Public Speaking: Principles and Practice Part 31

"But now, with folly and with pride, Their husbands' pockets tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, The ladies are so full of whims That people call them w(h)imen."

Mr. Chairman, I believe you said I should say something about the Pilgrim mothers. Well, sir, it is rather late in the evening to venture upon that historic subject. But, for one, I pity them. The occupants of the galleries will bear me witness that even these modern Pilgrims-- these Pilgrims with all the modern improvements--how hard it is to put up with their weaknesses, their follies, their tyrannies, their oppressions, their desire of dominion and rule. But when you go back to the stern horrors of the Pilgrim rule, when you contemplate the rugged character of the Pilgrim fathers, why, you give credence to what a witty woman of Boston said--she had heard enough of the glories and sufferings of the Pilgrim fathers; for her part, she had a world of sympathy for the Pilgrim mothers, because they not only endured all that the Pilgrim fathers had done, but they also had to endure the Pilgrim fathers to boot. Well, sir, they were afraid of woman. They thought she was almost too refined a luxury for them to indulge in.

Miles Standish spoke for them all, and I am sure that General Sherman, who so much resembles Miles Standish, not only in his military renown but in his rugged exterior and in his warm and tender heart, will echo his words when he says:--

"I can march up to a fortress, and summon the place to surrender, But march up to a woman with such a proposal, I dare not. I am not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the mouth of a cannon, But of a thundering 'No!' point-blank from the mouth of a woman, That I confess I'm afraid of, nor am I ashamed to confess it."

Mr. President, did you ever see a more self-satisfied or contented set of men than these that are gathered at these tables this evening? I never come to the Pilgrim dinner and see these men, who have achieved in the various departments of life such definite and satisfactory success, but that I look back twenty or thirty or forty years, and see the lantern-jawed boy who started out from the banks of the Connecticut, or some more remote river of New England, with five dollars in his pocket and his father's blessing on his head and his mother's Bible in his carpetbag, to seek those fortunes which now they have so gloriously made. And there is one woman whom each of these, through all his progress and to the last expiring hour of his life, bears in tender remembrance. It is the mother who sent him forth with her blessing. A mother is a mother still--the holiest thing alive; and if I could dismiss you with a benediction to-night, it would be by invoking upon the heads of you all the blessing of the mothers that we left behind us.

BRIGHT LAND TO WESTWARD

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. III, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY E. O. WOLCOTT

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--It was with great diffidence that I accepted the invitation of your President to respond to a toast to- night. I realized my incapacity to do justice to the occasion, while at the same time I recognized the high compliment conveyed. I felt somewhat as the man did respecting the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy; he said he didn't know whether Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare's works or not, but if he didn't, he missed the greatest opportunity of his life.

We are a plain people, and live far away. We are provincial; we have no distinctive literature and no great poets; our leading personage abroad of late seems to be the Honorable "Buffalo Bill"; and we use our adjectives so recklessly that the polite badinage indulged in toward each other by your New York editors to us seems tame and spiritless. In mental achievement we may not have fully acquired the use of the fork, and are "but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." We stand toward the East somewhat as country to city cousin; about as New to Old England, only we don't feel half so badly about it, and on the whole are rather pleased with ourselves. There is not in the whole broad West a ranch so lonely or so remote that a public school is not within reach of it. With generous help from the East, Western colleges are elevating and directing Western thought, and men busy making States yet find time to live manly lives and to lend a hand. All this may not be aesthetic, but it is virile, and it leads up and not down.

There are some things more important than the highest culture. The West is the Almighty's reserve ground, and as the world is filling up, He is turning even the old arid plains and deserts into fertile acres, and is sending there the rain as well as the suns.h.i.+ne. A high and glorious destiny awaits us; soon the balance of population will lie the other side of the Mississippi, and the millions that are coming must find waiting for them schools and churches, good government, and a happy people:--

"Who love the land because it is their own, And scorn to give aught other reason why; Would shake hands with a King upon his throne, And think it kindness to his Majesty."

In everything which pertains to progress in the West, the Yankee reenforcements step rapidly to the front. Every year she needs more of them, and as the country grows the annual demand becomes greater.

Genuine New Englanders are to be had on tap only in six small States, and remembering this we feel that we have the right to demand that in the future, even more than in the past, the heads of the New England households weary not in the good work.

In these days of "booms" and New Souths and Great Wests, when everybody up North who fired a gun is made to feel that he ought to apologize for it, and good fellows.h.i.+p everywhere abounds, there is a sort of tendency to fuse; only big and conspicuous things are much considered; and New England being small in area and most of her distinguished people being dead, she is just now somewhat under an eclipse. But in her past she has undying fame. You of New England and her borders live always in the atmosphere of her glories; the scenes which tell of her achievements are ever near at hand, and familiarity and contact may rob them of their charms, and dim to your eyes their sacredness. The sons of New England in the West revisit her as men who make pilgrimage to some holy shrine, and her hills and valleys are still instinct with n.o.ble traditions. In her glories and her history we claim a common heritage, and we never wander so far away from her that, with each recurring anniversary of this day, our hearts do not turn to her with renewed love and devotion for our beloved New England; yet--

"Not by Eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But Westward, look, the land is bright!"

WOMAN

From "Modern Eloquence," Vol. Ill, Geo. L. Shuman and Company, Chicago, publishers.

BY THEODORE TILTON

You must not forget, Mr. President, in eulogizing the early men of New England, who are your clients to-night, that it was only through the help of the early women of New England, who are mine, that your boasted heroes could ever have earned their t.i.tle of the Pilgrim Fathers. A health, therefore, to the women in the cabin of the Mayflower! A cl.u.s.ter of Mayflowers themselves, transplanted from summer in the old world to winter in the new! Counting over those matrons and maidens, they numbered, all told, just eighteen. Their names are now written among the heroines of history! For as over the ashes of Cornelia stood the epitaph "The Mother of the Gracchi," so over these women of the Pilgrimage we write as proudly "The Mothers of the Republic." There was good Mistress Bradford, whose feet were not allowed of G.o.d to kiss Plymouth Rock, and who, like Moses, came only near enough to see but not to enter the Promised Land. She was washed overboard from the deck--and to this day the sea is her grave and Cape Cod her monument!

There was Mistress Carver, wife of the first governor, who, when her husband fell under the stroke of sudden death, followed him first with heroic grief to the grave, and then, a fortnight after, followed him with heroic joy up into Heaven! There was Mistress White--the mother of the first child born to the New England Pilgrims on this continent. And it was a good omen, sir, that this historic babe was brought into the world on board the Mayflower between the time of the casting of her anchor and the landing of her pa.s.sengers--a kind of amphibious prophecy that the newborn nation was to have a birthright inheritance over the sea and over the land. There also was Rose Standish, whose name is a perpetual June fragrance, to mellow and sweeten those December winds.

Then, after the first vessel with these women, there came other women-- loving hearts drawn from the olden land by those silken threads which afterwards harden into golden chains. For instance, Governor Bradford, a lonesome widower, went down to the seabeach, and, facing the waves, tossed a love letter over the wide ocean into the lap of Alice Southworth in old England, who caught it up, and read it, and said, "Yes, I will go." And she went! And it is said that the governor, at his second wedding, married his first love! Which, according to the New Theology, furnishes the providential reason why the first Mrs. Bradford fell overboard!

Now, gentlemen, as you sit to-night in this elegant hall, think of the houses in which the _Mayflower_ men and women lived in that first winter! Think of a cabin in the wilderness--where winds whistled--where wolves howled--where Indians yelled! And yet, within that log house, burning like a lamp, was the pure flame of Christian faith, love, patience, fort.i.tude, heroism! As the Star of the East rested over the rude manger where Christ lay, so--speaking not irreverently--there rested over the roofs of the Pilgrims a Star of the West--the Star of Empire; and to-day that empire is the proudest in the world!

And now, to close, let me give you just a bit of good advice. The cottages of our forefathers had few pictures on the walls, but many families had a print of "King Charles's Twelve Good Rules," the eleventh of which was, "Make no long meals." Now King Charles lost his head, and you will have leave to make a long meal. But when, after your long meal, you go home in the wee small hours, what do you expect to find? You will find my toast--"Woman, a beautiful rod!" Now my advice is, "Kiss the rod!"

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Reprinted with the author's permission

BY HORACE PORTER

The story of the life of Abraham Lincoln savors more of romance than reality. It is more like a fable of the ancient days than the story of a plain American of the nineteenth century. The singular vicissitudes in the life of our martyred President surround him with an interest which attaches to few men in history. He sprang from that cla.s.s which he always alluded to as the "plain people," and never attempted to disdain them. He believed that the government was made for the people, not the people for the government. He felt that true Republicanism is a torch--the more it is shaken in the hands of the people the brighter it will burn. He was transcendently fit to be the first successful standard bearer of the progressive, aggressive, invincible Republican party. He might well have said to those who chanced to sneer at his humble origin what a marshal of France raised from the ranks said to the haughty n.o.bles of Vienna boasting of their long line of descent, when they refused to a.s.sociate with him: "I am an ancestor; you are only descendants!" He was never guilty of any posing for effect, any att.i.tudinizing in public, any mawkish sentimentality, any of that puppyism so often bred by power, that dogmatism which Johnson said was only puppyism grown to maturity. He made no claim to knowledge he did not possess. He felt with Addison that pedantry and learning are like hypocrisy in religion--the form of knowledge without the power of it.

He had nothing in common with those men of mental malformation who are educated beyond their intellects.

The names of Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln are inseparably a.s.sociated, and yet as the popular historian would have us believe one spent his entire life in chopping down acorn trees and the other splitting them up into rails. Was.h.i.+ngton could not tell a story. Lincoln always could. And Lincoln's stories always possessed the true geometrical requisites, they were never too long, and never too broad.

But his heart was not always attuned to mirth; its chords were often set to strains of sadness. Yet throughout all his trials he never lost the courage of his convictions. When he was surrounded on all sides by doubting Thomases, by unbelieving Saracens, by discontented Catilines, his faith was strongest. As the Danes destroyed the hearing of their war horses in order that they might not be affrighted by the din of battle, so Lincoln turned a deaf ear to all that might have discouraged him, and exhibited an unwavering faith in the justice of the cause and the integrity of the Union.

It is said that for three hundred years after the battle of Thermopylae every child in the public schools of Greece was required to recite from memory the names of the three hundred martyrs who fell in the defense of that pa.s.s. It would be a crowning triumph in patriotic education if every school child in America could contemplate each day the grand character and utter the inspiring name of Abraham Lincoln, who has handed down unto a grateful people the richest legacy which man can leave to man--the memory of a good name, the inheritance of a great example!

TO ATHLETIC VICTORS

From a speech at a dinner of graduates of Yale University, in New York, 1889. By the kindness of the author.

BY HENRY E. HOWLAND

On Boston Common, under the shadow of the State House, and within the atmosphere of Harvard University, there is an inscription on a column, in honor of those who, on land and sea, maintained the cause of their country during four years of civil war. The visitor approaches it with respect and reverently uncovers as he reads.

With similar high emotions we, as citizens of the world of letters, and acknowledging particular allegiance to the province thereof founded by Elihu Yale, are a.s.sembled to pour libations, to partake of a sacrificial feast, and to crown with honors and with bays those who, on land and sea, with unparalleled courage and devotion, have borne their flag to victory in desperate encounters.

Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.

On large fields of strife, the record of success like that which we are called upon to commemorate would give the victors a high place in history and liken their country to ancient Thebes,--

"Which spread her conquest o'er a thousand states, And poured her heroes through a hundred gates."

There are many reasons why Yale men win. One is that which was stated by Lord Beaconsfield, "The Secret of success is constancy of purpose."

That alone sufficiently accounts for it.

We are here present in no vain spirit of boasting, though if our right to exalt ourselves were questioned, we might reply in the words of the American girl who was shown some cannon at Woolwich a.r.s.enal, the sergeant in charge remarking, "You know we took them from you at Bunker Hill." "Yes," she replied, "I see you've got the cannon, but I guess we've got the hill."

We come rather in a spirit of true modesty to recognize the plaudits of an admiring world, to tell you how they were won. It was said in the days of Athenian pride and glory that it was easier to find a G.o.d in Athens than a man. We must be careful in these days of admiration of athletic effort that no such imputation is laid upon us, and that the deification of the human form divine is not carried to extremes.

It is a curious coincidence that a love of the cla.s.sics and proficiency in intellectual pursuits should coexist with admiration for physical perfection and with athletic superiority during all the centuries of which the history is written. The youth who lisped in Attic numbers and was brought up on the language we now so painfully and imperfectly acquire, who was lulled to sleep by songs of aeschylus and Sophocles, who discussed philosophy in the porches of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, was a more accomplished cla.s.sical scholar than the most learned pundit of modern times, and was a model of manly beauty, yet he would have died to win the wreath of parsley at the Olympian games, which all esteemed an immortal prize. While, in our time, to be the winning crew on the Isis, the Cam, the English or American Thames, is equal in honor and influence to the position of senior wrangler, valedictorian, or Deforest prize man.

The man who wins the world's honors to-day must not be overtrained mentally or physically; not, as John Randolph said of the soil of Virginia,--"poor by nature and ruined by cultivation," hollow-chested, convex in back, imperfect in sight, shuffling in gait, and flabby in muscle. The work of such a man will be musty like his closet, narrow as the groove he moves in, tinctured with the peculiarities that border on insanity, and out of tune with nature.

No man can work in the world unless he knows it, struggles with it, and becomes a part of it, and the statement of the English statesman that the undergraduate of Oxford or Cambridge who had the best stomach, the hardest muscles, and the greatest ambition would be the future Lord Chancellor of England, had a solid basis of truth.

Gentlemen of the bat, the oar, the racquet, the cinder path, and the leathern sphere, never were conquerors more welcome guests, in palace or in hall, at the tables of their friends than you are here.

You come with your laurels fresh from the fields you have won, to receive the praise which is your due and which we so gladly bestow.

Your self-denial, devotion, skill, and courage have brought honor to your University, and for it we honor you.

THE BABIES