The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 12

WESTERN SOCIETY OF THE ARMY OF THE POTOMAC BANQUET.

Chicago, January 31, 1894.

* Every soldier of the Army of the Potomac: remembers, the colors that for two years floated over the headquarters of Gen. Meade. Last night when one hundred and fifty men who fought in that army gathered around the banquet board at the Grand Pacific hotel a fac-simile of that flag floated over them. It was a handsome guidon, on one side a field of solferino red bearing a life-sized golden eagle surrounded by a silver wreath of laurel; on the other were the national colors with the names of the corps of the army.

The fifth annual banquet of the Western Society of the Army of the Potomac will be remembered on account of the presence of many distinguished men. The cigars had not been lighted when Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, escorted by Gen. Newberry and Col. Burbanks, came in. The bald head and spa.r.s.e gray hair of the famous orator were recognized by all, and he was given a mighty welcome.

Save for the emblems of the Union and the fac-simile of Gen.

Meade's flag the decorations were simple. There were no flowers, but the soldiers could read on little signs stuck up around the tables such names as "Petersburg," "White Oak," "Mine Run," "Cold Harbor," "Fair Oaks" and "South Mountain." The exercises began and ended with bugle call and military song, and the heroes of the Potomac showed that they still remembered the words of the songs sung in camp.

Col. Freeman Connor, the retiring president, acted as toastmaster. Seated near him were Maj.-Gen. Nelson Miles, United States army; Gen. Newberry, Col. Ingersoll, Thomas B.

Bryan, Col. James A.. s.e.xton, Maj. E. A. Blodgett, Fred W.

Spink, Col. Williston and Maj. Heyle.

The exercises began with the singing of "America" by all Col. Conner made a few remarks and then Col. C. S. McEntee presented the new-comer to the society. When Colonel Ingersoll was introduced, the veterans jumped up on chairs, waved their handkerchiefs and greeted him with a mighty shout. The Colonel spoke only fifteen minutes.

At the conclusion of Colonel Ingersoll's speech he was again cheered for several minutes. A motion was made to make him an honorary member of the Western Society of the Army of the Potomac. The toastmaster in putting the question said: "All who are in favor will rise and yell," and every comrade yelled.

--Chicago Record, February 1, 1894.

FIRST of all, I wish to thank you for allowing me to be present. Next, I wish to congratulate you that you are all alive. I congratulate you that you were born in this century, the greatest century in the world's history, the greatest century of intellectual genius and of physical, mental and moral progress that the world ever knew. I congratulate you all that you are members of the Army of the Potomac. I believe that no better army ever marched under the flag of any nation. There was no difficulty that discouraged you; no defeat that disheartened you. For years you bore the heat and burden of battle; for years you saw your comrades torn by shot and sh.e.l.l, but wiping the tears, from your cheeks you marched on with greater determination than ever to fight to the end.

To the Army of the Potomac belongs the eternal honor of having obtained finally the sword of Rebellion. I congratulate you because you fought for the Republic, and I thank you for your courage. For by you the United States was kept on the map of the world, and our flag was kept floating. If not for your work, neither would have been there. You removed from it the only stain that was ever on it. You fought not only the battle of the Union, but of the whole world.

I congratulate you that you live in a period when the North has attained a higher moral alt.i.tude than was ever attained by any nation. You now live in a country which believes in absolute freedom for all. In this country any man may reap what he sows and may give his honest thought to his fellow-men. It is wonderful to think what this Nation was before the Army of the Potomac came into existence. It believed in liberty as the convict believes in liberty. It was a country where men that had honest thoughts were ostracized. I thank you and your courage for what we are.

Nothing enn.o.bles a man so much as fighting for the right. Whoever fights for the wrong wounds himself. I believe that every man who fought in the Union army came out a stronger and a better and a n.o.bler man.

I believe in this country. I am so young and so full of enthusiasm that I am a believer in National growth. I want this country to be territorial and to become larger than it is. I want a country worthy of Chicago. I want to pick up the West Indies, take in the Bermudas, the Bahamas and Barbadoes. They are our islands. They belong to this continent and it is a piece of impudence for any other nation to think of owning them. We want to grow. Such is the extravagance of my ambition that I even want the Sandwich Islands. They say that these islands are too far away from us; that they are two thousand miles from our sh.o.r.es.

But they are nearer to our sh.o.r.es than to any other. I want them. I want a naval station there. I want America to be mistress of the Pacific.

Then there is another thing in my mind. I want to grow North and South.

I want Canada--good people--good land. I want that country. I do not want to steal it, but I want it. I want to go South with this Nation. My idea is this: There is only air enough between the Isthmus of Panama and the North Pole for one flag. A country that guarantees liberty to all cannot be too large. If any of these people are ignorant, we will educate them; give them the benefit of our free schools. Another thing--I might as well sow a few seeds for next fall. I have heard many reasons why the South failed in the Rebellion, and why with the help of Northern dissensions and a European hatred the South did not succeed. I will tell you. In my judgment, the South failed, not on account of its army, but from other conditions. Luckily for us, the South had always been in favor of free trade.

Secondly--The South raised and sold raw material, and when the war came it had no foundries, no factories, and no looms to weave the cloth for uniforms; no shops to make munitions of war, and it had to get what supplies it could by running the blockade. We of the North had the cloth to clothe our soldiers, shops to make our bayonets; we had all the curious wheels that invention had produced, and had labor and genius, the power of steam, and the water to make what we needed, and we did not require anything from any other country. Suppose this whole country raised raw material and s.h.i.+pped it out, we would be in the condition that the South was. We want this Nation to be independent of the whole world. A nation to be ready to settle questions of dispute by war should be in a condition of absolute independence. For that reason I want all the wheels turning in this country, all the chimneys full of fire, all the looms running, the iron red hot everywhere. I want to see all mechanics having plenty of work with good wages and good homes for their families, good food, schools for their children, plenty of clothes, and enough to take care of a child if it happens to take sick. I am for the independence of America, the growth of America physically, mentally, and every other way. The time will come when all nations combined cannot take that flag out of the sky. I want to see this country so that if a deluge sweeps every other nation from the face of the globe we would have all we want made right here by our factories, by American brain and hand.

I thank you that the Republic still lives. I thank you that we are all lovers of freedom. I thank you for having helped establish a Government where every child has an opportunity, and where every avenue of advancement if open to all.

LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF ANTON SEIDL.

New York, February 2, 1895.

MR. PRESIDENT, Mr. Anton Seidl, and Gentlemen: I was enjoying myself with music and song; why I should be troubled, why I should be called upon to trouble you, is a question I can hardly answer. Still, as the president has remarked, the American people like to hear speeches. Why, I don't know. It has always been a matter of amazement that anybody wanted to hear me. Talking is so universal; with few exceptions--the deaf and dumb--everybody seems to be in the business. Why they should be so anxious to hear a rival I never could understand. But, gentlemen, we are all pupils of nature; we are taught by the countless things that touch us on every side; by field and flower and star and cloud and river and sea, where the waves break into whitecaps, and by the prairie, and by the mountain that lifts its granite forehead to the sun; all things in nature touch us, educate us, sharpen us, cause the heart to bud, to burst, it may be, into blossom; to produce fruit. In common with the rest of the world I have been educated a little that way; by the things I have seen and by the things I have heard and by the people I have met.

But there are a few things that stand out in my recollection as having touched me more deeply than others, a few men to whom I feel indebted for the little I know, and for the little I happen to be. Those men, those things, are forever present in my mind. But I want to tell you to-night that the first man that let up the curtain in my mind, that ever opened a blind, that ever allowed a little suns.h.i.+ne to straggle in, was Robert Burns. I went to get my shoes mended, and I had to go with them. And I had to wait till they were done. I was like the fellow standing by the stream naked was.h.i.+ng his s.h.i.+rt. A lady and gentleman were riding by in a carriage, and upon seeing him the man indignantly shouted, "Why don't you put on another s.h.i.+rt when you are was.h.i.+ng one?"

The fellow said, "I suppose you think I've got a hundred s.h.i.+rts!"

When I went into the shop of the old Scotch shoemaker he was reading a book, and when he took my shoes in hand I took his book, which was "Robert Burns." In a few days I had a copy; and, indeed, gentlemen, from that time if "Burns" had been destroyed I could have restored more than half of it. It was in my mind day and night. Burns you know is a little valley, not very wide, but full of suns.h.i.+ne; a little stream runs down making music over the rocks, and children play upon the banks; narrow roads overrun with vines, covered with blossoms, happy children, the hum of bees, and little birds pour out their hearts and enrich the air. That is Burns. Then, you must know that I was raised respectably. Certain books were not thought to be good for the young person; only such books as would start you in the narrow road for the New Jerusalem. But one night I stopped at a little hotel in Illinois, many years ago, when we were not quite civilized, when the footsteps of the red man were still in the prairies. While I was waiting for supper an old man was reading from a book, and among others who were listening was myself. I was filled with wonder. I had never heard anything like it. I was ashamed to ask him what he was reading; I supposed that an intelligent boy ought to know. So I waited, and when the little bell rang for supper I hung back and they went out. I picked up the book; it was Sam Johnson's edition of Shakespeare. The next day I bought a copy for four dollars. My G.o.d!

more than the national debt. You talk about the present straits of the Treasury! For days, for nights, for months, for years, I read those books, two volumes, and I commenced with the introduction. I haven't read that introduction for nearly fifty years, certainly forty-five, but I remember it still. Other writers are like a garden diligently planted and watered, but Shakespeare a forest where the oaks and elms toss their branches to the storm, where the pine towers, where the vine bursts into blossom at its foot. That book opened to me a new world, another nature.

While Burns was the valley, here was a range of mountains with thousands of such valleys; while Burns was as sweet a star as ever rose into the horizon, here was a heaven filled with constellations. That book has been a source of perpetual joy to me from that day to this; and whenever I read Shakespeare--if it ever happens that I fail to find some new beauty, some new presentation of some wonderful truth, or another word that bursts into blossom, I shall make up my mind that my mental faculties are failing, that it is not the fault of the book. Those, then, are two things that helped to educate me a little.

Afterward I saw a few paintings by Rembrandt, and all at once I was overwhelmed with the genius of the man that could convey so much thought in form and color. Then I saw a few landscapes by Corot, and I began to think I knew something about art. During all my life, of course, like other people, I had heard what they call music, and I had my favorite pieces, most of those favorite pieces being favorites on account of a.s.sociation; and nine-tenths of the music that is beautiful to the world is beautiful because of the a.s.sociation, not because the music is good, but because of a.s.sociation.. We cannot write a very poetic thing about a pump or about water works; they are not old enough.

We can write a poetic thing about a well and a sweep and an old moss-covered bucket, and you can write a poem about a spring, because a spring seems a gift of nature, something that cost no trouble and no work, something that will sing of nature under the quiet stars of June.

So, it is poetic on account of a.s.sociation. The stage coach is more poetic than the car, but the time will come when cars will be poetic, because human feelings, love's remembrances, will twine around them, and consequently they will become beautiful. There are two pieces of music, "The Last Rose of Summer," and "Home Sweet Home," with the music a little weak in the back; but a.s.sociation makes them both beautiful. So, in the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" is the French Revolution, that whirlwind and flame of war, of heroism the highest possible, of generosity, of self-denial, of cruelty, of all of which the human heart and brain are capable; so that music now sounds as though its notes were made of stars, and it is beautiful mostly by a.s.sociation.

Now, I always felt that there must be some greater music somewhere, somehow. You know this little music that comes back with recurring emphasis every two inches or every three-and-a-half inches; I thought there ought to be music somewhere with a great sweep from horizon to horizon, and that could fill the great dome of sound with winged notes like the eagle; if there was not such music, somebody, sometime, would make it, and I was waiting for it. One day I heard it, and I said, "What music is that?" "Who wrote that?" I felt it everywhere. I was cold. I was almost hysterical. It answered to my brain, to my heart; not only to a.s.sociation, but to all there was of hope and aspiration, all my future; and they said this is the music of Wagner. I never knew one note from another--of course I would know it from a promissory note--and was utterly and absolutely ignorant of music until I heard Wagner interpreted by the greatest leader, in my judgment, in the world--Anton Seidl. He not only understands Wagner in the brain, but he feels him in the heart, and there is in his blood the same kind of wild and splendid independence that was in the brain of Wagner. I want to say to-night, because there are so many heresies, Mr. President, creeping into this world, I want to say and say it with all my might, that Robert Burns was not Scotch. He was far wider than Scotland: he had in him the universal tide, and wherever it touches the sh.o.r.e of a human being it finds access. Not Scotch, gentlemen, but a man, a man! I can swear to it, or rather affirm, that Shakespeare was not English, but another man, kindred of all, of all races and peoples, and who understood the universal brain and heart of the human race, and who had imagination enough to put himself in the place of all.

And so I want to say to-night, because I want to be consistent, Richard Wagner was not a German, and his music is not German; and why? Germany would not have it. Germany denied that it was music. The great German critics said it was nothing in the world but noise. The best interpreter of Wagner in the world is not German, and no man has to be German to understand Richard Wagner. In the heart of nearly every man is an aeolian harp, and when the breath of true genius touches that harp, every man that has one, or that knows what music is or has the depth and height of feeling necessary to appreciate it, appreciates Richard Wagner. To understand that music, to hear it as interpreted by this great leader, is an education. It develops the brain; it gives to the imagination wings; the little earth grows larger; the people grow important; and not only that, it civilizes the heart; and the man who understands that music can love better and with greater intensity than he ever did before. The man who understands and appreciates that music, becomes in the highest sense spiritual--and I don't mean by spiritual, wors.h.i.+ping some phantom, or dwelling upon what is going to happen to some of us--I mean spiritual in the highest sense; when a perfume arises from the heart in grat.i.tude, and when you feel that you know what there is of beauty, of sublimity, of heroism and honor and love in the human heart.

This is what I mean by being spiritual. I don't mean denying yourself here and living on a crust with the expectation of eternal joy--that is not what I mean. By spiritual I mean a man that has an ideal, a great ideal, and who is splendid enough to live to that ideal; that is what I mean by spiritual. And the man who has heard the music of Wagner, that music of love and death, the greatest music, in my judgment, that ever issued from the human brain, the man who has heard that and understands it has been civilized.

Another man to whom I feel under obligation whose name I do not know--I know Burns, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Wagner, but there are some other fellows whose names I do not know--is he who chiseled the Venus de Milo.

This man helped to civilize the world; and there is nothing under the sun so pathetic as the perfect. Whoever creates the perfect has thought and labored and suffered; and no perfect thing has ever been done except through suffering and except through the highest and holiest thought, and among this cla.s.s of men is Wagner. Let me tell you something more. You know I am a great believer. There is no man in the world who believes more in human nature than I do. No man believes more in the n.o.bility and splendor of humanity than I do; no man feels more grateful than I to the self-denying, heroic, splendid souls who have made this world fit for ladies and gentlemen to live in. But I believe that the human mind has reached its top in three departments. I don't believe the human race--no matter if it lives millions of years more upon this wheeling world--I don't believe the human race will ever produce in the world anything greater, sublimer, than the marbles of the Greeks. I do not believe it. I believe they reach absolutely the perfection of form and the expression of force and pa.s.sion in stone. The Greeks made marble as sensitive as flesh and as pa.s.sionate as blood. I don't believe that any human being of any coming race--no matter how many suns may rise and set, or how many religions may rise and fall, or how many languages be born and decay--I don't believe any human being will ever excel the dramas of Shakespeare. Neither do I believe that the time will ever come when any man with such instruments of music as we now have, and having nothing but the common air that we now breathe, will ever produce greater pictures in sound, greater music, than Wagner. Never! Never! And I don't believe he will ever have a better interpreter than Anton Seidl.

Seidl is a poet in sound, a sculptor in sound. He is what you might call an orchestral orator, and as such he expresses the deepest feelings, the highest aspirations and the in-tensest and truest love of which the brain and heart of man are capable.

Now, I am glad, I am delighted, that the people here in this city and in various other cities of our great country are becoming civilized enough to appreciate these harmonies; I am glad they are civilized at last enough to know that the home of music is tone, not tune; that the home of music is in harmonies where you braid them like rainbows; I am glad they are great enough and civilized enough to appreciate the music of Wagner, the greatest music in this world. Wagner sustains the same relation to other composers that Shakespeare does to other dramatists, and any other dramatist compared with Shakespeare is like one tree compared with an immeasurable forest, or rather like one leaf compared with a forest; and all the other composers of the world are embraced in the music of Wagner.

"n.o.body has written anything more tender than he, n.o.body anything sublimer than he. Whether it is the song of the deep, or the warble of the mated bird, n.o.body has excelled Wagner; he has expressed all that the human heart is capable of appreciating. And now, gentlemen, having troubled you long enough, and saying long live Anton Seidl, I bid you good-night."

LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF REAR ADMIRAL SCHLEY.

New York, November 26, 1898.

* The Lotos Club did honor to Rear Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, and incidentally, to the United States, at its clubhouse in Fifth Avenue last night. All day long the square, blue pennant, blazoned with the two stars of a Rear Admiral, snapped in the wind, signifying to all who saw it that the Lotos Clubhouse was for the time being the flags.h.i.+p of the erstwhile Flying Squadron.

Within the home of the club were gathered men who like the guest of the evening were prominent in the war with Spain, The navy was represented by Capt. Charles D. Sigs-Dee, Capt.

A. T. Mahan and Captain Goodrich. From the army there was Brig. Gen. W F. Randolph, and from civil life many men prominent in the business, professional and social life of the city. The one impulse that led these men to brave the storm was their desire to pay their respects to one of the men who had done so much to win laurels for the American arms.

The parlors and dining rooms of the clubhouse wore thrown into one in order to accommodate the three hundred men present fit the dinner. Smilax covered the walls, save hero and there where the American flag was draped in graceful folds. From the archway under which the table of honor was spread, hung a large National ensign and a Rear Admiral's pennant.

The menu was unique. Etched on a cream-tinted paper appeared an open nook, and on the tops of the pages was inscribed, "Logge of the Goode s.h.i.+p Lotos." "Dinner to Rear Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, given in the cabin of ye s.h.i.+ppe, Nov.

26, l898, Lat. 40 degrees 42 minutes 43 seconds north; longitude, 74 degrees 3 seconds west."

On each side of the menu was stretched a string of signal flags, giving the orders made famous by Admiral Schley in the naval engagement of July 3, 1898. On the second page of the menu was a fine etching of the Brooklyn, Admiral Schley's flags.h.i.+p. The souvenir menu was inclosed in blue paper, upon which were two white stars, the whole representing Rear Admiral Schley's pennant.

MR.PRESIDENT, Gentlemen of the Club--Boys: I congratulate all of you and I congratulate myself, and I will tell you why. In the first place, we were well born, and we were all born rich, all of us. We belong to a great race. That is something; that is having a start, to feel that in your veins flows heroic blood, blood that has accomplished great things and has planted the flag of victory on the field of war. It is a great thing to belong to a great race.

I congratulate you and myself on another thing; we were born in a great nation, and you can't be much of a man without having a nation behind you, with you; Just think about it! What would Shakespeare have been, if he had been born in Labrador? I used to know an old lawyer in southern Illinois, a smart old chap, who mourned his unfortunate surroundings.

He lived in Pinkneyville, and occasionally drank a little too freely of Illinois wine; and when in his cups he sometimes grew philosophic and egotistic. He said one day, "Boys, I have got more brains than you have, I have, but I have never had a chance. I want you just to think of it. What would Daniel Webster have been, by G.o.d, if he had settled in Pinkneyville?"