed, which was right; but the deep thinkers did n t merely laugh; they stopped to think, and they said : * There, that is a rising man. That man has in him qualities which deserve high place ; that man must be rescued from the law and consecrated to di plomacy." For they said, "When a man has the capacity to take care of his private advantage like that, when he has this quality in such generous measure, then he only needs spreading it, and in this case there SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 37 seems to be enough to spread out, and it can cover and take care of the advantages of the world ; the commer cial advantages of a great nation will not suffer in that man s keeping. 7 They kept their eyes upon that ris ing man, and the time came when they said, "We re quire a man, now that America has grown so great, with perhaps seventy or eighty millions of people, we re quire a man now not to take care of the moral character of America before the world, for Washington and his anecdote have done that ; we require a man to take care of her commercial well-being." They saw with their prophetic eyes the significance of that anecdote; they foresaw that out of that would grow commercial pros perity for this country by that quality so ripe and complete, which would last down, down, down the cen turies, until this country s prosperity has attained its summit, and has been so firmly established upon eternal foundations, and so it has proved. Mr. Choate has carried that quality with him to England. And as Mr. Carnegie says, he has worked like a mole, underground. We say that the mole has been doing great and good service. He tried himself to tell you what he did there. He started to, three or four times, but did n t reveal anything except the reason that brought him to this country. As to his services over there, that they have been more than merely suggestive, we know, for he has been there only three years, and now you see the results. Why, American railroad iron is so cheap in England, that the poorest families can have it for breakfast. He has so tickled those ministers, that cabinet of England, when he has seemed to be spending these week-ends, as they call it over there, referred to here 38 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB to-night; when he has been simply socially conversing, perhaps, he has been really pushing canal schemes and working the Monroe Doctrine, successfully spreading the commerce of this country for these three years, and now you know the result. Foreign commerce with the United States has augmented by tenfold, twenty and thirtyfold even; and he has depressed English com merce in the same ratio. Brethren, the principle under lying the anecdote of the lawyer and the principle of the man, was the principle which guided his course, and that principle was the principle of give and take ; that is diplomacy give one and take ten. As a result, we have in the one anecdote the character of this nation for truth, for veracity, for absolute trust worthiness when a man speaks, established upon ever lasting foundations ; that is the moral character of the country no one can budge it while that anecdote of Washington and his hatchet lasts. And Mr. Choate has placed the country upon the same perpetual foun dation or substratum by the principle involved in that other anecdote. And as long as this club shall swing amongst the other stars and constellations and what-not that make night beautiful, so long as they shall last, this country s moral character is safe on the one foundation, and its commercial prosperity is safe on the other. We owe to Mr. Choate a vast debt of gratitude for what he has done in England. This whole nation owes him a vast debt of gratitude. Let us with all our hearts strengthen his hands, and in all sincerity thank him, do our share in thanking him, and paying our share of the great debt, right here and now. EDWARD PATTERSON (JUSTICE OF THE NEW YORK SUPREME COURT) AT THE DINNER TO JOSEPH H. CHOATE, NOVEMBER 16, 1901 IT has been my good fortune on several occasions to experience the hospitality of this club when it has extended that hospitality to gentlemen of distinction in the arts, science, in professional life, and in the public service. But I never have attended one of these ban quets under more gratifying circumstances. First, I am enabled to see again the face and hear the voice of a very old friend, one who on occasions of this character has always set the table in a roar, and has sent us home much happier and more light-hearted than we came. If I were to speak in all sincerity and in the ample measure of the appreciation in which Mr. Choate is held by the bench and bar, I am afraid I should cause that which I am sure no act of his own life has ever caused, that is, bring a blush to his cheeks. Mr. Choate oc cupied a unique place at the bar of this community. There are other great advocates, and other great law yers, but there is none who precisely fills here the place that he occupied, and it was a little of a surprise to us that occupying that place he should have left the rich fields of jurisprudence to go and batten on the desert 39 40 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB meadows of diplomacy. I could not understand why that was, until I heard him announce his reason to night, and that is, that he went abroad for the purpose of getting a new perspective of American institutions and society from a distance. These institutions have impressed him more at a distance, probably, than they do at home, and he has returned with the same feeling of attachment and loyalty to them with which he left us. I regret very much that the presiding justice of our court, your honored fellow-member Mr. Justice Van Brunt, is not here this evening for the purpose of pay ing his respects to Mr. Choate. There is an outstanding account between them unsettled, in the keen encounter of wit which has taken place between them. I think if he were here to-night that account might be settled. I am not connected with it in any way, and therefore am not called upon to say anything in that connection ; but there are certain anecdotes with reference to Mr. Choate and the court which, perhaps, are not known to the majority of the gentlemen present here to-night. It is known to all of you that Mr. Choate is exceedingly vivid in the presentation of his cases in every way. On one occasion, in a court which was composed of gentle men none of whom are now members of the bench, it seems that certain of the judges were interested somewhat in speculations in Wall Street, and while they were upon the bench hearing a case in which Mr. Choate was counsel, one of the attendants was engaged in the business of bringing up little strips from the telegraph-ticker, and the quotations were rather startling to the gentlemen on the bench. The attention which the importance of the case and the EDWARD PATTERSON 41 character of the advocate required was not given, and it seemed annoying to the orator ; and after some delay, in an endeavor to arouse the attention of the court, he said that he knew it was exceedingly difficult for the members of the court to give close attention to what he was saying, on a falling market. On another occasion the honored guest of the evening was engaged in the argument of a very important case, but in the earlier stages of it he did n t seem familiar with the subject-matter of his case. The supposition was that perhaps he had not looked at his papers until he had entered the court-room. After laboring for some three quarters of an hour in an endeavor to pick up the thread of the case, he made an application to the court for an extension of his time, which was very reluctantly granted. As soon as the extension was granted, the wily gentleman seemed to strike the pace and the subject-matter of the case returned to him, and during another half-hour or three quarters he made a most effective and convincing argument, which he closed in this manner : "I thank Your Honor," addressing the presiding justice, for the very unusual courtesy you have ex tended to me. I trust that through your courteous compliance with my desire, I have not added much to Your Honor s too well-compensated labors." Now, Mr. Chairman, we miss very much from the courts our friend Mr. Choate. Some remark is made from time to time with reference to the changes that have taken place in the methods of the transaction of business in the courts. While Mr. Choate was with us, all his arguments were illuminated by the spirit of fun 42 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB and humor, very decorous, very appropriate, and al ways exceedingly interesting. The dullest subject was lit up with the charm of his mind, and, of course, we therefore miss him very much from the courts. His place in the profession is known to everybody, and it would be impossible for me to stand here without some embarrassment and offer to add to the incense of his praise, which all the lawyers are very willing to do. We miss him; we miss him from the courts; we miss him in our daily lives; and we miss most of all his companionship. Great lawyers there are in the city; great advocates there are here in this club. There is none whose hand-grasp is a more cordial one, or to whom our hearts go out with a warmer affection than Mr. Choate. We do miss him, because he has repre sented to us those qualities which constitute what you have described to be the requirements for membership in this club merit and good fellowship. MORGAN J. O BRIEN (JUSTICE OF THE NEW YORK SUPREME COURT) AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, DECEMBEE 21, 1901 I AM deeply moved by this touching reception, and by the very complimentary manner in which I have been introduced to you. But I must take exception to one or two statements made, because if I sat or stood here silent, and allowed them, to go unchallenged, I should be regarded as having concurred in their ac curacy. As a matter of fact, I did not receive the nominations of all parties the Prohibition party re fused me the nomination, and that was due entirely to the fact that on an occasion when by some accident one of that party got entrance to this house, I was dining with your president, the officers, and some dis tinguished colleagues and the result of that evening lost me the Prohibition vote. It would be a very difficult thing, were I gifted with oratory, to make a suitable acknowledgment of the very handsome and complimentary speech which has just been made by your president, and this difficulty is accentuated by the fact that to some extent I must speak of myself and my own work; and yet there is something in the character of this compliment which is so intensely gratifying that I should be devoid of 43 44 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB sentiment and emotion if I were not deeply touched and moved. I remember my entrance originally into this club and all its associations, and I have to-night received more than a reward for all I have ever done or had to do with the club. I have sought some explana tion for this gathering, and when I remember that the Lotos Club has been noted for its receptions to distin guished men, that thought has added to my embarrass ment. But I will not dwell further on this feature, because no matter how much I disparage my own merits or work, it would be a sorry acknowledgment indeed if I could not find some reason for this splendid assem blage. No doubt it is due in part to the good fellowship that is so distinctive a characteristic of the club. But that only slightly explains it. It has been explained by the sentiment voiced by your president in expressing the respect and veneration of all the members of the club for the judiciary, and which is enjoyed by my distinguished colleagues here to-night. These men have been my co-laborers in office, and they are entitled to share with me all the respect which is paid to their great office. On my own behalf, and on theirs, I acknowledge to you the privilege which you have given us to-night, of thanking you, and, through you, the people, for the respect which they have shown to our judiciary. Fourteen years ago, when comparatively unknown, I was made a guest of this club. I felt then, as I do now, the responsibilities of the great office to which I had then been newly chosen. But when I to-night think upon the results of the last election, and the cordiality with which you have received me, I have the right to MORGAN J. O BRIEN 45 feel that you have, and the people have, in no uncertain voice, spoken of my services as having been acceptably done. And that is all the reward that any right-think ing man should ask for to earn the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. But when to this is added the fact which has been alluded to, that I was made the nominee of all the great political parties, that is a reward which comes to but few men in a life time, a reward which I justly prize, and a priceless heritage which I trust I may transmit untarnished to my latest posterity. During the fourteen years of my incumbency of office, we have had many great and important changes Not only in the enlargement of our city and the exten sion of our national domain, but by the pressure of those great legal, social, and economic questions which make the duties of a judge more onerous and respon sible. And if you were to ask me in the future how those responsibilities will be met, I can but point to the career and to the record of the judges in the past. I can but refer to the history of our country, whose every page teems with a tribute to the integrity, patriotism, zeal, and industry of the judges of the past. As these great questions are presented, there will be men found to meet the responsibility. In a country such as ours, growing as it is with a marvelous development in all directions, having reached the very height of economic triumphs, leading as we do all the nations of the earth in science and inventiveness, having taken our place and challenged the preeminence of the historic coun tries of the Old World although we have the advan tage of this phenomenal development and progress, and 46 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB although we have enormous wealth, not only national, but in individuals; beneath the shadow of this great prosperity we have had misery increasing. Whilst we have had men whose fortunes run up into the hundreds of millions, corporations striding the continent, we have had many who have been deprived of the benefits of civilization and religion, and who are entitled to share, as we all hope to see them do, in the blessings which our country so magnificently holds out to all. Although, therefore, we have made great progress, there are many questions remaining to be solved. And when it comes to interposing a power which shall stand between the unlawful encroachments of concentrated wealth, or that shall attempt to stay the fury of a mob, the courts can always be depended on so long as they are supported by the people. The power and the authority which they wield they will possess so long as they enjoy the confidence of the people. There are but two powers of government. One is the power of the sword, supported by the hand that wields it; and the other is the power of the law, sup ported by an enlightened public conscience. The life of a nation, like the life of a man, may be prolonged in happiness to the end of its day, or it may perish the victim of internal dissension. We know that of the great governments and great republics of the past, some of them, having territory exceeding our own, have glistened in their day and then faded out as utterly as the vivid glories of sunset. If we would preserve the government which we received from our fathers, a government which has been so constituted as to give the highest individual life, individual liberty, liberty of MOEGAN J. O BRIEN 47 opinion, and equality and right, in unsullied dignity and power, it becomes us at all times to remember that we must stand by those civic virtues, that regard for what is right, for what is just, and for what is true, if we would perpetuate untarnished that which we re ceived from our fathers. Gentlemen, it has been said by a great lawyer, and I can do nothing better than to quote his words : Justice, sir, is the greatest interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and nations to gether. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is foundation for social security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race. And whoever labors on this edifice with usefulness and dis tinction whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its pillars, adorns its entablatures, or contributes to raise its august dome still higher to the skies, connects himself in name and fame with that which is and must be as durable as the frame of human society. THOMAS B. SLICEE AT THE DINNER TO MOEGAN J. O BRIEN, DECEMBER 21, 1901 I AM most happy^ to take part in this gentle vivisec tion, in which the subject is guaranteed to be alive after the process. I am not here in my ministerial capacity to gather up the remains for disposition ac cording to the order of my own church. And not alone because I have a very grave opinion that the subject himself would object to the functions of that particular church. Dr. Mackay told me a story the other night at the Bankers Dinner. It was of a Scotchman who objected to the length of his minister s sermons. The minister said to him : * You should n t say that, Sandy ; you 11 soon be where you 11 hear no sermons, long or short." "Weel," was the retort, " t will nae be for want of meenisters. Well, gentlemen, I am no judge yet some two years ago I felt as if I might make the intimate acquaintance of the judiciary. I was threatened with indictment by various persons, and I proposed to go entirely through the courts, from the Magistrate s Court through to the Appellate Division and the Court of Appeals ; but that danger passed as all funereal occasions do, and the mourners still go about the streets. 48 THOMAS R. SLICER 49 Now, reference has been made to the fact that Justice O Brien was upon all the tickets except of that small coterie who keep themselves in cold storage for the preservation of their immortal souls. I wish to testify to the fact that having been a part from the beginning of all this effort to produce a coalition of all interests for the benefit of the city of New York on a business administration, that there was one matter which was disposed of instantly, that never called for discussion or question, and that was the renomination of Mr. Justice O Brien. It was a foregone conclusion in all of the conferences, which in the beginning were sup posed to be a galaxy of reformers, and ended in being a great popular uprising. Now, while on the subject of reform, I wish to set myself right before the " court," and before these gentlemen, many of whom are lawyers. I have been constantly referred to as a "reformer." I am not. I belong to a small group of people in the city of New York who make political scrap-iron into bar steel. And it is not the professional reformer to whom Judge Hatch has referred. The professional reformer has had no share in this great occasion of which Judge Brien has been the ornament and undisputed element in the controversy the professional reformer may be defined only excluding myself from the class the profes sional reformer is a man who rides a nightmare while he sleeps and forgets to get off when he wakes up. He is in the condition of the man in the insane asylum they are not all in the insane asylum who was found by a visitor astride a small table which he was whip ping. The visitor said : That is a fine horse you have 50 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB there." The lunatic looked at him pityingly, and re plied : * This is not a horse, this is a hobby. And then the visitor said to him : What is the difference between a horse and a hobby ? The lunatic smiled knowingly, and said : You can get off a horse. And that brings us back to the difficulty connected with the Prohibition party. I should advise Judge O Brien and any other persons who come up for re- nomination not to distress themselves. These things take care of themselves. I received a paper from one of the adjoining States a little while ago which scored me for saying that a half -closed Sunday is better than a Sunday open all day, as we have it now. This paper, edited by a minister who was a candidate for the office of governor of that State upon the Prohibition ticket, contained an editorial which hit at me personally. It was headed, "The unworthy son of a distinguished sire." It was rhythmic and touching. I read the editorial and showed it to my family, who read the comic papers. And then I laid it carefully away in my scrap-basket, determined, as usual, not to answer appeals of the kind. And not two weeks ago that gen tleman was suspended from the ministry for the alleged improper use of funds, by the conference of which he was a member. These things correct themselves. I occupy the singular position of being the only min ister present, and without fear ; there are no conditions of civic administration that lead me to have any fear as to the probability of indictment for at least two years, and no one more than myself hopes to benefit by the splendid administration which Judge O Brien will THOMAS R, SLICER 51 repeat after the record of his years in office and his distinguished service. I want to say a serious word. A great preacher was once taken to task for what he said in the pulpit, and replied : You d thank God if you knew what I did n t say." That is my condition exactly. The serious word I want to say is this: my office brings me, not by way of amusement, but because I am, I hope, dedicated to the common life, in connection with and associated with a great body of people, of rough and discontented people in this city. They are people of the working classes. In the single social set tlement which is connected with my church and never appears as a church, we know personally 1200 fami lies, and have several hundred children in classes and clubs weekly there. I can assure the gentlemen of the judiciary that are here, that there is an anxious look toward them upon the part of these people, not because they doubt their integrity or justice, but because they depend upon their integrity and justice. Nothing but the judiciary and the law s strength, as you know so well, stands between the poor man and the injustice which he constantly fears ; and the great hope of justice in this city for all that seething mass of people who never hear an English word, is based on the confidence that they hold toward the judiciary of New York City and State. "Reason is no match for superstition," and it rests with the judiciary to illustrate to them the fact that here is the shadow of the great rock ; here is the thing against which the current of their discontent may turn 52 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB itself aside, until it finds the realization of their hopes. I say this merely for my humbler brethren that depend upon the people who stand to them, not simply as the interpreters of the law, but for the law itself in their own lives. DAVID B. HILL AT THE DINNER TO MORGAN J. O BRIEN, DECEMBER 21, 1901 FT! HIS is the second time that I have had the honor JL and the pleasure of being with you on one of these festive occasions. The first was to pay my tribute of respect to that distinguished gentleman who honors the State of New York in the Senate of the United States, and who is now on a joyful mission abroad. I met him the other day in the street, and tendered my congratu lations on the approaching happy event ; and he looked me in the eye, and said: "You congratulate me?" I said: "Yes, I suppose, Mr. Depew, you think that strange, coming from a confirmed old bachelor like myself. It reminds me of the story of the minister who, in the pulpit, preached against the use of tobacco, and then afterward walked down the aisle and proceeded to take from his pocket a quid of tobacco and put it in his mouth, because ministers don t always follow their own preaching, and when remonstrated with for the seeming inconsistency, said: People must do as I advise them, and not as I do myself. And so I gave that advice to Mr. Depew. I am glad to be present on this occasion, because I have known the distinguished guest of the evening for 53 54 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB a long number of years. He should be a happy man to-night, surrounded by his associates of the Appellate Division, which he honors by his presence, with the representatives of the judges of the highest court of our State, by a gathering of his fellow-members of the bar, and of the members of this club. He is a most fortunate man indeed, and his cup of happiness should be full. Many of us might well envy him. And in addition to that, he has a most splendid wife and ten children. Well, some, like myself, have no wife, and no children to speak of. Since I last addressed you there has been some unpleasantness here in this great city of yours. Judge O Brien was indorsed by all parties, because, I as sume, his nomination was conspicuously fit; and his election represents the principle of the survival of the fittest. Some fell by the wayside in the recent contest. A gentleman met me the other day, and, speaking of the result, began to praise it. I was careful in my utterances in regard to that matter, and he proceeded to tell me a story. There was a funeral procession once going up the street, and a gentleman asked who was dead. They said, a certain individual. "What was the complaint?" was the next question; and the answer was, "There is no complaint ; everybody is satisfied. "Touchin* on and appertainin to" the subject of the judiciary, permit me to say right here that Judge O Brien s nomination and election are not only grati fying to the citizens of this city, but, I think, gratifying to the bar of the State. It may not mark an epoch in the political or judicial history of the State ; but it cer- DAVID B. HILL 55 tainly is a most important event. It is not necessary upon this occasion for me to speak upon or to em phasize the point that the judiciary, an honest, incor ruptible, independent judiciary, is the safety of the State. John Marshall, as early as in the Virginia con vention of 1829, said that the greatest injury that could be inflicted upon a free people was a degraded or ignorant or a dependent judiciary. This is not the only instance, however, in the history of the State when both parties have risen to the occa sion and nominated for high judicial positions men without regard to their political opinions. Gentlemen cannot have forgotten, who are familiar with the his tory of this State, the fact that in 1890 the organiza tions of the two great parties of this State, represented by their State Committees, indorsed the nomination of Robert Earl for chief judge of the Court of Appeals of this State, and he was unanimously elected. That subsequently, in 1892, the same organizations, some times called by our friends the machines of the two parties, met, and although there was some opposition and some criticism, both nominated Charles Andrews for chief justice of the Court of Appeals of this State, and he was unanimously elected. And I desire to say to-night that this result in both instances was largely brought about through the influence of one of the great political leaders of this city, whom Mr. Choate, instead of speaking of as a boss, spoke of as one of the great leaders of the Republican party. FBEDERICK FUNSTON (BRIGADIER-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, MARCH 8, 1902 JUDGING from the remarks of the president of the Lotos Club, I suppose that I am to talk about the Philippines. I am glad of the opportunity to lay be fore such a company a few facts. You will take into consideration that I am not a public speaker. A man could not, by knocking around the world for fifteen or twenty years, acquire many graces as a speaker ; but I will give you a few truthful statements, and ask you to draw your own conclusions. When the city of Manila was surrendered to the Navy under Admiral Dewey and to the Army under General Merritt, there were in the city some hundreds of Spanish families, men, women, and children, and a great many thousands of Spanish soldiers who were prisoners of war in the hands of our troops. These people, absolutely unarmed and helpless, were dependent entirely upon us for protection. There were also many European residents: German and British merchants, with their families; proprietors of banks, commercial houses, warehouses, railroads, representing millions upon millions of dollars worth of property. To have turned these helpless Spaniards and others 56 FREDEKICK FUNSTON 57 over to the mercy of the uncontrollable mob which constituted the army of Aguinaldo would have been a positive crime. The Bulgarian and Armenian mas sacres would have been repeated on a larger scale, and the whole thing would have constituted the blackest page in American history a thing we could not have blotted out in a thousand years of repentance. It is not to be supposed that Aguinaldo and some of the other higher officers would have countenanced a massacre of the helpless Spaniards, or the looting of the city of Manila, but there is no possible doubt as to what would have happened. The thirty thousand armed men who constituted his force would have been abso lutely beyond control, and one has but to know that pitiable story of the execution of two hundred helpless Spanish soldiers in 1899, by an insurgent major in the province of Albai, in order to realize to what depths these brutal savages could go. No joint occupation of the city of Manila was pos sible ; only one thing could be done, and that was to put the insurgents, bag and baggage, clear outside of the city, and make them stay outside. Accordingly, on the demand of the American au thorities, the insurgents went outside the city, instead of going up to Malolos, where their government went. They formed a line of trenches running parallel with our own and extending from the sea at Maliban on one side to Peracuna on the other. They filled the trenches with twenty or thirty thousand armed men, so that constant vigilance was necessary on our part. The insurgents, with ribald jests, with curses and indecent oaths and insults, taunted us as cowards, and 58 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB dared our men to open fire; but stern discipline pre vailed in our Army, and we obeyed the instructions from General Otis to avoid a conflict under all circum stances, or delay it as long as was possible; day after day the friction became more intense, and nearly all of us, I think, realized that it was not a question of months, but a question of a few days, until the clash must come. Finally an insurgent captain who refused to respond to the challenge of a sentry on the streets of Manila was shot dead. That was the first actual clash. About three days after that, a private soldier of the First Montana regiment, who was on sentry duty outside the city, was approached by a man with a rifle about ten o clock at night; he gave the usual challenge; the man did not respond, but, instead, fired at him from a dis tance of a very few yards, but, Filipino like, missed him. Only two days later a private of the South Dakota regiment on outpost duty, only two miles north of the city, was approached by an apparently unarmed native, who asked him for a match. The sentry started to hand him one, when he drew a bolo, a native knife about two feet long, and gave him a terrible blow across the face, cutting him from the top of the skull down to the chin. I am glad to say that within about half a second the native fell dead, shot through the heart. A few days later a drunken mob of Filipinos, partly officers and partly soldiers of Aguinaldo s army, at tempted to rush through the lines of the First Nebraska near Santa Casa ; only the presence of Colonel Stearns, that magnificent soldier who fell at Gang Co, prevented the fight from opening at the time. He had a great deal FREDERICK FUNSTON 59 of influence over the natives and over his own men, and he induced them to retire. Three days later an insurgent lieutenant and two soldiers approached a sentry on the Santa Lucia bridge, three miles east of Manila. The sentry, in accordance with orders, challenged the three at once, and instead of halting, the men gave him an insolent reply, came forward, started to cross his post, and he fired and by one shot killed the lieutenant and one soldier. The remaining insurgent ran back to the insurgent line, and within a minute or two rifle fire broke out from the insurgent trenches in front of the First Nebraska regiment, and war had begun. It is said that that sentry began the war by firing the first shot, but I think army officers here will bear me out in the state ment that if he had shot his own captain under the same circumstances he would have gone scot-free, or even if he had shot the general commanding the Army of the United States. Even the President himself can not force his way past a sentry of our Army. He was justified in shooting the men, and the incident should have been closed right there ; but the excited insurgents in the trenches, hearing what had happened, opened fire on the First Nebraska, a fire that spread like a prairie fire on the plains of Kansas, for five miles to the right. I shall not attempt to take up your time with a his tory of the campaign from Manila north. I wish to say to you something, however, about the class of officers and men who are serving in the Philip pines and about some of those magnificent men who have lost their lives there. Of course, there are all sorts 60 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB of men in our Army, regular and volunteer, good, bad, and indifferent ; but I believe that ninety-five per cent, of the men who constitute our Army are a brave and humane lot of men, who are a credit to the service. The other five per cent, are the kind that write letters to the newspapers at home and tell big stories. I wish to hold up a certain officer who lost his life in the Philippines as a fair type of our Army officer, as humane and kind a gentleman as ever lived, Captain George J. Godfrey of the Twenty-second Infantry, who was born here in New York City, was appointed to West Point from here, and served under New York men. He was a very popular man, beloved by his soldiers, and by the natives too, popular with his com rades, humane and just, without such a thing as hatred in his heart. I was in a campaign one day with Godfrey s com pany, and owing to the conditions there ambuscades being absolutely certain we ran into one and had a fierce fight, lasting for about half a minute; God frey was shot through the heart as close to me as the president of this club now is. I heard the curses of his men and saw them crying, and I knew what they had lost in their beloved captain. Another type of man was Sergeant O Brien, of the Fourth United States Cavalry, twenty-five years an enlisted man in the Army, a magnificent type of the professional soldier, sober, attentive to his duties, courteous, and with great pride in his occupation. O Brien had been ill in the hospital for some days ; he heard that we were going on a scout, and he wanted to go with the troop ; but his captain, Captain Keeler, said: "No, Sergeant, you FREDERICK FUNSTON 61 can t go; you are not well enough." O Brien replied: "I have been in every fight with my troop for twenty- five years, and I hope I don t have to be left behind now. Captain Keeler said: "Well, come along. " Within twenty-five minutes after leaving town we struck 250 insurgents under Lacuna, and there was one of those wild minutes that are worth ten years of an ordinary humdrum existence, and when it was over, there were forty-four dead insurgents on the field, and among our own dead was Sergeant O Brien, shot through the heart. I simply wish to hold up those two soldiers, Godfrey and O Brien, as fair samples of the magnificent men who are being sacrificed in the Philip pine Islands. Now I am going to say something which I hope you gentlemen will not criticize; I am going to say it just as mildly as I can; but we who have seen our men killed, who have seen our men die of typhoid fever, die of dysentery in the hospitals, and who have buried them in hundreds of nameless graves in the Philippine Islands, feel bitterly about this subject. All of those men who have fallen since the month of January, 1900, have died, not because the Filipinos really had much heart in fighting against us, but because they were sus tained by a lot of misguided people here in the United States. It is perfectly proper for us to have all sorts of opinions about the advisability of holding the Philip pine Islands, as to whether they are worth anything to us, or whether they are a burden to us ; we are perfectly justified in having as many opinions about them as 62 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB there are islands in the Philippines; but, for heaven s sake, let us keep those opinions to ourselves until the sovereignty of the United States has been established over every square inch of those islands, and then let us get together and fight the thing out among ourselves. I have been told by a number of insurgent officers of high rank, after their surrender or after their capture, that they were kept up solely, after January, 1900, by the hope that the people of the United States would compel the Government to withdraw from the islands. I was told that without any hesitation whatever by even so reserved a man as Aguinaldo himself. The first part of the war was absolutely unavoidable, but when the insurgent army went to pieces in Janu ary, 1900, when they broke up into bands of guerrillas, then the thing would have stopped; they would have turned in their arms and given up, and all the hun dreds of lives and all the millions of money expended since that time would have been saved. I hope that I may be allowed to combat another im pression that is altogether too prevalent in the United States ; that is, that the insurgent leaders in the Philip pines are a very high type of men, patriots, fighting for the good of their country, and that they are to be compared with the men who won the independence of the United States more than a hundred years ago. About the ablest military leader the insurgents had was Antonio Luna, who was a brave man, a good officer, accomplished ; and as to capability to handle troops in the field, he probably would come up almost to the offi cers of our own Army. This man, on account of his personal courage, was gaming such prestige with the FREDERICK FUNSTON 63 insurgents that Aguinaldo ordered him to be assas sinated, which was done at the town of Palanan, the man being shot down in cold blood by the sentries on guard at Aguinaldo s door. I talked with the late lamented dictator himself on that subject, and asked him about it. He said: "Why, yes. I had him killed simply because if I had not he would have been dictator in my place. In the town of San Isidro, where I commanded for a year and a half, was a family of the name of Baya, a Filipino family. The father had been an opponent always of a rebellion; he was a large landowner, and had a considerable family. He had five or six sons, among them, the youngest boy, a chap of about ten years. This boy had gone to school for a couple of years in Manila, but during the war had returned to his home. He came over quite often to visit me and talk with me. He spoke Spanish, and was thinking of studying English. Consequently he got hold of a grammar, and was working away at the English language, and he came to me half a dozen times to get some aid when he would get tangled up on some of our beautiful words. This boy was suspected finally of being a spy because he came over to my headquarters a few times. One day a little over a year ago, his father sent him just outside the town to see if the crops on his land were ready to cut. It was considered perfectly safe to allow the boy to go out there; but the insurgent chief, Ta- gunta, had ordered this boy captured at all hazards, not only because he was suspected of being a spy, but 64 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB also because his father had refused to pay taxes to the insurgent government. This poor, helpless boy, who was as innocent of being a spy as any one possibly could be, and who in fact had never discussed any phase of the war with me at all, was taken by these murderers, tied to a stake, and flogged to death. They flogged him for three hours, until he fell dead. A few days later the same chief who had had the boy flogged, and who had been unable to collect any taxes in the town, made a raid in the town with a number of guerrillas, and burned about three hundred houses, and killed more than fifteen hundred people, without any provocation whatever, in order to compel them to pay taxes to the alleged insurgent government. We had been hunting him for fully a year, and lay in wait for him for many a week, and I am glad to say that the next time I had command of a detachment, we got him, and now he is with the angels. Aguinaldo himself, tried in any court in the world, could be convicted of the murder of Luna, and there is not one of the insurgent chiefs who could not be con victed of the assassination of men, women, and children. Several months ago two private soldiers of the Twenty-fourth United States Infantry deserted from the United States Army, joined the Filipinos, and fought with them. They were captured and brought before a military commission, or a general court-mar tial I should say, and last January they were executed, for giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. These men were poor, ignorant soldiers, men who FREDERICK FUNSTON 65 were probably misled, or were induced to do what they did through overindulgence in native intoxicants, and could not probably be altogether blamed for what they had done. They had not great opportunities for a proper understanding of the situation, and I venture to say that there are a great many men in the United States who have done more harm with their mouths, who have done more harm with their pens, than these men did with the Krag Jorgensen rifles that they car ried to the enemy. I do not want to say anything brutal, but, as I say, the Army feels bitterly about this business. I have no quarrel with the man who thinks that we should not at first have taken the Philippine Islands; I have no quarrel with the man who thinks a whole lot of things but who does not say too much about it now ; but as to those men who have been writing and talking about this thing and keeping this warfare alive and in the field to-day, I say that I would rather see any one of these men hanged, hanged for treason, hanged for giv ing aid and comfort to the enemy, than see the humblest soldier in the United States Army lying dead on the field of battle. Those of us who have served with these humble men, these magnificent soldiers, these faithful fellows, feel for them in a way that others can scarcely understand. And now I will repeat the request that I made be fore : let us keep still about this business till the war is over, and the Government of the United States is firmly established in the Philippines; and then let us get together and fight it out among ourselves ; whether we will allow them to go entirely, whether we will give 66 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB them autonomy, or whether we shall hold them down with an iron hand. It cannot be said that these people are fit for self- government it is perfectly ridiculous to imagine such a thing. Of course they clamor for it, and when I say that they are not fit for self-government, I do not mean that they are not fit for some such government as has been given to them under Judge Taft, but I mean ab solute independence. They clamor for it, and people say: "Why don t we do with them as we did with the Cubans? Promise it to them, and then let them have it." No, there is no comparison between the Cubans and the Filipinos, as far as their capacity for self-govern ment is concerned. I don t lie awake nights admiring the Cubans, and I know them pretty well, but it cannot be denied that the Filipino insurgents have not and never had among them such men as that magnificent Maximo Gomez, such a man as Garcia, or such a man as Lacret, and dozens of other insurgent chiefs ; such men as Palma, who was one of their leaders in the rebellion of 68. If we should withdraw from the Philippines to-day, withdraw entirely, and not establish a protectorate, there would be half a dozen kinds of civil war inside of six months ; there is no possible doubt of that. Every chief would gather his followers about him, and they would burn and loot and march up and down the country, each man killing those opposed to him, and we should have another Colombia or Venezuela, or some other kind of South American trouble on our hands at once; and the world, I am sure, would hold the FREDERICK FUNSTON 67 United States responsible for that. Gentlemen, I thank you. [President Frank R. Lawrence, after General Fun- ston had seated himself, bent over and whispered to him, and then said : Gentlemen, I am trying to prevail upon General Funston to tell us something briefly about the capture of Aguinaldo. We have all been most deeply interested in the General s remarks, and if we might trespass on his good nature for a very few moments more on that topic, we should very much like it"] General Funston rose again and said: I have very serious doubts about the propriety of my talking about the capture of Aguinaldo. Of course you know it was what they called "a dirty Irish trick" on Aguinaldo. You will understand that considerable doubt had existed for a number of months as to the actual whereabouts of the dictator. He had retired to the little village of Baler, near the northeast coast of Luzon, across an almost impassable range of moun tains, and there, accompanied by, I believe, eight officers and forty soldiers, had settled down, fifty miles from the nearest town garrisoned by Americans, and I can tell you that fifty miles over those mountains is farther than from here to San Francisco in a Pullman car. He had maintained an irregular communication with the insurgents, with chiefs such as Pablo Tecsom, La cuna, and numerous others, by means of runners who would cross the mountains and then carry messages south. Well, he sent one lot of messages too many, and they fell into the hands of Lieutenant Taylor of the Twenty- 68 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB fourth United States Infantry. Taylor s station was about one hundred and fifty miles south of where Agui- naldo was, and was in my own district. He telegraphed me at once that a band of insurgent soldiers had come in and voluntarily surrendered, and had given him a package of letters which Aguinaldo had intrusted to them. Taylor ran over them hastily, and saw that they were of great importance, because they disclosed the whereabouts of the long lost Presidente and Dictator, Aguinaldo. One of those letters was written in cipher, and a very difficult cipher to work out. It was a cipher of figures, and every third word was in the Tagalog dialect; the others were in Spanish, and there was a way of sub tracting certain numbers in order to get at what letter was meant. "We had no key to work on. This corre spondence and the man who brought it in were taken down to my headquarters at once. I had with me then an intelligent and courteous man, a man who had served ten years as an enlisted man in the Spanish army, and who knew the native dialects perfectly. He went to work on the cipher letter at about nine o clock in the evening, and at about four o clock in the morning he had worked it out; it was about sixty words alto gether, and it was a magnificent piece of work. I believe that feature of the thing can scarcely be ap preciated by any one who does not understand how difficult a cipher is without a key, especially when it runs into two languages, and those two languages dis similar. But we found that Aguinaldo had suspended his FREDERICK FUNSTON 69 command in the central districts of Luzon, and that his cousin, Baldomero Aguinaldo, was to succeed him. In this letter he told Baldomero Aguinaldo that as soon as he had relieved Alejandrino he should select from the various insurgent bands all through that region about four hundred armed men and send them to him at once. I talked with the man who had brought the corre spondence, and suggested several plans for Aguinaldo s capture, all of which he said were impossible. Finally I said to this man: "Aguinaldo is expecting reinforcements, from this letter. Suppose we go there, passing ourselves off as these reinforcements, and tak ing along some Americans as prisoners; how about that?" He said: "Good, that will do; that will do; we can do it. Then I sent the plan to my immediate commanding officer, General Wheaton, in Manila, who approved it and forwarded it to General MacArthur, and they at once telegraphed me to come to Manila. I talked the plan over again with General MacArthur, and after directing some slight changes he ordered us to go ahead and make arrangements with the admiral commanding the squadron at Cavite to give us one of the smaller gunboats. Our plan was to take a company of our own soldiers, Macabebes, who have been in our service and always against the insurgents, and pass them off as insurgent troops by merely putting them in the clothing of the country. I will say here that there seems to be a very general misapprehension of the fact that we had gone to Agui- 70 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB naldo clothed in insurgent uniforms. The fact is that we had been accustomed to going about in all sorts of uniforms, and sometimes with no uniforms at all. But we took along some insurgent uniforms, probably about twenty, although not more than half a dozen were worn at all ; and it is a fact that having those in surgent uniforms with us had no bearing on the success of the expedition. We saw that it would be necessary to lull by decoy letters any suspicions that Aguinaldo might have at the approach of an armed force. In these letters we merely made mention of the fact that Lacuna had received his communications of a cer tain date, and that he, Lacuna, had received orders from Baldomero Aguinaldo to forward immediately to the north one of his best guerrilla companies, and that he was sending them with Hilario Placido, who accom panied us, and three or four others whom he men tioned. It was a lucky thing for us to get such a ship as the Vickslurg, and so fine an officer as Captain Barry in command of her, and such a lot of sailors as manned her, because if we had had to depend on any merchant ship in the world, or any picked-up crew of men, I don t know what in hell we I mean we would never have put that expedition through successfully. The Vicksburg sailed from Manila on the 6th of March, 1901, with a force consisting of five American officers, including myself, seventy-nine Macabebe scouts, four ex-insurgent officers, and Sagovia, who had given up the correspondence from Aguinaldo. Four days later we reached Casiguran Bay on the east coast FREDERICK FUNSTON 71 of Luzon, and ran up the bay for about ten miles, and there we landed, 110 miles south of where Aguinaldo was. The country between the place of debarkation and his camp was composed of almost impassable mountains which had never been crossed by a white man, except once by a Jesuit priest, about twenty-five years before. The country was inhabited mostly by savages, but there was about twenty miles north of our landing-place a village known as Casiguran, a small town of not over three hundred people. They had a Presidente, or mayor, and a small force of insurgent soldiers. We knew it would be necessary for us to land south ward of this town, because the coast from there north was absolutely inaccessible, being composed of precipi tous cliffs. I knew also that landing an armed force in this town would cause the inhabitants to take to the woods unless we sent some correspondence to them. So we wrote another letter. This letter was signed by Hilario Placido, and merely said to the mayor of the town that he was on his way north to join Aguinaldo ; that he had captured five American prisoners, and that he would remain in his town for about two days, and told him to provide quarters and rations for his men at once. We sent Cecilia Sigismondo, two soldiers, and two Macabebe scouts to town with this letter, and we went in later. When we reached there the people were out to greet us. They looked with considerable curiosity at the American prisoners, we being the first they had ever seen. The Macabebes, though, thought it was a great joke, and it was with great difficulty that we were 72 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB able to keep these men from laughing and giving the whole business away. Before landing, we five Americans were dressed en tirely as private soldiers, in the uniform of the United States Army, but with no insignia of rank. Each man wore a campaign hat, a blue shirt, and a pair of khaki trousers, and carried no extras, I believe, but a few that did n t weigh very much anyhow, and when we reached Casiguran we were turned over to the Casi- guran authorities and put in the town jail. We remained two days and nights in Casiguran, and none of the people, neither the Presidents nor any of the other town officials, nor any of the soldiers, ever suspected anything at all. We obtained from the Presi- dente a runner and two guides to go north to Aguinaldo and tell him that we were coining on. These men carried the two decoy letters written over the signature of Lacuna, and also a letter from Hilario Placido to Aguinaldo, in which he stated that in accordance with orders received from Lacuna he had taken up his march, and after nineteen days spent in crossing the mountains had reached Casiguran, and was now on his way north; that on his way he had fallen in with a detachment of ten American soldiers, of whom he had killed three, two had escaped, and he was bringing the other five, us, as prisoners. It is too long a story to go through, that terrible march of 110 miles. We left Casiguran unable to ob tain a full supply of cracked corn ; we had about three days rations, counting on two meals a day, and with probably one day s ration of dried meat. We simply thought we would take chances. If the march had FREDERICK FUNSTON 73 lasted another day, if we had been twenty miles farther away, not a single one of us would ever have got out of the country alive. When we finally reached our des tination, some of the Macabebes had given up, some of them were crawling on all fours, and I myself had to lie down every half -hour for a minute or two, so weak that I could not walk. For the first six days we made this cracked corn hold out, with the dried meat; then we caught small snails and ate them ; we scraped limpets off the rocks and ate them, for we were marching along the sea ; and I regret to say that we also ate an octopus. I know the octopus is supposed to live in New York, and, therefore, I am afraid to speak about that. This octopus is a sort of small devil-fish, and the Macabebes made a stew of it. I took some, and I don t believe I care for any more. Seven days after leaving the town of Casiguran, we reached a point on the coast where the trail turned inland, and from there it was only eight miles to Agui- naldo s camp. As I have said before, the men were so weary and falling out, some of them were ten miles behind the column and did not get in that night until long after midnight, and we were very much wrought up, for the reason that no messenger had been sent out to meet us, and we suspected treachery. You see, we had to bring twelve natives as guides and packbearers, and the Macabebes had committed a few indiscretions in the way of talking, and we were very suspicious for fear that word had got to Aguinaldo, as one of the twelve packbearers had disappeared and we did not know where he had gone. As we found out afterward, 74 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB he had got tired of good, honest work, and had gone back home. When we reached this point on the coast where the trail turns inland, we met an old Tagalog and a few Belugas. The old man said he had been sent down there to build a shed where the American prisoners were to be confined, as we were not to be brought into the town. He also had a note from Simon Villia ad dressed to Hilario Placido, telling him that he must under no circumstances bring the Americans into the town, because it would not do for them to know the trails. He said that we should be left there with a guard of ten men, and that the others the following morning would continue the march. The situation was now very serious. "We were afraid to absolutely disobey these orders for fear suspicion would be aroused; we were not sure that we were not suspected. Finally we arranged to start the next morn ing, the Americans remaining behind, but would follow and finally join the column. So when day broke on the morning of the day on which the capture was made, Sigismondo, Hilario Pla cido and the other insurgent officers, and all of the Macabebes except ten, started for Palanan, guided by the old man. We five Americans were left behind under the guard of a very intelligent corporal. I had told this corporal, talking to him in Spanish, what he was to do. I told him that after the column had gone, a note or letter you see, we still had this letter habit would come back, ordering us to join the column. I had given Sigismondo his instructions, so when Sigismondo got some distance away with his col- FREDERICK FUNSTON 75 umn, he sat down and wrote a note in Tagalog back to this Macabebe corporal, saying : "Have just received orders from the Dictator to bring the American prisoners into Palanan with the column, the other orders being rescinded. We were a little bit suspicious of these Tagalogs who were building the house, so we showed the note, and they said: "All right, go along, go along. " So that thing worked. The other Americans were better marchers than I was, so I delayed the procession, but we managed to come up with the rear column of Macabebes just as the last detachment of them was crossing the river. The river probably was 150 yards wide and fifteen or twenty feet deep; we had only one boat in which it could be crossed, and this boat could carry only eight people at a time, consequently the Macabebes had been ferried across eight at a time and then formed on the other bank, and just as the last boatload of them was being taken across, we Americans came down. In the meantime Hilario Placido and Sigismondo had paid their respects to Aguinaldo. They found him surrounded by eight officers in the reception-room of his house; they were all armed, and outside, standing at attention, were the men of Aguinaldo s escort. It was a most trying experience for Hilario Placido and Sigismondo to go among these officers and stay there talking with them for half an hour, killing time until they could see us Americans crossing the river. Sigismondo kept looking out of the window at his right all the time until he finally saw us ; he knew then that the time had come for action, but he confessed to 76 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB me afterward that it was a terribly trying experience, and I have no doubt it was. Well, the Macabebes marched up, about half a dozen escorting us, and Sigismondo walked out of the house and said to one of the insurgent lieutenants who was with us, Give it to them, or something of that kind ; anyhow we did go for them. The Macabebes were so excited when they fired that their marksmanship was pretty wild and they hit only two men, for which I am very glad. We had no desire to kill those insurgent soldiers. All we wished to do was to capture Aguinaldo. I wished the two men had escaped, but that is one of the unfortunate incidents of war. The Macabebes fired on those men and two fell dead; the others retreated, firing as they ran, and they retreated with such great alacrity and enthusiasm that they dropped eighteen rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Sigismondo rushed back into the house, pulled his revolver, and told the insurgent officers to surrender. They all threw up their hands except Villia, Agui naldo s chief of staff; he had on one of those new fangled Mauser revolvers, and he wanted to try it. But before he had the Mauser out he was shot twice; Sigismondo was a pretty fair marksman himself. Alambra was shot in the face. He jumped out of the window, went clear down into the river, the water being twenty-five feet below the bank, swam across, and got away. He surrendered five months afterward. Villia, shot in the shoulder, followed him out of the window and into the river. But the Macabebes saw him and ran down to the river-bank, waded in and FREDERICK FUNSTON 77 fished him out, and kicked him all the way up the bank and asked him how he liked it. Santiago Barcelona, Aguinaldo s treasurer, gave up at once, and apparently was glad he was captured. The other officers went out of the door and windows and everywhere. Hilario Placido, who had been an insurgent officer and had been shot through the lungs earlier in the war, back in 1899, was personally acquainted with Agui- naldo, and was standing next to him when the firing began. Sigismondo had gone outside and ordered the firing. When this firing began, Aguinaldo thought his own men had ordered the firing to greet the reinforcements they were expecting, so he stepped to the window and said: "Stop that foolishness." Then Hilario Placido hurled him to the floor, and said : "You are a prisoner ; keep still." About that time we five Americans got into the room, and Aguinaldo got on his feet ; and he was a very mel low individual. He said : This is not true ? This is a joke?" I replied: "No, this is not a joke; this is the real thing. He was fearfully excited, as a man would naturally be under those circumstances. He asked us to protect him, and I assured him that he would be pro tected. The turmoil was all over in a very few minutes, but the Macabebes were wildly excited ; they had been under a terrible nervous strain, and especially for an hour the situation was very trying for them; they ran around like wild men, and insisted upon hugging us and call ing out in Spanish, "What s the matter with the 78 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Macabebes? They re all right. Who s all right ? The Macabebes. They were men no better, nor any worse, than the other Filipinos. They were simply Filipinos, and did not constitute a separate tribe, but merely belonged to a certain village ; they have never been insurgents sim ply because of the lack of opportunity. As soon as Aguinaldo s escort had broken and run, we collected the Macabebes as fast as we could, and came down and put the three prisoners, Aguinaldo, Villia, and Barcelona, into Aguinaldo s bedroom. They were very desirous that the American officers be in there all of the time, as they had little faith in the Macabebes. The Macabebes had recognized Aguinaldo, and were anxious to kill him. They had no particular spite against the other insurgents. It was in 1897 that 300 Macabebes were penned up in church and burned to death by an insurgent force under Aguinaldo, and that is the reason they felt so bitterly toward him per sonally. However, we took every possible precaution to pro tect the prisoners from harm, and treated them with all consideration. They appeared very much surprised that they were not put in irons, and they asked if they were to be sent to Guam evidently they had heard of that cheerful resort and also if they were to be exe cuted. We told them it was very unlikely, but that it would depend very much on their own conduct. The first night we spent in Palanan did not give us much uneasiness, because we were sure that the in surgents who had escaped would not be able to get FREDERICK FUNSTON 79 together again. The second night we took a great many precautions, as we were afraid, not only that these men would get back to the town, but that they would gather other insurgent soldiers, and possibly collect a number of rifles, and we had no reserve supply of ammunition. So on the second night that we re mained in Palanan we kept half of the soldiers and half of the officers on watch until twelve o clock; then they lay down and the others remained up, the men having their rifles loaded. But there was no attack made on us, and no shot fired at all. Finally the day came on which we were to meet the VicJcsburg at Casiguran Bay. It was only six miles from this point to Palanan. We did not return to where we left the coast before, which was eight miles distant, but we struck it at another point. It should take three hours to make this march, but, owing to the fact that neither Aguinaldo nor the officers with him knew the trail, we lost our way and were six hours get ting down there. Just as we reached the coast we saw a black speck of smoke away out at sea, and we knew that the Navy was doing things right, just as it usually does them. She steamed in within two miles of the shore, it not being safe to come closer, so we arranged a signal. We had brought down with us a bed sheet, and this was rigged on a bamboo pole, and we signaled: "We have him ; send boats for all. We watched with our glasses the signal on the Vicks- ~burg, and finally we spelled it out : "Bully. We are coming." But a tremendous surf was running, and we had very serious doubts as to 80 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB our ability to get on board the ship. All of the ship s boats except a steam-launch were lowered, and they came through that surf and honestly, it seems to me as if it was half as high as this room; maybe it was higher, I don t know. One of the boats turned upside down, but finally they came through the surf, and the men cheered and yelled. The commander was on the first boat that came through. We ran up, and, of course, there were very cordial greetings. It seemed to me those men never stopped howling and yelling; they just went through the surf, and they were drenched through and through, from head to foot, but that did n t make any difference, when they got through with their boats they just yelled and whooped it up. We got out with a great deal of difficulty. A couple of trips had to be made, but fortunately we got through without any accident at all, and we were finally landed on board the Vicksburg. The officers lent us some clothing, and we sat down to a very good dinner ; and two days later we turned the late-lamented Emilio Aguinaldo over to General MacArthur. MINOT J. SAVAGE AT THE DINNER TO FREDERICK FUNSTON, MARCH 8, 1902 I FEEL a little ashamed to-night, in the presence of men who do things. I am only a man who advises people to do them. I was standing in my study a little while ago, looking at a portrait of Giordano Bruno. Mr. Collier was standing by my side, and I said : * * That is a type of man that it is very difficult for us to dupli cate in the modern world, a man willing for his con victions to go to prison for six years, and then go out into the market-place and be burned, rather than be false to those convictions." Mr. Collier quoted two verses; I have not a very good memory, and I may make a mistake in quoting them, but they seemed to me appropriate here to-night as I was listening to General Funston s simple, wonderful, and admirable story : A noble thing is prudence, and they are useful friends Who never make beginnings until they see the ends ; But give me now and then a man, and I will make him king, Just to take the consequence, and just to do the thin^. I trust I may be pardoned just one personal word. There is no place in New York where I would rather be than with the Lotos Club. For three years I have not 81 82 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB been able to accept any invitations to dinners, or go beyond the necessary work which devolves upon me ; I have been obliged to decline coming here to meet you on these most pleasant occasions. I could not decline to-night ; I wanted to be here and see the man that did it. And when I was asked, my first impression was that I would look over the whole field and finally grapple with the Philippine problem. The Army has been about it for a good while, the President has been engaged in it, and the Senate as well and, most im portant of all, the newspapers ; but still there are cer tain outlying provinces that have not been taken care of ; so it occurred to me that I would tell you just what ought to be done in order to bring the thing to the proper conclusion ; but as I looked over the field, there were certain serious difficulties that stood in the way. I have had authoritative information that there is no war in the Philippines at all, only a few guerrilla bands here and there, and that in a little while all we shall need will be a few soldiers to act as police. On the other hand, I have been informed on equally good authority that there is a tremendous war going on there, and that we need to double the number of our troops. I have been informed that the Filipinos are a peaceful, loving, law-abiding kind of people, and that they are very much like the citizens of the provinces in this country at the time of the Revolution; that they want liberty, and that they deserve it as much as did our forefathers in 1776. I am informed, on the other hand, that they are simply a set of bandits and out laws, and that they deserve no consideration whatever. Then I am told, in regard to our own troops, that they MINOT J. SAVAGE 83 are lamb-like, and loving, and gentle, and kind, and then I am told on equal authority that they are a set of conscienceless cutthroats, engaged in the merciless slaughter of men, women, and children. I am told that the Filipinos are a religious people ; then I am told that they have a half-dozen different kinds of religion. I am told all sorts of contradictory stories, so that when I had decided that I would settle the question to-night, and had made up my mind I would look about for the facts, you see what I have encountered. There are a great many ways, I suppose, in which a man can get killed in the Philippines; there are a choice lot of diseases that he can contract; he can be shot in the back or killed in open warfare; he can be captured and tortured to death ; but there are a dozen ways of being killed in New York at the present time to one in the Philippines. A man might fall into the Subway. He might get blown up by dynamite, burned in a hotel, pitched on his head as he attempts to get off a car; all sorts of ways. A man is exposing his life at every turn in New York. A gentleman, a stranger in the city, the other day wanted to find a particular insti tution, and he asked a gentleman the way to the Emergency Hospital, and he answered: "Cross Broad way, anywhere you please. " So I know General Fun- ston is a brave man to come to New York ; but can we trust a man who would cheat Aguinaldo ? Now I have had trusty information from some of the anti-imperial ists in Boston, and they tell me it was a sort of mean thing he did. A man who is at war and who will go about to cheat his adversary and not tell him what his tactics are beforehand, is not to be trusted in private 84 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB life. How can your adversary admire your tactics unless he knows what they are? So I did not ask General Funston the condition of things in the Philip pines. But, gentlemen, for one moment let me be serious, and though I am a man of peace, and though I regret that such a thing as war must exist on the face of the earth, let me say that I am proud of the men who took their lives in their hands to uphold the honor and in tegrity of the country that we all so sincerely love and admire. Ever since the battle of Manila Bay I have been ask ing to find out what it is the opponents of the war would have done. Admiral Dewey at one stroke destroyed the only government that existed in the Philippines. What were we to do then ? Were we to steal away and leave chaos, murder, bloodshed, and kindred evils be hind us? It seems to me that the United States was under the highest of all obligations to see that the con dition of things in the Philippines was no worse than it was before. Should we give the islands away? To whom? Germany, perhaps, would have liked them; possibly England would have liked them. Which of these two was our intimate friend on that occasion? Which had the best claim to them ? We were under the highest of all moral obligations to take seriously and earnestly the consequences of our own acts. If Agui- naldo represented all the people of the Philippine Islands, and if I believed he was competent to rule them, and that they wanted him for a ruler whether he was competent or not, I should be in favor of giving him an opportunity of seeing what he could do. Some MINOT J. SAVAGE 85 newspapers are saying we have no right to establish a government without the consent of the governed. Would it be any better if we put Aguinaldo in con trol of the islands without the consent of the governed ? Would that be an improvement upon the present policy ? It seems to me, gentlemen, that we have done the only manly, honorable, noble, true thing that was possible to us in the conditions which followed the bat tle of Manila Bay. I felt like saying a most hearty "Amen" to General Funston when he said to-night, * Let us first establish order in the islands ; then let us decide what it is best for us to do with them. If you will pardon me in taking your time, I will go one step farther by way of suggestion. I am not one of those who believe that because the United States is rich and prosperous and capable of living quietly at home on its own resources, therefore it is the best and wisest and most humane thing for us to do. A man may be rich, may be prosperous, may have everything that the heart desires, but has he, therefore, the right to live a quiet, selfish life, taking no interest in the world outside, not caring what comes to his fellows? We are rich, a great, strong people, the richest and strongest people probably on the face of the earth to day, but Noblesse oblige. No, ability has obligations, and I believe that the United States has done wisely and well in saying, "We propose to have something to say in regard to the world s affairs." I believe that we, with our power, and wealth, and resources, are respon sible for the way things go outside of our own limits. There is enough English blood in my veins to make me feel like saying that I would like to see an understand- 86 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ing (I do not care for a treaty) on the part of the English-speaking peoples of the world. If we choose, if we were wise enough, if we can put under our foot the petty jealousies that disturb international affairs, we can control the destiny of this planet. We can control it in the interest of civilization, the real welfare of the world ; and it seems to me that it is the wickedest thing I can conceive, for us, either through jealousy or petti ness, or any other reason, to shirk this great human obligation. Let us then have an understanding. England, criti cize her as you will, has never taken a step around this planet anywhere, that she has not left a higher type of civilization behind her. I believe it is our duty to pacify the Philippines, to give them, so far as they are capable of receiving it, our kind of civilization ; and by and by, if they are capable of going alone, let them go alone, but do not set them adrift and let them become another Haiti, a kind of country that has a revolution every six months, where there is perpetual warfare, treachery, and assassination of every kind. "We have no right to do this. The one thing we have a right to do is to give the Philippines the highest type of civiliza tion and the most perfect peace they are capable of receiving at our hands. CHAELES S. GLEED AT THE DINNEE TO FEEDEEICK FUNSTON, MAECH 8, 1902 I HAVE been asked to-night to talk to you about five minutes, for the purpose of supplying a little of the personal pronoun that the General omitted. Well, in the beginning, he is Scotch-Irish, by pedi gree and by performance, and then he had the mag nificent good fortune to breathe Kansas air and grow on Kansas soil. But the real point about him, it seems to me, is that he has had an eye for the oppor tunity, and the courage to improve the opportunity. We had a strong man in Kansas once, named Ingalls, John J. Ingalls, and he wrote a sonnet called " Oppor tunity ; and I never think of Funston without think ing of it. Master of human destinies am I ! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait. Cities and fields I walk ; I penetrate Deserts and seas remote, and passing by Hovel and mart and palace soon or late I knock unbidden once at every gate ! If sleeping, wake if feasting, rise before I turn away. It is the hour of fate, And they who follow me reach every state Mortals desire, and conquer every foe 87 88 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Save death ; but those who doubt or hesitate, Condemned to failure, penury, and woe, Seek me in vain and uselessly implore. I answer not, and I return no more ! General Funston, when opportunity has knocked, if sleeping, has awoke, and if feasting, has risen, and fol lowed without fear and without hesitation. The first occupation that seemed obnoxious enough to be attractive to the General was going off into Death Valley in southern California. There is the hottest spot in the United States, away below the level of the sea, and there for nine long months this young man searched in vain for the water of life, risked his health, measured the gentle heat of 147, the hottest official measurement ever taken, and made for his country a report which is the best on record to-day about that valley. Coming out of Death Valley, I suppose in order to get a good average as to temperature, he went to Alaska. For two years he stayed in the frozen North. He traveled on snow-shoes 1100 miles, farther than from here to Chicago. If you see him now on Fifth Avenue, walking with a peculiar gait, you may know that he is neither groggy nor proud. It is the old snow-shoe gait, that comes back to him occasionally. One of these snow-shoe trips from his camp to Herschel Land occupied forty-nine days, and no man that he met had ever before seen a white man s face. When he tired of walking on snow-shoes in Alaska, he took to the canoe, and he paddled all alone on those wild rivers 2300 miles on one trip, from the head of the Yukon to the mouth of that magnificent river. Finally he came to me in New York and said: "I have enlisted." I said: "In what?" He said: "The CHARLES S. GLEED 89 Cuban army." I said: "How do you know?" And he said : " I found an office down here in a dark corner, and I enlisted." I said: "What for?" And here is the point I never knew him to do anything for ad venture ; there is always a purpose. He said : * That job down there has got to be cleaned up. " I said : " Do you think you can clean it up?" He said: "I can help." So inside of a week he was over there on Third Avenue in a garret every night drilling soldiers ; he had a Falstaffian army, and one big Hotchkiss gun. He and five other boys w T ent on the Dauntless to Cuba. Those other five American boys are dead. He landed in Cuba, and before he had been there a week he had been in about fiftj^-five fights, and they had put a Mauser bullet through him ; they had helped themselves to a piece of his arm, and finally a treacherous Spanish horse fell on him and rolled a piece of a tree into his leg. About the time that happened he had been com missioned by Garcia and Gomez as lieutenant-colonel in the Cuban army ; he had risen from a captaincy to a place as lieutenant-colonel. When he was useless they told him he might go home, and he started for the coast. He was walking along with a friend named Penny, when suddenly he saw a cluster of Spanish guns stuck in his face. Having taken the precaution to learn Spanish out in Kansas, he immediately opened up con versation and said he wanted to surrender, and I guess he spoke the truth if he ever did. They let him sur render, and started for headquarters. He had a severe attack of coughing and smuggled some despatches into his mouth, and they got down into his stomach, and I guess he would make affidavit that he has eaten many a worse meal than that. They at first thought they 90 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB would shoot him, but finally turned him over to Fitz- hugh Lee, who sent him back to New York. I wish you could have seen him then on Fifth Avenue ; he was thin and emaciated, with ice-cream clothes and a straw hat ; and it was cold weather. He turned himself over to the surgeon and the tailor, and they tried clothes on him; and when he was all right he went into the lecture busi ness, and I know he was successful for Major Pond has been trying to get him back ever since. But pretty soon the big war came and the lecturer went, and we heard of him in the Philippines, as colonel in fifteen battles, and as brigadier-general in three, and on his return from his visit to the United States, in twenty more ; they only got him once, and that was through the hand with a bullet. Before he left there, that Agui- naldo of the human system, the vermiform appendix, got hold of him, and the surgeon went in and took it out, but in the excitement of the moment he left a monkey-wrench or something inside, and so it had to be done over again when he got here. The question who is brave we cannot settle ; the ques tion why one is brave and another a coward we cannot settle. "We do not know who is the bravest man among our friends ; we cannot tell where the greatest courage lies. God made that scheme; we have nothing to do with it; we cannot go behind the returns. All we can do is to do as we do with the precious metals, take them as we find them, and we know that the courage which General Funston has shown excuses him for any good luck he has had, and that is why we praise and applaud and admire him, and why we hope and pray that the youth of the United States will emulate his example. JOSEPH B. COGHLAN (REAR-ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES NAVY) AT THE DINNER TO FREDERICK FUNSTON, MARCH 8, 1902 I CAME here with a great deal of pleasure this eve ning, because, as you know, General Funston be longs to the Navy as well as to the Army. We own him in one way, that is, we are personally interested in all his experiences out there, as we were the pioneers that drove the pick that made the hole to let him get in. Just about the time we were to sail from Manila, a tug came out from Hong-Kong with, I think, seven Filipinos, who called themselves officers and members of the cabinet, and I don t know what. They invited the admiral to wait two or three days, until they could get clean clothes. They promised us everything on earth, and they were going to raise a lot of the islands in our favor. I am very glad to say here that I heard Admiral Dewey refuse positively to make any promise of any description to the Filipinos. I remember very distinctly and his language was somewhat emphatic, as sailors language sometimes is; he struck the table, and said: "I will be damned if I promise anything; naval officers are not here for the purpose of entering into treaties of any description with any power what ever. Our duty is simply to see that no foreign power interferes with us. 91 92 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB But after about an hour and a half the admiral got tired and said : * Let s end this foolishness ; gentlemen, you will prepare to get under way at two o clock. That is all I have to tell you in which I use the pronoun " I. " When it came to our part of the work, I think you will agree with me that there was but one man in the business who deserved the whole credit, and that was Admiral Dewey. I am very glad, indeed, to be with you all this eve ning; particularly on the occasion of honoring the General. We do it, I suppose, you the same as myself, because he has shown a very high type of courage. We all have courage everybody is brave but it is in dif ferent degrees. The General represents what we regard as our ideal brave man. He not only knows and takes into consideration everything that has to be done, the dangers, and weighs them pro and con, but if he sees the slightest chance, where there may be but one chance in a hundred, he is brave enough to take that chance, knowing that he will so direct it that everything will go well. HORACE PORTER (AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, JUNE 17, 1902 TTTHEN I was spoken to about your doing me the T T honor of giving me a dinner in this club, I said: "It is summer, and everybody is out of town ; but I could n t object to that, for I have been out of town myself for some time. When one has been away for a period of time one quarter that of Rip Van Winkle s sleep, he becomes reminiscent; and it is dangerous at this hour of the evening to ask him to indulge in that form of human speech embraced under the head of a few remarks. But I thank you for the cordiality of your reception this evening. It is the most enthusiastic I have ever seen, except in a Western meeting, when the audience rose to its feet and vociferously applauded the opening prayer. I am glad to come here and meet my old friends, and to meet some new ones; but some in New York have changed so much that they don t know me. I met a gentleman down-town the other day, and he said: "I have heard you spoken of." There is nothing more flattering to human vanity than to hear, I have heard you spoken of." It does n t matter what was said about you. I remember once being present when two 93 94 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB rival politicians who had agreed to speak at a reception in a country town, or I should say at a little convention, met. One said to the other, in acknowledging the in troduction, I have often heard you spoken of, sir, but I have never seen you before," to which the other re torted, "I have often seen you, but I have never heard you spoken of. Now, I am glad about a great many things. I am glad, first, to see my dear old friend, your perpetual president, in the chair. After I had been six years or more president of the Union League Club, up to the time I left, a member made the remark, I don t know whether he intended it as complimentary or the re verse, that they had had to intercede with the Govern ment and get them to send me abroad to get me out of the presidency of the club. That is a good precedent, and you will have to intercede with some one to get Mr. Lawrence sent abroad to service at hard labor and transportation for a number of years, to prevent his being the perpetual president of this club. I was glad to see him swing the gavel here to-night. Now the gavel is essentially American, and does n t exist in France. I told them over there that it was in vented for the use of railway conductors, so that they could go around after an accident and hit the wounded on the head with it, because the limit of recovery then for a death was $5000, but there was no limit for the damages to the wounded. One of the first things I did in France was to preside at a Fourth of July banquet, and when I arose there were five hundred people out of order, and I had nothing to call them to order with there was no gavel. HORACE PORTER 95 Even the president of the Chamber of Deputies has no gavel, and when he wants to call them to order he rings a bell; and if they make too much noise he goes out and buys a larger bell. Well, I had to have something to rap for order with, and I took an empty bottle and rapped them to order with that. I told them that in America we called an empty bottle a corpse. There were quite a lot of Americans there, and word was passed around that I had used a corpse for this pur pose, and the next morning a French paper printed the story and said, "What people those Americans are! They even use the gruesome contents of their cemeteries to enliven their feasts." Now I come back to our city. I left it clothed in all the beauty of maidenhood. I come back to see it a series of bruises, about as bad as the city of Washing ton when Governor Shepard was trying to revamp it, and tore up the streets and left the houses standing up in the air. We had a Japanese charge d affaires at that time, the first one who came here; and he came down to invite the Secretary of War and me to dine with him, as he put it, in a hotel, a restaurant "high up, big mud, damn hard get at." That is about the condition in which I find the city of New York, and when the dust assailed my eyes I wondered if some smart American woman here could n t write a verse, something like the verse written by an American woman in Paris, which runs thus : The devil sends the wicked wind Which blows our skirts knee high ; But God is just, and sends the dust, Which gets in the bad man s eye. 96 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB When I went abroad I changed my habits. I under went a change of life. Brought up in the Army, I went into diplomacy. I spent the earlier part of iny life trying to make men downright, and now I am trying to make them upright. I was glad, in common with all other diplomats, to see the Navy grow in size. It is a good thing to have a navy at your back just to coincide. There was a great discussion here in the time of the Spanish War as to the coal-supply. Now we had no trouble on that score, did n t have any trouble about it at all; the American people would always find an ample supply in the coal-hole of the Lotos Club. Well, they can t understand us on the other side of the water. They know we are a progressive people; they know we are always looking after business, and that if we have large families we expect children to begin to pay dividends at two years of age. They think that we are a mass of contrarieties and contradictions. They see how we have taken the negro, who is naturally an agriculturist, and made a soldier of him; and how we have taken the Indian, who is by nature a warrior, and made a farmer of him. We have insisted upon using as our standard of money the yellow metal for the white races, and winked at the use of the white metal for the yellow races. I wonder what your president alluded to a little while ago. I had a great struggle over there on the tariff question and the copyright law, trying to intro duce Armour s pork from Chicago, with Mark Twain s works, and other products of the pen. Evidently that is what the president alluded to when he spoke of HORACE PORTER 97 me a little while ago as "only an armor-bearer" in France. Well, it is a good thing to get back here again. What a country to come to! See this matchless prosperity, the marvelous inventions, the remarkable discoveries in science, the onward march of civilization, which in spires us with the grandeur of its achievements. What a country ! It was not born amid the fabled tales and mysticisms of bygone days, but it is planted here on virgin soil, the only country that knows its own birth day. I am always glad to get back here and to see my old friends of the Lotos Club. .We formerly used to try to kill time, and now we are trying to prevent time from killing us. We are all trying to grow old grace fully, and it is a great enjoyment to come back here and see our president sitting here with Mark Twain he went to Europe to practise German, and I French. I took French because the verb is a little nearer the other part of the sentence ; it is not so long drawn out. Why, they know Mark Twain just as well over there as you do. There is n t a man there who would n t rather have a photograph of one of his jokes than a negative of any other man. General Brooke has captured everything in any di rection, and now the Lotos Club has captured him. John S. Wise is one of the numerous carpet-baggers from the South. I knew him in Virginia; we fought together, not on the same side though, and he kept at it till the last, still fighting for the things he considered were his rights, and a braver soldier never lived. I am proud to have him sitting here to-night. 98 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB I could go on and name all our old friends here, their characteristics and qualities, lovable and dear. We are coming to grow old together, comfortably and grace fully, though our heads don t silver rapidly. But we are not yet in the shadow of life s decay, and if we can t clasp hands across the sea, we can always clasp hands across the table. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS AT THE DINNEE TO HOKACE POETEE, JUNE 17, 1902 THE chairman has told the truth. He has n t had much practice, but he did it this time. I did say that I should be very glad indeed to say something in case anybody preceding me should furnish me a text. That anybody preceding me should furnish you statis tics that need to be corrected, or facts of any kind that seemed feasible things, did not occur to me. It is my line to correct them. I have stood for truth all my life. I have been a sort of symbol of veracity, and it has not always been recognized. But there have been things said to-night which furnish me here and there a text, and they are pleasing texts. I don t see that I have any real fault to find with anything that I have heard. I did n t quite like to hear men whose heads are still brown, like the chairman s, and black, like the guest s, talk too much of people who have been in this club longer than they have, meaning me. And to hear them calling your distinct attention to the stuff which I wear upon my head and which has been tanned to its present tone by hard work in the interest of civiliza tion ! I have first to correct an opinion of the guest of the evening, as everybody can have an opinion. Compli ments are paid to him in a gracious way, and in a truthful and righteous way, the way in which Mr. Law- 99 100 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB rence has turned these compliments, when he speaks of this brilliant bird of passage from the coal-hole of the Lotos Club. I like to hear him pay these compliments. I like to see the chairman show off what he can do with language. And I like to see him throw out his culture and his knowledge in this mysterious way, and talk about the date of the battle of Bunker Hill just as if he was there and knew all about it. He throws out this his torical information with a scandalous air of having it always on tap. He has been studying a cyclopedia to day. There was a man here who knew the date of the battle of Bunker Hill. I don t take these random historians at par. I shall look myself when I get home, and see if they re right. Why, General Porter stands up here, and he also throws out very nice things, and sometimes they sug gest Wagner s music from the pen and point of view of Bill Nye. Bill Nye said that he had heard that Wagner s music was better than it sounded. You can take what General Porter says in the same way. Now he has been abroad over five years, and has been work ing in my interest and Mr. Armour s interest, trying to get our literature introduced, our pork from the pen. Well, that is a good thing to do, and he has been and is working very hard, and has done admirably well. He has sold more than forty copies of my works in France every year, and it was only half that when he went away. He has done exceedingly well. We have never had a representative there who has done his work more to my satisfaction than General Porter. And he has been learning French. I wish he had made his speech in French. Not because any one would SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 101 have understood it, I could not have understood my share, perhaps. But I should like to hear him. I think General Porter did know French before he went away. He has complimented me on my study of the German language ; I think I did yeoman service in trying to tame that language. I had not the same success with it that he had with the French. I have great reverence for the German language. I did the best I could with it. I stood by it many years. I worked it hard and it worked me hard. There were many pleasant incidents connected with the struggle. We had a very dear old lady, a sweet old soul, who took a great fancy to a young lady who was traveling with us. She took so strong a fancy to that young American woman, that she poured out her practical German affection upon her, and she could n t say too much, or find too much praise in that young person and everything connected with her. And this dear old lady was always trying to find similarities between the Germans and the Ameri cans, and was always delighted when she could show a sort of relationship in methods of expression and feel ings. And she said one day, "Why, you talk the same as we talk. We say, Ach Gott, and you say, God damn. " But the remarks of Admiral Barker carry me back to the time when I was in Austria. That was the time when the war broke out. It was threatening daily, that Spanish War, and the admiral says that Americans are more comfortable there on the other side, and are now treated with higher regard than they were at any earlier time. It is no doubt true. At the time I speak of, 1898, Americans who were sojourning in Vienna had a sufii- 102 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ciently uncomfortable time, for it was said, it came from America, that we were going to fight Spain for Cuba s sake, and that our sole reason for that was the humanitarian one that we were going to put forth our strength to achieve the freedom of the down trodden Cubans, and that we should not charge any thing for that, but would do it simply from our Ameri can principle of standing by weak nations who were struggling for their freedom, and ask nothing for that but the consciousness of doing this thing. They thought we were too selfish to pour out blood and treasure for that cause. I had to stand hearing people say in all kinds of German, with languages mixed, that that was all nonsense, folly, romance, humbug, that we had an ulterior motive for that war, and that our humanitarian purpose was a mere pretense. I had to stand all that. Everybody in that country had to stand that, and put up with that. It was hard enough, because I believed thoroughly that we had no object in view but the high and noble one of setting that people free. And I said it; and I instructed the young American people, younger than I was, and we were in trouble, and met with scoffs on all hands, and jeers. And I strengthened them, and I said to them, l Don t you be afraid. It is all true, absolutely true. Speak out and say so. These people don t understand fighting for any such pur pose as this, but we understand it, and we do it. Stand by your flag and don t be afraid." We went all through that and we have waited to see the result, and now I should like to stand in Vienna and say, "See what we have done. We have done everything. We have kept our word. We set those SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 103 Cubans free. We said we should do it and we did it." If there is anything in this world we have to be proud of for a long time, it is that fact. I am glad I have lived long enough to be able to say to those Viennese that I was right and they were wrong. General Porter has done a great many things to be proud of; and a great many things for which we have reason to be proud of him. More than one of you have understood in one way or another what General Porter has accomplished in that short life which has resulted in that black head of his. Men get older some time or another. All of you know how brilliant he is. He should have a school. He has done some meri torious things, but you have n t heard of the greatest victory he ever won, on the battle-fields or in the diplomacy of Paris over wise men. I saw him put to a test one night that would have taxed any other man severely. He saw it through, and I should tell about that for his everlasting credit. Fifteen or twenty-five years ago the Fellowcraft Club was formed. They had sixty-five members, and they held one meeting very successfully that I remember. At this meeting Mr. Gilder was chairman, and just for fun I made a proposition. I got Major Pond to say to Mr. Gilder that there was a young man here from down South who had a plan by which he proposed to teach young men how to make after-dinner speeches without any preparation. He would teach them how to choose any subject, take any text, and speak to that text with out embarrassment of any kind. Mr. Gilder did n t want to introduce this young person, but he was per suaded to do so. Major Pond said that this man s name 104 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB was Samuel Langhorne Langhorne is part of my name and when he stated what this man s name was, he said he hoped the club would call for Mr. Langhorne. And then Mr. Gilder called it out. I stepped forward. I said: "There is no swindle about this, Langhorne is part of my name. I wanted to try this project, and I wanted to take a class to teach people after-dinner speaking. I wanted to try it on the dog, as the actors say, and I wanted to make the experiment there. My scheme was this, and it is based on this, that, as a rule, after-dinner speeches seem to me to consist of anec dotes, and remarks attached. From observation it seemed to me that the anecdotes are made for the speaker, and just this. A man gets up on his feet to make a speech, and he talks along and talks very hand somely. Presently he approaches an anecdote. You can see it in the air. You can smell it. And presently he says, "Now, how felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who," and then he tells the anecdote, and those people are caught, and they laugh, and the thing goes off, and it does n t occur to them that that anecdote did n t illustrate a thing. But that does n t matter, he talks along, and presently he brings out another anecdote, and they still don t notice that it does n t illustrate, and the man goes on and takes out these anecdotes, and the people go home. And after all, his anecdotes never illustrated anything he had to say. And then I got those people to give me a text, to show them what I could do with it. And I asked them to send around a hat, and have every body propose a text. I said it would make no difference what the text was, one was just as good as another on SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 105 this plan. And after that they sent a hat around and somebody reached in and got one out. The text I got out was portrait-painting. Well, it was n t much of a text, considering what I knew about that subject. But I said that would do, one was just as good as another. And then I began to deliver the facts and the history about it, starting back to the primeval man who sketched the mammoth, and so on, and every now and then I dropped in an anecdote. I always said, you can see how felicitously what I have just said is illustrated in the case of the man who, and I went right along. Now you see the whole scheme. Everybody here ought to be able to act on this line. He must have his anecdote ready, and he must always remember to say, 1 You see how felicitously this is illustrated in the case of the man who." There was n t a man there who got through his speech, because he never got to an anecdote without all those people jumping in to help him out, until it got to Gen eral Porter. And General Porter stood up there, and told nineteen anecdotes. They tried to shut him off, to shout him down, but they could n t do it. He intro duced each one by saying, "You see how felicitously what I have just been saying is illustrated in the case of the man who." There never was so much courage exhibited. He took a text himself, that "Truth is stranger than Fiction." He did n t illustrate it in a single instance. He always said he did, and it always carried, and he finished it most happily. Now all the anecdotes had been told before, taken from here and there. And General Porter said it was true from his 106 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB own personal experience. He said he made a voyage across the Atlantic, a very stormy voyage. You see how he handled the thing, and he had the people s hair standing on end about the dangers, and he got up on that, that the ship was leaking and they had to keep at the pumps all the time, day and night, all the way. And then he wound up, "Why, we pumped the Atlan tic Ocean through her sixteen times." That was his idea of truth being stranger than fiction. Everybody could see that it was. I have immense admiration for General Porter. I have more admiration for him than I have for the tax assessor of Tarrytown. The tax assessors of Tarrytown understand their business better than anybody else. There are Tarry- town people here to-night. The way those tax asses sors work is that in order to verify their figures they find out what the fellow is worth, and multiply it by fifty-seven. They would tax Porter on his personal appearance if he lived there. Oh, I am going to have a time up there. I am up there, and I have got to put an addition on that place. I have got to get a chicken-coop, and you can t have a chicken-coop in Tarrytown without risking something. I am going to build that one of chilled iron. I am going to save the coop itself when the assessor comes. I don t propose to get taken up. It is a great place. I am enjoying the prospect of going there. I have n t got there yet. It s a great place. It has a lower death-rate and a higher tax-rate than any place on the civilized globe. But I welcome General Porter back to his native shore. I welcome him with all my heart. I have a reverent affection for him, and this feeling has grown SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 107 with the years during which I have observed him. He grows in my estimation all the time. I have a great opinion of his abilities, and a great opinion of his career as he has made it, and great hope that he will make it greater in the future. And if next time I don t have an opportunity to vote for Theodore Roosevelt for President, I hope to vote for Porter. CHOWFA MAHA VAJIRAVUDH (CROWN PRINCE OF SIAM) AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, OCTOBEE 25, 1902 I MUST thank you very much for having honored my toast, and I assure you that I appreciate very much the honor you have done me in giving me this most excellent dinner. I find a very long list of distinguished strangers who have already been entertained here, and I am pleased to be among them. I have been only a short time in the United States, only a fortnight, and I have scarcely had time to know the country well. But I have heard a great deal, of course; it is only natural that I should have heard of America, this country which we are very glad to have as our neigh bor. Gentlemen, it takes at least two to make good neigh bors. I can assure the American people, if they will be good neighbors to us, we will be as much to them. We are proud of our country, which we always call the land of the free, and in that way we think we have a great many ideas in common with the people of the United States. Although our King is an absolute mon arch, he rules by the will of the people, and he appre ciates very much the trust that his people have placed in him; and I am sure that we, his successors, shall always do our best to keep up the traditions of our 108 CHOWFA MAHA VAJIRAVUDH 109 family and be equally worthy of the trust which the nation places in us. We wish always, naturally, to make our country the land of the free, and in this we look to the cooperation of our neighbors, and prin cipally of our new neighbor, our newest neighbor, the United States. There are a great many ways in which the United States can help us, principally by way of commerce. I hope very soon to see commerce better established between our country and this country. I am very glad to be here, as I am sure it will be the means, or, at least, one of the means, of making the people of this country look, turn their eyes, toward Asia and toward us. And if I have done that, I shall feel that my absence from my country for nine years has not been in vain. I have received a very warm welcome from the American people wherever I have been, and I have received a great deal of attention on all sides, especially from the press of the country. All this at tention, I assure you, I appreciate very much, and I shall carry away with me very pleasant recollections of my tour in the United States ; and among the pleasant- est recollections will be the dinner at the Lotos Club. PEINCE CHOWFA CHAKRABONGSE OF SIAM AT THE DINNEE TO THE CEOWN PEINCE OF SIAM, OCTOBEE 25, 1902 I BEG to thank you most sincerely for your kind words, and for the way you gentlemen have joined in honoring this toast. Finding myself at the present moment in the presence of such eminent men as are represented here from all classes, I feel myself very small. And being a young man, and a soldier by profes sion, I do not profess that I have any art in speaking at all. The president has been so kind as to ask me to speak; so I have to try my best. Besides, you have here, and you are kind enough to entertain, two broth ers, and you can hardly expect that both of them can make speeches without saying the same thing. I am honored and very pleased that I have had a chance to visit this country. I can assure you that I was looking forward to this visit already a year ago, and I am very sorry that I shall have to leave much sooner than my brother, because being a soldier, as I have said, I cannot extend my own leave. Before sitting down, I wish to say only one thing more, and that is that the greatest feature I have found in this great country is the big-heartedness and kind- 110 PRINCE CHOWFA CHAKRABONGSE 111 heartedness of the people. I never met any people more kind-hearted than those in the United States, and I say this with the utmost sincerity. So now, before I sit down, I wish to thank you again, Mr. Lawrence, and gentlemen here, for the very kind way in which you have honored my toast, and more still for the kind way in which you have received my maiden speech. FELIX ADLEE AT THE DINNER TO THE CROWN PRINCE OF SIAM, OCTOBER 25, 1902 I HAVE just heard the definition of a diplomatist as a deaf-mute. I have heard a distinguished gentle man in the diplomatic service of the United States give a somewhat different account of what should be the qualifications of a diplomatist. He said that the su preme equipment of a diplomatist is humanity, a pro found sense of the human worth of the foreign peoples to whom he may be accredited, in order that he may understand those people, and, understanding them, interpret his country to them and them to his country. Now I believe that these qualifications of a diplomatist are those which every citizen, especially every citizen of a great country like ours, should seek to possess. Allusion has been made to the fact that we are hence forth neighbors of Siam, and in his admirable address the Crown Prince of Siam has expressed the hope that the tie of commerce would bind us more closely to his country. But commerce itself, the successful expan sion of commerce, depends in no little degree upon the ability to understand the people with whom the com mercial ties are to be formed, to understand their peculiar needs, and to adapt ourselves to those needs. Humanitarian sentiment plays a great role, greater 112 FELIX ABLER 113 than is appreciated even in the world of commerce. Now I, for one, am of the opinion that the value of such functions as this of to-night consists not only in the ceremonial pageant in which we delight to take part, but in the fact of our being within the presence, as it were within the atmosphere, of a distant people, rep resented by their Prince and future King ; that people is brought nearer to us, and we are incited, if so be that hitherto we have known little of that distant coun try, but are acquiring information about it. This evening will have been not in vain for us if it shall become the means of stimulating us to widen our knowledge of that country. It is a most interesting country and people, a people with a history, a people with a literature, and a people that has for centuries waged a great struggle for power and independence, a people that has been dashed to the earth and has risen up again in its might and rebuilt its national edifice. It is a people interesting in its resources, in its customs, and in many peculiar but humane provisions of its legislative code. This people is looming up on our horizon. We take pride in receiving the Prince of Siam to-night, and we take pride, I hope, in receiving the people of Siam, that pride of humanity which may have been distant from us, which may have been an unknown and unrealized proof of our common human ity ; and so we take pride in this function to-night, and that people comes nearer to our understanding. Gentlemen of the Lotos Club, one has recently coined the term neophobia to express that contempt of stran gers, that aversion to things foreign and to people that are foreign which is the characteristic of primeval man. 114 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB primitive and uncivilized man. Nothing is more char acteristic of the lack of civilization than neophobia, aversion to what is alien and a contempt of it, and this neophobia lingers on into the midst of civilization. Such meetings as this which the Lotos Club has ar ranged, if I am to speak from an ethical point of view to-night, if I am to emphasize that note, such meetings as this have more than a ceremonial significance if they contribute to conquer the instinct of neophobia in our hearts, if we go from here to-night with a more cordial appreciation of what is foreign, with a desire to under stand, to sympathize with a people alien in race, in culture, in civilization, and yet essentially one with us and part of the great brotherhood of mankind. HENRY D. ESTABROOK AT THE DINNEE TO THE CROWN PEINCE OF SIAM, OCTOBEE 25, 1902 IF the newspapers report correctly, our royal guest is fast modifying his impressions of New York, and I am quite sure that the charming personality of His Royal Highness (who, if he ever becomes a citizen of the United States, I hope will change his name, for his friends sake) I say that the charming personality of the Prince is fast modifying some of New York s pre conceived notions of Siam. I doubt if many New York ers ever had any exact trustworthy information of Siam. They had heard of it, to be sure, just as they had heard of Chicago and the Punjab. But for years all of our knowledge of Siam came through Mr. Bar- num. From this dubious testimony it was vaguely inferred that, owing to circumstances over which they apparently had no control, the people of Siam traveled in pairs. The primary purpose of this dinner is, of course, to do honor to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Siam ; but one of its objects, I apprehend, is to give him another snap-shot at an American banquet. So, lest by any peradventure or accident it should be omitted from to-night s program, I hasten to offer a toast without which no banquet in this country, cer- 115 116 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB tainly no stag banquet, would be considered orthodox. It was my first intention to propose the stereotyped toast to the absent sweetheart, but on second thought I concluded to make it more comprehensive The Ladies. The word " sweetheart" in the Siamese grammar may rank as a collective noun. If in this country it has a more limited signification, it is due perhaps to a dif ference in our laws rather than to a difference in our disposition. So let it be that good old orthodox toast, The Ladies." I ought to explain to our guest, perhaps, that far more important than our constitution, by-laws, legisla tion, or what-not, is this toast of ours to the ladies. We would no more conclude one of our feasts of reason and flows of soul without a toast to the ladies than we would sit down to our Spartan broth and such-like exotics without uttering a silent grace. For we hold, in com mon with all good people, that while God rules the uni verse, his vicegerent on this earth is woman. Now some folks, living, perhaps, in Greenland s icy moun tains or Boston s colder strand, might imagine that a theme so constantly recurring, a theme with so many da capos, as it were, would become commonplace and hackneyed ; but that simply shows that some folks have never studied the subject and its kaleidoscopic possi bilities. A man in love with only one woman can make life a burden to his friends by forever toasting his charmer s charms, whereas there are members of this club, maybe, in love with twenty women, whose hearts are veritable kodaks loaded to the muzzle, requiring only the flash-light of a pair of eyes to produce an im pression and make them garrulous as magpies. The HENRY D. ESTABROOK 117 theme is perennial ; age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety. I remember years agone, when I used to live in Omaha, how Miss Phoebe Cousins and her emancipated cohorts swooped down on Nebraska to wrest from tyrant man the elective franchise. I was callow then, and challenged the gentle maiden to a joint debate, not, I assured her, for the mere purpose of measuring swords, for, unlike Darius Green, I was willing to con cede The bluebird and Phoebe Are smarter n we be, but because a hand-to-hand debate conducted according to Socratic methods might lead all parties concerned to a more amicable understanding. She wrote declining the distinguished honor, and closed her letter by asking me if I believed in taxation without representation. Surely not. But is it true that the women of America have not been represented in the legislation of this country? I did not think so then, nor do I think so now; for it seems to me that the mother who pushes back the hair from the forehead of her little boy, when standing at her knee he learns from mother lips his first lessons in chivalry and honor; the sister who stays with fond persuasive hand the wayward course of a wayward brother; the sweetheart who gazes into her lover s eyes, her own eyes glistening and humid in their tenderness and trust; the wife who knows and shares her hus band s cares and makes his home a haven of escape from all of them these, and such as these, send forth not simply a representative but a champion, who rather 118 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB than see their rights invaded or a single prerogative impugned would lose his right arm or perish on the battle-field. It is not that we would deny to woman the right to vote, the right to govern; but we would spare her the dangers and temptations and burdens which the right involves. And yet, God help us, woman I know will some day vote, and you and I no doubt will sanction it. Indeed, I have long since made up my mind that when a ma jority of the women themselves demand the ballot, they shall have it for aught of me ; not because my apprehen sions would thereby be allayed, but because I would trust to their intuition of what is right rather than to my own fears of what is wrong. Ah me! Adam lay down and slept, when from his side A woman in her matchless beauty rose ; Trembling and in love, he called that woman bride, And his first sleep became his last repose. Gentlemen, drink to the sweetest cause of man s in somnia ! JOSEPH I. C. CLAEKE AT THE SUPPEE TO EDWAED H. SOTHEEN, FEBEUAEY 21, 1903 WE have every reason to be proud of our great city which adds a thousand inhabitants to its population every week in the year, and where every three days a new musical comedy opens up on Broad way. Of course, if this could go on indefinitely, the drama in New York would in a little while not be above the level of a minstrel show. It was not, however, al ways so, and, Heaven helping, it will not always be so ; but now, when frivolity reigns, we cannot help admir ing the courage and grit of the man who plans and realizes a splendid, a worthy production of Hamlet, and this, too, when twelve musical comedies are playing on Broadway and monopolizing the theatres. It is to Mr. Sothern we owe this tribute of admiration. In considering such a man, it is well to go back to his origin. He comes honestly by his artistic enthusiasm. Mr. Sothern was born into the dramatic profession. It may be said that he came into the world with the theatrical silver spoon in his mouth. He inherited grace, voice, mimetic power, and brains from his dis tinguished father. But in the theatrical world, perhaps more than in any other realm of art, a stern rule pro vides that every man must be his own man. He may 119 120 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB not be his father s son simply, and thus succeed in the dramatic profession. That he is his father s son may help him because of the genius he has inherited, but it is to his own efforts in applying it that the success he attains is due. It is the great basic condition of the actor that he is obliged to win in his own person all the success he may have each man for himself. You have read the name of David Garrick and learned perchance where and how he made the Third Richard wonderful. You know perhaps how splendid were the lightning flashes by which Edmund Kean read Shakespeare. You have had experience of the eery brilliance of Henry Irving each a differing star in the firmament of art. And so Mr. Sothern is laboriously earning his own place on the higher levels of the drama. To those who have followed the career of Mr. Sothern, nothing has been more remarkable than his steady growth as an actor and artist. We were familiar with the light comedian Mr. Sothern ; we were familiar with the romantic actor Mr. Sothern; but it is only within the last few years that we have been convinced that we knew the tragedian Mr. Sothern. What is it that makes the tragedian? In essentials, it is the same in all ages : the power to interpret on the stage the nobler, deeper emotions of human life, as por trayed in the highest reaches of the drama. Outwardly, and off the stage, the tragedian changes with the times. In the time of the respected father of Mr. Sothern, a piece was played in which an unsuccessful but am bitious actor was burlesqued; it was called "The Crushed Tragedian." The title-role was sustained by Mr. Sothern s father, and we saw a strange weird per- JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE 121 son, with long black hair, shabby black clothes, and a constant theatrical pose ; and that made him pass for a tragedian. Nowadays, the man who plays tragedy is a man in a dress-suit, who comes to a banquet. Accord ing to the pictures of him in the old days, he was long haired ; now his locks are trimmed pretty close. In our day the actor no longer has a supper of red herring, but dines elegantly at the most modern hotel, or has his own stately home instead of living in the back room of a lodging-house; and so the player to-day is a modern man who depicts on the stage the characters, the expres sions, and thoughts of the dramatic author, as he him self interprets them. And what is termed naturalness replaces much that was traditionally stilted and unreal. The modern actor must be a modern man who may be majestic without being inflated. At his best, at his highest, he plays tragedy, and if his merit sustains him, he reaches the highest round of the ladder. It is to that point that Mr. Sothern has climbed. The actor is right in thinking that "Hamlet" stands at the summit of theatric art, but we know also that there are Hamlets and Hamlets. We are certain of one thing, that the Hamlet of Mr. Sothern of 1903 is ten years in advance of the Hamlet of Mr. Sothern of 1899. It is plain to me, that is, from my own personal point of view, that Mr. Sothern s growth in his art and profession has been enormous within the last few years. I presume it dates from the time when he took his courage in his hand and said: "I will play Hamlet." You cannot well cross the ocean until you have embarked upon it ; you cannot sail your ship by standing on the shore; and therefore, when Mr. Sothern embarked upon the 122 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB great ocean of the character of Hamlet, he gradually and surely discerned the immensity of the character and the greatness of the play in a manner that never reached him before ; and so he actually achieved results that I am certain he never dreamed of when he started. And it is all so splendidly worth while. ELIHU BOOT (SECRETARY OF WAR) AT THE DINNEK IN HIS HONOK, MAY 9, 1903 I AM deeply sensitive, I could not be otherwise than deeply affected, in receiving this accolade of honor conferred by being the guest of the Lotos Club. The Chinese proverb says : "What is the use of being a man darin of two tails if it is not known in one s native village?" I thank you for the kind expressions which the personal friendship of President Lawrence has col ored so highly and so agreeably in your greeting to me. I regret my own incapacity fittingly to respond to the honor which you confer upon me. I feel myself to be in the position of the man who was asked, "Is your wife entertaining this winter?" and who answered, "Not very. I am in the safest possible position, but the worst pos sible position, for originality to-night, because I am here, and speaking. The only way in which any one to-day can secure credit for originality is by being somewhere else and letting the gentlemen of the press, out of their own fertile imaginations, originate his remarks. I have said that the only way a man can be really original is to be silent, or to allow the gentlemen of the press to originate his remarks. We have had some signal 123 124 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB illustrations of that in a statement purporting to come from the President of the United States, who had just been most royally entertained in St. Louis. A comfort ing and original genius of the press says, "The Presi dent, considering sternly for a moment, said: You may print from me the fact that I had nothing to eat in St. Louis/ " I ask you what genius could ever have originated that statement outside of the press. How could any man just coming from his entertainer s house ever have conceived such a supreme effort of originality as the statement that he had had nothing to eat. A few days ago another genius put into the mouth of General Sir Baden-Powell, the distinguished English cavalry officer who had been here looking at the move ments of our cavalry, the statement that they did n t amount to much anyway, that they were overfed. When a man trusts to himself and really adventures upon ob servations which he really makes, he is certain to be bald and uninteresting. Your president has expressed the hope that I enjoy the relaxation and the hilarity of this occasion. I as sure you that in about ten or fifteen minutes I shall begin to enjoy it. I have been so far removed from my old friends in New York for the past four years, that it seems to me as if I were coming back from a great dis tance, after a long period of absence. It has not been an ordinary exile. It has so happened that the duties to which your president has referred in too complimen tary terms have been so engrossing in their character, have involved dealing with questions so entirely differ ent from those which occupied the community in which I had lived for so many years, that not merely has my ELIHU ROOT 125 body been absent, but my mind and heart and soul have been engaged in the isles of the sea. The ordinary exile who travels away from home ever finds his affection and his thoughts harking back to those he has left. For four years past not only my body but my mind have been removed to distant fields and in different occupa tions, so that in coming back to New York it seems to me as if I had been away for an age in another world, and it seems strange to me to find you all still so young. To find that you still have the same bright and cheerful faces, no more wrinkles, no more gray hairs, no fewer hairs, no less enthusiasm, and youth, and capacity for enjoyment, than when a hundred years ago I met you. It has produced a curious effect upon me, this coming back ; the break, the complete break, has led to my mem ory going back and joining itself, not to the city and the men as they were four years ago, but going back to the early scenes of my life here. As I come back to our streets, I think of the scenes and the life of nearly forty years ago, when the first deep impressions of the lad coming fresh from the country were made. Your invitation called up most vividly to my mind a night passed in the old Lotos Club in Irving Place, when John Brougham held the center of the stage, and day light came under the spell of that delightful master of humor and good fellowship. I remember the days when the stages in winter ran on runners on Broadway, and when the Fifth Avenue stages coming from Fulton Street had their northerly terminus at the Croton Cottage, a little road-house at Forty-first Street, where Frederick Vanderbilt s house stands now; when the Madison Avenue stages ran to 126 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the Ultima Thule of Forty-second Street; when Pfaff s flourished on Broadway; when Wallack s Theater was the most northerly place of amusement in the city; when New York was a little provincial town of but seven hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants ; and it requires an effort for me to bring myself down from those distant days, from the days when the first thing I asked was how to get to Beecher s church, and was told to cross Fulton Ferry and follow the crowd, and, following it, found that prince, that great exponent of blood and brain in religion. What a wonderful city it is, whose appearance and whose present activity join on to those early recollec tions ! What a good old town it is ! Men may abuse it ; many hard things are said about it ; it has many faults ; but, after all, it closes within its limits the best of all there is, here or anywhere on earth, to those of us who believe that the hope of the world lies in the great pro cess of liberty which is lifting up to participation, in telligent and effective participation in government, the entire body of the people, leaving no class below; and those who do not believe that need hard experience for their education. Into this gateway of the western world have come since the census of 1850, between the census of 1850 and that of 1900, more than seventeen millions of people from across the water. Here the men of the Old World are received and taught the first lessons of citizenship, taught to stand erect in the in dependence of manhood, with no superior. The first results of the lesson are not lovely or agreeable, the first results of the lesson are crude and harsh and disagree able, but it is a necessary lesson for the men who are ELIHU ROOT 127 to be self-governing and country-governing. Here the men of the Old World are taught first that liberty means not license, but ordered liberty and subordina tion to law. The lesson is not easily learned. The idea of freedom in its first dawning in the human mind means freedom from all limitations, and the men who grasp it first beat against the bars of order and law. But the burden is upon this city, at once, to teach the undisciplined masses of mankind who seek the freedom of the West the double lesson of independence and lib erty, but of liberty restrained and ordered by law and justice. Let the denizens of the cities and quiet fields, who have the ordering of their own lives with the les sons of free forefathers to guide them, find fault with the city of New York ; but let them remember that the city of New York is doing the rough work of civiliza tion, making over the raw material of citizenship, and standing in the post of difficulty, of hardship, and of disagreeable duty in the preparation of mankind for that citizenship upon which alone can permanently rest the advance of mankind along the pathway of civili zation. Dear old New York, absence has made me love her but the more, criticism makes me appreciate her merits but the more, and detraction makes me but the prouder of being her citizen. And when I come in for a day or two, when I come here and see about me the faces of the old friends with whom I have had so many good times, with whom and against whom I have fought so often, from whom I have received so many kindnesses, I want to come home. I feel like the young lady from Chicago who went to the new hotel, and wrote back to 128 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB her friend that the new bath-room was so fascinating that she should hardly wait until Saturday night. Coming from outside the city and seeing its wonder ful advance, and how the municipal surgery is opera ting for appendicitis, taking out the bowels of the city, the kidneys and the liver, for underground transit, for new Pennsylvania tunnels and stations; how even the New York Central has become conscious of the posses sion of a liver which needs excavation; how upon the surface our city is growing great and beautiful I feel bound to say that the country, the great country with whose prosperity our city must rise or fall, which finds its flower and fruit here, keeps pace with the metropolis. I doubt if there has ever been a lustrum in which any people have made such progress as the people of the United States have made in the past five years. When we were boys at Peekskill and elsewhere, there was no higher test of capacity than a knowledge of geography ; think how the people of the United States have been learning geography in the last five years ; how the hori zon of the American boy has been pushed back; five years ago, who knew where the Philippines were ; who knew what was the road from the sea to Peking; who knew much about the West Indies? Five years ago, how much did we know about the politics of the world that centered about the eastern question? We have passed through an era of isolation since the days when James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were trained diplomats concerned in the affairs of civilization. We have passed into another era, in which the people of the United States have taught a lesson to every power in Christendom. The knowledge, the topics of discussion, ELIHU ROOT 129 the educational influence to be found among our people, have suddenly, like the crystals shooting out upon the surface of the water at the point of freezing, instantly spread out from our own domestic home af fairs into a wide and general observation and under standing of the affairs of all mankind. The knowledge and the interest of the American people have broad ened and taken in the whole world. The possession and the use of power are strengthen ing the fiber and increasing the capacity of our people. The possession of money has not yet, and I have faith to believe that in the future it will not have, emasculated the American people or brought degeneracy in its wake, for the possession of money which has resulted from our wonderful prosperity is the possession of money by all the people, the length and breadth of the land. Never in this world has so much money been used for the hap piness and comfort of so many people as is being used in the United States to-day. Never in the world have there been so many people so free from the harsh re straints of poverty, so many people able to furnish luxuries and comforts to their families, so many people able to educate their children, so many people able to perform the duties of good citizenship, and secure in the comfort and security of prosperous lives, as to-day. Where money is most greatly concentrated, we see but the efflorescence of wealth, in the four-in-hand parade, the red devils that shoot about the country, in the steam-yachts which carry our millionaires. But under lying it all is the greatest expenditure of money for all good and great causes that the world has ever seen. Underlying it all is that benevolence, that interest in 130 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB education, that love for humanity, that willingness to labor and to spend, and to spend without limit, for the elevation of mankind, and the alleviation of suffering, in which the city of New York easily leads the world. I feel that in coming back to my home I shall come back to a city which has kept up in the march of prog ress in the forefront of a nation ever progressing ; and I feel like saying to-night in this festal company : Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow, and to-morrow, and still to-morrow, and for unending years, the great city which is our home and the great country that we love will not die, but live and do their work for the elevation of mankind and the progress of civilization, beyond the dreams of prophets and the hopes of phi lanthropists. SIMEON FOED AT THE DINNEK TO ELIHU BOOT, MAY 9, 1903 THE chairman made a mistake in his pronunciation of golf. What he ought to have said was "guff." The distinguished guest has stated that after an ab sence of four years he returns to New York and finds among his friends no new gray hairs and no new wrinkles. I challenge the latter statement. Now you all recollect that at one period I delivered quite a num ber of eulogies and panegyrics in this club upon dis tinguished guests. As a eulogizer and panegyricker and all-round taffy promulgator, I was in a class by myself. But my conscience got all calloused and my flowers of rhetoric got a little frost-bitten, and my stock of honeyed flattery got a little shop-worn and fly-blown, and the president laid me on the shelf for a while to recuperate. But now I am entirely recuperated and ready to declare, with a fine assumption of truthfulness, that the guest of the evening is the real thing, and the greatest ever, whether I believe it or not. I am all ready now, Mr. President, to throw bouquets with either an in-curve or an out-shoot, at any distinguished guest, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of sobriety. It must be an awful thing to lead such a life as to 131 132 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB incur one of these complimentary banquets. That is the one thing that always prevented me from amount ing to anything. Sometimes I have thought that I would get to work and become a great and distin guished citizen, and serve my country at my country s call at an inadequate salary, or earn undying fame in any other underhand way. But then the horrible thought would flash across me, that the Lotos Club would track me to my lair and drag me to one of these complimentary banquets. And when I think of having to sit up there in the midst of the twelve apostles, try ing to look the part, and have President Lawrence fix me with his glittering eye and smear me over, as a boa- constrictor does his prey before he swallows it, it makes me break out into a cold sweat. Now Chester Lord told me that he wanted me to make a speech for I do not propose to perjure myself. He said the proper thing for me to do was to talk about war. But I don t know anything about war, any more than the Secretary does. I was born too soon for the Spanish War, thank God. Like many of our generals, I can speak about war only from hearsay. The nearest I ever got to war was when I fought, bled, and died for seven long years in the National Guard, thereby relieving myself from the possibility of serving a week every year on the jury, and I calculate that if I live to the ripe age of 350, I shall have gained by the operation. But when I joined I was in the first flush of early youth, about the only flush I ever drew to and filled, and I did not look at things in the cold, cynical way that I do now. In the first place I joined under a misapprehension; I was given to understand SIMEON FORD 133 that I should right away acquire a military carriage. I had always had a sort of hankering after a carriage, and when I got into the awkward squad and began to acquire my carriage, my superfluous flesh and my en thusiasm melted right away. Touching my toes with the tips of my fingers without bending my knees was not only repulsive to my proud and haughty spirit and severe upon my suspenders, but proved to be a physical impossibility, owing. to my peculiar, lofty, fire-proof construction. It did not comport, either, with my pre viously conceived notions of a military career. I had an idea that I should start right in behind a band of music, prancing along, and that when arrayed in uni form I should be a dream of military pomp and splen dor, and that beautiful young ladies would strew flowers in my pathway. This idea proved to be er roneous; when arrayed in my uniform I was a sight, and beautiful young ladies fled swiftly at my approach. But it was as a riot-queller that I gained my greatest fame. I think, perhaps, that my warlike and ferocious appearance had something to do with my success in this line. I was not as fleshy then as I am now, and when arrayed in my shad-bellied coat and my inverted flower pot hat with a blue sausage on the top of it, I was a sight calculated to freeze the blood. I remember, when I was up at Hornellsville quelling a riot, that rude burly rioters used to gaze on me when I was on guard, and as they gazed at me they came to realize that grim- visaged war with all its horrors was in their midst. "Were they to attempt to monkey with me, I was liable at any moment to let loose the dogs of war. But I never did; and I always was relieved when they went 134 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB away and left me unmolested, because I was always fastidious about imbruing my hands in gore. I always considered it an untidy habit. Now I was not one of those who criticized the ad ministration during the late war. A great many people took so much time finding fault with the administration that they forgot all the glory. We run up against just such people as that in the hotel business. As long as everything goes along nicely they, maintain a discreet silence, but let them run up against an egg which has passed its prime, or a chicken which has arrived at the age of consent, and right away their lamentations fill the air. Now, the only criticism I could make of our distinguished guest s predecessor was that he did not ask any of the hotel men to go to the front. Of course it is not absolutely necessary to ask a hotel man to go to the front, because all a hotel man has to do is to touch a button, and the front comes to him. But, if a few of us hotel men had been asked to go down to Cuba, do you suppose that any of those boys would have lacked for food? Every private would have been sup plied with lobster a la Newburg, and apple-dumpling with plenty of hard sauce. Yes, sir, and the hotel men would have stood up under fire; we are accustomed to be stood up all the time. JOSEPH C. HENDEIX AT THE DINNER TO ELIHU BOOT, MAY 9, 1903 THE organizing ability of Secretary Root is some thing we all take great pride in. I have recently had a little vacation down in the Orient, and I have seen, through all the countries which I have visited, a state of preparedness in the matter of their army, and their equipment for war. From the placid harbor of Villefranche I saw the French soldiery being drilled; I saw them traveling miles upon miles, under severe stress of drill, under heavy equipment, to harden them and give them vigor, and teach them to lead the stren uous life. I saw that the Emperor of Germany was sending each year representatives of his army to study and make to him written reports ; and I have never seen an army, nor have I ever seen soldiers, who presented such a front for war as were gathered by the Sultan of Turkey at the feast of Bairam on what is known as the Salamlik, on which occasion he went to a mosque which is about as near as the corner of Forty-sixth Street, to say his prayers, with an escort of thirty thousand troops. These men were of the savage type, Nubians, Syrians, Ethiopians, and Albanians, and they all had fight in their front and a thirst for loot and blood in their very expression. All over Europe one is im- 135 136 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB pressed with the sense of preparedness for war ; we are three thousand miles across the ocean ; we feel our isola tion, and we glory in it, but perhaps we have been neglectful of the fact that we are becoming more inti mately connected all the time with the affairs of the world, and no one knows what strange turn things may take when we might be called upon to show an ability to take care of the name and the fame of the United States of America, And therefore it is a pleasant thing to all of us as citizens, peace-loving, home-loving burgh ers, to feel that a Secretary of War has come upon the scene who has the capacity to take hold of the army establishment and put it into modern and efficient trim. Reference has been made to the very remarkable state of prosperity in our country, and all of us feel the elixir of it in our blood; the fine wine of it kindles in our brain and warms our heart ; but may it not be the subject of analysis ; is it not possible for us as ordinary students of human affairs to look at it in the cold light of scientific fact? There is an old saying, and it has come into the economic literature of Great Britain, that when America puts on her old clothes and her old shoes, she lays the world under tribute. Preceding this period of great prosperity, I think it will be admitted by all of you that there was a period when things were vastly different, and we left a great many things undone which were pressing to be done ; but the times were not ripe, and we did n t feel like it, and it is characteristic of our country that we are always on the mountain-tops of prosperity or in the depths of despair. At that period we were in the depths of despair, and out of it we have slowly wound like one of those Greek proces- JOSEPH C. HENDRIX 137 sions winding up the mountain-side from the valley below, and we have come up to the mountain of pros perity and we have gone on steadily with the sun shin ing in our faces, the balmy air about us, the joy of the song of success all about us, and we feel to-day that we are the conquerors of the earth. It is in our blood al ways to exalt ourselves, but let us take into considera tion the fact that we have been forcing into four or five years the normal business of ten or twelve years, that we have gone through a period of tremendous excite ment, that we have been the most highly stimulated country that ever was known on the face of the earth. We have not only been stimulated by a high protective tariff, one of the very highest known in history, but we have been stimulated by the manufacture of a great amount of additional money which has been placed in circulation all over the country, not only the good hard money that comes out of the soil, not only the magnifi cent product of the gold-mines of the West, added to by the rich fruition of the discoveries in the Klondike, but by one of the most brilliant operations of modern his tory, by which we have added about a hundred millions to our money in circulation, based not only upon the faith of the Government, but also on the assets of the national banks. These are some of the influences that have come into our blood, and into our national life, and warmed us like a brandy cocktail helped out by an injection of cocaine, and made us feel that we are to-day the most magnificent nation on the face of the earth. Let any one go into Egypt to-day and see what the English government is doing there ; let him stand on the banks of that wondrous river Nile and calculate the 138 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB immensity of the product of that country when the full effect of the engineering project which the English peo ple have executed at the Assuan dam gets into opera tion. This is a tremendous world; we are a great producing people. We pride ourselves upon the fact that we are the granary of the world. We are, and so may we remain. But the world is active ; cheap labor is working everywhere; the Nile is being cultivated in little patches hardly big enough for a man to take a fair turn around before breakfast in. Granaries are being established on the mountain-sides of Syria, the great valleys of the Lebanon, and the crops being pro duced there are something which astonishes a man who has never seen them before. And all this leads me simply to say that there is a time in the affairs of nations, when in the height of prosperity, when the sky looks all bright, when the sunshine touches every bit of the landscape before us, when hard common sense and prudence should impel the public administration to have a care for the mor row ; and no event of the past years has to my humble judgment been more significant than the fact that the organizing talent of the city of New York has happened to be in the office of the Secretary of War, and that he has brushed out the cobwebs and thrown into the dust- heap the obsolete customs and methods, and put that one strong arm of the American Government into proper place. There is still more to be done, and I trust that before this administration closes its career, as a man who believes in Democratic philosophy, and who voted twice with great satisfaction for President Mc- Kinley, I feel that as we go along from manhood to old JOSEPH C. HENDRIX 139 age, we of this generation, those of us who have lived in this time, will more and more honor that great name and feel that in the long line of Presidents that have come down to us, strong individuals, great men, fit for great occasions, there was no man better suited to his time or who could respond with more delicacy to the American sentiment, who could act with more common sense, who could conduct his administration with more placidity and with more success for the American peo ple, than William McKinley. SIR CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG (CHINESE MINISTER) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOE, NOVEMBER 28, 1903 extraordinarily good judgment of the executive JL committee of this club has again been shown in selecting for this evening s entertainment this auspi cious day, the sixty-eighth anniversary of the birthday of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager of China. Gen tlemen, I sincerely consider this as a great honor. Such honor I believe it is your custom to reserve to those who have achieved something in the realms of letters, of art, of science, of finance, or politics. I am at a loss to know what I have done to merit this special dis tinction. Shakespeare says, "Some have greatness thrust upon them. My case, I suppose, is an instance of this. My attendance at this dinner is not entirely free from misgivings. I have heard before of the native tribe of Lotos-eaters, and the fate of Ulysses s com- panions-in-arms who happened to fall among them is well known. It is said that those who partook of the luxuries which the Lotos-eaters had to offer, forgot their own native country, and lost all desire to return to their homes. The modern Lotos-eater has certainly succeeded in keeping up the good reputation of his remote ancestors, in this delightful entertainment. I wonder if this evening s enjoyment will have upon me 140 SIR CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG 141 the same effect as the companions of Ulysses experi enced in their journey ings. There can be nothing more clearly showing the natural instinct of the Lotos- eaters than the removal of their homes from northern Africa to the eastern part of the United States. The sands of the Libyan Desert are anything but congenial to their natures. Only the surroundings of such a city as New York are able to fulfil and to satisfy the re quirements of their refined taste and cultivated minds. Having become a Lotos-eater myself, I am now ex pected to give a more satisfactory answer to the ques tion which I have been asked times without number: * How do you like this country ? Why should I not like this country ? All my past ex perience of it has been of the most pleasant kind. It was in this country that I spent my boyhood. I remem ber very well my school-days spent in a State of New England. What a contrast between those and what we have been accustomed to in China. School life in China means a steady grind. There is no rest from day to day, from month to month, always study, and no play. When I came to this country, it did not take me many days to find out that America had an entirely different standard of scholarship. Accordingly I entered with enthusiasm into the sports which the American boy loves the most, with the result that I carried back to China with me, after seven years of conscientious study at the best school in New England, a little Latin, less Greek, but a great deal of base-ball lore. Not many years elapsed before I had another opportunity to come to the United States. This time it was to join the Im perial Legation in Washington as an attache. While a 342 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB student, I had had the proud privilege of shaking hands with President Grant, and at this time I had the honor of shaking hands with the first Democratic President of the present generation. It is supposed that the chief duties of a diplomat are to uphold the honor of his country abroad. In this re gard I did my humble part. I found it was very pleas ant to attend, day after day, teas, dinners, and other official receptions of that nature ; but I must confess it was rather wearing on the digestive organs, as well as on my clothes. My first official sojourn in this country seemed to have been a sort of preparation for the sec ond, my present one. I was pleased beyond measure a year ago when I received the appointment as His Im perial Majesty s Envoy to the United States. It would seem as if my wishes in this direction had been con sulted. The reception that I have met with since my arrival in this present capacity has made me feel that I have come among old friends. It will be my highest ambition, as well as my bounden duty, to do all I can to create always a good feeling and a better relation be tween the country of my birth and the country of my bringing up. It is hardly possible to conceive how two countries could be better situated, geographically or numerically, to accommodate the welfare of each other, than China and the United States. The waters of the same ocean wash the shores of both ; steamers ply regularly between their principal seaports ; direct telegraphic communica tion across the intervening depths of the Pacific is now an accomplished fact; the tendency of every day s hap penings seems to draw the two countries into closer SIR CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG 143 relation. Moreover, the industrial development of the United States has reached a point where an outlet for its products and manufactures is a pressing necessity. What country can furnish a better market than China ? On the other hand, the opening of China presents un told opportunities. What country is better situated than the United States to improve this opportunity ? I should like to say, gentlemen, China and the United States should become more helpful to each other ; and I should like to help in working out the manifest destiny of both, and securing the greatest happiness to the peo ple of the two countries. THOMAS E. SLICEE AT THE DINNEE TO SIE CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG, NOVEMBEE 28, 1903 I SUPPOSE that ordinarily a Christian minister would have to explain himself to a Chinese minister but for the fact that the guest of the evening has had the New England training referred to, and that I be long to a denomination of Christians that never sent a missionary to China. We did send a man to Japan at the request of the Japanese people in the high circles of Tokio. They asked to have a Harvard man sent over upon a mission of sympathetic inquiry as to the resem blances between liberal Christianity and Buddhism and Shintoism, and a few other assorted religions; but he insisted that he should not be called a missionary " ; so in the meeting which dismissed him from this country upon his errand, he was called a Minister Extraordi nary from the Kingdom of Heaven to the Empire of Japan. And that is very much my position now with regard to the guest of the evening. I never have been able to worry myself into any excitement about the paganism of China. It is impossible for me. I am able to believe that whatever the missionary to China might do, he had nothing to offer the Chinamen on the score of ethics, and nothing in the essential and large sense of the classics, or of literature. I have no doubt a great 144 THOMAS R. SLICER 145 deal of good work has been done ; but I am rather glad this evening that I belong to a denomination which has never sent a missionary to China. I was struck with the recital which the guest of the evening made of his promotion from one stage of service of the empire to another; he was sent to an American school. Did you ever hear of one of our diplomats being sent to China, to Korea, or to Japan, or anywhere else where he might possibly have to serve afterward ? Has it ever dawned on our people that consular service and diplomatic service might be a profession for which a man should be trained from the beginning in the very rudiments of learning, by contact with the people that he shall serve? We have not reached, sir, the distinc tion of your country in understanding that the service of government is also a high service for any human being, and requires a great preparation, an understand ing which has fallen to the Oriental mind through the wisdom of your people. The usual course in this coun try when a man wants anything, is that he goes and asks for it, without any particular training; and the more readily he asks, the greater the area of his ignorance, as a rule. When I was signing my humble name to these copies of this most ingenious menu, which reflects such credit on Secretary Lord that it almost seems like an act of divine providence to come to the Lotos Club, I said to myself, "What could be more Celestial ? What could adorn more the idea of the entertainment of the guest of the evening than to have these twenty odd copies of the menu given out to the world with the signature of the distinguished guest of the evening, flanked by the 146 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB names of General Woodford and Senator McCarren, Lieutenant-Governor Woodruff and a Unitarian minis ter, to keep the peace between them? It seems to me a most charming and auspicious thing to be in that frame with the rest of them, when they come to be framed and hung up in the clubs to which they shall go. I should like to tell one of your guests, Mr. Henry W. Lucy, a story. Mr. Lucy speaks the American dia lect so perfectly that he will not mind if I speak the original English to which he is somewhat accustomed. It was suggested to me, and perhaps the Minister from China will pardon this digression, for it has nothing in the world to do with him, if I say to Mr. Lucy that the difference between American humor and the English humor, for which you had no answer ready, if I under stand you, is well illustrated by an incident that oc curred in Chicago things do occur in Chicago besides the packing business. A distinguished English actress and her husband were dining at table with a friend of mine, and this Englishman you will pardon my revert ing to the original English tongue said to my friend : "We are going to Leavenworth to-day; is there any thing in Leavenworth that we ought to see f And my friend said: "Well, there is a military post there, and there is quite a picturesque figure there also, General Pope, who is commandant there." Said the English man: "Yes, I think I remember the name Pope in the Civil War." "Yes," replied my friend, "he is the one who provoked from General Lee the only facetious re mark supposed to have ever been used by him in the war." Said the Englishman: "Yes, a fine man, Lee; THOMAS R. SLICER 147 we know about Lee." My friend continued: "When General Pope took command of the Army of the Poto mac, General Lee was shown the first order of General Pope, who had succeeded General McClellan. He read at the top of it, Headquarters in the Saddle, which, as you remember, was a slightly satirical thrust toward the somewhat staid movements of the former commander. General Lee said: Headquarters in the Saddle ; this is the first instance in history of a man having his head quarters where his hindquarters ought to be. " Well, what do you suppose my English friend said when that was referred to by the American as illustrat ing the difference between English and American humor ? MR. LUCY : I give it up. MR. SLICER: Well, the Englishman said: "Yes, and a very pretty compliment, too, was n t it?" Now, I un derstand that ; I understand the process, its psychology. It is inconceivable in the mind of a gentleman of the English nation that any officer should speak ill of an other officer, and having heard the name of the distin guished General Lee, one of the greatest men of the Civil War, if not the greatest general in that conflict ; I say, having heard the name of this distinguished sol dier, he had already made up his mind that whatever he said was complimentary, and he did not hear the conclusion. He did not hear the facetious remark; he could not conceive of anything facetious that should not be complimentary, and nobody knows how perfectly true that is of the English people better than Mr. Lucy himself, who enlivens the pages of Punch with jokes that are carefully explained in the context. 148 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Now, after this digression, Your Excellency, may I say a serious word about what you can do for us ? Ref erence has been made to China and America as mutu ally interested for the world s good. "We are so far apart that we meet coming around opposite curves ; so far apart in our conception of civilization and tradi tions. "We have n t much background, but we are splendid on coming forward. Of course, we seem new to you, and crass, and rude, and, I presume, were you in your own land, you would not be able to forbear the thought that we are barbarians, after the manner of the Greeks of other days ; and in the splendid achievements of your literature, and the consistent habit of your thought, we, no doubt, seem a little crude and new. Of course, there is one point in which we resemble your own progress. Returning to the reminiscences of the ball field on which you met some of our budding statesmen at Andover, I want to say to you, sir, that many a man among us has risen to distinction through the "high ball and the bat. There is a steady progression up ward through those lines. But there is one thing I would add: if you have leisure, start a class of ethics in Washington, teach the Confucian ethics and the laws of Mencius to that kalei doscopic assembly we call our Congress ; you might do a service very far-reaching, more far-reaching than even your genius can conceive. There is in the Confucian ethics and the laws of Mencius, the splendid self-ab negation of Buddhism, the splendid reverence that Shintoism has taught for the ancestor which it worships and which it conceives for the past, and I wish that you THOMAS R. SLICER 149 would get up a Sunday-school class, even a kinder garten, of the two houses of Congress ; repeat to them a few precepts daily, with the privilege on their part of morning prayer afterward. I believe, sir, that you would do a service to the whole nation. STEWART L. WOODFORD AT THE DINNER TO SIR CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG, NOVEMBER 28, 1903 WHEN it was my privilege to represent this Gov ernment at Madrid, in the years 1897 and 1898, I found that the Minister from China to the United States was also accredited to the Court of Spain, and my first meeting with His Excellency s predecessor, Wu Ting Fang, was as Minister from China at Madrid. My introduction to China was thus coincident with my in troduction to the diplomatic service. A year ago I was permitted to spend my summer in the Orient, and since then I have thought much and often of the great fact that all large immigrations of races seem for the last six thousand years to have been continuously westward. When those who dwelt here in northern America, whoever they were, were lost in the savagery of the American continent and forest, China stood already in the forefront of the then developed intellectual supremacy and civilization of the world. It seems to have begun somewhere in Korea or China, and to have moved by progressive steps westward. That was the experience of Babylon, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Borne, France, Germany, The Netherlands, and Great Britain. Across the sea and across the continent, ever 150 STEWART L. WOODFORD 151 westward, moved the armies of civilization. As we greet our guest to-night, the remembrance is forced upon me that the very discovery of this continent and its ensuing civilization came from the tendency of the Spaniards to go westward to find the Orient. They thus discovered the West Indian Islands. Our conti nent and our civilization are the result. And now, strangely enough, the thought and hope of our people is directed toward piercing the Isthmus and creating a canal that shall carry our civilization and commerce farther westward through that Isthmus and across the Pacific seas. Remember also that, by the recent decisions of the International Court of Arbitration in England, to us has been given the practical command of the entire eastern coast of the Pacific. Across that ocean, those old Oriental lands and old nations hold what men have called the Orient, but which is really the western side of the Pacific. What is to come in the years that are to be no man can know. What is to be the future of the great empire of our Chinese guest and friend, no man can tell. But in the movement of the civilization of the world, that movement is inevi tably to go westward and ever westward. The circle that has not been completed in these thousands of years around the entire globe is beginning again on the coast of Japan, Korea, and China. With modern means of travel and modern scientific knowledge, the new west ward movement will be larger, broader, and more speedy than the old. The ancient movement was by caravans and by the march of armies. Now it will be by railway, by steamship, by telegraph, and telephone. These newer and more complete commercial communi- 152 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB cations will girdle the entire globe, and should bind all people in a real and vital community of interests. God grant and I speak it reverently that armed collision of these interests on the far western side of the Pacific shall not occur. And so I join in His Excellency s earnest prayer that the movement may be for the good of China and the good of ourselves, and may the material civilizations of the western people take on and accept the higher moral development of the eastern people, for in some respects they are far superior to us. They reverence age as we have never reverenced it; they respect personal rights as even we here do not respect them; and they really love and strive for peace. I pray that in the future no collision of commercial in terests shall come, but may the higher purpose, not merely of the Christian civilization or of the Confucian civilization, but the higher purpose of a humanitarian civilization, prevail and control both of us. May the future be good to them and good to us, and may all the world be better as we shall come nearer, inevitably nearer to China and the Orient. JOSEPH WHEELER AT THE DINNER TO SIB CHENTUNG LIANG CHANG, NOVEMBER 28, 1903 PRESIDENT LAWKENCE spoke as to how lit tle we knew of China and of the Chinese, and I thought he was going to add that the more we knew of them the more respect we felt for the Chinese, and the more we knew of the country the more we honored it. In every phase of life where we have come in contact with the Chinese people, we have found in them the most noble and admirable qualities. In every relation of life they show an integrity of which their people should be proud. A little experience that our Army had with the Chinese : it was the universal expression of the officers who saw their conduct in battle that they were as brave men as they had ever seen in any country. There has been much said to-night about the advantages of close intercourse between China and this great country, but all that has been said was of a very general character. There are men in my presence who, during their early lives, knew how insignificant this country was in the eyes of other nations, and during their lives our progress has been so great that to-day we are not only the greatest producers of staple products, but we pro duce nearly half the staple products of the world. 153 154 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB While this great progress has been advancing, we have found markets for the output of our factories and farms in the more rural, and, in a measure, in the west ern part of the country. Now, these sections are ceasing to be customers, consumers, and are becoming competi tors, producers, and every thoughtful mind must real ize that to continue the great progress of which we boast, we must find other markets ; and China, with her industry and vast population, makes what the whole world wants, and we produce what China must have. It seems to me it solves a problem of our future prog ress. Now, Mr. President, after these eloquent speeches, after what has been said, and said so well, so ably, and wittily, I want to thank you for the honor and pleasure of being with you to-night, and I want to say that it gives me great pleasure to participate on this occasion, where the youngest nation of the earth greets with both hands the great Celestial Empire. SIR HENRY MORTIMER DURAND (BRITISH AMBASSADOR) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, JANUARY 20, 1904 WHEN I was dining the other night in Washing ton with the Gridiron Club, who were diverting themselves in their delightful manner by roasting some of your public men, I told them of a piece of advice I had received from a very distinguished citizen of the United States which was very excellent, and which, I think, will bear repeating. He said to me: "Are you accustomed to speaking in public?" I said: "No, not at all." He said: "I will give you a piece of advice. There are two things for you to bear in mind : the first is, don t speak too often; and the second is, when you do speak, don t speak too long." I thank you, Mr. President, for what you have said. I hope I may say that the thinking Englishman will face his enemy with as much courage as other people; but if you put him on his legs to face several score of friends after dinner, all that courage oozes out. To use the words of the immortal Falstaff, "He has no more valor than a wild duck. "When the good ship Etruria, in which I came out from England, was lying in Queenstown, a steward brought me a letter and a book. The letter was your very courteous invitation, and the book was a volume 155 156 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB of speeches at the Lotos Club. Now, gentlemen, I am quite a conscientious man, and I began by reading the invitation, and then the introduction, and I had not read far when I came to the following: " Nothing ex traneous will avail the man who rises to speak at the Lotos Club table. He must then show himself to be capable of original thought and feeling, or he is a lost man. Gentlemen, when I read that sentence, I put down the book with a groan, and as the Persians say, my heart turned to water. I saw myself standing before this dread tribunal, wretched, no originality in me, 11 nothing original in me excepting original sin. I could see myself, a poor wretch standing before this dread conclave, faltering a few words, and looking around in dull despair, reading my doom in the faces of my audience. So terrifying was the picture that my first inclination was to call in the aid of that horrible invention, the Marconi telegraph, and send a message resigning the embassy at Washington, and then go over the ship s side and strike out for shore. But I re frained, and here I am. I have said, I am afraid, rather strong words about the Marconi system. I have the greatest admiration for the genius of the great Marconi, but he really has destroyed the rest and refuge of a man who wants peace. We used to think that in mid-ocean we were absolutely free from the telegraph boy, and now he has burdened us even in that last haven of refuge. In Persia, which is covered with telegraph lines, we used to get a certain amount of peace, because the camels used to rub against the telegraph-poles and knock them SIR HENRY MORTIMER DURAND 157 down, and the country is covered with a tangle of wires. But with this frightful and clever invention of Marconi s, even that solace is taken away from those out there. As I have touched on the subject of Persia, one thing I should like to say that may possibly interest you, which has just occurred to me; and that is that you might like to know something of the estimation in which the poet Omar Khayyam is held in his own country. Of course, we all know, between friends, that Fitzgerald has made him in English. The question is whether Omar Khayyam is equal to Fitzgerald, and that is an other thing. I suppose I am hardly sufficient of a Per sian scholar to judge. I read him in the original, but a man must be an absolute master, in my judgment, of a language to enable him to judge of its poetry. And I can tell you that the Persians themselves do not regard Omar Khayyam as one of the first poets. I remember, when the great Shah was alive, that some British association inquired of me as to the sending of money to repair the poet s tomb. I spoke to the Shah about it. He was a very merry monarch, and he leaned back and roared with laughter. I asked him to aid in the repairs. He said: "No, not one crown (which was about ten cents) ; we have hundreds of poets better than Omar Khayyam; he is nothing at all." I don t think that is really the universal judgment, but that was the Shah s. Now, gentlemen, I am not going to say much more. But before I sit down, will you allow a man who comes from the land of the lotos India to lay one white flower of gratitude on the grave of an American poet? 158 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB I owe a great deal of the pleasure of my life to Ameri can writers, from Bryant down to that candid friend of my country, the editor of Life, whose paper has given me a great many laughing half-hours in Persia and India and other parts of the world; but I owe a great deal more than pleasure to one. Times pass and fashions change, and I am told that the power of Longfellow is gone, that his poetry is no longer read as it used to be. In my own country, peo ple have asked me whether the rivers of Damascus were not better than all the others of Persia, whether the poems of Longfellow were not better than all the verses of Lowell, and Whittier, and others. I don t mean to say a word against any of them. Far be it from me. I love them all, but one was the master of them all. Some reason for this can be found possibly in early association, but Longfellow has always spoken to my heart. I have often sought sympathy, in joy and in sorrow : Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime; Whose distant footsteps echo In the corridors of time, but from that gentle, universal spirit. In conclusion, I want to thank you very warmly, Mr. President, for your kindly words, and you all for the warmth with which you have received your president s toast. I am sure you all know how entirely I agree with all that was said with regard to the unity of our great race. There is nothing in the world that I desire now, or that I have desired all my life, or nearly all my life, SIR HENRY MORTIMER DURAND 159 more than to see England and America stand together. I don t mean by any alliance, nothing of that kind is in the slightest degree necessary; what is wanted is what has come, thank God, that our people understand one another, and believe in one another, and I trust that it will always be so. HENEY VAN DYKE AT THE DINNER TO SIE HENEY MOETIMEE DUEAND, JANUAEY 20, 1904 IF the reading of the introduction to the "Speeches at the Lotos Club" is sufficient to enable a man to make such a delightful address as that made by the British Ambassador to-night, it should be put in the hands of every school-boy in the land. I am heartily glad, Mr. President, to find myself again among the guests of the Lotos Club. The weather since I was here last has not been exactly favorable to common or garden flowers. In the financial world there have been floods, and the stock-market has been inundated. But the Lotos lives upon the water. In the political world there have been cold days, and the low-lying flowers have been frozen out. But the Lotos diffuses around itself a delightful atmosphere of sum mer. This club represents the spirit of good fellowship, pure and simple; the spirit of genuine and non-com mercial hospitality. And I think it very well for us to remember that our common life would not be enjoyable or even endurable unless that spirit were kept alive, and the men of different parties could all gather at times and feel that they had some common ground where they could meet one another and get together, 160 HENRY VAN DYKE 161 without having to keep one eye on the main chance, political or commercial. It is pleasant to find a place where the traveler can tell his wondrous tales without an affidavit ; and the fisherman can describe the weight of his fish without a scale; and the diplomatist can reveal to us those secrets which we know already; and the clergyman can tell us what he does when he is n t writing sermons; and the college president can tell us how he feels when he is n t thinking of how to raise more money; and the actor can explain to us how he has been educated by the critics and the public; and the painter can tell us how much the old masters have borrowed from him; and the author can explain to us that the reason why his last book did n t have a larger sale is because it was so much above the level of the public taste. We all of us have our little weaknesses, and it is very agreeable to have a place like this where we can let them out without being indicted for a mis demeanor or nominated for office. Mr. President, our guest of to-night comes from a race that believes in this sort of thing. Englishmen make some of the most scholarly, charming speeches in the world, although they cannot be correctly described as an effusive or garrulous race. But they have that instinct of comradeship which makes it possible for gentlemen of different opinions to talk together in clubs, and which preserves, in the midst of the fierce and perilous strain of modern life, a social sphere where the knights joust with blunted weapons and afterward sit down and make merry together. A great many things have been said to you, Mr. Ambassador, since you have been in this country, in 162 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB regard to the fact that England and America are bound together by the use of the same language, that they have the same history, the same literature, and that their conditions are very similar. You have been reminded that America is a great country, and Eng land is also a great country ; that the Anglo-Saxon race is the dominant race in the world, and that we are "It"; that we mean well by every other race, and all the other races must make way for us. A great many things have been said to you to-night; but I have not observed a single remark among those which have been addressed to you about just one that seems to me im portantthat is, the instinct of comradeship which is in the Englishman, that makes a good friend, a loyal companion, on the burning deserts of Persia, or any where else in the world. That instinct of comradeship survives on this side of the water. It has had a hard time to live, a strenuous time, but it has survived, and there is a social sphere here where you can meet and speak freely, and have a friendly hearing, and the profits will be equally divided all around. The visitor who takes time can find this sphere in America. Dickens, I think, failed to find it, because he did n t take time. But Thackeray found it, as we know from those charming letters which are just now coming out ; and your well-beloved predecessor in your high office found it. I hope you will find it, and like it so much that you will stay here for the rest of your life. When an American has to make a speech to an Eng lishman, he feels somewhat as if he were talking to himself. The Englishman would share that feeling more fully if the speech were shorter. I think that HENRY VAN DYKE 163 one of the best things that American inventiveness could be turned to now would be the providing of an apparatus (for which I should like to apply for a patent) an after-dinner oubliette, a series of trap doors arranged around the guest table with electric attachments, and with buttons for the president to press. Then, when a speech had reached the limit and was growing tiresome, he could simply touch the but ton, and the guest would slide quietly out of sight to continue his remarks in the grill-room; and when any guest or speaker began to sharpen a political axe, with the patience of his audience as a grindstone, he might be precipitated into utter darkness. But why should a man make a long speech on the tie that binds England and America? It can all be said in a sentence: one race, one language, one desire; we stand together for liberty and order upon the earth. WAYNE McVEAGH AT THE DINNER TO SIR HENRY MORTIMER DURAND, JANUARY 20, 1904 r INHERE was just one amendment to Dr. Van Dyke s A proposal that I would have liked to have offered, and that was that there never should be more than three after-dinner speeches on the same evening; one by the chairman, and one by the two principal guests of the evening; that the rest of us might enjoy our dinner in peace and love, without having to mar the enjoyment of our fellow-guests. But, gentlemen, it is always so great a pleasure to be the guest of the Lotos Club, that one unconsciously becomes garrulous, and forgets that the moments are slipping away as he looks into your hospitable faces and remembers how much this club has done for that very best form of American hospitality. It is a source of shining pride for every hearty American to know that here in the commercial metropolis of the nation is a club to which every distinguished guest of the coun try is glad to come, and where you are glad to receive him and make him welcome. In that respect your hospitality is quite unique ; and I am always glad and happy to come here and join in doing honor to any guest whom you may select to distinguish by your hos pitality. 164 WAYNE McVEAGH 165 When I was last here, it was the Chinese Minister. He was a delightful person, but did n t quite under stand the lingual capacities of your president. And in that respect I differ from His Excellency, the Ambas sador. I don t think it is at all necessary to be familiar with a language in order to enjoy it to the fullest ex tent. Your president addresses distinguished members of the French Academy in New York French. He has the admirable warrant of Shakespeare long ago, who knew and did speak the French of Stratford. And the learned gentlemen who come here from the universities of Germany he addresses them in Pennsylvania Ger man. Well, the Minister asked me what language he was speaking in addressing him. I said : "He is now speak ing your own language. " And he said: "He must have learned it from the tea-chests." And while we are on literature, I would like to follow up a remark of the Ambassador in that respect. He did us all the kindness to speak in terms of affection and regard of a poet very near the hearts of all Americans, whose poetry has been charming two generations of his coun trymen, and whose name, I am glad to think, is still a household word. Longfellow s fame will never die out of the hearts of the American nation. But I was about to say, with the superciliousness of an Englishman he put Shakespeare above Longfellow. I am very sure he has never heard the story of the Bos ton gentleman who, having read for the first time that tragedy which Shelley called the supreme effort of human genius, at once universal, ideal, and sublime, the tragedy of "Lear," laid it down and said he had 166 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB no insular narrowness about him "That man is a clever writer. And with the generosity natural to an American and a Bostonian, he said he did n t believe there were over twenty literary men in Boston who could have written it. But after all, to-night is dedicated to diplomacy. We have not heard many secrets, but those we never hear from diplomatists, because they have n t any. That I learned long ago, and my first essay in that profession was when I was a much quicker man than I am now. It was at a period of very great excitement. I was at Constantinople the famous winter when the Black Sea Treaty was revised. I learned then that there were hardly any secrets in diplomacy, and those there were were not confided to the diplomatists. His Ex cellency heartily agrees with me. E. FRANCIS HYDE AT THE DINNER TO EICHAED STRAUSS, MARCH 19, 1904 YOU are all doubtless familiar with the fact that some years ago there was proposed a universal language, a sad effort which died almost still-born. The author of it forgot that there was already one uni versal language, that of music, and I rejoice that to night I have the honor of being present in the company of one of the great preachers of that language to us as citizens of the world, Dr. Richard Strauss. A few minutes ago, when I listened to the perform ance by Mr. Arnold and Mr. Jellico of that charming duet composed by the guest of the club, I was indiffer ent, and when I shall listen in a few moments, as we shall, all of us, to our friend Bispham singing his songs, I shall be indifferent as to whether they are sung in German or any other language, because the language which the creator of those songs has put into them appeals to our hearts and tells the story of the genius that inspired them. I have at home a chronological table that I worked out myself; it has stretching along it the names of the composers of the ages. Commenc ing at the beginning of the eighteenth century there is Johann Sebastian Bach, as the representative of that age. Coming down toward the end of that century, 167 168 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB there are Haydn, Mozart, and Handel as the represen tatives of that age. Beginning with the last century, there is Beethoven, and so on down. The chronological table for the beginning of the twentieth century has not been made yet, but when it is, I shall find that stretching across the line marking the beginning of that century will be the name of Richard Strauss, for this is the era of Richard Strauss. He is the prophet of the time. We sometimes think "How can there be anything new in music ? And as an answer to that, we have a demonstration of something entirely new in every re spect ; we have in the works of Dr. Strauss a new form of composition. Take the Heldenleben, " something never before thought of, with its long storied symphony, comprising the whole life of man in one picture. Then we have his wonderful use of the orchestra, and, as something entirely new, his use of old instruments and his introduction of new instruments. If a musician carefully follows the directions of Richard Strauss, he can produce effects never thought of before, simply by adapting his instruments to Dr. Strauss s direction. Then there is that wonderful idyllic beauty which abounds in Dr. Strauss s compositions. Then there are those extraordinary, you might say, dissonances, which he has created, and which to me constitute the greatest part of his genius. To me he is not only, as has been said, the greatest humorist in music, but he is the greatest representative and demonstrator of what I call light and shadow in music. He is the Turner of musical compositions. I have often read what Ruskin said of Turner s works: "You al- E. FRANCIS HYDE 169 ways find the brightest lights conjoined with the darkest shadows." And looking over Ruskin s book Rivers of France, you will see how he describes ; how the whole picture is illuminated by throwing bright lights against dark shadows. And to my mind, as I have listened to the works of Dr. Strauss, I have seen that continually, how the lights are always illuminated and brought out and accentuated by these dark dis sonances, these shades, which he has above all other men the power of manipulating with such poetic beauty, with the making of new forms, of chords to be resolved into harmonies by exquisite resolutions, in order to bring out the whole beautiful effect of his work. That to me is the greatest manifestation of Dr. Strauss s genius. I hope, and I have no doubt that there are still in Dr. Strauss s imagination new creations that we shall listen to; and so to-night, "Long life to Dr. Strauss for renewed additions to the wealth of music which he has already given us, and long life to us all, that we may be here to listen to them. SIMEON FOED AT THE DINNER TO GEOEGE B. McCLELLAN (MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK), MAECH 25, 1904 A FEW weeks ago, at Palm Beach, I was walking on the pier, when a man dashed up, called me by name, and wrung me warmly by the hand. Now I have lived opposite the Grand Central Depew so long that I have become rather suspicious of these hand-shakers, and I presume my greeting was somewhat distant and haughty, for the stranger said: "I see you don t recog nize me. I gave him the old gag about his face being perfectly familiar, but I could n t place him. "Why," he said, "you delivered a magnificent oration in my honor at the Lotos Club last winter. I am Elihu Root. Well, if there had been a convenient knot-hole around, I d have dropped through. And yet, how can I be expected to remember all the people I eulogize in this taffy-factory and soft-soap dispensary? When Chester Lord orders me to come and eulogize a man, why, I come and eulogize him, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of inebriety, and when I have gotten through with my eulogy, I just go on about my business. I don t pay any particular attention to the guest of honor, or try to impress his likeness upon my memory. I don t have time. As I explained to 170 SIMEON FORD 171 Mr. Boot: I said, "You men cabinet officers, mayors, and such are but the creatures of an hour. You have dinners tendered you, and bouquets thrown at you, and laurel wreaths placed on your brows, but it s funny what a difference a few hours make. The next thing we know you are out of a job, and back at the old stand looking for law business. And then these guests of honor look so different when you get them outside. Take them away from the center of the stage and the glare of the calcium, and that drawn and haggard look disappears, and they appear just like human beings. Speaking of Palm Beach : this was my first visit, and, in my opinion, it is an earthly paradise, and I paid my board too, just like anybody else. When I left New York the mercury was having one of those sinking spells which have been so prevalent this winter, and I was swathed in furs and jaegers, and chilblains, and my nose was working overtime. Forty hours later, my dimpled form arrayed in a cute little bathing-suit, I was disporting myself in the flash ing waters of the Atlantic, surrounded by society ladies, ladies who are not in society, ladies who are trying to butt into society, millionaires, politicians, and other tropical amphibia. As I looked about me and recognized the members of the Four Hundred, of whom I have so often read, people whose names are household words in each other s households, I felt proud to think that I lived in this free land where it was my privilege to bathe in the same swells with these swells. I was afraid to venture in at first, for fear of the sharks which are 172 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB said to infest these waters, but the bathing-master as sured me that as soon as the Wall Street men came down the local talent took to flight. Palm Beach is well named. There is a palm on every hand, and especially on the hands of the colored em ployes, and they are continually waving, thus creating a gentle draught on the pocket-book. Every time you turn around you are held up by a colored bandit with a seductive smile and a productive whisk-broom, and his battle-cry is, "No quarter, nothing less than half a dollar." They keep the pot boiling down there, and the lid is off, and you can look right in. They have a club where you can play games of chance. But they are not really games of chance ; they are sure things. I tried it. You pick a number, and put a dollar or two on it, and if the marble rolls right, you get thirty-five for one. But I proved to be a poor picker. Still you do have a chance, and that beats Wall Street, where you have no chance at all. I believe if Wall Street was shut up, and Can- field s opened, we could all have more fun with our money. I Ve tried both, and I know what I m talking about. You get broken on the wheel, either way. I think we Ve got a great little Mayor. I like his looks. He looks clean-cut, well-groomed, and trained to the minute. He comes of good stock. He has started in right. Some of us who did n t vote for him had an idea that when he was elected the city would at once become a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead of that, the minute he got in he took his new broom and began to sweep, and apparently his sainted predecessor had left quite a little dirt around in the corners. SIMEON FORD 173 He advocated more water for New York. Think of a Tammany man interesting himself in water! And now they talk about him for President. This is a great country. One day a man is a quiet citizen pursuing the even tenor of his way, and the next day he wakes up and finds himself a Peerless Leader, with a capital P. I hope to wake up some day and find myself a peerless leader, and then, I suppose I 11 wake up. WILLIAM H. McELEOY AT THE DINNEE TO GEOEGE B. McCLELLAN (MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK), MAECH 25, 1904 I HAVE never tried to analyze why, but for some reason or another I take very kindly to a fellow-man whose name begins with "Me." The ancient saw tells us that "it is good to begin well." A name which be gins with * Me has an auspicious start. It is always pleasant to dine with the Lotos Club, for it has a veritable genius for good fellowship. In its way and an interesting way it is the Lotos is one of the greatest forums of which the city of New York can boast. To-day I turned the pages of the book made up of speeches delivered at the Lotos. Where else in this country, or in any other country, will you find postprandial creations to match them ? And what good cheer goes with the good talk ! The club serves its hos pitality, as it does its wine, in magnums. As I look about me and within me I recall a number of your famous feasts. That, for example, was a brilliant oc casion when Sir Edwin Arnold was the guest of honor. You presided, Mr. President Lawrence, in your own unrivaled style. Arnold made a speech as graceful and felicitous as it was appropriate, and concluded, as many of you will recall, by reading one of his own 174 WILLIAM H. MCELROY 175 poems a picturesque, piquant, and highly impassioned effort, redolent of the life of the sensuous Orient. There was a playful passage at arms at this dinner which I venture to mention. When Sir Edwin had con cluded President Lawrence presented as the next speaker that great master of our English tongue, St. Clair McKelway. Seth Low had spoken earlier, and in a eulogy of Arnold s career had referred to the fact that he had been not only a distinguished poet but a distinguished journalist as well. "There is no reason why he should not successfully have pursued both of these professions," said Mr. Low, slyly, "since the imagination plays a large part in journalism as well as in poetry." In the course of his capital speech, Mr. McKelway, replying to Mr. Low, observed: "Yes, imagination has a good deal to do with both the pro fession of the poet and the profession of the journalist, and it may be that if the journalists of Brooklyn had not let their imaginations loose, Mr. Low would not have been elected Mayor of Brooklyn. To the laughter which followed this sally Mr. Low was a generous con tributor. I am glad of this golden opportunity of paying my respects to the guest of the evening, Mayor George B. McClellan. I was not of those who supported him in his canvass for the exalted office which he now fills. Somebody tells of a Southern colored brother who, directly after the funeral of his fifth wife, was asked by his pastor how he was bearing this latest affliction which had smitten him. "Dominie," replied the fre quent widower, "I feel that I am in the hands of an all-wise but unscrupulous Providence." Now Mr. Me- 176 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Clellan s election by no means by no means made me feel as that colored brother felt. But as a dyed-in-the- wool Republican I naturally wanted to see the Repub lican candidate win. Nevertheless, while frankly stating this, let me add that, not grudgingly, but heart ily, as one should bow who believes in the rule of the majority, I said, "Amen," to Mayor McClellan s elec tion. We Americans, supporters of a government of the people, sharply antagonize one another during a cam paign, but good-naturedly ignore party differences after it is over. That is the American spirit as applied to politics. While as yet our present mayor was simply candidate McClellan, we Republicans fought him be cause he was "our friend the enemy." But when he became the elect of the people, the mayor not of or for a party, but of and for all New-Yorkers, then, without regard to party lines, the time had arrived for partisan opposition to him to cease, and we all became McClellan men. And now, as a last word, I beg to assure Mayor McClellan that he has only to administer his office with an eye single to the genuine progress and prosperity of our metropolis, to command the hearty support of pub lic-spirited citizens, whatever may be their party affilia tions. They will be loyal to Mayor McClellan so long as Mayor McClellan is loyal to New York. JOHN MOELEY AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, NOVEMBER 25, 1904 rflHIS is positively, positively, my last appearance JL upon any American public stage. You, to the last, show me the same cordial kindness that has been ex tended to me in Pittsburg, in Chicago, and at other companies in New York. I don t deserve either the language that was used of me, as I understand, by Mr. Choate last night in London, or the language used by your president to-night. I don t at all profess to de serve it ; and I don t think I do. I do deserve it, however, in this sense, that there is no man on my side of the water who is more in earnest in believing that the best interests of mankind will be best served by good feeling, which is far more, as your president has said, far more than parchment treaties, the good feeling of the people, whether of Usona, or whatever your name may ultimately be, or the people of a country the name of which I hope is not going to be altered, the people of Great Britain. These nicknames provoke retaliation; and I tremble when I think of what some vindictive American may say in response to Sir Edward Clarke s somewhat in felicitous suggestion. I have made a mere scamper over your great country, but I have seen a good deal; and after all the alternative is between a short visit, 177 178 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB such as I have had the pleasure of paying, and a resi dence of two or three or four years. For any man to pretend that with anything less than a residence of months, or even years, he can solve problems which you who live here always are not quite ready to solve right off, is really too absurd. I think I have been able in my short visit to do three things. First, to perceive what are the questions and what are the problems which will engage your attention perhaps for the rest of my life, at all events. Second, to perceive the possible paths along which you may be able to travel toward the solution of those problems. And, third, I have been singularly happy in being able to make the acquaintance of a great number of per sonalities in the United States who must exercise in their various spheres, from the very highest, down ward, I was going to say down to the presidents of universities [turning to President Butler of Columbia] . I have had the honor and the pleasure of making, I hope, a cordial, certainly on my part a cordial acquain tance with those personalities who will have no small share, but a great and decisive share in molding the future destinies of this great country. Now, something has been said by the president of my having written things, and my having taken a part in public affairs. Yes, it is true, I have written too many things. And the president said, too kindly said, that I was greatly admired in my own country. I cannot discuss that question for obvious reasons, but I would point out this. When the president says that I have taken a part in public affairs, it is true. I think I have been for twenty-one or twenty-two years a mem- JOHN MORLEY 179 her of the House of Commons, and through those twenty-one years the country which so greatly admires me has left me planted on the wrong side of the speak er s chair. It is therefore a great admiration, with some limitation. But we are now on the eve of a great event, such as you have just recently passed through in this country ; and I feel with considerable confidence that as to the next few years, so many of them as I am spared for, the situation on the side of our speaker s chair will be com pletely and most satisfactorily altered. But whatever turn that may take, I do believe I may fairly say, speaking not merely for one of those miserable subdi visions of a country called a party, but speaking for both parties in my country, whoever sits on the right of the speaker, or on the left of the speaker, there is on both sides of the House of Commons an enduring, thor ough resolution, if you will let us, to be absolutely good friends with the government of the United States, and to take a part side by side and shoulder to shoulder with the United States in promoting the great common causes, which are the causes of human civilization. But, gentlemen, don t let us be too exclusive. I my self don t find the satisfaction which I believe many of you find with the prospect of three fifths, if that be the right fraction, of the human race being of Anglo-Saxon origin within a certain number of years; it does n t much matter to me what those years are. But I don t find any perfect satisfaction in that. The important thing is not that the English-speaking race on this side of the Atlantic, or on my side, should have an intellectual and moral primacy, but should 180 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB enter into a generous emulation with France, and with Germany, and with Italy in bringing mankind at large in a primacy, covering a great many more elements than we English-speaking people shall be able to cover. Your president refers to things I have written, and, as it happens, many of my writings have dealt with events that have turned upon the genius of France. Mankind cannot do, in my opinion, without the con tributions which the genius of France makes to the cause of civilization. I confess that I have always said that successful diplomacy for me greatly depends upon two things, and I hope no German friend of mine will take offense, first, a good understanding with the United States; and, second, a good understanding with France. You represent, as I understand, a most distinguished section or number of sections of intellectual and other forms of effort. I am sure that politics are entirely an intellectual form of effort. But you have artists, and journalists, and writers in all walks and degrees. Well, then, gentlemen, after all, you represent the forces that mold communities. The profession of letters, since you, Mr. President, said something about literature and writing, I think, is in itself the noblest of professions. It seems to me that any man who attempts to pur sue the profession of letters without keeping himself closely in touch, and saturated with all the influence of the world around him, will probably not write as well as if he had taken part in public affairs; and I repeat here what I said before, it has particular refer ence to literature, I think, what a better, older, and JOHN MORLEY 181 wiser man than I said a long while ago, it ought to be a part of the religion of men to see that their country is well governed. And it is the part of men of letters in the best sense to see that this is effected. Somebody said to me to-day, "Well, you have come over as a missionary in a lost cause. Well, I was greatly surprised. I said, No, I did not come as a missionary, and I had no cause at all ; not as a missionary, and no cause. "Oh," he said, "what is it free trade!" "No, I have not come over as a missionary. True, I have said a few words, a word or two about free trade" don t be alarmed, gentlemen; not a word to-night, not a word. I hope I am not profane or guilty of levity if I say that this remark of my friend to-day, that I had come over as a missionary in the cause of free trade, re minded me of what happened to Frederick the Great. In those days, connected with the monarchy of Prussia was the principality of Neufchatel, and there they were engaged in an ardent and vindictive dispute, as some times happens to you. This great controversy was on what all deemed to be the fundamental topic of eternal damnation. Frederick the Great was appealed to to decide the matter. He listened to the arguments on both sides, and then considered the question. Finally he said, "My decision is this: in Neufchatel those who don t believe in eternal damnation, so be it; and those who do believe in eternal damnation, let them be eter nally damned." Gentlemen, I am sure you are all too clever and too acute not to see the application one which I respect- 182 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB fully make in a protectionist community, you being protectionists. Now I am detaining you too long. All I can say is, I have had such a reception in va rious parts of America : in Pittsburg, which I see is the Gibraltar of protection ; in Chicago, which is the Gibral tar of many things; at Washington, and now, crown ing the edifice, in New York, I have had a reception which I can never forget. It will always remain. The personalities that I have made the acquaintance of, the questions put in motion in my mind, the enlargement of the horizons of my poor political contemplation, are things I can never forget; and I beg to thank you all most cordially for your extreme kindness and joviality in my respect to-night. NICHOLAS MUEEAY BUTLER AT THE DINNER TO JOHN MORLEY, NOVEMBER 25, 1904 Ethis distinguished and representative presence, jathered to do honor to the scholar and statesman who is your guest to-night, I am moved to speak aloud the question that I have been putting to myself for an hour or more past : Why should the city of New York be spoken of as provincial ? We come together here, drawn from every profession and occupation, to greet a distinguished man from across the sea ; and we are so familiar with his person ality, with his achievements, with his manifold writings, that we look upon him not only as a guest, but as an old and valued friend. If I know New York, it is a catholic and many-sided community, quick to appreciate, warm of sympathy, and always ready to help and welcome. Whether it be a flood in Galveston, or an earthquake in Charleston, or a fire in Baltimore, the heart and the head and the purse of this great community are at the service of their fellow-men. And whether it be a scholar, a statesman, an explorer, or a man of letters who comes within our gates, he is cordially welcomed as one whom we have valued, and as one whom we are only too happy to take to our own hearthstones. I am inclined to think, however, that our reputation 183 184 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB for provincialism comes from the fact that the gentle men of our newspaper press do not give us oppor tunity enough to know of some of the important things which go on in other parts of our own land. I am moved to make this observation by the fact that I am sure that very few gentlemen in this room know that not many weeks ago there was delivered in the city of Pittsburg a most unusually brilliant and thoughtful oration upon the general subject of Progress," that that oration was delivered by our distinguished guest of to-night, and that the delivery of it was perhaps the chief purpose of his coming to these shores. I pur chased not only my usual morning paper, but all of the morning papers on the following day, and I was unable to discover that the citizens of New York were able to learn even that such an oration had been deliv ered, much less to become acquainted, if only in outline or in summary, with the charm of the style of your guest, or with the scope and profundity of his thought. It was an enviable privilege, gentlemen, to be permitted to sit in that great audience simply to hear that oration, and to learn from your guest s own lips something of his deepest and latest reflections upon the great move ment of which we are all a part social, political, and intellectual. It must always be a matter of keen regret that the great, busy, energetic population of this city has not yet come to know that such an oration was made, or that certain significant tendencies of present- day thought were pointed out and critically examined by the orator. But, gentlemen, the thought that is uppermost in every mind to-night is the one that has been touched NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 185 upon so delightfully by your president, and referred to so generously by Mr. Morley, that warm friendship and community of interests that bind together the two nations that we represent, and that also bind us to the other cultured nations of the earth. Permit me, if you please, in one brief moment to refer to what seems to me to be the chief significance of that friendship and community of interest at this time, and for the years that are to come. The one great fundamental lesson that the people of England and the people of the United States have been able to teach the world, or to exemplify to the world, over and beyond the beauty of their speech and the splendor of their literature, the one great fundamental lesson is this, the power of liberty for progress and for civilization. In common with the English people we have a law and a polity, and a body of political institutions, that are based upon the recognition of liberty ; and that word liberty has come to be the most precious word in all our vocabulary. From the days of the barons at Run- nymede to the great convention of the constitution at Philadelphia, and on to the surrender of the anti-Union forces at Appomattox, the story has been written that liberty is the fundamental principle of civilization and progress. The English people and our own have been the chief bearers of that noble tradition. See, if you please, what the condition is at this mo ment. That fundamental doctrine of liberty is, I will not say threatened, because perhaps it is not threat ened; but the fundamental doctrine of liberty is at tacked and criticized by an increasing number of human beings who have been unable to gain that 186 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB measure of success which they think is their due, and they are blaming upon the principle on which our whole society rests, the measure of failure which has been their lot. We are again face to face with the preaching of a doctrine in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in France, and in lesser degree in England and in the United States, that not liberty, but the surrender of liberty, and the guidance of the social weal in the inter est of a socialistic democracy, is the path of true progress. Gentlemen, the denial and restriction of liberty has been tried in the history of the world. There have been nations that have exalted the supposed interests of the mass over the liberty of the individual, and they have stood still until they died. They exist to-day chiefly as great traditions and forms of governmental and na tional failure ; and whatever element of progress enters into their life to-day, enters because they are opening their doors to the doctrine of liberty that has made the civilization of the West. I like to recall that the gentleman who is your guest to-night has been in literature and in politics the life long apostle of the doctrine of liberty. He has sought out and studied the careers and characters and achieve ments of those great men of France and England who have meant so much to the cause of liberty, and to whom liberty has meant the most; and then, as the crowning literary achievement of his life, he has traced for us in the minutest detail the progress of the great career of Gladstone, whose name is a synonym for lib erty itself. It is not so many years ago that Mr. Gladstone wrote NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 187 his famous and much read paper, entitled "Kin beyond the Sea." Since that time the sea has ceased to be a barrier, and has been made a bond. Never were these two peoples so close as now in sympathy, in interest, and in knowledge; and never were we so firm in our national self-respect. We have learned how to be friends and allies without jealousy, without envy, and without malice, because in our saner and more reflective moments we see that we shall thus come to be more and more the bearers of the great tradition of liberty. There is something more than the material progress which holds it all up ; there is something more than the magnificent commercial prosperity that we so widely and deservedly seek; and that something is this fun damental idea of liberty which is in our constitution and in ourselves, which is the spirit of their government and of ours, which is the basis of their morality and of ours, and which is the inspiration of their best lives and of ours. Gentlemen, no American who realizes what America really means can hesitate to welcome with warm affec tion and with the profoundest respect, John Morley, the apostle and exponent of Anglo-Saxon liberty. HENEY VAN DYKE AT THE DINNEE TO JOHN MOELEY, NOVEMBEE 25, 1904 A GREAT English poet has described the Lotos land JT\. as one "in which it seemed always afternoon." Mr. Morley now finds himself in the Lotos Clubland, wherein it seemeth always about eleven o clock in the evening, and hearts are trumps. It has been said that we have no titles of nobility in this country. It is true; but we have the Lotos Club banquets, and the man to whom a Lotos Club banquet is given has the equivalent of a title of nobility; and in the case of our guest, we are glad that this title has the great advantage of not separating him from the House of Commons, where he belongs, and where we hope his voice will long be heard on the side of true freedom and fair play. It is astonishing to us conservative, sober, steady- going, somewhat stolid Americans to see with what rapidity and vivacity our young British friend has perambulated this continent. Mr. Morley, since he has been over here, has taken in the whole show. He has left nothing unseen that is worth seeing, and has had everything said to him that is worth hearing. He has tried the climate of Chicago, and measured the winds of that place ; he has bound the friends of Pitts- 188 HENRY VAN DYKE 189 burg to his heart "with hooks of steel"; he has lived the "simple life" at Washington with trumpets. He has even been at Boston. George William Curtis once came back after a short absence from New York, and he went into his club. Some one of his many friends there asked, "Where have you been, Mr. Curtis ? " He replied, I have been in Boston to lecture." His friend rejoined, "I am glad of it; I always did hate those Bostonians." But now our honored guest has come back from those wide peregrinations to rest and repose in the quiet Lotos Club of New York. He is welcome here ; we wish that he would stay with us longer ; and if there is any thing that we know which he does n t know, we should be glad to tell him. I have observed, in following his course I may say his mad career through this country, that he has ex pressed a great many valuable opinions and profitable truths, all of which he has seen fit to preface with an apologetic statement and a request that he should not be thrown out, or that nobody would sit on him, or do anything violent to him, or something of that kind. That is not necessary, let me assure him. In this coun try we all have open minds, because we usually "know we are right. Now, I heard Mr. Morley last Monday, about half- past one in the afternoon, say that he thought in this country there was a tendency (he apologized for say ing it, but he said it) that in this country he thought there was a tendency not only to think one man as good as another, but also to think one man s opinion as good as another man s opinion, and he said that he 190 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB thought (he ventured to think, you know, in his mild, gentle, deprecatory way), that the competence of the man who expressed the opinion seemed to qualify the value of the opinion. As he made that profound and searching philosophic remark, I looked around, and I saw alongside of Mr. Morley, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan ; and on the other side, Mr. D. 0. Mills ; and just behind him, Mr. James Still- man; and men of that kind sitting all around him. And I said, "Now, how true that is!" If any half- dozen of these men here should express the opinion that stocks were too high, stocks would all go down to-night, because they are not only competent men, but also men who have amassed what you might call a modest competence. : I have observed that there has been some reference here to-night to Mr. Mor ley s books. When I saw "The Life of William E. Gladstone" come in served up on ice, I thought that the reference was rather cold. 1 We might have given a warmer reception to that book, which is undoubtedly the best biographical work the twentieth century has yet produced. The author of that book may well say, parodying the words of one who said he did n t care who made the laws, provided he might write the songs, "Let me write the biographies of the great statesmen, and I will help make the laws of coming generations. It is true, Mr. Morley, that there may be a man in the club who has not read all of your books, strange as it may seem; but there is not a single man in this club, 1 This referred to the form in which the sherbet was served at the dinner. HENRY VAN DYKE 191 representing all professions, representing arts and literature, there is not a single man here who does not know you by your name, Honest John Morley. And I will say that it is this knowledge of you, and your character, and your career which gives the warmth of the heart of the Lotos Club to our welcome to you to night. For, after all, what the Anglo-Saxon race most honors and most loves (I venture to differ from my friend the previous speaker, although he be a presi dent), is not liberty, but fair play. Fair play stands higher even than liberty; fair play, equity, honesty, that is the great thing. That is the thing that stands above and beyond mere freedom. Liberty is valuable only because it gives a chance for the great expanding of the human heart, in its desire for fair play and honesty and just dealing, to come to the front and assert itself. "We welcome the guest of to-night because he belongs to the race of Pym and Hampden; because he inherits from the men who struck that deep note of fair play in freedom, which, as Tennyson says, "will vibrate to the doom." "We welcome him because he represents those ideas and those ideals which have actuated prog ress in this uncrowned republic, and which we hope to see once more actuating the progress of the crowned republic. Now, we who have ideas which we have convinced ourselves are right, should each hold firmly believing in them, and can afford to wait, trusting to the results of time. One quality of the Anglo-Saxon race, I think, is precious beyond compare not only the love of liberty and the love of fair play, it is the great importance of 192 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the enormous patience, it is the willingness to hold on and wait for the time to come. Through all the coming years there is not a man who will rejoice more in what really makes for prosperity, for the welfare and par ticularly the liberty of this country, than our guest to nightJohn Morley. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW AT THE DINNER TO JOHN MORLEY, NOVEMBER 25, 1904 I AM very glad that Mr. Morley was here at the time of the American Thanksgiving. It is an English festival. It was brought over to us by Anglo-Saxon descent two hundred and fifty years ago. The early set tler of New England had n t much to be thankful for, except that he was alive; but he returned thanks for that. There are sections of New England, in New Hamp shire and in Vermont, where the Anglo-Saxon race has not been affected by the American, and where they have the vernacular of the period when their ancestors came, and their customs; and I wish Mr. Morley could have celebrated Thanksgiving among them. There he would have seen dyspeptic-looking Yankees, who go out to new territories and build up States; and where they build up States and cities, no matter how many there be, they still bear the stamp of their ideals and carry with them always the school-house, the university, and the church. And he would have discovered the source of their power in their methods of returning thanks ; for that dyspeptic man and intellectually dyspeptic-looking woman, his wife, devour quantities of American turkey, and 193 194 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB sausage, and eleven or twelve kinds of pie, and call for more. In tracing the American Thanksgiving from those true descendants of those who fought at Naseby and Marston Moor, we know why it was that those follow ers of Cromwell so easily beat the followers of Prince Rupert and brought about the Revolution of which we are the inheritors and enjoyers. I think Brother Mor- ley himself has something of the Puritan strain, cer tainly inherited. In this country recently fourteen millions of Ameri can people, by the astounding majority of two millions, had instructed us to stand up for protection; and yet Mr. Morley, here, among the high priests of protection, tells them that if they like hell, they had better remain in it. I have on one side of me my Calvinistic friend the doctor from the Princeton University, and on the other side my friend Professor Adler, who does not believe that there is any such place at all. And yet, if protec tion is hell, it is a mighty prosperous and progressive and happy hell. Now, we have been almost surfeited in the past with the visits of our English brothers. They came here originally about one hundred and twenty-five years ago; and some of them returned home. Then later as lecturers, who wasted our time and money. Then came representatives of the smart set of London, sometimes titled, and generally entitled to nothing. Then came the English tourist, to write a book about us and our civilization, who saw us from the win dows of the car in which he rode, and made notes as CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 195 he passed through our villages and cities that part of our villages and cities through which railroads pass; and then, having been told that the one critical and political question with which we were struggling, and what difficulty we were finding in its solution, was the negro question, he got his views on that subject from the porter in the Pullman car, and when he got home he would write his book, which would receive criticisms in the press of England, and not be received with favor by the American people. Now I am glad, however, that a new element is com ing to America. The John Morleys and Bryces are coming over to see us; men who represent in English public life what the best men here are in our public life, men who stand for the considerations in their own country that the best of our American thought stands for, come here to be part of that great constituency of which we are all one upon that platform. I remember a dinner in London at Mr. Lowell s, when he was minister, when the complaint was made by a man of letters that the English language was being adul terated by American slang. And Mr. Lowell himself, in his "Biglow Papers," had been open to some extent to the criticism which this English man of letters gave, and Mr. Lowell went to his library and brought out a book from which he proved that American slang was the vernacular of the Pilgrim when he sailed from Plymouth, and the language of the English people at that period. We are preserving the classical English language in our American slang. Now, my friends, I endorse most heartily the senti ment, the cordial sentiment, which has been expressed 196 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB here to-night by Mr. Morley for the peace of the world. Nine tenths of our people are of this composite race. We are Anglo-Saxons, Germans, Frenchmen, Danes, Scandinavians; in my own veins runs the blood of almost every nation in the world; my ancestors came over here two hundred years ago; we stand for the peace of the world, and that can best be preserved by the men of the United States and Great Britain, by the statesmen of the Morley type and the statesmen of the Roosevelt type and the statesmen of the best type of both sides standing for the ideals common with both people. With all these English-speaking races standing for peace, for civilization, for the uplifting of the dependent peoples and bringing them to higher planes and representative government, the peace of the world is secure, and the future of the world is what Morley would have it, and what Morley would have it is what every statesman, every philanthropist in this world prays may come about. LYMAN ABBOTT AT THE DINNER TO JOHN MOKLEY, NOVEMBER 25, 1904 I COULD hardly think of consenting to take your time at so late an hour of the evening as this, were it not that I wish particularly to bear my testimony and to express for myself, and I think I may say for others, the sense of appreciation for a certain phase of Mr. Morley s work to which little allusion has been made here to-night. He has been a leader of the nation as a statesman, and of that much has been said. He has set an example as an interpreter of men through his writings, of which little has been said. We have just passed through a political campaign which has illustrated the truth that it is exceedingly difficult for one man to understand or thoroughly interpret the fortune of another. I think there are few of us who did not see in the newspapers the contrasted portraits of the real and the legendary Roosevelt. I am sure that those of us who know him believe that the legendary was the real and the real was the legendary. I am sure that there are few Repub licansno Republicans who would be willing to take their opponents interpretation of their candidate, and no Democrats who would be willing to do the same thing. What is true in politics is true in religion. 197 198 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Roman Catholics don t understand Protestants, and vice versa. They are not able to see with each other s eyes, or to get each other s point of view. Professor Herrick was traveling in Italy, and an Italian professor was sitting at his side and began, in the course of conversation, to attack the Pope. The professor defended the Pope. Presently he said to the Italian, l It is strange that you, an Italian, should attack the Pope, and I, a Protestant, should defend him." The Italian replied, "You a Protestant ! I also am an atheist. Now, gentlemen, for one man to interpret another man requires three distinct things : He must be a lover of truth, above all other things. When Truth sends in her visiting-card we are glad to receive her, and we are ready to pay her out of our receipts. It requires, in the second place, respect for men ; not merely good will for them, but respect for them, whether they think as we think, and live as we live, or if, on the other hand, they are absolutely uncongenial in temperament and absolutely opposed in opinion. And it requires, in the third place, imagination, which enables one to stand in the place of another, to put himself in his mind in the other man s place, and to see through that other man s eyes. I don t know of any man in our time who has possessed these three qualities as fully as John Morley. He has been actuated by a supreme love for truth; he has been able to see through the other man s eyes, and he has respected the men whom he has criticized and to whom he has been opposed. Mr. Gladstone was a high- churchman, so high a churchman that he was prac tically a form of Roman Catholic in disguise. I may LYMAN ABBOTT 199 venture to say that Mr. Morley never was a churchman ; and yet, non-churchman as he was, he was the man who was desired by Mr. Gladstone s friends to write the biography of Mr. Gladstone. Nowhere in England will you find a better expression of Gladstone s religious views or a better understanding of them. Oliver Cromwell was a mystic, and an important part of his force lay in the belief that he was in con stant communication with the supernatural powers. John Morley is a rationalist, certainly not a mystic, and yet no one in England could have written so clear and so fair a description as is in the biography that John Morley has written of the statesman who was a mystic. Personally, in our religious views we are far apart. John Morley I think I may call a rationalist. I don t hesitate to call myself a mystic. He declares he does not believe in the supernatural powers. I believe that we live encouraged and surrounded by them, live and breathe and move and have our being in them. But if I could conceive it possible that the publishers of my poor writings would ask me what man in England, not a personal friend, I should choose to interpret my re ligious views to the world, I would say, without any hesitation, give me John Morley, because in his criticism he would find every weak point in my arguments and disclose it mercilessly, but present me with ab solute fidelity and truthfulness, which is all that any man has the right to ask. I thank Mr. Morley for the pace he has set, for the example that has given inspiration, in the name of men of letters, editors, and journalists, in the name of authors and in the name of preachers. I thank him 200 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB for what he has done to teach us that the love of truth must be preeminent above all, because that is absolutely essential to any true and honorable love for men, and that if we would understand our fellow-men we must enter into and see life as they see it, and interpret them as they would be interpreted. I trust that we shall all learn this lesson from John Morley, and carry it with us wherever we go. FELIX ABLER AT THE DINNER TO JOHN MOBLEY, NOVEMBEE 25, 1904 FTHHE lotos flower, worked out in bronze or other JL material, is sometimes used as a console to support the figures of legendary or historical heroes. Your Lotos Club, in like manner, has been a console or pedes tal on which not a few eminent figures have stood out before the public, and never has it served this purpose more fitly than this evening. In the few words I shall say, I wish to emphasize especially that ethical quality in Mr. Morley which dis tinguishes him as an author, as a statesman, and as a representative of English character in its most admir able aspect. If it be true that the best style is that which touches the living qualities of the reader s mind, and induces in him, by way of response to the author s challenge, the spontaneous employment of his own faculties, then we may go far before we shall find a style more completely measuring up to this standard than that of Mr. Morley. We read and reread, with still increasing appreciation, his profound psychological analyses, his crisp presentation of the results of compre hensive scholarship, his close-linked reasoning, and we are no less benefited by the intellectual honesty which marks the handling of the subject-matter than by the 201 202 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB nicety with which the processes of thought are mirrored in the phrases and in their sequences. There is no finer quality than honesty. Common honesty becomes a noble thing when translated into the high regions of intellectual effort and achievement. And in all the literature of the English-speaking peoples at the pres ent day, it seems to me, there is no more conspicuous illustration of this virtue of mental honesty than is to be found on every page of Mr. Morley s writings. Of the ethical quality of Mr. Morley s statesmanship it would be superfluous to speak. The principles which have determined his course in public life, the policies with which his name is associated, reveal transparently the ethical purpose underlying them. I cannot for bear, however, in passing, to reflect with something like envy on the comparative facility with which men of Mr. Morley s type come to the top in England, especially in view of the difficulties that would hinder their rise in this country. One of the greatest, if not the greatest practical problem of politics is to arrange matters in such a way that the best men shall be in charge of the government, and in this respect our American democ racy has not met with the success we desire for it. It is true that we have had, among our statesmen, some of the most illustrious personages that have ever appeared in human history ; and on great occasions in the life of the nation, thus far, there have always come to the fore great leaders competent to meet the emergency of the hour. But, on the other hand, the average politicians of the United States are very far from measuring up to an elevated standard of ability and character. One is tempted to say that in the United States the few FELIX ABLER 203 great political figures exceed in stature, especially in moral stature, the great men of other countries, while the average politician falls below the average type of such countries as England and Germany. But what I have more particularly in mind to say is that England seems to compare favorably with the United States in the far greater degree of independence accorded to her public men, and the far less rigid con- formance to popular opinions and beliefs that seems to be exacted of them. Certain of Mr. Morley s opinions may perhaps be characterized in a somewhat crude fashion as " radical "; at any rate, his religious and philosophical creed is probably divergent in important respects from that of the great body of the British electorate. But this difference did not stand in the way of his political advancement, and that this should have been so is gratifying evidence of the extent to which personal independence is honored, or perhaps taken for granted, among English statesmen and by the English people. I doubt whether in the United States a man of such pronounced opinions as Mr. Morley s, no matter what his merits might be in other respects, would be eligible for the highest political offices. A third point is the fine significance and interest which Mr. Morley s career and personality possess for us, as representing the best type of Englishman. It may be asked whether a noble example of English char acter has or should have for us a greater significance than an attractive type of any other nationality. We are reputed to be, and I think justly, a hospitable peo ple. The Lotos Club, for instance, has entertained emi nent men of every race, coming from every quarter of 204 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the earth. Moreover, we are a cosmopolitan people, a "melting-pot of the nations," as has been said. Now, there are two tendencies to be observed at present in the utterances of our public men. On the one hand, the heterogeneous derivation of our population is em phasized. All Europe, and not England alone, it is said, is the mother-country of America. A new nation has taken shape on this continent, and to its develop ment the entire Occident, if not also the Orient, is in vited to make its contribution. On the other hand, England is spoken of, in a somewhat exclusive fashion, as the mother-country. The plea for friendliness be tween ourselves and our "cousins" across the water is based on the fact that "blood is thicker than water." And the American people generally, without distinction, are sometimes characterized as Anglo-Saxons. That is to say, those who are not Anglo-Saxons are in a way passed over as if they did not count, or are relegated to a somewhat inferior place as if they were but sub- Americans. Being an American not of Anglo-Saxon descent, I may perhaps be permitted to say that the two ten dencies are not irreconcilable, but should each receive the consideration due to it. We should realize that America is not a new England, but just America ; that a new kind of civilization is being slowly built up in this country; and that, from whatever land the immi grant may come, he is challenged and in duty bound to dedicate the best that is in him to the service of his adopted country, and to sift out the best in his inheri tance in order to incorporate it in our new American civilization. FELIX ADLER 205 And yet, speaking for those who are not of Anglo- Saxon descent, if I may, I do not hesitate to say that in coming to this country we should all suffer, as it were, a kind of "sea-change," by which I mean that we are bound to recognize, to a certain extent, the hegemony of the English mind as embodied in English speech, in the English conception of liberty, and especially in the basic English political tradition. We may modify, we may revise, we may expand, we may augment what in substance we accept ; nevertheless, the American people are, and will be, if not an English people, yet an Eng lish-speaking people, and to no slight degree an English- thinking people, and the full consequences implied in this concession we may not shirk. And therefore, I take it, a statesman and writer of Mr. Morley s rank does have a special significance and an intimate interest for us exceeding that of eminent personalities representing the types of culture produced by France or Germany, however greatly, in other re spects, we may appreciate and assimilate what those other personalities and types of culture have to give us. But there is one more proviso which I have to add. If we accord a unique importance to the English tradi tion and the English spirit as an element in American civilization, if we admit a peculiar relation of intimacy to England as compared with other countries, it is to England on its best side that we mentally ally our selves; it is the noble fruit of English history that we would adopt and, in our own independent way, per petuate. For every people, like every individual, to use the allegory of Robert Louis Stevenson s, has its Jekyll side and its Hyde side. Every people is Janus-faced, 206 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB has its noble features and its ignoble features. And it is to the noble features of English life and English character that we would relate, within the limits in dicated, our own life; it is to John Bull, so far as he wears the form and features of John Morley, that we would pay our homage and extend our welcome. HENEY VAN DYKE AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, DECEMBER 23, 1904 FT1HESE are the most embarrassing circumstances I under which I have ever spoken. Many a time you have given me the pleasure of sitting down to one of your good dinners and of making remarks about your guest of honor. Certainly it never entered my head that you would ask me to sit down at the right hand of the president and have my portrait "painted by Law rence. There is really only one explanation of the present situation. In the days of Homer and Herodotus, when men ate the lotos they forgot their friends, but now the effect of the Lotos is to make men remember their friends, and it is to friendship, and to friendship only, that I owe the honor of this evening. And an honor that comes in that way ought not to make a man feel that he needs a larger hat, but only that he would like to do his work a little better in order that he might not disappoint his friends. And after all, gentlemen, about the best wages we get for our work in this world is paid in the coin of friendship. Take the preacher. How are you going to measure his success ? Certainly not by the number of heretics that he has smoked out, but by the number of people that he has had the good luck to help in some way amid the conflicts and perplexities of this 207 208 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB mortal life people who feel that he is honest enough to listen to, and that he is human enough to tell the truth to, and that, somehow or other, they can call him a friend in the spirit. Now, the preacher can never get into that relation with real men and women if he fol lows the course described by the old Scotchman in giv ing an account of his new minister. "The new minister," he says. "Ah, six days of the week he is invisible, and the seventh he is incomprehensible. He has got to come close to his fellow-man, somehow or other ; and if he is ever tempted in the pride of intellect to elimb up into a theological sycamore tree to survey the crowd, he is likely to hear a voice saying to him, * * Zaccheus, come down. And above all, I think he has got to make men feel, somehow or other, that he is in the same fight that they are in with various kinds of evil, a fight which is sometimes far from easy to carry on and to stick to. Tommy, said a friend of mine to his little boy not long ago Tommy, yon have been bad ; now you really must be good. "Yes, father," said the boy; "but it is not so easy to be good ; I wish you would just try it yourself once." The minister who is a man has got to take the view of life so lucidly expressed by Thomas. And if he does it he is very apt to find his best reward, the best salary he gets, in the friendship of men with whom he has really touched shoulders in the conflict with evils which beset us all. Then take a man who is a teacher in one of those institutions where they now teach the young idea how to shoot. You have heard a great deal lately about the small pay of the professors smaller even than that HENRY VAN DYKE 209 of a reasonably accomplished and non-poisonous cook. Well, now, it is true it is painfully true that the pro fessors pay is small in money, but you must not forget that the profession of teaching, while it is one of the worst paid, is one of the best rewarded in the world, though not in academic honors and dignities. Then take literature; take the profession if it be a profession of a writer or author. What is the best pay that a man gets in that profession? It is not the money, although I am very glad to say that writers get more money to-day than they used to in the old times. I am grateful I am surprised, but I am grateful when I find there are a lot of people foolish enough to buy one of my books. The pay of authors is better than it has been in previous centuries. Why, some authors can even afford to go into the legislature. Just think of it ! But the real reward, the thing that they care for most of all, does not come in that shape. It comes in the shape of friendship, to enter into many homes, to come as a welcome guest by the winter fireside, and to be a friendly companion in the summer walks, to cheer the hour of loneliness, to soothe the hour of pain, to uplift and strengthen and encourage the despondent, to give a ray of pure and clean feeling to men whose hearts are heavy and tired, to speak the word that shall linger kindly and pleasantly in the memory of every human being. That is what is worth while in author ship. Now, I am going to be honest enough to confess, too, that men who write wish for fame. Fame they wish for and hope for. They cannot tell anything about it, but down in the bottom of their hearts is the secret wish and hope that what they have written may pos- 210 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB sibly live after they are gone. But the best kind of fame is only another form of friendship. What is the fame of the book which all men talk about but nobody reads, like Paradise Lost, compared with the fame of Shakespeare s plays and Burns s poems and Lamb s essays or Thackeray s novels, which are still in living companionship, beloved by men and women who are grateful for the companionship which they get out of this kind of literature? That is fame to have a post humous friendship with living men and women in the world. That is fame. I am going to tell you about two convictions of mine in regard to two conditions which I think are valid and important, or whatever you choose to call it, to the man trying to write the kind of literature that will really win for him the reward of friendship now, and possibly a posthumous friendship, which is the best kind of fame. The first is this : the man who wants to get that kind of reward for writing has got to live his life in touch with his fellow-men. It is not necessary, in order to be an author, to wear your hair half-way down your back and live in a cage. It is not necessary, in order to be an author, to even shut yourself up in any literary circle or coterie. For my part, personally, I am frank enough to confess that I could not get into a literary coterie if I tried. I do not believe it is necessary for a man to exclude himself from the active school of life in order to enable himself to perform literary labors. I do not believe that the finest poetry or prose has ever been written by men who had nothing else to do but to write. I remember hearing John Morley say at this table that he thought it HENRY VAN DYKE 211 was a good thing for the men who were writing to have a share in the active work of life; and I think so too. And as I look back over the history of literature I am astonished to see how many of them did it. Chaucer was a most active kind of politician. All we know about his life is the different offices that he held. Shakespeare was a theatrical stage manager; and if there is any more active life than that, I do not know it. Milton was a school-teacher and a secretary of state; Walter Scott was a lawyer and a sheriff; Wordsworth was a stamp distributor, and Matthew Arnold was a school inspector; Charles Kingsley and Ralph Waldo Emer son were preachers and lecturers; Lowell and Long fellow were professors ; and, as far as I can see, the bulk of the literature that we have that has survived has been produced by men who have done something else besides write, and they have been in touch with active life. If you are going to know about anything you write about, and if you are going to know anything about life, you have got to be in it ; and I do not know any better way to be in life than to have some kind of work to do in the world. Therefore I believe that it is perfectly wise and altogether advisable for the men who have got to write to have a hold on their fellow-men in the world in the way of active work. The second conviction and this I advance with some modesty because it is quite frequently disputed is, that the man who wishes to write books which the world will take into friendship, must put into them his best, not his worst thoughts and feelings; and when I say his best work and not his worst, I mean that he must distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong. 212 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Now, gentlemen, let me make myself perfectly clear. Speaking now as a man of letters, I say that the ethical principle of life is the best principle of life, and that the ability to distinguish between right and wrong is the most interesting and most noble in life; and I say that the man who emasculates himself so that he pro fesses not to know the difference between right and wrong, incapacitates himself for dealing with the prin cipal interests of human life. I am not going so far as to say what Aristophanes, the great Greek comedian, said. He said distinctly : The bard is the master for manhood and youth; He is bound to instruct them in virtue and truth. I would not say that. I would modify it by the later view of Aristotle and Plato that he is not bound to instruct, but he is bound to inspire. Instruction is a different thing from inspiration. There is no use what ever in trying to attain the artistic spirit of the Greeks by cultivating eccentricities tinged with vice; yet that is what some people think is the proper thing. The artistic spirit of the Greek is this : Art exists for the sake of pleasure, but there are differences and de grees in pleasure as there are in everything else in the world. Noble art lives for better things, but that which is not noble in pleasure enervates and degrades and weakens. What a splendid history we have in our brief history of American literature in this respect! Look at the roll of men that has been called the roll of Ameri can men of letters Irving, Hawthorne, Emerson, Lowell, Bryant, Longfellow, and Charles Dudley War ner, who sat here at your board, the last of these men to HENRY VAN DYKE 213 go, the fine, clean, honest, true men men whose hands it would be an honor to take, men whom you can trust. Now, is Americanism to mean nothing but cutting loose from these men and from the traditions of their litera ture ? Is it to mean something not only new, but some thing different ? I hope not. I hope that the tradition of American literature is going to keep in the spirit of those men. For my own part, I have written but little, and it is not half as good as it ought to be ; but I should wish to see every page that I have ever written blotted out and burned rather than that one man should turn from what I have written with a mind degraded or defiled or weakened, disheartened and discouraged ; and I should be most grateful if from any page or any verse that I have penned a man should draw something that would make it easier for him to meet life s vicissitudes and to do his duty and to love his fellow-man, to rejoice in the world in which he lives and in the life which has been given to him. Two things have come to me that I am proud of: one, that my father for forty years took me into his closest intimacy and taught me the best that I have ever known; and the second, that through the work that I have done, poorly enough, here in this town for twenty years, I have won so many good and kind friends. MINOT J. SAVAGE AT THE DINNEE TO HENRY VAN DYKE, DECEMBER 23, 1904 I AM very happy to be here to-night to do honor to Dr. Van Dyke. He has distinguished himself in so many different ways that I really do not know where to begin the enumeration. In the first place, and the one thing which I consider chief of all, is the fact that he has distinguished himself as a man. There are no ladies present, so I have not to consider them; and in their absence I will say that I think the grandest thing in all the world is a grand, true, noble man. It is only men we need to make the world ideal. Dr. Van Dyke has distinguished himself as a min ister, and if you will pardon me I should like to trespass on your patience long enough to say one word about the work of the minister. It comes close home to me, and you must forgive me if there is a little bit of the personal element in it. We are passing through a curious transition of thought at the present time, caused, I believe, by the new flood of thought in revela tion and truth that has come to the world. They tell us that at the universities there are fewer students looking towards the ministry to-day than there have been for one hundred years. I believe that by and by, when we 214 MINOT J. SAVAGE 215 get through with our present confusion when, as Mat thew Arnold, I think, says, we are born out of the old universe and into the new one * we shall have a grander church and a grander and nobler religion and a nobler ministry than the world has ever known. In spite of the fact that Dr. Van Dyke has left the min istry for another profession, I venture to think that the ministry is the noblest profession on the face of the earth. He has distinguished himself as a minister; he has not only done that, but he is distinguishing himself now as a teacher. In the Talmud the old Hebrew wise men took this ground : they said that the teacher was to be honored sometimes more than the father. The father gave his child physical life; the teacher helped his brain and soul to live, and so it was a higher and finer thing than the position of father even, as honored as that should be. Dr. Van Dyke has also distinguished himself as an angler. I am not sure that I shall praise him here in that capacity, but I do not know that I shall find fault with him. I will not presume to criticize, but I will confess that when it comes to this business of angling, I am inclined to be on the side of the fishes. He has done another thing ; he has made himself distinguished as a writer of stories, and those stories are of the inspiring, clean, sweet, fine, helpful kind. He has done still more; he has conquered another field. He is a poet ; and right here my jealousy is aroused. You know a man is never jealous of somebody who is not in his profession; the president of your club would never think of getting jealous of Dr. Van Dyke as a poet, 216 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB because your president has not distinguished himself, as far as I know, by writing poetry. I venture to state that this is the finest field, in some ways, on which he has entered. I believe in the poetry of life, and I believe with my whole soul that the man makes a great mistake who thinks that poetry is merely moonshine ; that it is something away up in the ideal, or that it does not touch the practical life of man. Poetry is the truest truth and the most real reality in human life. Wordsworth tells us in that beautiful ode of his, and I do not believe one word of it, that "heaven lies about us in our infancy ; that there is less of it with the growing boy, although he sees something of the beauty and the joy ; and that man, when he reaches his maturity, comes into the common light of the common place day. Wordsworth himself is a contradiction of his statement. He recognizes the beauty and the glory of the world in middle life and in old age as he did not and was not able to when he was a boy or when he was a young man. I pity the man who does not appreciate these high and fine and beautiful things that poetry establishes and utters. Indeed, gentlemen, the man is really not a man until he has climbed up into the higher and finer ranges of his nature. So long as we live only in those things which we share with the lower orders of life beneath us, we have not begun to live as men. The new ideal, the thought of truth, in beauty, in the con ception of God, in the dream of immortality, these, if you choose to sit down as a scientist and analyze human nature, these you will find to be the things that set man apart as man, and here is the realm of the poetic and the ideal. MINOT J. SAVAGE 217 I remember that Lowell on a certain occasion, coming across a pool by the sea-shore, looked down into it and saw strange forms of life, beautiful vegetation and all sorts of wonderful creations. He looked down for a moment and said, "What a poem!" And I remember that James T. Fields tells us that when he visited Tennyson on a certain occasion he walked out with him in the twilight ; it was too dark for him to see, and be fore he knew what had happened, Tennyson was on his knees, and he said to young Fields, "Down on your knees, man! Violets, violets!" There was poetry; there was the noblest and simplest manhood. I do not believe that we are outgrowing the time of the poetic. They tell us that the world is getting old and decrepit. I do not believe it. The scientific men tell us we have been here on this planet something between three and four hundred thousand years at the least, and instead of the world s being old, as I was taught to believe when a boy, I think it is young. It is only the morning twilight yet; we are just beginning to be civilized in spots, a little here and there. They tell us that Her cules in his infancy strangled some of the serpents that crept around his cradle and attempted to destroy him. This infant humanity of ours has strangled a few of the serpents that have been crawling and hissing around the cradle of its infancy. The growing age of the Herculean labors of humanity, those that are to make conquest of the world for the highest and finest in us, those are before us. It is just sun-up. The day- beams are shining over the hilltops, and the light goes down into some of the valleys. It is to be day by and by, and when that day comes it is to be a day of the 218 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ideal, of the poetic, of the spirit of the grand and of the human. I love to think that the mystery of the world is only being intensified by the discoveries of science. The material for poetry is all around us. Think of it, gentlemen! I stood at the telephone the other day ; I was waiting for my friend to come, and I heard his footsteps crossing the floor miles away when he was coming to answer my call. Think of the work of electricity; think of the scientific men who are un raveling the star-beams and telling us what it is that is aflame uncounted millions of miles away. Think of the age in which we are living. It is only the people who have no poetry in their hearts who do not find poetry in this marvelous, complex civilization of ours to-day. As Lowell has expressed it, I can quote just a little, * If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness and vine in Sinai, it is thy soul is poor ; there towers the mountain of the voice no less, and whoso seeks shall find. And the one poem of Dr. Van Dyke s which, if I may ven ture to discriminate, has pleased me more than any other, is the Toiling of Felix," he who sought the Christ, the ideal beauty and the ideal truth, and found it in felling the timbers, in shaping the rocks, in build ing the great structures of the world. There is poetry in our subterranean tunnels, poetry in our sky-scrapers, in our steam-engines, in our electricity, and in our tele phones. It only needs the poet to find it and give it utterance. EICHAED WATSON GILDER AT THE DINNEE TO HENRY VAN DYKE, DECEMBER 23, 1904 THE Lotos Club is a standing proof that the people of the busiest city in the world are not altogether busy in the contemplation of the things of this world. If not often a participant in your delightful meetings, I have watched them from the outside with applause and great interest. There are many on the other side of the world who think that in New York we care for nothing but worldly success, connected with the amass ing of great fortunes, which, of course, is a success not to be despised, especially when the fortunes are widely distributed. But this club is a sort of academy to make distinction for men who think. The psychology of the after-dinner speech is one which interests me intensely. I do not know why it is that the speaker takes the lib erty of being intensely confessional and personal, or why he takes the liberty of being at times extremely complimentary. That I should stand up and say things to Dr. Van Dyke formally, to my good friend, that I should not dare to say to him informally, is an amazing liberty, just as it would be if I should talk about myself, an amazing liberty and an amazing in discretion. Mr. Lord was to have read my speech, but he says I 219 220 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB must read it. Some of you know that I have been a little under the weather. I want it understood that I am better, but not fit for jury duty. Please do not tell Mr. Jerome, because he is trying to save me from duty on the Grand Jury; but if I had spoken I would have said something like this. I would have said that Dr. Van Dyke has been not only all the things that they have said about him, but he is a man, and I am glad that he is a man. He is an awfully good citizen; he has long been one of our best citizens. Princeton is only a suburb of New York, so therefore he is a citizen of New York. Dr. Van Dyke used his pulpit once to preach a ser mon on international copyright, which appealed to my understanding. I once visited the White House with a friend of Mr. Roosevelt, named Mr. Cleveland. He asked me, "Why are you so much interested in inter national copyright?" I said, "With me it is only a moral question." It was only a moral question with Dr. Van Dyke, and he preached the sermon in the little old Brick Church, and he went down to Washing ton and preached it to one or two congressmen. Most of the congressmen stayed away. The others heard it, and it helped us in that great enterprise. I do not think enough has been said to-night on this subject, although it has been implied. I charge Dr. Van Dyke with being a poet, and I am able to prove the charge, if the defendant should refuse to plead guilty. I can bring any amount of testimony into the Lotos court to sustain the accusation, in the shape of various odes, sonnets, lyrics, and such like. As to my self, it has been authoritatively decided both by the RICHARD WATSON GILDER 221 legislature and the Court of Appeals that I am not a poet; for when each of those bodies separately was solicited not to favor certain tenement-house reforms on the ground that the chairman of the commission was a poet, they forthwith decided against my accusers by taking the action the said chairman desired. I have heard the word "poet" used here to-night in a complimentary sense. It is not always a compliment ; there is only one community that I have ever lived in or visited where the whole community considered it an honor to be a poet. That was a little district in the south of France, where it was considered that if you did not write verses you were under suspicion. I went down to Gettysburg with George William Curtis, and Mr. Godkin, and some of that ilk once. Mr. Curtis was to deliver an address on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg. In the party there was a gentleman who asked me what I was going to do that afternoon. I said I was going to read some verses to one of the regiments. He looked at me with pity and suspicion, and he said, "I did n t know you did that sort of thing. In the case of Dr. Van Dyke there is no escape. But while I contend that Dr. Van Dyke is a poet, I acquit him of being a minor poet, for the reason that while we do not nickname any man a minor sculptor, painter, architect, dramatist, or artist in general, it is unfair to call a poet minor. You know the story of the certain actor who was ad mitted to heaven because he was n t much of an actor. But the only question as to a poet is whether he is a poet at all; if he is, we ought so to call him and not give him nicknames. My contention is that whatever 222 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB else Dr. Van Dyke may be, he is a poet, and a true poet. The thing that will longest be remembered, perhaps although there are many things of Dr. Van Dyke s accomplishment that will long be remembered is his influence upon that perhaps most dubious of all sub jects, theology. I will only say that and let it go. The things that will certainly be remembered are his beauti ful and solemn and poetical verses, which I believe will never be blotted from American literature. GEORGE HARVEY AT THE DINNER TO HENEY VAN DYKE, DECEMBEE 23, 1904 WHAT is the distinctive peculiarity of Dr. Van Dyke, which, makes the selection of him as your guest of honor seem so wholly natural, and proves to be so obviously pleasing to this assembled aggregation of talent, tact, and cynicism ? My answer would be that it is because, in a greater degree than any one else in America, he is the embodiment of sane idealism. No body needs to be told that, even in these commercial days, we do not suffer from lack of morals. There probably never was a time when the supply of that commodity met the demand in greater variety or luxuriance. The pulpit, or so much of it as is graced by the notion that the man of God can do his most effec tive service by climbing down to the level of the man of clay, sheds morals in great profusion over the heads of the multitude. Nor in all the realm of literature, from the swashbuckling novel to the poems of child hood, from ponderous reviews to yellow journals, can we, by the exercise of the utmost ingenuity, escape the inevitable moral lesson. Even finance has a code of casual morals. Sometimes those who deal in them im pose them gratuitously and with much blare of trum pets upon a helpless people; but in any case, at any 223 224 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB time, they may be had for a price. The reason of this undoubtedly is that experience has proven that what we term morality is not only the handmaid, but an es sential element of material achievement. I would not be understood as intimating that your guest is not a moral man. I dare say that he is, but so are we all. And yet he is in the place of honor. The difference is that our voices are those of the quail, and his is the note of the lark. It is the developed spiritual quality of this man s heart that wins our glad homage. It is the purity of thought, the uplifting endeavor, the effective gentleness of purpose, all garbed in beautiful lucidity of expression, that holds our respect and draws our very reverence more signally than at any time since the great soul of Emerson passed out of its human form. It is good that this is so, because it is high time that this overgrown, overworked, over-successful people, whose very existence sprang from the Puritan conscience, be again influenced and inspired by that sane idealism of which Henry Van Dyke is the foremost living exponent. IRVING BACHELLER AT THE DINNER TO HENEY VAN DYKE, DECEMBER 23, 1904 I HAVE just returned from a visit to one of the old- time guides on the northern side of the Adirondacks. To him St. Lawrence County is the world, and game, the woods, and huckleberries the fatness thereof. God is only a word, and mostly part of a compound ad jective, and "Fisherman s Luck" is the only scripture with which he is personally familiar. Hell is the city of Ogdensburg, whither he once journeyed, and the devil is a lawyer who once bullied him for an hour in the witness-chair. His lies have been for the delight of those he loves ; his profanity, for the emphasis of his affection, or for the expression of well-grounded dis approval; his soul has never given him any more con cern than his body, for the reason, as I am assured, that both are healthy. This man lives on the northern side of the Adirondacks; his spirit is that of the pioneer, dauntless and unconquerable ; his history is the epic of the woods. His memory reaches from a time when, as it would seem, God entered the wilderness and his paean of welcome was on every trail, "Come, all ye that are weary"; yet he lives to-day when the title has largely passed to the mill-owner, and the welcome upon the aisles of the forest is displaced by a warning. In his 225 226 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB young manhood he walked from Saranac to Cranberry in twenty-four hours, under a heavy pack. He lives to day, when the lazy degenerate forgets your comfort in the contemplation of his own. The steam-locomotive now passes his cabin. Within five years the hills around it have been stripped naked. The foliage, has been burned away; there are ashes and charred tree trunks in the valleys ; the rock bones of the hill lie bare and bleaching in the sun. The springs and water brooks which Dr. Van Dyke has taught us to love are running dry. The rivers that flow northward have slackened their pace, and the merry song with which they leaped along in my boyhood has been stilled to a low and solemn sort of music which is more like a song of mourning. The water-wheels have stopped on account of the feeble flow, and we read to-day that the industries of the East are threatened by an unheard-of drought ; and in the midst of these facts one hundred and fifty men are cutting a swath a mile wide and four long from Wanakena to Carter s Plain, in the most magnificent pine forest with which man ever was blessed on earth. The time has come when the question will be answered once for all, "Who owns the mountains?" But I am not here to raise the voice of complaint in the house of good cheer. Was it St. Peter who said to his friends after the most terrible tragedy in history, when they were consulting what was best to do, "As for myself, I shall go fishing"? He had just seen the most sublime spec tacle of history, but he said, "Let us fish." I remember, last summer, I had an engagement to go fishing in the woods. I was extremely busy up to the moment for departure, but before that time I went to IRVING BACHELLER 227 my tailor and asked him to make me an outing suit and send it to the point I designated. He wanted to know what material I desired, and I said, "I have n t time to think about it. Send me something that is light, and something that will be comfortable and respectable." Then I rushed to my train and went to my work. By and by I started to go fishing. I arrived at the little town of Wanakena, and there I found the package from the tailor. I opened it and adjusted the garments to my person. There was a Norfolk jacket and waistcoat and knee-breeches. The material was extremely light in color, and it was cut into squares of considerable magnitude by stripes which ran north, east, west, and south. As I stood before the mirror I reminded myself of the pictures of the globe cut by those parallels so useful to the navigator. I could have located any part of my person by degrees of longitude and latitude. Down in the vicinity of the south pole the cloth lay in deep ridges and furrows, and at the equator was a large mountain sloping gradually toward the intemperate zone. Rivers of perspiration were flowing down from the snowy summit of the far north, and the rim of my hat resembled, somehow, the arctic circle. I was not much pleased with the suit, but it was the only suit I had ; so I sallied forth and began, as it were, to move in my orbit. I was not aware to what extent my clothing had expanded my person until I was walking along, and a gentleman inquired how wide I was across the shoulders. I hesitated, not remembering the figures, but I heard a familiar voice saying, "You mean across the withers?" To which he said, "Yes, I should think about two axles and a piece of shoe-string." I recog- 228 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB nized the voice of the venerable guide of whom I have spoken. I greeted him; he was to go fishing with me, and I had waited until the next train came in, bearing my friend, and we started up the river. I had a book with me, and took it out of my pocket and sat com fortably in my canoe and began to read. It was "Fish erman s Luck," by our honored guest. I turned to Uncle Fide, the guide, and said, "Here is a book you ought to read." He said, "What s the name of it?" and I said, "Fisherman s Luck." He said, "I have read it." I said, "That surprises me; I did n t know you had any familiarity with Dr. Van Dyke." He said, "Well, now, I 11 tell you. I had to spend last winter in camp, and I was snowed in, and it was the only book I had. It was left by a fellow stopping with his wife the summer before." I went on reading, and presently came to the essay entitled " Talkability, " and in the midst of that you will remember the doctor quotes from Montaigne to the effect that good things, gaiety, friendship, and freedom, are necessary to good companionship in the woods. I said, Look here ; let s try to be good for a week; and I don t know of any better way to start in than by agreeing to tell the truth to each other. I have always suspected you of having some respect for the truth, and it seems that you ought not to hide it under a bushel. Well, he agreed to that, and I said, "There s another thing. Now let s have no more profanity ; just let s get along with Christian sort of talk." He said, "I think that will be easier for you than for me ; I have got you fellows on my hands, and it is a good pull with a paddle up to the Plains, and there s some fly-fishing on the way, but I will try. IRVING BACHELLER 229 " It is singular, he says, what a change there is in the world. They have got a meeting-house down at Wanakena, and some of them go to meeting and get religion, and there is one of them that is so afraid of doing wrong that he don t do anything. Another one is determined to stop swearing, and so he don t say nothing, for fear he will." Says he, "He s spoiling himself for his family, and no one likes him any more ; he s all withering up; it s kind of burning him up holding of it in; I think it s better to just let it naturally drain off." I said, "All right; but do the best you can." So we went on, and we began to tell the truth to each other, my friend and myself, in a rather frank fashion, and we came presently to the camp, where there was a young man in charge who had recently returned from the West. He told about hav ing bought one of my books the Christmas before as a present for a friend this was in Livingston, Montana ; and he said that after he had bought the book and as he was going up an alley he heard a shot, but he did n t think anything of it until he got home, when he found the bullet was buried in the leaves, about half-way through. Well, says my friend, it takes something more than the energy of a bullet to get through one of Bacheller s books." So we went on telling the truth to each other, and pretty soon he knew what I thought of his talents and his philosophy, and I knew what he thought of mine. "We was both a little sore," as Uncle Fide would say ; and presently the old man said, "You fellers have forgot one thing : Dr. Van Dyke says in the book that you have got to have friendship, and you fellers can never be friends, telling the truth to 230 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB each other. " So we agreed that it was about time to get down to a basis of politeness, anyway, and we agreed to relax a little bit. Presently he suggested that we enter into a compact under which he should insist before all comers that I was one of the great men in the world, and I was to do the same for him. Well, I did it, and he did it ; but, do you know, although things went on more comfortably after that, a very singular thing hap pened: folks believed me, and they did n t believe him. While it is no wonder, after all, if a misapprehension did arise, I discovered pretty soon that I was telling the truth. That very night we sat before 1ihe camp-fire, and Uncle Fide sat on his haunches; he just had lifted a coal out of the fire and put it on his pipe with his fingers. I said to him, Uncle Fide, who owns the mountains ? And he said, I will tell you. I used to think that I owned them as much as anybody, and I was inclined to agree with Dr. Van Dyke, until one day I was walking across Bear Mountain, and a man came along and ordered me off; then I went over to Blue Mountain, and another man ordered me off. It s curious, I have lived to see wonderful things happen, and I would n t be at all surprised if I should wake up some morning and find myself in the air, and turn around and see some fellow who owned some big cor poration walking off with the earth on his back." My friend and I nudged each other, and we looked at Uncle Fide, with his bald peak and a little fringe of gray hair around his ears, and he said, "It won t be long." HAMILTON W. MABIE AT THE DINNER TO HENRY VAN DYKE, DECEMBER 23, 1904 I HAVE no business to be here, because I have a relaxed vocal cord and I cannot talk. But Henry Van Dyke has a magic in making dumb things speak, and so I came in that faith to-night. The first thing that strikes me about him, and if anybody thinks I am going to stand up here for ten minutes and talk about Dr. Van Dyke, after the manner which the London Punch once described as belonging to the Marquis of Hartington, now the Duke of Devonshire, an air of general ubedamnitiveness, he is very much mistaken. I am here to speak of my friend, and I am going to speak of my friend. The first thing that strikes me about him is the fact that he has always had, to an ex traordinary degree, the right to carry the title of his own book, "Fisherman s Luck." Here it is the night before Christmas Eve, and in twenty-four hours his stockings are to be hung up and crammed full, as they always are, and to-night he has achieved that delightful experience of being a guest of the Lotos Club. You remember how Dr. Johnson once described a club as "A company of good fellows meeting regularly under cer tain conditions. I cannot help thinking that Johnson 231 232 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB would have liked the Lotos Club. He liked the fra- Lrrniicc of tin* bowl ami Iho giMUM ous trencher dish; and he liked to sit up late at night, as I understand some of you do down here. There is a tradition that on a certain occasion he celebrated the success of a young woman poet by inviting her to a company, and they sat up all night; and in order to give distinction to the feast he had a large fresh apple-pie made which was crowned with bay. Boswell records that as the hours wore away, Dr. Johnson s face became rosier and rosier until the dawn. Now we find here to-night the bay and the laurel ; we have the mountain pine for purity, and the Scotch heather for the sweep of the sky; we have the balsam for the fragrance and the warmth of friend ship, and we have the blue flower for the eternal search of the poet, and those who have the poet s soul for the ideal. Gentlemen, after all, it is a matter of luck.; If you meet this man on the well-kept lawn of criticism, or in the great open stretches of nature study, or in the fertile and well-tilled fields of affection, in the height of the pulpit, or in the quiet and secret places of poetry, wherever you find him, challenge him with that call which the fisherman always knows and recognizes, "What luck?" And if he tells the truth, as he is bound to, there is but one answer for him to make, "Good luck." Look at his rod and reel and his book of flies ; they are the very best that can be had ; educa tion has done everything it could for him except spoil ing him. Even Princeton could n t do that. I am reminded here of a story of a gentleman who once saw three men before him at a booking-office in Liverpool three or four years ago. They had all just landed, and HAMILTON W. MABIE 233 he overheard the conversation. The young man at the head of the line said to the ticket-seller, " Three for London." And the man inside the wicket said, "What class?" And the man at the head of the line replied, "1900, Princeton." I would like to overhaul Dr. Van Dyke s outfit; I think I should find all those dun-brown faded flies per haps all cast out for those flies which are much more apt to attract the eye on the surface of the water, and stir the sleeping fish which he wishes to arouse beneath. He has been a student all his life, and he has become a scholar. I want to say that, and then I qualify it at once because I do not want to prejudice you against him. He can speak to you in several languages. It reminded me of the Irishman in Paris, who called upon a friend who has a maid. He asked for his friend in French, and the maid said, before she answered him, 4 He is English. He asked her how she knew, in Eng lish, to which she replied, "No, he is Irish." Then he said, "Well, you know I am English by my French, and now you know that I am Irish by my English." As I say, he can speak in various languages. There is one language in which he reaches the hearts of all of us. I am not here to tell you how educated he is, but his erudition reminds me of that of the young lady from Boston, who is reputed, I will not vouch for it, but she is reputed to read Henry James in the original. But all of those tools, all those modern flies, all those patent reels and rods he has, but so have a great many others, and you will find them fishing in every stream, and you sometimes feel as you do when traveling through France, where, in every river, and every stream, from 234 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB every bridge, there are patient fishermen who fish and fish and never move, the rods never tremble, and all is silent there, but still they fish and fish, and catch nothing. Henry James wittily said, "The French love art for art s sake; yet the same people, with the same outfits, are fishing everywhere, rarely catching anything; and when they do, what queer things they draw out of the water! They say, Look at the string, it is a record catch. He has had the luck, and we might as well confess that in the arts luck is everything. But do not think that all the work in the world, and all the pa tience, high-mindedness, and intellectual endeavor in this world, will ever take the place of the quality given to those whom the gods love. Do you think Shakespeare ever spent much time thinking over such lines as "Where late the sweet bard sang," or any other of those immortal lines that leaped off the end of his pen? Not at all; it is what you call bull luck, and it is the same thing in every one of the arts. I could quote line after line of Dr. Van Dyke s that I know he never spent five minutes on. Just his infernal luck. Well, after all, gentlemen, the gods are not blind when they dispose of their gifts, and I suspect that the man chooses the gods before the gods choose him. There is an old tradition that long ago the sirens and the muses contended together on the shores of Crete for supremacy in the arts, and that when the sirens were defeated they plunged into the sea, and went off to a distance, and began to sing their kind of song, while the muses sang theirs. Now, one reason why luck has al ways come this man s way is that he has been able to HAMILTON W. MABIE 235 distinguish between the song of the sirens and the song of the muses. Art is always in revolt, and the muses are always in revolt, and the spirit of the artist is al ways the spirit of spontaneity and freedom, and in every age the man who sees the work that goes fairly home to the imagination and the heart of his time is the man who breaks through the conventions. But it is one thing to fight against conventions in the interest of the eternal freedom of the human soul, and it is another thing to confuse conventions with law, and fight against law. The real artist is the man whose soul is aflame against artificial barriers and the law which crystallizes into tyranny, and he is also the man who knows the difference between law and conventionalized usage, and who knows that it is the very essence of art that it should be obedient to the law. And wherever there is a great thing spoken of, done with hand, pencil, chisel, or sound, in any form of material, wherever it is done, it is done in obedience to the law which is not laid down or stamped from without, but which is the expression of the nature within. If a man were to judge by some of the recent dramas, such as, for instance, The Dead City/ he would imagine that the only way in which a man could be a free man was to commit adultery, that the only way to be strong was to be violent, and that no man could be a full-fledged man until he began to curse. Is not that the expression of the idea of the revolt against the organized conventionalities of life, as it is found in a great deal of what we call the up-to-date dramatic poetry and up-to-date dramatic fiction ? It is the distinction which this man has made, between power and violence, which has helped him to be the artist that 236 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB he is; it is the distinction between Thucydides and Hector, between Governor Vardaman and President Roosevelt. Wherever you find him whipping the streams or climbing the mountains, you come upon an other secret of his power, and that is the fact that he is always seeking the original fountain-springs of life. A great many love bottled waters, taken from the Pierian spring, sterilized and put up in their libraries. But theirs is the quality of the books that are written from books. This man lives in the open ; he knows what it is to be out of doors, and he knows that the secret of all true writing is to write out of your libraries. I re member it is said of Goethe, that even in the coldest weather, when he felt obliged to have as near an ap proach to a fire as a German stove can accommodate, he always had the windows wide open. Scholarship is a profession for which I have the profoundest respect, but the gift of writing comes from the gods. There are three classes that stand in the way of real recognition and a common understanding of true writing in this country to-day. There is the class that goes with the crowd and imagines that if a thing is popular therefore it is good. There is the other class that holds the re verse, that because a thing is popular, therefore it is bad; and then there is the class who judge a book from the standpoint of the literary scholar rather than the standpoint of the literary instinct and feeling. They are the class who explain in a superior manner that Shakespeare had no right to be ignorant of the fact that there was no sea-coast in Bohemia, and who would dwell at great length upon his general law lessness. And then there are those who believe that HAMILTON W. MABIE 237 literature is written to-day for the few, and that it is practised by a cult, that its language ought to be a sign- language, understood only of those with a special train ing to comprehend it; that it should be occult, and symbolical, and reserved to those who have penetrated to the innermost shrine. The fact is that literature is just the biggest and most indifferent and careless thing in the whole world. In its great moments it is always with the crowd and never of the crowd. It is full of the wisdom of life, and it is monstrous indifferent to the technicalities of scholarship, and it always speaks the language of the public fair and square. Professor Palmer called attention recently to the fact that litera ture is always greatest when the age is least bookish and most talkative, and that the literature which sur vives is the literature which comes nearest to the speak ing language, the speaking dialect. The bookish age is always decadent. The talking age, with its ideas living on the tongue of the moment, is always the vital age. Those who hold that to reach the hearts of one s fellows by the pen is to be held as unrighteous, will consider Dr. Van Dyke as a monstrous sinner, almost the worst of his time. He has done what Matthew Arnold explained was the secret of his success, borrowing an expression of a famous French litterateur: he "put his heart into his business." He has discharged, to me, the highest functions of art, and I do not hesitate to say, although it is not at all popular with the people with whom he associates professionally, that he is an optimist. When I say that, I do not mean that he has always a pleasant countenance and thinks well of his fellow-man only, but he does what I think the greatest artists in every time 238 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB have done. He has been one of our leaders in the pur suit of happiness. Dr. Van Dyke has had the pursuit of happiness so close, and so much a part of himself, that while he has not hesitated to speak the truth, yet he has always led us in the way in which happiness lies. He was born a skylark, and not an owl. He has not been one of the owls that sit back in the shadow, with their imposing luminous eyes, regarding the skylark and finding it impossible to realize how the skylark can do what he does with that tiny body of his, how he can mount so high and how he can with that delicate organization in his throat produce such a flood of melody. And so the owls are always doubting about the skylark. They wonder whether Shakespeare was really Shakespeare, and they cannot understand how he could do it. And many a time this man has mounted into the heavens and we have heard his songs, as we have heard those of the skylark coming down on a pleasant afternoon in July over the English meadows. And in this later world of ours, with its increasing cares and increasing toils, who is so important to us or whom shall we love more than we love the man who sings the song of the blue sky, the stretch of the blue sky, and the infinity of the God who made it all ? SIR CASPAR PUEDON CLARKE AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOK, FEBKUABY 23, 1905 Lotos Club is well known in Europe. To dine _ with the Lotos Club : those are very simple words, but they brought up to my mind visions and memories of romance and realities, of the Lotophagi in their dreamy country, and several months which I spent, years ago, in delightful fashion in a house-boat on the lakes of far Kashmir; the memory of eating the lotos- leaves ; the scenes of fair Kashmir, and the recollection of the drives and the days spent in the simple life. An American friend, an artist resident in London, who was one of a party that I can never forget, coming in to congratulate me, I took advantage of the oppor tunity to ask respecting the special subject which the Lotos Club regarded as a qualification for membership, and upon listening to a few general remarks I suggested that the Lotos Club was probably an equivalent to the Savage Club in London, but my friend remarked that it was so, with a difference. There is a very great differ ence. From the entrance-hall of the Savage Club, and through all the rooms, hang tomahawks, and they try to impress upon you that they are savages. The presi dent s club is an enormous bulb with little balls or knobs on it, a mace, I believe it is, formerly belonging to some chief in West Africa. The entire house is decorated 239 240 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB with, native weapons from many lands. It is the only club that won t admit millionaires at any price. And that formidable mace that the president uses is gener ally pounded on the table, with the gruff remark, You may smoke. The members, however, are savages only in name, and are otherwise simply turtle-doves. But the Lotos Club, with its dolce far niente title, is not to be taken so lightly as its name implies; it takes things very seriously, and one had better look out. Its members live in another atmosphere from that of London, and although the word " strenuous" may be a softening down of the old word snap, they are still terribly in earnest, and unless you can get them to purr they may scratch and perhaps bite. This may be slander, and the quality of the dove pos sibly dominates your gatherings; but I make a frank confession of the state of mind in which I came here, with the hope that the spirit of the Lotos Club, the om mani padme hum of the Light of Asia, will, at least this evening, reign supreme. I am not sure, sir, that I am expected to say some thing about the museum the Metropolitan Museum. Twenty-one years ago I went over it very carefully. I don t recognize it now. It has apparently doubled in size, and some of the collections have doubled in im portance, and you have quite beaten me in reproduc tions by means of casts. Several things I failed to get for the South Kensington, you have managed to get over here. I am rather pleased in finding that in one or two senses the museum will not require much help on my part. SIR CASPAR PURDON CLARKE 241 I don t think I can say anything more on the sub ject, because there are several present who know so much more about the museum than myself. I had much rather listen to the hopes and expectations of those gentlemen than to my own fears. I can only say that I am taking up the work thoroughly determined to do my best to merit all the kind things said, and the very high expectations which you naturally have here. I am going back to London in a few days, taking back with me the memory of the most gratifying event which has occurred in my life. It was in India, though, that I had the great experi ence of my life, after the sleepy days in London. Some time ago the home government sent me to India charged with an important mission, and there I met with a reception that would have turned the heads of some people. They put me on the back of an elephant, and all the people kotowed as we went along. My ele phant was a rogue, though, and I broke up the proces sion by letting him stop to rob a greengrocer s shop, and allowed him to get his fill. FEEDEEICK DIELMAN (PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN) AT THE DINNER TO SIR CASPAR PURDON CLARKE, FEBRUARY 23, 1905 IT is the very basis of art that it is a bond which links together all humanity. It is a bond which connects the man of to-day with him who lived ages before the dawn of history. It is a bond of sympathy between him who is a product of the highest culture of to-day, and that other one who scratched and ornamented the cobble in his unknown cave, and painted rude figures and ornaments upon the blade he wrought. It is a bond of sympathy. We of America or Europe may be utterly incapable of understanding or sharing the ideas, ethical or re ligious, of the nations of the East say of those who occupy the Japanese archipelago. Their language, their written words, are sounds and songs, and are simply unintelligible to us, meaningless; but their painting, their carving, these instantaneously and powerfully strike a sympathetic chord within us; while their lan guage is meaningless to us, their art is eloquent in appealing to us. That is because art is one, it is uni versal. It connects, as I said, the man of to-day with the savage, the man who lived in prehistoric times. It is a bond that runs true and acts unmindful of condi tions of time, race, or region. 242 FREDERICK DIELMAN 243 Now it would be pedantic and out of place to dwell upon the particular characteristic of art its univer sality; but it may not be out of place to point out, as you have already pointed out, that we have another illustration of the fact of this community of art, which proves the truth that it is not the art of this country, of this time, that of one people or another, but simply that it is art. We have an illustrious proof of this fact in the coming to us of Sir Purdon Clarke. Our political system differs somewhat from that of Sir Purdon s own country, and differs greatly from that of other European countries. We could not ex pect that the statesman, of whatever ability, of Eng land, Germany, or even Russia should come to us and take the management of our government. We can hardly expect that the eminent jurists should come to us and give us in person the benefit of their learning and experience. It is rarely, I believe, that a foreigner takes charge of great industrial undertakings (Scotch men are hardly an exception unless caught very young), but Sir Purdon Clarke comes to us to assume the leadership of a great museum of art. Fully equipped and qualified, he needs no sea-change; all that is necessary for him to do is to continue in the exercise of the high qualities of head and heart which he has proved himself to be possessed of in his native England. We may naturally, I think, congratulate Sir Purdon that he comes to a field of art of wonderful amplitude in everything that calls for a liberal spirit and unex celled generosity, and to a welcome that will make him feel at once at home and in no sense a stranger. It is 244 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB a most pleasant duty for me to say a word for the insti tution which I have the honor to represent, and for the members thereof, and to express and extend a welcome to him from them, individually and collec tively; and I think I may venture also to extend that welcome from every artist in New York City, at least. And this I now take upon myself to do because, after all, they are all, in one way or another, identified with that old institution, the National Academy of Design. Robert R. Livingston was one of those who brought about the first exhibition of American art. Trumbull and Holland, among others, were important men in that period. It was at the very beginning of the nine teenth century that the first art society was organized in this country and in this city, and that society was the nucleus of the National Academy of Design. WILLIAM T. EVANS AT THE DINNEE TO SIR CASPAR PURDON CLARKE, FEBRUARY 23, 1905 IN honoring the newly appointed director of the Metropolitan Museum, the Lotos Club does honor to itself ; and in behalf of the art interests of the club, it is my great pleasure and privilege to extend to Sir Purdon a most hearty and affectionate greeting. The Lotos Club, in addition to following the simple life, has consistently stood for the best in art, litera ture, and science. Credit is due to President Law rence, upon whose initiative was established the Lotos Club Fund for the Encouragement of American Art. By the subscriptions of members we annually add to our collection one or more representative Ameri can paintings. The Lotos Club extends further prac tical encouragement by admitting meritorious American artists to life membership, taking from them, instead of money, a picture approved by the Art Committee, so that the Lotos to-day possesses the best collection of American paintings and has the largest membership of eminent artists of any club in the country. It is therefore highly appropriate that we should extend a cordial and friendly welcome to the distin guished guest of the evening. We can readily understand that the important posi- 245 246 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB tion which Sir Purdon has occupied in the South Kensington Museum was attained only through stu dious application and sheer merit. He has acquired not only extended knowledge in all the various branches of art, but he has shown administrative ca pacity and tact which will stand him in good stead in the high office to which he has dedicated himself. I am very glad to hear from Sir Purdon that in many de partments the Metropolitan Museum of Art will com pare more than favorably with any similar institution in the world. Public museums are not created overnight. The great English National Gallery in London was started in 1824 by the purchase of thirty-eight pictures from the Angerstein collection, and it was not opened to the public until fourteen years later. The collection now contains several thousand examples. Many of us re member the modest beginning of the Metropolitan Mu seum in an old private house on Fourteenth Street, and we have seen it grow with the growth of the metropolis. There are still many rich treasures in store for it. The growth of aesthetic taste in this country has been re markable. A little more than twenty years ago there was held the first art exhibition given in the South at Louisville in 1883; since then there have been im portant exhibitions in New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charleston. Art museums are now to be found in almost every leading city in the country. There was held a few weeks ago in this city what was called the Comparative Exhibition. There were shown two hundred paintings, equally divided between Ameri can and foreign works French, English, and Dutch. WILLIAM T. EVANS 247 The committee in charge secured the best obtainable examples. In order to import valuable works from Canada in bond, the Society of Art Collectors was in corporated. The success of that exhibition was epoch- making, and I think I am warranted in saying that the works of the American artists fully held their own by comparison. The good effect upon American art was immediate and, I believe, far-reaching. In landscapes particularly the American works were notably impressive. Not only were the great deceased painters, Martin, Wyant, and Inness, well represented, but the living American painters of landscape gave a good account of themselves. Nor was the American half of the exhibition confined to landscapes : Winslow Homer was splendidly represented by his powerful marines, and many of our figure-painters contributed to the success of the exhibition, which included such names as William Morris Hunt, George Fuller, George de Forest Brush, Wyatt Eaton, Thomas W. Dewing, J. Alden Weir, B. R. Fitz, and others. I have mentioned the name of that poet-painter, Homer D. Martin. During his lifetime he was appre ciated by a limited circle of admirers. There is a story told of his early life in Albany which illustrates his struggle for existence. He was called upon one day by the famous sculptor, E. D. Palmer. He found Martin s studio very uncomfortable, and Martin himself almost famished with cold. Palmer asked him why he did not get some coal, and Martin acknowledged that he had no money. Thereupon Palmer gave him ten dollars. A couple of weeks afterward the sculptor called at Martin s studio and found the same conditions existing. 248 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Palmer said to the painter: "Where is that coal I gave you the ten dollars to buy?" "Oh," replied Martin, * I bought a couple of pails of coal, and for the rest of the money I got a box of cigars. It is well known that Sir Purdon was, before he be came a museum director, a practising architect, and I know he will acknowledge we have made some advance in our architecture during the past decade or two. This reminds me of another bright saying of Martin. With a friend he was passing the General Post-office, which, by the way, ought never to have encroached upon the City Hall Park, and remarked that "poor Mullett could never understand the dignity of a dead wall. The new Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum is a great improvement on the older portions of the building. It is a far cry from the Mullett Post- office to the new Custom-house. Art is the only lasting record of a nation s civiliza tion, or, as Austin Dobson has expressed it : All passes ; Art, alone Enduring, stays to us. The bust outlasts the throne; The coin, Tiberius. WHITELAW EEID (AMBASSADOR TO GREAT BRITAIN) AT THE DINNEK IN HIS HONOB, MAY 18, 1905 MORE than ever you convince me that it is all a mistake. We used to talk about the Lotos Club as a land where it seemed always afternoon. But it is nothing of the kind. On the contrary, it seems always in the morning, quite early in the morning, the morning of life, of cheer, of hope, the morning of ardent beliefs and of hearty appreciations. I am not vain enough to fancy that these smiling faces, these voices of good will, this generous warmth of recognition, are the just due of any merits of mine. I know well how they come from the vivid memories and the red blood of a public-spirited club that has learned to carry the freshness of its morning friendships throughout its full and successful day. You yourself, Mr. President, illustrate perfectly how long this morning lasts. In spite of all the years that you have held this post, the Lotos charm keeps for you still the air and the quick sympathy of the young law yer who succeeded to my place and bettered my work away back in the 80 s or early 90 s. What memories this very generous and ever fresh greeting of the Lotos evokes ! How often have I stood here extending in your name the first welcome to newly arriving guests from the Old Home ! 249 250 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB You will recall the proud pleasure we all took in being the first to receive on these shores the author of "The Three Fishers " and "Alton Locke " and "West ward Ho ! Preacher, novelist, and poet, and fascinat ing alike in each relation, Canon Kingsley s stay was too short for us, though unhappily too long for him, and but a year or two afterward two nations mourned his Then came, but a few months later, the most bril liant word-painter the study of history has given to English literature in half a century, James Anthony Froude, and you bade me welcome him to your board. The next year brought another Englishman, Wilkie Collins, whom you took to your hearts from the mo ment when, in reply to some playful reference of mine, he gallantly avowed to you that his sole mission in life was to produce what heavy people called light litera ture. And then came another, a statesman and poet whom we still like to call by the name under which we had learned to admire his work, Richard Monckton Milnes. Some of you will remember how the proud parent could scarcely keep back his tears when Bayard Taylor spoke admiringly at your table of the manly, broad-shouldered young fellow he had seen at the home of the guest of the evening, a young fellow who would some day be Lord Houghton himself. How time flies! That broad-shouldered youth who had caught our traveler-poet s fancy, and whose name the Lotos members applauded because they saw it pleased his father, has since been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and is now known as the Earl of Crewe. But why should I prolong these reminiscences? We WHITELAW REID 251 could never recount them all. Matthew Arnold, that rarest Greek in the later English world of letters; Sir Edwin Arnold and Sir Henry M. Stanley, Edmund Yates and George Augustus Sala and dear old Tom Hughes (whom you never could learn to call anything but Tom Brown), and Sir Henry Irving belong to the earlier days. William S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sul livan came while "Pinafore" and the "Pirates of Penzance were young. In later years the list of Eng lishmen whom you have made your guests is far too long for the briefest recital. And now you are sending me off with your God speed to the other side, as more than once you have sent me before and tolerantly welcomed me back. If but a tithe of your English guests remember me for your sake, I shall find myself surrounded from the first by a host of brilliant friends. Increasing cares and duties have of late made me a very unworthy member of this club. I am almost ashamed to recall the fact that the last time I stood before you was to thank you for the welcome you gave me on my return from a post whence my colleagues and myself had brought home peace, with national ex pansion. Whatever may await me in the future, am bition can scarcely hold out a more grateful attainment than the approval then given here by those who have known me longest and best, and given next by the country we tried to serve. May I add, with reference to the new appointment whose duties I am now about to undertake, that by far the most gratifying thing about it is the way it has been received. We have been living in a strenuous time. 252 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB No man in this great metropolis and in my place could well escape an active part in the incessant controversies and turmoil of the last third of a century; and my critics, I believe, have generally agreed that I was apt to assume, at any rate, my full share of them. After such a life to have this appointment made by the Presi dent of my country, without the filing of a single recommendation, approved by the Senate without a dissenting voice, and received by the press and the public with such apparently general cordiality, fills me with a sobering sense of responsibility beyond any thing I have ever felt before, and with earnest aspira tions that all this generous confidence may prove in the end not to have been wholly misplaced. Let me take the opportunity before this club, so largely made up of members of the press and others of literary and artistic pursuits, to say further that the thing that has touched me most of all is the unbroken good will expressed with such heartiness and without distinction of party by my colleagues in the press of the city and State of New York, among whom I have lived and worked and done my share of fighting for more than a generation. May I presume a little on this ? I should like to take the liberty of pointing out that other work may now bring different duties. No one, I trust, will ever find me unmindful of the rights and the just claims of the profession I honor most in the world and am the proud est to have served. No man can have spent his life in newspaper work without being led by all his habits and instincts to a warm sympathy with newspaper workers, and a readiness to facilitate their efforts. And yet may WHITELAW REID 253 I hint to the general manager of our wonderful Asso ciated Press service, whose wary eye I see upon me, and to others, in less responsible places, who may have chanced to think of the matter hitherto with less scru pulous care than Mr. Stone himself and his representa tives in the great capitals always show, that there may in fact, there must come a time when it will be my duty to report first and exclusively to the government, instead of reporting to the newspapers ? It is perfectly true that an open course is the best; that a free people wish to know from day to day what is being done in their name and by their authority; that our government is not adapted to secrecy and does not like to make a mystery of its movements and its policy. But the Japanese have been showing, on a great scale, that there is a duty in war which under any sagacious government must come before the duty of furnishing bulletins for the daily press. Diplomacy, if it is to be sagacious or successful, even the diplomacy of a republic, must be somewhat in the same class. Neither can always be advantageously conducted coram publico. There is another phase of our newspaper activities that merits more serious consideration from all of us than we generally give it. The free press largely rules a free country. It may make peace or war ; it has done both. But it is quite capable of fomenting very grave difficulties which it never desired, or intended, or even thought of. In our great distances and isolation be tween two oceans, and general feeling of remoteness and elbow-room and independence, it has sometimes been apt in moments of excitement to measure its 254 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB words as little in dealing with a high-spirited and sen sitive nation as with a candidate for the office of town constable or for the Board of Aldermen. Is it not time for the press, when it exercises its power, to recognize also the obligations of rule, consideration, moderation, and a scrupulous regard both for the rights and the susceptibilities of others? We have ourselves resented at times with the utmost asperity the slightest foreign interference in our own domestic discussions. More than once those of us of maturer years have seen this country lashed into a fury almost belligerent, merely by the critical or carping references in foreign newspapers. It might be well now, in some quiet hour, to consider the other side, and reflect how they may feel over our free-spoken com ments on their affairs. Have we not, in fact, taken sides, and led our people to take sides, habitually and even vehemently, on almost every foreign question that comes to our notice? Would it not comport better sometimes with our position now if we were a little less dogmatic in laying down the duty of this or that nation in its own domestic affairs, and a little less partisan in our view of the unhappy conflicts between contending nations? Do not misunderstand me, I am arraigning no one, and making no criticism of others which I do not take to myself also. But has not the time come, in the development of this country and in the increased intimacy and importance of its relations to other coun tries, when we may advantageously practise a little more reserve in commenting upon other people s affairs, a little more impartiality between countries at war, and a friendlier tone to each when we are on good terms WHITELAW REID 255 with both, and have every interest to remain so ? What is good policy for individuals in the disagreements of their neighbors might sometimes in these international cases be pretty good policy for newspapers, too, and for the people at large, an attitude of friendly neutral ity, while meantime diligently minding our own busi ness, and letting that of other people alone. Meanwhile, Mr. President and gentlemen, may I hope to see you from time to time in London ? You will know where to find me, and you will not need my assurance that I shall try to make you as welcome as you have made me. The great kindness you extend now, and the confidence you bestow, are purely on credit. I shall have deserved it all only if, while taking the greatest care for our own interests, I can still help maintain in full force that good understanding between ourselves and Great Britain which has grown clearer and stronger at each step of our advance, in the paths that have been steadily broadening before us every year and month since our peace with Spain. EDMUND CLAEENCE STEDMAN AT THE DINNER TO WHITELAW EEID, MAY 18, 1905 I REMEMBER well my disappointment when I sat with that brilliant friend of mine, William Walter Phelps, when I knew that Phelps would not be the premier of this country for the next four years, and that my friend Reid would not go at that time to the Court of St. James. But I had great confidence in my friends ; I knew of Reid s tenacity, and I knew that if he deserved a thing he would have it. Since that time he has earned and deserved the right to go to the Court of St. James. But I know why he did not go at that time. Fate orders these things better than we do ourselves. Fortune had him in training, and she wished him to be Minister first at the politest court in the world, and brush up again a few of those graces for which he is noted. She wished him to be twice a peace commissioner, and an accomplished orator, and display his orations in a volume which is perhaps superior to any volume of patriotic and statesmanlike addresses of modern times. And then, in the ripeness of his years and the ma turity of his powers, he goes abroad under the happiest circumstances. If I have been disappointed this time, it has been owing to the reluctance of other consuls to return to this country. It has been six weeks since the 256 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 257 date I expected to repair to the Lotos Club, and I would just like to talk a little as an old friend of Reid s. I do not know that any one here could have known Mr. Reid, either as a friend or a journalist, earlier than I, because we both lay under the same blanket in 1861 and 1862, in the early part of the Civil War, when Mr. Reid came to Washington as the war correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette, and I was a correspondent from New York. We were both early in the field. That was a very remarkable time for bringing together men as hopeful and patriotic as the youngest here, the boy senator from New York, at my right. In 1861, about the time I met Whitelaw Reid, I met the handsome, modest, and delicate, yet virile John Hay; and I met another young man at the time who was perhaps an older friend of Mr. Reid than myself, William Dean Howells. Howells, Hay, Reid, and I, we ran together like drops of water, although I was very short and Reid was very tall, and Howells was going to Venice, and I was staying here to do the work. We became, perhaps, not a big four, but still a very hopeful four, and a very generous four as far as one another were concerned. I do not believe that any one had a thought that was not kindly to the others ; and it was always the same, and this has continued through forty-five years. We were all in humble positions then ; probably Hay had the most brilliant prospects, as he was in communion with the immortal Lincoln. Yes, we were in humble positions, when I think of the salary that Reid had. We had about twenty-five or thirty dollars apiece to write the report of the battle of Gettys burg. To think of the modern war correspondents re- 258 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB porting what would have been deemed a mere skirmish then, with steam-yachts and cavalry brigades to attend them ; and for them to think they know anything about war or about journalism ; it makes me very tired ! But I did n t intend to go off on that tack; what I wanted to say was this. It has been said that life is a dream, but it is never more a dream than when you look back over a man s life for nearly half a century. Every one here has read the finest and most Homeric book in the French tongue, "The Three Musketeers," and fol lowed the fortunes of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D Ar- tagnan. I remember, about the time of the war, being hard up, and helping to translate "Les Miserables" as it came out, number by number, and about that time I first read Dumas. I won t attempt to describe Porthos there never was anybody exactly like Porthos ; but I watched the course of the others Aramis, for instance. He always had a fight on, or a love-affair, and finally became general-in-chief of the order of the Jesuits, and went back to France as ambassador to the most power ful court in Europe. D Artagnan received his sword on the battle-field and became grand marshal, and so on. And so I have watched the course of Hay, Howells, and Reid. Howells pen was his sword, and he has been absolutely loyal to it, and has been perhaps the most purely a man of letters of us all, and done more, perhaps, than any other man for the literature of America. I expected to see Howells here to-night. I remember once that Mr. Reid, in introducing Howells to a great crowd of multimillionaires, alluded to him as "the parlor anarchist" ; Stedman, on his left, was "the amateur socialist." I plead guilty to "the amateur EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 259 socialist/ and Ho wells fine humanitarianism is well known to us all. We never, either of us, have requested to be ministers or ambassadors, but we have been good Republicans most of our lives. Howells did have a consulate, but that was before he was found out. But I have hopes now, if I live until Mr. Reid s term is ready for renewal. I observe that the administration is veering around to Howells point of view, and mine ; and I should not be at all surprised if we should find ourselves in sympathy not only with the administra tion, but with the Tribune and with the ambassador to England, four years from now. ERNEST M. STIRES AT THE DINNER TO WHITELAW EEID, MAY 18, 1905 THIS is a great occasion, and in a great and noble way has the Lotos Club met it ; and I am disposed to agree with what has just been stated by the junior senator from New York, that when the President and others in authority wanted a really good man for a really important place, they came to the Lotos- Club. And therefore it is quite proper that I should not only advise you, but also your member, our ambassador to England, to take good care of his health. I am reminded of a message which John L. Sullivan is said to have sent, after the death of Edwin Booth. He said : I am exceedingly sorry to hear of it ; there are darn few of us left. And while congratulations are evidently due, and doubtless many are received by Mr. Reid, and also evi dently due to our country and to England, I venture to congratulate most of all to-night that distinguished guild and profession of which he has been such an eminent member for so many years. The importance of the profession of journalism has been suggested here to-night. It is one that has per haps more power than the guild of diplomatists in mak ing war and peace. I have been told that it has accomplished both, again and again. The necessity for 260 ERNEST M. STIRES 261 high ideals, for truthfulness and straightforwardness y for absolute honesty and devotion to the highest stan dards, is so evident as to need no argument ; and all these things are most brilliantly exemplified and have been again and again most justly recognized and rewarded in the man whom we seek to honor to-night. And so I congratulate, gentlemen, the great profession of jour nalism, and I beg to advise those who cannot hear what I say the young newspaper men all over the country to remember the early beginnings of this man, his devotion, the privations which he endured, his faithful ness in little things and his equal faithfulness in bigger things, and the result which almost inevitably comes to such character and such faithfulness, which is now exemplified in the sending of Mr. Reid to the most im portant post outside of our country. We are sending to England that for which she should be grateful, a scholar rich in wide and useful learning, a writer of forceful and exquisite English, a citizen of the loftiest ideals and the purest patriotism, a gentle man of most exceptional cultivation and refinement, a man of the purest character, of the strongest convic tions, and of the calmest courage, a true American. Mr. President, we have sent great men to England before now, but it would surprise no one in this room to hear a message sent across the sea in the near future: You have kept the best till now. There is perhaps a rule for after-dinner speaking which might be applied, which was suggested by a story concerning gastronomy that I recently heard. A gentleman sitting next another at some public dinner noticed that his neighbor was of large proportions, 262 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ample curves, and greatly enjoyed his dinner. To him he said, Have you any special rules about eating?" Said he, "I have one, and it is a winner. When I sit down I push my chair back about six inches from the table, and when I touch I m done. If I might venture to hope that, with that anecdote, it at least touched, I am done ; it only remains for me to wish with all my heart a very hearty God-speed to our new ambassador to England, and all the members of his family. May every day they spend in England be happy, and may they every day be more proud that they are Americans. CLAEK HO WELL AT THE DINNER TO WHITELAW REID, MAY 18, 1905 A DMONISHED as I am by the fact that it is now J\. midnight, and that I occupy the only avenue of escape for a very large portion of the audience, I feel that it would be far more appropriate if, instead of speaking, I should plead the excuse of the man asked to change a ten-dollar bill. It was at a railroad station, and a man rushed up to catch a train. The cashier at the window did n t have the change, and he said to the man next to him: "Will you change a ten-dollar bill for me?" "I thank you very much for the compli ment," said he, "but I have n t got it." And so I say I thank you very much for the compli ment of asking me to join in these words to Mr. Reid, but the lateness of the hour admonishes me not to make my remarks more than brief. Permit me only to say that as an American citizen, as a man belonging to a different party from that in which your guest has be come almost preeminent, that I rejoice with you in the sentiment unanimously expressed by the American press and the American people, that we are to have as our representative at the Court of St. James a man so worthy to bear that honor and to represent this country, regardless of party, press, or section. I have heard statements to-night about The Three Musketeers, and 263 264 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB I wish to say that in many of the elements there por trayed, in the chivalry, manhood, courage, and devotion of Whitelaw Reid, we have indeed an ideal D Artagnan. I come perhaps further to pay my tribute to Mr. Reid to-night than any man in this house, with the ex ception of my good friend Mr. DeYoung, of the Pacific Coast. I have been thrown into very great intimacy with him in the past few years. My companionship with him as a member of the board of the Associated Press has been exceedingly friendly and cordial, and there is not a member of the board who does not view with exceeding regret the fact that he is leaving us. I was about to say that I hoped he would come back, but I will not say that, because I know that his services over there will be so magnificently done that it will be an honor to us to have him represent us there as long as he would be willing to stay. It is a great pleasure for me to be with you and meet you, especially on this occasion. In referring to the story so beautifully told to-night by Mr. Low, I am reminded of another similar incident, as bespeaking the greatness and glory of our flag. It is the story of a naval review at Gibraltar, where all the nations of the world were represented with their greatest battle-ships. One after another, these great ships passed in review. A stranger stood by, in the neighborhood of an Ameri can seaman thoroughly familiar with all the different ships and flags. The stranger was not, and so he asked the seaman, as follows : "What ship is that?" "It is the ship of His Maj esty the King." "And this one?" as another giant plowed the waters. That is the ship of the Emperor CLARK HOWELL 265 of Germany." "And what is the flag now flying on the ship that just passed?" "That is the flag of the Czar of Russia. " " And this ? " "The flag of the King of Italy." "And," said the seaman, as the next came by, flying the Stars and Stripes, "that s my flag." And so we of the South, my State and every State, say, as you go worthily to represent us, "You carry with you the glory of our country, and you bear in your hands our flag, the flag of every State in the Union." No man, regardless of party, regardless of section, can more worthily or honorably carry that flag than the distinguished guest of the evening. On you the eyes of every citizen of this country are fixed, and you take with you the good will and the God-speed of every patriotic American citizen. FEANK E, LAWEENCE AT THE DINNER TO JOSEPH H. CHOATE, OCTOBER 21, 1905 AT our first meeting for the season just beginning, I Jl\_ congratulate you that so many appear to have survived the summer holidays, and that the prosperity of the club continues in so marked a degree. We assemble to-night to pay tribute to a rare and perfect product of American genius, and to signalize our admiration for a great career. In this country we don t often elevate our greatest men to the highest offices at home ; we send them abroad. Americans must be judged in other countries by those who are sent to represent them there, and how fortunate it is when to a great country we can send a great representative ! The United States has been fortunate in its represen tatives to Great Britain. Motley, Lowell, Phelps, and John Hay, each in their turn did much to cultivate good feeling, and to elevate the regard of the English people for the American character; and when, to succeed all these, President McKinley sent Joseph H. Choate as the American ambassador to the Court of St. James, it seemed as though a climax had been reached which could not be surpassed. We knew Mr. Choate as a lawyer, as an intellectual 266 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 267 giant, as the leader of the American Bar; but he dropped into the wiles of diplomacy as naturally as though no such simple pastime as the study and prac tice of the law had ever been his daily portion, and as though he had known nothing but diplomacy from his childhood. It has been said that the Americans are a nation of diplomats, which I suppose is another way of saying that we, as a nation, are notable for our sim plicity and candor and truthfulness. In all these qualities, and far be it from me to intimate that there are other and inconsistent qualities which may be useful to the successful diplomat, Mr. Choate excels. It is not for me now, nor, indeed, would it be possible, to recount in detail his public services. The period of his residence in London, during a long and interesting and often trying time, was a period of one continuous, unbroken, conspicuous and brilliant service; and its crowning glory was this, that he brought England and America more closely together than they ever had been before; that he entered so heartily into the life of the English people as to seem to become one of themselves, while at the same time remaining as completely Ameri can as he was before he ever left the United States. Leaving London, he carried with him the affection of the English people to a degree never before accorded to one not of their own nationality. Returning here, he receives the plaudits of his countrymen in a degree never exceeded by any American coming home from foreign service. His personality to-day forms one of the strongest links which bind together the two great branches of the English-speaking people; and it is scarcely too much to say that the affection of both coun- 268 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB tries for him is so great that if any difference unhappily arose between them which could not be settled by other means, it might almost by common consent be referred to the decision of Mr. Choate as the final arbitrator be tween the two nations. Gentlemen of the Lotos Club, we are greatly honored in receiving Mr. Choate to-night. We are delighted to see him back here; we applaud his past services; we hope for him a happy and glorious future : and I know that you will all join very heartily with me in drinking to his health and future prosperity. Gentlemen, Mr. Joseph H. Choate. JOSEPH H. CHOATE AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOR, OCTOBEE 21, 1905 NOTHING but your cordial and genial greeting could have brought me to my feet after the very overwhelming story that your president has told you about me. I entirely failed to recognize myself in the picture that he was drawing ; and so far as he was try ing to draw upon my services, he has entirely over drawn his account. I am afraid he has sacrificed his credit and that of the Lotos Club with these distin guished bankers who are sitting about me. This is not the first time that I have enjoyed the honors and hospitality of the Lotos Club, made up as it is, the most representative body in the city of New York, and, I think, in the United States, of men of all professions, of all ages, of all nationalities, and of all creeds. I know of no body from whom such a tribute as you have paid me could be more grateful. There is one office that I would rather have than any other that comes within my present view, and that is to be president of the Lotos Club. As he has shown to-night, the president of the club can say what he pleases, and draw an inspiriting pic ture without the least regard to the facts. He tells me that he has been president of the Lotos Club for the last seventeen years. I wonder whether the record of 269 270 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB himself and of the club for that protracted period would bear a searching investigation, such as is now going on. I wonder what his emoluments and per quisites have been during all that period. I see he has got his son and his son-in-law here, and I d like very well to know in what measure they have shared in his prosperity. But, Mr. President and gentlemen, you could not have given me greater pleasure than to invite me here to receive your greeting, and to find myself in such a company as surrounds me to-night. To return after a long absence and find myself once more among my old friends : here are men on my right and on my left with whom I have enjoyed the privilege of close and intimate friendship for forty-five and forty-seven years ; and all through the rooms on either side are men whom for a less protracted period I have been proud to call my friends. These judges; these lawyers; these generals; these admirals; these artists; these bankers; these men of business and of art, how could a greater compliment be paid to any man ? I see Judge Patterson here. He is one of my very oldest friends. I think he is lying low for an opportunity to tell you some stories about me. I shall not have an opportunity to reply to him, and so let me say in advance that none of them are true. He is not going to speak here to-night as a judicial luminary : there he is bound to adhere to the facts and the law; but he is going to appear in the guise of an old and inti mate friend, and he can take any liberty he pleases with him who stands before him at this moment. Well, I have been away from you for many years, JOSEPH H. CHOATE 271 and delightful as every year and every day that I spent abroad was, loyal and devoted as the friends who gath ered about me there were, and no man ever had better or more sincere friends ; splendid as was the hospitality which I enjoyed from the very beginning to the end of my term of office, and glorious as it was to see how my country grew every day in the esteem and regard of the nation to which I was accredited, and of all the other nations of Europe, I must say that the most delightful day of all was that on which I found myself on board the Caronia, bound for New York, once more to be at home for good, to rejoin the comrades of a lifetime, and to take up my part again in the life and activities of this great city and country, which absence had only made more dear to me. It is delightful to me to meet these old friends after seven years. As the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table says : " I find that my contemporaries are not quite as young as they were." Their hair is more silvered or more scarce. Some of them have burst their waist bands, or would have done so if they had not been let out ; some of them have dwindled. Some, I am sorry to say on this occasion, have passed away; but those who remain and those who are here to-night still possess the same warm and loyal hearts that I left behind me when I went abroad. Now, you won t expect me on this occasion to discuss the people among whom I have been for these last six years. I have been appealed to on many occasions since my return to write them up. I think I could have made a very good living by so doing, but that hardly seemed to me to be a suitable thing. It may perhaps be more 272 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB to your liking, as it certainly will be to mine, if I tell you of some of the changes, the wonderful changes, which I find have taken place here at home during my absence. In the first place, the rush of life here seems to have grown much more intense than it was when I went away. The strain of nerve and mind and brain and body seems to have been growing stronger and stronger every year. You were going at a tremendous pace when I went away, but now, if I can judge from all I can see around me, you have started upon the pace that kills. How mind and body and brain and nerve can stand it remains to be seen. It does seem to me that we, as a people, would do well to imitate a little the repose, the relaxation, which prevails in older countries. Let me tell you of the differences between the life of a lawyer, with which I am best acquainted, in the city of New York and in the city of London. Here, when I was hard at work practising law, we, judges and lawyers, worked incessantly from the first Monday of October around to the last Friday of June, with no interval but a few days at Christmas. But our older and wiser brethren upon the other side learned to mingle pleasure with business a great deal more than we have ever done here. The courts come in, for in stance, on the 24th of October, and the lawyers with them. They sit for eight weeks. Then comes the Christmas holiday of two weeks. Then they come back and work for eight weeks more, until Easter, with an other delightful interval of repose. Then they come for eight weeks more of labor, or until Whitsuntide, a period of rest and vacation which, I think, is utterly JOSEPH H. CHOATE 273 unknown in this or any other State of the Union, and eight weeks more bring them to the summer vacation of ten weeks, and complete the round of the legal ser vice. Now, Judge Patterson, what would the members of the Appellate Division say if their time and labors were measured out in that way? That is one of the questions I want you to answer when you come upon your feet. It has brought about one thing, this tremendous rush, and that is the splendid opportunity for young men that exists in this country. I think there never was a time when the young men of America had such golden opportunities as they have now. The old men need them for their help and support. When I hear fathers and mothers complaining how hard it is to find places for their sons, I wonder whether the fault is with the fathers and mothers for taking too much care of them, or with the sons for relying too much upon their fathers and mothers. I wonder did these young men sin, or their parents, that they are born blind to the opportunities that surround them. There never was a time when the young men of this country, as distin guished from all other countries, had such splendid chances. There is n t a business; there is n t a profes sion; there is n t a public service that is n t on the lookout at every moment for capable and willing young men to do the work that is waiting to be done. Now that, I think, has been growing and exists in a still more marked degree at this time than ever before. What else do I see ? Why, the wonderful growth and expansion of the city of New York, of which we are all proud. Why, when I first saw this city, it was four 274 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB miles long, ending at Forty-second street; a city of eight hundred thousand people. And now I ani told that it embraces a territory of three hundred square miles, with nearly four million people, all hard at work, and all laboring for their own good and the benefit of the community. I often hear New York and London compared. Lon don, I believe, increases its permanent population one hundred thousand a year; but it will be a very close race between New York and London if you take the next ten or twenty years into account. Then, what else have I seen? What else do I find here? I find that we are now citizens of a country greater far than ever it was before, a country that has been gaining in the admiration and wholesome respect, and affection even, of all the other nations of the world. Will you wonder that I grew more and more proud and fond of my position every day, when all the people who surrounded me were growing more and more full of admiration for my country every day? It was a posi tive fact that there was never any cessation of the ad vance through which the United States commanded the respect and confidence of the world. Now, I want to refer to one man, no longer with us, who had a very great share in the promotion of the good name and fame and power of this country, a man under whom I regarded it as the greatest privilege of my life to have served, and to have been instrumental in a certain small degree in carrying out his policy and his instructions. I refer, of course, to Mr. John Hay, once a member of the Lotos Club, who held the office of secre- tarv of state at the time that I was made ambassador. JOSEPH H. CHOATE 275 Mr. Lowell said forty years ago that it was the mis fortune of American biography that it must needs he more or less provincial. This was true when he wrote it. A few great Americans had passed the confines of our territorial limits and had made themselves known and felt abroad. Washington and Franklin and Hamil ton and Lincoln were almost as well known across the Atlantic as they were at home. But, as a general rule, what Mr. Lowell said was literally true. It is no longer true. The man who fills such an office as Mr. Hay filled, and discharges his duties as he dis charged them, stands upon a pedestal that commands the attention of the world, and his fame will be known to the very limits, not of his own country, but of all the other countries with whom he had to do, whose policy he led, and who were proud and glad to follow wherever he led; and especially as to what he did in the policy of establishing safety and freedom of commerce for all nations in the far East and in the preservation of the integrity of China, in which all were equally in terested. His is one of the names that will stand imperishably, as I think, upon the annals of the history of America, of the history of diplomacy and of the world. And it is an indication of the closeness of sympathy which pre vails between the great divisions of the English-speak ing races that upon the occasion of his death there was held in the great cathedral of St. Paul s in London a memorial service which they celebrated with an im- pressiveness that had hardly had a precedent before. All England mourned at his bier, and king, government, and people united in that grand tribute to him. 276 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Well, then, as another instance of the growth of the power and standing of the United States, I cannot re frain from referring to the last achievement of our youthful President at "Washington. With the sympathy and the prestige of the eighty millions of his fellow- citizens behind him, he commanded peace between the two great warring nations of the East. He not only brought them together, but was extremely influential in bringing about the terms upon which to agree. I don t see how one man could have rendered greater service, not to his own country only, but to the whole world, than that which President Roosevelt, with the commen dation and approval of all nations and of all men, rendered on that occasion. Well, there is another thing I think I have observed, and from an outside view you sometimes get a better, a little better perspective than by being on the ground the whole time. And that is the growth of an instinct and willingness for public service, the growth of a real and wholesome public spirit among the young men of America. Now, that is one of the things that we used to be lacking in. I can remember the time when it was not thought desirable that young men should give them selves up to politics and public service. But now, all over the country, following one great example, I think you can find that the young men of all parties, espe cially the young men of education and character and ability, are willing to give themselves up to the service of their country. Now, if I am right in that, then, much as we may praise and honor the specific service for which we give our President the credit, I submit that his general in- JOSEPH H. CHOATE 277 fluence in this wholesome and important direction is even of greater value still. No, gentlemen, the longer I stayed away, the prouder I became of the land that gave me birth ; and now that I have been here for the last four months and have been studying, as best I might, its progress and its present condition, I believe that it occupies the most hopeful position of all the nations of the world. But I cannot detain you longer. This table is full of distinguished men who are eager and ardent to be heard. I believe that Mr. Morgan is the only one of them that is under a safe-conduct. He has an absolute safe-conduct. I have undertaken to speak for him. All of these other gentlemen are intense and eager to make themselves heard, judges, lawyers, literary men, sol diers, sailors, all ready to say a word; and as they are all old friends of mine, I don t wish them to be disap pointed; I don t wish you to be disappointed. If you will only permit me to say how grateful I am, how deeply grateful, for the genial kindness and gen erous friendship that has dictated this occasion, I will take my seat, thanking you over and over again for the cordial and genial hospitality of the Lotos Club. FEANK E. LAWEENCE AT THE DINNEE TO HORACE POETEE, NOVEMBEE 18, 1905 IT has seemed lately that an air of diplomacy has hung about this club. Our final dinner last season was to a departing ambassador. Our first dinner this season was to an ambassador who had come home, and our present dinner is to an ambassador who has both departed and returned. It seems to be your fate to hear me often, and you will be grateful if I am brief. The story to-night is altogether too long for me to attempt to tell. It would be the story of a brilliant young officer in the Army who attracted the notice and became the friend and the aide and the chief of staff and in a large sense the biographer of the great captain, Grant. It would be the story of one long known to us in this club, and known for many years through many past activi ties in this metropolis. It would be the story of a man whom you remember eight or nine years ago heading the countless thousands of men who marched in the sound-money parade in defense of the business honor and integrity of the United States. It would be the story of one who has served his country with great dis tinction for many years abroad, and, as elsewhere has been said of him, made Paris for years the center of the diplomatic world. It would be the story of a man who, 278 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 279 after indefatigable research, restored to America the mortal remains of the founder and the father of the American Navy, thus proving that republics are not forgetful. But, above all, it would be the story of our young friend, our young member of many years, a Bohemian of the Bohemians, who, after receiving the greatest distinctions and the highest decorations that either the Congress of the United States or the Repub lic of France can bestow upon him, loves, I know, to come back and rub elbows here and renew the old com radeship which made the name and the presence of Horace Porter a delight in this club a score of years ago. Gentlemen, the story of his achievement, the story of the many charms that have always delighted us in his companionship, is too long for me to try to tell. He is here; let him speak for himself. And I want to tell you who have not been long in this club, that he is at his old tricks again. He has the secret of perpetual youth, and all its charm. "While we grow old, he re mains young ; do not let him tell you that, like St. Paul or some other saint, he dyes daily. There is no truth in it, not a word ; but I do want to say this of him and for him, that, like the perfect typical American, he comes back, after his long residence abroad, the same old child of this young country, perfectly unspoiled, the typical American, the ideal member of the Lotos Club. In spite of his long residence at the brilliant French capital, I know that he feels, in common with most of us who have been much abroad, that " there s only one Paris, and that s New York." HOEACE PORTEB AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, NOVEMBEE 18, 1905 THIS most cordial demonstration of good will, this all too generous manifestation of friendship and kindly greeting, commands my profoundest gratitude, my deepest sense of obligation. I come to you to-night able to say, in the words of the great sea-fighter whose name has just been mentioned, and whose remains were brought to our shores recently by a historic fleet com manded by one of his most deserving successors in accomplishment and courage, my friend Admiral Sigs- bee; I can quote his words when he resigned sometime after the War of the Revolution: "I have thrown off the robes of office ; I have now no rank but that of fel lowship ; no title but that of comrade. I had a very warm recognition of my humble instru mentality in recovering those remains a few weeks ago. Coming down Sixth Avenue, I was looking for a place to register as a voter at the late election, and a police man recognized me and showed me into an undertak er s establishment. Our worthy president has once more upbraided me upon my youth; he seems dissatisfied with my nut- brown locks. My hair does not wear what Shakespeare would call the silver livery of age. He does not take 280 HORACE PORTER 281 into consideration that my mustache has done its full duty and is growing white, and this is in inverse order, because it is twenty years younger than the hair. I fear it may give rise to the thought that I have exer cised my mouth more than my brain. I have listened and was naturally flattered by all the kindly expressions of your president that perpetual president may he always be our perpetual president ! for there is no one who has done so much for the administration of the business of the club ; no one can equal him in weaving those graceful phrases which lend such charm to all the hospitable banquets given in this hall. I listened to the encomiums he was kind enough to pronounce upon me and my career with as much satisfaction as if they had all been true and deserved, but I was thinking at the time of that young English clergyman who some years ago went to a country house and asked for his "bawth, " and there was no bath. He set about searching for one, and after a while they heard him in the attic splashing around in the tank, and the lady of the house cried out: "Good gracious, that s our tank of drinking-water!" To which he replied: "Oh, don t mind me; I m not using soap." Eight years ago, my friends, we parted. An incon siderate government condemned me to hard labor for a term of years, and deportation to a foreign country. I took occasion to say, in departing, to everybody, every member of this club, "If you ever get within a mile of my embassy, be sure to stop there." I said more. I said, "The latch-string will always be on the outside, and there will always be a seat for you in my pew at church." Candor compels me to state that the latch- 282 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB string was often pulled, but the seats in the pew re mained vacant. And there was one member I observed stopped his subscription to the Christian Observer; he did n t want to have an observer while he was in Paris. Last year I notified my government that I could not make my residence there immortal by making it eternal, and that I might grow too fat feeding at the public crib and partaking of the succulent food of the French cuisine, and that if I died my demise might be attrib uted to a foreign growth in the stomach. A man away from America for a period of years begins to feel like the coupon of a railway ticket not good if detached; and I thought if I did n t get home there would not be standing-room left for me; it would be like the night of the benefit, when the last man that came in had to leave his cane outside. I see by the statistics that this population has run up to over four millions, twice as many as there used to be when I was here; the explanation of that may be that the Americans have been leading double lives. I did not know but that I might find myself in the position of the woman who entered the omnibus in Paris one day, in the Boulevard Haussmann. She was about as broad as she was long; she was the goddess of abun dance; she was like Tony Lumpkin s girl, the "full of a door." There was no seat, and a lady said to her, "You have no place to sit down." She replied, "Yes, I have, but there is nowhere to put it. I was often asked the chief characteristics of the members of this club, for the club is known for its hos pitality wherever you go, and I said : "The members of HORACE PORTER 283 this club are troubled with a shyness that sometimes becomes aggressive. You invite one of them to your house, anc 1 the first thing you know he is taking a seat on the roof ; ask him to a feast, and the first you know he is placed at the head of the table; put him in an orchestra, and the next thing, he is playing on the big fiddle; and if he is going to be cremated, he always specifies that it shall be in the crater of Vesuvius. As for their heads, they are just large enough to contain the maximum of intellectuality, and their female rela tions have such small feet that they have their shoes blacked with a tooth-brush. " Now that I have got home, I feel that sense of home life, because we are on an island here; it is like the feeling they sometimes have in England, I suppose because they are on an island. Some years ago in a London theatre there sat in an orchestra seat a British matron ; she wore a hat of the vintage of 1823, and her hair was plastered down over her temples with Spauld- ing s prepared glue, after the manner of Dickens s characters, or like the dowager duchesses that Du Mau- rier used to picture. The play was "Cleopatra," and in the fourth act a messenger arrives and announces the destruction of Antony s army. Cleopatra seizes a weapon and strikes him dead at her feet. The curtain went down, amid applause long and loud. After it was over the British matron said, "How different from the ome life of our own dear queen ! Well, glad as I am to get back, I passed many delight ful years in that pleasant land of France. I thought, when going over, there would not be much of interest, and I thought I would stay a very few years; but I 284 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB soon found that Paris was becoming the real capital of Europe, and that there convened there nearly all the missions and congresses and tribunals and inquests of the world ; and then broke out the war with Spain and the archives were transferred to Paris. During the war I was expected to keep tab on the Spaniards ; then, when that was over, there came the peace commission, one of the most intelligent ever organized. They sat patiently and made an honest, fair, and generous treaty of peace, and what was interesting about it was that they called it the treaty of Paris. It was the second; the first made by Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues. And these two treaties were signed on the same historic table; so that all our diplomatic transactions with France have had within them the consummation of peace ; we have always been close together, and may the ruthless hand of discord never rend us asunder ! And in Paris they had that great exposition, where the buildings were palaces and the grounds were gar dens, and the street scenes seemed as if they had been touched by the wand of a magician and turned into scenes of fairyland ; there you could fasten your atten tion on masterpieces of artistic genius, those noble crea tions which rouse our deepest emotions and appeal to our higher senses, induce the power of reflection, thrill us with the grandeur of the creative faculty, and in spire us with the majesty of achievement. There came the difficulties in China, when all the great powers were sending their armies over to save the lives of our threatened representatives, and when it was about all a diplomatist could do to keep those armies from being touched off and fighting each other. Then HORACE PORTER 285 came this great war in the Orient, which, happily for the peace of the world, resulted in peace organized by our President, who had the American courage to take the initiative and bring about the greatest result in modern diplomacy. The clubs there are different from ours; there are many charming organizations, but they are not, in the sense that we use the word, a club. They are conve nient places for playing cards and other games; men do not often dine there, for the people on the Continent are accustomed to dine at their famous restaurants. You meet very few people socially, and they have not the idea of home as we understand it. "We cannot put our friends coming from outside cities up for two weeks and invite them to the hospitality of the club. It is all very charming, but not as it is understood here. Every club has been organized on some specific basis, it has some special characteristic. The special characteristic of this club, which has made it well known and favor ably known at home and abroad, is its broad, unlimited hospitality. It has looked out for men in its own land whom it wanted to honor, and it has looked after those coming from abroad ; it has given many a good fellow a send-off that has warmed the cockles of his heart. A member of this club is at home anywhere, in his own land, treading a foreign strand, in the capitals of Europe, the cool valleys and the mountains of Bohemia. Sometimes they join those Bohemian impressionists who insist on painting the woman s hair green, the country yellow, and the town red. And yet, having been the recipient of too many of your good things here, when going abroad, when coming home from pub- 286 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB lie service, you have never failed to give me hearty cheer within your walls, and made me feel that I am doubly at home. I feel a deep debt of gratitude. Burke says that gratitude is a debt which it is left to the debtor to pay in whatever coin he pleases. Alas, I have no coin of sufficient value to pay you the debt of grati tude I owe. But I must close. In the language of the song, "There are others"; and let me close in the words used by Jacob to the angel : l Now, pull in the ladder. SETH LOW AT THE DINNEE TO HOEACE POETEE, NOVEMBEE 18, 1905 I THINK it was our late fellow-citizen Amos Cum- mings who is reported to have used the expression in Congress, " primeval forest," and when asked by his fellow-congressman Timothy Campbell what it meant, replied that he was not sure, but thought it was "a place where the hand of man had never set foot. I do not know whether that would correctly describe Paris or New York, but I have thought that about our honored guest of to-night there was something as de lightfully natural and unusual as that. I became espe cially aware of his many-sided character by being present once when he and I were members of a small group who gave a dinner to Admiral Erben. He told us that he had taken part in what he called then an amphibious expedition, in the early days of the war, when soldiers were sent by sea to take part in some enterprise on land. He told the admiral that he thought the soldiers had surprised the sailors beyond imagina tion ; that apparently up to that time they had thought soldiers could throw up nothing but earthworks, but they astonished the crew of that particular ship by the extent and variety of their capacity in that direction. In a word, they parted with everything except the im- 287 288 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB mortality of their souls. I dare say that when General Porter told that he hardly realized what a prophetic expedition that was, or how strikingly it illustrated what was to become of him, that he should do so much to erect a permanent memorial of the great general he served so long and so well, and that he should do so much toward recovering for the United States the mortal remains of a great captain of Revolutionary days. I remember, a few years ago, shaking hands with an old man at Plymouth who was then ninety-four years of age. He told me that he had seen Gran ther Cobb, who died in Plymouth at the age of one hundred and six, and that Gran ther Cobb had seen the funeral of Peregrine "White, the first white child born in New England; so that at that time only three lives were between me and the first white child born on the shores of New England. I confess that as I look at General Porter to-night, and realize that he has shaken hands with John Paul Jones, a man who died one hundred and thirteen years ago, and see how well preserved he is in appearance, it does not seem to me so strange that two lives can span the whole history of our people on this continent. What a career it has been, this that we celebrate to night ! How typically American in the best sense ! As our chairman has said, there was a lad who went to West Point and was taught a soldier s business by the nation, and when the nation s life was in peril offered his life to defend it. His career was enough to satisfy the ambition and pride of any man. It was his good SETH LOW 289 fortune also to be thrown into the warmest personal relations with the grand commander who preserved the perpetuity of the Union ; for I think it may be admitted that Grant did not do more by his victories to per petuate the Union than by his great utterance which is carved upon his monument in this city, when he said, "Let us have peace. " It was that spirit, the spirit of the soldier who hazarded everything in the day of danger, and who when the war was over said, "Now we must get to gether, " that has made our country what we see it to-day, and General Porter, as he fought by the side of his great commander, so has he done what he could to further the work of peace which Grant began. Many men so closely connected with the Army might have been inclined to stop there, but I suppose that General Porter has heard the toast of "The Army and Navy forever!" so often that he really could not stop with the Army, but had to identify himself with the Navy in some way. I remember pointing out on one occasion that old Rome sought the conquest of the habitable globe and was satisfied she had made it, but that modern Italy, through Marconi, has sought for the mastery of the air, and has given to the Italy of to-day the triumphant glory of making the very atmosphere throb in obe dience to the commands of the Italian. So General Porter, not satisfied with sharing the glory of the Army, must needs share the glory of Paul Jones of the United States Navy. It was a fascinating mission, and I congratulate him that he was permitted to realize it. 290 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Most of you have read, in The Century, his account of the recovery of the body of Paul Jones. Many of you, I hope, have heard the story from his own lips, for it is as interesting as a tale from "The Arabian Nights. " If you have, I am sure you will agree with me that Conan Doyle never pictured, much less achieved, a greater triumph. I read in the paper the other day that Conan Doyle had been asked to solve some mystery that the police had been unable to disintegrate, but, while he might write of Sherlock Holmes, he declined the undertaking ; but General Porter, though he has not written of Sher lock Holmes, performed a feat that he may well be proud of, in starting on that quest with absolutely no clue, and following it through one labyrinth after an other until he brought the body of Paul Jones to be buried on American soil. General Porter s career is interesting, not simply because he was a gallant soldier, nor simply because he has shown himself so patriotic in reference to the Navy, but also because he was one of the great multitude of men who, having fought for four years, turned, when the war was over, into avenues of peaceful occupation, and gave years of useful service to the industry of the country in private life. And then, as we all know, when the opportunity or the duty came to take up diplomatic work, he went into that as naturally as he went into the Army, and acquitted himself as bril liantly as on the field of battle. Many of us have been in Paris when he was our am bassador there, and I speak the words of truth and SETH LOW 291 soberness when I say that every one of his countrymen who was in Paris was proud that he was an American. 1 am sincerely glad to have been permitted to join you in welcoming General Porter home, and I think the city of New York seems a cheerier place now that he has come back once more. WOODROW WILSON AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, FEBRUARY 3, 1906 I AM sincerely obliged to Mr. Lawrence for the words, the very gracious words, of introduction which he has just uttered, and yet I must say that this is not the kind of occasion to put a man most at his ease. I feel very much as the old woman did who went into the side-show of a circus, and saw, or thought she saw, a man reading a newspaper through a two-inch board. "Oh, let me out of here," she cried, "this is no place for me, with these thin things on ! " I feel that the guise of greatness with which he has clothed me is perhaps a very transparent disguise, and that, after all, is all that I need this evening. I am in the plight of the Methodist divine down in Tennessee who spent a quarter of an hour praying for power. One of his deacons said to him, taking him aside, "Parson, you are praying for the wrong thing; what are you praying for power for? You don t need any power ; you ought to pray for ideas. I think it a very graceful and interesting arrange ment of yours to put the man about whom you are going to speak first on the program of speakers. I have an excellent opportunity of telling you more about myself than you can possibly know, and stealing all your thunder, and giving you that kind of discour- 292 WOODROW WILSON 293 agement it may be worth my while to give you, like the youngster they tell about who found some of his chums fishing on Sunday. He told the minister. "Well," said the minister, "did you do anything to discourage them?" "Oh, yes," replied the boy; "I stole their bait." I might do the sa.me thing to you, and so pre vent any more fishing in these now, I assure you, troubled waters. There are many things that this country needs, gen tlemen. It needs knowledge ; it needs skill, and a great deal of it, and of excellent sort ; it needs that scientific discovery should be pushed forward to practical inven tion; and I take it that above all things else it needs enlightenment, in order that these needs may be put in appropriate setting in our thoughts, and we may have a definite notion what it is they are for. Are we to have skill in order that we may be merely mechanics? Is it not necessary that there should be some general line in which we should use these things in their proper proportions and perspective ? Surely it is the duty of the universities to supply the enlightenment in order that they may see the real journey they are making, and the journey the races have made in the past, and the journey we should wish them to make in the future. There is nothing that so disturbs my imagination as the thought that we are merely one generation; that we are merely an incident in the great story, and that our success will be judged in its relation to the history of the people. Is that success consistent with the plot ? What is the plot? Is there any plot, or plan, or se quence? Do we know where we came from? Do we know whither we are going ? 294 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB I remember a friend of mine telling me that he stopped on a Scotch highway, and asked an old fellow who was breaking stones by the roadside, if that was the way to such and such a place; and the old fellow said, "Where do you come from?" My friend replied, "I don t know that that is any business of yours," and was told that it was as material as where he was going to. And, if you reflect, the old man was right when he said, "I cannot tell you where you are going, whether you are on the right road or not, unless you tell me whence you come from. To use an illustration oft repeated, but which seems indispensable to me, we very often speak of a man who has lost his way in the desert as having lost himself. If you will reflect upon that for a moment, you will see that this is the one thing he has n t lost. He is there; he has a firm grip of himself ; but he has lost all the rest of the world. If he could determine any fixed point on the globe, he would have something to steer by, but he can t steer by himself. And it seems to me that the only method of guiding ourselves in life is by determining fixed points and steering by them. You can t steer by yourselves; you must have an established direction which is not cen tered in your own person. When that direction is es tablished, it gives you general control, that is, the way of the rest of the world. This is what I mean by the map of life, by those roads which the race travels. There are certain things which the race has found out as a means of enlightenment, and one of the things which it is finding out is that the way for material mastery to be found is not to devote yourself to the WOODROW WILSON 295 processes of material mastery, but to the principles of material mastery, that is to say, not the processes of manufacture, but to the sources, the pure sciences. The world which intends to live by science must know science, and in order to know science it must con stantly refer and resort to men who bury themselves in the laboratories and seek the foundations of the forces used, the men who are not seeking anything in the making of money or the extension of manufactures, but are studying to find out the most profound secrets of nature. You know that we are sometimes laughed at for brag ging of the size of this continent, for manifestly we did n t make it ; and foreigners think us very ridiculous for saying abroad that America is so big. It is not at all ridiculous, because we have conquered all of it. We are as big as the things we get. Our progress is mea sured by the size of America. If it had proved too big for us, we should have to be ashamed; it is because it has not proved too big for us that we are proud of its size. If you can recall the history of this race you will remember that when we came to these shores, we came helpless as infants ; and when you remember the miles of continent that lie between us and the Pacific, and the character of the thick forests, and the hills upon hills, and remember that there was n t any road made for us that we knew how to travel or find, and that we have sped our way from the Atlantic to the Pacific chiefly by knowing the processes of nature, you will see that we have conquered the country by having from first to last knowledge of the sciences, and that we never should have had this knowledge if there had not been 296 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB laboratories in which, men who did n t care either for commerce or civilization were constantly getting to this simple foundation of the hidden forces, and man s best relation to the great streams that drive our mills and make progress possible. So that if men want to keep the greatness of the race they must constantly see that it resorts to pure science, and that is the business of the university. I have sat beside very successful men on occasions, and heard them explain the philosophy of their lives, and wondered how they had attained what they termed their successes. And yet it shows one thing, that a man can steer in this great uncharted ocean of our life if he steers by some sort of compass, and the compass that he should steer by is the compass of experience, the knowledge of the human mind and human nature. I suppose that some very distinguished philosophers have a very limited practical knowledge of human nature, but all distinguished philosophers I have ever known have had a great deal of human nature them selves. It is worth your while to know what ridiculous notions people have had about themselves, as well as the notions of a nation. Preachers are right, whether you want them to be or not, in saying that we have got to have a philosophy of life and conduct. The trouble with us is that we can get along with very inconsistent philosophies of life and conduct. De Tocqueville said it was no argument that the American philosophy was consistent because it worked, for, he said, Americans can work any combination; and so it is no argument for the excellence of your philosophy that it works: you can work anything. The different parts don t have WOODROW WILSON 297 to be consistent, but it is a distinct characteristic of the two most successful races, the Romans and ourselves, that they have blazed their minds with a theory about themselves, and then practised whatever theory suited their convenience, and the very best, naturally, have been those who reduced their experience and practice to a philosophy. For example, what better generaliza tion could you have as a description of the distin guished man who now heads the nation, than De Tocqueville s characterization of a constitutional states man: "A man of ordinary opinions and extraordinary abilities. I have often said that I have learned a great deal more politics from the poets than from the systematic writers of politics. I have been a systematic writer of politics myself, and I don t wonder at it. Any sys tematic writing is immoral writing. I say immoral writing, because no man knows enough about anything to write about it systematically. No man knows more of a certain subject than some parts. Suppose he starts to write systematically. He must have some sort of a table of contents, a systematic scheme of chapters. It may be possible he has to talk about things he does n t know, in order to make the chapters about the same length. Some contain things he knows; some contain things he does n t know, but has taken from somebody else ; and he fixes the surface so that all will look alike, the parts not being divided, so that nobody may under stand and stand on the weak parts long enough to break through. Now, I say that that is immoral, and I am materially opposed to systematic writing. The poets are not sys- 298 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB tematic. The poets talk about only the things they have come definitely to understand, and they are inter preting to you in the phrases and language that the systematic writer has not been able to incorporate in the volume. Take this list of qualifications which might be headed "Political Workers" : Some sense of duty; something of the faith; Some reverence for the laws the wise have made ; Some patient force to change them when we will ; Some civic manhood, firm against the crowd. Where can you find this better depicted than in these lines ? I will not trust a man to understand the song of a people who is not deeply read in the literature of his own people in the imaginative literature of his people. For, gentlemen, we are lifted from achievement to achievement by imagination. No man ever demon strated an achievement ; he conceived the achievement. There was a vision dreamed in some moment of lofty feeling, and he is elevated to it by something in him that aspires to a height that the race has not yet at tained, and in which, therefore, he is guided by feeling or by imagination ; and that is the way of the men who lift their figures above the general crowd and are picked out as the leading men, the distinguished men, the achieving men of our generation. Is it not worth while that somewhere young men should draw apart from active life for a little while to study these things, to contemplate these things, and be lifted out of the rut of general experience into the WOODROW WILSON 299 road of special experience ? There are some things that are very material characteristics of the nation we belong to. Two things I shall mention : one, the extraordinary authority of the majority in this country; the practi cally overwhelming compulsion of the majority. I would speak with deference of the majority, because at the present time I belong to the minority at least the part of it I belong to is so select and small that I sup pose you must regard us as the guests of the majority, and I must speak with that respect with which the guest speaks of his host. We are at present being en tertained in this country by the Republican party. I will make my obeisance to my entertainers, but, notwithstanding, I should like to suggest that it is worth while sometimes to be very impertinent to the majority, and that university men are, if they are worthy of the name, the men especially qualified by their training to entertain independent opinions. There are moments when I actually regret being an imperial ist, because the anti-imperialists are put down as though they had no right to their opinions; whereas they are entitled to their opinions, even if they are inconsistent. This reminds me of a story of Mr. Hay s. He said that the anti-imperialists, in their demand that this country give up the Philippines, because it was not right that this nation should hold dependencies, and that they should be turned over to Germany, reminded him of the young lady who was much given to dress and self-adornment, and who experienced religion. When she was asked by some of her friends who noticed how plainly she was garbed, what she had done with all her pretty things, she replied, "Oh, when I found that 300 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB my jewelry was dragging me down to hell, I gave it to my sister. I don t mean that I am desirous of belonging to these inconsistents, these anti-imperialists, but they have a right to their opinions even if they are inconsistent. The time may come when we need * civic manhood firm against the crowd/ and have a majority that under no consideration must prevail, when the crowd is not worthy of our respect, and there should be civic man hood enough to stand firm against it until it turns out that the crowd knows what it is about; and we won t know until somebody does stand out against it worthy its respect. Then there is another thing; that is, the extraordi nary influence in this country which the accomplished fact has. If you throw yourself against anything that has been done, you will be told, What is the use ? The thing has been done; we must accept it." I remember the impatience with which the law class to which I used to lecture on constitutional law, and which endured many things at my hands, used to hear my arguments to the effect that the Supreme Court of the United States was in error in the Dartmouth College case, and based its decision upon a misunderstanding of the English law and elementary rights as laid down in Blackstone. The youngsters looked at me in amazement to see me run up against the Supreme Court of the United States, and, in the second place, they said, l Suppose they were wrong ; the Dartmouth College case is law, and that set tles it. The Dartmouth case is law ; if it is mistaken law, must it always be law? Is there no such thing as WOODROW WILSON 301 reversing in some conservative fashion the mistakes of the Supreme Court? Is there such a thing as the jus tification of men, who can reason of their own will, accepting an unreasonable opinion? I am assuming now that you will confess it is unreasonable; if you were to confess it is unreasonable, would you say that because it is law it should stand, and say nothing as to its validity as reason ? Must we not have, gentlemen, some scheme of life, some particular hope, some great set of principles? Shall we forget that our eternal Judge was the judge of men who are convinced of the principles of their life ? Must we not always have the spirit of learning, which is the open-minded spirit, the catholic spirit of appreciation, the spirit which desires the best, that is truth ; the spirit which is correctly convinced that there are principles at the heart of things, and that things are worth while only in proportion to the sound prin ciples that lie at their heart ? ANDEEW V. V. EAYMOND (PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE) AT THE DINNEK TO WOODKOW WILSON, FEBEUAKY 3, 1906 I AM here by accident, as one of the humblest mem bers of the guild of college presidents, which the guest of the evening makes distinguished. This office of a college president is much like other offices, I imagine, in that it confers a good deal less than it demands. But it is unlike other offices, at least some other offices, in that what it does confer is worth every thing; anything that gives a man a place at this ban quet is worth while. Apart from the personality of the temporary occu pant of the office, the office of a college president, I always like to believe, in the popular mind carries with it peculiar dignity and honor. Of course a good deal depends upon the college of which one is president, but then that does not affect the kind of dignity and honor that applies to the office as much as the degree ; and, if I am not mistaken, a part of the success of this occasion lies in the fact that it is a tribute to the presidency of Princeton College, as well as to the president of Prince ton College. "We speak of the office as "the presidential chair, " and I always speak of it in that way ; it is the force of habit, and a tribute to tradition, I think. No symbol 302 ANDREW V. Y. RAYMOND 303 was more fitting than that chair in the old days, calling up a picture of a man of scholarly leisure, sitting in his classroom or in his library, thinking, always thinking, or writing, or teaching, intent all the while upon some one thing beginning or ending with the college. I don t know of any symbol that is more edifying than that was in the days of Francis Williams, or Timothy Dwight, or Mark Hopkins, the symbol of the chair. But, gentlemen, what one of you thinks to-day of the college president as sitting long in any one place? What one of you identifies the college president with the library or classroom? Not even the substitute which Dr. Holmes made of the study with the portable chair meets the situation ; it has to be a chair according to tradition. If it has to be a chair, let s make it a portable chair. It is a portable chair to-day, a chair in the trustees room to-morrow, at a faculty meeting the next day, at an alumni banquet the next day, next day a chair in the office of a millionaire, a possible bene factor, the most anxious chair in the whole set ; on Sun day it is a pulpit chair, and between times it is a Pull man chair. How many kinds of a chair it is ; and what an endow ment all those kinds of a chair should have ; how many kinds of a man it takes to fill all these kinds of a chair ! He must have enough knowledge of business to keep the finances of his trustees better almost than a sharp business man; -he must have enough knowledge of busi ness to lead them to do collectively what they fail in doing individually. Is n t that business? He must have enough knowledge of educational matters to lead his faculty, or make them think he is leading them. 304 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB He must have enough knowledge of athletics to keep in touch with the students. He must be wise and witty, or the alumni will pass him by and ask a mere profes sor to speak at the annual dinner. He must be technical and professional, tactful and persuasive, or the money he is after will go to another college or hospital. He must be eloquent and orthodox, or the ladies will think that he is an unfit guide for their youth. He must be a dreamer of dreams, as you have told us, and a man of affairs at the same time. He must be good and he must be practical; and, in addition to everything else, upon your own authority, he must be something of a poli tician. Now, you recognize the picture I mean. I hesitate to name the man, but you know him, and the president of Princeton needs no introduction to this intelligent au dience. If it takes many kinds of a man to make any kind of a college president, it takes many kinds of a great man to make a Princeton College president; and when we know that the trustees have found such a man, we delight, and we unite to do him honor. With some of us the office honors the man. It goes without saying in this instance, however, that the order is reversed, and so, whatever tribute we are willing and glad to pay to Princeton and to Princeton s complex, multiplex executive chair, we go a little deeper, I think, for the tribute that we all offer to the executive himself, the man who always gives more than he takes, wherever he sits. Institutions are made by men, and men, in general, are made by one man here and there. It is the personal ANDREW V. V. RAYMOND 305 equation that solves every problem, and it matters very little how many men are engaged in any undertaking, it is the one strong individuality dominating them that determines the success of the enterprise. A college as an impersonal thing, a material thing, a group of build ings on a campus, would have no more or less influence than a massive stone amid some beautiful surroundings. It would n t stir a man ; it would n t compel a sacrifice ; it would n t quicken a heart throb to look at it. What is it, then, that makes the college such a power in the lives of so many people, once it has gripped, and what a grip it does have upon the affections, so that no matter how long a man lives, or how far he travels before he gets back to the old institution, its influence still abides with him; what is it, but the power of the inspiring* personality which breathes in the buildings and touches them in every corner of the campus, the influence of the association with men who thought and studied and lived in the air that inspires and helps. We call this a materialistic age, a practical age; a scientific age, an age that demands the real substance. You can t fool this age, because it believes only what it sees. Well, that may be; but with all our devotion to materialism, with all that, there is nothing that gets such a hold of us, and reaches so deep into our natures, and lifts us out of ourselves and controls us as some thing that is not material at all, spirit or matter, some influence which you can t put your finger on, and can t touch or describe, a persuasive influence somehow comes to you, and just lifts you out of yourselves until you become real men. For just so long as a man is spiritual, with well body and brain, the thing that appeals to his 306 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB spirit, the invincible part of him, is the thing that makes a real man of him. And so I think that almost any institution is justified that establishes the relation and gets hold of a man s spirit, gets hold of that part of his nature where the real manhood is, that part of his being that he respects more than he does any other part. And this, I think, is the business of the college. It is the business of the college more than of any other institution we know of, excepting, perhaps, the family ; and it is the business of the college because of the pervasive influence of per sonality in college life, and above all, the pervasive influence as a rule of one man who makes the college spirit. I am going to quote just here : "Every time that a man takes fire, he takes it from fire; and no weak individuality ever perpetuated itself or touched another heart to make it strong. So that the best way to image an institution for yourself is to image it in the terms of a particular life which happens to stand in the history of the institution most conspicuous. "We suppose sometimes in this day of combined and organ ized effort that the individual is sunk. But do you know of any organization now vital which is not touched by the personal force of some one man who organized it, or who now conducts and dominates it? Did you ever know of an age in which the power of individual thought told for more than it does in this day? Organization is not the mere mul tiplication of individuals; it is the drawing of individuals together into a net formed by the conceptions of a single mind; and the greater the organization^ the more certain you are to find a great individuality at its origin center. The business which is now handed on from father to son ANDREW V. V. RAYMOND 307 in our day cannot be handed on unless the son is like the father, unless he has the same power of keeping the threads of an intricate organization in his hand, and putting the force of an original mind into the changing circumstances of a business which never stands still, and is every day trans formed by the changing circumstances of the day. There never was a time when such drafts were made upon indi vidual power as are made in this day of organized industry and organized effort upon every hand. Let us not make the mistake of supposing, then, that we can dispense with the idiosyncrasy of being ourselves. A man has nothing else to contribute to the world except himself; and that is the prin cipal argument for keeping himself efficient, and keeping himself pure, because there will be a seed of decay in him if he does not." Now I think that is rather fine. Perhaps no one of you here recognizes those words, with the exception of the man who uttered them, as President Wilson s. He spoke them about a year and a half ago at the centen nial celebration of Dr. Eliphalet Nott s acceptance of the presidency of Union College. Dr. Wilson thought that he was accounting for the great influence of a great man, and did n t stop to realize that he was at the same time accounting for his own influence. In drawing the picture of one great president, he drew the picture of all great presidents, and wist not that his own features were clearly discern ible by those who watched the canvas. So I think that we all can agree that we are here not so much to honor the office of the presidency of Prince ton University as to honor the man whose abilities, centering in himself, make that office honorable. Dr. 308 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Wilson has told you something of the business of the college. Now, I think there is another view to be taken of it. Just a word in that connection. It is the busi ness of the college not only, I think, to provide educa tional facilities to young men, but it is to educate young men. That is a distinction with a difference. Only the other day I heard a certain college man described as one who had been exposed to education, but had n t caught it. I think that is true of a good many of us a good many of us. It is the business of the college to make education so contagious that a man can t be ex posed to it without catching it. This kind of contagion is found not in the beautiful buildings and well- equipped laboratories, nor in the library, comprehen sive as that may be, but that contagion is found in the teachers who teach, and more especially in the per sonality of the man who inspires the teachers and stu dents alike, and it is just that more than anything else that makes an educational institution a real educational institution. That is the kind of man we are here to honor, a man who believes in God, and if he does n t he is n t a real man ; who believes in his fellow-man ; if he does n t, he is n t like the Son of God; a man who speaks what he believes, and who lives what he speaks; a man whose influence is already felt in all the college world, brief as has been his term of office thus far ; whose influence will be felt, I prophesy, with increasing power as the years pass, and God give him long life Woodrow Wilson, President of Princeton. GEORGE HAEVEY AT THE DINNEE TO WOODBOW WILSON, FEBBUABY 3, 1906 SAID your guest in his masterful response, "We need not flatter ourselves that we are a story, or even a plot ; we are a mere incident. For the purpose of this occasion I think that I may go a step farther. That veteran editor, Mr. Henry M. Alden, has deduced from his long experience and intensive knowledge the conclusion that the most important feature of a story is its background. Whether or not he would make the application to an individual, I cannot say. Probably not. In any case there can be no doubt of the interest one must feel in the influence of the lights and shadows that encompass a character. Of your distinguished guest as an educator, as a scholar, as a historian, there are others here far better equipped than I to speak, and the few words that I shall venture to utter will apply only to the minor phases. Back of the president is the university ; back of the man is his native State of Virginia. Of the former it is probably sufficient to recall that simultaneously with the installation of its present head it planted itself firmly against the tendency to shorten and make easy the courses of study for undergraduates. Other colleges responded promptly, but it was Princeton that carried the flag, 309 310 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB and it is to Princeton and its new young president that the chief credit is due. Of Princeton as a community, as a growing load stone of philosophy, idealism, and sane comprehension of affairs, it suffices to say that it meets all require ments. But recently we have had a notable example. When, last summer, a Princeton man, a famous Prince ton man, and as honest a man as ever came out of Princeton, was harassed into resigning his well-earned position as the president of a great insurance company, another was found ready and fully equipped to assume the responsibility. As the one stepped out, the other with sturdy tread walked in, and hanging his hat upon the hook, he said, at least by inference, They say things have been going on here that ought not to have gone on. They won t any more. I say to my countrymen that they need have no further apprehension. I am the original square-dealerbeware of imitations ! "We will now proceed to business." What business they have proceeded with since has not yet been made clearly manifest. The point is that Princeton filled the gap. May it always find for such emergencies a man of the qualities of Grover Cleveland. Woodrow Wilson was born in an atmosphere sur charged with true statesmanship. The fates directed his steps in other paths, but the effect of that associa tion with the traditions of his fathers remains. That he is preeminent as a lucid interpreter of history we all know. But he is more than that. One who reads understandingly the record of his country as set down by him cannot fail to be impressed with the belief that he is by instinct a statesman. The complete grasp of GEORGE HARVEY 311 fundamentals, the seemingly unconscious application of primary truths to changing conditions, the breadth of thought and reason manifested on the pages of his books, constitute as clear evidence of sagacity, worthy of the best and noblest of Virginia s traditions, as was that truly eloquent appeal which last year he addressed to his brethren of the South, to rise manfully from the ashes of prejudice and lethargy and come back into their own. It is that type of man that we shall soon, if indeed we do not already, need in public life. Nobody would think of criticizing the general reformation of the human race now going on by executive decree. But progress in that direction is making so rapidly that the great work itself is sure soon to be accomplished, of course to the complete satisfaction of all concerned. "When that time shall be reached, the country will need at least a short breathing-spell for what the phy sicians term a period of perfect rest. That day, not now so far distant, will call for a man who combines the activities of the present with the sober influences of the past. If one could be found who should unite in his personality, in addition to these qualities, the instinct of true statesmanship, as the effect of early environ ment and the no less valuable capacity of practical application as the result of subsequent endeavors in another field, the ideal would be at hand. Such a man it is my firm belief, and I venture earnestly to insist, is to be found in Woodrow Wilson of Virginia and New Jersey. As one of a considerable number of Democrats who have become tired of voting Republican tickets, 312 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB it is with, a sense almost of rapture that I contemplate even the remotest possibility of casting a ballot for the president of Princeton University to become President of the United States. In any case, since opportunities in national political conventions are rare, and usually preempted, to the enlightened and enlightening Lotos Club I submit the nomination. ST. CLAIE McKELWAY AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, DECEMBEE 15, 1906 I HAVE spoken often enough to the Lotos Club, when others have been honored, to know what to expect from those who will follow me. They are the tar- geteers, I am the target. For what I am about to receive from them, may the Lord make me truly pachydermatous! In what I shall say to them before they can draw the long bow or the short gun on me, I shall be sincere as always, but, not as always, brief. Fewer editors than men of other callings have received the approbation of this club. In my memory, I recall among them Murat Halstead, the late Charles A. Dana, and Whitelaw Reid. Mr. Reid could have been received either as an editor, or a publisher, or a -dip lomat. Mr. Halstead was received in the character of an eminent person who had just adventured on Brook lyn. The representative position of the late Charles A. Dana, in authorship, in journalism, and in public ser vice, we all know. I have had the pleasure of speaking at the dinners to them, as well as at dinners to many others here, and in my capacity of targeteer I can be called experienced. I trust I shall have the necessary finesse or fortitude for the other role. I can stand blame or badinage, for I know that those who may indulge it here against me, 313 314 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB while they may be sincere if they know me, can be endured and excused if they do not. Any, however, who indulge in praise or over-praise will really em barrass me, because I have that excellent quality of simplicity which can feel or feign surprise or regret when praise is uttered before folks. To be seen makes me assume a modesty which I have not. Publicity requires us to affect wonder and disclaimer under praise, whether we really feel it or not. It is with tribute as it is with sensitiveness. Every man says he is not sensitive, and is. Every man says he does not like to be praised by others, before others, but he does like it. He likes it especially when he knows it is deserved and true. His affectation of dislike of it is the tribute he pays to good form and to good pose. The abrupt and carefully advertised candor of Mark Twain in saying that he wished he could go around in Adamic costume fools no Missourian who went in to swim with him and he and I went to school in the same Missouri County. The naked truth, if told about him, and it shall not be told here, would be very different from what he affected to tell about himself in "Washington the other day. An Adamic photograph of him, if copied right, would never be copyrighted in any language except the profane. But now as to those men about whom I have spoken or at whom I have shot at other Lotos dinners. Their difference from myself was marked. Several of them were poets. There were both rhyme and reason in dinners to them. Several of them were fictionists. I never told a lie in my life to which I did not confess ST. GLAIR McKELWAY 315 the moment it was found out. Several of them were dramatists, but their real character here outclassed all their assumed characters, and we honored them as men, not as actors or managers, and accepted compli mentary chairs and boxes from them with the know ledge that their courtesy was like the quality of mercy, which blesses him who gives and him who takes. Others were sculptors, painters, soldiers, ambassadors, jurists, singers, explorers, and critics, and not a few were simply jolly good fellows, as, indeed, all of them were declared to be at the close of every dinner. The Lotos, since its foundation, has felt the pulse of the times surrounding it and has prescribed the right artistic regimen and the sound ethical tonic of each occasion it has confronted. The present appeals to the club with moral and marked significance. Our nation has a spelling reformer, a political genius, and the recipient of the Nobel prize for his work as a peace maker, for its Chief Magistrate. Our State will soon have a reformer and a jurist for its governor. We have had worthy and ordinary Presidents. I doubt whether, for a long while to come, we shall have merely an ordinary President. A high stamp generally im presses more than a short period. Cleveland, McKin- ley, and Roosevelt have preserved the White House from mediocrity or chicanery for many a year to come, as well as for their own time. Governor-elect Hughes should be an influence to hold his successors, for years to come, to character, courage, and capacity. The men who tread the heights of principle often reach the sum mits of achievement. Any department of human endeavor measurably 316 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB affects every other. The period of political reform draws art to higher levels. It inspires literature to the study of great examples and to the aspiration of higher ideals. It should stir journalism to the com mendation of the hopeful and the clean in politics and in life. No great result is solitary. Diffused intel ligence makes heroism, whether moral or material, both a passion and a force. Our republic and our time are peculiarly favorable to this. Only blatant or mediocre journalism magni fies merely material prosperity. The better journalism makes prosperity spell opportunity, and opportunity obligation. It prescribes to that journalism the praise of principles, and not merely the cheap praise of pos session. We are asking to-day, not what men have amassed, but how and where did they get it; not how much one holds for himself, but of how much will he let go for the uplift of humanity. It was a poet whom this club honored once who said: "All that we hold in our dead right hand is what we have given away." And to the living, the obligation to account for their stewardship, while living, is made apparent on every hand. That which must be pardoned to the spirit of altruism in the national heart is due to the sense of shame and of wrong in the national conscience. The temporary it may be the permanent effect of recent disclosures puts, to be frank, all wealth under inquisition. There is no hostility toward wealth hon estly gotten. There is respect for it, enhanced if at least its unearned increment is used for mankind. But of itself, and for itself alone, wealth is no guarantee of standing, and is little welcome as a helper, even of ST. GLAIR McKELWAY 317 good causes. A man is what he is and what he does, not what he has. This is the club of clubs for this gospel. Givers have here been more honored than getters. It is this which makes the club not merely an authority on art, but for ethics and for humanity within the republic and beyond it. Your occasions have shown this. Many of your members have exem plified this by service to letters and to the state. The Lotos, as I remember, was formed by men in the professions or in the arts, for finer purposes than conventional clubs could easily subserve. The Lotos drew those who rated sentiment above sordidity, achievement above assumption, learning above wealth. The Lotos soon let in such business men as were them selves students and lovers of humor and of wit, of literature and of art. These men enabled the club to capitalize its ethical and art advantages on the side of solvency, as well as of literature and of art. The comforts of prosperity were not incompatible with ideals never lowered or lost. No other organization in New York has been so perfectly equipped for Lotos purposes as the Lotos itself. All other organizations concede the unique competency of this club for its rare role, and the debt of the city to the club for its high functions is one which every man of affairs or of senti ment well knows will draw an interest of gratitude and of pride for as long as New York is the metropolis of the higher values. They are the values which can be infallibly invested so as to secure the best returns, whether this side or beyond the stars. HOEACE PORTER AT THE DINNEK TO ST. CLAIE McKELWAY, DECEMBEE 15, 1906 NOW that the fireworks are over and the stick is about to come down, Mr. President and fellow- members of the Lotos Club, I will say that I remained some time abroad feeding at the public crib, but to relieve the strain upon our taxpayers I thought I would come home and feed occasionally at the Lotos crib. It is a joy to us all, our main joy to-night, that we have with us this distinguished representative of the press. I notice particularly that public speakers are always genuinely happy when they are able to say they have the press with them. I have been opposed to many things connected with these Brooklyn bridges, but I have become reconciled to them this evening, be cause they have furnished the quickest means of bring ing our good friend over to this quarter of Greater New York. But suppose these bridges had been builded at an earlier date, what might not have happened? When the Pilgrims came to Brooklyn it has never been altogether decided in history where they landed, whether on Plymouth Rock or at Plymouth Church. But from the Forefathers banquet on December 21, it is reasonable to conclude that they landed in Brooklyn, and, as they have selected December 22 for the Fore- 318 HORACE PORTER 319 fathers dinner in New York, that it took them twenty- four hours to ferry across the East River. Suppose the bridge had been built. They would im mediately have come over, without tarrying in Brook lyn, and there would have been a conflict raging to this day as to which night should be selected by Brooklyn and Manhattan for the Forefathers dinner. Suppose at the battle of Flatbush, when Washington was defeated and retreated to New York, where he was saved because there was a great storm in the East River and the British were not able to pursue him; if there had been a bridge built at that time, and the traffic had not been too congested, the British would have followed on the heels of Washington, the Continental Army would have been destroyed, and America would have been robbed of every prospect of liberty. We are glad to meet such a distinguished represen tative of journalism here to-night, and I am glad that I have been placed so near him, for I always try to gain something of the spark of intellect that passes from him. When I was coming home from the French ma noeuvres one day I saw a Zouave soldier trudging along the road, and he had that little red fez stuck on the corner of his head. I said to him, "My man, what accounts for that little red cap sticking so closely on the corner of your head ? He replied, Proximity to intellect, m sieuV I have been in proximity for a time to intellect to-night. We admire our friend because he has written in the interest of truth and justice, and written seriously. He has not written, as some writers have, seeming to have only one ambition, to place their writings largely 320 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB in the hands of the people, so that the proofs of their mendacity may descend to posterity. Our friend has had the happy faculty of duplicating himself and doubling his usefulness, because, like other editors, he uses the pronoun "we" to represent an individual. That is entirely correct. John Phoenix is authority for saying that there are only three personages in the world who have the right to use that plural pronoun "we" a crowned head, the editor of a newspaper, and a man with a tapeworm. The most terrific weapon that the journalist uses is a blue pencil. There is something depressing in the color. I remember when Bunner of Life came to me one day. He was very sad. He had written an article for a Sunday paper on the trip he had made to that interesting quarter of London known as Petticoat Lane. He said they blue-penciled him ; that the editor said that there were a great many lady readers of that paper, and they could not use in print "petticoat." Bunner said, "What are you going to do with people like that?" I said, "Bunner, I would try to compro mise the matter with them. Tell them that in the in terest of modesty you are willing that they should shorten the petticoat, but not to remove it altogether." Now, the press gets us into many a scrape, and some times it helps us out of a scrape. I remember on a political campaign up in one of the northern counties of the State, a good many years ago, Judge Davis was to make the principal speech for the Republicans. The Democrats had already corraled the town hall, and we had to take the Methodist Church. The judge was tired, and said that he had to have a stimulant, that he HORACE PORTER 321 could not make a long speech, that he was very much fatigued, and he wanted some whiskey or brandy. They said, "Why, that will never do; they are all temperance people here, and it will never do in a church." Then came forward the ingenious member of the Republican committee who said, "I know what to do to fix it. I will go out and get a pitcher of gin, and they cannot tell that from water when he pours it out." And it was placed upon the platform. The judge had already begun to speak, and before long- there were some ladies in the front seats, and there was a woman with a baby in her arms. The baby cried and she rushed forward and seized the pitcher and poured out some gin and gave it to the baby. The baby rolled up its eyes and took a conniption fit and yelled bloody murder, and the mother tasted the liquor and rushed out of the church. I said, "We are simply gone now. You can see that Democratic paper describing it to-morrow morning, and you can imagine the headlines." But the Repub lican editor was there, fortunately, and he said, "I will beat it." The next morning large headlines ap peared in the Republican paper, reading: "Dastardly attempt on the part of the Democrats to poison the chief speaker at the Republican meeting, endangering the lives of an honest woman and an innocent child. Now, journalism has changed vastly since I first knew anything about it. I remember as a boy, when things took the belligerent shape, and every man that had been attacked was seen marching for the sanctum, going along like a walking arsenal. The editor gener ally wrote with a bowie-knife down his back, a pen in 322 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB one hand and a revolver in the other. To-day, these men would seek their rights at law. Taylor of Boston is authority for the scene that occurred when a man came in there with a large club in his hand. The edi tor was rather an athlete, and he jumped up, turned the man around, and shoved him out of the room to the head of the stairs, and then planted a kick on his anatomy, and the man landed at the foot of the stairs and lay there stiff and cold, with his head bleeding. The editor rushed down the stairs and felt the man s heart, to see if by any chance it was still beating. In a few moments the man arose and walked out, and at the door he turned and shook his fist at the editor, and said, "You will hear from me." "Thank God!" said the editor ; " I thought I never should. Journalism, above all other things, has kept pace with the progress and invention of modern times. You remember, when steam-heating was introduced some years ago into New York, that the name of the Fireside Companion was changed to the Christian Register. Now, I learned a little about journalism when I was secretary to President Grant at the White House. Of course we had an organ published there in Washing ton one of the principal ingredients in recipes to make a perfect administration is an organ, and that implies that there must be a crank connected with it. They thought then that truth lay at the bottom of a well, and that it required a crank to bring it to the sur face; and that crank used to manage the organ when the principal was away. If he turned the crank the wrong way, he changed the policy and set the adminis tration back seven years in politics and fifteen years in HORACE PORTER 323 religion. The editor of that organ was a man who believed in the proper distribution of labor. He had a man employed to write the articles, and he stood the libel suits, which numbered about eight a week then. One day he came to the White House. I said to him, "I see you are sued again." He said, "Yes; I was never so surprised in my life as when this old preacher got mad." I said, "What did you say about him?" and he replied, "I did n t say much of anything. I only said he was a hypocrite unmasked, a wolf in sheep s clothing, and a whited sepulcher; and the damned old fool got mad. My good friend came to Paris when I was there, and he brought his wife with him, and she said she was going to study French by reading the journals. So she bought them all, and filled the rooms with them, while she talked all the time, and he could n t get in a word edgeways. One day she said to him, "Do you know, I think I can think in French. And he replied, "I d thank God if you d let me hear you do it awhile. Well, now, McKelway there, is, I am sure, so irre proachable, that I can t do any more than repeat the remark made by a young English clergyman who came to Paris and spent his time for two weeks in making the rounds and seeing the sights, and he appeared to be attracted by the gaiety of that capital at the end of that time, and said, "I only wish I had struck this town before I gave my heart to the Lord. But, my friends, we must look seriously at the power of journalism. It is a gigantic power either for good or for evil. It is our Fourth Estate. The nation, the 324 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB governments nowadays seem to initiate very little, the press very much ; for it keeps its finger on the popular pulse, and many of the greatest measures that we have had successfully carried through in this country have been initiated by the press. And we admire our friend here because he has always been as independent as the air itself. Nothing ever controlled him but his own conscience and his own sense of right. He has always had the courage of his convictions, and has never taken counsel of his fears ; he has always hewed in the line of right, let the chips fall where they may. He has fear lessly unearthed fraud and probed corruption, even in the highest places, without shrinking, but he has not considered it necessary for journalism to infect the community with the worst of all diseases, hysteria. He has abided by the words of Bailey: "The worst way to reform the world is by condemning it." Justice has been at the bottom of everything he has done and everything he has said. He has heeded the words of the writer who said, "Knowledge without justice is cunning rather than wisdom. But we greet him here to-night not only because he is a great, honored representative of modern journal ism, or because he has been a great educator, traveler, student, a graceful orator, and a brilliant writer, but we greet him here because we love and honor him as a personal friend. When he comes into this club all doors are open and all arms are extended to him, and all hearts are warm to him with the glow of abiding affection. There is something in that word friendship, that dearest sentiment in our nature, which always touches us deeply. You cannot describe it. It is made HORACE PORTER 325 up of a great many little things, sometimes of similar characteristics in individuals and sometimes just the contrary, different temperaments which offset each other, and we cannot describe what we mean by having it, but we feel that it is good ; we call it friendship and we thank God for it. And we have seen with him, in our contact with him, that friendship, that plant which is the hardiest in our gardens, that friendship which touches and smooths and strengthens the declining years on earth. He has gained a title-deed to honor from which he can never be deposed, and we trust that the evening of his days may be as peaceful and as happy as the whole of his brilliant career has been use ful, honorable, and noble. EOBEET E. PEAEY (COMMANDER UNITED STATES NAVY) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOE, FEBRUARY 2, 1907 IT is unnecessary for me, President Lawrence, to tell you how much and how deeply I appreciate your kindly words, how absolutely at home I feel by your side, and particularly in the precincts of the Lotos Club. I recall very distinctly several similar pleasant occasions here. Many of you are aware of the fact that during the last eighteen months a new degree has been added, and the Stars and Stripes have been placed in the lead in the international race for the pole. But that is not the only result of the last eighteen months of work, for new lands have been discovered, and new and valuable scientific and geographical information and data have been obtained. The point of view of Mr. Jesup and his associates in the Peary Arctic Club has been that arctic work to-day is a simple business proposition, and should combine in intimate coordination two objects: the attainment of the pole as a matter of record and national prestige, and the securing of all possible geographic, hydro- graphic, and other scientific information from the unknown regions about the pole. And since the govern ment has not considered it advisable to undertake the work, the club gladly assumed it, and shares the result- 326 I ROBERT E. PEARY 327 ing honor, whatever there may be, and the scientific material, with the country and its museums. The steamer Roosevelt, built especially for arctic work, sailed, in July, 1905, on her northern voyage. This ship was built from American timber from Maine, New Hampshire, and other States; built in an Ameri can shipyard and fitted with American machinery. The ship, one hundred and eight feet long and thirty-eight feet beam, was fundamentally better fitted for the work than any ship that had ever gone north, and was in reality a steamer with auxiliary sail-power. We followed the ordinary itinerary to Sydney, Cape Breton, and then we beat our way up the west coast to Grantland, where we took on board the Esquimaux. There is a little tribe of Esquimaux who are the most northern people in the world, and they form one of the most important adjuncts in arctic work. I knew their capabilities, and so I was able to select the pick and flower of the entire tribe. These men, with their wives, their children, and their dogs and sledges in fact, all their belongings we took on board the ship, to act as drivers and carriers. Off Cape Sabine we had eighteen days of incessant battle, a battle of a kind many of you cannot under stand, using the ship as a huge battering-ram and driv ing it at the ice. Nobody at this dinner can imagine what that work was. After eighteen days we managed to reach Cape Sabine at last, five hundred statute miles from the pole itself. Here I followed the routine of every arctic explorer, a routine which is compelled by the sequence of the arctic seasons. A ship goes north one summer in 328 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB August or September, and goes into winter quarters before the months of darkness set in, when nothing can be done ; and perhaps I can bring that home clearly to you when I say that the sun set for us on the 12th of October and rose again on the 6th of March. How many of you can really bring that home to yourselves ? What would it be right here in New York if the sun were to set in October and not rise again until March? That winter night is really the only real source of trouble in arctic work. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people have the impression that the cold is the great trouble ; but when you are up there, and dressed for it in fur clothing, and properly fed, the cold at seventy- seven degrees below zero is not nearly as disagreeable as is the damp, raw cold that we have in New York every winter. And the last five hundred miles of that journey of only three thousand miles from New York to the pole must be accomplished with dogs and sledges; that is inevitable. The winter quarters of the Roosevelt were farther north than the winter quarters of any other arctic ship except one, the Fram. We went west along the coast, parallel with it for some sixty miles; we made some eighty miles when we came to a break or lead in the ice which was impassable. We sent two parties back for additional supplies, and sat down to wait for the lead to freeze or close over; and then, as we had some low temperatures, forty-five to sixty below zero, we put light loads on the sledges and crossed. Then from the northern side of the lead we made three good marches north, and were stopped by a blizzard which set the ice in motion. Here we ROBERT E. PEARY 329 built a hut for shelter, and one night we had to get out in the storm and build another. The ice-pack during this storm drifted eastward seventy miles, and you will naturally recognize that we were cut off from our sup plies and the party was larger than we had supplies for, and that whatever was done had to be done by a quick dash if conditions proved favorable to enable us to make a record. We therefore abandoned everything that was not absolutely necessary, and made a start. We put our best efforts to setting a pace, and the first march of thirty miles was made in ten hours ; for the most part, I set the pace in the lead. On the second march we overtook one of the parties I had sent in advance, wait ing beside a lead. They immediately hitched up and joined us, and we kept on with our small party of seven men and six teams until the 21st of April, when we halted in the middle of the day to take observations, which showed that we had reached latitude 87.6 north, which at present is the nearest approach to the north pole. Nansen had previously reached 86.13, and Abruzzi reached 86.33, but both these points were prac tically at the opposite side of the pole from me. Per haps it will bring home to you more clearly the narrowing of the record when I tell you that with the pole here (indicating), and my own point here, the distance is only 374 nautical miles. It is true that we had attained a record we could n t have come back without it but the feeling that that record fell so far short of the splendid thing on which I had set my heart for years, and for which I had been almost lit erally straining my life out, was one of most intense 330 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB disappointment. But you can possibly imagine where my heart was when I looked at the skeleton figures of the few remaining dogs and remembered the drifting ice and the big lead. I felt that I had cut the margin just as close as it could possibly be done, and from that point we turned back. Before we turned, however, my flags were hoisted on the highest pinnacle near us, and a little beyond this I erected a cairn and in it I left a bottle containing a brief record and a piece of the silk flag the flag that hangs over there, gentlemen, and which is the same one I have carried for six years. Had our provisions lasted, and had we been able to keep up a pace of twenty miles a day, in ten to twelve days we should have been at our goal. The journey back to our last camp was one of exceed ing difficulty, inasmuch as the drifting snow was con stantly blown into our faces, stinging like red-hot needles; and when we reached the camp we were all nearly completely done up. There we slept one full sleep, and it was many days before we got another. Finally we reached Storm Camp, and here we were detained twenty-four hours by a howling storm. The igloos here had been turned into ice grottoes, but they proved a welcome refuge. From here we picked our way with indescribable toil, and constantly using the pickax, to the big lead. Five days and nights we spent by this lead, and on the fifth day my scouting party of Esquimaux came in and reported that there was some young ice forming across the lead a few miles off, which might support us on our snowshoes over the rather more than two miles ROBERT E. PEARY 331 to the southern side. We wasted no time in getting to the place, and each man tied his snowshoes on carefully and we started across in skirmishing order, well ex tended. I had five-foot snowshoes and the others had four-foot ones. There was a distance of fifty feet be tween us as we walked across the tough young ice, which trembled and bent and yielded before us at every step. We could n t stop, and we could n t lift the snowshoes, they had to be carefully slid or pushed along. Never again do I care for any similar experi ence. At last we reached the southern side of the lead, and the sigh of relief of the two men nearest me was distinctly audible. Well, we were safely over, so we camped for a while and had a grand dinner just of dog and then we were ready again to keep on to the southward over ice that seemed almost impassable, and some of the pin nacles of which were the size of the dome of the Capitol in Washington, ranging from that down to a cobble stone. For the next three marches the going was fright ful, and then it began to improve. I made out the summits of distant Greenland with my glass, and soon we were under the shelter of Cape Morris Jesup, and there was no longer any danger of drifting around it. On May 12 we came out on the ice-foot at Cape Neu- meyer, for I was familiar with this coast, and I knew that we were likely to find game there. Within an hour we had four arctic hares, weighing from nine to ten pounds each, and the meat was more than delicious. Just before reaching the shore we crossed a fresh sledge- track, and for a moment I thought it was a party look ing for me, but a closer inspection showed that it was a 332 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB light sledge drawn by three weak dogs, and four weak men walking very slowly. As soon as we had slept a few hours I sent some of the Esquimaux to find out, and the next day they came back with Clark and three Esquimaux. They had lost their way and were going away from the ship and would soon have perished. The addition of four men to my nearly starving party was an added burden, but we fortunately secured some ten more hares, and started for the ship. During the march I had a scout out all the time look ing for game hares and musk-oxen; and one day, just after we had killed a dog, a herd of musk-oxen was seen some five miles distant. I footed it for the five miles, and was lucky enough to kill the entire herd of seven. Then we camped there, and for two days and two nights we did nothing but eat and sleep. I did my share of it too. I simply had n t the heart to make the others stop. I need not speak of the voyage home, but may add a few remarks as to arctic work, on points not generally understood. The incentive of the earliest northern voyages was commercial, the desire of the northern European nations to find a navigable northern route to the fabled wealth of the East. "When the imprac ticability of such a route was proven, the adventurous spirit of Anglo-Saxon and Teuton found in the mys tery, the danger, the excitement, which crystallized under the name " north pole," a worthy antagonist for their fearless blood. The result of their efforts has been to add millions to the world s wealth, to demon strate some of the most important scientific proposi- ROBERT E. PEARY 333 tions, and to develop some of the most splendid examples of manly courage and heroism that adorn the human record. Let me call your attention to that flag, that tattered and torn and patched flag you see hanging over the mantel there. That is the flag from which I have taken pieces for deposit in the cairns I built. You will notice that three pieces are gone. One is in the cairn at the "farthest north," 87.6 degrees; a second piece I placed in a cairn I built on one of the twin peaks of Columbia, Cape Columbia ; and the third in the cairn on the north ern point of Jesup Land. To the practical explorer, particularly those who will yet wrest their final secrets from the arctic and antarc tic regions, the experience of the expedition, its free dom from sickness and death, especially the scurvy which has been the bane of so many expeditions, even up to some of the later antarctic ones ; its methods and equipment, its rapidity of travel and its evolution of what I believe will be the true type of ship for arctic and antarctic work, able to fight, or drift, or sail equally well, as circumstances may demand, afford valuable lessons. In view of the fact that the work has defined the most northern land in the world, and has fixed the northern limit of the world s largest island, was that work a useless expenditure of time, effort, and money ? Neither the club nor I think so. The money was theirs, the time and effort mine. But the scientific results are the immediate practical ones, and British and foreign commentators do not ob scure or overlook them ; and these results, together with 334 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the expedition s non-loss of a man, entire freedom from scurvy or sickness in any form, and return of the ship, have had their very friendly comments. No better illustration of the practical way in which the business men of the Peary Arctic Club have approached the work, and of our own practicality as a nation, could be afforded than the quiet way in which the club s expedi tions have set forth, and particularly the recent return of the Roosevelt, as compared with the return of Nan- sen s Fram. The latter came into her home port with salvoes of artillery, a harbor covered with boats, and the shores lined with a cheering multitude, congratulations from king and parliament, and Nansen is to-day Nor wegian ambassador to Great Britain. The Roosevelt steamed into New York harbor, lay at anchor for forty- eight hours, and went to her shipyard for repairs, without a ripple. The discovery not only of the north, but of the south pole as well, is not only our privilege, but our duty and destiny, as much as the building of the Panama Canal, and the control of the Pacific. The canal and the con trol of the Pacific mean wealth, commercial supremacy, and unassailable power ; but the discovery of the poles spells just as strongly as the others, national prestige, with the moral strength that comes from the feeling that not even century-defying problems can with stand us. AETHUE T. HADLEY (PRESIDENT OF YALE UNIVERSITY) AT THE DINNEE TO EOBEET E. PEAEY FEBEUAEY 2, 1907 I HAVE but few words to utter on this happy occa sion. It may be well to refer briefly to the charac teristics of these explorers. A well-known Persian savant, about three or four hundred years ago, stated that there were two great problems remaining to be solved. The first, Why does the tail of a pig always turn to the right ; and the second, If it does n t turn to the right, why does n t it? Gentlemen, I beg to take exception to the saying of the Persian philosopher. There still remains to-day an enormous problem to be solved. It is this. There still exists an area in the polar regions which covers two million square miles, and of which nothing is known, except through inference. The world at large to day, both this country and Europe, looks to the Peary Arctic Club and to Commander Peary to reflect the light over this unexplored region. There are two or three points left untouched, although Commander Peary has devoted the better part of sixteen years to ward the exploration, under the inspiration of the Arctic Club. In his work he has spent practically twelve years in the battle and the study of the explor- 335 336 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ers methods, and a number of years preparing for a new battle, and the whole thing lies in the preparation. I think it may be fairly conceded that the journey of 1892 was in fact a mere preparation for this last expedi tion, when the point of 87.6 was reached, a point that had never been approached before. You may go back to three hundred years ago, when Hendrik Hudson made an effort to discover the North west Passage, in the course of which effort he got down here and sailed up the Hudson River, and his effort approached perhaps very nearly to the characteristics of the singular efforts of Mr. Peary. And you can go still a hundred years further back, and you will find and concede that no explorer has made a braver or better battle since the days of Magellan. In order to show what I mean at a glance, perhaps you will look over the records of the efforts to find the pole and see what progress has been made in northern exploration. A comparison between the amount of progress made by British explorers and that of Peary shows that in the remarkable journey of Markham he only succeeded in making the journey at the rate of one and one half to three miles per day, whereas Peary traveled from twenty to thirty miles. These facts are most significant of the advance made by Peary. It is not necessary for me to impress upon you the value to scientific research or to plane geography of the work which Commander Peary has done, or the value to the prestige of the country, for it is sufficiently shown when we have developed such a man as Commander Peary. EOBLEY D. EVANS (REAR-ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES NAVY) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOE, NOVEMBER 2, 1907 OF course you all know that making speeches is not my business, and if I had ever had the idea that I could make one, it would only be necessary for me to look around this table and decide that I was mistaken. I can t do it, but I thank you, gentlemen, for this glorious night. Not in a personal way, because I know full well why I am here, not because I am Bob Evans, but rather because I am a Rear-admiral in the United States Navy. In the Navy we are not much different from the rest of you, except that probably just now we are not worried quite as much as you are. In the Navy we have something back of us that you fortunately have back of you Uncle Sam; and we don t worry a great deal in any case when we know that Uncle Sam is back of us. Permit me to say just here I think that not all of you know what it is to feel sometimes, when things are get ting strenuous, that there are seventy-five millions of Americans back here who are looking to see you do something. I have had that sensation once or twice, and have tried hard to do something that would please them. We are exactly like you in one thing, we like to 337 338 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB please our employer. You employ us, and we like to do things to do a nice, clean job when we get at it. During the past forty-seven years, while I have been interested in the ships in the Navy, it has done one or two pretty clean pieces of work; and I would like to say that we have got plenty more clean work, if any body else wants any, which we can deliver. It is difficult to make a speech, when the regulations forbid you to talk about the only thing you know any thing about. Of course you gentlemen are not under the necessity of being under the will of anybody; you have no one to consider but yourselves. With us it is different ; but as the government has published a good deal about this fleet, I suppose it would not be out of place for me to comment on some of the things I have seen in the newspapers. This fleet of sixteen battle-ships, and half-a-dozen de stroyers, and six or eight auxiliaries, will sail from Hampton Roads on the 16th of December. I don t think anybody wants to stop us, and I think they would have a good time if they did. I know the officers and men I command, and I know what the ships can do. I don t go out of my way in saying you won t be disap pointed, whether it is peace, frolic, or fight. So far as I am personally concerned, it would be a great pleasure to me to take this fleet into Yokohama. I know the Japanese people; I have lived with them; and I know the hearty welcome we should receive there. Now, a few words about your fleet. When we took account of this fleet two and a half years ago we were doing target practice that we thought was fairly good ; ROBLEY D. EVANS 339 and as compared with that of other nations, it was. In the last target practice we have excelled any nation on earth. We have pulled out ahead of anybody, and I don t ask you now to believe some of the things I am going to tell you, unless you want to, but I will premise by saying that I am going to tell the truth. We have just completed in Massachusetts Bay a target practice, the first of the kind ever undertaken. We moored two targets, thirty by thirty feet, out in the open sea, and then steamed, one after another, past those targets at a distance of five miles, more than eight thousand yards. We got the range, and then opened fire, exactly as in battle against ships ; and some of the results of that firing were startling. The Maine, for instance, got on the target with the third shot at a range of about eight thousand six hundred yards. Then they got the order for rapid firing, and in two minutes and fifteen seconds the target screen was cut clean off from the target, so that the hits made in two minutes and fifteen seconds as shown when we picked up that screen were 4 12-inch, 9 8-inch and 17 7-inch shells right through the target, which simply means that if another battle-ship were off there, it would have been out in two minutes and twenty seconds. You can guess from this what would happen if that was kept up for ten minutes. We thought that in practice it would be a good scheme to train up some of our own officers by simulat ing an attack by three torpedo boats on our battle ships; and they got in as far as three thousand yards, and they all fired at the three targets at the same time. 340 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB There was n t a single ship in the fleet that did n t hit all three in the first minute, sinking all the torpedo- boats. Gentlemen, when we go through the Straits of Magel lan, which is really the only difficult part about this great cruise to the Pacific coast, I shall, for one, think of to-night, and I hope you gentlemen will drink a bumper and say, Good luck to you all ! " HENRY C. POTTEE (PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF NEW YORK) AT THE DINNER TO BEAK-ADMIRAL EVANS, NOVEMBER 2, 1907 IT is not gracious in your president to remind me of the long absence which has discredited me with the Lotos Club ; but I beg to assure him that within the last three days I have been reading a large part of the his tory of the Lotos Club in the recollections, which I commend to all of you, of the late Colonel Richard Lathers, who lived in this club for a great deal of his life in New York, and who was one of the most enthusi astic entertainers of all the distinguished guests gath ered at your table. It is in precisely that spirit, my dear Mr. President, that I have come here to-night. What our honored guest is about to do is something which will enlist the sympathy, I venture to believe, of every American citizen. The people who believe in war are hoping that he will teach to other nations something of the qualities of American ships. The people who believe in peace, of whom I am one, will rejoice to know that, wherever he goes, the American flag will be put abreast of the people as the symbol of safety, the em blem of that large-hearted sympathy which to-day, more than in any other land in the world, we are giving to all sorts and conditions of men. 341 342 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Now, then, gentlemen, what is it that we can say to Admiral Evans, as he sails away from these shores? What is the message of greeting and assurance that we can convey to him, that will give him comfort and strength in the really great task which is before him? My acquaintance with the sailor s life is not intimate. Indeed, I am credited sometimes with an experience in that connection which is purely figura tive. For instance, as my friends who know me in timately remember, I am supposed to have been the man who addressed a lady on the Channel boat, when the sea was very rough, and said, Madam, what can I do for you?" And when the lady said I could do nothing for her, I pointed to a man whose head was lying in her lap, and said, What can I do for your husband?" and she replied, "He is not my husband; I don t know who he is." Now, my dear Admiral, if that ever happened on one of your ships, I want to assure you it never happened to me. If there is anything I can do for you, sir, I am glad to be here to oblige you. There was in the House of Bishops some ten or fifteen years ago a bishop whom a great many men in this room knew very well ; under his preaching they sat when he was a rector in New York, and he possessed a great many very unusual gifts, and a very uncertain temper. On one occasion, in the House of Bishops, he lost his temper, and used language which, when night came, he greatly regretted. He came to the House of Bishops the next morning, and with singularly courtly presence and manners said to the chairman: "Right Reverend Sir, last evening, under the stress of great irritation, I forgot myself; I used HENRY C. POTTER 343 language in this presence which was unfitted to the occasion. I regret it extremely, and beg to apologize for it, and ask my brethren to forgive me. But, sir, he thundered suddenly, and with a complete change of manner, "I maintain that this Right Reverend House ought to set apart a form of strong words to be used by a Christian man under circumstances of great provoca tion. Now, my dear Admiral, if it will be any relief to your mind, I will prepare a set form of strong words and license you to use them. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, JANUARY 11, 1908 I WISH to begin this time at the beginning, lest I forget it again. And that is to say, I wish to thank you now for this welcome that you are giving me, and to thank you also for the welcome which you gave me seven years ago, and which I forgot to thank you for at that time. And I also wish to thank you for the wel come which you gave me fourteen years ago, and which I forgot to thank you for at that time. You know how it is when you are in a parlor with ladies and you have been at dinner in somebody s house, and when you are going away, why, common decency or your own conscience should suggest to you that it was a customary thing to say to the lady of the house that you have had an excellent and handsome time. Everybody can remember to say that except myself, and therefore I always detest myself when I come away having forgotten the common courtesy due to the lady. And I am now paying back these honors by thanking you this time. I say that now because if I tried to say that when I get through I should not think of it again until next week, and therefore I had better say it now. I hope that you will continue this excellent custom of giving me a dinner every seven years. I have enjoyed it so much on these three occasions that although I have 344 SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 345 had the purpose in my mind some time of joining the hosts in the other world, I don t know which one of the other worlds, I am willing to postpone it for another seven years. When you are the guest of honor at a banquet you are always in a sort of embarrassed position, because the topics you are to talk to are compliments. Mr. Lawrence has paid me many compliments. Mr. Porter has paid me many compliments, and that is what al ways happens. It is very difficult to talk to compli ments. I don t care whether you deserve the compli ments or not, it is just as difficult to talk to them. The other night, at the Engineers dinner, I sat there and enjoyed the squirms of Mr. Carnegie here, because they were complimenting him. He was trying to think of something to say when they got through ; and when they got through, of course he could n t. But there it was, all compliments, all compliments, and all of them deserved. And I tried to help him out by a few wit ticisms and references to times which he and I know about and nobody else does. I can manage to digest them; those things give me no trouble at all. I have often thought that I missed so much in this life that I did n t make a collection of compliments and put them away where I could take them out now and then and look them over and enjoy them. And last autumn, when I came back from Eng landI had been through a good deal of complimenting there I began to think that I missed it again. Now I am beginning to select compliments, and store them away, as other people collect pipes, and auto- 346 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB graphs, and books, and such things; I am collecting compliments. I have brought some of these compli ments along, and you can see what they are. I wrote them down to preserve them, and I think they are very good, extraordinarily just. Here is Hamilton Mabie; he wrote an article in the Outlook a short time ago, and he put this in. I think it is one of the handsomest. He says: "La Salle was the first man to make the voyage of the great stream of the Mississippi, to which hordes of smaller streams are tributary; but Mark Twain was the first man to chart, light, and indicate it for the whole world." If that could have been published at the time of the issue of my book on the Mississippi, it would have been money in my pocket. You can see how difficult it is to frame a compliment gracefully and make it ring true. It is a talent itself. I never possessed it. I wish I did. But a man who can pay a compliment of the nature of that compli ment in public need not make one ashamed of one s self. Here is the compliment of Alfred Bigelow Paine, my biographer. He has written four octavo volumes about me. He has been right at my elbow for two years and a half, making notes, and under these cir cumstances if he does n t know me, who does know me ? This is his testimony. He says : Mark Twain is not merely a great writer, but a great philosopher and a great man. He is the supreme expression of the human being, with his strength and his weakness. It takes a talent for compliment in order to make one like that. And now then, I come to Mr. Howells s SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 347 compliment. Howells, writing in the December At lantic, last month, going over his reminiscences of ancient days when he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly about thirty-five years ago, or a little before that; and in this December Atlantic, when he had reached seventy years of his life, he was passing in pro cession before him Emerson, and Lowell, and Holmes, and Whittier, and other men that were in those days writing for the Atlantic, that is, thirty-five years ago ; and then he came round to the younger men, the men that were just coming along, and he reached out to me, and he said of me, then and now: "Later, 1871, came Mark Twain, originally of Missouri, but then of Hart ford, and now ultimately of the solar system, not to say the universe. It seems to me that that is a satisfying kind of com pliment. I know that if he can prove that my fame has reached to Neptune and Uranus, and possibly to some systems a little beyond there, why, that would satisfy me. Howells knows how to say those things; that courteous man, you know Howells, how sweet and gentle he is, how painfully modest and retiring he is; but you know, deep down, that man is as full of vanity as I am, and just as ready to show off as I am. You know Howells, they called him over there, and made him an Oxford LL.D. ; and he came back with his red gown, and you d always think that Howells would n t dare put that fiery gown on his back, with all his osten sible modesty. Now that is a mistake. He told me himself ten days ago that when he was going to a public function up here of some kind at Columbia University, he sent and aske*d what kind of a gown he had got to 348 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB wear, the American black gown or the Oxford red gown, and they sent him word that it was not cus tomary to appear in anything but the ordinary black university gown of America. And Howells said he went there, and in the great crowd of black gowns there were three of those red Oxford badges. Howells was so ashamed of himself and vexed with himself, because he could have been one of those angels of light in that red, instead of being unnoticed with the general crowd of black men. And this is Mr. Edison s compliment. Edison was at that Engineers dinner the other night, where you, Mr. Carnegie, believed a lot of pleasant things that were not so. And this I took from a newspaper that said that when I had finished speaking and went home, Mr. Edison wrote on his dinner card and passed it to his neighbor. What he wrote was: "An American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain." I think the world of that great compliment; that suits me best, it is what I like to see. And finally, here is the compliment of a little Mon tana girl, at some little town in Montana. She did n t send it to me ; some person in that town or some visitor sent it to Chicago, and it was sent out to me. This little girl was in a neighbor s house, and she was noticed gazing musingly at a large photograph of me on the mantelpiece, and presently she said reverently, "We have got a John the Baptist like that at home, only ours has more trimmings." I suppose she meant the halo, and mine has n t arrived yet. Now, here is a gold-miner s compliment, and this one SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 349 is forty-two years old. I remember the circumstances perfectly well. It was the introduction of Mark Twain, lecturer, to an audience of gold-miners at Red Dog, California, in 1866, by one of themselves. It was in a log house, a large school-house, and the audience oc cupied benches without any back, and there were no ladies present, they did n t know me then; but all just miners with their breeches tucked into their boot-tops. And they wanted somebody to introduce me to them, and they pitched upon this miner, and he objected. He said he had never appeared in public, and had never done any work of this kind; but they said it did n t matter, and so he came on the stage with me and in troduced me in this way. He said : "I don t know anything about this man, anyway. I only know two things about him. One is, he has never been in jail; and the other is, I don t know why." Well, gentlemen, I shall value that collection when I get it finished. I don t care where a compliment falls, nor from whose lips it comes, it is always a blessed, blessed thing to receive. Mr. Lawrence has spoken of certain compliments and attentions to me in England, and I remember them so pleasantly. They were com pliments from great personages, and notice taken of me by great personages; and it pleases me to think that that notice was taken of me all the way down, all the way down to where what Robert Louis Stevenson and I, sitting in Union Square and "Washington Square a great many years ago, tried to find a name for, the submerged fame, that fame that permeates the great crowd of people you never see and never mingle with ; people with whom you have no speech, but who read 350 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB your books and become admirers of your work and have an affection for you. You may never find it out in the world, but there it is, and it is the faithfulness of the friendship, of the homage of those men, never criti cizing, that began when they were children. They have nothing but compliments, they never see the criticisms, they never hear any disparagement of you, and you will remain in the home of their hearts affection for ever and ever. And Louis Stevenson and I decided that of all fame, that was the best, the very best. I knew His Majesty the King of England long ago, years and years ago. I did n t meet him for the first time this time at all, but the first time since he has been king, and now there was one thing there that I re gretted. I regret that very much. It distressed me. That was that some newspaper said that I talked to the Queen of England with my hat on. Very well, that could have been explained. I did n t approach the Queen of England with my hat on, but with it in my hand, where it belonged. I would not wear a hat; I trust I have better sense than that, and better manners than that; I know we have here. I did n t put my hat on when first she asked me to put it on ; and I neglected that, and then Her Majesty told me to put it on. There is a command; and, in fact, the first invitation was a command. It seemed to me that I had made my reputa tion for democracy, that I had gone far enough when I disobeyed twice, and I drew the line there. It was to please her. I had n t any use for a hat, and never did have. There were some other things there that have never been in print, but they did rejoice my soul. The very SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 351 first thing they gave me, when I stepped ashore from that ship on English soil, a great body of the bone and sinew of England, the stevedores, gathered together and received me with a hearty English cheer. And I liked that so much. And in Mr. Porter s house, I was his guest in Oxford, the butler from some neighbor of his came over and proposed to, and did, superintend all the arrangements for a large luncheon party so that he could look at me. He said he had read every book of mine, and he just wanted to see me. And that was an immense compliment. He could quote from those books; he remembered what was in them. I don t. That was a compliment most valuable of all. And then, who was that talked about the police? Why, it was proper that the police should know me over there. Why, the police know me everywhere. And I tell you that the knowledge of the London police, their knowledge of me, was a very high compliment indeed. It has always pleased me. There never was a time when I went up to London that one of those men, those splen did policemen, did n t salute me, and that salute was a compliment ; and he then would put up that all-power ful hand of his and arrest the commerce of the world, to let me cross that street uncrippled. And he would treat me just as he would a duchess. I appreciated that ever so much. And, finally, there was that distinction that I had to take back from England, one that I take particular and peculiar pride in, and that is, that old Punch Punch, which never in all its long history allowed any foreigner the privilege of entering that great dining-room in the Punch Building where those men sit once a week, and 352 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB have for fifty years Leech, and Burnand, and Russell, and Du Maurier, and all the men that have made Punch great in England and Punch is great in England, is the greatest periodical in the world on its own soil. I say on its own soil for the reason that you know you can t understand an Englishman s joke, and the Eng lishman can t understand our jokes. The cause is very simple, it is for the reason that we are not familiar with the conditions that make the point of the English joke. But Punch is a great periodical. As I say, Punch never had granted that grace to any foreigner before, to sit down at that great board ; but it extended that great privilege to me. I went there and sat with the editors of Punch and the cartoonists ; that is where they meet once a week and lay out the next week s Punch; and when everything was ready and everybody seated at the table, the editor said, "Just a minute ; there is to be a little ceremony, and then out of a little bit of a closet, where she had been shut up, a little bit of a creature, eight years old probably, a little girl all pink and white and blue, pretty as a picture, danced out of that closet and made a curtsey to me. She had in her hand the original of the Punch cartoon of the previous week, in which Punch is drinking my health. And that pretty little creature, that little fairy, probably eight years old, just innocence itself, broke me all up. The child expected to go back in the closet, but they gave her a greeting, and she came and sat in her father s lap, the chief editor, until half the dinner was over. And the prettiest decoration of that wonder ful table was that beautiful child. When she was sent away she came and said, Good-night, to me. I said, "Oh, my dear, you are not going to leave me. Why, SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 353 we have hardly got acquainted; you ought to stay. 7 And she replied, "No, they never let me come here be fore ; and now they will never let me come again. And that is one of the beautiful instances that I cherish of those days there. And lest you should imagine that I did n t heartily appreciate the English hospitality, and lest you should think that I did n t do what little I could to confess what I felt about them, I will conclude with a few sen tences with which I closed the last speech that I made in England, the night before I sailed. It was at the banquet given to me by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, and I said : "I am now to say good-bye. Home is dear to all of us, and I am now departing to my home beyond the ocean. Oxford has conferred upon me the highest honor that has ever fallen to my share in this life s prizes, and which was the very one I would have chosen ; it is the very one I would have chosen as being more gracious than any other honor that could be con ferred upon me by men or state. And during my four weeks stay here in England I have had another lofty honor, a continuous honor, an honor which has flowed willingly along without hold or cessation during all these twenty-six days, a most gratifying, most delight ful honor in this, this treatment, the heartfelt grip of the hand, and the compliment that does n t descend from the blue-gray matter of the brain, but rushes by red blood out of the heart, and, so voiced, is manifestly freighted with affection, that dearest reward that any man can earn by character or achievements in this world. And, My Lord, it makes me proud, and some times, sometimes it makes me humble. Many, many 354 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB years ago I gathered an incident from Mr. Dana s Two Years before the Mast. It was like this : There was a poor little ignorant, self -satisfied skipper of a coasting sloop of New England engaged in the dried-apples and kitchen furniture trade, and he was always hailing every vessel that passed, and he only did it just to hear himself talk, and air his small greatness, just as I am always doing myself, always showing off, always trying to attract attention and notice. And that poor little man could n t help that. He was born that way, and so was I. "And one day a majestic Indiaman came floating by, with course on course of canvas towering into the sky, and with its decks and yards swarming with sailors, and full burdened to the Plimsoll line with spices, aromatic spices and gums, lading all the breezes with the gracious and mysterious odors of the Orient, a noble spectacle, a sublime spectacle, that great ship. Of course that little skipper hopped into the shrouds and squeaked out the hail, Ship ahoy ! What ship is that, and whence, and whither? And then a deep and thunderous voice came back booming across the tops of the waves, The Begum of Bengal; one hundred and forty-eight days out from Canton; homeward bound. What ship is that? "And, you know, that just crushed that poor little creature flat, and he squawked back this: Only the Mary Ann; fourteen hours out from Boston ; bound for Kittery Point. Oh, the eloquence of that word, Only ; the eloquence of that phrase, Only the Mary Ann, to express the depths of his humbleness. "And that is just my case, My Lord; just my case. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 355 During one short hour in the twenty-four I pause and reflect ; during one short hour in the silent watches of the night, with the music of your English welcomes still ringing in my ears, and I am humble; then I rec ognize, and then I confess to myself that I am Only the Mary Ann, fourteen hours out, cargoed with vege tables, and bound where? But during all the other twenty-three hours my satisfied vanity rides high on the white crests of your approval, and then I am the stately Indiaman, flying across the seas under a cloud of canvas, and laden to the Plimsoll mark with the most redolent spices that were ever passed to a wanderer alone in this world; and then my twenty-six days on this old mother soil seem ample for themselves, and I am the Begum of Bengal; one hundred and forty-eight days out from Canton; and homeward bound/ " (At this point the Oxford cap and doctor s gown were brought, and Dr. Clemens put them on, amid great applause. ) Oh, this is all right! I should have brought them myself if I had thought of it. I like the giddy costume. I was born for a savage. There is n t any color that is too bright and too strong for me, and the red is n t that red? There is no such red as that outside the arteries of an ox. I should just like to wear it all the time, and to go up and down Fifth Avenue and hear the people envy me and wish they dared to wear a costume like that. I am going to a house, to a luncheon party, where there will be nobody present but ladies; I shall be the only lady there of my sex, and I shall put this on and make those ladies look dim. ANDEEW CAENEGIE AT THE DINNER TO SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, JANUARY 11, 1908 SAINT MARK and Fellow-Members: I was begin ning to think what the Governor of North Caro lina said to the Governor of South Carolina, upon a memorable occasion, when I reflected that it is nearly two years since I had the pleasure of appearing among you, and addressing you, and enjoying your dinners. He remarked that "It is a long time between drinks. " But I rejoice to-night, when I come among you after an absence, upon this occasion of all others. You, Mr. President, have talked about replying to some things that Saint Mark has said, and I can think of nothing except one thing which he said that was wrong ; he told you that his halo had not arrived. That was a mistake on his part, for one of the treasures that I have kept and shall keep, is to this effect : "Dear Saint Andrew: If you had told me what was coming when you sat at my bedside the day before you sailed, I would have given you my halo then. Take it now. You have won it fairly. It is a good halo, pure tin, and paid the duty when it came down, and now it is better than when it came down." Now that is signed 1 { Saint Mark. And I was wondering to-night how he 356 ANDREW CARNEGIE 357 had forgotten that he once had a halo, and I am sure that none of us feel upon this occasion that he has lost it. Gazing upon that head, every hair of it seems to be a halo, and I find that Mark Twain exudes halos. And he could present his friend Mr. Rogers, or myself, or Colonel Harvey, or you, Mr. President, with a halo, now and then, and not miss them. Now, gentlemen, when Mark Twain is talked about, and especially when he is talked about in Britain, his high and unique literary quality is always expatiated upon; and in my opinion they elevate that feature of his many-sided character and fail properly to value the man that underlies all this literary excellence for which he is unique, and for which, no doubt, as we all know, he is to go down to posterity among the immortals ; but let me call your attention to-night to the man that underlies the artist. There come to men in this world supreme moments when the test is made. Is this pure gold, or is it not gold? Now that test came to Mr. Clemens at a time when he found himself embarrassed pecuniarily. "Well, many men have been embarrassed; many men have obeyed the law, and given up all they had, and received release, and there is an end on t. That was all the creditors could have asked. That is all that the law re quires of an honorable man. Well, what did Mark Twain do? He was n t asking, "What is due my creditors ?" but, "What is due to myself ?" And he took the burden upon his shoulders. He entered the fiery furnace of trial a man, and he emerged a hero. I have been highly entertained, and laughed and laughed over what he has written, but until I knew the 358 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB man, I could not appreciate Mr. Clemens. What a man does is not seldom greater than anything he can write. It is the deed that makes the man, and here was the occasion, and here stood the man. Now after what he has written, the future historian is to read the story of this man s life, if he has a biographer that under stands his duties, and he is to say that great as the original was, a man of undoubted genius there never has lived but one Mark Twain in this world he was still greater as a man a hero who in trial proved him self the pure gold. He has a style of his own, and he has no followers, genius seldom has, and he has followed no man I have always had a streak of Bohemianism in my composition, and I have sought the best society always that I could find. I knew Charles F. Browne; Artemas Ward; Bret Harte; your own Josh Billings, Mr. Shaw; and I have known every man of that class that I ever had an opportunity to know; and I know that no person who sits here values them more than I do. But Mark Twain is different from all these as man. He is in a class by himself; and I don t make much of a claim when I say that as a man, tested in the fiery furnace of trial, whether he was pure gold or only com mon clay, there are only a limited number of men who could rank with him. And I see his friend there, Mr. Eogers, to whom he went and to whose advice and sterling friendship he owes so much, a lucky man, too, in that wherever he goes, there go friends with him. That is the main thing I like in the man. These are the things that tell. And the more I know of Mark Twain I have known him pretty well lately ; by lately, I mean the last twenty ANDREW CARNEGIE 359 y ears _that is something in a lifetime. There is, of course, the universal verdict that Mark Twain is unique in literature. He had given the world some thing of which it had much need. But few know the creator of all those works, the hero from whom they have proceeded ; I have no doubt about the heights your distinguished guest has attained in that field. Before closing I wish to mention one point I had forgotten. There was another man who did what Mark Twain has done Sir Walter Scott. He and Walter Scott will live together in history, because they both went through the same fiery furnace and proved the metal of which they were composed. Of Mark Twain I am willing to say, as Burns said about Tarn Sampson : Tarn Sampson s well-worn clay lies here, By canting bigots blamed; But with such as he, where er he be this mark- May I be saved or damned. EGBERT STUAET MAcABTHUE AT THE DINNEK TO SAMUEL L. CLEMENS, JANUAEY 11, 1908 I GREATLY felicitate myself on my good fortune in meeting with you to-night, when you meet to do honor to Dr. Clemens, and thereby do additional honor to the Lotos Club. I have also a deep sense of the pleasure which I shall experience when this club meets in its beautiful new club-house under the shadow of my spire on Fifty-seventh Street. I feel that I shall have to elect myself as your chaplain, that I may see that everything is done in decency and order and ac cording to the highest rules of orthodoxy in this club. It has been said about Saint Mark oh, don t you forget that he has it on now. "What does the good book say? "A hoary head is a crown of glory when found in the way of righteousness. " Yet when Mark Twain goes, he has given to liter ature living, enduring characters. The greatest maker of characters is Shakespeare. In that respect he stands alone. In that respect, as the Germans would say, he is "Der Einzige." He is the only one. I think, per haps, that next to Shakespeare comes Charles Dickens. He has given us, next to Shakespeare, the greatest number of characters that will endure in literature and live. The third place, perhaps, belongs to Sir Walter Scott, to whom Mr. Carnegie made such ap propriate allusion just now. Or, perhaps, it belongs 360 ROBERT STUART MAcARTHUR 361 to George Eliot ; I am not quite sure. But I am quite sure that in that category stands Mark Twain, what ever position he may have there. He has given us characters that have reality and vitality, and that will have immortality, without the slightest doubt. And because of his identification of these characters with actual life, he and Dickens and others whose written books are in the lighter vein have perhaps very little conception of the influence which their books exercise. Only recently I was in India. I stand in some re spect in sympathetic touch with certain phases of life in India. Relatives both of my father and my mother fought in the British Army all through the Crimean War and all through the Sepoy Rebellion, and I re ceived many honors from civil and military officers in India. I found in the officers quarters; I found in the barracks of the common soldiers; I found in the homes of the Babus; I found in conversation with Eurasians, who are largely the conductors on railway trains in India, a perfect familiarity with the books of Mark Twain. One of the most distinguished officers in India told me that some of those books had cheered his lonely hours, had brightened his life in India, and had given him nobler aspirations for the future, and grander and supremer morality. I was reminded, as these officers told me, of an inci dent that occurred in relation to General Sherman. You will recall the fact that a few years ago Charles Dickens the younger came to this city and gave read ings from his father s books. Those readings were to be given in Chickering Hall. I went early; I had a ^62 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB seat on the platform. General Sherman, who then had his home in New York, came in and took a seat beside me. I had with me my little daughter, and I was very anxious that she should know General Sherman, so I took the liberty of presenting her to the great general. He said, I am so glad to have an opportunity to hear Charles Dickens, Junior. I owe and I think this remark has never been put into print; some day I propose to write it out I owe a debt of gratitude to his father, Charles Dickens, which I shall never be able to pay. During my march to the sea, after many of my greatest battles, I went into my tent, I took up David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, Tale of Two Cities/ and others of Dickens s books, and I for got all the horrors of the battles of the day; I forgot all the terrible anticipations of the day to come. Dick ens lifted me out of myself; lifted me out of my en vironment, lifted me into another world, and in that world there was peace and brightness and joy; and I thank Charles Dickens from the bottom of my soul for the influence of his books and his characters on my military life. Little did Charles Dickens know the influence that his books were to exercise over General Sherman. Lit tle do you know, sir, of the influence that your books will exercise, and have exercised, from the throne of the king to the home of the peasant ; from the miner on the hillsides and valleys of England, and in every country and empire around the globe. Your crown of glory is already on your lofty brow, my dear friend. And then again, as I would suggest, I honor our guest of to-night for the amelioration of trying condi- EGBERT STUART MAcARTHUR 363 tions in the lives of many, which his various books have secured. A physician of the old world has recently said that every man should live to be at least one hun dred and ten years old, and that one of the great elements in securing this degree of longevity is cheer fulness, joyousness, brightness of life. Do you know, sir, I would like, if I were Mr. Carnegie or some of the other multi-millionaires here, I would like to endow a chair in every college in this country, and every theo logical seminary, where they train men to be preachers, I should like to endow a Chair for Sanctified Fun, and make you the incumbent of it. Why, sir, there is a class of men who think that gloom is synonymous with grace, and that dullness is a synonym for piety. They make an enormous mistake. Merriment is vitality, merriment is health and youth, and joy is a foretaste of heaven. I give you, sir, all the benefit of clergy to-night. There is no danger about your being on the left hand with the goats. Why, bless you, you d make all the goats sheep before you had been with them half an hour ! I sincerely hope that we shall celebrate another dinner with you seven years from to-night, and four teen years from to-night, and twenty-one years from to-night, for then, sir, you will have come to your majority. I don t want you to go to heaven. We don t want you, sir, to go to heaven. We want you here, and well, the influence of religion ought not only to better fit men to go away from this world and to go to heaven, but to bring more of heaven s light and joy and beauty and blessing down to earth. WtJ TING FANG (CHINESE MINISTER) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOE, MAY 6, 1908 IT is eight years since I had the honor of being your guest. At that time, although I was a stranger, you received me with open arms and welcomed and treated me almost as a fellow-countryman. Eight years have passed, and many changes have taken place, many improvements, as I can see in this city and in the city of Washington. Great changes have also taken place in my country. One of the gentlemen asked me to express my views of the United States and the American people. I thought my views on this subject were known. If I did n t like your people, if I had not been admirably impressed with your institutions, and I may say en amoured of your people, I can assure you I would not have come here a second time. It is always pleasant to me to meet with your people, and in particular to meet with old friends in a social club like the Lotos. Gentlemen, much has been said about the reforms in China. Yes, China is moving forward. China has slumbered for many centuries; now she is awake, and she is moving fast. It is interesting to note that within the last few years our ancient mode of examination for office has been abolished, and the examination now is 364 WU TING FANG 365 conducted in a different way. A couple of years ago a number of students who had studied in Japan, in America and Europe, went to Pekin for examination for literary degrees. The subjects given to them were modern subjects. The themes were about the philos ophers of the West. I may mention the interesting fact that my secretary, who is here, was educated in the University of Virginia. Reference has been made to the fact that the char acter of the religion of Confucius is negative. In a sense it is negative, that is why Confucianism exists only in China. "We have not sent missionaries abroad. We believe in the maxim, "Charity begins at home," and we have done our best to convert our people to this creed. Now, since so many Chinese come into for eign countries, it is time, we think, that we should have Confucian churches in foreign countries. For this reason a movement is on foot to get the Chinese in America to establish a Confucian church in New York. Gentlemen, especially the two Reverend Gentlemen, you need not be alarmed. We are negative people ; we establish a church for the purpose of preaching the doctrine to our people. We don t use force, we don t send battle-ships to compel any one to embrace our religion. Gentlemen, the duty of a minister is to maintain friendly relations between his own country and the country to which he is accredited. I am glad to find that our relations are most friendly. There is no cloud on the political horizon between China and your coun try. JAMES WHITFIELD BASHFOBD (MISSIONARY BISHOP TO CHINA) AT THE DINNEB TO WU TING FANG, MAY 6, 1908 THE first proof of the new intellectual life of China is found in the revolution in education. There is only one aristocracy in China, and that is not an aris tocracy of wealth or of birth, but of education. Under Chinese customs usually only persons can be appointed to office who hold a degree won in the great examina tions which the Chinese government conducts to test the educational qualifications of her subjects. "With very few exceptions, all young men can offer themselves for those examinations, and those who succeed in win ning the degree become the intellectual and official aristocracy of the nation. In 1903 the dowager empress issued a decree declar ing that at the close of ten years no person would be put upon the list of eligibles for office whose degree did not specify that he had mastered the Western learning. Many persons regarded this decree by the dowager empress as spectacular, inasmuch as on its face it was not to go into effect for ten years, and few people be lieved that it would ever go into effect; but in 1905 a supplementary decree was issued, putting the reform into immediate effect. These two decrees do not pre scribe that every future official must have the Western 366 JAMES WHITFIELD BASHFORD 367 learning, for there are not sufficient men trained in the new learning to furnish officials; hence all who now hold degrees received under the old regime are eligible to appointment. But all future degrees must certify to the holder s efficiency in the Western learning, in order to make him eligible to official appointment. Already the decree has been put into operation so far that exam inations have been held in Pekin for the highest degree, in which the applicants were allowed to choose the language in which they would take the examinations, and some took the examination in English instead of Chinese. This is unparalleled in the history of the empire. Again, competitive examinations in Western subjects have been held in leading Chinese cities for the selection of students to be sent to America. Thus, Western learning has already become the standard of education for the officials of the empire. It was the demonstration in 1905 and 1906 of the genuineness of the educational reform which sent some fifteen thou sand young men to Japan in a single year for the Western learning, and some three or four thousand more to Europe and America : a far wider and swifter movement in education than the Japanese made in their eagerness for the Western learning, a far larger num ber than ever went from America to Europe for uni versity training in a single year. This reform, which is now in full progress, revolutionizes the intellectual training which has prevailed among four hundred mil lion people for twenty-five hundred years. It promises to become the greatest single change which has taken place in the intellectual history of mankind. Turning to political progress, the metropolis of 368 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB northern China, with a population of a million and a quarter, in July held the first municipal election ever known in the history of the Chinese empire. Yuan Shih Kai, the man of power in China to-day, holds that the Chinese, from their centuries of village government and of guild government, are far more ready for re publican institutions, and indeed, are far more demo cratic in spirit, than the western world dreams. Hence he is urging the Chinese government to adopt a consti tution. In order to prove that constitutional govern ment is practicable, he has established municipal government in the northern metropolis of the empire. Note the requirements for voting in the first city in China ever holding a municipal election: each voter must be a male citizen twenty-five years of age, born in Tientsin, or he must have lived in Tientsin for five years and paid taxes on two thousand taels ; all voters must be able to read and write. These four classes are debarred the franchise: all who have ever failed in business ; all who are now engaged in any disreputable business, like selling opium, etc.; all who are opium smugglers ; and Buddhists and Taoist priests. Passing through Tientsin last fall, I saw a lecture- hall in which perhaps a thousand listeners could stand, and was told that a half-dozen such halls had just been opened in the city, in which illustrated lectures on Western geography, "Western science, Western inven tions, etc., are delivered two or three times a week to audiences which fill the halls to overflowing. If Tientsin persists in demanding this high standard of morality and intelligence in her voters, possibly fifty years hence American citizens will be sending delega- JAMES WHITFIELD BASHFORD 369 tions to China to learn the secret of municipal gov ernment. I was present in Pekin that momentous Sunday in September, 1905, when the commissioners who were going to the United States and Europe to study our institutions were to leave Pekin. On my way home from a preaching service, I heard the explosion which wrecked the train and wounded His Excellency Wu Ting Fang. I had the honor of calling upon him a day or two later and discussing with him the cause of this attempt to assassinate the commissioners. We both agreed that it was due to the opposition of the con servatives to the commissioners visiting Europe and America, and possibly carrying back to China recom mendations for reform. This shows that at the time there was a party of intense conservatives in Pekin. Last fall, when I was in Pekin, I had the honor of calling upon our American minister to China, Mr. W. W. Rockhill. I remarked that from such reports of the two hundred newspapers published in China as I received from some Chinese students who were furnish ing a few of us the summary of Chinese newspapers, there seemed then to be no defense of conservatism by the newspapers. Mr. Rockhill immediately answered: There is no conservative party to-day among the offi cials in Pekin." He added that there are two parties in the empire, one of which he would characterize as the Liberal party and the other as the Radical party. All parties believe in progress and are sure that China must immediately adopt great and far-reaching re forms. The Liberals, however, believe in studying the conditions which now confront the empire, and striving 370 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB to adopt such reforms as will prove permanent and will not result either in a revolution or a reaction. The Radicals, upon the other side, are committed to all, any, and every kind of reform, and desire these reforms adopted immediately. All representatives of foreign governments and all missionaries in China are in sympathy with the Liberal rather than with the Radical party. In a word, China is in more danger to-day from revolution than from undue conservatism. I believe that if we will strive more and more to let the Golden Rule govern the spirit of our dealings, po litical, industrial, and commercial, with China, that China and the United States can make a greater civil ization along the Pacific Coast than any other, and one that will dominate the globe. STEPHEN S. WISE AT THE DINNEE TO WU TING FANG, MAY 6, 1908 I WONDER how many of you know that there has been a Jewish colony, a colony made up of my brother Jews, in China, for more than two thousand years, a settlement which began about two hundred and fifty years before the present era, and which Jewish settlement has been unchanged for now more than two millennia. It ought not to be necessary to say that my Jewish cousins or brothers in China have not prospered in a business way. There are three countries in the world in which the Jew cannot get along in the business sense. The first is the Chinese empire ; the second is Scotland ; and the third is New England. You will remember the story of the Englishman who was being rallied upon his failure in business, after he had gone to Aberdeen to live and sell fish; and when he was asked, "Why have n t you been able to get along and be successful?" he said, "My dear fellow, think, I buy from the Jews, and sell to the Scotch. It may be because I am a younger brother of the great teachers of history of another age; those men who dared to proclaim twenty-six and twenty-eight hundred years ago, "For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" ; it may be that because mine is a religion like the brotherhood of William Lloyd 371 372 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Garrison, my own country has awarded me humilia tion. "We have witnessed in the last decade the awaken ing of the far East. That awakening has found illustration in our learned brother to-night, as demon strated by the triumphs of Japan, and that is another illustration of the great seething unrest of the mighty Chinese empire. And I rejoice that that awakening has come, in order that you, in order that you Westerners, you gentlemen of the Occidental world, may begin to understand how unworthy of you, how base in you, it is to speak of Asiatics, of Chinese, as if they were an inferior people. It is as true to-day as it was when first spoken, "The light has come out of the East." You are only repay ing in part, in a very small part, the debt which you can never wholly pay to the East. Gentlemen, you venture sometimes to speak deris ively and contemptuously of Asiatics. Do you not see that nearly all the precious things in life have come to us from the great East ? Who are, and who have been, the great religious teachers of the world? Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, every one of them an Asiatic. I know that there are German anti-Semites to-day who, in the madness of their anti- Jewish delirium, are now even seeking to prove that Jesus was not a Jew, because in Nazareth there was a large settlement of Aryans. Next we shall be hearing that Paul was a Frenchman or an Italian, or that Peter was a German or an Irishman. I have heard something to-night about Confucius and Confucianism. I wish you might know, as I have come to know, in part from the inspiration of our honored STEPHEN S. WISE 373 guest, what a mighty moral, religious factor Confucian ism has been in the East; Confucianism, which is a religion that says very little about man s duty to God, but omits nothing concerning man s duty to man; a religion that is not a cocksure unethical theism, but a reverend ethical ecclesiasticism ; a religion of which a great Oxford professor, Mr. Giles, declares that it is a religion, and that it is as sincere, as earnest, and as noble as any great religion in the world. We of the Western world, of Christendom, to-day face the most searching, the most vital problem with which it has had to deal in more than a thousand years. Let me explain my seemingly strange words. China has lived up to the Golden Rule; China has prac tised the nominal Christian art of non-resistance and the Western world, Christendom, has set out, as it were, to point out to China the folly of observing the rule of non-resistance, laid down by Jesus of Nazareth; with the result that we have to-day the attempted apportion ment and dismemberment of China by the powers without. Gentlemen, with the fullest realization of the serious ness of my words, I say to you that the dismemberment of that is to say, the securing of extra-territorial rights in China, the land-grabbing of China by the Western Christian powers, is the gravest possible in dictment of Christianity. If you were to ask me to-night, gentlemen, * Of what single act of the American government are you most proud ? " I would point not even to the seizure of Cuba and the deliverence of the Cubans from a weak but cruel tyrant s yoke; I would point to the repayment of 374 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the indemnity which the United States received from the Chinese government. That was a greater victory than the victory of Port Arthur, because it was a victory not over others, but over ourselves. "What does the new diplomacy mean? The diplomacy of the Golden Rule, the new diplomacy, is new internationalism. Do you not know that we have changed the old saying, "My spear shall know no brother," to "My brother, whatever his race, whatever his color, whatever his faith, shall know no spear. The new internationalism means this the recogni tion of the motto of John Quincy Adams, "My country, may she always be successful, but, whether successful or not, may my country ever be in the right." Then, too, the new internationalism means just this, as my last word : it means that the moral law is not forgotten at national boundaries; it means that the Ten Com mandments and the Sermon on the Mount are just as truly binding upon us in our international as in our national, domestic, civic, and industrial relations; it means that the Mount Sinai or the Mount Sermon is loftier than the mightiest people upon the earth; it means that the commands, Thou shalt not covet ; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not kill, are binding upon nations as well as individuals, and most binding upon the strongest and the mightiest nations of the world. Let this be our thought to-night, and in this thought let us shake hands across the mighty eastern sea and say: Our flags together furled, henceforward no other strife Than which of us most shall help the world, which lead the noblest life. BAEON KOGORO TAKAHIEA (JAPANESE AMBASSADOR) AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, DECEMBER 19, 1908 I FEEL very highly honored by your very cordial invitation to be your guest this evening. I am very much gratified to enjoy the pleasant company of so many distinguished gentlemen of the great metropolis. I don t feel equal to replying to such cordial expressions of sentiment as have so gracefully been made by your president, but I assure you, if Japan has succeeded in achieving anything worthy of such remarks, it is prin cipally due to the friendly action taken by the United States through Commodore Perry in introducing Japan to the comity of nations. Ever since the opening of our intercourse we have been trying to do our best to reciprocate the friendship exhibited by this country. In doing so we have always thought that we should be able some day to repay what the United States has done for us. We have passed through the vicissitudes of life in different ways, but we have always regarded the United States as our best friend, and we look to the United States for not only friendship but guidance. I cannot dwell upon such circumstances, there is not time enough for me to do it, but I can tell you that what you have done will never be forgotten by our people. The United 375 376 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB States will always be regarded as not only a friendly nation, but as the best guide in leading Japan and her neighboring countries to enjoy the benefits of Western civilization, which the United States introduced to that part of the world. When I lived in this city many years ago I used to go to the Harlem River for fishing, and I saw that the boatman always rowed hardest when the tide was against him ; in the same way, I now see that a diplomat speaks much when his affairs are not in good shape. But, as things are between the United States and Japan, there is nothing to warrant much speechmaking. I fully believe I am not mistaken when I say that our relations are in the best possible condition. I think we may say there is now nothing left to be desired in the relations of our two countries. No doubt there have been undesirable incidents oc curring between some people of the two countries, but they were local affairs and in no way to be regarded as menacing our traditional friendship. Too much importance was given them in some quar ters, and even a war clamor was raised by a few people in spite of the sincere good will existing between the two governments. I do not understand why mistaken reports should have been so broadcast. There were many contradic tions and refutations given to the press from time to time, but it seems that people did n t place any credence in them ; and, thanks to the sincerity of the friendship existing between the two governments, no serious con sequences occurred. Shakespeare denned the mission of the so-called dip- BARON KOGORO TAKAHIRA 377 lomacy so many centuries ago when he said that "the devil knew not what he did when he made men politic." Franklin said, "Honesty is the best policy. " I don t know what circumstances led him to make such an as sertion. But from it American diplomacy has found a firm foundation. I took the opportunity, at a dinner given in my honor on my arrival here some months ago, to declare that there is no art in our game of diplomacy. In our international transactions I can most firmly repeat the same assertion, and that there is no such word as " diplomacy " as popularly defined. The declaration of the two governments recently made by the United States and Japan in regard to their respective policies in China and the Pacific is a good example. It is simply a reaffirmation of what was understood between them years ago, and there is practically nothing which was not hitherto declared between them. It is a trans action between trusted friends. It requires no for mality to legalize the instrument. Gentlemen, I thank you most sincerely for the cordial reception you are good enough to extend to me. I wish you happiness and prosperity. MELVILLE E. STONE AT THE DINNEE TO BAEON KOGOEO TAKAHIEA, DECEMBEE 19, 1908 1WAS impressed by the remark of Mr. Low that in this case we had better go to the Genesis of things. I was reminded of this by a telegram which came to us last night and was printed in this morning s papers, the story of the rescue of five Japanese sailors on an island on the Pacific coast by an American ship, and that turned my mind back to the Genesis of this busi ness and of the entrance of Japan into the family of nations. Well may the Japanese pay tribute to our Navy ! There is a dramatic situation there, and a poetic justice. In the old time we were enemies because we were strangers. The Japanese did not know us, and therefore we were l the foreign devils. But we had an interest out there. We had nineteen million dollars invested in whaling-ships traversing the Pacific Ocean. Now and then one would run on the Japanese coast and be wrecked, and the Japanese, not knowing these American whalers, regarded them as enemies. The hour came when it was necessary that something should be done to save our sailing ships and sailors who went out there, and then in that hour the American Navy came to the front, not for war, but for the highest and holiest motive. 378 MELVILLE E. STONE 379 Commodore Aulick of our Navy suggested to our then secretary of state, Daniel Webster, that an expedition be sent out there. The thing was considered, but noth ing was done for two years, and then another com modore, Perry, suggested that the thing be done, and induced him to do it. The Navy of America is respon sible for the opening of Japan. I have in mind two episodes; and I shall try to be brief, Mr. President, because I know that my friend Mr. Wise is to follow me. The Japanese government immediately listened to the demand of Commodore Perry, and two or three great men of Japan seconded Perry and opened that country, against great obstacles. Finally they succeeded, through Townsend Harris, whose name should be immortal, in negotiating a treaty. Well, it went along until 1863. Japan was then having her troubles in regard to a certain Shogun, and some American warships were passing through the Japanese sea, and were fired on, but the Japanese government was in no way responsible. It was done by the rebels. Nevertheless, we demanded immediate reparation and indemnity. But I want to say something : that I belong to a country that never fought to establish or carry commerce anywhere, that never made war except in the interest of humanity. Well, this Shogun fired his shot, and we demanded reparation and indemnity, and the Japanese government paid us; and it ran along until 1874, when I happened to be in Washington, and I had a long talk at the time with General Grant in re spect to this outrageous indemnity we had asked from Japan, and then General Grant did a thing of which I am supremely proud. He sent a message to Congress 380 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB recommending it to pass an act refunding to Japan that indemnity, on condition that it be used for the educa tion of Japanese scholars. In the language of a pro fessor of Harvard, that was a great blunder, because your students get two dollars 7 worth of education for one dollar s worth of pay. Now, the president said I might say something in respect to the Japanese-Russian war. Gentlemen, we stand on historic ground. This club itself bore its part in that great work. As the Portsmouth Conference was in session, there came an hour when positive instruc tions were issued to the Russian delegates to retire and leave on a certain Tuesday. All of the questions at issue had been discussed at great length and a con clusion reached on all save one, the question of in demnity. The Russian representatives were instructed from St. Petersburg to pay no indemnity under any circumstances, and they were instructed to leave the conference and break it up on the following Tuesday. On the Sunday preceding I received a telephone mes sage from a distinguished Japanese representative, asking me to lunch with him. I went, and we discussed the situation at length, and then Japan rose to the very highest level of statesmanship or humanity, rose to a level which America might well emulate, which any nation might emulate. I shall never forget what this gentleman said to me: ""We can never be put in the position before the world of fighting this war for money ; and if the question resolves itself into a ques tion of indemnity, Japan, with all her sufferings, all her expenditures; Japan, with no large revenues; Japan, struggling after having expended eight hundred mil- MELVILLE E. STONE 381 lion dollars in this war, will make peace without taking a dollar of indemnity. A suggestion was made that perhaps an intermediary could be found, and, determined as I was to communi cate that fact to the President of the United States, I went that afternoon to Oyster Bay. Before I went I tele phoned to Lenox, where Baron Veschin, a German charge, was stopping, and asked him to come to this club, and he came at five o clock. I went to Oyster Bay, and a telegram was prepared to the Emperor of Germany, asking him to intervene. I came back, and we, the baron and I, went upstairs in this house, and the upshot was that that telegram was sent to the Em peror of Germany, and he communicated with the Czar, and said to the world that Japan was not fighting for money. I was deeply impressed by one phrase in Baron Taka- hira s remarks deeply impressed. He said, "We look to the United States for guidance. You introduced us to the family of nations, and we look to the United States for guidance/ Gentlemen, that puts upon the United States, upon every citizen of the United States, a tremendous responsibility, and I ask you if it does not behoove all of us to live up to this responsibility. I say now, as I have said before in public, there is no genuine yellow peril," except the peril of the yellow press. JOHN S. WISE AT THE DINNEE TO BAEON KOGOKO TAKAHIEA, DECEMBEE 19, 1908 /GENTLEMEN, when you talk about Genesis, you VJ forget that Japan is the cause of the discovery of America. Christopher Columbus would never have sailed on his western voyage except to get to the fabled land of Zipango. In his dream of journeying right to the west, he had consulted the greatest geographers of the day, and the greatest of all was Toscanelli, who showed him his maps with all the details showing the fabled isle of Zipango, and filled him with the stories of that wonderful land of gold, the dream of commerce, that commerce which is spoken of as something new. It was not an inspiration to discover the western continent, for in the maps of Toscanelli, delivered into the hands of Christopher Columbus, the island of Zipango was placed in the west, and the maps showed no land be tween western Europe and that great golden territory. Columbus sailed on a search for Japan. Columbus went on his untried voyage unaware that a great con tinent lay between western Europe and Japan, and when he landed on the island of San Salvador he mis took it for Zipango, and thought that he had discov ered that great land. Not only that, but after the 382 JOHN S. WISE 383 discovery of this continent, which lay between the fabled land of Zipango and Europe, the discoveries of the great voyager were heralded first as the discovery of the land of his dreams. I have heard what has been said here, and it has astonished me that no gentleman has referred to the fact that at the bottom of the discovery of America lay the search for the commerce of Japan, which has come at a later day in our little brief span of life. I remember the distinguished statesman who is our honored guest when he and I were both young. He was then the secretary of the legation, and voted the most fascinating little secretary in all our national capital. Let me say to the baron that the affection between America and his people is natural and it is progressive, and it is the best security which his country has for a permanent peace, for we realize the strength, the ad vance, the power of that wonderful nation. We are not afraid of them. We are not afraid of any one on top of this earth, and we believe we can whip any nation in the world. It may be bragging to say so, but it is God s truth. That, sir, is the surest guarantee that you have that this other self-respecting, progressive nation looks not upon the struggles and the advance of the Japanese with an eye of jealousy, but that we are proud to recog nize another nation arising from nothingness into prom inence, as our own nation has done. That is the foundation of our friendship. First, we are friends; second, we have got nothing to fight about; and third, neither one of us wants to fight the other. FEANK E. LAWEENCE AT THE DINNEB TO CHAELES E. HUGHES, JANUAEY 30, 1909 r INHERE must be a tinge of sadness about our pro- JL ceedings to-night, for we realize that when our voices die away here this evening, the echoes in this house will be raised no more, and these rooms will be closed forever. It is a climax, both honorable and delightful, that the last dinner of the Lotos Club in this old house should be given in honor of the Chief Magistrate of this State. New York is proud of its governor. His presence here reminds us that we are members of a very great commonwealth. In our system of government, the State is so far overshadowed by the Nation, that the impor tance of the State is often lost sight of in contemplating the aggregation of the States ; yet were this an entirely separate community, New York, with an area about the size of England, with wonderful natural resources, with enormous wealth, and with eight millions of the most progressive and intelligent people upon the earth, would take high rank as an independent nation. It is well, sometimes, to stop and think of the posi tion of the individual State in our great federation of States; and I think I use almost the words of the 384 FRANK R. LAWRENCE 385 Supreme Court of the United States when I say that in so far as the powers of a State in this Union are not limited by the Constitution of the United States, each State is a sovereign State, with all the attributes of the most absolute government upon the face of the earth. The people of this country pay little heed to mere official rank. One may be clothed in all the panoply of office, and yet fail to arouse popular esteem. The suc cess of a man with the American people depends on his own individuality, and upon the ability of his character to stand the test of the fierce light that beats upon public station. We respect public office because we are law-abiding men ; but it takes the qualities of the individual man to evoke enthusiasm or affection. We honor devotion to the public service. We honor such unqualified courage as we have lately seen upon the part of our Chief Ex ecutive. We honor and approve the capacity to ad vance the cause of good government, but while we ought always to pay due respect to the office of the Governor of the State of New York, yet that respect is greatly enhanced while the office is filled by such a man as Governor Hughes. This, gentlemen, is a non-political club. I don t know how its members voted at the last election, nor am I privileged to inquire. Yet with respect to the majority of them, a great majority of them, I think I might make a rather shrewd guess. There are men here of all shades of opinion ; but whatever our political beliefs, we all rejoice in whatever makes for the public welfare, and none of us can fail to admire the career and achievements of Governor Hughes. 386 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB He entered upon the discussion of the questions in volved in the last presidential campaign, known prob ably only in his own and a few neighboring States. He emerged from that discussion a conspicuous national figure, a position from which, I venture to predict, he will find it difficult to dislodge himself for the future. New York has in its time given five occupants to the presidential chair; and should this State within the next few years be called upon to sacrifice another of its sons, the man is not far to seek. And it seems to me, gentlemen, and I believe it will seem to you, that a career so solidly founded, so rich with fine achievement and high aspiration, ought not to be permitted to stop even with the governorship of the State of New York. But, gentlemen, presidential elections are far away; and we are not here to enter upon a political theme. "We are here to greet the governor and the man, and it is an abundant honor to the Lotos Club that now, after almost forty years of life, it should be thought fit to receive in this way the Chief Executive of our State. CHARLES E. HUGHES (GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK) AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, JANUAEY 30, 1909 I AM very proud of the distinction that you have conferred upon me in permitting me to share in the honors which have been conferred in days past in these rooms, so rich in the echoes of eloquence. I regret with you that you must leave them; and I am glad, indeed, that before you part from a place so rich in memories, it has become my privilege to join with you in the courtesy and hospitality of such an occasion as this. A high dignitary of the church said to me the other night that there was this difference that might be noted between distinguished denominations. The Presby terians don t care what you do, so long as you believe with them; the Methodists don t care what you believe, so long as you do what is right ; and the Episcopalians don t care what you believe or do, so long as you join their church. I am very glad to join your church, and have you throw the mantle of courtesy over what I have done as well as over what I have believed and still believe. We are not here to-night to suggest differences in political opinion, or anything which might permit any diver gence. "We are here as loyal citizens of the great State of New York. I have heard it said frequently that an 387 388 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB optimist was a man who had just met a pessimist. I have inverted that proposition because I think the inversion is better than the original. But I think an optimist is a man who has just had the pleasure of dining with the members of the Lotos Club. And you will understand me if in this presence I view with entire satisfaction and confidence the future of the Empire State. I am somewhat divided in my emotions as I contem plate the citizenship of New York and the accomplish ments of the past. We have indeed the greatest reason for gratification in what has been achieved. It is worth while to be elected governor to become intimately ac quainted with the State of New York ; and I should be willing to go through again what I have been through in the last two years, for the satisfaction of having an opportunity of knowing well the different communities which make up this State, from north to south and from east to west. No man who knows them can have any doubt as to the future of the commonwealth. It is secure, because of the intelligence and patriotism of the people that compose it. And in no gathering would it be possible to find a better representation of the intel ligence and high-minded sentiment of that people than in this gathering that does me the pleasure to appear to-night. I wish it were in my power to do all that the gov ernor of the State ought to do in recognizing the various offers of hospitality which are so generously bestowed. Nothing is more embarrassing to me than the necessity of constantly declining the very kind offers that are made from various parts of the State; and it is no exaggeration to say that I spend a goodly CHARLES E. HUGHES 389 portion of each day in explaining that I am only one man and not a hundred men, and that it is impos sible for me, in the time at my disposal, to do more than a very little in accepting the hospitality that is tendered me. But the Lotos Club is distinguished not only in the personnel of its membership, but in the character of its meetings and the quality of its dinners. And I con sider it one of the best bits of good fortune that has come to me that I was not too late to join with you in this historic building in a festal occasion of this sort. Now, while we are considering the glories of the past of the State, we must not be unmindful of the future. As I have said, I am constantly oppressed by two emo tions, one of pride and one of ambition. When I look at the commercial interests of the State, at the ability that is represented in the colossal financial undertak ings that are here in evidence, I am amazed at the extraordinary concentration of power and strength in the great State of New York. It is indeed an Empire State. I don t need to remind you of what we have achieved. It is written on every hand. It is written in our great financial institutions, the security of which is the bulwark of the republic. It is written in our differ ent big commercial and industrial enterprises. No where in this favored land can more be found of promise with regard to power and intelligence and actual accomplishment than is employed in business in the State of New York. And then I turn to the other side, and I think of what still remains to be done. My friends, I don t care whether you join my church or 390 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB not, I want you to believe what is right, and stand for what is right, and make this great State worthy to be a free community. We are here gathered in the metropolis of this State, a State of splendid possibilities, in which, as you know, much remains yet to be accomplished. I don t speak of extraordinary enterprises requiring aggregations of capital; I speak of the discharge of those functions of government which are familiar, and in connection with which we find the true test of the quality of our citizen ship. You know a great portion of our people know very little of that which concerns men in the ordinary activities of life. They see our judicial processes in the work of our inferior criminal courts. They see our educational work in that which is made familiar by our common schools. They see government as it is repre sented by the policeman and by the magistrate. It is not really in the fine affairs of the best educated that we find the truest test of our civilization. It is in the manner in which the ordinary functions of government are discharged in connection with the ordinary activi ties of life. Look at the wonderful opportunities for education. I suppose there has never been a time when we have had greater reason for pride than now, in view of the opportunities that are afforded our youth, of whatever degree, to obtain a reasonable education. But when you reflect, you are distressed by the fact that a very large proportion of our youth are leaving our common schools before they are fitted for any ordinary work in life. That is a very distressing but remediable condi tion. We have n t yet begun to understand what is the CHARLES E. HUGHES 391 duty of the State with regard to the preparation of our boys and girls for proper fields of usefulness. I am not one of those who desire to see an extension of the functions of the State in untried fields, or who would forget the common failings of our human nature and suppose that by concentration of authority we could solve that problem. You will find, in connection with our educational work, a great opportunity for advancement. We should make our elementary courses of such a character that the ordinary student would see that the prosecution of the entire course was worth while. We must realize that to bring our young men and women into proper opportunities for usefulness is a proper branch of our educational equipment. We have only begun to develop our common schools, and this is but one phase of our activities. I have already spoken of the processes of our courts. We are proud of the judicial work and the eminent men who have adorned our bench, and no one more than I recognizes the respect that is due to the author ity of the courts and the necessity for increasing that respect if we have surely founded our free institutions. But there is a lamentable lack of propriety and in dustry in connection with the work of our lower courts, particularly our criminal courts ; and we must see to it in this city and throughout the State that by improve ment in the machinery we shall secure a better adminis tration of justice in these courts, which touch perhaps two-thirds of all our population. It is not too much to say that some of our judicial processes at this time are a disgrace to civilization. We find, to a very large extent, our courts crammed with 392 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB negligence cases. We find employers paying large sums for insurance against liability on their part as employers. We find that perhaps only thirty per cent, of all the sums thus paid for this insurance ever reach those who are actually injured and incapacitated from work. We find, in the prosecution of our ordinary processes of justice, attorneys receiving from thirty to fifty per cent, of all that may be collected in connection with certain classes of injuries. This is a standing indictment of our present methods, and we must by observation and careful analysis find out in time what can properly be done to remedy such an obvious defect. We are at the beginning, gentlemen, of our civiliza tion. It is easy for us, gathered together on occasions like this, when men of ability and talent and a fair degree of prosperity may congratulate themselves upon their individual accomplishments, to forget how far short the sum total of those accomplishments is of what they should be. We must constantly be looking to the future. We must hitch our wagon to a star. I believe in idealism. I believe in holding firm to the ideals of this republic. They are ideals closely asso ciated with freedom and individual opportunity. Strongly as I believe in the regulation of those enter prises which affect the public interests, I recognize with all of you the supreme importance of holding out to our youth the reward for perseverance and honest effort. The time is not far distant when we shall re gard it as little short of a disgrace that we should ever have existed in conditions like these. We have, in addition, our great public works. We CHARLES E. HUGHES 393 desire to make communication more easy. "We want the avenues of trade opened. We do not desire competi tion, unjust and improper, with enterprises which have been established by hard work and conspicuous ability, but we do want the commerce of the future to have abundant scope and to have that healthy activity which must depend in the last analysis upon absolute freedom of intercommunication. Therefore it is that I am very desirous that the public works of the State connected with our artificial waterways should be intelligently prosecuted. "We want our water-power developed. I have seldom seen any more severe indictment of a civil ized community than that which has been presented in connection with the report of our water-supply com missioners with regard to the water-power which is daily running to waste in this State. These are matters which must receive our attention. Now, in connection with all this work, where the State is desired to make progress in the interest of all the citizens of the State, what is essential? It is abso lutely essential that we should have faithful representa tion. I ask no one to take account of particular plans or to abdicate his convictions. I have never asked a single man connected with the State government to surrender his convictions to me for any price or under any conditions. I have a profound confidence in the merit of argument and in the presentation of sound reasoning. Despite what has been said with regard to the necessary extension of opportunity in the public schools, we have great reason for congratulation upon the wide extension that we note of the intelligence of our people. 394 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Never before have there been so many voters in the community who knew what they were voting for. Never has there been a time when there was so much actual knowledge of existing facts and such a wide diffusion of information. But with all that, we must constantly endeavor to give the widest possible play to that intelli gence and to the sound public opinion which results from that diffusion of information. I want to see the methods of the blacklist and the boycott in connection with our political parties done away with. I want to see the time pass when anybody can assume the role of dictator of a free city. I do not care what your politics may be, whether you agree with me or not, I simply stand for the free expression of the will of the people through the party system, in order that every leader ship and every representative may stand upon the expressed will of the constituency represented. And therein I see the hope of the community. We are not born to servitude of any character. "We are not in any way committed to this man or that man. The happiest day for the member of the legislature is when he can say: "I have done my duty, and I am ready to account to those who elected me. " It is the salvation of the public officer. Now, the matter is not one of per sonal consequence to me. Nothing I regret more than alignment of so-called Hughes men and anti-Hughes men. I am not an issue. It makes no personal differ ence to me what becomes of any particular controversy with regard to matters of debate, so long as I can make sure that I am right and that time will vindicate the position that has been taken. What I am most concerned with is the progress and CHARLES E. HUGHES 395 prosperity of the great State of which we are all so proud. I want to see our public works conducted with the utmost efficiency. I want to see opportunities for education enlarged. I want to see the law s delays diminished. I want to see our courts relieved of bur dens unjustly thrown upon them by a system which conduces to the benefit of ambulance-chasers and of particular sets of attorneys, and has little for the benefit of the injured or the workingman. I desire to see politics free and pure so far as human nature will permit. Do not suppose that I cherish any delusion with regard to either politics or human nature. I was not born yesterday. The longer I live, the more persuaded I become, of the necessity, for every man s comfort, of the possession of true philosophy. The happiest moments, perhaps, that I enjoy are in the midnight hour when I read the discourses of Epictetus. No, we are not contemplating an Utopia. It is not that we desire to press men beyond what they can normally achieve. It is simply that we should have a recognition of our opportunities as citi zens and our duty as citizens of the great State that we are so fortunate in having our citizenship in. Any one who knows the State of New York knows that there is a great revival of interest in everything pertaining to our civic relations. Some call this dis content, some decry it as unwholesome agitation. My friends, it is neither discontent nor agitation in an unpleasant sense. It is simply an awakening, because the people are coming to their own, and they will get their own. It is simply that we have begun to realize that with the extension of the activities of the State it is 396 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB absolutely essential to have men who are loyal to the State in every department of State effort. They are throwing open organizations for the pur pose of commercial improvement. They are as proud of talent as our American people ever have been. You go to St. Lawrence County, of which my friend Mr. Merritt is such a distinguished representative, or you go down into Suffolk, it makes no difference, and you will find that the American boy is just as eager to merit a prize as he was half a century ago. You cannot ob literate the true American sentiment of the individual opportunity and individual talent. Socialism has no place, and never will have any, in this country. But the people want a fair show, the State s work done well. They want the representatives of the State to do their duty loyally, and owe allegiance to the people of the State only. They want to have it clearly recognized that they are as much servants of fidelity as is com monplace in every business undertaking and in every social organization. They want to be free to deal with the question of who shall be their representative with out suffering political ostracism. They want what is fair and what is right, and they will get it. As I have said, I am torn between two emotions con stantly. I would n t for a moment have any one sup pose that I look with a cynical eye upon the present, or that I regard with indifference the splendid tone of our political life in the main part. For the most part, our State business is admirably conducted. As I read the other day, reformers legislate in a hurry, and a distin guished man said that this was because bigots would n t legislate at all. CHARLES E. HUGHES 397 I would rather, I tell you in all truth, be in your company to-night a private citizen working in my own professional life, than occupy the position which you have conferred upon me. It is no joke to be governor of this State. But each one of us has coming to him the duty of the day and hour, and the test of every man here, in private life or in public life, is whether he is willing to meet the things that come before him just as he may, and grapple with them. And I have confidence in the future of the State, because I find throughout the State groups of men who are eager to embrace the op portunity, groups of men anxious to discharge the duty that lies before them, and I have no doubt as to the future of the country or of this particular section of it. Unless you despair of humanity, you cannot despair of the United States of America. MAHLON PITNEY (CHANCELLOR OF THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY) AT THE DINNER TO CHAELES E. HUGHES, JANUARY 30, 1909 YOU perhaps appreciate how embarrassing is an invitation and an introduction from my good friend Mr. Lawrence. Any words of praise from him deprive one of the desire to make a retort. But I do indeed gladly say a few words on this occasion, for I not only esteem it a high honor to participate with you in this magnificent tribute to the distinguished Gov ernor of the Empire State, but a personal pleasure to come and bear some testimony to the high esteem and regard in which the guest of this evening is held by your neighbors across the Hudson River. Belonging as I do to the legal profession, for I thought I was a lawyer until I became a judge, it is natural that I should think of Governor Hughes first and foremost as a lawyer, and we in New Jersey ad mire him largely as such. We admire him for the notable distinction and prominence that he at a com paratively early age achieved at the Bar in the Empire State. We admire him for his sound judgment ; for his thorough grasp of all the intricacies of every legal problem with which he has been confronted, and his ability to get down to the minutest detail of the most 398 MAHLON PITNEY 399 complicated case without losing sight of the main points ; for his high spirit ; for his integrity of purpose and ideals. We think the Empire State is highly for tunate in having secured the service of so distinguished a jurist and member of the Bar as Charles E. Hughes. But we of the legal profession, you know, have a notion that lawyers are sometimes better qualified to act in a high representative capacity than others. They are trained to have a regard and a respect for law and order, having an appreciation of the importance of constitutional guarantees. All their lives they are familiar with the complicated affairs of human life, and we think they naturally do well in government office. And so I say that we in New Jersey, as Governor Fort has already intimated to you, congratulate the people of New York on being able to enlist the services of this distinguished member of the Bar. And we ad mire Governor Hughes also as a fighter. My friend across the table has reminded you of some things that bring us to a sense of admiration of his distinguished career, whether in the forum or upon the hustings. We like his style of fighting. Without assuming that he is right on all occasions, and I should be out of place in discussing the matter here if I differed from him; yet if I did so far depart from the proprieties, it is quite possible I should find myself obliged to disagree with the governor on points of policy and principle. I have never yet been able to agree in all things with any man. I say we admire Governor Hughes as a fighter. As suming that he is not always right, for it would be rash to assume otherwise, he goes into a fight when he be- 400 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB lieves he is right, and he uses all honorable means, every legitimate weapon that opportunity and experience bring into his hand, and with magnificent skill accom plishes what he can to bring about what he believes is right. Never in our time, I believe, has any other man been so accomplished in the legitimate use of that great force known as public opinion. I know of none, I know of no man in our time who, without resort to the ways of the demagogue, has been able to marshal pub lic opinion behind him with such distinguished success as Governor Hughes. Any man who is clever and who is in public life can with a little diligence form a pretty good estimate of what is public opinion, and, after second thought upon any matter, what is the current of opinion; but it requires more than a clever man to foresee with a clear vision, months ahead of the event, what is to be the second thought of public opinion after the discussion that shall intervene in the meantime. I am not, I confess, either an advocate or an admirer of what is commonly called "initiative and referen dum," but I am a believer in the broad plans of the founders of the government, which intended that the Chief Executive of the State or of the Nation was to be charged with the duty of recommending to the law- making body of the people such changes in the law as he in his judgment under a sense of duty should deem proper. I believe in that initiative, and I believe in that kind of referendum. Governor Hughes believed it was his duty to make a recommendation as the result of study and experience, and go before the legislature with it, relying upon the influence of legitimate and instructed public opinion. MAHLON PITNEY 401 Now, I don t know that what I intended to say would be complete unless I make some part of it in form that is understandable in financial New York. As Governor Fort has said, we often think of New York, and espe cially of Wall Street, as spending much of its time in financing New Jersey corporations. We have a corpo ration law in our State, and I might mention what we think Wall Street sometimes forgets, that that law contemplates that every dollar s worth of corporate stock that will be issued shall have behind it an equiv alent in value, in money or money s worth, and every share of stock issued for property purchased shall have behind it equally solid value. Now, if my friend across the table, who is somewhat of a light among the cor poration lawyers in New York, will devise some scheme that will get an underwriting in Wall Street, and in corporate the brain, the heart, and the high purpose and the mental equipment of Charles E, Hughes, di vided into a sufficient number of shares so that it can be freely distributed to each of us, you may capitalize it at what figure you please, and the Bar of New Jersey will strenuously maintain that the stock is backed by assets of more than par value. FRANK E. LAWRENCE (PRESIDENT OF THE CLUB) "LAST WOBDS IN THE OLD HOUSE," JANUAEY 30, 1909 FT! HE last assemblage in the house 556-558 Fifth JL Avenue took place on the 30th of January, 1909, at a dinner in honor of the Governor of the State of New York. At the close of the speaking, "Auld Lang Syne" was sung by all present, and then President Lawrence said : The time has come to say the final word. It is diffi cult to realize that never again shall I look about these old rooms, upon this kindly, sympathetic gathering. I wish we had not to go. I wish it could all be undone. But life in New York is inexorable, and, like poor Jo in Bleak House, we must move on. "Let the last words spoken here be those with which it was my privilege to terminate our last gathering in the old house, sixteen years ago : We may build more splendid habitations, Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, But we cannot Buy with gold the old associations/ ( Gentlemen, good night. 402 FEANK E. LAWEENCE AT THE DINNEE TO ANDEEW CAENEGIE, MAECH 17, 1909 ENTLEMEN of the Lotos Club : I welcome you to VJ your new home. Amid these surroundings you are henceforth to pursue the simple life. Claude Mel- notte, in Bulwer s melodrama, depicted to his beloved a dwelling of the most wonderful splendor, and then con ducted her to the hut of a peasant. The Building Com mittee of this club, after causing us to expect a house of great simplicity, have beguiled us to this Florentine palace. This is the fourth home of the club, which has now entered its fortieth year. It had outgrown the old house, and needed such a home as this; and to-night even this large hall is taxed beyond its capacity, though not often may we expect such a great outpouring of the members as is now assembled to greet Mr. Carnegie. The transition from the old house has not been with out its difficulties. "When the club had sold its recent home, but had not been paid for it ; when it had bought the land upon which this house stands, and had torn down the building which formerly stood here, the panic of 1907 occurred, and with payment for its property deferred, and its resources indefinitely tied up, the predicament was, to say the least, a disagreeable one, for the club could go neither forward nor back. 403 404 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB The situation being made known to Mr. Carnegie, he, without a moment s hesitation, said that the work should not be delayed, and advanced the means to pro ceed with this building ; and this was done so kindly, so modestly, and so graciously, as to leave your president, at the end of a most delightful conversation, with a confused feeling that, somehow or other, an obligation had been conferred upon Mr. Carnegie. One other thing he did. He predicted the course of affairs so unerringly that by following the advice he gave your committee was enabled to go into the market at just the right moment, and to make its contracts on terms the most advantageous ; so that this house, erected with the resources which he so generously advanced, was constructed for many thousands of dollars less than would have been possible either a year earlier or six months later. Like the rest of the world, we had long known of his great kindliness of heart, but it was a delight to find him so warmly attached to the Lotos Club, of which, for the past sixteen years, he has been an active and interested member. No words spoken here would be adequate in praise of Andrew Carnegie. His benefactions have been innum erable. Boundless as has been his success, how infinitely greater has been his philanthropy! Beside the story of his career, the tales of "The Arabian Nights " seem puny and prosaic. What other life can we recall, crowded so close with vast achievements, all in the line of promoting peace, advancing industry, literature, and the arts, and contributing, through countless channels, to the welfare of mankind ? FRANK R. LAWRENCE 405 And yet I like best to think of Mr. Carnegie as one of ourselves; as a man filled with, the spirit of kindli ness, of comradeship, the spirit which bubbles over so abundantly in the earliest of his published books, which I first read twenty-five years ago. In the first ten pages of that delightful volume, there is philosophy enough to furnish us all with food for thought, and on every page there is the touch of nature which makes him kin to the spirit of this club, and it must have been that spirit which first attracted him to us. It is not the men here, but the purposes of this club, which have appealed to Mr. Carnegie. For this is no mere place of convivial assembly. Here the artist, the writer, the journalist, and the professional man meet upon common ground, and to no unworthy purpose. The club aspires to be a home of art and literature ; to welcome the distinguished stranger to our shores, and to extend to genius a hearty recognition, in whatever form it may have found expression. These purposes it has tried to pursue in the past. Amid these larger sur roundings, our aim should be to pursue them on a broader and higher plane. What a happy omen that our first assemblage about these tables in this new house should be in honor of this illustrious patron of arts and letters, of whose encour agement and assistance the club now makes grateful acknowledgment ; to whom the world owes so much ; to whom humanity owes so much; our friend and fellow- member, to whom I ask you now to rise and join with me in wishing long life and every happiness Mr. An drew Carnegie. ANDKEW CAKNEGIE AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOR, MAECH 17, 1909 THE way of the philanthropist is, indeed, hard. Now, what if you come here and sit here, as I sat just now, and hear one of the most eloquent of presid ing officers let loose to descant upon your virtues ! I think that in the trial of endurance the balance is on my side. You have told the members, Mr. President, of some slight service I was able to render the Club in enabling it to secure this palatial home. He did not urge me to do anything. I led him to tell me of a situa tion that had arisen and I simply said what he says I said, and that is all I have done. But you know this is the home of art, and that pic ture he drew of your fellow-member is certainly a high piece of true and capable art it bears so little resem blance to the original. I looked up a book the other day upon clubs, and I found that a British author stated that there were now clubs after the English model in New York. And among those in America comes first, so he said I am not misrepresenting the Lotos, and then follow, at a respectable distance, the Century and the Union League. I believe that the im pression you have spread in England is, as a distin guished financier said to me when he heard about the 406 ANDREW CARNEGIE 407 Lotos Club, "Oh, that s where all the clever fellows are/ Well, being one of those who had got there, I modestly was silent. Now, you all remember, you have read at all events, that the Church of Britain would n t consecrate a bishop in the United States, until we got an old Scotch man; and he said he would n t care a bit what the government said, if the man was right he would con secrate him, and by that means this great country has all the blessings of ordination, coordination, and foreor- dination and all the others. I have thought of a great many things this evening, as when, for instance, I saw the father of golf sitting there. Now we have here the game of golf brought from Scotland, and we hear a great deal in these days about it; there were two Scotch lads in Dunfermline, one of whom brought the first golf sticks to America and began to play at Yonkers. And there sits the president of the first Golf Club of America. Talk about distinguished citizens of Dunfermline, of Scotland, tell me what two men can be more distinguished than these from Dunfermline; and there is a third Dunfermline member who gets the highest number of strokes in every handicap, who shall be nameless. I always try to make the best bargain possible; and then I don t mention the odds unless called upon. But now, I read here upon your beautiful menu that it is astonishing how much you can make out of a Scotch man if he is caught young. There is another side to that question which occurs to me. How much can a Scotchman make out of you if he begins when he s 408 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB young? Now, gentlemen, that is well worthy of con sideration. Now turning to the modern club the name comes from Scotland. In 1740 I have read this all up and I am just primed now that was the first time it ever received the name of club, from the club, or clump, of trees. The modern club dates from that time in Scot land, and it took there; they tell of an old gentleman who when asked where he was going, replied, * Oh, doun tae the club. " ll Wha f or? " "Oh, just to contradict a wee." The real use of clubs is that men may get to know each other, and the term, a clubbable man, takes on a proud significance. We are all good-fellows, and, oh, how true it is that we only hate or despise those that we don t know! There is something about it, bright men contributing all kinds of things, they join the same club, and it is astonishing how one man begins to think "Why, Lawrence is n t such a bad fellow, after all." If you just get to know your enemies, why they are all right. Take the case of a man who joins this club ; he discovers a universal feeling, that you would like to know and welcome them all, satisfied that if you did know those that you don t meet with, you would be surprised, gratified and benefited in a hundred ways by knowing those whom you set wholly apart as per haps not worth the knowing. That is the great benefit of a club, and that is what makes the Lotos Club the delightful place that it is. It is a great thing in this country of ours. It is a saving grace for the national character in this struggle ANDREW CARNEGIE 409 for wealth that we have clubs like the Lotos, where men come together and are touched by finer things, and get to know that among all the blessings of life are few that rank above that of good fellowship. I recognize, of course, that what the president has to say about the guest of the evening has to be taken in a Pickwickian sense, and know that his panegyric won t do me any harm. I could n t believe a word of it. I think it is like a story that is told of dear old Mr. Dodge and Dean Richmond. Dodge told Richmond that he must quit swearing, or must break off with him, that he could n t stand it. Richmond remonstrated: Oh, well, Dodge, I swear a little, and you pray a good deal ; but, oh, Lord, neither of us means anything by it. We must remember, gentlemen, in our association with each other, that if any little jarring should come, and any little disappointments, we must be generous and forgive and forget, and, above all things, contribute to the blessings of mankind, and never for a moment allow yourselves to believe that your fellow-member meant anything that could jar upon your feelings or hurt you in any way whatever. We are all friends here, and T close with that quotation from "Hamlet" that I hope you will find to be true all your life : "I think myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my dear friends. I thank you, gentlemen. ST. CLAIE McKELWAY AT THE DINNEE TO ANDEEW CAENEGIE, MAECH 17, 1909 ON behalf of the newspaper men here present, I have been requested to speak for that calling. I do so with great pleasure. To-day was St. Patrick s day. This, in the Lotos Club, is Andrew Carnegie s night. St. Patrick and Mr. Carnegie are Scotchmen both. They have been wanderers both. St. Patrick, who earned the credit of running away, was born in Scotland, but did n t stay there very long. He was involuntarily deported. Mr. Carnegie left Scotland voluntarily, and has returned to it periodically. St. Patrick, under com pulsion, went to Ireland. There he was in involuntary service, and from there he escaped to France. In France he attained education, religion, and ordination, and then he returned to Ireland to make it forever his own. He established religion there. He established only one religion there. The civilized world was then one in religion. It became divided owing to a dispute between men as to which should have a monopoly of the conduct of sinners into one place and saints into an other. As I was named, and have always been named, and have always lived as among the saints, I shall pass no criticism upon that dispute as to the province of theological thought. 410 ST. GLAIR McKELWAY 411 Something has been said about Mr. Carnegie as a Scotchman. Mr. Carnegie is an American. He is in eligible only to the Presidency or Vice-Presidency of the United States, and he wants neither. He is a valu able and a valued American, a valued and valuable citi zen of a polyglot republic. Valuable because he has done much for it ; and he has done much for it because it has done much for him. Valued because he has, almost alone among magnates, insisted that he was taxed too low and too little, and should be rated at the full value of the possessions upon which he owed a duty to his city and his country. In this, I think, he was unique. The unusual has been his preference or his foible. Only the lack of resources, however, has prevented some of us from insisting upon being taxed that is, up to the full value of Mr. Carnegie s possessions. Now this is to be borne in mind. None of us are sorry, as none of us can be surprised, that several of Mr. Carnegie s benefactions have been criticized by those who cannot make them, but have no scruple about en joying them; for there will never be a unanimity of estimate about Andrew Carnegie as long as he is alive, and may he live long ! And after he has ceased to live, time enough will pass before he is crystallized into a sage, and may his adjournment into shadowland be indefinitely postponed ! This carries with it a certainty of criticism, and we are ready to stand as a unit for the cause of such criticism as long as he has cause, and to endure with him, as he will with us, the result of the consequences of being alive. Criticism either signifies what people think or what they think they think. Those who only think they think are those men whose thinking 412 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB is done for them by us newspaper folks. I would do nothing to discourage those who think they think ; some of them let me do their thinking for them. No, Mr. Carnegie is not only a liberal and a shrewd factor of liberality in others, but he is more than a giver, more than an instigator of giving, he is a topic and the cause in others of the discussion of himself. I am not eulogizing him. I am trying to denote him. The man who makes three occasions for editorial com ment where none existed before is a boon, and a boon is greater than a benefactor. EICHAED WATSON GILDER AT THE DINNEE TO ANDEEW CAENEGIE, MAECH 17, 1909 IN giving me the subject of Andrew Carnegie, you have given me a very rich subject. If the quality of riches attached to Mr. Carnegie s name was only such as your kind applause would indicate, it would be a comparatively uninteresting subject to me. Mr. Car negie is not only a boon as a subject of editorial dis cussion, but he has his value as a contributor, and nobody appreciates that more than the editor of a cer tain magazine. Mr. Carnegie has a fixed price as a contributor, a fixed price per word. I shall not tell you what it is. He is always paid. "What finally becomes of the proceeds of the check with which he is paid is a matter of finance you will not ask me to disclose on this occasion. Mr. Carnegie interests me not so much as a man of incomputable wealth, but as a man living one of the richest lives I have ever known. I have little doubt that he would have been a success in any line he might have taken up, because in him we have, I think, one of the most interesting and powerful individualities of our day. He has the power of literary expression that is always interesting to me. My mind goes back to the time when I was a good 413 414 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB deal interested in the subject of finance, and I remem ber saying to him, standing in front of his fireplace and asking him, if it was n t an undue accumulation of funds at that time which troubled him. I also know another thing : I have sat here this evening, thinking of a time when Mr. Carnegie had to borrow money, and I was wondering whether it would be competent for me, here and now, to attempt to collect twenty-five cents I lent him on a recent occasion. Mr. Carnegie spoke of friendship and of good fellow ship. I speak of his life as a rich life. If you will think for a moment, you will recall that Mr. Carnegie has been brought, during the last twenty years, into inti mate association with some of the ablest and noblest men in the two great countries of America and Great Britain, not merely of Scotland; and in America I in clude Canada. The foremost men of these two great countries have been administering his wonderful bene factions. Now, I know these men to be among the greatest and noblest characters and most cultivated men living to-day. And I know that every one of them prizes as one of his dearest possessions the friendship of Andrew Carnegie. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS AT THE DINNEE TO ANDEEW CAENEGIE, MAECH 17, 1909 I AM glad that at last a man has been found with justice enough in his heart to pay me the compliment which I have so long deserved, and which has been denied me by so many generations of supposedly intel ligent human beings. Ranking me with the saints! There is nothing which pleases me more than that, be cause there is nothing left which I have deserved more than just that. I have ranked myself with St. Andrew there for several years, and I really think that this should have been a dinner to the two of us, as St. An drew was born on the same day in the same year as I was. If St. Andrew had been born as early as he was on the 30th of November, I should stand now about where he stands. He got in a little ahead of me. St. Clair there is a saint, but a minor sort of saint. He is a Missourian. So am I. Look at St. Clair McKel- way! You would n t think he came from a State like that, he looks so proud and respectable. In its coat of arms is a barrel-head and two Missourians, one on each side of it, leaning there together, with the motto, a mis leading motto altogether, which says, " United we stand, divided we fall." Now it is an interesting thing, St. Andrew here is 415 416 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB here as a special guest, and he has heard himself compli mented, and complimented, and complimented. You know, it is anybody s experience who has had any large experience in being the chief guest at a banquet, and you must know how entirely undeserved that entire pro ceeding is, for the reason that the chairman begins by filling him up with compliments, and while they are well done, they are not quite high enough to meet the demand. Now, this man has suffered this evening from hearing compliments poured out on him, apparently with lavish- ness, but he knows deep down in his heart that if he could overcome his diffidence he could improve those compliments. But he tries to dissemble, as our chief guest always does look at the expression he has got on now ! And the man always thinks he is doing it well ! Anybody who knows, knows that it is a pretty awkward performance, that diffidence that he is working on his countenance does n t deceive anybody ; but it is always interesting to see what people will find to say about a man. It is not a matter of what Carnegie has done, for I would have done it myself, if I had had to. I don t know just what Mr. Lawrence told you about how Mr. Carnegie came to the rescue of this club when it was likely to get into trouble, for I came in late ; but I judge from remarks that followed that he did tell you about that, and that was a fine thing to do. And they tell me that it was at a banquet given by the Lotos Club to me; it was at that banquet that Mr. Carnegie had that inspiration. But, of course, he gets the entire credit ! It never occurs to anybody that perhaps I fur nished that inspiration. I don t say I did. I live a SAMUEL L. CLEMENS 417 modest life, and people can see that by my features ; I don t want to advertise the way others do. "Why, the first thing that Mr. Carnegie starts out to tell you is what Scotland has contributed to this world. It has contributed everybody that has been of any value to the United States. I am not denying it. I am saying that it is momentous, that s all. I don t know that Andrew Carnegie and Mr. Tower told it, but they all come from Dunfermline. What would have happened if all Scotland had turned out ? I understand that Mr. Carnegie claims that Columbus was born in Dunfermline, and he discovered the coun try, and two or three other men established religion, where they did n t have any; and from this fact they go on distributing Dunfermline people all over this country, and acquiring advantages thereby. Mr. Tower moved back and called his hand one or two points bet ter. Well, I don t know how far Tower did go, but he furnished us a saint out of Scotland that I always thought was from Ireland. That is not the right thing to do on St. Patrick s Day. St. Patrick was well enough, not St. Andrew s equal, but well enough. I don t think Mr. Tower ought to back him up at this time and go on distributing Scotchmen out of Dun fermline. St. Clair McKelway followed up the compliment with a veritable compliment of compliments, away on top of anything that these men have been able to pay Mr. Car negie when they were trying as largely as they could. Mr. McKelway makes a compliment away beyond all others, beyond which nobody can go, when he says that there is a man who wants to pay more taxes than are 418 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB charged to him. I have never listened to such extrava gance of compliment, and I have never seen a case when it was so well deserved. Well, McKelway had to come in and pay his compliment, and McKelway did it very well, and so did Gilder very well for a poet. And he took the opportunity to advertise his magazine, and that it has the distinction of having Mr. Carnegie as a contributor ; but, worse than that, he said that it pays Mr. Carnegie, otherwise you might feel that his maga zine was getting that literature for nothing. Now, he gets that into the Associated Press in the morning, and his magazine will fly pretty high and mighty, and the people will hear of Mr. Carnegie ; and, the next thing, Gilder will be trying to hire me ! I have gone on through this world now nearly sev enty-four years, and all through it I have preserved all that I have preserved is my diffidence, my chief vir tue, a moderate modesty and diffidence. I am getting pretty old now, likely to run out, and can t work; but I am going to sit down, and before I sit down I do want to wish for Mr. Carnegie long life and continued pros perity, and eventually a measure of respectability. HENEY S. PEITCHETT AT THE DINNEE TO ANDEEW CAENEGIE, MAECH 17, 1909 THIS is one of the very few occasions on which I have been able to be proud of the fact that I was born in Missouri. I happened to have the great mis fortune to be born in the county adjacent to that in which our friend Samuel L. Clemens was born, and all my life long I have tried to live down the reputation for truthfulness which that unfortunate accident of birth brought upon me at an early date. It is only the fact that I served an apprenticeship in Boston which has served at this late day to wipe out, to some extent at least, the misfortune of my untimely birth. It is these occasions that indicate our feeling for a man, that we are glad that he is alive. We have been doing this on a large scale. We began with President Roosevelt when he gave up his great office. The en comiums which came to him had occasionally a few pricks in them. Then President Eliot gave up his great office. Now the distinguished guest of the evening has not completely resigned his business, for he con tinues to do business at the old stand, and it is therefore as a great personal compliment that we welcome him as one right good man and good-fellow. Just what sort of crown posterity reserves for those 419 420 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB who are right it is hardly possible for us to say, but I was interested a few days ago in a story which a college president told me. He dreamed he died and went to heaven, being a college president, and he rapped mildly at the door. The guardian inquired what his business had been, and he said he was a college president. In answer to a question as to how long he had been a col lege president he said, * Twenty-five years. The door was thrown open with the remark, "Any man who has been a college president for twenty-five years has in stant admission here. Have a seat inside for a minute, while I take care of a gentleman from New York. The president sat there, and soon the New York gentleman came along, and he talked to the guardian in a very quick, energetic manner, and also had a short con versation with St. Peter. He was instantly admitted, and after remaining inside for ten minutes he came out, and seemed disturbed. Then the college president went inside and sat down to be measured for a halo, and he asked, "Who was that gentleman that just came in?" "Oh," was the answer, "that was Mr. Andrew Carnegie, from New York." "Why, does he come here ? " " Oh, yes, it is just the place for Mr. Carnegie ; he is the kind of a man we like to get up here." "Well," persisted the college president, "why did he go out?" "Well," was the response, "it was like this. Mr. Carnegie came in in a very businesslike way. He wanted to get down to business at once. He wanted a first-class, A-number-one halo, fine gold, with all the modern fittings, and he d like to get into the game as quickly as possible. One of the angels * halos was brought in, but it was just a half halo. And we said HENRY S. PRITCHETT 421 to him, Mr. Carnegie, we have been observing the method in which you deal with college presidents, and think it is an extremely good plan ; and we are going to fit you out here with half a halo, and expect you to rustle and get the other half yourself. " Your distinguished guest said that the life of a phi lanthropist was a hard one. I suppose that the reason is that very few of us ever really stop to think what it means to be the master of one of these great sums of money. I say master, because no man ever owns five hundred million dollars, or three hundred, or two hun dred. A man owns that which he can use for his own support, comfort, and pleasure, and charities that is, charities in which he can give himself; everything above that he simply controls for a long or a short time. These great sums of money are merely a sort of reser voir of power that may be let loose, or not. Now, no responsibilities laid on any man in our social order are so heavy as are the responsibilities laid on that person who has by accident, or descent, or industry, or by his own wise planning come into the responsibility of one of these great reservoirs of monetary power. A ruler may resign, a president may serve his term and pass on, but a man with this responsibility must inevitably in the end account to his fellow-men. He may give it in ways that are bad, and posterity will call him anathema. He may give it in ways that are unwise, and they will call him a fool. But it is the fact that the man who comes into this responsibility must give an accounting of it sooner or later, whether that account ing comes in his own generation or the generation which follows. 422 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB I, for my part, would not undertake to answer that question which naturally arises: Can a man wisely manage so much power? Is it, on the whole, good for humanity that three hundred millions, or four hundred or five hundred millions of dollars shall come into the management and control of one man ? That is the ques tion which society asks to-day practically of the men who have this responsibility. That is the question which sooner or later each of them must work out. Just what the result will be in any distinct case I don t undertake to say. I know that so far as I am per sonally concerned, and speaking with reference to Mr. Carnegie, I cannot separate the thing from. my own high estimation of his character. It is one of the great est problems which any human being can work out, and while I do not undertake to gauge the estimate which the men who follow us will give, I am pretty sure that in that estimate will be seen some of the words of the Greek philosopher : He was a friend of the nation. He needed no other praise than this, of his fellow-men. EGBERT STUART MAcARTHUR AT THE DINNER TO ANDKEW CARNEGIE, MAECH 17, 1909 IT has been my good fortune to meet with churchmen of many names and faiths, but never in all the years of my ministerial life have I had such fellowship with saints as here to-night. It has been St. Mark, St. Glair, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick from the beginning of the evening until even now. Don t worry about St. An drew s other half of his halo; he 11 get it, all right. Don t worry about St. Mark s halo; he has it now. Does n t the Good Book say that a hoary head is a crown of righteousness, when found in the way of truth and peace ? I am proud and happy, indeed, to welcome you to this vicinity. You have come right into my parish. I have long believed that this was one of the best streets of New York, that Calvary Church was one of the best churches in New York, and that the Lotos Club was rapidly becoming the best club in New York. So we have the three best things that I have met on this occa sion in this vicinity. I have watched the construction of this building from the blasting and the laying of the foundation-stone until even now. It has been a joy to me to do it and see this superbly beautiful structure adding beauty, charm, 423 424 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB and financial value to this entire street. I have watched the decoration of the interior as well as the erection of the walls themselves, and I have thought that in the matter of acoustics, to which Dr. St. Clair McKelway has referred, the problem has certainly been solved here to-night. This room is admirable as a place to speak. This club is known all over this country and all over England, Scotland, Germany, and France, and in the other countries of Europe. This club is simply a home of good-fellowship and of inspiration along all the lines of noble endeavor and high achievement, and I think you have entered upon a new career as you have come into this part of our great, noble city. I join with the utmost enthusiasm in the words of eulogy which have been spoken here to-night in the case of your and our distinguished guest. I have thought of Mr. Carnegie in connection with St. Patrick. There is a very interesting parallel, if I could detain you long enough, but I shall not, between these two men. In the first place, both of them bore remarkable names. St. Patrick s first name was Succat, or Succoth, which means "brave, able to work." Then he was called Patrick, from Patricius, which means "noble, high born, and worthy. In all the relations of life he justi fied both of his names. Andrew Carnegie s name is just as significant as that of St. Patrick. Andrew is Greek, where it means "brave, able to work," and Carnegie is a word of Ger manic origin which means "a rock, a stone, a pile of rocks, a pile of stones"; it means Carnegie Hall, Skibo Castle, only Skibo is not Scotch at all ; Skibo is a. Norse word. It is a very interesting fact that this Scotch ROBERT STUART MAcARTHUR 425 American has a Norse word to describe his superb castle in Scotland. He has honored Scotland and America; he honors both ; he honors every country in which he lives, and in which he scatters his munificent benefactions. Then again St. Patrick and St. Andrew were both remarkable missionaries. They both were born in Scotland, though St. Patrick did not have the happiness of being born in Dunfermline. He could n t help that, of course, but it was a misfortune. They both left Scotland when they were little boys; they did n t leave Scotland for its good, but for the good of other countries. Now it is n t lucky to be called a philanthropist or a missionary, but St. Andrew can t help it, because he is both. I am a truthful man, you know, and I can safely say that what St. Patrick did for Ireland, St. Andrew is doing for the world, driving out snakes of bigotry and ignorance with truth and education, and distributing libraries with intelligence and charity and loving-kind ness. When he has done his work to its fullest degree, the hero s prize of peace on sea and on land, in every palace, on every hand, and in every heart shall come like the song of the angels that echoed over the plains of Bethlehem the night that Christ was born; shall echo once more when Andrew Carnegie s efforts for peace have reached their full perfection: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will toward men." I give you the other half of your halo, even now, St. Andrew. There is one point in which St. Andrew and myself are alike. I have spoken of the resemblance between 426 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB him and St. Patrick. Mr. Carnegie and I both had Highland Scotch mothers. He never knew my mother, but I knew his. A gentler, sweeter, queenlier, diviner woman than Andrew Carnegie s mother I have seldom seen in this country, or in any other country; and I never saw Andrew Carnegie and his mother together but I was at a , loss whether the more to admire the mother s love for the noble son, or the noble son s love for a queenly and beautiful mother. You remember the inscription on the Taj Mahal, which reads: "To the Memory of an Undying Love." All through the life of Andrew Carnegie, in his deeds of kindness and loving charity and beneficence, I hear echoing the inscription on that tomb, regarding his mother : To the Memory of an Undying Love. His mother filled his heart with love, and put the crown of her affection on his brow. JOHNSTON FOBBES-EOBEETSON AT THE SUPPER IN HIS HONOR, APRIL 2, 1910 I FEEL a great embarrassment in addressing this dis tinguished assembly. I look around and see so many notable men, distinguished men of this great city, and I tell you frankly that I fear I cannot do this occasion justice. Your president has overwhelmed me with his kind remarks about my work. And let me say before I go any farther I need hardly say, indeed, that I look upon this occasion as the very greatest possible honor. The Lotos Club is famous throughout the English- speaking world for its hospitality to the Britisher. I suppose you would expect me to say a word about the stage and the drama. I am an optimist as regards the drama and the interpreters of the drama. I feel that we have in many ways advanced enormously. I can look back, I won t say how many years, and I feel very strongly that both here and in England we have advanced the drama very considerably. In some re spects we have advanced in the most wonderful manner. We have advanced in the way in which plays are repre sented. The average of the acting is very high at the present moment. I remember very well that when I first joined my call ing in London things were very different. There were 427 428 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB only two or three real homes of the drama, and the per formances were of rather a slipshod character. But now, both here and in London, we see representations with great detail, great care. There is no longer the "All right to-night bird," if I may use the comparison, the man who says to you, "I cannot do it at rehearsal, but will be all right at night. There is no longer the dark horse I mean the man or woman who gives no sugges tion at rehearsal of what he or she is going to do at the performance, and only vaguely hints at the character interpreted; and when the night of the performance comes, everything is in confusion, because he or she very suddenly changes the business, or lines, and throws the rest of the cast into the most distressing uncertainty. That person generally says that he can t act without an audience ; and I think you may take it as a fact that the person who says he can t rehearse properly, can t act at rehearsal, you will find could n t get any audience at all. Now, as regards the drama, I feel very strongly that there have been and there are plays produced, par ticularly of late, of what I might call a feverish nature, plays that are described by people when they come away and say, "Well, it was a very strong play." Well, that only means one thing, that it was just a little too spicy. As regards the acting, as I have said, the interpreta tion of the drama, I am persuaded that the general trend, the general excellence of the average acting, is infinitely better than it was when I first went on the stage. I grant you that we have among us, and I sup pose we always shall have, the ready-made star and the inspired amateur, but they have their purpose. The JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON 429 inspired amateur and the ready-made star, after all, add to the joy of nations. I remember meeting one inspired amateur when I was a member of a stock company at Manchester in England ; and at that particular time we were support ing the great tragedian Samuel Phelps, and there was one lady who had been engaged, Heaven knows why, to play certain parts, and among others she was called upon to do Lady Teazle. Well, this inspired amateur was full of all sorts of ingenious ideas, and, as you all very well remember, the opening scene is the quarrel scene between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle, and takes place in a corridor. Well, at rehearsal, we were all intensely rehearsing, when this lady, very ambitious and spelling art with a big "A," a very dangerous practice, and full of individual ideas, to the horror of the company, who were all respectfully standing about the great tragedian who had played the part a hundred times or more, this inspired amateur began to suggest to Mr. Phelps, or, rather, to press upon him, all sorts of innovations. She wanted to have the stage fully set, with a quan tity of furniture, and Phelps to move here, or there, and dance around, and move around the furniture, and add what she considered would be realism to the quar rel scene; and she went on explaining the scene and this sort of thing for some time, and at last we realized that the storm was going to break. For Mr. Phelps, who was just walking through his part, and had his umbrella in his hand, thumped upon the stage with the umbrella, and then we knew something was coming. For a minute he did n t speak a word, and then in his 430 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB heaviest bass he said : "Madam, I shall be here to-night. Where you will be, God only knows." The prurient drama, if one may use the expression, is only a thing that is passing. It may have its in fluence in a way, perhaps, for good, but in the mean time it is undesirable ; and I assure you it is a delight to find that there is in this city one who has steadily set his face against that class of drama through all his splendid career. For instance, I would like to consider the influence of what we would call the teacup- and-saucer drama, of which T. W. Robertson was the head. Well, the teacup -and-saucer drama served its purpose, it was very helpful in its day, and taught the interpreters to play with distinction and discretion, and with acceptability, a modern comedy of modern life and surroundings, and it has had much influence upon the acting of the future, it made the business of the company much simpler, more direct, and more truthful. And so these different forms of drama pass and go, but still I firmly believe in my heart of hearts that we should lift higher our ideals of the drama, as we have lifted higher and higher our ideals of its inter pretation. Gentlemen, you know that there has been instituted a theatre in this great city which I think shows us very plainly what an enormous stride has been made in my time. I am thankful and delighted to find that you have now established here a repertoire playhouse, and I think it does New York a great deal of credit. I am afraid to mention the number of plays that have been read at that theatre. It amounts to many hun dreds. I was complaining to my friend the late John JOHNSTON FORBES-ROBERTSON 431 Golden, one of our most distinguished actors I was complaining of the difficulty I had in writing back to a young author my regrets that I could not consider his play for production, and my friend John Golden told me that on one occasion he simplified that difficulty by writing to the man who had sent him a hopeless play, and he wrote in this way : "MY DEAR SIR: I have read your play oh, my dear sir! "Yours very truly, "JOHN GOLDEN." I told the story of that letter for a good many years, I laughed heartily at it when my dear friend told it to me, and so did he, and it was always received as it has been received to-night. But on one occasion, in my dressing-room, I told it to one who was my secretary, and to my amazement he did n t laugh, and I was ex tremely put out. And it occurred to me that surely it was the secretary s duty to laugh at my funny story. And I was so annoyed at it that I turned around to him I was making up and said, "You don t seem to be amused with that story." And the poor fellow very frankly said, "No, no; I was the one who received the letter." Well, I have a bad memory, but at least that memory is capable of retaining for all the rest of my life the kindness, the sympathy I want a stronger word may I say affection? that has been literally heaped upon me by all classes of society, all members, and all kinds of people in this your great city of New York. WILLIAM WINTER AT THE SUPPER TO J. FOEBES-EOBEETSON, APEIL 2, 1910 THERE was a time when, perhaps, I might have succeeded in attempting to pay an adequate trib ute to the fine artistic and beneficent achievement of Johnston Forbes-Robertson. That achievement has long been well known to me, and I have long held it in the highest esteem. I should be glad and grateful if, at this moment, I could express that esteem in potent, fervid, moving eloquence ; but, while the feelings of age are deep the expression of them is difficult. My mean ing is very earnest. My words must be few. The dramatic artist whose range is so wide that it extends from Chastelard to Scarpia, from Jeremy Diddler to Arthur Dimmesdale, from Buckingham to Benedick, from Lysander to Leontes, from Orlando to Romeo and from Mercutio to Hamlet the dramatic artist who has played all those parts and many others playing all of them thoroughly well and some of them greatly, needs no assurance, from any source, that he stands in the front rank of intellectual actors. Such is the professional position of the distinguished guest who, on this interesting occasion, affords to us the privilege of doing honor to the dramatic art and of 432 WILLIAM WINTER 433 doing credit to our judgment and taste by doing honor to him. I have known Forbes-Robertson, as actor, painter, author, editor, critic and a very good one and if I may venture so to say personal friend, for a quarter of a century. He is a much younger man than I am. He belongs to a generation later than mine. But as an actor he was educated in the methods of the Old School that school with which all of my long life I have been, in a certain sense, associated, and which now, I believe, it is somewhat customary to disparage; and I think that he will not widely dissent from my opinion that his present noble eminence in the dramatic pro fession, while largely due to his brilliant inherent powers, is also partly due to the splendid early train ing that he received in the ways of that Old School. For Mr. Robertson, as it happened, was taught by honest, sturdy, genuine, thoroughgoing old Samuel Phelps, the stalwart veteran chieftain of The Wells, a man who conducted a first-class theatre in London for nineteen years ; who successfully produced thirty-three of the thirty-seven plays of Shakespeare, who acted almost all of the great tragic and many of the great comic parts in the old legitimate English drama ; whose range was so wide that it touched Macbeth at the one extreme and Sir Pertinax Macsychophant at the other ; who finally surpassed Charles Kean not an easy thing to do, as I can testify, because I saw that actor often and studied him well and who held his ground, for years and until the end, as the admitted rival of Ma- cready the most potential and formidable intellect that appeared on the English-speaking stage between the 434 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB time of the memorable John Philip Kemble and the time of the illustrious Henry Irving. Such a student as Forbes-Robertson, guided by such a teacher as Samuel Phelps, must have learned his art; and Mr. Robertson has given ample proof that he did learn it, and that he learned it in the fullest sense of the word. I have no sympathy with any form of bigotry, and especially I repudiate the bigotry that would unduly extol the Past in order, by invidious comparison, to de preciate and disparage the Present. Nevertheless, when I contemplate the condition of the contemporary stage a condition which I know to be, in some respects, de graded and deplorable, but which I believe to be tem poraryI am impelled to cling, with a tenacity which I cannot deem unreasonable, to my stanch preference for that older and better school of acting, in which impersonation and elocution were equally cultivated and exemplified, and for that affectionate, romantic popular feeling relative to the stage, which once was widely diffused, but which is dormant now. I might mention many names of actors of that Old School, actors eminent in my earlier time, all now dead and gone, and, mostly, forgotten, whose places have never been filled. Placide, Burton, Blake, Murdoch, Gilbert, Warren, Wallack, Forrest, Booth, Hackett, Brooke, Davenport, Owens, Jefferson, Florence, Fisher, Lewis those are only a few of them and I might mention, also, the significant fact that the best actors on our stage to-day, such as Forbes-Robertson, Robert Mantell, James Neill, Otis Skinner and John Mason, are survivals of an earlier time or heirs to the old faith. What was the charm of those old actors? The charm WILLIAM WINTER 435 was, in one word, Poetry. They had defects, no doubt ; nothing in the world is absolutely perfect; but they cherished ideals; they did lovely things, because they loved to do them. They wrought in an atmosphere of romance, and they found a ready response in the ro mantic enthusiasm of the public. Is that charm preva lent now ? Is that atmosphere of romance apparent, to any considerable extent, upon the stage, or in front of it, to-day ? And, if not, why not ? Why is it absent ? This is the same glorious world. The sun still rises in majesty and sets in splendor. Still the south wind breathes "upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor/ Human nature exists unchanged. Every im pulse of goodness, every instinct of kindness, every aspiration to nobility, is vital in the soul. Youth, inno cence, virtue and heroism are as much in the world to-day as ever they were ! Art is still potential. Genius is still sublime. And still the fires of love and hope and faith are glowing with immortal splendor on the living altars of the human heart ! Much is heard from time to time of "the Inde pendent Theatre, " " the Drama of Ideas, " " Naturalis tic Literature " whatever that may be and a peculiar foggy efflorescence of diseased mentality called "New Thought. Inspection of those fads discovers that their advocates are desirous to be "emancipated" from some thing. The nature of their fetters is ambiguous, but apparently they are wishful to be " emancipated from the trammels of duty, morality and decency. I believe that the whole fabric of those fads is rank and mis chievous folly. Pure literature, like pure air and pure water, was found long ago, and it has not been and it 436 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB never .will be superseded by any new discovery. In honoring Mr. Robertson, which I do with all my heart, I once more testify my allegiance to that established principle and immovable standard. My labor, like my life, is drawing toward a close. It has, from first to last, been devoted to one service to the Ministry of Beauty. That is the consummate agency of civilization, and that should be the supreme purpose of all art. "Whatever I have read or thought or seen or known of the Beautiful, I have wished should predominate as an impulse, imperial and absolute, over the lives of the men and women of my time. When I have roamed in the storied places of the Old "World; when I have listened to the silver chimes of Heidelberg, or paused in the classic groves of Oxford and Cam bridge and seen the solemn shrines and stately temples that rise so glorious upon those luxuriant, incomparable lawns; when I have mused in the haunted gloom of gray old Winchester Cathedral, austerely magnificent, and reverend with the memories of a thousand years; when I have lingered, awe-stricken, in the shadow of massive Canterbury, while the green ivy was trembling on its gray, wind-beaten walls, and the rooks were hovering above it, and the glory of the western sun was flooding its great windows, and the music of the throb bing organ within its bosom seemed like a voice from heaven then, deep in my heart, I have felt the pas sionate desire always present with me, if not always aflame that the celestial influence of Beauty, before which sin is impossible and wrong and sorrow disap pear, might be more and more communicated to my land and made perpetual to bless my people. That influence WILLIAM WINTER 437 is peculiarly vested in the mission of the actor and in the native function of the stage. That influence has been at once the inspiration and the accomplishment of the noble actor around whom you are assembled now, and to whom I pay, as best I can, my humble tribute. FLOWER-DE-LUCE To him whose charm of magic art Has made ideal beauty live, To soothe the mind and cheer the heart, What shall we give? What can we give, to feed his flame Of joy, in these victorious days, But tender love, and true acclaim, And grateful praise? He came, as comes in woodland dell The earliest violet of the year, That tells, yet hardly seems to tell, That spring is here. Sweet, modest, gentle, simple, true, His art pursued one clear design By power and pathos to subdue, And to refine. He nurs d no envy, sought no strife With worldlings for the world s applause, But only nobly gave his life To Beauty s cause. 438 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB So year by year his fair renown An ever-wid ning circle spread, Thick sewn with amaranth to crown His royal head. Still may he move in that white fame Genius and Truth alone possess, And ev ry voice that speaks his name Speak but to bless ! Full be the tide and free the flow Of fortune, while his years increase, And, over all, the sunset glow Of perfect peace ! LAURENCE IRVING AT THE SUPPER TO J. FORBES-ROBERTSON, APRIL 2, 1910 I KNEW the time when Forbes-Robertson and Henry Irving appeared in conjunction in "King Henry VIII. 7 I hardly remember how many times I saw those fine performances, but certainly, when I bring them back to memory, I say to myself, When shall we see such others ? The greatest tribute, the greatest testimony I think I remember ever hearing to an actor was at the meeting in London to further the object of the national English theatre, an object that you have certainly got ahead of us in achieving. One of the speakers read over a list of the most celebrated English actors of the day, and although Forbes-Robertson was absent himself, there was such a wealth of applause at the mention of his name that every other had certainly to take a sec ondary place. Our public, as well as yours, I am sure, will remember that Forbes-Robertson has never allowed his pocket to influence him in the work which he loved to perform ; and many lovers of the theatre in England, I think, have felt that the fullness of his pocket was not always commensurate with his fame as an artist. Gentlemen, I must say myself that when I hear all this about the prurient drama, I perhaps am a little in 439 440 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the dark. Mr. Lee Shubert is here at my side. In a sense I have been a play-builder. I don t quite know what prurient drama is. I do know that one-fourth of Shakespeare s works cannot be spoken in public, and I consider "The Merry Widow" a highly deleterious en tertainment. But it does seem to me that it is a good thing that we have not remained stranded at "The Lady of Lyons and * * The Love Chase. For my part, I would give all the performances of Roger and Claude Melnotte which have been played, I would give them all, for Mr. Will Gilbert s "Brothers," or other dramas of that kind I could name ; and it does seem to me that the difference is that whereas formerly the dramatists wrote the lines that were humbly followed, the dramatists now, the greatest modern dramatists, deal with the funda mental questions of life in a sterner fashion and handle them as a part of their scheme, and as conveying a moral which they desire to impress ; and from all I hear, and from all I read, I don t think that those morals were at any time more in need of being impressed than at present. Well, I am afraid that what I am saying, after the eloquent words we have heard, may seem rather brusque, but I think that before the drama can again spread its wings and reach the great height it had reached under the inspiration of Shakespeare, we must, as Eugene Walter has done in America, Rostand in France, and Shaw in England, keep close to life, and we must examine the dark corners before we can illumi nate the lighter ones. FEANK E. LAWEENCE AT THE DINNEE TO CHAELES E. HUGHES, NOVEMBEE 19, 1910 AT this, the beginning of the forty-first season of -XJL your festivities, I have to congratulate you upon a continuation of the good fortune which has attended the club in the past, for we have to-night succeeded in beguiling a most illustrious guest, engrossed in the most arduous duties, to lay aside official cares and come here to spend a quiet evening in the serene atmosphere of the Lotos. When the distinguished gentleman who honors us with his presence to-night was last with us, he was at the beginning of a second term of office as the Governor of the great State of New York. He had passed through a first term, a period of storm and stress, striking great blows on behalf of good government, banishing the powers of darkness from the State Capitol to a degree previously unknown, and establishing himself as the representative, not of a party, but of the whole people of the Empire State. Without being in the least a politician, his career seemed to carry a lesson which sometimes the most consummate politicians fail to un derstand. And it is this: that the surest foundation upon which to rest the affection and confidence of the people is for a public man always to adhere inflexibly to 441 442 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB that which he believes to be right, and never to be swerved from the highest ideals of public duty. When Governor Hughes was last our guest, in the sincerity of our hearts and the shortness of our political vision, we considered him a prospective President of the United States, and we hailed and acclaimed him accordingly. He passed through a second term as gov ernor, going steadily from one measure of public use fulness to another, like one of those described by James Martineau, "whose worship is action, and whose action is ceaseless aspiration, " but always completely un selfish, and with no other aspiration than an aspiration for the public good. There are men here of all shades of opinion; yet, whatever our political beliefs, there is not one of us who does not admire the achievements of Governor Hughes. We are privileged at this time to greet him at the close of one great career and the beginning of another. The public, I venture to say, learned of his acceptance of a seat upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States with mingled feelings of gratification and regret; regret that a commanding figure was to be removed from the activities of public life, and gratifica tion that the greatest tribunal in the land was hence forth to be strengthened by his presence. The Supreme Court of the United States is one of the bulwarks of our liberty. Its judgments have aided immeasurably in building, molding, and welding to gether this nation. It is the court of final resort for this great commonwealth of more than ninety million peo ple. It decides interests and questions larger than those FRANK E. LAWRENCE 443 which, are decided by any other human tribunal. Be fore its bar sovereign States are summoned, and the proudest State in the Union submits to its decrees as obediently as the humblest individual in the land. Whoever strikes a blow at the confidence of the peo ple in the Supreme Court of the United States strikes a blow at the security of our government. And when ever confidence in our highest tribunal shall become impaired, then, indeed, will our institutions be in danger. For nearly one hundred and twenty years the judg ments of this great court have received the unhesitating acquiescence of the people. Its judges have been men of purity and righteousness, taken from those most capable of administering the law. It is of untold im portance to us and to our posterity that the task of interpreting the law should be placed in the hands of the most capable men in each generation, and it is a satisfaction to us to believe that throughout this genera tion, and we hope for many years to come, the court in which John Marshall sat, the court where Joseph Story sat, is to be strengthened and its capacity en larged by the presence and participation in its delibera tions of Mr. Justice Charles E. Hughes. CHAELES E. HUGHES AT THE DINNER IN HIS HONOE, NOVEMBER 19, 1910 (UPON HIS BECOMING AN ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES) IT would be impossible for me to make adequate re sponse to this cordial greeting. At best I can speak only the deep appreciation of this renewed pledge of your good will and your friendly interest. Two years ago I was introduced to the charm and unalloyed delight of this society. I remember how, then, timidly I shrank from the rhetorical grasp of your eloquent president, as he led me along the golden path of his fancy. But I knew as much and as little of the future as did he ; and once more I find myself in circum stances even recently wholly unforeshadowed and un- imagined. I am glad to come into the warm sunshine of this company, and in saying this I hasten to add that I imply not the slightest reflection upon the temperature of the judicial chamber. I desire only to express the deep sense of obligation that I feel for the encourage ment and the inspiration that you give. I know that in an excess of generous commendation you desire to emphasize the just confidence that any public officer may have, of securing the friendly regard of his con stituency, if only he will try to serve according to his 444 CHARLES E. HUGHES 445 conception of his duty ; and I am glad to furnish in any way an occasion for illustrating how even a modest effort may receive such a rich reward. I speak to-night under limitations wholly unfamiliar. I cannot talk to you of issues, past, present or future. It is my duty now to hear appeals, and not to make them. It is a tradition, happily well established and which we must do our utmost to conserve, that our judges shall know no politics and no partisanship. It is their high privilege to uphold the Constitution and to apply the law with fidelity ; and there can be no greater am bition. Nor would I speak to you of the burdens of executive office ; you make me forget those. It is one of the fortu nate things of life that it is the agreeable experiences that we remember; and we shed our sorrows easily. Rather in this brief and desultory address, I would speak of the inestimable privilege of public service. It is, in a democratic community, the duty of every one to serve the public as opportunity may offer; but the priceless advantage of high office is the opportunity of uninterrupted and unreserved service, with no thought save for the public good. No matter what obstacles may be encountered, no matter what anxieties may be sus tained, there is an exhilaration, not to say an ex altation, in the thought that life has offered the opportunity to one to give himself wholly for the pub lic good, in the service of a free people, by reason of their choice. I do not mean to imply that there is any hesitation with regard to accepting public office, or any con- 446 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB spicuous lack of zeal in its pursuit ; but sometimes even the intelligent refer to public office with a flippancy that speaks ill of their conception of the government under which they live. Public office is the highest opportunity that can come to a free citizen ; and it is one of the great pleasures of holding office, that quickly, with the discharge of its duties, comes a realization of the responsiveness of the people to every sincere effort to serve. I go out of my four years of service as the governor of this State with a profound faith in our institutions. I go from many experiences which at the time seemed grievous, realiz ing that underneath the turmoil and the conflict of opinion and interest, there is a strong current of in telligence and good sense on the part of a people whose opportunities for education and for intercourse have never been equaled. And it is difficult to convey to another the impression that one gets in office, of being surrounded by a host of unseen forces, operating for the benefit of the community, and ready to work in support of every measure well conceived and faithfully declared. Apart from the obvious agencies of public opinion, there are many groups of citizens interested in important public causes. In many of these groups men are brought together with entire unselfishness, and are devoting their time and energy freely to what they conceive to be the public interest. Their zeal is some times embarrassing, and their demands cannot always be granted as they would desire to have them granted. Many such movements easily lend themselves to ex treme measures which reflection cannot commend ; and the busy man, engrossed in the affairs of his particular CHARLES E. HUGHES 447 line of work, often loses sight of the extent of unselfish effort that is being put forth in different communities of the State in order that the cause of public govern ment may be advanced. The executive comes to a sense of cooperation with a variety of helpful movements ; he comes to regard himself as, to an extent, a trustee of public opinion with regard to many desirable ends. And so it is that, however opposed, whatever the con flict, there is a constant and abiding sense of sup port, which, in addition to the satisfaction resulting from the performance of what is conceived to be duty, makes the holding of high office a conspicuous privi lege. It would be impossible for me to express to the peo ple of the State my sense of gratitude at the confidence they have reposed in me. After all, it is not the par ticular thing that is done that is so important, in my judgment, as the way of doing it. And it is making our institutions work, as they were intended to work, according to those simple principles of government understood of all men, so easily apprehended, and so difficult in application, that commands the best efforts and all the ability and strength that one may possess. It is the spirit of our institutions, of impar tiality in administration, of efficiency in government, which constantly calls to the officer like a shining light, through any fog, despite the tortuousness of the path, and unfailingly helps him forward toward the desired goal. My friends, nine-tenths and this I believe I can say without transgressing any of those limitations to which my tongue is yet a stranger nine-tenths of adminis- 448 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB tration and of government has nothing in it of any legitimate partisan consequence. Differ as men may with regard to particular measures and policies, the scope of administration invites fidelity and a devotion to those ends commonly appreciated. Therein may be found the reason for the responsiveness which the pub lic officer may count upon in seeking to call on any other to come to his aid; and however potent it may seem to be, he will utterly fail unless he can convey to his constituency the impression that the chief end is neither partisan nor personal, but to carry the govern ment along the commonly accepted lines of impartial and efficient administration. But it is not my purpose to speak formally or at length. I desire simply to thank you from the bottom of my heart for a greeting with which I am deeply touched. I have been transferred to another sphere of effort. Justice must ever be the chief concern of de mocracy. If we are to have laws, they must be inter preted. If we are to have constitutions, embodying the fundamental agreement of the people in their defini tion and in their limitation of powers, they must be enforced. The administration of justice is the final security of the liberty that we have won; and is the final security for the equal opportunity that we desire. However lofty may be the conception of the opportu nities of leadership afforded by executive office, or of the highest prerogative of those elected to make the laws of a free people, we must rest our final confidence for the perpetuity of our institutions upon an impar tial, able, unselfish administration of justice by our courts. CHARLES E. HUGHES 449 I thank you for your encouraging God-speed. This is not the place or the time to refer to the work of the courts. I do desire to say, that I have assumed this new duty with the deepest sense of responsibility ; and, strengthened by your support, I enter upon this life- work with but one ambition, and that is, through it to give to this nation whatever ability and strength I possess. DAVID H. GEEEE (PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP OF NEW YORK) AT THE DINNEE TO CHAELES E. HUGHES, NOVEMBEE 19, 1910 I SHARE with you your sincere and profound ad miration for your distinguished and honored guest to-night. My association with him dates from an early day, when I was a young clergyman in Providence, Rhode Island, and he was a student in Brown Univer sity and an occasional member of my congregation. For a time at least I had an advantage over him, in that he had obediently to hear and receive my charge to him and could n t answer back. Since then I have followed his career with a lively interest, and have not been surprised to find that he has gone steadily on and up in fulfillment of those staunch and sterling qualities of which he gave such early promise. I am pleased to know that my associa tion with him, slight and tenuous as it has been, is to continue to the end. A few weeks ago, when I was passing through the city of "Washington, finding that I had a little time to spare, I called at the White House to pay my respects to the President. I found Mr. Justice Hughes just coming out, and after we had exchanged greetings he said to me, "I find that there is a little bond of union; 450 DAVID H. GREER 451 between us. My lot in Woodlawn Cemetery is imme diately next to yours." And I assure you it was a satisfaction to me to know that, however inconspicuous my own path in life may be, yet in death we shall not be divided. But, Mr. President and gentlemen, the work of the judiciary, as you have just heard it so eloquently de scribed, is, after all, substantially, as I interpret it, the work of the pulpit. The purpose, the ultimate purpose of both is the same, to maintain or to interpret and analyze that principle, that quality, that great moral and spiritual something that flies everlastingly around the human soul and from which it cannot escape. In doing this, the courts must stand for justice and right eousness, in spite of all clamor and outcry. It reminds me of the fable: a household god, made of wax, which had been carelessly left near the fire where some valuable porcelain was baking, began to melt, and it made a complaint against the element. "See," it said, "how cruelly you treat me. To those things you give durability, while me you destroy." The element answered, "You have nothing to complain of; you have been well served and long. As for me, I am a fire always and forever." Righteousness or jus tice is righteousness forever, and as such it must be maintained. It is for this that our great judicial tribunal has stood, Mr. President, as you have said here, sir, in the past ; for this it stands to-day ; and as long as its bench is composed of such persons as your honored guest of to-night, it will forever stand. That is the value, that is the strength of our judiciary, and it is that, the ulti- 452 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB mate and fine quality, which so eminently fits for his distinguished place your honored guest of to-night. It is helping us to work out from time to time, as they appear, our great present problems; and, fellow-citi zens, fellow-Americans, we are working them out. For while I am not so much of an optimist as to believe that all is right with the world, neither am I so much of a pessimist as to believe that all is wrong with the world. I am rather a medianist. How can I be otherwise? I, who profess to believe in a government of God, working in and among the nations of the world. Things are getting better. This is a better nation, with better people in it than it has ever seen before. The fraud and corruption of which we hear so much to-day, and which the press flashes upon our vision, are not the rule, but the exception. It is that that makes the news. Like the story I have heard of the man who was run ning to catch the boat, and seeing it, as he supposed, going out some distance from the shore, made a tremen dous leap and fell sprawling on the deck. The boat was coming in ! So in our American life there are far more good people than bad; far more honest than dis honest; far more conscientious men seeking and striv ing to do the right than conscienceless; far more pure and true than false and untrue ; and the number is in creasing, the boat is coming in ! GEORGE W. WICKEESHAM (ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES) AT THE DINNER TO CHARLES E. HUGHES, NOVEMBER 19, 1910 IN nominating to the Supreme Bench a man whom we cannot yet think of except as Governor Hughes, the President of the United States might well have said, as did Washington when he commissioned John Jay for that tribunal, that he had not only acted ac cording to the dictates of his best judgment, but that he had done a grateful thing to the people of the United States. For although Justice Field maintained that the Su preme Court is the most democratic feature of our government, representing as it does the whole country, while senators represent their States and representa tives their constituents, yet the manner of the appoint ment of the justices and the nature of their tenure of office are such that they are removed in a large degree from contact with the mass of the people. When the people from time to time learn that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that a certain popular measure of Congress is void, because unconstitutional, or that some law much desired cannot be carried out except by appeal to the legislative branch of the gov ernment, or perhaps that it cannot be accomplished at 453 454 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB all, because of some constitutional limitation, they are only content if they have confidence in the integrity and learning of the justices of the Supreme Court. The appointment, therefore, at this time of a strong, learned man, established in the confidence of the peo ple, strengthens immeasurably the position of the Su preme Court, and by just as much increases its power of usefulness. If, as Bacon said, "The lawful end of ambition is the power to do good, Mr. Justice Hughes has entered upon a career which may well satisfy that ambition. For what greater thing can any man accom plish than to strengthen the hold on the people of the independence and integrity of the judiciary, upon which in the last analysis must rest the perpetuity of those institutions which we have inherited from our fathers, and upon which depends the maintenance of our civilization. Every foreign student of our institutions, from De Tocqueville to Bryce, has dwelt with special admira tion upon the establishment of the judiciary as a sepa rate institution and a coordinate branch of our govern ment, protecting the legislative from the assaults of the executive, and the executive from the aggression of the legislative. The fathers of our country, the formula- tors of our Constitution, were especially careful to provide for the independence of the judiciary, rightly regarding that as the keystone of the constitutional arch. If the independence of the judiciary of the United States shall ever be impaired, we may well tremble for the perpetuity of republican institutions. We live in an age of eager, questioning doubt, an age which regards no principle as final, which seeks to sub- GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM 455 ject to analysis the things which we thought were ulti mate. The Supreme Court of the United States, as the ultimate arbiter of our destinies, may be called upon to analyze principles which we think are in no need of analysis. The very structure of our whole civilization may once more be subjected to the liveliest test and analysis of judicial investigation, and the Supreme Court of the nation may again be called upon to de clare in no uncertain terms that no man s life, liberty, or property shall be taken save by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land. These are some of the avenues of usefulness that open before Mr. Justice Hughes. His experience in the past is proof to us that in his judicial career, as in his executive, he will be guided by the highest motives, and that he will give to the service of the court the same earnest, sincere devotion that he gave to the direct service of the people in executive office. MORGAN J. O BRIEN AT THE DINNEE TO CHAELES E. HUGHES, NOVEMBEE 19, 1910 NOTHING could be more agreeable to me than the surroundings of this evening, to find here as sembled the members of a club with which I have been long associated, and to express the honor and gratifica tion which is experienced at the presence of a distin guished guest, who has lately been honored by being made an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the most august judicial tribunal in this or any other country. And the occasion is furnished for expressing, through him, the confidence and respect which we have for that great tribunal and the judi ciary, because of the useful and self-sacrificing work in which they are engaged, in one of the highest and best of human activities. It would be impossible for me to resist, however, in passing, a reference to the personal relations which have for so long a time existed between myself and our distinguished guest. For twenty years it was my privi lege to sit and listen, from the bench, to his able advocacy whilst a member of the bar, and it is now my time to express the hope that, whenever I am fortunate enough to receive a retainer to appear before his great 456 MORGAN J. O BRIEN 457 court, he will listen to me with patience and be recep tive to my plea. It is one of the incidents of our democratic form of government that he who at one time is selected as a judge to listen to a lawyer, may some" day find himself sedulously seeking an opportunity to present his client s cause to a tribunal of which the former lawyer is a member. This is the real essence and the charm of democracy, which affords the opportunity to the able and gifted to rise from any position to the highest in the land, and verifies the biblical saying that often "the first shall be last and the last first. From a distinguished position at the bar our guest has had a rapid and remarkable career, which, because founded on solid qualities, is bound to be safe and en during. Called from the bar to the Governorship of this great State at a time when there was need for the greatest courage and ability, he proved equal to the occasion, and discharged his arduous duties in a man ner that won the commendation of all who, regardless of politics, believed in clean policies and honest ad ministration. We may not agree with all his insurgent views, nor with what some of us would regard as his perverted policies. It is unnecessary to commend all the measures which he advocated, and with which his name will always be associated; but we agree that in every thought and act he was moved by a singleness of purpose to promote the public good, and the measures which he proposed and the policies which he suggested were the emanations of a sound and sane mind actuated by an honest purpose to promote those things which he believed to be right and true and good. 458 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB And it is because of the ideals and standards which he set, because of the success which he achieved in promoting them, and the betterment of public affairs which he accomplished, that in his public career he has won the admiration and respect of our citizens, regard less of party. In the battle which he waged he was a stimulating leader to those who were fighting for what was right and true in our governmental system ; and in a siege which was short but decisive he has won his spurs. He has now been removed from the arena, and is no longer the center of contending forces ; but, away from the noise and struggle, he is to occupy a most im portant position, that of arbiter and judge with respect to great questions which affect our common weal. The change for him, no doubt, will be a pleasant one, and for the American people a most hopeful one. In reach ing his decision to put aside the ambition, which he naturally might have entertained, of being one day the Chief Magistrate of the nation, he was perhaps in fluenced by the sentiment which was well expressed by Danton, the greatest of the French Jacobins, and one of the most formidable figures in modern history, who had not completed his thirty-fifth year when he went to the guillotine, and who declared it better to live a poor fisherman than to have anything to do with the government of men. No longer concerned with the government of men in a political way, he is called upon to exercise his splen did ability and talents upon what, in my view, is a higher plane of human endeavor ; and from our know ledge of his ability and worth, we have little doubt of the success of his future career. MORGAN J. O BRIEN 459 Every American recognizes the Supreme Court of the United States as the depository and expounder of our law and Constitution, the forum which has been designed to deal, in the last resort, with questions af fecting life, liberty, and property, realizing that in the voice of the judiciary we obtain the final expression of that which we must and do accept as just and right. The proper discharge of judicial duties is inseparably connected with individual security and national pros perity. "We know that "the life of a nation, like the life of a man, may be prolonged in honor to the fullness of its time, or it may perish prematurely, for want of guid ance, by violence or internal disorders/ Kingdoms expire, and republics, some of which in territorial area were larger than our own, some of which attained an intellectual height which still commands the admiration of the world, have glistened along the past, only to be extinguished and fade as utterly as the vivid glories of sunset. Shall our country, whose glory and prosperity are linked with every fiber of our hearts, whose founda tions were laid so deep and strong, which, through the heroism and patriotism of our fathers and the great judges of the past, has given us a government so ad justed as to satisfy the highest and noblest ideals of social and civil life shall our country, through our indifference or folly, repeat the history of the nations that are now no more ? It is axiomatic that true liberty can exist and continue only while just laws are enacted and properly administered. In a free state there must be but one law for rich and poor, and that law must be 460 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB so interpreted and administered that its benefits, re sponsibilities, and penalties shall apply equally to all. I shall invite no dissent, I hope, when I assert, what I firmly believe, that the progress and development of man are more closely associated with our own country than with any nation under the sun. In the struggle for civil and religious liberty, in the effort to attain a better and higher civic life, we have here the last and the best expression of the yearnings of humanity, which in its final analysis represents a government of liberty under law. Solon, that great lawgiver, said that "it is of the essence of democracy that it should recognize no mas ter except the law." This principle of the supremacy of the law is the distinguished characteristic of our country, and let us never forget that one great prin ciple has more influence upon the progress and destiny of a nation than all its territory and wealth. We have had a national career of unexampled greatness and splendor; but the marvelous development, during re cent years, of our national resources, combined with the great increase and unequal distribution of wealth, has produced difficult problems which require for their solution the broadest statesmanship and the largest patriotism. In the midst of our great national prosperity, how ever, we could not, if we would, fail to observe those dark and ominous clouds which hover over our national firmament, which are the inevitable forerunners of a violent storm. Such a storm may accomplish good or bad, may be increased or diminished according to the manner in which it is met and directed. If the now MORGAN J. O BRIEN 461 smouldering embers are to be fed into a living flame, the end no man can foretell. If advantage is taken of present conditions to direct the current into safe and patriotic channels, then, instead of evil, good will flow. Hence the burden which rests in a special manner upon our judiciary to see to it that from prevailing condi tions there shall result good instead of evil. To accom plish this, nothing is more needful than respect for law and for the judges, for they are powerless unless supported by an enlightened public sentiment. We are passing through a period when the nation, stirred to its depths, is wrestling with great problems, social, in dustrial, and political. We are in the throes of one of the great eras of unrest, when former conditions will no longer be tolerated; and this spirit and temper rules throughout the world, and in no place more actively than in our own country, wherein is being fought a tremendous battle, involving not only social and indus trial and political conditions and principles, but our whole framework of government. It is not my purpose to attempt to assign the reasons or influences which have accentuated the rapid and restless movements of our national life, but there is one upon which it may be profitable to dwell for a moment to-night : the evils that would follow if we should cease to trust and revere our Constitution and law and judges. The pessimists tell us that our institutions will be unable to cope successfully with the new govern mental conditions. Foreigners tell us that we are a nation of money-grabbers, and that we have no ideals of public life or service other than the idolatrous wor ship of the golden calf. We are told that our plutoc- 462 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB racy is as heartless and unfeeling as our democracy is corrupted by envy, hatred, and malice; that in the consideration of great public questions, involving the interests of the whole country, our statesmen are unable to rise above the selfish dictates of sectionalism, and that we are losing our interest in religion and in all the high standards and ideals upon which the future of man depends. To some of our fellow-citizens every partnership spells plunder; every corporation, corrup tion; every effort, evasion; and every inspiration, in sincerity. We are told that capital tries to enslave labor, and that labor is prepared to fly at the throat of capital; that a nation which the struggle over slavery could not dismember is to be destroyed because the material interests of one section will be shown to be adverse to those of another; that we are becoming materialists, and that with the loss of faith and the standards of conduct inherited from our fathers, a republic based upon the consent of the governed and the rule of the majority cannot long endure. I dissent from these pessimistic views. There is no country in the world where the struggle for the lives and the betterment of others is proceeding more earn estly and successfully than in our own. Compare the present attitude of the rest of the world towards slav ery, war, woman, the weak, the sick, and the aged, with our own attitude. Consider the gifts which have been made for educational and eleemosynary purposes in the United States during the past decade. We do not hear very much now about patriotism, because the pessimists have failed to impress the country that our national life is seriously menaced. There is in the hearts of the MORGAN J. O BRIEN 463 American people to-day as controlling a love of country as there ever was ; and if the occasion arises when this fact must be demonstrated by action, there will be the same generous outpouring of money and blood as was produced by our early struggle with England or by the later War of the Rebellion. We know that patriotism is not dead, and that when the patriotic spirit is invoked it will rise superior to parties or partisanship. The hopeful patriot and the intelligent citizen knows and feels that the evils which threaten our country, because of social inequalities, questions between capital and labor, and all the other great questions needing solution, can be solved by our judges in some way consistent with vested rights, in some way consistent with the rights of property, in some way consistent with the preservation of the law and the Constitution, upon which rest our peace, our liberty, and our happiness. The settlement of such questions, subject to legislation, must be left to our courts. The judiciary is the living voice of the Consti tution, made up of men who, away from the busy marts of enterprise, removed from the blinding and bewil dering struggle for wealth, are able to give that study, care, and attention essential to the determination of those great questions, upon the right solution of which so much of individual liberty and national prosperity depends. Such close association as our honored guest, in his new and exalted station, will have with all that is high est and best was eloquently expressed by Webster : " Justice, sir, is the greatest interest of man on earth. It is the ligament which holds civilized beings and 464: SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB nations together. Wherever her temple stands, and so long as it is duly honored, there is foundation for social security, general happiness, and the improvement and progress of our race. And whoever labors on this edi fice with usefulness and distinction ; whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its pillars, adorns its entabla tures, or contributes to raise its august dome still higher to the skies, connects himself in name and fame with that which is and must be as durable as the frame of human society." FRANK E. LAWRENCE AT THE DINNER TO JULES J. JUSSERAND, DECEMBER 2, 1910 ENTLEMEN of the Lotos Club : One of the prin- cipal purposes of this club, as declared in its con stitution, is to encourage social intercourse among representatives, amateurs, and friends of literature, science, and the fine arts. Sometimes we take excur sions into other fields anywhere, wherever you please, from polar exploration to public life; but it is always delightful, it always seems like coming back home, to return to the things that are nearest and dearest to our hearts. And what is there that we love more, what friends have we more faithful, more constant, than our pictures and our books ? "When we come together to receive a guest who is foremost in the world of diplomacy, and who occupies an equally foremost place in the world of letters, this club is doubly fortunate ; and such is its happy position to-night. We assemble to receive His Excellency the Ambassador of the Republic of France. How can we ever say enough in praise of the country which sends us so distinguished a guest? We know its history, its literature, its art, its fine traditions; and to those of us who have been privileged to spend a time in that beautiful country and learn something of its fair 465 466 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB women and brave men, France must ever be enshrined within our hearts as "the land of sunshine and of song. Americans are bound to that great and powerful nation by an ancient and peculiar tie, for it can never be forgotten that when the few American colonies were struggling for their lives, France was our earliest and greatest friend, sending us Lafayette and many more, the flower of her youth and chivalry. When we were weak and feeble, France sent us of her best. Now that the United States is great and strong and fit to cope with any nation, France sends us of her best. Benjamin Franklin, our great philosopher, was the first Minister of the United States to France ; and when we of the Lotos Club assemble to receive His Ex cellency the French Ambassador, it would be unseemly did we forget that our former president, Whitelaw Reid, resigned his office to go abroad as Minister to France, while our old comrade Horace Porter, long your vice-president, (who is kept away to-night only by uncontrollable circumstances), has only lately been our Ambassador to the Republic of France. There are thus more than ordinary ties which attract this club toward the great nation represented in the person of its Am bassador here to-night. But, apart from his great position in the world of diplomacy, there are sympathies which draw us more closely to His Excellency M. Jusserand. It is as a man of letters that he appeals to us most closely and touches most nearly our hearts. "We recall that, although a native of a country which has a literature of its own which is unsurpassed in all the world, he has yet delved FRANK R. LAWRENCE 467 into the literature of a foreign country, to a degree unsurpassed by any English or American scholar. I need but remind you of his English Essays from a French Pen/ a work as delightful as any of its kind which has proceeded from any American or English author. His Literary History of the English People has laid us under a lasting debt of gratitude ; and that charming work which he has been pleased to call "The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare" is a book without which no library of English literature is com plete, for in it he perpetuates the names and the works of early English novelists whom their countrymen were allowing to become forgotten. Gentlemen, all honor to His Excellency M. Jusse- rand, all gratitude to the country which sends us such a representative! I give you a double toast, "The pleasant land of France/ and its illustrious Ambas sador, His Excellency M. Jusserand, a master-crafts man both in diplomacy and in literature. JULES J. JUSSEBAND (AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE) AT THE DINNEE IN HIS HONOE, DECEMBEE 2, 1910 I CANNOT well say how deeply touched I am by your friendly reception, and by the charming way in which your president has proposed the prosperity of my country and my health. I have heard that your president is one of the lights of the law, but I find that this is probably a mistake, and that in this club, where he speaks so well of art and literature, he ap parently belongs especially to art, and is a portrait- painter. Looking at this particular portrait of me [holding the menu in his hand], may not I wish I were this young gentleman? I was like this when I came here, but that is a great many years ago. I think I beat the record of all my French predecessors in Washington. My first notion of America dates back a very long time. It was in my father s house in the country, where his library, as the library of an honest French gentleman living in the country, consisted only of the classics. The library is still there, with the same books, well bound Holier e, Rousseau, Voltaire, La Fontaine, and all the various men of mark; yet there were very few foreign books in my father s library, very few: but we did have the works of Fenimore Cooper, complete. 468 JULES J. JUSSERAND 469 There was a double row of Walter Scott, bound in yellow, and Fenimore Cooper, bound in blue. And it was through those books bound in blue that I first knew Cooper s "Deerslayer" and the rest of the "Leatherstocking Tales," and I got my first inkling of a country which I never expected I should see. The vogue of Cooper in France is something extraordinary. My father s library was like any other Frenchman s library. There is n t one in France where you will not see Fenimore Cooper, complete. I might mention that when they came abroad, the works of Fenimore Cooper created a sensation that was unspeakable, and one of our best critics put it very clearly in memorable words. He said: "The astonishment to see that wonderful literature come from that remote land of Indians and fighters, was so great that nothing can better be com pared with it than the astonishment of Robinson Crusoe when he found the footprints on the sand of his desert island." And then it was my fate, my happiness, to be ap pointed ambassador here. I had traveled very much, but I had never -been in America. I must say that my impression was *very deep, by which I don t mean that I consider the skyscraper is as beautiful as the Louvre, but I mean that when you go to the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset and look towards New York and see the immen sity of Babylonian buildings, with the smoke going up into the sky and a red sunset behind, you see a thing that is unique in the world, one of the great sights of this round ball. One of our poets, Jean Doublet, has written a sonnet which begins thus: "Hope like Ulysses s first marked 470 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB this voyage"; and then he goes on to describe his own feelings (he himself was abroad in the diplomatic ser vice, having an office in Persia), and he tells something of his principal wish, of knowing it as it was then and in the past. The day to go back to my native house, my father s house, will come one day. I hope it will not come as soon as I see now and then in the papers. But the day will come when I shall have to return to that house, and find myself again with the yellow Walter Scott and the blue Fenimore Cooper. I shall then have time to think of what took place, and have to consider what happened to me in America. So I am not going, I hope, for a long time, as I have been here a great many years ; but I can already guess what will be the things which will be uppermost in my mind in my old age in that quiet spot where my parents used to live. One of the things will be my official life in Wash ington. I don t think it is possible for any one to find a more hospitable, a more charming social welcome than it has been my privilege to find in your Federal City. I found it in the White House, both with the former and with the present President, and with their secretaries of state. I shall name no names, but they were President Roosevelt and President Taft. And the same with their secretaries. The feeling I have in Washington I have had throughout the country. My impression of the nation grew as I knew it better. I began to know it, like Ulysses, by traveling. I went around, and I think there are very few States which I have n t visited, and very few cities. And I have admired their character- JULES J. JUSSERAND 471 istics, for there are as many brands of Americans as there are brands of good wine in France. Boston, Chicago, St. Paul, even San Francisco. Last year I roamed with my wife for thirty-five days on the road, sleeping in our car, visiting the country constantly; and, as I have said before, my admiration was very great, because in the West it is very difficult to decide which is the more wonderful of those wonders of nature which you have, and which you have in nearness to the lines of the railroad, and the works of man. There is nothing to be compared with the Grand Canon of Arizona, which in parts has a depth which seems to lead to the nether regions, and wonders of coloring that re mind you of the other extreme. Then take what man has done. American energy has succeeded, to my mind, in doing something which surpasses even the natural beauty. I have seen immense fields of sage which would be incapable of yielding food to any being of any kind ; but the American engineer comes, and, with a magic wand like that of Moses, causes water to flow amidst the fields, and there come the city and agricul tural wealth and enjoyable life. When a celebrated inventor was about to die, he wrote one last essay, in which he considered what would be the inventions which were most useful to all mankind. And he mentioned one or two, and he said, "There is one which perhaps will be made, perhaps not for years I don t know and perhaps to-morrow; that is, the possibility of using the air as a means of transporta tion"; and he added, "When that invention is made, mankind will be changed more than by any other inven tion that went before even than gunpowder, or print- 472 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ing, or any other; for this simple reason," he said, there will be no frontiers." There is no doubt that when this happens it will be a very sad day for a friend of ours, the collector of customs in New York. No fron tiers, no customs, no officers what a colossal change! And among other changes which are to come, that in vention will certainly transform the world, to para phrase the saying of one of your great sages, Benjamin Franklin, one to whom your president alluded. He was present at the birth of the first engine that went up in the air, which practically was a French invention, and it went up in the year of American independence, 1783. Some one said to Franklin, You can master the air, but what is the good of it ? And Franklin said, < What is the good of a new-born babe ? And so it is. Immense changes will take place changes, I am sure, altogether good. Your president recalled that we have been your friends in war. I assure you we are very willing to be your friends in peace. And if ever some of you want to go to the ficole des Beaux Arts, I am sure you will find a hearty welcome. One thing I shall remember above all, and that is, wherever I have been in America, I have found something reminding me of my country, in terms that warmed my heart. Wherever I went from city to city, I have been received by associations like the Cincinnati, the Sons of the Revolution; and whether founded to preserve the old traditions, or, like this club, for social purposes, I have found the old feel ing still alive, and it has warmed my heart. When that same Ulysses mentioned by our great poet, Doublet, was among you for he was among the Lotos- JULES J. JUSSERAND 473 eaters he said to be with them was exceedingly dan gerous, because when you had dined with the Lotos- eaters you forgot your own country. My impression, since I have been in America, and now that I am among you who have treated me in such a French way, is that it is very difficult indeed, impos siblein America to forget that friend of the United States France. HAMILTON W. MABIE AT THE DINNER TO JULES J. JUSSEKAND, DECEMBEE 2, 1910 YOU remember, Mr. Ambassador, that delightful French proverb to the effect that a man has three chances at a dinner, one on his right, one on his left, and the company. And you have discovered, sir, that at the Lotos a man has every chance. When Mr. Law rence began to enumerate the ambassadorial connec tions of the Lotos Club, I began to feel that this was really a reception by ambassadors to an ambassador. I wonder, gentlemen, if you realize that, in addition to all the other perplexities which beset an ambassador in this country, there is one which falls with great weight on the French ambassador, and it is the matter of his name. Now, we can get along with Von Rosen and Sternberg or Bernstorff among other names, but I had the pleasure, a year ago last summer, to make an excursion on Lake Champlain with the ambassador, who spoke both in Champlain s tongue and in English on at least half-a-dozen occasions. On every occasion he was introduced by a different name. Sometimes he was "Mr. Jusserand," and sometimes "Mr. Jusserau"; and I suggested to him that if he felt like going to ex tremes, he had just cause for war. There is a story that a New York lady some time ago 474 HAMILTON W. MABIE 475 asked a Boston lady what was the real pronunciation of the word " Boston " in Boston, and she said, "You must pronounce the V softly, as in the word God. " Now, that first "u" I won t tire you with my primi tive attempts at using the French language, which on all foreign occasions give my family unending joy and humiliation as well. And I won t try to suggest the proper pronunciation, but I suppose it is a little touch of the "u" in justice, which might be associated with the ambassador. We understand the French, if we don t always correctly speak their language; and we have in that respect a great advantage over other nations. One of the most interesting of those speeches on Lake Champlain was that delivered at Plattsburg. It has always been a great question as to which State was dis covered first Vermont or New York. And what did he say ? He said, in describing the march of Champlain down through the valley woods, that when he reached the lake he looked up and saw in the same glance New York and Vermont ! But what was interesting that day and very characteristic was the fact that to the fifteen thousand people assembled there, of both races, English and French (for the French had come in great numbers away from over the Canadian border), he spoke first rapidly for ten minutes in English, and then in French, to the intense satisfaction of the French audience, who were delighted to hear their own tongue spoken again in a foreign country. He has always been not only an eloquent speaker in two languages, but an interpreter of two literatures ; he has been an ambassador, a toiler rather, in that higher 476 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB ground whose real business in the world has been to interpret the spiritual and the intellectual to the final analysis. He has spoken of Brander Matthews s ad mirable life of Moliere. He has spoken of the French influence in England during the time of Shakespeare. Why, if any one were to attempt to write the history of French influence on English literature, he would do precisely what the ambassador has done, he would write the history of English literature. Only last week John H. Finley, president of the Col lege of the City of New York, and one of the best fel lows that ever lived, spoke of the earliest contact of France with America as the most romantic story in the history of the known world. I have no doubt that many of you have looked down from the citadel of Quebec on that magnificent panorama, and have in imagination recalled the figures of those early French men who came across that perilous, mysterious sea in their little yawls the soldiers, sailors, merchants, and priests and passed up that great river along that wonderful gulf, and in a long period of years made their way across intervening space to Niagara and the Great Lakes, across the prairies to the source of the Mississippi, and through the heart of the unknown con tinent, and passed down to the Gulf of Mexico. I don t think it is far out of the way to say that wherever the Frenchman has touched this continent, he has left the impress of his chivalry, courtesy, and charm of manner. That is true at Detroit, St. Louis, and wherever a trace of the old French is still found. It is a long story connected with our continent that tells of the ruggedness of adventure, and the skill and hero- HAMILTON W. MABIE 477 ism. They did n t care what happened as long as they did their work associated with that triumphal progress of France up the great river and across the Great Lakes and down that other great river of the continent. Then go down, if you please, to Charleston and stand on the hill there, overlooking that peaceful bay dotted with little islands, and remember the Frenchmen who came there in the early days, the Huguenots, the Puri tans of the South, bringing with them the refinements of social life and charm of hospitality and courtesy of manner which have survived in American Charleston to-day. And then recall as you stand there, and visit the cathedral there, the old cathedral, which was the first church in America where all might worship in their own way, and that France gave to us. Yes, all this France has given us, and far more too. It is too late in the evening and too early in time to speak of our indebtedness to France, of what France has done for us. Other ambassadors have represented their own country ; this ambassador has done something different. He has interpreted us to France and to our selves. He has told the story of English genius in literature with the same fidelity and the same sense of life, with all its intimate touches of English char acter. If you want to know English intimately, read his "Wayfaring Life." If you want to know the romance and sentiment of Shakespeare s time, read his interpretation or account of the individual of that day. If, above all, you want to see the whole movement and spirit of England expressed through its greatest tongue, read the "Literary History of the English People." Do you remember how charmingly it ends rather, 478 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB the account of Shakespeare ends ? The author of this is one whose name we will not mention, because every time it has been spoken it has brought a blush to his cheek. I was speaking to-day with one of the gentlemen with whom the ambassador has been very intimately related in his official life, and I said, "What is his prime characteristic ? And he said, l This : that with perfect loyalty to his own country and always urging its cause with unvarying patience and ardor, he is never otherwise than persona grata to the government to which he addresses himself. CHARLEMAGNE TOWER (LATE AMBASSADOR TO GERMANY) AT THE DINNER TO JULES J. JUSSEEAND, DECEMBER 2, 1910 FT1HE presence of M. Jusserand recalls, I am sure, JL many agreeable remembrances to us all. For I think that every one of us, at some point in his experience, has come under the charm of France and French life, from which he has brought back lasting impressions. The American has never failed to respond to it I think, perhaps, more readily than almost any other stranger. Indeed, our relations of friendship with France reach back to the very beginning of our exis tence as an independent nation. As your president has well said, it has been impressed upon our hearts since earliest infancy, for our first diplomatic negotiations took place in the cabinet of the great foreign minister of Louis XVI, when our representatives, announcing themselves with the remark that they were not much accustomed to the usages of courts, came to plead the cause of the infant nation that had just sprung into life beyond the sea. The result of it was that French soldiers carried the French flag along the banks of the Hudson River and the James, under the command of General Washington, and that we have written upon that page of our history such names as Rochambean, 479 480 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB Lafayette, and De Grasse; and it is a pleasure to welcome the honored guest of the evening, and to recall the fact that through the passage of more than one hundred years since, those friendly relations have never been changed. Methods have changed. The old diplomacy is gone. The man whose reputation for truth suffered more than he really deserved, the man who was believed to speak the truth diplomatically, who was supposed to be steeped in intrigue and, under the guise of a friend, to be an enemy at heart, and always a stranger, has de parted. The ambassador of to-day occupies a different position. He is upon a much higher plane as a states man and a man of the world. A very striking example of this is the ambassador of France, who, during his mission of eight years in our country, has so maintained the interests of his own government, and has made such a place among us, that we are happy, upon a purely social occasion like this, to come here and express to him our high consideration and personal respect. From the point of view of diplomacy and interna tional law, the attitude of nations in their dealings with each other marks very strongly the progress of civiliza tion. Browning has said that the most stubborn ad versaries can discover points of similarity between them, if they will, and this happily is what is going on to-day. For the countries of the world are not only being drawn closer to each other by the triumph of modern science, as a result of which a steamship may cross the Atlantic Ocean in five days or six, but the bridge is also made by that great common interest which is found among men of every race, to protect the CHARLEMAGNE TOWER 481 rights and property of others and recognize the obliga tions of law and maintain the peace of the world. There can be no doubt that the minds of leading statesmen are turned in this direction in the direction of compassing the difficulties of making men less ready to draw the sword. The boast of the great armaments of to-day is that they are the truest guarantee of peace; and so indeed they are, but it is a peace imposed by force or by the fear of force. May we not look forward to the day when the peace of nations will be held secure because it will be based upon judgment and equity and reason? A great step ahead was made in the erection of the tribunal at The Hague, and the establishment of the principle of arbitration for the settlement of interna tional disputes, to which more than forty independent states have announced their adherence; among them the sister republics of the United States of America and France. We ourselves have submitted to its consideration dur ing the past summer a series of the most complex and difficult questions upon which we have been in differ ence with Great Britain for upwards of a century. We have accepted its decision, as has also our magnanimous opponent ; and when we consider this result, and when we contemplate the influence which is able to bring to an end the angry contests of two great powers by a determination the justice of which is recognized by both, it seems as if the learned advocate of Britain was right when, in addressing the court, he declared it to be the greatest tribunal in the world. It is into this broad field that the profession of 482 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB diplomacy has extended itself, the profession in which our honored guest has distinguished himself, not only in Washington, but in London and Copenhagen as well. If he had never been an ambassador at all, we should have known him and appreciated him fully as a critic and a writer upon English literature, and a student of Shakespeare. I am sure that we wish him many years of activity and success, and I think you will all agree with me that in his hands the interna tional relations between America and France will al ways be safe. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW (UNITED STATES SENATOR PROM NEW YORK) AT THE DINNER TO JULES J. JUSSEEAND, DECEMBEE 2, 1910 DURING my thirty-odd years of membership the Lotos Club has welcomed men distinguished in every de partment of human endeavor. The broad policy of our organization is to recognize merit in every career. The arts, the professions, and the trades are all welcomed in the person of a distinguished representative. The execu tive branches of our government, National and State, the Federal and State judiciary, the Army and the Navy, the law, medicine, theology, art, literature, the drama, journalism and politics, have each in turn been the recipients of our hospitality, and by their presence en larged the vision and added to the distinction of the club. But to-night is the first time we have had the opportunity to pay tribute to a personality dual in its career and distinguished in each. Ambassador Jusse- rand occupies the first rank as a diplomatist and stands among the foremost in the field of literature. He was eminent as a writer before he became distinguished as a diplomatist; and then the man of letters, stirred by the success of the diplomat, strove successfully for higher honors, until the diplomat in turn demanded his 483 484 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB fair opportunity. Thus, with the one spurring the other, and each inhabiting the same brain, we have with us to-night a diplomatist unrivaled in his successes as a representative of his own government to ours at Wash ington, and a man of letters who speaks better English than the Englishman and writes better English than the American. The tie between France and the United States has always been full of sentiment. Our relations with other nations from the beginning have been based upon interest and the give and take of highly organized in dustrial peoples who are competitors in their own markets and in the markets of the world. But the ar rival upon our shores of Lafayette, Rochambeau, and De Grasse was just one of those divine inspirations of the best of human nature which in private life results in the broadest charity, the tenderest philanthropy, and the deepest friendship, and in international relations is a fair step toward the peace of the world and the brotherhood of man. Students of history, and especially one who has been intimately associated for a half-century or more with public life, have impressed upon them how events move in cycles. The marvel of to-day may be repeated a century after. As in the Mendel theory of the trans mission of hereditary traits, the strongest ancestry may not be found in the second generation, but is likely to appear in the third, and certainly in the fourth. So with nations. Every crisis which is evolutionary in its nature plants the seed which may lie dormant for a century or more, but is certain to bear abundant fruit in the end. When Lafayette came to the United CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 485 States there were many things he might have brought General Washington. Washington was fond of fine clothes, good wines, works of art, and books; but La fayette brought to the man whom he loved and admired beyond all others none of these. He gave to him the key to the Bastille. He knew what that would mean to the great heart of the Father of our Country. The key to the Bastille signified for that day the overthrow of the old order of arbitrary and autocratic power. It meant the recognition and admission of the people to a share in their own government. But the key to the Bastille meant also and that, no doubt, in his pro found faith in popular sovereignty was foreshadowed by the prophetic vision of Washington that a seed planted in the destruction of the Bastille would bear fruit, after one hundred years, in a republic framed, as far as French conditions would admit, upon the model of the United States ; a republic which in its brief life of forty years has demonstrated its vitality and ele ments of perpetuity in financial crises the most critical, in diplomatic difficulties the most perilous, and only the other day by coming safely through an industrial revo lution which aroused the apprehension of the whole world. There is another way in which history moves in cycles. Great as was the help of the French army and navy, greater was the cash and credit which France loaned to us. Our cash and credit were both exhausted, and both were absolutely essential to the continuance of the Revolution and its ultimate triumph. Both came from France, and now, one hundred and twenty-five years afterward, we had a financial crisis in the United 486 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB States. The markets of London, Frankfort, and Am sterdam were closed to us because every country, like ours, was expanding beyond its own resources and a borrower. Only the financial writer of the future can tell how much we are indebted for our present stable business condition, for the efficiency of our transporta tion lines, and for our general prosperity to the hun dreds of millions of dollars which France loaned to us in 1908 and 1909. France, with the largest debt ever known, and yet with the most generally prosperous population; France, rising from the ashes of the war with Germany, the overturning of dynasty, and the change of her form of government, is to-day, with all the burdens which come from these mighty cataclysms, by reason of the skill and the thrift of its people, the banker of the world. Libraries have been filled with literature about diplo macy, but, as Horace said about a poet, a diplomat is born, not made. Metternich was followed by every one in his generation, and Metternich taught that the secret of diplomacy was solely in successful lying. In that day the highest distinction which could be given to an aspiring diplomat was to elect him a member of the Ananias Club. Talleyrand s dictum was to so conceal one s meaning by the use of words that if the interpre tation did not turn out satisfactory, he could deny that that was what he meant. Bismarck s theory was that as lying and diplomacy were synonymous, if he told the truth he could carry out his plans to successful execu tion before the other party had grasped that he meant what he said. Now, I have given some attention to diplo macy and have an idea what a diplomat should be. I CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW 487 studied it up when President Harrison offered me the position of secretary of state, as that officer is the head of the whole foreign service. I studied it up when Presi dent Johnson sent me my commission, which had been confirmed by the Senate, as minister to Japan, which I declined after a month or more of examination. I studied it up when I was offered and accepted the ambassador ship to England, but which, because of a good, healthy lie told about me, did not materialize in the end. I studied it up when offered the mission to Berlin, but found my German too rusty to make the place happy for myself. The modern diplomat adjusts himself to the powers that be in the capital to which he is accredited. John Hay told me that a distinguished ambassador closed the door so that the interview might be private, then read to him the official communication from his own government on the matter in dispute, and then said, So much for that. Now listen to me. So and so, which is directly opposite to that communication, can be brought about, only both you and I must be in a posi tion, if it fails, to deny that this conversation ever took place. Our friend, Ambassador Jusserand, grasped as did none of his contemporaries the fact that confidential relations with the President were through the tennis cabinet. Our strenuous President loved a rough rider to accompany him, and he found his match in the am bassador from France. Roosevelt, in one of those dar ing rides, plunged with his horse into the turbulent waters of the Potomac, and as he reached the island in the stream he found the French ambassador beside him, with a quotation from the classics which fitted the occasion. 488 SPEECHES AT THE LOTOS CLUB The students of our universities have felt the inspira tion of Mr. Jusserand s literary finish and genius for saying the right thing in the right place. Social Wash ington hails him with ever-increasing delight. The representative of one of the Oriental countries, talking with me after President Taft was elected and before he was inaugurated, and during the time he was having that series of possum dinners in Georgia, made many inquiries about him. The Oriental s English was lim ited, but excellent as far as it went. I said to him, "You have been eminently successful with President Roosevelt. Now, then, as a preliminary to an acquain tance with his successor, I would advise you to learn to love possum. " Oh ! " said the Oriental, I have had the pleasure of meeting Possum s wife, but I never knew him." Our friend, the French ambassador, neither has to eat possum nor play possum. With President Taft s alert mind, judicial judgment, and wide experience in many fields of government activity, and especially in diplomacy, he appreciates the value of having a friendly country represented by such an am bassador as Mr. Jusserand. In the delicate conditions arising out of the Payne tariff law, I have no hesitation in saying that there is no man living who could have performed, and can continue to perform, the service for French industries and for the amicable relations between our two countries which has been done, is being done, and will be done by our distinguished guest of to-night. DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed, is book is DUE on the last date stamped below. SAprSOCQ ^WK ftfiTB LD JH5 -^ < ( : PR 3197004 APR 14 19? T7Jun 54TFW LD 21-100m-ll, 49(B7146sl6)476 RECEIVEO M 70 AY 29 1970 -5PN 06 R1S1913 THE UNlVKStTY OF CALIFORNIA UBEARV