Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER IX

AFTER DINNER SPEECHES

8 44

LIBERTY UNDER THE LAW

By George William Curtis

(Speech at the seventy-first anniversary banquet of the New England Society in the city of New York, December 22, 1876.)

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY: It was Izaak Walton in his "Angler" who said that Dr. Botelier was accustomed to remark "that doubtless God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but doubtless He never did." And I suppose I speak the secret feeling of this festive company when I say that doubtless there might have been a better place to be born in than New England, but doubtless no such place exists. [Applause and laughter.] And if any skeptic should reply that our very presence here would seem to indicate that doubtless, also, New England is as good a place to leave as to stay in [laughter], I should reply to him that, on the contrary, our presence is but an added glory of our mother. It is an illustration of that devout, missionary spirit, of the willingness in which she has trained us to share with others the blessings that we have received, and to circle the continent, to girdle the globe, with the strength of New England character and the purity of New England principles. [Applause.] Even the Knickerbockers, Mr. President-in whose stately and splendid city we are at this moment assembled, and assembled of right because it is our home-even they would doubtless concede that much of the state and splendor of this city is due to the enterprise, the industry, and the genius of those whom their first historian describes as "losel Yankees." [Laughter.] Sir, they grace our feast with their presence; they will enliven it, I am sure, with their eloquence and wit. Our tables are rich with the flowers grown in their soil; but there is one flower that we do not see, one flower whose perfume fills a continent, which has blossomed for more than two centuries and a half with ever-increasing and GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. Born at Providence, R. I., February 24, 1824; died at Staten Island, N. Y., August 31, 1892; editor of Harper's Weekly, 1857-1892.

deepening beauty-a flower which blooms at this moment, on this wintry night, in never-fading freshness in a million of true hearts, from the snow-clad Katahdin to the warm Golden Gate of the South Sea, and over its waters to the isles of the East and the land of Prester Johnthe flower of flowers, the Pilgrim's "Mayflower." [Applause.]

Well, sir, holding that flower in my hand at this moment, I say that the day we celebrate commemorates the introduction upon this continent of the master principle of its civilization. I do not forget that we are a nation of many nationalities. I do not forget that there are gentlemen at this board who wear the flower of other nations close upon their hearts. I remember the forget-me-nots of Germany, and I know that the race which keeps "watch upon the Rhine" keeps watch also upon the Mississippi and the Lakes. I recall how could I forget?-the delicate shamrock; for there "came to this beach a poor exile of Erin, and on this beach, with his native modesty, "he still sings his bold anthem of Erin go Bragh." [Applause.] I remember surely, sir, the lily-too often the tiger-lily-of France [laughter and applause] and the thistle of Scotland; I recall the daisy and the rose of England; and, sir, in Switzerland, high upon the Alps, on the very edge of the glacier, the highest flower that grows in Europe, is the rare edelweiss. It is in Europe; we are in America. And here in America, higher than shamrock or thistle, higher than rose, lily or daisy, higher than the highest, blooms the perennial Mayflower. [Applause.] For, sir and gentlemen, it is the English-speaking race that has molded the destiny of this continent; and the Puritan influence is the strongest influence that has acted upon it. [Applause.]

I am surely not here to assert that the men who have represented that influence have always been men whose spirit was blended of sweetness and light. I confess truly their hardness, their prejudice, their narrowness. All this I know: Charles Stuart could bow more blandly, could dance more gracefully than John Milton; and the cavalier King looks out from the canvas of Vandyke with a more romantic beauty of flowing love-locks than hung upon the brows of Edward Winslow, the only Pilgrim father whose portrait comes down to us. [Applause.] But, sir, we estimate the cause beyond the man. Not even is the gracious spirit of Christianity itself measured by its confessors. If we would see the actual force, the creative power of the Pilgrim principle, we are not to look at the company who came over in the cabin of the Mayflower; we are to look upon the forty millions who fill this continent from sea to sea. [Applause.] The Mayflower, sir, brought seed and not a harvest. In a century and a half, the religious restrictions of the Puritans had grown into absolute religious liberty, and in two centuries it had burst

beyond the limits of New England, and John Carver, of the Mayflower, had ripened into Abraham Lincoln, of the Illinois prairie. [Great and prolonged applause.]

Why, gentlemen, if you would see the most conclusive proof of the power of this principle, you have but to observe that the local distinctive. title of New Englanders has now become that of every man in the country. Every man who hears me, from whatever State in the Union, is, to Europe, a Yankee, and to-day the United States are but the “Universal Yankee Nation." [Applause.] Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle? Do you ask me whether it is as good for to-day as for yesterday; whether it is good for every national emergency; whether it is good for the situation of this hour? I think we need neither doubt nor fear. The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom. From that spring religious liberty and political equality. The free State, the free Church, the free School-these are the triple armor of American nationality, of American security. [Applause.] But the Pilgrims, while they have stood above all men for their idea of liberty, have always asserted liberty under law and never separated it from law. John Robinson, in the letter that he wrote the Pilgrims when they sailed, said these words, that well, sir, might be written in gold around the cornice of that future banqueting-hall to which you have alluded: "You know that the image of the Lord's dignity and authority which the magistry beareth is honorable in how mean person soever." [Applause.] This is the Puritan principle. Those men stood for liberty under the law. They had tossed long upon a wintry sea; their minds were full of images derived from their voyage; they knew that the will of the people alone is but a gale smiting a rudderless and sailless ship, and hurling it a mass of wreck upon the rocks. But the will of the people, subject to law, is the same gale filling the trim canvas of a ship that minds the helm, bearing it over yawning and awful abysses of ocean safety to port. [Loud applause.]

Now, gentlemen, in this country the Puritan principle in its development has advanced to this point, that it provides us a lawful remedy for every emergency that may arise. [Cheers.] I stand here as a son of New England. In every fiber of my being am I a child of the Pilgrims. [Applause.] The most knightly of all the gentlemen at Elizabeth's court said to the young poet, when he would write an immortal song, "Look into your own heart and write." And I, sir and brothers, if, looking into my own heart at this moment, I might dare to think that what I find written there is written also upon the heart of my mother, clad in her snows at home, her voice in this hour would be a message spoken from the land of the Pilgrims to the capital of this nation-a message like

that which Patrick Henry sent from Virginia to Massachusetts when he heard of Concord and Lexington: "I am not a Virginian, I am an American." [Great applause.] And so, gentlemen, at this hour, we are not Republicans, we are not Democrats, we are Americans. [Tremendous applause.]

The voice of New England, I believe, going to the capital, would be this, that neither is the Republican Senate to insist upon its exclusive partisan way, nor is the Democratic House to insist upon its exclusive partisan way, but Senate and House, representing the American people and the American people only, in the light of the Constitution and by the authority of the law, are to provide a way over which a President, be he Republican or be he Democrat, shall pass unchallenged to his chair. [Vociferous applause, the company rising to their feet.] Ah! gentlemen [renewed applause]-think not, Mr. President, that I am forgetting the occasion or its amenities. [Cries of "No, no," and "Go on."] I am remembering the Puritans; I am remembering Plymouth Rock, and the virtues that made it illustrious. But we, gentlemen, are to imitate those virtues, as our toast says, only by being greater than the men who stood upon that rock. [Applause.] As this gay and luxurious banquet, to their scant and severe fare, so must our virtues, to be worthy of them, be greater and richer than theirs. And as we are three centuries older, so should we be three centuries wiser than they. [Applause.]

Sons of the Pilgrims, you are not to level forests, you are not to war with savage men and savage beasts, you are not to tame continent, nor even found a State. Our task is nobler, is diviner. Our task, sir, is to reconcile a nation. It is to curb the fury of party spirit. It is to introduce a loftier and manlier tone everywhere into our political life. It is to educate every boy and every girl, and then leave them perfectly free to go from any schoolhouse to any church. [Cries of "Good," and cheers.] Above all, sir, it is to protect absolutely the equal rights of the poorest and the richest, of the most ignorant and the most intelligent citizen, and it is to stand forth, brethren, as a triple wall of brass, around our native land, against the mad blows of violence or the fatal dry-rot of fraud. [Loud applause.] And at this moment, sir, the grave and august shades of the forefathers whom we invoke bend over us in benediction as they call us to this sublime task. This, brothers and friends, this is to imitate the virtues of our forefathers; this is to make our day as glorious as theirs. [Great applause, followed by three cheers for the distinguished speaker.]

§ 45

THE NEW SOUTH

By Henry W. Grady

(Address delivered at the eighty-first anniversary celebration of the New England Society in the city of New York, December 22, 1886.)

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: "There was a South of slavery and secession-that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom-that South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my text to-night.

Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my provincial voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if, in that sentence, I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. [Laughter.] Permitted through your kindness to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the significance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the semblance, of original New England hospitality [applause], and honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost, and the compliment to my people made plain. [Laughter.]

I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landing afforded, into the basement; and while picking himself up had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher?" "No, I didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't!" [Laughter.]

So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with energy if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher

HENRY WOODFEN GRADY. Born in Athens, Ga., May 24, 1850; died at Atlanta, Ga., December 23, 1889; educated at University of Georgia and the University of Virginia; editor of the Atlanta Constitution, 1880-1889.

« PreviousContinue »